Daisy in Chains(15)
There is no discernible pattern. Nothing to indicate where Zoe is. And sometimes Pete feels that, if he doesn’t find her, he might spend the rest of his life looking.
So Pete comes here and hopes that one day the idea will come. That one day, from his vantage point on the tower, he’ll follow the track of a lone walker – like that one just now, in the white coat and blue hat, the one climbing over shingle falls to reach the northern cliff – and realize, in a eureka moment, where Zoe is.
The climber in the white coat pauses for breath and pulls off her hat. She sweeps her hair back, twisting it into a loose knot at the back of her neck, before tugging the woollen hat back on.
Pete moves quickly. He cannot run down the forty-seven metal steps of the watchtower and he certainly can’t run down the two hundred cut into the rock face that will take him back to the road. But he will make his way down into the gorge and back up the other side again as quickly as he can because the hair he just watched being tucked into a hat was blue.
Maggie Rose is climbing the northern cliff, heading for Rill Cavern.
Chapter 10
DRAFT
THE BIG, BAD WOLFE?
By Maggie Rose
CHAPTER 2, THE SHAMING OF JESSIE TOUT
At first glance, Jessica (Jessie) Tout, the second victim, could not have been more different to quiet, unassuming Zoe. Jessie was an attention seeker, a blogger and a small-time journalist, her main subject being body size. Jessie, if we are to believe what she wrote, was not ashamed of being fat.
Jessie had a day job, handling claims for an insurance company in Bristol but dreamed of making it big with her writing, of being taken on by one of the nationals. In the meantime, she wrote a column for her local newspaper, called ‘Confessions of a Fat Bird’. It was popular, by all accounts. She had over ten thousand followers on Twitter.
In her relatively small way, Jessie was becoming known. She wasn’t afraid to pitch into those she described as ‘fat-shamers’. She was controversial, combative, her blogs attracting huge, not always calm and reflective, comment streams. Her tweets were inevitably met with a torrent of abuse, hate and threats. Rarely a day went by without a spat of some sort playing out. This all happened online, of course. There is no suggestion that Jessie’s online enemies ever brought the fight into the real world.
She had a family (parents, two siblings) and a wide circle of friends. She lived alone, in a small top-floor flat in one of the older houses on the outskirts of Clifton.
Note: some potential here? An obsessive Twitter troll taking matters too far? Discovering a taste for stalking and killing fat women?
Jessie dressed for attention. She dyed her hair jet-black, was always well made-up and wore stylish, attention-grabbing clothes. Big and beautiful seems to have been her mantra.
The stealing away of Jessie Tout
Around the middle of the morning on Saturday, 6 July 2013, Jessie texted three of her friends to say that she had a ‘big’ lunch date. Reluctant to give too much information, she did admit that this man was a stranger, that it was, in effect, a blind date. She assured them that both she, and he, were being entirely sensible. They were meeting in a city-centre park and then walking to a restaurant close by. She would be surrounded by people at all times and completely safe. This was all at his suggestion, she added and, also, that although she hadn’t met him before, they’d been in touch for several months.
As far as Jessie’s friends were aware, she’d gone to meet the man as planned, and the date had gone well. Her best friend received three further texts during Saturday afternoon.
3.15 p.m.: Just finished lunch. Amazeballs. Off to beach. Going really well.
5.47 p.m.: I think I’m in love!
7.18 p.m.: And he can cook!!!
That is the last we hear of Jessie.
Enter DC Pete Weston, stage left
Jessie wasn’t properly missed until Monday, when her mother, Linda Tout, phoned Jessie at work to learn that she hadn’t shown up. Using her own key, Linda let herself into Jessie’s flat, to find no sign of her. She and her husband both went in person to report their daughter’s disappearance. The detective who took their statement was Detective Constable Peter Weston.
Something about this new case set DC Weston’s spider-sense a-tingling. It’s unclear when he made the connection between Jessie and Zoe, but we do know that his attempts to convince his bosses of a connection between the two cases went unheard for quite some time.
There was no sign of a struggle at Jessie’s flat. In fact, no sign that anyone had been in it since she’d left it on Saturday lunchtime. Her computer was removed to the station and investigated. What detectives found on it proved crucial to the investigation. It was on Jessie’s computer that the police met Harry Wilson.
Who is Harry?
Jessie’s contact with the man called Harry began with a private message on Facebook in which he congratulated her on her latest blog. As a doctor, he wrote, he’d long felt the health risks of being a certain percentage overweight were being seriously exaggerated. If people eat a good diet, exercise moderately and don’t take recreational drugs including alcohol, he wrote, they can be as healthy as anyone. Current preferences for ultra-slim women were no more than societal taste and an excuse for pack-mentality bullying.
Exactly what Jessie wanted to hear!
Harry seemed determined to be helpful and supportive. He attached a link to a piece of research. The tone of his message was respectful, professional and non-intrusive. The language he used, the technical terms he included, suggested that he was indeed what he claimed to be – a medical doctor. On the other hand, anyone with half a brain and the time to do a bit of research could probably have written the same thing.