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