Daisy in Chains (42 page)

‘Keeping me exactly where you wanted me. Totally in your power.’

‘Something like that. Of course I also have enough evidence hidden away to have got you out at any time, should my mind have changed.’

‘Victims’ hair? Clothes? In a safety deposit box somewhere? Ready to plant on some unsuspecting patsy?’

She smiles.

‘So what happens now?’

She shrugs, feigns carelessness, even though her heart has never beaten faster. ‘You’re a free man. The dead woman at my house will ensure that. I’ll be the killer of six people, you’ll be the innocent man, wrongly accused. You’ll be a national hero. You can return to your profession, make a fortune from public appearances, start a family, have the life you used to dream about.’

‘And you’ll be behind bars?’

‘Oh, I didn’t say that.’

He looks long into her eyes and she knows he has guessed her intentions. If Hamish turns his back on her tonight, she will climb to the highest point of the Gorge. She won’t be the first wronged woman to seek solace on its cold, high edge.

She makes a show of looking at her watch, although from the moment she entered the cave she has known exactly what the time is. ‘They’ll be hot on our heels, my long-lost lover. Which is it to be?’

He breathes out a sigh so long, so heavy, that she half expects to see him deflating. Then, awkwardly, as though he has been sitting too long, he gets to his feet. He reaches down, takes her hand and pulls her up. For one, heart-stopping moment, she thinks he will kiss her. Then he takes a long step back.

‘I’m truly sorry about what I did to you at Oxford.’ His eyes lift, go over her shoulder and fix on something behind. ‘But you should have gotten over it.’

Maggie spins round to see dim pools of light immediately in front of the rocky overhang. She can just about make out two forms. Pete.

And Sirocco.

‘
MAGGIE ROSE, I
am arresting you for the murders of Jessie Tout, Chloe Wood, Myrtle Reid, Odi Smith and Broon Richards.’ As he speaks, Pete is thinking fast, measuring the distances between the four people in the cave, reminding himself where the dangerous places are, because he’s seen the look in Maggie’s eyes and he knows this could still go very badly wrong. She will almost certainly have a weapon and she is very close to Hamish. ‘You do not—’

‘Shut the hell up!’ It is Pete at whom she yells, but her eyes haven’t left the woman at his side. ‘Who the hell are you?’ For the moment she is ignoring both Pete and Hamish, but that won’t last long. Soon the full force of her rage will be directed at the lover who spurned her. A second time.

The woman Maggie knows as Sirocco Silverwood opens her mouth to speak but Pete catches hold of her arm and stops her.

‘This is Detective Constable Liz Nuttall,’ he says. ‘Hamish’s liaison officer. You didn’t hurt her just now, you’ll be relieved to know, but she was wired up and we heard everything that went on in your house. Hamish is wired too, by the way.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Pete sees Liz allow her huge coat to gape open, to let Maggie see the body armour that was meant to protect her from knife wounds. All the same, he will never again send a constable into such a situation. The fifteen minutes that Liz was in Maggie’s house were the longest in his life. Especially when she went into the cellar and they lost comms.

Maggie spins round to look at Hamish.

‘You knew? You were part of this?’

Hamish bows his head once. His eyes leave her and settle on Liz. ‘It took me a while to persuade Liz, but I got there in the end.’

‘And Liz convinced me,’ says Pete. ‘It’s over, Maggie. I need you to come with me now.’

He moves forward again, trying to block Maggie’s view of Liz, because he really doesn’t like the way the two women are looking at each other. Liz, though, is not about to be intimidated by the woman she’s worked for months to bring to justice. She lifts up both hands and takes off first the beanie cap, then the long black wig.

‘This is a gel skullcap.’ She is speaking directly to Maggie. ‘Skateboarders use them for the more dangerous stunts. I know you meant to knock my brains out, but you’ve just given me a nasty headache.’

Hamish seems about to move.

‘Stay where you are, please, Hamish,’ Pete says. ‘Maggie, I want you down on your knees with your hands in the air. I’ll make this as quick and as comfortable as possible, but we have to get you out of here.’

In response she backs away. ‘Are you mad? Do you imagine for one moment that you’ll convict me? Think about what you’ve been doing. Illegal searches of my house, breaking and entering, threatening me on that Ferris wheel. Not to mention springing a convicted murderer from prison. Any confession of mine that you taped was made under duress, when I was in fear of my life. There is more chance of the two of you going to prison than me.’ She turns to Hamish. ‘As for you, you’re going to rot.’

‘Officially, we’ve only ever been in your house with your permission,’ says Pete. ‘The break-in – or, strictly, trespass, because your door was unlocked – is likely to remain an unsolved crime. There is nothing to suggest that the origami rose, the writing under the table, the daisies delivered on Christmas Day were anything to do with us.’

‘I know they were.’ She’s practically spitting at him. ‘You staged that break-in so I’d agree to the crime scene people coming in. You released my personal information to Facebook too. You were trying to frighten me, to intimidate me into making a false confession.’

‘Prove it,’ says Pete. ‘Prove that the three of us had anything to do with that.’

‘As for the Ferris wheel incident,’ says Liz, ‘I remember it quite differently. It was your idea. You frightened me when we were at the top. Sandra and Bear will back me up on that, by the way.’

Maggie is getting angrier by the second and Pete knows he needs to wrap this up. But she has turned on Hamish now. ‘You escaped from
prison and stole a plane. That is a serious crime, and if these two jerks helped you, then that alone is enough—’

‘Actually, he didn’t.’ The new voice cuts through the cold air of the cave. Pete should have known Latimer wouldn’t be able to keep out of it for long. Keeping him in the dark about the unofficial undercover operation he and Liz instigated is probably still something he’ll have to answer for. Oddly, though, he finds himself quite relieved to see the boss. Especially as he hasn’t come alone. At least two of the uniformed officers they left outside have made their way in with the DCI. Sunday is with them too.

Latimer glances around the cave and addresses Maggie. ‘There was no ten-mile hike across the Isle of Wight, no James Bond style escape in a light aircraft,’ he tells her. ‘The ladder and the handmade key were only to provide some photographs that Sunday here used to create a very convincing fake BBC website. And to provide a bit of noise on Twitter. Hamish left Parkhurst in a police car and came here via the Isle of Wight ferry and the M5. Technically, he is still in police custody and no crimes have been committed by my team.’ He glances over at Pete and drops his voice. ‘Although God knows they came close.’

‘Maggie,’ says Hamish, ‘you need to go with Pete now.’

Maggie turns back to Hamish and shakes her head. Her eyes don’t leave his, although she must surely be able to sense, if not see, that Pete, Latimer, Sunday and Liz are all making their way towards her. God knows how they’ll get her out of here uninjured if she fights, but they have to bring this to an end. Behind them, more uniformed constables are entering the cave.

‘You love me,’ Maggie tells Hamish. ‘I know you do.’

‘No.’ Liz speaks up, her voice echoing through the cave. ‘He loves me. That part was true.’

Hamish takes the last step that will bring him up to Maggie.

‘And that dog isn’t called Daisy,’ Liz shouts. ‘She’s called Cruella.’

Maggie seems to sway but she’s still looking at Hamish. Pete doesn’t think either of them have blinked for the better part of a minute. Hamish reaches out and puts his hands on her shoulders, bends down and kisses her cheek, whispers something in her ear. She seems to slump against him. Hamish looks over her shoulder at Pete and nods.

With a sudden, painful screech, Maggie rears up and strikes out at Hamish. Taken by surprise, he loses his balance. Liz rushes forward. Maggie darts away. She cannot leave the cave, there are too many officers blocking her way, but she isn’t heading for the exit. She stumbles across the last few stretches of damp limestone to the edge of the river.

‘Daisy!’ yells Hamish, as she throws herself into the water.

The current reaches up and grabs a hold of her. Every police officer in the cave runs to the river’s edge and shines his torch on the water. In Latimer’s beam they think they catch a glimpse of a pale hand as the water rushes underground. Then nothing.

The Times
Online, Thursday, 14 January 2016

‘CONVICTED’ MURDERER FREED PENDING APPEAL

Hamish Wolfe was released from prison yesterday by a High Court judge pending a fresh appeal into his conviction. ‘It would appear, from what I have learned this morning,’ said Lord Justice Robinson, ‘that new evidence in this case has come to light. If substantiated it may, in the fullness of time, lead to a quashing of Mr Wolfe’s conviction. In the meantime, I see no reason why Mr Wolfe should not rejoin his family.’

Police have, this morning, named thirty-eight-year-old lawyer and true-crime author Maggie Rose as their new prime suspect in the murders of Jessie Tout, Chloe Wood and Myrtle Reid. Rose fled police custody during an attempted arrest two days ago and is believed to have died. A police search for her body is currently under way.

Hamish Wolfe, thirty-eight, was given a whole life tariff in 2014 and has served fifteen months of his sentence, primarily in HMP Isle of Wight. While family and friends campaigned energetically for his release, the turning point came when he secured the confidence and support of his police liaison officer, Detective Constable Elizabeth Nuttall, thirty-four.

The divorced mother-of-two confirmed to reporters this morning that she and Wolfe are romantically involved and expect to marry shortly after his release has been formalized.

Nuttall is not the only woman to fall prey to the handsome former surgeon’s dark charm (he received, allegedly, over a hundred letters a week in prison), but in her case, the infatuation might cost her dear. A spokesman for Avon and Somerset police confirmed this morning that she has been suspended from her CID job and is expected to face misconduct charges for entering into a relationship with a convicted prisoner without informing
her superiors. If it is found that she acted incorrectly, she may be dismissed from the police service.

At a press conference this morning, senior officer DCI Tim Latimer refused to condemn DC Nuttall. He said, ‘Clearly there needs to be a full investigation, but at this stage I’m proud that my officers, in particular Detective Sergeant Pete Weston and Detective Constable Liz Nuttall, were prepared to put the pursuit of justice before personal considerations.’

Hamish Wolfe has been unavailable for comment today and is believed to be with his parents at an undisclosed location, but Ms Nuttall told us that she couldn’t be happier that her fiancé’s innocence has been proven and that they can look forward to a normal life together. ‘I started to believe Hamish shortly after I became his liaison officer,’ she told us. ‘After that it was a question of finding proof, and of convincing my colleagues that there’d been a miscarriage of justice.’

The couple have not yet set a date for their wedding. ‘Soon,’ Ms Nuttall told us. ‘Very soon. Hamish needs some time, obviously, to get used to being in the outside world again. I’m going to need to be patient with him, cut him some slack but, yes, it’s going to happen soon. No, I haven’t spoken to him for a couple of days, but that’s fine. He needs some space.’

When I ask what would have happened if proof hadn’t been forthcoming, if she’d remained convinced of his guilt, she doesn’t have a ready response to hand. I decide to push a little and ask which came first, the belief in his innocence, or a dangerously irresistible attraction.

‘I fell in love,’ she says. ‘Obviously I’m much happier to love an innocent man, but if he’d been guilty?’ She pauses for a few seconds before giving me her answer: ‘I would have loved him just the same.’

My grateful thanks to:

My family, including my mother-in-law, who gets dragged on research trips during the coldest months of the year and who never seems to mind. My dog, Lupe, for being beautifully behaved during our stay at the Crown in Wells and for not killing the cathedral cat. Peter Warner, for advice on what lawyers can and can’t get up to with convicted felons. Adrian Summons for the detecting stuff. Brian Snell of the Mendip Caving Group, for help with disposing of bodies beneath the Mendip Hills. (Sidcot Swallet and Goatchurch Cavern are real caves, but Rill Cavern and Gossam Cave are my inventions.) Any remaining mistakes are my own.

My two UK editors, Sarah Adams and Frankie Gray, both of whom worked exceptionally hard to get
Daisy
to the publishable stage. A cheery wave, also, to Kelley Ragland at St Martin’s Press in the US, Andrea Best at Goldmann in Germany and all my lovely overseas publishers.

As ever, the Transworld team: Alison Barrow, Tom Chicken, Elspeth Dougall, Christina Ellicott, Larry Finlay, Giulia Giordano, Gary Hartley, Becky Hunter, Louise Jones, Naomi Mantin, Deirdre O’Connell, Gareth Pottle, Bradley Rose, Kate Samano, Bill Scott-Kerr and Nicola Wright.

By no means least, my agent, Anne-Marie Doulton, and her colleagues, the Buckmans.

Sharon Bolton
is the author of the bestselling Lacey Flint series, as well as a number of stand-alone thrillers, including
Blood Harvest
, which was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Novel of the Year. In 2014 she was awarded the CWA Dagger in the Library for her whole body of work.