Daisy in Chains(14)

A detective constable visited the Sykes’s home within two hours of Brenda reporting her daughter missing. Zoe had her purse and mobile phone with her. It was a smartphone, with a tracing application, but when the police activated it, they found it was listing the last-known location as the Trout Tavern on Friday evening. For some reason, Zoe had turned off her phone in the pub.

The hunt steps up

The next few days were spent interviewing Zoe’s friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Her boss at the salon described her as a conscientious and reliable employee. Kevin Walker was interviewed at length but maintained consistently that he had no idea of Zoe’s whereabouts.

The search was widened to the whole of Avon and Somerset constabulary by Monday evening. The local TV news programme carried a small piece. Nothing happened for several days.

The red boot

On Thursday, 14 June, a red cowboy boot was found on the roadside just outside the village of Cheddar in Somerset, a mere two hundred metres from the cave where Myrtle Reid’s remains were to be discovered, nearly two years later. The boot was identified by Zoe’s mother. Small bloodstains inside it suggested she’d been harmed.

At this point, the police search went national. All police forces in England and Wales were sent copies of Zoe’s photograph. Her disappearance made the national news and Brenda Sykes took part in a televised appeal for information.

Two weeks after the finding of the boot, three weeks after Zoe was last seen, the blood was confirmed as being hers. Kevin Walker was taken in for questioning, his house and garden were searched, as was Zoe’s family home.

Nothing. Zoe had pulled off as effective a vanishing trick as anyone had known. After time, as is largely inevitable, the police search was scaled back and Zoe joined the ranks of the missing. Arguably, that’s how she should have remained. There is not a jot of evidence that Hamish Wolfe, or anyone else for that matter, killed her.

Maggie saves the draft. It is all she has found on Zoe Sykes. Without access to the police files, it is as far as she can go for now.

‘So, you’ve decided, then?’

She closes Word and opens up her email. ‘Nope.’

‘Lot of work for a case you might never take on.’

‘Just organizing my thoughts.’

‘If I were a gambler . . .’

‘You’re not.’

‘I’d be placing my bets right now. Ten to one, Hamish Wolfe will be your client before the year’s end.’





Chapter 9


THREE HUNDRED FEET above sea level, above the hills, the quarries and the rivers, above the woods and meadows of the Somerset countryside, stands a painted-steel observation tower. Those who ascend to its octagonal platform can look directly down into the jagged cleft that is the Cheddar Gorge and watch it winding its way through the limestone mass of the Mendips.

The rusty old watchtower creaks and grumbles. Not with the wind, because today is quite still, but with impatience at the man who climbs its steps so often, but who never comes to look. The man who stands as still as the tower itself, with his eyes tight shut.

Detective Pete has stood here many times.

In spring, he can almost smell the world waking up; the rich sweetness of the soil as the worms churn it, as the buried bulbs send up their shoots. In the summer months, when the wind races across the levels, it brings with it the bitter tang of the ocean. In autumn, the trees of the nearby forest give off their own scent, a muskiness that reminds him of the scent of his ex-wife’s hair. Today, though, the air seems too cold to move and he can smell nothing but his own breath.

If Pete were wise, he’d wear gloves and a decent coat when he makes this pilgrimage to the tower in winter, but he never seems quite dressed for the time he spends here. Maybe he thinks suffering will bring him closer to Zoe, make it easier for him to sense where she is. Because Pete comes to this tower to find Zoe.

Every time he comes here, he stands with his eyes shut, telling himself that, when he opens them, he’ll be looking directly at the place where Zoe lies.

In his coat pocket, his phone trembles, letting him know a message has arrived. Taking it as a signal, Pete opens his eyes. No good. He is staring at the north cliff, at the area around Rill Cavern where Myrtle was found, and that area has been thoroughly searched.

Where are you, Zoe?

He turns, tucking his hands deep within his pockets, and looks north-east towards another limestone gorge called Burrington Combe and the cave known as Sidcot Swallet that became Jessie Tout’s grave.

No one has ever been able to explain quite how Hamish Wolfe got the body of Jessie Tout into the bottleneck hole that is Sidcot Swallet and he has yet to enlighten the world, but somehow he did it, because that’s where she was found, nearly four months after she vanished.

Not far at all from where Jessie lay is Goatchurch Cavern, a popular cave with those new to the sport. Boys from a grammar school in the north-east were exploring it in January, nearly five months after Chloe Wood vanished. A small group left the main route to explore one of the narrower passages and found a whole lot more than they’d bargained for.

Rill Cavern, Goatchurch Cavern, Sidcot Swallet. Pete’s team have spent hours staring at road maps, Ordnance Survey maps, cave maps and Google Earth, looking for patterns, for the fourth point that might indicate where Zoe is. They looked after Chloe was found, after Myrtle was found, and they looked again when Latimer arrived and imagined he was the first to have the idea.