Daisy in Chains

by Sharon Bolton

The constable’s face says he’s registered Maggie’s aggression, and is up for a fight – to a point. He says, ‘We wondered if perhaps your client gave you some idea where to look.’

  ‘Why on earth would he do something so stupid? And all you’ve found is the computer that was used to make contact with the women. You haven’t found anything to link it to Hamish.’

  ‘Actually, we have,’ the constable begins, before Pete silences him with a look.

  ‘There was a pen,’ Pete says. ‘A biro, hidden away beneath the carpet. It has Hamish’s prints on it.’

  Maggie stares back at him for a second. ‘It proves nothing,’ she says, although she knows that, in the eyes of the world, it will prove a great deal. ‘If someone broke into Hamish’s house to steal evidence, they could easily have found a pen.’

  The constable sneers. Maggie’s hand reaches out for a paperweight and clasps it tight. The sneer fades.

  ‘Just three women?’ asks Maggie.

  Pete frowns. ‘You mean, did we find any trace of Zoe?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I mean.’

  ‘Nothing,’ says the constable. ‘In fact, the first activity we found dates to after Zoe’s disappearance.’

  ‘I thought so. I don’t think Zoe’s disappearance had anything to do with the three murders,’ Maggie says. ‘I think it may have been entirely unconnected, except that it gave the killer the idea. A fat girl vanished, presumed dead. Hamish supposedly had a history with fat girls. The real killer decided to make other fat girls disappear, and direct the blame towards him by planting evidence.’

  Pete sighs. ‘Maggie, this conspiracy theory is going nowhere.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you and Hamish were friends before his arrest?’

  He flushes. ‘We weren’t friends.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that your ex-wife, who left you for your boss, just six months before Jessie was murdered, is a very similar size to Hamish’s supposed three victims?’

  He gives an odd, twisted smile. ‘Are you serious?’

  Maggie turns to the constable. ‘If anything happens to me, Detective, if I vanish suddenly, or have a freakish accident, I do hope you’ll remember this conversation.’

  The man laughs, but glances sideways at his sergeant. Pete reaches into his coat pocket. He pulls out a clear plastic wallet, with several loose sheets of notepaper inside and puts them on the desk in front of Maggie.

  ‘They’re just copies,’ he says. ‘The originals are at the station.’

  ‘What are they?’ Maggie sees the heading on the stationery and can feel fibres in her body start to tighten. HMP Isle of Wight.

  ‘Please read them. They’re in date order. We’ll wait.’

  She wants to refuse, to tell them to leave the letters, that she’ll get to them in her own time. She knows they won’t agree.

  Aware that she has no choice, she unfolds the first letter.

  My love,

  When I think of the moments in my life that have given me greatest pleasure: the scaling of an impossible rock face, watching the moon over the ocean on Christmas morning …

  Hamish’s handwriting. She reads it through to the end. The second letter talks about how the world sees him as a monster and how only the woman he loves can redeem him. The third is more whimsical, poetic even, deeply moving in its sadness. She recognizes his turn of phrase, his sense of humour, his imagination. The raw eroticism of the Christmas letter stabs her in the gut. There is no doubt that he wrote these letters. Five of them in total, the most recent sent just a week or so ago. Hamish has been writing love letters. And not to her.

  She has a sense of a great weight above her head, a weight that will fall soon, crushing her entirely.

  ‘Who is the recipient?’ She hears her own voice sounding old and worn out. Hamish sees no one but his mother and herself. He told her that. She believed him.

  Pete says, ‘I suggest you read the replies.’

  There are more letters. The next batch is in a different handwriting, harder to read. No address.

  My darling,

  I was sleeping when we met. I’ve been sleeping my whole life. You woke me. Not with a kiss – oh, if only! – but with the knowledge that there is another in the world like me.

  She can’t read this drivel. She skips to the end.

  Yours, always,

  Me

  There are more. One is enough. ‘Are these genuine?’ she asks, although she knows they must be. ‘Who sent them?’

  ‘All letters sent into and out of Parkhurst are copied,’ Pete explains. ‘We applied for a warrant to examine Wolfe’s correspondence – after we found the originals from him in Sarah Smith’s flat. Remember Sarah Smith? You know her as Sirocco.’

  ‘These letters were sent to Sirocco?’ Maggie manages. ‘To and from Sirocco?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Sirocco? That weird, needy, clingy girl? Hamish in love with Sirocco?

  ‘Are you OK, Miss Rose?’ the constable says. ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’

  If that man speaks to her again, she will hit him. ‘You told me she never visited. You checked. She was lying.’

  ‘Actually, she wasn’t,’ Pete says. ‘She just didn’t give her own name. She used the name Sophie Wolfe, pretending to be Hamish’s sister.’

  ‘That’s impossible. She’d need ID.’

  ‘She had it,’ Pete tells her. ‘She used Sophie’s old passport and had a new one issued with her photograph. She looked sufficiently like her for the Passport Office to be fooled. We spotted it the minute we checked the visitor’s schedule. We’ll add it to the charges she’s facing, of course.’

  ‘She would have needed Wolfe’s help to do that,’ says the constable. ‘He probably told her where she’d find the passport, how to sneak in to his parents’ house. They’ve been conspiring together.’

  Maggie has an urge to get up, to bang her fists against a hard surface. She clasps the seat with one hand. ‘Sirocco killed Odi and Broon. She tried to kill me.’

  ‘Yes, that’s another thing,’ says Pete. ‘We have absolutely no evidence to connect her with the murder in Wells Market Square. Which means we can’t charge her. The only charge that will stick at the moment is that of threatening behaviour towards you. I’m afraid she was granted bail this afternoon.’

  ‘You’re kidding me?’

  They get to their feet.

  ‘She’s been told to come nowhere near you,’ says Pete. ‘But as we know, she is a bit unstable. You might want to keep your doors locked. Obviously, if you’re concerned at any time, you should dial 999.’

  Pete glances back as he leaves the room and his eyes settle on the pile of letters. ‘You can keep those.’

  Chapter 99

  ‘HE DOESN’T LOVE HER.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘He can’t love her. Have you seen her? He’s been using her.’

  ‘So he loves you, but he’s using her, is that right? And yet, she’s the one who got the letters.’

  Maggie pulls herself out of the bath and feels cold again immediately. She finds a gown and slippers. She is shaking, she is so cold. She leaves the steam-drenched bathroom and the temperature drops by a degree or more.

  ‘He loves me. He said so.’

  ‘Actually, that’s not what he said. He said, he loved – note the use of the past tense—’

  ‘Enough!’

  ‘Look at me.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘It’s time. Look at me.’

  Her feet dragging like a sulky child, Maggie steps across the carpet to the full-length, free-standing mirror in the corner. The lights in her bedroom are always kept low, and the steam has stolen out from the bathroom to coat the surface of the mirror. She can see nothing of her reflection but a hazy shape.

  In spite of the cold, Maggie lets her robe slip to the carpet. She can just about make out her tiny frame in the steamed-up mirror. She hasn’t weighed more than nine stone fo
r years, but in recent weeks the weight has fallen off her. She was eight stone six pounds this morning. She’ll have gained two pounds, roughly, during the course of the day. She always knows, to half a pound, how much she weighs.

  She pulls loose her hair and fluffs it up around her head. She can just about see the pale blue curls and the paler face.

  A slender body, a perfect oval face, and bright blue hair. That is the reflection hiding itself from her right now.

  ‘I’m still here.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ll always be here.’

  ‘I know.’

  As the mirror clears Maggie’s reflection gains substance. She can see the pale, pale skin on long, slim limbs. She can see loose and saggy skin, that she can never reveal to the light of day, because its folds and wrinkles are revolting, in spite of the relentless surgery she once endured. She can see the long, angry red scars, on the insides of her arms and legs. Disfigured limbs, that must always be clothed in long sleeves and trousers or opaque tights, that have never known the soft stroke of a lover’s hand. Never felt warm, damp kisses.

  As the steam fades completely, so do Maggie’s scars, until they vanish and her flesh blossoms. She is growing, blooming, swelling. All the pounds she once lost by walking endless miles day after day, by existing on near-starvation levels of food, are coming back. She is getting plumper, riper, regaining the former self she once gloried in. She feels the weight of her breasts, the silky slide of her thighs as they brush together, the jiggling of her ass as she moves.

  The last trace of steam leaves the mirror and Maggie can see her face again. It is the same face, but looking so very different with so much added flesh, and before the surgery removed the hook of her Jewish nose. Before expensive dentistry corrected the crooked teeth. Her hair isn’t blue any more. It is longer, thicker, curlier, dark as polished jet. Her eyes are conker brown. She has become the woman she used to be, before a broken heart and the shame of public humiliation forced her to flee, to change herself completely. She has become, once again, the woman she will always be inside; and the voice in her head breathes a long, satisfied sigh, happy at last.

  She is Daisy.

  Chapter 100

  BBC News Homepage, Tuesday, 12 January 2016, 2000 hours

  CONVICTED MURDERER AT LARGE AS PARKHURST WALLS BREACHED

  Killer of three, Hamish Wolfe (pictured), could be on the run tonight after escaping from Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. While the prison has made no official statement, and the Governor remains unavailable for comment, it is thought that Wolfe has already left the island.

  According to unconfirmed reports that have reached the outside world through contraband mobile phones, Wolfe, 38, convicted in 2014 of the abduction and murder of three women, made a bid for freedom late this afternoon, slipping away during a disturbance and using a home-made ladder (pictured below) to scale the perimeter fence. Our correspondent has been unable to confirm that police dogs tracked him ten miles across open country to Sandown Airport (pictured), but has seen heightened police activity around the site.

  Airport staff have confirmed that a two-seater Cessna has been reported missing from the airfield. It is understood that the plane’s owner is not currently in residence on the island and that the airport’s control room was given no details of a planned flight.

  Wolfe is a qualified and experienced pilot and authorities are concluding that he escaped in the plane.

  A spokesman for Avon and Somerset police refused to deny that the force is working on the assumption that Wolfe will head back to his home and that they are compiling a list of places and people that he might head for.

  While no specific warning has yet been issued by police, Wolfe is considered a very dangerous man and the public should not approach him.

  Screenshot placed in Avon and Somerset police files.

  Chapter 101

  MAGGIE ROSE, who started life as Margaret Rose Baron, nicknamed Daisy by her parents, is reading and re-reading the item on the BBC website about Hamish’s escape. When she feels she knows it by heart, she flicks to Twitter, to the stream of misspelled tweets supposedly sent from contraband mobile phones inside the prison, that have been retweeted several thousand times already.

  She can find nothing else on the internet to bear out the escape story but knows that Pete has been trying to get in touch with her for nearly an hour now. She has ignored his phone calls, and his texts, but the email from his colleague with the odd name caught her attention. The message contained a link to the BBC site.

  She has tried to telephone Parkhurst but the phones are not being answered. She has tried to contact the Isle of Wight police but gets voicemail messages. Somehow she found the energy to get dressed, although she hardly knows why.

  She tries to work out how long it would take a fit man to run ten miles. How long it would take a light aircraft to fly from the Isle of Wight to Somerset.

  Will he come to her?

  She remembers Sirocco’s words on the night the two of them met. ‘He has a plan. You’re part of it.’ If Maggie has played a role in this, she cannot see it. Everything Hamish has said to her, about relying upon her, about trusting her, has been a lie. He has been stringing her along, while all the time planning to escape.

  Is he with Sirocco right now? Are they fleeing together?

  Unable to keep still, even to stay in one room, she gets up, descends two flights of steps into the cellar and flicks on the dim lights.

  Dead flies litter the floor of the first, largest room and crunch underfoot. No matter how many she sweeps away, there always seem to be more. Most are houseflies, but there are others too, moths, crane flies, huge great bluebottles. She has no idea where they come from in the middle of winter but they appear with a worrying regularity. As though there is something down here that attracts them. Which is impossible, of course. She cleans down here often. It is the most frequently swept, dusted, bleached and polished basement in the West Country.

  And still, the flies.

  She looks around for the broom, not sure whether she left it down here after her last visit or took it back upstairs to the kitchen cupboard. As her eyes fall on the dark walls, the now empty shelves, the flagged flooring, she has a sense that this may be the last time she ever comes to the cellar.

  She should check, one last time, make sure there is nothing she missed.

  Three storage heaters line one wall. A fourth stands beneath the high narrow windows. This room, like the rest of the house, is never cold when she is in it. For several years her heating bills have been huge. A faint smear of dust has settled on the heaters but she needn’t worry about that. Not any more.

  The high, narrow, horizontally figured windows, alone in the room, are never cleaned. They are beyond dirty, filthy even, as though someone has smeared mud across them, making it impossible for anyone outside to see in. The windows are the one big disadvantage to this house and yet they are necessary all the same. The windows let in the flies.

  Maggie walks past them, catching a scent of the chill night air, towards the back of the cellar. The smallest basement room appears to be a bathroom but the plumbing has been disconnected long ago. Turning on the taps would produce nothing but a few splutters of dank air. Any liquid poured into the Victorian-style roll-top bath would drain, not to waste pipes, but into a large, shallow tray that lies immediately beneath the plug. Several large buckets stand to one side.

  The bath is spotless. So is the drain tray. So are the buckets.

  By the side of the bath is a large plastic container of household bleach. More out of habit than because she knows it is necessary, Maggie opens it and pours it around the rim of the bath. Bleach is thick and it takes time to run down the enamel sides of the bath, gathering in the bottom, draining out into the tray. Slowly, the tray fills. She will empty it tomorrow, on the land at the bottom of her garden, because pouring that amount of bleach down the drain would be traceable.

  The sudden bangi
ng makes her jump. Someone is upstairs, hammering on her back door. Knowing she has no choice now but to move with events, she makes her way up, expecting to see Pete. He will want to make sure she knows about the escape, that she is taking sensible precautions. He will think she needs to fear Wolfe. She sensed a new and unsettling coldness in him earlier, but Pete is a good man. He will no doubt offer, once again, to find a room for her at the Crown in Wells.

  The very air seems to be thickening around her, making it harder to move freely. Every step she takes upstairs increases the heaviness in her chest. Is it possible, really, that she might never see Hamish again?

  Silently she opens the door to the back hallway. She has disconnected the security lights at the back of her house and can only see a dark silhouette through the glass of the door. She doesn’t think whoever is out there is tall enough to be Pete. Her heart leaps momentarily, but too small to be Pete is too small to be Hamish and it settles back down again. She unlocks the door and opens it.

  Sirocco.

  ‘He’s out,’ Sirocco steps forward, as though Maggie will simply invite her in, take her coat and put the kettle on. ‘He’s escaped. Have you heard?’

  Sirocco seems to be wearing even more loose, flowing clothing than usual. On her head, clamping down her unruly black hair, is a tight-fitting beanie-style cap. She looks dressed to travel and the sight sends another pang into Maggie’s heart.

  There is some hope, though, in her being here. She isn’t with Hamish yet.

  ‘I saw it on the news,’ says Maggie, wondering how to take this forward. The last time she saw Sirocco she’d been afraid for her life. This isn’t the top of a Ferris wheel, though, here she is on home ground.

  ‘Read this.’ Sirocco has fumbled in her coat pocket and is holding out a sheet of pale blue paper. ‘Read this and tell me what it means.’

  Maggie glances down and sees handwriting that she recognizes. Suddenly, the heaviness inside her seems more manageable. Her heart, that has been fighting to keep beating, picks up its pace.

  ‘Come in,’ she says, stepping back from the doorway. In the kitchen she will have room to move. In the kitchen there will be enough light. She will be able to see what’s coming.