in front of a story like this. It’s all over Twitter already.’
‘You can’t seriously think that Gavin Parrie is innocent? That it was someone else all along – someone completely under the radar – who’s started up again, all these years later –’
‘It’s not what I think that’s important, Adam. We have to be seen to be doing the right thing. And all the more so if –’
‘If? If what? If I got it wrong – if I fucked up. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
Harrison’s fiddling with something on his desk now. Anything to avoid looking me in the eye. ‘That sort of attitude isn’t going to help. It’s perfectly reasonable that the Chief Constable should ask us to demonstrate we’ve considered all the alternative theories of the crime.’
If I wasn’t so furious I’d laugh out loud. In fact, I’m almost furious enough to laugh anyway. Which would really land me in the shit.
There’s a silence. An angry, fizzing silence.
Harrison sits back again. ‘In the meantime, I will, of course, have to bring in someone else.’
‘Someone else?’
‘You can’t possibly handle it any more, Adam. It’s a manifest conflict of interest, surely you can see that?’
‘Who? Who are you bringing in?’
‘Ruth Gallagher, from the Major Crimes unit. She’ll take on the Appleford/Blake inquiry, and liaise with whoever the Chief Constable selects to do the Parrie review.’
It could be worse. In fact, it could be a lot worse. I’ve only met Gallagher at the odd police social thing, but I know of her. She’s shrewd and she’s uncompromising, but she’s good. And she’s fair. She’ll call it how she sees it.
‘And I will, of course, have to inform Parrie’s lawyers.’
I don’t reply. I don’t trust myself to say anything civil, but either way, the phone ringing saves me from myself.
Harrison seizes the handset. ‘I said I didn’t want to be disturbed,’ he barks. Then he stops, glances at me, looks away. ‘Tell her that at this moment in time we have no statement to make, but one will be issued in due course.’
He puts the handset down and gives me a heavy look.
‘That,’ he says, ‘was Jocelyn Naismith.’
* * *
Outside, the rain shows no sign of easing, but there’s no window on the weather in the morgue. Here, as always, the light is just a bit too bright, and the neon tubes hum beneath the low murmur of voices and the clatter of metal on metal. There are two CSIs and an exhibits officer in the room but Gislingham is the only one of the CID team present. He told the rest of them it’s his turn and they’re too busy to go mob-handed (which is true), but the real reason is because he doesn’t want the women seeing this. And yes, he knows he’d have got labelled a sexist throwback if he’d actually said so, but as far as he’s concerned, it’s just called ‘being considerate’.
‘Ah, just you, is it, Sergeant?’ says Colin Boddie from the other side of the room. His assistant is behind him tying his gown.
‘We’ve got a lot on.’
Boddie gives him a wry look. ‘Likewise. So let’s get on with it, shall we?’
* * *
The room is silent.
It has been, ever since Somer ran out of words.
Fiona Blake has asked nothing, said nothing. She’s not hysterical, she’s not frantic. She’s just sitting there, in the cold and curtained room, her face running with tears she isn’t even bothering to wipe away. Somer’s never seen anyone so silent, and so still. She’s never seen anyone in so much pain.
And as they sit there, in the deepening dark, from the pavement outside comes the drum of the rain and the low drone of the press; and from the kitchen, the sound of Everett doing her best to comfort Sasha’s sobbing and inconsolable friend.
* * *
Adam Fawley
5 April 2018
19.05
‘I don’t know the name – who is she?’
I’m in the car, on the phone. I got soaked running even the fifty yards across the car park, but I needed to talk to Alex and I wanted privacy more than I wanted to stay dry.
The woman I saw at the press conference; the woman I thought I recognized.
‘Jocelyn Naismith works for The Whole Truth.’
With anyone else, I’d have to explain. Anyone outside the criminal justice system, anyway. But my wife is a lawyer. She knows all about The Whole Truth – about their campaigns for people convicted on erroneous evidence, their dogged persistence in overturning miscarriages of justice. She’s watched and