Daisy in Chains (23 page)

From the office of

MAGGIE ROSE

The Rectory, Norton Stown, Somerset

Sunday, 20 December 2015

Dear Hamish,

Something of the world outside?

This morning, I walked by the Bristol Channel, on the beach where I first met your dog. (And your mother!) I went early, shortly after sunrise. Snow clouds hung heavy and low (they made their way north-west to Wales and missed us completely) and as the sun got higher they seemed almost to burst with gold light, while the sky behind them was the deepest and most perfect shade of violet. The tide was high, the waves were rapid and noisy. Along the length of the beach these little waves were breaking on the pebbles several hundred times a second and all the while the colour of the rising sun was spreading out across the world.

Usually, I walk up the cliff but today, something made me find the shelter of a bank and sit and watch the sun coming up. It was beautiful. And yet . . . I think I know now why you have a dog. And why you miss her so much. There are times when the need for another beating heart is hard to bear.

Maggie

PS. Don’t dismiss the computer. Killers keep trophies. Maybe our killer still scrolls through the conversations he had with his victims, reliving the moments he knew he’d reeled them in.

PPS. I’m really not happy about your seeing DS Weston without me. I just hope you’re very careful about what you say to him.

THE WIND IS
never still here. Even on the hottest of days, sea-scented breezes will wash over the moor, soothing the burnt grasses. On cooler days, the wind on Black Down, the tallest hill in the Mendips, will dance like a dervish, whirling around walkers, racing alongside runners.

Wolfe is a runner, a lone one, because it’s early in the day and the shadows are still long, throwing black stripes across the bracken. Later, a steady stream of ramblers will make their way up to the Bronze Age site that sits on the very peak of the Down but for now, it is just him, the plovers, the grouse and the occasional hare. He treads on a bramble and the sweet smell of crushed blackberry just manages to catch him before he moves out of reach.

As he reaches Beacon Batch the whispers of the long-entombed dead call up to him.

Faster, Hamish, faster. Something’s coming and you need to run now.

Run, Hamish, run, it’s hard on your heels.

‘Wolfe! Visitor.’

Wolfe opens his eyes. Phil lies on his bunk, half-heartedly making a blue-and-gold paper chain. Soon he will sink back into the half-sleeping, half-waking doze in which so many offenders spend most of their hours inside. When he’s not watching repeats of
Grange Hill
, that is. He has long since grown bored of Wolfe’s workouts.

The door to the cell is open and an officer is looking in with no surprise on his face. Wolfe slows to a jog and looks at the clock. He has been running for forty minutes. He aims for an hour, each day. Then twenty minutes of press-ups, sit-ups, chins and squats.

‘Wolfe! I won’t tell you again.’

‘Who is it, guv?’ He says this to be annoying. He knows perfectly well who has come to see him.

‘I’m not your frigging secretary, Wolfe. Get out here now.’

‘Have I got time for a bit of a wash, guv? Maybe a change of clothes?’ This too, is a wind-up. They both know he will go as he is, red-faced and sweat-stained.

‘State of you.’ His guard shakes his head as Wolfe meets him in the doorway. ‘Cuffs.’ Wolfe holds out his hands. They walk the length of the floor and descend the first flight of steps. Then the second.

‘Good news for you, Wolfe. You’re being transferred to the library.’

This is not good news as far as Wolfe is concerned. He has been working in the metal fabrication workshop every day for six months. It suits him. He has no wish to transfer to the library.

‘Why’s that, guv?’

They reach the bottom of the steps and head towards the private meeting rooms.

‘Governor thinks it’s better if staff in the library can read.’ There is no suggestion of humour in the guard’s face, but it’s hard to tell for sure. ‘And it’s against prison policy for convicted murderers to work in metal fabrication. Access to all those potential weapons, you see?’

‘Hadn’t occurred to me, guv. When is this going to happen?’

‘Couple of weeks. Start of next year. Suit you, sir?’

Wolfe smiles to himself. ‘Suits me just fine, thanks.’

‘Weston! How you doing, mate?’

Pete Weston is waiting for him in one of the visitors’ rooms. He is intent on his mobile phone as Wolfe is led in and doesn’t look up, doesn’t acknowledge Wolfe’s presence in any way. The accompanying officer, a dark-skinned, slightly portly young man, is not one whom Wolfe knows.

Wolfe sits and waits. The detective constable looks uncomfortable, his eyes flicking from Wolfe to Weston and back again. After a few seconds Wolfe glances back at the guard and makes a wanking gesture with his right hand. The guard pretends not to have seen.

Weston remains motionless, apart from the flick, flick, flick of his index finger. Wolfe whistles the first line of a tune, ‘I Shot The Sheriff’, and waits for the reaction that doesn’t come.

‘Take your time, mate. My schedule’s pretty light today.’

Weston looks up, lets his eyes roam up and down Wolfe’s body, in
the way some of the cons checked him out when he first arrived. His nostrils twitch and he pushes his chair back an inch. ‘Hamish.’ He nods his head, as though solving some internal puzzle. ‘You OK?’ His eyes drift left. ‘This is Detective Constable Sunday Sadik.’

Weston has aged. His hair is thinner on the temples, there’s more grey than last time and his skin has a dryness and a pallor that probably isn’t just the reaction to a cold winter. Wolfe sees the same thing happening to his mother, even though she visits fortnightly. In the outside world, people are ageing, time is passing in the normal fashion. In here, it stands still. Wolfe has a sudden vision of himself, being released in forty years’ time, still a young man, going out to find everyone and everything he once knew has crumbled and gone.

The pain takes him by surprise and he grins, suddenly, stupidly, to hide it. ‘Never better, mate. I see the quit-smoking resolution didn’t last?’

Pure guesswork on his part, but the frown of annoyance on Weston’s face tells him he’s hit home. Weston has smoked for years. Every year he tries, and fails, to give up. He looks now at the guard. ‘We’ll be OK, thanks. I’ll yell if I need you.’

The guard nods in response and turns to leave the room.

‘Right then,’ Weston says, as the door clangs shut and is locked from the outside. ‘Let’s talk.’

IN HER OVER-HEATED
, softly lit kitchen, at just after seven in the evening, Maggie sits and waits. The food is ready, wine and lager are in the fridge. She has a list of notes so that she will forget nothing. Two lists of notes. One for each visitor.

One of whom is twenty-four minutes late; the other due in six.

She almost, but not quite, checks her phone line. A telephone call booking system can’t work to time. Not in prison.

Twenty-seven minutes and forty-two seconds later than the time arranged, the phone rings. She picks it up and walks to the window.

‘Maggie Rose.’

‘I hear you have dinner plans.’

She can’t help glancing round at the ceramic pot on top of the Aga, at the loaf of bread she’d taken from the bread maker just ten minutes earlier, at the table, set for two people. Wolfe will have eaten two hours ago, the tasteless, formless slop that is so much of prison food.

‘I went to that restaurant today and had a brief chat with the owner,’ she says. ‘I asked whether he’d be prepared to contact his customer base, asking anyone who can remember dining there on the night Zoe disappeared to come forward.’

‘And?’

‘He promised to think about it. Realistically, given how busy he was, it’s unlikely to happen this side of Christmas. I can also put an ad in the local paper and instigate a social media campaign. It will take a lot of sorting through, though, and I can’t help questioning how much good it will do. You weren’t convicted of killing Zoe, remember?’

Hamish clears his throat. ‘Speaking of Zoe, DS Weston asked me a question today. Will you answer him for me?’

‘Of course.’ She doesn’t like that he knows Pete is coming round this evening. Doesn’t like that the two of them have been discussing her, although she knows that it is inevitable.

‘Please tell him the answer is no. I have no idea where the body of Zoe Sykes is. It makes no odds how many maps of Somerset’s cave system I look at, I can’t do more than scores of searches have already. And if, by some extreme coincidence, Zoe is found, no one will ever believe me innocent again. Which reminds me, how are you doing on that front?’

Wolfe will get ten minutes, at most, to call her. Already two of those minutes are gone.

‘I don’t need to believe in your innocence,’ she says. ‘Just to convince others of it.’

Outside, the wind is high and her garden is full of scurrying movement: the bending and swaying of trees, the shivering of bushes.

‘Pity,’ he is saying. ‘It would be nice to have someone believe in me who isn’t either my mother or bonkers. So, is he picking you up? If he’s booked the Crown then not only is he a cheapskate but his intentions are unlikely to be honourable. He lives just upstairs, you know.’

‘DS Weston is bringing round your files. He’s going out of his way to be cooperative. But if you can’t think of a better use of our time than juvenile banter, please carry on.’

From the street there is the sound of a car pulling up. Not quite seven o’clock. Why are the police always on time?

‘Can you give him another message?’ Wolfe says. ‘Tell him no male over the age of fifteen wears Lynx.’

Footsteps are crunching along the gravel drive. She doesn’t want to be caught talking to Wolfe.

‘You must be out of time. If you can book the same slot tomorrow I can fill you in with any progress. Goodnight, Hamish.’

‘Driving home for Christmas?’ Pete slings his coat over the back of the nearest chair and looks across the table at the map of Bristol and the surrounding area. Maggie is over by the Aga. A cream-coloured apron is tied over her clothes and her hair has been swept up into a ponytail. The domesticity looks completely out of character. As does the fact that she is, quite clearly, flustered.

‘Drink?’ she offers.

‘You’re mellowing,’ he tells her.

‘Beer’s easier than coffee.’ She sidesteps to the tall fridge and stands in its light for a second. When she turns back, she has a bottle of Stella Artois in one hand, a glass in the other. ‘Dinner’s almost ready,’ she says.

‘Thanks, hope you didn’t go to any trouble.’

‘Least I could do. I really wasn’t expecting to get the files so quickly.’

Pete’s eyes fall back to the map. ‘So, where are we going?’

‘I’m glad you asked. I think we could work together on this one.’

‘Unless I’m missing something, we’re on opposite sides. How is our mutual friend, by the way?’

‘You’ve seen him more recently than I. Which reminds me, as his lawyer, I’m entitled to be present at all future meetings. Please don’t forget again.’

‘I’ll enjoy the company. Something I want to ask you, though. If you’re not convinced of his innocence, why have you taken on his case?’

She pretends to think. Already he’s learned when the thinking process is real, when it’s faked. Pretend thinking involves a cute pout, a sideways glance. Real thinking is less pretty, a deep frown, a downward curve of the mouth, a blank stare into the middle distance. ‘Maybe I’m falling for him,’ she says, and the pout turns into that cat-like smile.

‘You’re far too smart.’

‘We wouldn’t be the first convicted murderer and representing lawyer to enter into a romantic relationship.’

‘Is he coming on to you?’

‘Are you?’

He looks at his coat. ‘What am I doing here, Maggie? Why am I drinking your lager and getting increasingly enthusiastic about the lamb stew I can smell in your oven? And what’s the map of Bristol for?’

She reaches behind for a glass of white wine. ‘We’re going to find the computer that the killer used to cyber-stalk the three women.’

‘We are?’

‘If you really believe Hamish is guilty, it’s as much in your interest as it is in mine. You find the computer, there’s some forensic evidence to link it to Hamish—’

‘Fingerprints on the keyboard?’

‘Exactly, and all doubt flies away. He stays in Parkhurst for the rest of his life, you’re safely on track to make DI, and you get a transfer away from Portishead. You can start rebuilding your life properly and finally get over losing Annabelle to your boss.’

Why does everyone assume he is defined by Annabelle’s having left him? ‘And if we can’t link it to Hamish? If it leads us to someone else?’

‘Then it works even better for you. You’re not only the man who caught a killer, you’re the man who can admit his mistakes and put them right.’

If she thinks it works that way, she’s an idiot.

‘And even if it doesn’t work that way, I don’t think you could live with yourself if you knew for a fact that an innocent man was in prison.’

She comes close, leaning across the table, holding a pencil and compass. She puts its point into the street where Hamish Wolfe lived and draws a circle around it. ‘It’s somewhere in that circle,’ she says. ‘Probably in a small, rented office on a big, anonymous industrial estate.’

The circle encompasses a big area. It takes in the south side of Bristol, the western areas of Bath.

He shakes his head. ‘It’s somewhere at the bottom of the Bristol Channel.’

‘Put yourself in his shoes.’

‘Wolfe’s shoes?’

She points a finger. ‘The killer’s shoes. You need a computer to start your cyber-stalking, but you can’t use one that has any traceable connection to you. What do you do?’