All the Rage (DI Fawley)

by Cara Hunter

  Just along the bar, the hen-in-chief is now ordering a round of cosmos and something in a tulip-shaped glass that involves a cocktail shaker, a cherry on a stick and a sparkler. It’s evidently destined for the bride-to-be, who catches sight of what’s going on and gets to her feet. The young man at the bar isn’t the only one to notice her: it’s hard to ignore that long dark hair, the red heels she’s probably now regretting, those violet-blue eyes.

  She doesn’t appear drunk – unlike some of her companions – but the young man has a hunch the wine has had its effect, all the same. She eventually makes it to the bar, after evading several attempts to get her to dance, and slides on to a stool next to her friend. She’s six feet away from him now.

  She gestures at the cocktail glass. ‘If you think I’m drinking that, you’ve got another think coming.’

  The pitch of her voice is low – lower than he’d have expected.

  She looks at her friend and then at the barman. ‘Is she trying to get me pissed? She is, isn’t she? So I’ll do something appalling like dance on the table with no knickers.’

  The barman grins widely and shrugs. He’s a heavy man, thickset. ‘Don’t look at me. What happens on a hen night, stays in the coop.’

  She laughs out loud then turns again to her friend. ‘You haven’t got a bloody stripper, have you, Chlo? Please tell me you haven’t got a stripper.’

  Chloe opens her eyes wide and looks mock-offended: Who, me?

  The woman gives her a narrow look. ‘Yeah, right. Well, let’s just say I’m steering well clear of anyone in a bloody uniform.’

  She reaches across and takes the sparkler from the drink, then hands it, with a flourish, to her friend. It’s all just a little too theatrical. As if she knows she’s being watched. Which, of course, she is.

  She picks up the glass and takes a sip.

  ‘Actually, that’s not too bad.’

  Her friend grins and gives the barman a high five. ‘Way to go, Gerry!’

  ‘Though there’s still no way I’m drinking it.’

  Her friend slides, a little awkwardly, off her stool. ‘I’ll just take the drinks over to the girls. Amy’s sending me manic distress signals.’

  Left to herself, the woman reaches for the hair clip to take it off. But it’s got caught. The young man has to stop himself offering to help, but she finally manages to yank it clear, stuffing it into her bag, then rubbing the side of her head.

  She must have seen the young man pick up his glass out of the corner of her eye because she looks straight at him now. She flushes and smiles, a little self-consciously.

  ‘Bloody thing – it’s been giving me a headache all evening.’

  There’s a squeal of laughter from the girls’ table now and Chloe starts to make her way, none too steadily, back to the bar.

  ‘Sorry if we’ve been a bit loud,’ says the bride. ‘Blame it on the job. We work at a law firm, for our sins. It’s hardly laugh-a-minute.’

  ‘You’re a solicitor?’ asks the young man.

  She looks at him for a moment, then takes another sip of the drink. Her eyes are very bright. ‘No, just a legal secretary. Very, very, very dull. What about you?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I’m just a civil servant. That’s pretty dull, too.’

  The woman laughs and raises her glass in a toast. ‘May universal dullness cover all!’

  Chloe comes up and leans her arm round her friend’s shoulders. She’s having difficulty staying upright. ‘Are you coming, Sand? The girls want to move on somewhere else.’

  ‘In a minute. What sort of civil servant?’

  He hesitates; perhaps there’s something about his job he’d rather not divulge. At least to attractive women he’s only just met. ‘At the council. I’m in Planning.’

  A smile curls her lips. ‘I see. So you’re the man to ask if I want an extension?’

  Chloe starts shrieking with laughter. ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe you just said that!’

  The bride is smiling too, but playfully, as if goading him. As if she’s seen through his lie.

  ‘You might be a useful man to know, Mr I’m-in-Planning. Do you have a card?’

  His turn to flush. ‘No, sorry.’

  She smiles a little more widely and reaches for a napkin. ‘I’m sure you have a phone number, though,’ she says. ‘Even very dull people have those. You can write it down for me. Just in case.’

  Chloe is looking at her, wide-eyed, as the young man takes out a pen and writes the numbers down.

  The woman picks up the napkin, looks at it, and then at him. ‘Adam Fawley,’ she says softly. ‘For a dull man, you have a distinctly interesting name.’

  * * *

  ‘There’s nothing in the recordings,’ says Saumarez, staring at the TV. It’s a huge flat-screen in the corner of the sitting room. So huge that it’s hard to get far enough away from it to focus properly. ‘But let’s have a look at the deleted items. We may get lucky – not everyone knows you have to erase stuff twice on these things.’

  He starts to scroll through the list – Monday Night Football, The Big Fight Live.

  ‘Everything OK? Only I need to get going.’

  It’s Riley, standing at the door. He’s dressed now, a leather jacket slung over one shoulder.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Riley, we won’t be long now.’

  ‘What’s this then?’ he says, moving towards the TV. Saumarez has stopped scrolling; he’s staring at the screen.

  ‘Oh, just something we were checking,’ says Somer quickly, a little embarrassed.

  ‘Patsie loves that crap,’ says Riley, gesturing at the list. ‘Watches it all the fucking time. Faking It, A Perfect Murder, The First 48. I asked her once why she was wasting her time with shit like that and she just gave me one of those looks of hers and said “research”.’

  He sees their faces change and laughs. ‘Yeah, like, seriously – she actually said that. I said to her, was she planning on killing me then, and she just did this weird smile. Bloody creeped me out, I can tell you.’

  He hitches his jacket a little higher. ‘Of course, when Den told me you were questioning her about the Sasha Blake thing I practically pissed myself. I mean – you couldn’t make it up. She’d only been watching that sodding show two days before.’

  Somer frowns. ‘I’m not with you. Which show?’

  Saumarez turns to her. ‘I know which one he means,’ he says quietly. ‘It’s called I Killed My BFF.’

  * * *

  Adam Fawley

  11 April 2018

  15.40

  I can see it now, in my head. The colours slightly too bright, the focus slightly too sharp, like it is in dreams, or in fever. Parking the car outside the Co-op that day. The litter bin spilling over with rubbish, a magpie perched on the edge, something pink and glittery gripped in its beak, sparkling in the low winter sun. Something I thought, even then, I recognized. I remember my pace slowing, just for a moment; I remember wondering at the coincidence, if that’s what it was. But I didn’t put it together, not then. Not then, and not even five minutes later when I went inside and saw her and realized that she’d cut her hair.

  And what about later, you’re going to say, after they found what they found? If forensics had come to me first, if they’d showed me what was in that evidence bag, would I have put it together then?

  Yes. No question.

  And would I have said something? Would I have done things differently?

  I think so, but if I’m honest, I don’t know. I still don’t know, even now. Because we knew it was him. I knew it was him. And this was the only way we were going to make him pay.

  But it’s all hypothetical, because they didn’t come to me. They went to Osbourne, and he realized at once what they had, and the difference it could make, and by the time anyone told me it was far, far too late.

  * * *

  When Gallagher looks up from her desk and sees Somer her first reaction is to frown.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed
to be off this afternoon?’

  But then she notices there’s a man standing behind her, and the thought half forms that this must be the boyfriend everyone’s talking about, but then Somer’s holding out her phone and there’s no mistaking the look on her face.

  Gallagher stares at the screen then looks up, frowning. ‘Sorry, I don’t get it – what’s this?’

  ‘It’s from the TV in Patsie Webb’s house. A programme she watched six months ago – a programme she thought she’d deleted. This is why those girls ripped out Sasha’s hair, and why they’d already done exactly the same thing to Faith. They knew about the Roadside Rapist all along. They wanted us to think he was back – they wanted us so focused on him we wouldn’t go looking anywhere else.’

  TRUE CRIME TV

  New: Britain’s Most Notorious Predators

  1h 3m

  ® ↕ Record series, Monday 11.00 pm

  The Roadside Rapist: True crime author Walter Selnick Jr takes an in-depth look at the case of Gavin Parrie, convicted of seven brutal sex attacks in the UK in 1999. But could the real rapist still be out there? (S3, ep8)

  * * *

  Adam Fawley

  11 April 2018

  15.45

  ‘You knew about the hairslide.’

  Alex is staring at me, her face white to the lips.

  ‘I remembered you wearing it. How it’d got tangled in your hair. And I remembered you shoving it in the side pocket of your bag. I thought, afterwards, how easy it would be to forget about something like that – how it might be weeks before you remembered it was there. Months, even.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘There was no way to be sure.’ But the real truth is I didn’t want to ask – didn’t want to watch her face as she decided whether she was going to lie. Because by then I was already in love with her.

  ‘And like you said, the longer it went on, the harder it got.’

  ‘You could have lost your job.’

  I take her hand. ‘I know.’

  There’s a silence.

  ‘I was terrified,’ she says, ‘all the way through the trial – I thought that barman at Kubla would say we were both there that night – that they’d find out I lied.’

  I don’t say anything. I don’t tell her I spoke to him. That I squared it away – told him about the girl Parrie assaulted in Manchester – that Parrie might walk because we couldn’t refer to it in court and we had precious little else. The man was ex-army; he understood. But Alex doesn’t need to know about that. Not now.

  ‘It was him,’ she breathes now, her voice barely more than a whisper. ‘Parrie. I know it was him. I wouldn’t have done –’

  She swallows, forces herself to continue; she’s not looking at me. ‘I wouldn’t have done what I did if I wasn’t sure. Absolutely sure.’

  ‘I know.’

  She raises her eyes to mine. ‘You do understand, don’t you? Why I did it? I had to stop him. The papers kept saying there was never any DNA – that he was too clever to leave any proof. That poor girl who killed herself – she was scarcely more than a child. And then I found myself in that queue and I realized it was the same smell, and he was just standing there behind me like a normal person, but I knew, I just knew it was him, and I thought – this is my chance – this is my chance to make him pay –’

  I hold her hand tighter. Her fingers are icy.

  ‘I thought it was all in the past – that it was over and done with and he’d got what he deserved, and over the years I managed to convince myself that it was OK. That any reasonable person would have done the same thing I did. And then suddenly you were telling me that he might get parole – that he might be let out – and it all started up again. I thought you were going to lose your job – that it would all come out and it would all be my fault, and I – I –’

  She’s sobbing now. I pull her into my arms and kiss her hair. ‘Well, I didn’t, and I’m not going to. It’s over – really. Everything is going to be fine. You, me, our child. That’s all that matters. And I promise you that nothing – nothing – is ever going to take that away.’

  * * *

  Fiona Blake is woken by the doorbell. She reaches blindly for the alarm clock – 7.35: she’s been asleep less than an hour. Her eyes feel like they’re opening into mud and her limbs are heavy but unstable, like wet cement.

  They’d told her – the policewomen – that they’d do their best to keep the press away, but all the same it might be better if there was somewhere else she could go – someone else she could stay with. But she’d told them no. There was nowhere she wanted to go, no one she wanted to see. She just wanted to be left alone. She wanted them to leave her alone. She’d almost felt sorry for them, by the end, when she finally got the two of them out the door. Especially the pretty one. Somer or whatever her name was. She looked really upset. As if she’d known Sash – as if she could even begin to understand what it felt like now – to know that –

  The bell rings again. She rubs her face, feeling the skin coarse and unmoisturized under her fingers. She reaches for the dressing gown; it’s the same one she’s been wearing for days. Even she knows that it smells.

  She daren’t look at herself in the mirror by the front door, but she doesn’t care. If there are bloody press out there, let them look. Let them see what it looks like – what it does to you to lose a daughter like that.

  But it’s not a journalist. It’s Victoria Parker. She’s holding a bunch of flowers in her hand. Lilies. Just like the ones her daughter brought. There’s a sudden overwhelming wave of scent. Fiona feels nauseous.

  ‘Mrs Blake – I mean, Fiona,’ says Victoria, her voice dragging in her throat. Her face looks bleached, almost bruised. ‘I didn’t know what to do. This is so awful – I just don’t understand – they were all such friends – such great friends –’

  Victoria swallows. Her knuckles are white where she’s gripping the lilies to her chest. A small part of Fiona’s deadened brain notices the smear of orange pollen on her beige jacket. She’ll never get that stain out now, she thinks. There are some things that can’t be retrieved.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Victoria. She’s blinking; too fast. Trying to push away the tears she knows this woman will not pity. ‘I’m just so very, very sorry.’

  Fiona stares at her for a long long moment, and then, slowly and quietly, closes the door.

  * * *

  Daily Telegraph

  13th February 2019

  OXFORD TEENAGERS FOUND GUILTY OF ‘BRUTAL AND INHUMANE’ KILLING

  By Lisa Greaves

  Four teenage girls were convicted at Oxford Crown Court today for the assault and murder of Marston teenager Sasha Blake. After an eight-week trial, Patsie Webb and Isabel Parker were found guilty of murder, and Leah Waddell of conspiracy to murder. A fourth girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found guilty of Actual Bodily Harm. All four were fifteen at the time of the killing.

  The court heard that Webb and Parker planned the murder for weeks, researching several similar crimes and focusing in particular on the 1999 conviction of Gavin Parrie, the so-called ‘Roadside Rapist’. Nicholas Fox QC argued that certain details of the ‘brutal and inhumane’ killing of Sasha Blake were specifically designed to lead police to believe that the perpetrator was a copycat sexual predator. The girls even went so far as to carry out an almost identical assault on another young woman a few days before the murder, to lend weight to the deception.

  Sasha Blake was lured into woodland off the Marston Ferry Road, in Oxford, on 3 April 2018, and submitted to a brutal beating by Webb and Parker which resulted in her death. The jury was told how Webb had developed an intense and irrational hatred for Blake, despite the fact that they had been friends since childhood. She also believed that her boyfriend, Ashley Brotherton, wished to finish their relationship and take up with Blake instead. Brotherton gave evidence in court about Webb’s volatile temper, and described various threats she made against him in rel
ation to his supposed attraction to Blake. Mr Fox told the jury that Webb had homed in on the Roadside Rapist case not only because the crimes had taken place in the Oxford area, but because Mr Brotherton was a plasterer, and she knew any forensic evidence transferred from his van would give the police further reason to believe the assaults were linked to the Parrie case. Several witnesses attested to her fascination with true crime TV programmes and investigative procedures.

  Under questioning, Leah Waddell broke down in tears and claimed that she had been ‘bullied and intimidated’ into going along with the plan, and Webb and Parker were ‘domineering’: ‘I just couldn’t say no – I was afraid of what they would do to me.’ After Sasha Blake’s death, Webb went to considerable lengths to divert attention away from herself and Parker, including planting condoms at the victim’s house to lead investigators to believe she had a boyfriend. When she overheard a CID officer tell Mrs Blake that the police did not believe there was any connection between her daughter’s death and the Parrie case, Webb came forward with another suspect, who was investigated but subsequently cleared of any involvement in the crime.

  All four girls will be sentenced next month. Webb, Parker and Waddell are also due to face charges in relation to the earlier assault.

  Posted 10.27 16 February 2019

  Headshot, interior, direct to cam

  Hi everyone. I realised this morning that it’s six months since I started sharing my personal journey with you guys. I didn’t have the courage to talk about that when I started my channel, and I don’t think I ever would’ve without my awesome partner Jess, and my amazing mum, who’s been through so much herself lately, but has always always been there for me and loved me for who I am. Getting a bit emotional now because it’s been such an overwhelming few months, but I just want to thank both of them from the bottom of my heart.