Daisy in Chains(16)

Jessie replied to him. Of course she did. She was a young woman, uncomfortable in her own skin, whatever she might have claimed to the contrary, and here was an intelligent man telling her she was right, praising her point of view and her writing skills.

The conversation continued on the private message facility of Facebook. It was carried in full by one of the weekend broadsheets after Wolfe’s trial and what follows is a short extract:

Jessie: What frustrates me particularly is the idea that there must always be a reason behind weight gain. The woman must be suffering low self-esteem, is unsure of her place in the world. Eating is always seen as compensatory, a defence mechanism. Have you ever had people make assumptions about you, purely on the basis of how you look?

(She is trying to find out what he looks like. His Facebook profile picture shows only an extremely cute Husky puppy.)

Harry: I had weight issues growing up. My mum was an amazing cook and mealtimes were always a big thing in our house. At secondary school I started playing rugby and that turned most of the excess pounds to muscle. I do remember, though, how quickly the pack that is a group of teenage boys can turn on anyone who deviates from the norm. Good luck with the Bristol Post pitch. Let me know if you have any success.

(He’s sympathizing, but at the same time letting her know he’s a bit of a hunk. He signs off, as he always does, with an invitation for her to respond. In low-key, unthreatening ways, he keeps the conversation open.)

Unfortunately, the Facebook exchanges told the police nothing more than that Jessie was stalked. The Harry Wilson page was fake, set up using a computer with an IP address that has never been traced. The profile and cover pictures were all taken from the internet. He had a small number of ‘friends’, just twenty-four, and all of them, subsequently contacted by police, had no idea who he was. As often happens on Facebook, they’d accepted ‘friendship’ requests indiscriminately.

Harry and Jessie spoke on Facebook for several months before she suggested that they exchange email addresses. Jessie then created an email folder called, simply, Harry. In it she stored all his messages, flagged in various colours. The police were unable to work out the significance of the flags and I can only imagine they didn’t ask a needy young woman. The different flags refer to how encouraging, on a romantic level, Jessie considered the messages to be.

Still it remained professional. He helped her with her research (although one gets the impression she was making excuses to contact him – most of what she asked she could have got herself from Google). He proofread blog pieces and articles, always getting a good balance between helpful criticism and praise. He encouraged her to submit pieces to the nationals.

Towards the end of May, her desperation to take the relationship further was becoming apparent. She initiated a conversation about the homosexual community. She was trying to find out if he was gay. He mentioned a past girlfriend.

The meeting on that last Saturday was documented on email. Red flag.

Harry: I’d love to meet you. I’d have suggested it long before now but a) I didn’t want to alarm you and b) working as a medical professional, I really do have to be careful about how I’m perceived. It sounds terribly old-fashioned to worry about ‘reputation’, I know, but in my line of business, a loss of reputation can be ruinous.

Jessie: Where shall we meet?

Harry: Don’t give me your address yet. I don’t want you to feel any level of anxiety. What about The Downs, near the children’s playground? We could walk to Al Bacio on the Queen’s Road.

Jessie: Sounds great. I can’t get away before 12.45, will that be OK?

The date

Jessie arrived on time wearing a bright apple-green dress and was noticed by several people in the park. Three of them remember her talking to a man, although the descriptions given of him are vague and contradictory. One witness claims she saw Jessie leaning on the railings, by the children’s play area, talking to a woman.

The Italian restaurant mentioned in the email conversation had no memory of Jessie and a companion dining there that lunchtime. They’d had no bookings in the name of either Harry Wilson or Jessie Tout, nor did they have any ‘no-shows’.

In court, the prosecuting barrister made much of the idea that whoever was luring these smart young women away would need to be possessed of a great deal of charm, most likely physical good looks. Few women would get into the car of a creepy-looking stranger, but if (turns dramatically to look at Hamish in the dock) confronted with a man with movie-star good looks, how much more forgiving can we be?

We associate good looks with goodness. No arguments. We just do.

The search for Jessie went on although, at this stage, no one was publicly linking her disappearance with that of Zoe. Only DC Pete Weston actively pursued this theory, spending much of his own time trying to establish links between the two women, to find someone who knew them both.

And then Jessie was found. On 22 October 2013, a caving expedition came across human remains fifty feet underground in a cave near Burrington Combe, around four miles north of Cheddar Gorge. The corpse had been the focus of much insect activity and had lain in water. Decomposition was very advanced. Jessie might have entered the cave as one of Somerset’s larger women, she didn’t leave it as such.

The body was unclothed which, whilst not conclusive evidence of a sex crime, would point towards it. There was no obvious cause of death. Some of the bones, including the skull, showed signs of trauma damage, but it proved impossible to tell whether they’d been inflicted before death or post-mortem.