Daisy in Chains(22)

‘Can I suggest we start by you introducing yourselves to me,’ Maggie says. ‘We’ll go round in a circle. Tell me who you are, whether or not you know Wolfe personally, and why you believe him to be innocent.’

‘His name is Hamish.’ The woman on Sandra Wolfe’s immediate left, with long black hair and hard black eyes is staring at Maggie.

Maggie returns the look. ‘Why don’t you go first?’ she says.

Black eyes mutters something.

‘Sirocco, I wish you’d stop saying that.’ Sandra’s voice cuts across the cold air like a colder wind. ‘That’s the sort of nonsense that just embarrasses Hamish.’

‘Give me your name again?’ Maggie asks.

‘Sirocco.’ The woman sits upright on her chair, like a cat about to lick her paws. Her clothes are black, flowing and shapeless.

‘Like the car?’ Maggie says.

The woman shakes her long hair. ‘Like the wind. I’m Sirocco Silverwood. Hamish and I are soulmates.’

It is difficult to guess Silverwood’s age. Her dress, hair, make-up suggest early to mid twenties but there is a coarseness to her skin that typically only occurs after the age of thirty. She looks thin, but is dressed in such loose, shapeless clothes that it is impossible to be sure.

‘Does he know?’ Maggie asks.

A narrow-eyed glare. ‘Of course.’

Sandra practically jumps in her seat in frustration. ‘They’ve never met. Sirocco talks nonsense.’

The black-haired woman’s body tenses, as though she might leap at Hamish’s mother. ‘We write to each other all the time. The only reason I don’t see him is because you take all the visits.’

Sandra doesn’t seem remotely intimidated. ‘He wants to see family, not some stupid girl who’s living in a dream world.’

Maggie turns away from the quarrelling women. ‘Mike, why don’t you start with the introductions. We’ll go anticlockwise.’

They begin again and this time get round the circle without interruptions. Fewer than a third have met Wolfe. The women talk about being moved by his photograph, about feeling him calling out to them, of an instinctive belief in his innocence. All of them claim to write to him on a regular basis.

To Maggie’s immediate right is a man in a crimson corduroy jacket and a bowler hat. On his other side, barely visible, is a small, plump woman. The two of them belong together, it is obvious from their eccentric clothing, from the badges and pins that adorn their jackets and hats, from the mud on their boots and the faint smell of unwashed clothes and bodies coming from them both. They are travellers.

The woman is called Odi.

‘I met Hamish when I had pneumonia.’ Odi speaks so quietly that everyone in the circle, Maggie included, has to lean towards her. ‘I was rushed into the Bristol General and he was the doctor on call. I’ll always remember how kind he was. He knew I was a traveller, and it didn’t make any difference to how well he treated me. I just don’t believe someone that kind can kill women.’

Having said her piece, Odi shrinks down further into her seat. Maggie has yet to catch a glimpse of anything more than her colourful, shabby clothing.

‘I’m Broon.’ The man in the corduroy jacket is holding tightly to Odi’s hand. ‘I don’t know the guy. I’m here for him because my lady is.’

A man called Rowland, with the trembling hands of a drinker, speaks more about himself than Hamish. He is a crime writer, with four novels to his name. Researching his latest book, he’s become interested in Hamish’s case. He doesn’t want to tread on Maggie’s toes, of course, but he thinks the story will make a good docu-drama and is already working on the screenplay.

‘Do you think him guilty?’ Maggie asks.

By the side of Rowland’s chair leg is a lager can. Rowland reaches down but lets his hand dangle. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Too many discrepancies in the evidence.’

‘What discrepancies?’

Rowland, in some discomfort, looks around the group.

Shiven jumps to his feet. ‘Why don’t I do this bit?’ He turns to Maggie. ‘Of course we’ve formed a collective view in the time we’ve been meeting. Shall we share that?’

‘By all means.’

‘You might want to take notes.’

When Maggie makes no move to take either pad or pen from her bag, Shiven steps into the centre of the group. ‘The first problem we have with the Crown case against Hamish is that the prosecution never explained how he supposedly got his victims into the caves? Am I right?’

Nods all around the group.

‘The feat Hamish supposedly pulled off is considered practically impossible, even for a fit and strong caver who knew the underground system.’ He spins on his heels to point a finger at Maggie. ‘The prosecution argued that Hamish knew the caves well. That as a doctor he had access to sedative drugs, and that he was familiar with ropes and pulleys. If anyone could do it, they claimed, Hamish Wolfe could. The question remains, could anyone have done it?’

The question hangs in the air. Shiven closes his eyes, raises his head, as if listening to an inner voice.

‘The next thing that makes no sense to us,’ Shiven’s eyes snap open again, ‘and we’re grateful to Rowland for pointing this out, is the inconsistency in the placing of the bodies. He concealed Zoe’s body very effectively, but Jessie, Chloe and Myrtle were found relatively quickly, because all three had been left in locations regularly visited by caving groups. This argues against Hamish. If he’d wanted those bodies never to be found, he could have weighted them down and dropped them into a sump. He could have thrown them into cavities that are never explored. Am I right?’