Daisy in Chains

by Sharon Bolton

  Chapter 4

  www.CommonplaceSexism.com

  HOW FAT BECAME A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

  Posted 5 October 2014, by Beth Tweedy, regular contributor and self-confessed ‘bigger-than-average girl’

  Zoe Sykes, Jessie Tout, Chloe Wood and Myrtle Reid were killed because they were fat. That is a fact.

  Zoe, Jessie, Chloe and Myrtle were targeted on the strength of their dress size and then murdered. We still don’t know exactly how, but you can bet your life it wasn’t pleasant. Their bodies were dumped in wet, dark, underground places, from which they were never supposed to be recovered. Zoe’s still hasn’t been. This happened to these women because we’ve become a society in which body size is the last remaining bastion of prejudice. Because fatness has become so despised, we can tolerate the annihilation of it.

  Hostility towards those who don’t conform to our body-image ideal has been growing steadily in the last couple of decades. Oh, I know, girls in plus-sized school tunics have always been catcalled in the street. Fatties, fat women in particular, have long been the (big) butt of comedians’ jokes, but in recent years, this fat-ism has taken a much darker turn.

  We’ve seen larger women attacked in pubs and on the streets, by assailants of both sexes. Dental hygienist Tracey Keith, 22 stone, was left shaken and badly bruised by the verbal and physical attack launched upon her as she travelled home by train one night last June. Her offence? Taking up too much room on the seats. Many women tell similar tales. Fat women get refused entry into nightclubs, they’re abused in doctor’s surgeries, because, of course, their ailments have to be directly related to their body size and consequently their own fault. Fat people don’t get jobs, they don’t get interviews for jobs, they can’t even get cabs, half the time, as though their excess body weight might prove too much for the seat springs.

  And all this is being condoned by those in authority.

  It’s OK now, for influential bullies, like the vile Ron Carter writing for The Spectator, to talk about the ‘horribly fat woman’ in the Tesco queue, accompanied by her ‘wobbly kids’ and to joke about sending them all to starvation boot camp. When educated, intelligent opinion-formers talk in such ways, what hope is there for the jabbering Twitter underclass?

  As a nation, we pride ourselves on being diverse. And yet there is almost zero tolerance of anyone of size. Women of my size and larger cannot walk the streets without being verbally or physically assaulted. The normal rules about behaviour, respect and common courtesy don’t apply to us.

  And now the most fundamental of the Ten Commandments doesn’t seem to apply to us either. Hamish Wolfe swore to preserve life wherever possible but allowed himself to become so enraged by what he saw as the drain on the NHS by overweight people that he took matters into his own hands. Even those who outwardly condemn his actions are secretly relieved he didn’t kill anyone of worth. He chose to kill large, unattractive women, so that’s not so bad then. He may even have done us all a big favour, by reducing the financial demand on the NHS in future years. Think I’m exaggerating? Search Hamish + fat people on social media and see what you find.

  By his actions, Wolfe has legitimized the ill treatment and abuse of people of size. He has set us back decades.

  Hamish Wolfe will never come out of prison alive. But the threat to women roams our streets continually.

  COMMENTS:

  SuziePearShape writes …

  I’m a larger than average but perfectly healthy woman and so far, today, I’ve been called Tubs, Nelly the Elephant and Fat Cow. It’s not even the middle of the afternoon. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been pushed, shoved, or abused by perfect strangers in the street, simply because of the way I look. In the queue at Asda, other shoppers look into my basket and sneer. A man asked me once if I was planning to eat it all myself. I have three kids, thanks very much, dickhead. You’re right, Beth, bigger women just don’t matter as much.

  MellSouth writes …

  A darker side of fat-shaming is to assume that fat women are easy. Because they look the way they do, they will sleep with anyone, they are grateful for the attention. They aren’t allowed to be particular, they have to take what they can get (and frequently do). Inappropriately touching a fat woman in a bar, grabbing her breasts or her bottom, will be viewed by all around as humorous. Either she was asking for it in the first place, or she should be grateful anyone wants to touch her at all. Fat women simply aren’t afforded the same protection by the law as their skinnier sisters.

  GazboGoon writes …

  Fat cows like you make me sick. Just stop eating so much and your problems will all vanish, daft bitch.

  Jezzer writes …

  Ever shagged a fat bird? Talk about fart and give us a clue. LOL.

  ‘Never read below the comments line.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Maggie closes the screen.

  ‘Do you think people buy this idea of the killings being a vendetta against fat women?’

  ‘No. Most of the stuff in the national press was a lot more sensible.’

  ‘Where?’

  Maggie flicks through her bookmarked articles. ‘This one. In the Telegraph.’

  Telegraph Online, Wednesday, 15 October 2014

  FAT WAS NEVER THE ISSUE

  Dismayed by the hysterical outpourings surrounding Hamish Wolfe’s conviction last month, Sally Kelsey argues that the victims’ size was largely irrelevant.

  Since Hamish Wolfe started his prison sentence barely a day has gone by without an article decrying our habit of ‘fat-shaming’. ‘Justice for Fat Girls Too’, screamed one well-known blogger’s headline last week, as though Wolfe hadn’t just been handed a whole life tariff, effectively locking him away for the rest of his days. If justice can strike a heavier blow than that, I’m not aware of it.

  The police have been criticized for not catching him quickly enough, for not realizing when Zoe Sykes vanished back in June 2012, that there was a fat-slayer at work. Never mind that Zoe still hasn’t been found, that for days, weeks, even months after she was last seen she was still just listed as a missing person, the police should have known back then that something was up. They should have warned fat girls that they were in danger.

  The media have been accused of not taking the serial killer seriously enough, because he ‘only killed fat girls’. We’ve been accused of condoning the behaviour of the social media ‘low-lifes’ who trolled the victims’ Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, posting hateful comments about how they deserved what they got.

  These commentators, on both official and unofficial channels, are seriously missing the point.

  Hamish Wolfe wasn’t running a one-man campaign against fat women. He was too intelligent for that sort of nonsense. He was a killer and, like every other serial killer of our time, he had a victim type. Zoe, Jessie, Chloe and Myrtle rocked his boat. He liked them. Unfortunately for them he had a very warped way of showing it.

  There’s a lot of evidence, and much of it came up at his trial, that Hamish Wolfe had always had a bit of a thing for chubsters. Our size-obsessed society found it hard to believe, given his own Greek-god looks, but like them he did. (Don’t be fooled by press photographs of him with his reed-thin fiancée – some men are remarkably good at using their partners as smokescreens.) Wolfe dated quite a few larger ladies at college and there was even a rather seedy video found, allegedly, of him having sex with a Rubenesque young lady.

  What he did was dreadful. Shocking. But it says nothing more about our society than occasionally we produce something that is twisted and broken. There is a great deal wrong with Hamish Wolfe, but no serious commentator has ever suggested there was anything wrong with his victims.

  Eat up, ladies. You’re as safe as any of us.

  Comments …

  * * *

  ‘No. No comments. Stop right there.’

  Maggie shuts down the site. ‘I’m done.’

  ‘What did you make of Detective Sergeant
Weston then?’

  She tries, and fails, to stifle a yawn. ‘Haven’t really thought about it. Seemed sensible enough.’

  ‘Think there’s anything in this idea that Wolfe’s supporters might come and bother you here?’

  ‘I doubt it. Why?’

  ‘Oh, I’m just wondering how long you’re going to ignore the crunching on the gravel, the knocked-over flowerpot and the sound of several door handles being tried. How long before you admit that, for the past half-hour, someone’s been wandering round outside?’

  * * *

  At first, there is nothing outside that Maggie can see. The night is too dark. Nor can she hear anything, except the click and rattle of the central heating system as it cools. Then a pinpoint of light appears from around the side of the house as a solitary figure heads towards the road.

  Maggie watches as, not once looking back, her midnight visitor walks away down the street.

  Chapter 5

  People of Our Time magazine, December 2014

  HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLFE?

  Silvia Pattinson braves Parkhurst Prison to meet the infamous Mr Wolfe.

  Hamish Wolfe receives over a hundred letters a month, over 90 per cent of them from women. Most of his correspondents, he tells me when I meet him at HMP Isle of Wight (Parkhurst), believe him to be the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

  ‘Sometimes the truth is obvious,’ he says. ‘Only those with a vested interest of their own remain blind to it.’

  When I question the extent to which we should rely on the opinions of people who’ve never met Wolfe personally, who’ve never studied the case and its evidence in detail, who might be – I’m sure I blush as I say this – more influenced by his good looks than by any real sense of justice or truth, he denies that his personal attributes are the issue at stake.

  ‘When a body of people believe something to be true, it’s usually because it is. I’m the victim of a narrowly focused, cost-pinching investigation that went for an easy and obvious solution.’

  When I ask why, then, he hasn’t appealed against the verdict, he tells me that he fully intends to. ‘Sometimes the dust needs to settle. I’m thinking carefully about who I’d like to work with in the future. I want my lawyer to be the best and I can wait. My liberty is too important to throw away on a rushed appeal.’

  While he waits, he has no shortage of women only too happy to help him pass the time. Women send him money, write letters of support, suggest escape plans and even propose marriage. Each assumes that she is the only person who has taken an interest in him, that he must be lonely, longing for her letters.

  I suggest that giving this interview might let the cat out of the bag on that one, but he just shrugs. I get the feeling he is unmoved by the adoration of women he will probably never meet. He responds to very few, he says, only the ones who strike him as being intelligent and sensible, and then usually just to thank them for their good wishes. Many of his letters he gives to fellow inmates, particularly the lewder ones.

  When I question the morality of doing so, he looks at me sharply. His green eyes narrow and for the first time I remember that I’m in the presence of a convicted killer.

  ‘If a man sent you his boxer shorts,’ he says, ‘along with a note telling you he’d worn them two days in a row and then masturbated in them, what would you do?’

  ‘Bin them,’ I respond. ‘Throw them out.’ I’m a little unnerved by this stage. Wolfe and I are alone in a windowless room. He is cuffed to the table but he is a powerfully built man and very close to me.

  ‘I did that,’ he tells me. ‘The guys started fishing them out, so now I just save them the trouble.’

  I ask him if most of the letters he receives are sexual in nature. ‘A lot are,’ he admits. ‘Some of them want to know what I’m supposed to have done to the victims. Those are the most disturbing, if I’m honest. These women don’t care whether I’m guilty or not. They’re actually hoping I am and that I can give them salacious details. Others ask if Parkhurst permits conjugal visits. It doesn’t, by the way. Mostly, the women who write to me are lonely, even if they already have families. They’re desperate to reach out to someone, to have that special connection. They see me as a bit of a soft touch. I’m not going anywhere.’

  At this point, Wolfe smiles at me, and I’m suddenly far more afraid of him than I was when he was being less than charming.

  ‘Not immediately, anyway,’ he concludes.

  (Maggie Rose: case file 00326/5 Hamish Wolfe)

  Chapter 6

  HMP Isle of Wight – Parkhurst

  Clissold Rd

  Newport

  My darling girl,

  I woke in the night from a dream of you; so vivid that, for a few sleep-drugged seconds, I thought you were there beside me. I opened my eyes before the disappointment could bite too hard and found the room filled with a pale, eerie light.

  I got up and walked to the window, remembering how oddly excited my dog would become on certain nights. I’d follow her downstairs, through a house filled with a strange, silver glow, and out into the garden to discover no hovering alien spaceship, just the full moon. She never had any pressing need to go out (I won’t lower the tone by reference to canine bodily functions), she just wanted to lie in the light of the moon and watch the stars. So the two of us did it together.

  I stood at my window last night, watching the moon, thinking of the dog that I love, and the woman I love, and was filled with a sense of time stretching out endlessly, that this small cell-room will be my world for all eternity, that even when I die, my hell will take this form, and the shit-stained walls and phlegm-polluted food will go on, and the remembrance of you will become like a dying star, just a memory of light that makes the darkness unbearable.

  Hamish

  PROPERTY OF AVON AND SOMERSET POLICE. Ref: 544/45.2 Hamish Wolfe.

  Chapter 7

  THE CID ROOM at Portishead police station is unusually quiet for a weekday morning, thanks to an armed hold-up and two muggings in Bristol city centre last night. For now, only Pete, Liz Nuttall and Sunday Sadik, a rotund, disgustingly cheerful man, are in the room.

  Liz is staring at her computer screen. ‘Shane Ridley drowned his wife in the bath,’ she says, ‘before hacking her body into pieces to dispose of it. The jury took less than an hour to convict him. Maggie Rose, however, has supposedly found evidence that Lara Ridley was having an affair – or affairs – with person or persons unknown. She’s arguing that one of the lovers killed her.’

  From directly behind Liz’s chair, Pete can see the photograph of Ridley’s wife, Lara. Mid twenties, blonde, beautiful.

  ‘So, not only was she murdered, the world is being told she was a whore,’ Liz goes on. ‘Ridley’s appeal is coming up in two months and is expected to be successful. Lara’s father had a stress-related heart attack last month and her mother is on antidepressants.’

  Sunday, who will never stand up if he can avoid it, glides over on his wheeled office chair, catching himself inches before he collides with Pete’s legs.

  ‘Steve Lampton beat up and strangled three women he met on internet dating sites.’ Liz has opened another screen. ‘Except he didn’t, according to Maggie Rose, who got him off in 2007. He received nearly half a million in compensation and, rumour has it, his lawyer got 40 per cent of that.’

  ‘Gwent police never looked for anyone else in connection with those murders,’ Pete adds.

  ‘Nigel Upton was her second big success.’ Liz is on a roll now. ‘He got out in 2008. His claim for compensation was settled out of court but it was believed to be big.’ She looks back over her shoulder. ‘So, if anyone was wondering how she can afford that big, fuck-off house of hers, there’s your answer.’

  Sunday’s desk phone rings. He shoves his chair in its direction and picks it up.

  ‘She’s a vampire,’ Liz says.

  ‘She’s in reception,’ Sunday says. ‘Want me to go get her?’

  Pete stands upright. ‘I’l
l do it. I’ll let Latimer know first.’ As he steps away from Liz’s desk, he knocks over her bag, spilling some of its contents. He bends down, but Sunday has jumped out of his chair ahead of him.

  ‘Something you want to tell us, Liz?’ Sunday is holding up a copy of Brides magazine.

  Liz blushes scarlet and can’t look at Pete. ‘It’s for a friend,’ she says. ‘Like I’d be that dumb again.’

  Pete pulls open the chief’s door. ‘Maggie Rose is here,’ he says. ‘She’s down in reception.’

  DCI Tim Latimer closes the file he’s been reading and puts it away in the pulled-out drawer. He switches his phone to answer-machine mode and adjusts the angle between the only other objects on the desk. Two photographs. Getting to his feet, he lifts his jacket from the back of the chair and shakes out imaginary creases.

  ‘Better bring her up,’ he says at last. ‘Brenda’s already in MR 3, I take it?’

  ‘She is. With the FLO.’

  Latimer is several inches taller than Pete and has a habit of standing just a little too close, of looking down his nose. ‘Don’t forget your jacket,’ he says.

  There is a small, square mirror on the back of the door of the DCI’s office. It isn’t standard issue and the previous incumbent didn’t have one, but Latimer never leaves his office without glancing at it. Satisfied that not a short silver hair is out of place, he strides ahead of Pete through the main office. As he walks, his head darts from side to side. In spite of his instruction that he doesn’t want to see any decorations until Friday the eleventh, two weeks before the big day, paper chains and tinsel have started to creep in, like weeds in the outer corners of a neglected garden.

  Liz is waiting by the door with Pete’s jacket. Her short, corn-coloured hair – rarely flat on her head after ten o’clock in the morning – has the look of a fight in a hay barn. She shakes his jacket, matador style and he pulls a face.