Daisy in Chains

by Sharon Bolton

  We associate good looks with goodness. No arguments. We just do.

  The search for Jessie went on although, at this stage, no one was publicly linking her disappearance with that of Zoe. Only DC Pete Weston actively pursued this theory, spending much of his own time trying to establish links between the two women, to find someone who knew them both.

  And then Jessie was found. On 22 October 2013, a caving expedition came across human remains fifty feet underground in a cave near Burrington Combe, around four miles north of Cheddar Gorge. The corpse had been the focus of much insect activity and had lain in water. Decomposition was very advanced. Jessie might have entered the cave as one of Somerset’s larger women, she didn’t leave it as such.

  The body was unclothed which, whilst not conclusive evidence of a sex crime, would point towards it. There was no obvious cause of death. Some of the bones, including the skull, showed signs of trauma damage, but it proved impossible to tell whether they’d been inflicted before death or post-mortem.

  The police investigation had one bit of luck. A small piece of Sellotape, just short of an inch long, was found clinging to Jessie’s hair. Speculation is that it was lying on the floor of the killer’s home. Jessie’s hair was long and thick. The killer didn’t see it.

  It held carpet fibres and two short, white hairs that were subsequently found to be canine. The fibres were identified and the police now knew they were looking for someone with a white dog and a BMW 6 series.

  Chapter 11

  MAGGIE STANDS at the mouth of Rill Cavern, listening to the sound of running water and the steady drip, drip of a stalactite forming. It is cold here, at the cave entrance, because the December sun is low in the sky. Already shadows are lengthening, and the pale, weak beams can no longer reach the north cliff. It will be warmer inside.

  There is plant life in this cave, strange though it may seem. Spongy clumps cling to vertical rock faces, fungus-like ferns peek out through cracks, the damper walls have the green sheen of algae. Some light squeezes in here, through cracks in the rock, through chimneys that lead right up to the world outside, allowing these alien, distorted growths to survive.

  Another step and her foot slides. She pushes the switch on her torch and lets the beam move around the walls. There is something disturbingly, flesh-crawlingly organic about the limestone mass around her. A curve of rock to her left could be the haunch of an animal. To her right hang formations that have the appearance of drying skins. Directly ahead, the roof of the cave lowers and she will have to bend low if she is to reach the chamber she knows to be beyond.

  Maggie steps into the narrow, low passageway, conscious of the massive press of rock above her, but turning around in this cramped space will feel worse than going straight on and so she makes herself take the final few paces.

  Suddenly, the low rock ceiling is gone and in its place is a vast emptiness. Maggie shines her torch up and around, but its beam is hardly strong enough to reach the highest or furthest points. This chamber is huge, as though the entire cliff is hollow, and still the rocks around her have the appearance of living flesh. She might almost imagine herself in the belly of some giant creature, that were she to reach out and touch the walls they would be warm, would yield to her fingers, be pulsating with blood.

  A fluttering sounds high above her head and instinctively she lowers her torch because disturbing the resident bats is against the law. She moves towards the river, past a raised pool on a rock shelf, with limestone fingers reaching down into its depths. The rocks below the water’s surface gleam in jewel colours and patterns.

  The underground watercourse is flowing in an easterly direction, linking this chamber with others near by, creating a network of caves and passageways. Eventually, it will make its way out from the Mendip hills and flow across the Somerset levels to the Bristol Channel.

  A sound behind, louder than the trickling and dripping and scuttling that is the noise of the caves. Without thinking, Maggie switches off her torch and the cave is plunged into darkness.

  She waits, hearing the gentle murmur of the water, the constant dripping. In the darkness of this cave, she can hide for ever. Whoever is coming will never find her.

  ‘Maggie?’

  A light appears and she stands up quickly, ashamed of the instinct that made her fearful. With her torch back on, she sees feet, a pair of legs in dark suit trousers and a head, with short brown hair. He reaches the end of the overhang and stands upright. His light is much weaker than hers, just the beam from a mobile phone.

  ‘This can’t be coincidence,’ she says.

  Pete shakes his head, a little like a dog trying to dislodge drops of water. ‘I saw you come in. And I couldn’t help but wonder why.’

  She feels guilty, and not just at being caught trespassing. He will know she’s here out of interest in the Wolfe case and Pete Weston does not want her to become involved in the Wolfe case.

  ‘Curiosity, I suppose,’ she says. ‘Wolfe has been forced on to my radar screen. When that happens, I just have to dig a bit deeper.’

  ‘Did you find anything?’ He’s looking around, into blackness that his tiny torch beam can’t penetrate.

  ‘What would you expect me to find? I assume you’ve checked already. You’d know if Zoe were here.’

  ‘She isn’t.’ He steps carefully past her. ‘Police divers, assisted by very experienced local cavers, searched every inch of it. We even had divers search the river. Or as much of it as we could access.’

  Maggie joins him at the water’s edge. ‘She could have been swept out of reach.’ She shines her torch to where the water disappears below rock. ‘Be stuck on something.’

  ‘Quite likely she is. Either in this cave or one of the dozen others in the area. But until Wolfe tells us where to look, we haven’t a hope of finding her.’

  ‘Where was Myrtle?’ she asks him.

  He nods towards where a narrow strip of rubble pretends to be a beach. ‘Half in, half out of the water,’ he tells her. ‘Probably washed up, because this cave gets a lot of visits and if she’d been there since she went missing, she’d have been found a lot sooner. So, Maggie, are you staying down here long, or would you like to get a coffee?’

  Maggie opens her mouth to say that she has to get home, that she has a dozen things to do. Instead, she finds herself taking one last look around. ‘I’m done here,’ she says. ‘Coffee sounds good.’

  Chapter 12

  DRAFT

  THE BIG, BAD WOLFE?

  By Maggie Rose

  CHAPTER 3, THE FOOLING OF CHLOE WOOD

  Chloe Wood became the third plus-sized woman to go missing, on Wednesday, 11 September 2013. Her disappearance took the investigation into a new league – that of the hunt for a serial killer.

  Chloe was thirty-two, a self-employed jewellery designer, running a moderately successful small business from her home on the outskirts of Glastonbury.

  She lived with her boyfriend of eight years, Jeremy, a barrister. By all accounts, the couple were happy and Jeremy was never a serious suspect.

  Not quite as large as the other three, Chloe had long auburn hair and very good skin. The photograph used most often in the police hunt shows her in a floaty, teal-coloured dress. Her listed hobbies included power walking and yoga. She was also a vegetarian. She seemed living proof of the much-repeated adage that it is possible to be big and healthy.

  For some months before her disappearance Chloe had been ‘talking’, first of all via her website and later, by email, with a woman called Isabelle Warner, managing director of JustOffMainstreet.com, a jewellery distribution company that wanted to mass-produce and distribute Chloe’s jewellery around major stores and high-street retail outlets, starting in the south-west, but with a potential roll-out nationwide. Had it been real, this would have been a big deal for Chloe’s small business.

  The two women arranged to meet on Wednesday, 11 September at the public library in Cheddar. This may seem an odd choice of meeting venue, but a
ccording to Chloe’s boyfriend, there were plans to go on from there to the company headquarters.

  Her boyfriend reported her missing that evening. The desk sergeant knew of DC Weston’s interest in the possibly linked cases of Zoe Sykes and Jessie Tout and his antennae pricked up. He phoned Weston immediately and the hunt for Chloe went into top gear.

  At this point, remember, neither Zoe’s nor Jessie’s bodies had been found. They were still just missing persons.

  Chloe’s computer was taken away, and it became the work of minutes for the police to establish that the emails to Chloe from ‘Isabelle Warner’ had been sent from the same computer that hosted ‘Harry Wilson’s’ Facebook page. The two women had fallen foul of the same predator.

  Chloe’s body was found in January 2014, in Goatchurch Cavern, a well-known Mendip cave.

  Chapter 13

  THEY FIND A TABLE in a café that has a river running beneath its reinforced glass floor.

  ‘Same river?’ Maggie is watching the play of water over stones as Pete takes his double espresso and her flat white off the tray. They’d had a brief argument about who would pay for the coffee. He liked that she hadn’t taken his willingness to pay for granted. And also that she’d let him win.

  ‘Possibly a different branch.’ He shrugs off his coat. ‘Only way to know for certain is for you to go back to the cave and send a toy boat down. I’ll wait here for it to come through.’

  He waits for her to smile. Her sapphire eyes are startling against the pallor of the rest of her face.

  ‘Are you from Somerset?’ She breaks the uncomfortable silence.

  He nods, gulping down his coffee too quickly. ‘Born and bred. Grew up in Weston-super-Mare. Whereas your accent suggests the north to me. Just occasionally. The odd word.’

  ‘My father was a Yorkshireman, but we never lived there. He was in the army. We lived abroad for much of my childhood.’

  ‘So what brought you here?’

  ‘I was a bit New Age, when I was younger. The idea of Glastonbury fascinated me. The convergence of the ley lines, that sort of stuff.’

  ‘I’d never have guessed. You look so conventional now.’

  There’s a smile bubbling beneath that icy composure. She’s just remarkably good at keeping the lid on it.

  ‘I pestered my parents for months to let me go to the music festival when I was seventeen,’ she says. ‘They finally gave in and I never dared tell them I hated it. I liked the place, though.’

  ‘Have you heard anything from Hamish Wolfe or his fan club?’

  A tip of pink tongue licks coffee froth from her upper lip. ‘A couple of emails from the group. They’re meeting tonight in Minehead. They’ve asked me to go along.’

  ‘I strongly advise you not to. But if you do, don’t go alone.’

  ‘I’ve met people like them before, you know.’

  He does know. She goes into prisons, talks to some of the worst offenders there are. She doesn’t need him to look out for her.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ he says.

  ‘You can ask me whatever you like.’

  ‘You told me you live on your own.’

  She looks at him over the cup rim. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘When I came to your house, when we were talking about the Wolfe fan club, I asked—’

  ‘And I took it as a veiled threat. I didn’t answer your question.’

  ‘True.’ He starts again. ‘So, I had someone check. Turns out, you do live alone.’

  Two perfectly shaped eyebrows rise.

  ‘When I was out of the room, I heard you talking to someone.’

  Smiling doesn’t seem to be in this woman’s repertoire, but she has a way of softening her eyes that lets you know she’s amused. ‘Maybe I was on the phone.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Didn’t hear a phone ring.’

  ‘I made the call.’

  ‘While a nosy copper is in your downstairs loo? And, you know what, it really didn’t sound like someone on the phone. The pitch of a voice is completely different. Raised. Clearer. Designed to carry. You were talking to someone in the room.’

  ‘And if I was?’

  He gives up. ‘Whatever. I have no right to ask. It’s in the job description to pry.’

  ‘How about I tell you when I know you better? Does that sound fair?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Now it’s my turn. I’ve been doing some reading about the case. Not because I’ve decided to take it on – I’m still pretty certain I won’t – but it does interest me, I’ll admit. There was something I found a reference to. Twice. But it wasn’t explained. I wondered whether you might fill me in.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘What’s “Daisy in Chains”?’

  He feels the stiffening in his spine and hopes she hasn’t seen it. ‘Where’d you hear about that?’

  ‘There was a reference in a book about Wolfe. Trashy piece of work, so I’m not sure how seriously to take it. But you’ve obviously heard of it too, so go on, what was it?’

  ‘To be honest, we don’t know. It was only ever a rumoured piece of evidence. We never found it.’

  ‘Found what though?’

  ‘When Wolfe was on remand and we were building our case, we spoke to people who’d known him when he was younger.’

  Maggie has leaned forward across the table, removing her gloves to reveal small, pale hands and pink painted nails.

  ‘We were trying to get an idea of his character. Some signs that he had a history of violence. Or, at any rate, disturbed behaviour.’

  ‘Torturing animals, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Exactly. Or girlfriends presenting at A & E rather too frequently for comfort.’

  ‘Did you find anything?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Nothing in terms of violence. What we did uncover was a lot of talk about his – how shall I put it – sexual preferences.’

  ‘Is this about his fondness for plus-sized females?’

  ‘There was a club, when he was at university, allegedly. Called themselves the Fat Club. A group of four or five male students who dated fat women and – this is the interesting part – made sex tapes with them.’

  Her black eyelashes tighten. ‘With the women’s knowledge?’

  Pete shakes his head. ‘No. The sessions were filmed secretly. Trouble is, the men who supposedly were involved, the so-called Fat Club themselves, have stayed tight-lipped about it. We had them in countless times. Nothing. It was a couple of people on the periphery who told us about it. A bloke on the same course, one of the women who supposedly was one of the victims. Trouble was, it was all just hearsay. No proof.’

  ‘What was the hearsay?’

  ‘That these five guys deliberately targeted large women, quite often plying them with drink, maybe recreational drugs too, getting them into a state where their inhibitions were pretty relaxed, and then taping the sexual encounters.

  ‘Charming.’

  ‘Exactly. But it gets worse. Because these tapes weren’t intended just for private viewing. Rumour has it they were sold, via some backstreet distribution channel, under the brand name Fat Girls Get Fucked. According to hearsay, they sold a lot of copies, made a lot of money.’

  ‘And there’s no proof of any of this?’

  ‘It was almost twenty years ago. Backstreet video outlets closed down long ago. And something happened. We don’t know exactly what, but my guess is that some of the women found out about it and complained to the university. Maybe some parents got involved. Anyway, the game came to an end and the footage was destroyed. There’s no trace of it left. Just rumour and supposition.’

  ‘And Daisy in Chains was one of the videos?’

  ‘By all accounts. One of the dodgier ones.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘It starred Hamish and a young student called Daisy, who apparently had very ample charms.’

  ‘And chains?’

  ‘Yeah, they figured too. Allegedly. Some people claimed it was h
eavy-duty S & M stuff, that Daisy got hurt. One guy even went further and speculated it was an actual snuff movie; that Daisy ended up dead. This was all very unreliable evidence because it was so long ago, the boys were always drunk when they watched the tapes, and it was never clear whether they’d actually seen it or just talked to someone else who had. What we do know is that the Daisy in question – sorry, can’t remember her last name – left the university when this all kicked off and no one knows where she went. She vanished.’

  Maggie appears to think for a second. ‘You think she could have been his first victim?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Pete says. ‘Ask me, I think something went wrong during the making of the Daisy in Chains video. Maybe there was an accident, maybe he got carried away. I think Daisy ended up dead and he managed to cover it up. With or without the help of his friends. I think, initially, he was mortified by what he’d done, vowed never to do it again, tried to put it behind him and concentrate on building a career as a brilliant surgeon.’

  ‘But his true nature couldn’t be suppressed?’

  ‘Can it ever?’

  Her eyes widen. ‘His dog is called Daisy.’

  ‘I know. And that really turns my blood cold. Because he got that dog just before he started killing again.’

  Chapter 14

  DRAFT

  THE BIG, BAD WOLFE?

  By Maggie Rose

  CHAPTER 4, MYRTLE REID’S FAIRYTALE TURNS DARK

  Myrtle Reid was twenty-three years old, the youngest and also the largest of the four victims. Living at home with her mother, her four siblings, her fifth stepfather (although I’m not sure her mother ever actually married) it seems fair to say her life wasn’t especially happy or fulfilled.

  Not particularly bright at school, with no obvious talents, Myrtle was never going to be one of life’s high achievers. Leaving school at sixteen, she did a string of minimum-wage jobs, not managing to hold down any of them for more than a few months.