Twenty-Seven
Anna awoke, after finally falling asleep at around 2 a.m., to cold sunlight streaming in through a chink in the bedroom curtains. She squinted at the bedside clock and, not seeing it clearly, pushed herself up, brushing hair away from her eyes and face.
7.10 a.m. She never slept beyond six thirty. She pushed her hair back and checked her phone. No messages, but her news feed had a headline from a red-top that caught her eye.
Woodsman killer is serial rapist
Gloucestershire police refused to comment last night over allegations made by sources close to the investigation that the killer of eighteen-year-old Emily Risman, butchered in a beauty spot in the Forest of Dean in 1998, and more recently sixteen-year-old Nia Hopkins, was also a rapist they had been hunting for eighteen years. Last week, Thames Valley police revealed thus-far-withheld details of a serial rapist who had committed twenty brutal attacks in four counties. Sources confirmed last night that they were investigating the possibility that one man was responsible, but refused to elaborate.
The authorities’ failure to comment in a case that has captured the public’s imagination is bound to fuel further speculation. With the man known as the Woodsman, Neville Cooper, stable in hospital after an abortive suicide attempt while in police custody, sources have also refused to rule out the possibility that Cooper, awaiting retrial for the murder of Emily Risman, may not have been acting alone.
In a new twist, the identity of a body found on the main railway line between South Wales and London has been confirmed as that of Charles Willis, husband of Gail Willis, who was found murdered in the garden of her own home just days ago. Police have released the name of a man wanted in connection with the rapes and murders of these three women. Richard Osbourne is thought to be dangerous and the public are advised not to approach him if sighted.
A candid photograph of Osbourne took up one column. The journalists had chosen the image for maximum effect. Taken at work, Osbourne was smiling, a hammer in one hand.
This new connection provides yet another bizarre twist in what has become a cause célèbre for the Southwest Major Crimes Review task force, who have been re-examining the Woodsman killings following the release of Neville Cooper.
Anna scrolled down to find her own face staring back at her from a grainy black and white portrait taken years before. Beneath was a caption: Inspector Anna Gwynne, leading the investigation.
She groaned. Another leaked story to the press they could have done without.
Photographs of the victims stared back at her accusingly: Emily, Nia and Gail were the silent witnesses with all the answers. She read on with growing incredulity as her theories were expounded in black and white. Someone, somewhere, had tipped them off. She read the article again, the flush rising from her chest to her neck like warm water.
Fucking press.
Even now they would not let Neville Cooper off the hook. And linking the rapes to Nia’s and Emily’s murders was something she had hoped to avoid, but with Willis dead and Osbourne on the run, it was unlikely to cause much damage. Indeed, there was very little there that truly jeopardised the investigation, but seeing her face splashed all over the news made her cringe. On edge and needing to find an outlet for the frustrations, Anna threw on her running gear and set off with a small backpack containing only water and her phones.
She’d gone with her intuition in asking Slack to find out about Osbourne’s clinic visit. He may, or may not, have taken her seriously. Harris’s team did not have a good track record when it came to that. She allowed herself a little rueful snort. She wanted so much to believe that it would yield results. Wanted desperately to know that by trusting in herself – this strange alchemy of analysis and instinct that had, so far in her life, caused nothing but angst – it might once, just once, come up with the goods. Never mind the plaudits, never mind the glory. She wanted to nail this monster and, if nothing else, to at least justify her dad’s belief in her.
She’d ring Slack as soon as she got in to the office. It was too early to do it now. And if it all came to nothing, she’d console herself with knowing that she’d at least given Tobias a chance to finally clear Cooper’s name. But Anna knew that would not be enough for her. Even thinking these thoughts brought a wave of guilt. Shaw had seen through her and tapped into her ambition. He’d seen how desperate she was to prove herself worthy of those who believed in her, even if she sometimes didn’t believe in herself. But none of this was about her now. Her hunger was driven by a need to stop this man from ruining another life. Murder was the ultimate crime, but rape could desecrate a life in another kind of way just as easily.
Better that she release the tension that was wound so tightly in her head with a run.
Mist had rolled up the channel during the night and, though the sun was up, grey murk hung over the city’s rooftops and the naked branches of the trees on Horfield Common. Street lights were still on, glowing like miniature suns, each surrounded by a soft halo of water vapour. Even the usual hum of traffic seemed distant and strange as cars rolled by, slowed by the conditions, their lights looming out of the fog, their engine noises oddly subdued, rubber tyres on wet tarmac hissing like snakes.
Anna crossed the common and hit the damp streets, letting her mind beat its own path, praying silently that her efforts and those of everyone else involved in the horror that the Woodsman case had become would finally pay off. In the mile and a bit to Badock’s Wood, she passed commuters muffled against the chill mist. When her eyes met theirs for the briefest of moments, in the split second it took for her to pass, she read wary acknowledgement.
In the summer, she was often met with smiles. But winter had arrived and with it the knowledge that every one of these people would face their journey to and from work in the darkness for another three months. If they’d seen the news that morning they’d know, too, about what the Woodsman was capable of. Fanciful though it might be, Anna found herself easily believing that she saw some of the horror of his actions etched on every face she passed. Few, if any, welcomed the coming winter, their moods a slave to a wired reaction shared with ancestors as old as the hills. An irrational fear perhaps, but one that most people were helpless to resist and augmented by knowing there was a monster in their midst.
Even in the twenty-first century, warm-blooded animals all knew that things hunted in the dark.