All the Rage

Adam Fawley
3 April 2018
14.55

I promised Challow I'd talk to Harrison. And I will. Just not yet. There's someone else I need to see first.

I pull up outside a solid brick and flint house a few miles outside Abingdon. Open fields, a high hedgerow and a line of distant trees that marks the river. For as long as I worked for him it was Alastair Osbourne's dream to retire to the country, and last time I came here Project Picket Fence was well underway. Climbing roses, herbaceous borders, the lot. The place looks a lot less loved now, but then again, it's hard to make anything look that wonderful on a grey April afternoon, even if you do have a lot of time on your hands.

I rang ahead so he knew I was coming but he still looks frazzled when he opens the door. He has a mug of tea in one hand and a tea towel over his shoulder.

`˜Adam,' he says distractedly, as if he expected me and yet was still taken on the hop. `˜It's good to see you.'

`˜You're sure it's not a bad time?'

There's a flicker across his face at that, which I don't immediately understand.

`˜No, no, not at all,' he says. `˜It's just, well, one of those days.' He steps aside to let me in. `˜Viv's in the conservatory. She likes to be able to look at the garden.'

That phrase alone should have told me something, but I'm too wound up about what I'm about to say to hear it. Which is why I'm so entirely unprepared for what I see, when I follow him through to the back. Vivian Osbourne, avid fell walker, former bank manager and no-nonsense Girl Guide leader, is by the window. She has a rug over her knees and a large black cat curled asleep on her lap, but she's sitting in a wheelchair. I falter a moment then try desperately to pretend I haven't.

`˜MS,' she says, her voice a little halting but still the Viv I remember. `˜The bastard.'

`˜I'm sorry `“ I didn't know.'

She makes a face. `˜Well, we haven't exactly been putting announcements in the Oxford Mail. It's been pretty shitty, to be honest, but we're getting there. Finding a way forward.'

Osbourne puts the mug he's holding on the table next to her. `˜Will you be OK in here for a bit if I take Adam into the kitchen?'

She flaps her hand at him with a dry smile. `˜You two go and talk shop. I'm not completely incapable. Not yet, anyway.'

When we get to the kitchen Osbourne flicks on the kettle and turns to face me.

`˜How long's it been?'

`˜Since the diagnosis? We knew about that before I retired. It's why I went six months early.'

I did wonder; we all did. Everyone noticed a change in him, towards the end `“ a weariness, a sense that he really didn't care much any more. But we just thought it was the job. That it had finally ground him down.

`˜We weren't doing badly until she started needing the chair. That was last autumn. Since then, it's not been so easy.'

I remember the state of the garden, and I try not to make it obvious that I can now see the kitchen could do with a proper clean and there's an over-full bin reeking by the back door.

`˜I'm sorry `“ if I'd known, I wouldn't have bothered you.'

He shakes his head. `˜Don't be ridiculous. Life may be tougher but it still goes on. And Viv's the last person who'd want treating like an invalid. You should know that.'

He turns and reaches into a cupboard for teabags.

`˜So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?'

And here we are. No-way-back time.

`˜Gavin Parrie.'

He pours the boiling water, stirs both mugs, puts the kettle back down and then, and only then, turns to face me.

* * *

Daily Mail

21st December 1999

`˜ROADSIDE RAPIST' GETS LIFE

Judge calls Gavin Parrie `˜evil, unrepentant and depraved'

By John Smithson

The predator dubbed the `˜Roadside Rapist' was given a life sentence yesterday, after a nine-week trial at the Old Bailey. Judge Peter Healey condemned Parrie as `˜evil, unrepentant and depraved' and recommended he serve a minimum of 15 years. There was uproar in the court after the sentence was announced, with abuse directed at both judge and jury from members of Parrie's family in the public gallery.

Parrie has always insisted that he is innocent of the rape and attempted rape of seven young women in the Oxford area between January and December 1998. One of his victims, 19-year-old Emma Goddard, committed suicide some months after her ordeal. Parrie contends he was framed by Thames Valley Police and, as he was led away, he was heard issuing death threats against the officer who had been instrumental in his apprehension, saying he would `˜get him' and he and his family would `˜spend the rest of their lives watching their backs'. The officer in question, Detective Sergeant Adam Fawley, has received a commendation from the Chief Constable for his work on the case.

Speaking after the verdict, Chief Superintendent Michael Oswald of Thames Valley Police said he was confident that the right man had been convicted and confirmed that no other credible suspect had ever been identified in the course of what became a county-wide investigation. `˜I am proud of the work done by my team. They went to enormous lengths to find the perpetrator of these appalling crimes and bring him to justice, and it is absolutely unacceptable that they should be subject to either threats or intimidation. Police officers put their lives on the line on a regular basis to protect the public, and you may rest assured that we take all necessary steps to ensure the continued safety of our officers and their families.'

Emma Goddard's mother, Jennifer, spoke to reporters outside the court after the verdict, saying that nothing was ever going to bring her daughter back, but she hoped she could now rest in peace, knowing the man who destroyed her life was going to pay the price for what he had done.

* * *

`˜Alan Challow found it. It was on the girl's shoes.'

Osbourne smiles. `˜How is the recalcitrant old bugger?'

`˜OK. Bit heavier, bit balder, but otherwise much the same.'

He laughs briefly at the memory. But only briefly. `˜And those test results `“ there's no doubt?'

I shake my head.

He digs the teabags out and hands one of the mugs to me. There are bits floating on the surface, as if the milk is on the turn.

`˜But that's not such a huge deal, is it?' he says.

I feel my jaw tightening. `˜It could be. You know the plaster dust thing was always controversial. We never found any of it in that van of his. Or the lock-up.'

`˜But the brother was a builder, wasn't he? Parrie could easily have borrowed his van if his own was off the road.'

Which is precisely what we told the court, and what the jury must have decided to believe, even though the brother vehemently denied it. Parrie always said the plaster dust proved he wasn't guilty, and now there's someone else out there, attacking young women, leaving the exact same thing on his victims `“

I take a deep breath. `˜It's not just that. Faith said he pulled out her hair. Though it's not clear if that was by accident or intent.'

Osbourne's face hardens. `˜Look, Adam, you can't seriously be suggesting that the real rapist is still at large somewhere? Someone who `“ let's not forget `“ stopped what he was doing the minute we arrested Parrie, only to start up again now, out of the blue, after all these years?'

`˜Perhaps he's been in prison. Perhaps he's been abroad. Perhaps he's been doing it somewhere else all this time and we just didn't know.'

`˜I don't believe that for a minute. Someone, somewhere, would have made the connection by now.'

`˜Not necessarily `“'

`˜It isn't him,' he says steadily. `˜You know it isn't.'

`˜Do I?'

He holds my gaze. `˜We caught Parrie, Adam. You caught Parrie. He's in Wandsworth. The same place he's been for the last eighteen years.'

He puts the mug down and takes a step towards me. `˜We got the right man. I believed that then, and I believe it now.'

And I know why. Because there was one thing the jury never heard; one thing the law back then wouldn't let us use. After we arrested Parrie, we discovered he'd been questioned about a similar attack on a sixteen-year-old girl in Manchester two years before, but when they finally got him into an identity parade the poor kid was half out of her mind with terror and refused to identify him. By the time he started on our patch he'd got a lot more savvy. And a lot more brutal.

I look away, out of the window, down the garden. On the horizon, I can just make out Wittenham Clumps.

`˜We thought we had the right man for Hannah Gardiner too.'

Hannah Gardiner who went missing on the Clumps in 2015. Hannah Gardiner who Osbourne thought `“ we all thought `“ had been abducted by a man called Reginald Shore. But we were wrong.

There's a silence, and when I turn back to look at him his cheeks are red.

`˜You know how much I regret that, Adam. Especially now.'

I take a deep breath. `˜All I meant was that sometimes we don't get it right. Despite our instincts and our training and all the rest of the crap `“ even if we're a hundred per cent convinced we have the right man we can still be completely wrong.'

Silence again. I can hear Viv talking to the cat in the next room, and the rattle as the wind lifts the corrugated plastic on the lean-to outside.

`˜I'm sorry, sir,' I begin, but he waves it away.

`˜No need for the apology. Or the `њsir`ќ. If I sounded defensive, then I'm afraid there was a reason.'

He goes over to the pile of post by the bread bin and pulls out an envelope from halfway down. Locates it so quickly, in fact, that I know he must have put it there deliberately so it was out of sight. Because whatever it is, he doesn't want Viv to see it.

He hands it to me. A plain brown envelope addressed as `˜Confidential' to Detective Superintendent A. G. Osbourne, Thames Valley Police (Retired), with a postmark dated two weeks before and a government crest. Her Majesty's Prison Service.

I look up with a question and he nods. `˜It's a psych report on Gavin Parrie. He's up for parole.'

CONFIDENTIALPSYCHIATRIC REPORT

Name: Gavin Francis Parrie Date of birth: 28th May 1962 Current location: HMP Wandsworth Date of report: 12th March 2018