Daisy in Chains (34 page)

‘I’m not drunk, although the illegal hooch is doing the rounds again. Just curious.’

Even allowing for the background noise he is still speaking loudly. She isn’t sure she believes in his sobriety. ‘Well, then you need to think about what you’re actually asking me.’ She pushes the door shut, turns the key and leans against it. ‘Do I really need to rehearse the time-honoured reasons why everyone, innocent or guilty, is entitled to legal representation?’

She gives him a moment to respond. He doesn’t, but she can hear his breathing. ‘You’re feeling sorry for yourself, Hamish. I don’t blame you, but I don’t have time for it, I’m afraid.’

The kitchen has grown cold during the day. She will need to crank up the heating.

‘So what do you have time for, Maggie? What do you do, all by yourself in that big house of yours, other than play God with other people’s lives? Come to think of it, why do you even do it? What makes a clever young woman say to herself, I will walk among murderers and liars and thieves, and I will succour them?’

How does he know she lives in a big house? ‘Hamish—’

‘Why? Why don’t you want a normal career? Why don’t you want friends, a partner, children? Have you ever even been in love, Maggie Rose?’

His mother. Of course. His mother has seen her house, will have told him about it. ‘I’m sorry, Hamish,’ she says. ‘I won’t be dragged into this sort of nonsense. I understand that you’re upset, but it’s late and things always look better in the morning. Goodnight.’

She puts the phone down before he has the chance to respond. She is trembling.

Email

Sent via the emailaprisoner service

From: Maggie Rose

To: Hamish Wolfe

Date: 5. 1. 2016

Subject: Why?

I can find just one question worthy of an answer in that self-indulgent diatribe. I do this job because it is rewarding (financially and in other ways) and because it is needed. It doesn’t matter to me whether the people whose convictions I overturn are innocent or guilty, just that their convictions are unsafe. No one should be convicted on the strength of a flawed case. The best, strongest, soundest system of justice in the world is the one that allows itself to be scrutinized and challenged. I scrutinize. I challenge.

In common with many people I fell into my specific career by accident. I became interested in the case of Steve Lampton, sufficiently
so that I met with his wife. I saw the weaknesses in his conviction and I made the decision to do something about it, if I could. I never liked the man. I never particularly believed in his innocence. For all that, he should never have been convicted.

One more thought, before I go to bed. It’s late and I’m tired. Are you familiar with the expression: Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?

Maggie

Email

From: Avon and Somerset Police, Detective Sergeant Peter Weston

To: Maggie Rose

Date: 6.1.2016

Subject: Result!

Daisy Baron enrolled at Newcastle University in 1997 and graduated in 2001. Four years instead of the usual five, but she was given credits for having done her first year at another medical school, according to the very nice Mrs George in the records office.

So, if she’s dead, Wolfe didn’t kill her. Not at Oxford anyway.

You’re welcome!

P

‘Listen! Can you hear that?’

Maggie closes down her email program and gets up from her desk. The house is silent. As is the street outside. ‘What?’ she says, with ill-disguised impatience.

‘The baying of hounds.’

‘Oh, very funny.’ She walks into the next room, although she knows by now that she will be followed wherever she goes.

‘Detective Pete is not a man to be underestimated.’

‘The trail will go cold. Daisy didn’t leave Newcastle.’

‘He won’t give up.’

‘He’s gone as far as he can. He has to operate within the law.’

Maggie hears a soft laugh.

‘Unlike us.’

‘
WHY?
’
PETE ALMOST
moans down the line. ‘Why on earth are you seeing that lot again?’

Maggie turns off the main road. The huge, wire-meshed gates of the caravan park are closed, but Bear, in a quilted coat that makes him look even bigger, is waiting to open them.

Maggie says, ‘What part of “we can’t see each other any more” did you not understand? Oh, how extraordinary.’

Where there should be the unrelenting blackness of the winter night sky, there is colour, movement, neon lights racing in wild, abandoned shapes and leaving glowing, rainbow trails behind them.

‘I’m not seeing you, I’m talking to you on the phone. What’s extraordinary? And you haven’t answered my first question.’

She drives into the park and pulls up at the barrier. In the rear-view mirror, she can see Bear closing the gates again behind her. He ambles back towards the car and she wonders whether she need offer him a lift to the clubhouse. It would be rude to make him walk in her wake, but she doesn’t want the huge, unsavoury mass of him in her car, breathing the same air, leaving behind traces that she will never be able to see, let alone clean away. He draws level with the driver’s door and she cannot avoid lowering the window a few inches.

‘Treats tonight.’ He leers down at her, like the oil-secreting uncle who thinks cheap sweets will make up for his unseemly presence.

‘Do you need a lift down?’ Politeness, social conventions are surely the heaviest chains of all.

‘Waiting for Mike. I’ll see you down there.’

Pete is still on the line. ‘Maggie, what’s going on? Why are you there and what’s extraordinary?’

‘They’ve got the fairground going.’ She drives along the road that runs parallel to the beach, the one that takes her through the painted fences, the flimsy chalets, the sturdier caravans, and sees none of them.
They are thrown into shadow by the baubles whirling and spinning ahead of her. The fairground, eerie and empty on her last visit, is lit and active. The Ferris wheel is turning, as is a merry-go-round. She can see the impaled horses like plaster kebabs rising and falling. Lights flash from the waltzer, from the dodgem cars, from the side-stalls. The crashing of the waves is drowned by several different tracks of rock music. If there are people on the rides, she can’t see them. Everything seems to be taking place without human participation.

‘In this weather? In the dark? Seriously, Maggie, why are you there?’

‘Three reasons.’ The spinning lights have become a little mesmerizing. ‘One: you lot have failed, dismally, to find out who broke into my house before Christmas, so I’m going to ask a few questions of my own.’

‘Look, I’m at least an hour away. Can you just sit in your car and do a crossword puzzle till I get there?’

‘They won’t talk to me if you’re here. And it’s years since I’ve been on a carousel.’

‘Jesus wept. And the other reasons?’

‘Sorry?’ She is distracted by the sight of Sandra Wolfe, bundled up against the cold in the doorway of the social building.

‘You said you had three reasons.’

‘Oh yes. Well, there’s a chance Odi confided in somebody in this group about what she saw in the Gorge that night. Also, I think whoever killed her and Broon will be here. And that could well be the person who framed Hamish.’

‘Oh, give me strength. Maggie—’

‘Think about it. Serial murderers are notoriously narcissistic. While the hunt is on, they’re completely at the centre of things, but once someone else is caught, all that excitement goes away. Whoever framed Hamish can’t kill again without giving the game away, so the only way of keeping the buzz going is to get involved with the group that’s trying to free him.’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’

‘And an added bonus is that they can keep an eye on any developments, spot any threats. Odi knew more than she was letting on. I want to find out who she was close to, who she spoke to, other than Broon.’

‘No, no, no.’ Pete’s voice is climbing. ‘If there is even the remotest chance you’re right, I’ve rarely seen anything as callous as what happened to Odi and Broon. This is not someone you want to mess with. Forty-five minutes – and I’m risking death and mutilation in an RTA.’

‘I wouldn’t want that. Why don’t I meet you in the Crown when I’m done? It can’t hurt for once. I’ll fill you in then.’

‘Somebody will be filling in your shallow grave, you daft cow.’

There is a sudden silence on the line, the silence of a man who knows he has gone too far, has overstepped the bounds of the fragile friendship.

‘I’m touched.’ Far from being offended, she finds his concern oddly moving. ‘Come if you must, but don’t rush. I need time to talk to these people.’

‘Bear does this occasionally.’ Sandra strides ahead as the two women make for the fairground. ‘He’s not supposed to, but the owners live abroad in the winter.’

They step under the illuminated, painted arch
into the realm of enforced, motor-driven jollity and can almost smell last season’s candyfloss and stale cooking oil. The rides aren’t empty after all. There are people on the waltzer. Rowland is driving a solitary dodgem car around the track, weaving in and out of the other stationary cars with a look of fierce concentration on his face.

‘He lost his driving licence a couple of years ago.’ Sandra is standing close, her taller form keeping some of the wind off Maggie.

‘Sandra, was there anyone in the group that Odi seemed particularly close to? Apart from Broon, I mean. Anyone you saw her talking to?’

Sandra thinks for a few seconds. ‘Not really, just Broon. Oh, and Sirocco sometimes, I suppose.’

Right on cue, Sirocco herself emerges from the darkness, her loose, black clothes giving her the appearance of a crow with an injured wing. ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she says to Maggie. ‘Come on the big wheel.’

Maggie shakes her head. ‘I don’t think so. I’m not great with heights.’

Sirocco actually takes hold of her arm. ‘It’s perfectly safe. I want to talk to you about Odi. And I don’t want anyone else listening in.’

‘What? What is it?’ Sandra isn’t going to be left out.

‘Just her.’ Sirocco takes Maggie’s arm and pulls her along towards the now stationary Ferris wheel.

‘Who operates it?’ Close up, Maggie can see that several of its lights are missing. It looks bruised, as though it has narrowly escaped from a fight.

‘Bear. It’s his job in the summer. It’s fine, come on.’

The wheel appears decades old. The chairs seem flimsy, nothing more than double swing-seats with fold-up footrests and slot-in-place bars to protect the occupants. Bear is standing beside a red chair. There is a metal hood, which may offer some protection from a downpour, but nothing to guard them from the wind.

‘Ladies.’

Maggie opens her mouth to ask about maintenance and realizes that Bear is the sort of man who feeds off the fear of women. She does not want him to see that she is nervous. ‘Just once round, I think,’ she says, because it will sound as though it is she who is in charge. ‘It’s going to be cold up at the top.’

She climbs in first. Sirocco gets in after her and the chair rocks. Only Maggie and Sirocco will be riding the wheel, because Bear pulls down the safety bar, locks it in place and goes back to the control cab. The wheel starts to turn and they move forward before swooping up. Almost immediately, the wind gets stronger.

‘Odi knew something, didn’t she? What did she know?’ Barely is their seat a dozen feet from the ground before Sirocco twists round to face her. She is hatless, and her long black hair is flying up and around her head. She smells of patchouli oil.

‘Why don’t I ask the questions?’ They will have to shout the entire conversation. Already, this is feeling like a ridiculous idea. ‘A few weeks ago, someone entered my house without permission. Any idea who?’

Sirocco frowns. Her eyebrows are artificially dark, shaped to be two arched wings above her black eyes. They do not match.

‘They left a paper rose behind,’ Maggie goes on, ‘which I’m guessing they stole from Sandra, because I know it originated with Hamish, and they wrote something on the underside of my kitchen table.’

A sly smile creeps over Sirocco’s face. ‘Did it freak you out, knowing they’d been in your house while you were asleep?’

‘Oh, I’m used to dealing with crazy people. I’m just not sure what the purpose was.’

They are high above the ground. When Maggie looks directly ahead, she can see nothing of the fairground, just the black sky and some darker shadows where clouds might be. She is beginning to doubt that this woman has anything useful to say to her, and the strain of shouting is starting to tell in her throat. ‘Sirocco, I know this group is a bit unorthodox, and frankly I don’t care as long as you do no harm, but coming on to my property is harming me and I want to know why it’s happening.’

‘If it was Odi and Broon, it can’t happen any more, can it? They’re dead.’