Daisy in Chains (21 page)

‘Can I ask you something?’ Brenda’s eyes drop to the mugs on the table. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, why do you make such a mess all the time?’

‘Actually that was me,’ Maggie says. ‘I wasn’t expecting the mugs to be quite so hot. Let me clean it up.’

‘Kim will do it.’ Brenda glares at the girl, who is staring down into the sink.

‘What did you want to ask me?’

‘Huh?’

‘You said you wanted to ask me something. Just now, when you came back into the room.’

Reminded, Brenda stands square on to Maggie. ‘Why are you here? If you’re going to be that animal’s frigging lawyer, what do you want with me?’

‘Hamish Wolfe isn’t my client and may never be. For what it’s worth, I’m still inclined to think he’s guilty. I’m here because there are details about Zoe’s disappearance that don’t make a lot of sense to me. If you help, I promise to try one more time to get him to tell us where Zoe is.’

‘What if he doesn’t know?’ says Kimberly.

Brenda’s head shoots round to her daughter. ‘What the hell are you talking about? Course he knows.’

Kimberly has a way of drooping, of dropping her head so that her hair falls and covers her face, of letting her shoulders slump so that she seems diminished.

Maggie fakes a loud cough. ‘Brenda, can I please see Zoe’s room? Does it still have all her things in it? And if you have any family photographs, that would be useful too. Perhaps Kimberly could show me?’

Brenda glances dismissively at her daughter. ‘I’ll take you.’

The room Zoe shared with her sister is a double bedroom, with twin beds. One of them unmade but recently slept in, the other devoid of linen, just a bare mattress.

‘Kim!’ The shout makes Maggie jump. ‘Get up here and make your bed. What have I told you?’

Although shared by a teenager and her twenty-something sister, the room has a childish feel to it. The furniture is white MDF, the sort you might see adorned with Hello Kitty and One Direction posters in young girls’ bedrooms. The pink curtains have faded from years of sunlight. There is a photograph on the dressing table of Brenda and three young women, two of them Kimberly and Zoe. From their formal clothes, Maggie guesses it was taken at a family wedding. Zoe, the largest of the three young women, has been pushed slightly to the back of the group. Another photograph of the same three girls stands on the window ledge. This one shows them on a park bench. Kimberly and the oldest girl sit on the bench. Zoe leans over them from behind it. Kimberly and the older girl look very similar.

In the corner of the room is a small fibre-optic Christmas tree. It is the first decoration that Maggie has seen in the house.

‘What did you want to see?’ Brenda asks.

‘I just want to get a feel for her. Do you still have her clothes?’

‘Of course.’ Brenda nods towards the built-in wardrobes along one wall.

‘May I?’ Maggie slides the door to one side. The wardrobe smells like the back room of a second-hand shop but the clothes are neatly hung. On the far left of the rail hang several outfits that look new. Gently, conscious of Brenda’s barely tolerant stare on her shoulders, Maggie pulls them towards her. Several still have labels attached. She pulls out a red dress. Size 14. She moves quickly to the middle of the rail. The rest of the clothes are sizes 16 and 18.

Behind her, Brenda breathes out an impatient sigh.

‘Are these Kimberly’s?’ It seems unlikely. No way is Kimberly a size 14.

‘They were Zoe’s. She was on a diet. I always think it’s good to have an incentive.’

Several pairs of shoes, boots and trainers sit neatly on the carpeted floor of the wardrobe. Maggie crouches.

‘I bought her those cowboy boots. They were a birthday present. I don’t want it back for myself, it wouldn’t fit me, or Kimberly, and what good would one boot be anyway? She just wore them so much. Loved them, really. It’s not right it’s just stashed away in a police cupboard somewhere.’

‘I’ll mention it to DS Weston. It’s possible it’s just been forgotten about.’

Maggie picks up a court shoe, in purple patent leather. Size six. She upturns a trainer. Size six and a half. She stands, closing the door behind her and notices that Kimberly has appeared in the doorway.

‘Do you have another daughter, Brenda?’ She looks towards the wedding photograph on the dressing table. There had been no mention of a third child in any of the police reports and yet the family resemblance is strong. ‘An older girl?’

‘That’s Stacey. She lives in Aberdeen. Works for an insurance firm up there.’

‘Thank you. I won’t take up any more of your time.’

The phone rings as Maggie is sitting in her car outside the Sykes’s home. It is Pete.

‘I’ve done a bit of digging on this Sirocco Silverwood,’ he says, as she tucks away the photographs she’s been studying for several minutes. ‘Real name Sarah Smith. Bright lady, once upon a time, dropped out of Dundee University in her second year. Studying English literature. Significantly, she was working in Magaluf for nearly nine months in the run-up to Wolfe’s arrest. The chances of her having met him are slim.’

‘So I can just write her off as another fruitcake obsessive?’

‘Looks like it. So what are you up to? Anywhere close to the station? Fancy a coffee? Lunch?’

‘I’m miles away. Thanks, Pete, I’ll be in touch.’

From the office of

MAGGIE ROSE

The Rectory, Norton Stown, Somerset

Wednesday, 16 December 2015

Dear Hamish,

OK, I’ll admit that I’m intrigued. Not by you – all you’ve given me are impossible-to-prove conspiracy theories – but there are discrepancies surrounding your case and one of them is Zoe Sykes.

I visited her family home today. It was interesting.

Let’s be clear, I am making no promises. For what it’s worth, I still believe you to be guilty. I’m just curious to dig a little deeper. If you can go along with that, I’ll try to clear my diary so that I can visit you on Friday.

Best wishes,

Maggie

Email

From: Anne Louise Moorcroft, Ellipsis Literary Agency

To: Maggie Rose

Date: 17.12.2015

Subject: Hamish Wolfe

Dear Maggie,

I’ve had over a dozen emails and phone calls from journalists wanting to know if Hamish Wolfe is now your client. They’ve all requested interviews, or failing that a comment at least. And social media’s going nuts.

Anything you can share?

Anne Louise

From: Maggie Rose

To: Anne Louise Moorcroft, Ellipsis Literary Agency

Date: 17.12.2015

Subject: Hamish Wolfe

Dear Anne Louise,

He is not my client, although I am having my third meeting with him tomorrow and that could change. I’ll give you the nod and you can send out the usual press statement.

Maggie

DAYLIGHT DOES NO
favours for the Grey Mare at Bishopstone. It is a night-time pub, meant for live bands and overflowing pint glasses, for cigarette smoke creeping in from the smokers’ area out back. It is a pub that needs crowds pressed together, shouting into each other’s ears, coughing with the effort of making any audible sound. It is a pub for sports, on the huge wide-screen TV, for noise, for broken glass, for soon-forgotten fights in the doorways and furtive shags in the ladies’ loo. It is a pub where drugs are sold, if you’re lucky, dropped into an unguarded drink if you aren’t. It is a pub where smart women take their mai tais into the toilets with them.

In the daylight, every stain on the paisley patterned carpet is visible, and tangible. Every surface seems covered with a thin film of grime. With eight days to go before Christmas, even the festive decorations look shop-soiled.

Steve Lampton leads the way from the bar, carrying his own drink, and Maggie’s. He insisted on paying for them. He always does.

‘I’m loving your local.’ Maggie brushes crisp crumbs off the fake Tudor chair seat and sits, thinking of yet another dry-cleaning bill.

He grins and she sees his teeth have improved since the last time they met. He’s had them professionally cleaned and whitened, private dentistry he can now afford, making up for years of prison neglect.

‘It’s a bit of a dive,’ he admits. ‘But I only have an hour off work and I can’t lose my bonus, not this time of year.’

Since his release in 2007, Lampton has been forced to take one temporary contract after another. His jobs usually only last until one of his co-workers finds out who he is.

‘You actually his lawyer, then? That Wolfe bloke?’ Steve pulls out a chair and sits before gulping down most of his double Scotch. He always drinks quickly and, whilst he never really shows it in other ways, Maggie wonders if she makes him nervous.

‘Not yet. I’m thinking about it.’

He pulls a face that is half smile, half sneer. ‘You will.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘You can’t resist a challenge. And Wolfe’s even prettier than me.’

She doesn’t argue. Lampton might be very easy on the eye, especially now he’s eating properly and working out regularly. He looks younger than his forty-five years, as though prison somehow pickled him. Wolfe, on the other hand, is in a league of his own.

‘Are those highlights in your hair?’ she says, because she doesn’t really want to talk about one of her men, with another of them. In prison, Lampton’s hair was always a dark, dirty blond. Now, even in the dim lights of the pub she can see the lighter streaks.

‘You can talk,’ he tells her.

‘What happened on the thirtieth of October, Steve? In this pub, if my memory serves.’

His face clouds. ‘Misunderstanding.’ His eyes, that haven’t left hers since she arrived, drop to the greasy tabletop.

‘You were cautioned. A woman made a complaint.’

He looks up again, bravado restored. ‘I misread signals. It happens. No harm done.’

‘I disagree. If you get arrested again, I can’t help you. I won’t even try.’

The knuckles of his hand whiten as he tosses back his head and makes a show of polishing off the drink. When he puts the glass down, he’s smiling again. ‘I got something for you,’ he says. ‘Christmas present.’

‘Will I like it?’

He lets his head fall to one side, looking at her appraisingly. ‘I like it.’

She makes a point of peering around the table to look at the carpet beneath his feet, although she already knows he brought nothing into the pub with him. ‘It must be very small. And you must be doing very well if you can afford jewellery for someone whom you don’t even need to keep on side any more.’

‘I didn’t bring it with me. It’s not the sort of thing you open in public.’

‘I’m not giving you my address, Steve.’

He leans forward. ‘Now, you see, that makes no sense to me, Mags. If you think I’m innocent, what reason do you got to be afraid of me?’

She laughs. ‘Remind me, exactly, when I said I thought you were innocent?’

He tries to laugh too, but doesn’t quite make it. He has never, quite, been able to reconcile her refusal to pretend with her willingness to work on his behalf.

He gets to his feet and looks down at her almost-empty glass. ‘Top-up?’ he offers. ‘Or are you racing back?’

She hands him her glass. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I’d love another drink.’

‘
I WANT TO
talk about Jessie, Chloe and Myrtle. How do you know how they died?’ Maggie watches Wolfe’s face carefully. Normally, she can spot lies in an instant. It’s nothing to do with the eyes, accomplished liars get very good at controlling their eyes when they’re spinning yarns, but every liar she’s ever known has taken a deeper than average breath before the lie comes out.

‘I don’t.’ He holds her stare. ‘How could I? I didn’t kill them.’

No lie that she can see, but she’s only just got started. ‘My first visit, you were very specific about how they met their deaths. You talked about them being lured into a cave, having their throats slit, being left alone in the cold and the dark, to bleed out. But by the time the three bodies were found, they were largely bone. The post-mortems didn’t come to any conclusions about how the victims died. So, back to my question, how do you know?’

He smiles, a careful, tight smile that doesn’t reveal his teeth. Only his guile. His breathing hasn’t changed. ‘I guessed.’

‘You guessed?’

He lets his forearms rest on the table. ‘Yeah, it’s easy. Let’s try it again. Whoever took them into the caves – and I’m not saying it was me – lured them with some sort of story. Maybe tales of a remarkable rock feature. Personally, I’d have plumped for the romantic angle. Perhaps he offered to show them the place where Arthur and Guinevere’s wedding rings are encased in limestone.’

‘Arthur and Guinevere?’

He’s still smiling, everything about his body language is upbeat. ‘Perfectly plausible. Glastonbury is generally agreed to be the site of Camelot. I can see that appealing to young impressionable women, especially the jeweller. So he leads them to where he wants them to be and he says, “Over there, just where I’m shining my torch, there’s a bit of a slope, so you have to watch your step, lean over a bit” – can you see
what he’s doing, Maggie? He’s getting them off balance – then he comes in behind, maybe puts one hand on a shoulder, as though to steady them. He’s being super gallant. He gives them the torch, to free up his other hand. Maybe he wraps that hand around their hair, he figures he can step up the romance factor, and women like that, don’t they? It’s an intimate, alpha-male gesture, reminiscent of cavemen. He makes sure he’s got a nice firm grip then, just as she says, “Where, Hamish, I can’t see anything?” he bangs her head hard against the rock.’

Maggie pushes back against her chair, feels it slide along the floor an inch. Her eyes flick to the nearest officer on duty. He’s on a raised platform, some ten yards away. When she looks at Wolfe again, he is licking some invisible substance off the tip of his thumb. She doesn’t think he’s taken his eyes off her.