Daisy in Chains(33)

I do not envy my colleague who takes on his case.

PROPERTY OF AVON AND SOMERSET POLICE. Ref: 544/45.2 Hamish Wolfe.





Chapter 23


THE WORLD SEEMS to be slowly choking on snow cloud by the time Pete pulls up outside Maggie’s house. The taller rooftops seem blurred. Chimneys and aerials have all but disappeared. The sky is the colour of unwashed bed sheets.

Two hours have passed since his meeting with Latimer. Not wanting to arrive ill-briefed, he’d found the report on the system.

Mrs Hubble of 78 High Street, directly across the road from Maggie’s house, had spotted a dark-clad figure moving around in Maggie’s garden. She wasn’t entirely certain, but thought perhaps the time was around 10.50 p.m., which would be around the time he’d put Maggie back in her car in Market Square, Wells and told her to drive safely.

At about the time he was having one last cigarette (the pub didn’t allow him to smoke indoors) the dark figure had completed an entire circuit of the house and Mrs Hubble had assumed it was probably Maggie herself. The arrival of Maggie’s car twenty minutes later had convinced her otherwise, but she hadn’t done anything about it.

Only at two in the morning, when all the lights had suddenly gone on in Maggie’s house, waking Mrs Hubble up, because she was a light sleeper and her bedroom faced the road, did she think to call the police. She reported seeing someone dressed in dark clothes slipping away down the street.

The attending constable had spoken to Maggie on the front doorstep. She’d assured him that nothing had disturbed her, and that all the doors were locked and bolted. She declined his offer to come in and look around but had promised to double-check everything herself before going back to bed. The officer had wished her goodnight, taken a brief look around outside, and driven away.

Pete walks past the gate and up the drive. The back garden is still in the grip of a hard frost. There are lots of tall, thick shrubs, box hedging, misshapen yew trees. Lots of hiding places. Even in daylight.

She appears a few seconds after he’s knocked on the back door. Slim blue jeans, those big, fluffy slippers, an oversized, knitted sweater, white with black snowflakes. No make-up. Hair in a high ponytail, eyes bluer than he’s seen them yet. Also a bit damp, and pink around the edges.

‘I was wondering when you’d show up,’ she tells him, as she heads inside.

Pete tugs off his coat and hangs it over the back of the first chair he comes to in the kitchen. ‘Are you spending time with me to pump me about the Wolfe case?’ he asks.

She practically springs into her usual chair. ‘You make it sound like we’re dating. We had dinner. I paid for my own food.’

‘You insisted.’

‘We’re not dating.’

‘What happened here last night?’

‘Which are you worried about – me or your career?’

He leans against the table. He’s not ready to sit down yet. He doesn’t want to look relaxed. ‘You. My career can look after itself.’

She blinks. ‘And I can’t?’

‘What happened? And do I have to make my own coffee? It’s frigging freezing out.’

She glares, but gets up anyway, crossing to the kettle and filling it. ‘My neighbour, who has form when it comes to calling the police out unnecessarily, had a bad dream, saw my lights on and was on the phone before she’d woken up properly. I imagine she feels silly right now. Or maybe not; people have a remarkable ability for self-justification.’

‘You were up at two in the morning?’

‘Often. I don’t sleep well.’

The smell of roast coffee beans fills the room.

‘Anything out of the ordinary that you saw?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘Anything disturbed? Missing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Anything left behind?’

Blue eyes narrow. ‘Like what?’

He turns to the bookshelf behind her chair that mainly holds cookery and gardening books. ‘Like an origami rose, for example?’ He points to the small, paper rose he’d spotted the moment he walked in. ‘That thing’s got Wolfe written all over it.’

She turns her back on him, completely forgetting he can see her reflection in the window. ‘Now you’re being fanciful.’

‘I’ve seen him make them. He even made me one once. Told me it was a pansy.’

‘Maybe I made it myself.’

‘Fine.’ By the side of her chair is a notepad. ‘May I?’ Without waiting for permission, he tears out a page. She turns at the sound. He holds it out. ‘Make me a pansy.’

She doesn’t move.

‘Daffodil? Tulip? Something simple?’

She turns her back again. When she picks up both mugs her hands are shaking. He says nothing but, using a pen, he pushes the paper rose around on the shelf to look at it properly. Pink. Perfectly formed. A little creased, where it might have been squeezed in someone’s pocket. A smear of dirt on one of the petals.

A rose. For Maggie Rose.

‘The rose was in my kitchen this morning,’ she says. ‘I’d already received one via his mother, so obviously I thought of him when I found this.’

He waits.

‘I was working last night, after I got back. I thought I heard someone come in. I hadn’t locked the back door at that point.’