Daisy in Chains(13)

‘Thanks. And the second?’

‘If your case against Wolfe is as watertight as you say, then there’s another reason why you’re so edgy about him. Have you considered that, on some level, you actually think he’s innocent?’





Chapter 8


DRAFT

THE BIG, BAD WOLFE?

Note: almost certainly too corny but worth keeping as a working title.

By Maggie Rose

CHAPTER 1, THE VANISHING OF ZOE SYKES

Zoe Sykes is one of our missing. Her death has been assumed, her supposed murderer caught, tried and sentenced, but we do not, and possibly never will, know what happened to her on that Friday night in June, three years ago.

Zoe was twenty-four years old and unmarried, living with her mother, Brenda (forty-nine) and younger sister, Kimberly (sixteen) in Keynsham. She worked at a tanning and beauty salon in the town centre and had a boyfriend, Kevin, of four years’ standing. As anyone would expect, Kevin was the initial principal suspect in Zoe’s murder. For good reasons, as we’ll learn.

Note: actually nothing concrete on Kevin at this stage. Will need to dig something up.

One treads carefully with a physical description of a victim, especially when it comes to the clothes she was wearing, but when serial killers are involved, the victims nearly always conform to a type, making consideration of an individual’s ‘fit’ important. In other words, the need to examine Zoe’s physical presence outweighs the sensibilities of the easily offended.

Zoe Sykes was fat. I’m not going to pander to political correctness or feminist sensitivities by calling her large, sizeable, or plus sized. She weighed, by my best estimate, around thirteen stone, giving her a body mass index (BMI) of 32 and putting her in the obese category.

On the last night of her life that we know about, Zoe met up with four friends at a town centre flat. She was wearing a black leather jacket, a red-and-black floral print dress, black tights and red cowboy boots.

The women shared three bottles of wine before heading out, arriving at the Trout Tavern on Temple Street, Keynsham, at around half past nine.

The pub became busy and the group of five began to talk about going on to one of the town’s nightclubs. Zoe took no real part in the discussion, but that wasn’t exactly unusual. Often, Kevin would meet Zoe in the pub and walk or drive her home.

Zoe’s friends, to a woman, were unanimous in their disapproval of Kevin. He was controlling, too inclined to dictate what she wore, where she went, even how she behaved.

‘Zoe always seemed anxious,’ one friend told police. ‘As though she was looking over her shoulder all the time.’

Kevin claimed not to have met Zoe on the night of Friday, 8 June, to have been in a different pub, in a different town, until well after midnight. He and a friend then went back to the friend’s house where, they claim, Kevin spent the night. At this point, the alibi becomes flimsier. The friend was drunk and fell asleep soon after arriving home. He cannot vouch for Kevin’s movements from midnight onwards.

Zoe was captured on three separate street cameras that night and we can therefore assume she left the pub between eleven o’clock and eleven twenty, some time before her friends. Police were unable to ascertain why Zoe left earlier and alone, and why she failed to tell any of her friends where she was going.

She was last seen at 11.45 p.m. walking in the direction of the railway station. There is, though, no evidence that she ever entered the station, bought a ticket or caught a train. We have to assume she did not.

We now enter the dead hours. The time between a disappearance taking place and it being noticed. Zoe vanished shortly before midnight. Her mother, Brenda, began looking for her at ten o’clock the next morning. We have no idea what happened to her during those ten hours.

The police version of events is that Hamish Wolfe, with murderous thoughts in mind, happened upon Zoe as she staggered in the direction of the station’s taxi rank. The two had more than a passing acquaintance already. Wolfe’s mother, Sandra, frequented the salon where Zoe worked and, more significantly, Zoe had become a patient of Wolfe’s some months earlier. Had Hamish offered her a lift, the police argue, she almost certainly would have accepted.

This is speculation, pure and simple. There is no evidence putting Hamish, or his car, in the vicinity of Keynsham railway station that night. On the contrary, he and his mother both claim they had dinner together that night, that she drove him home afterwards. However, as no one in the restaurant can confirm this (they were especially busy that night and weren’t even asked about it until over a year later), the alibi has largely been discounted.

Should it have been? It is a fundamental principle of British law that people are assumed to be telling the truth, until evidence suggests otherwise.

According to the police and prosecution, Hamish happened upon Zoe – tired, drunk, cold – and offered her a lift. He didn’t drive her home. He took her somewhere else and murdered her. The time frame remains indeterminate partly because Zoe’s body has never been found and partly because the remains of the other three murdered women were in a state of such advanced decomposition as to make a forensic examination practically worthless. We have no idea what happened to them in the final hours of their lives.

The search for Zoe

At ten o’clock on Saturday morning, Zoe’s sister, Kimberly, mentioned to her mother that Zoe hadn’t come home the previous night. Brenda got in touch with Kevin, who told her that not only had he not seen Zoe but that, to the best of his knowledge, she hadn’t spent the night at his flat.