Daisy in Chains(34)
‘Maggie, if you’re going to associate with—’
‘I know, I know. I searched the house, pretty freaked out, I don’t mind admitting, but there was no one here. I locked the door and went to bed. It was probably some time after midnight, not as late as 1 a.m.’
‘Mrs Nosy across the road called the police at 2 a.m.,’ Pete says. ‘Claiming to have seen someone leaving your garden.’
‘She may well have done. Something woke me up then and I noticed the security lights were on. I told the officer who knocked on the door that I was fine, but first thing this morning I noticed something.’
‘The rose?’
Her eyes go briefly to the rose then back to him. ‘No. I noticed that the chairs around this table weren’t pushed right under. They always are, every time I leave the room. They were last night before I went to bed. This morning they’d been moved. And the back door was unlocked.’
Pete looks at the back door, then back at the table as though measuring the distance. ‘So where was the rose?’
She bends down, indicating that he should do the same. They face each other beneath the table. ‘This is going to look weird,’ she warns him, before squeezing herself into the narrow space between the tabletop and the chair seats. Pushed together, the seats form a platform. She lies on it, curled in a foetal position, looking at him.
‘I think I’m supposed to turn my back and count to ten first,’ he says.
‘This is where he hid. This is where he was while I was searching the house. I might have glanced under the table. I didn’t look here. He came in, while I was still working and hid here. Sometime later, probably at around 2 a.m. when Mrs Hubble claims to have seen someone, he left the house.’
She pushes herself backwards, drops to the floor and stands up again. The exertion has made her face pinker than normal. ‘The rose was on the floor underneath one of the chairs,’ she says.
He gives an audible sigh of annoyance. ‘Why am I only hearing this now?’
‘It’s a paper rose, Pete, and I need the police to take me seriously. It’s difficult enough persuading you guys to cooperate as it is. I’m sure you’d love to be able to write me off as a loon.’
Well, she has a point. ‘Got a freezer bag?’
She brings him the bag, he uses it to pick up and contain the rose. When it’s safely in his pocket, he asks her: ‘Maggie, are you telling me everything?’
Chapter 24
From: Denise Prince, consulting psychiatrist To: HM Director of Public Prosecutions, FAO Stephen Bachelor Cc: DC Pete Weston, Avon and Somerset Police Date: 12.6.2014
I regret that, following my recent meeting with Hamish Wolfe at Wandsworth Prison, where he is currently being held on remand, I am unable to proceed further with this assignment.
I have prepared no report. The exchange between us, such as it was, simply didn’t lend itself to any formal record.
If I might be allowed a recommendation: any further attempt to draw a psychiatric profile of Hamish Wolfe should probably be attempted by a man.
PROPERTY OF AVON AND SOMERSET POLICE. Ref: 544/45.2 Hamish Wolfe.
Chapter 25
THE A39 IS blocked by a white van that has skidded on ice and overturned and Pete has to take the back road past the Avalon Marshes. The day has been darkening since he left Maggie’s house, the clouds falling lower, fooling the wildlife that dusk is coming sooner than usual. As Pete nears the reed beds where hundreds of thousands of starlings bed down for the night, a dense cloud looms in the sky ahead of him. Darker than the snow clouds, its particles dancing like a giant dust storm, this is a Hitchcockian scene of beautiful menace. The daily murmuration of the starlings.
‘Has she told you everything, do you think?’ Latimer’s voice over the phone startles him. For a second, Pete had forgotten he’d just called his boss.
‘Hard to know for sure. She wasn’t keen on me looking round. I think she’s got someone else living there and doesn’t want to admit it, for some reason.’
The dark cloud shoots up high above him and Pete half expects the heavens to open up and admit the river of birds.
Latimer says, ‘What’s happening about the intruder last night?’
‘Well, that’s another thing. She admitted it’s not the first time someone’s been on her property at night. She saw someone hanging around a few nights ago. Presumably that time, they couldn’t get in.’
‘Well, she works with some dodgy people. If you play with fire . . .’
‘I’ve arranged for the crime scene team to stop by, but a trespass with nothing stolen isn’t a high priority. Maggie promised me she’d change the locks today and be extra careful about security in future.’
‘So, she’s going to go and see him, you think? Wolfe, I’m talking about now.’
‘She is. She seems to think that, if she meets him once, finds nothing to even get the ball rolling, then that will be the end of it. She’ll have done all his little support team can ask for and they’ll leave her alone.’
‘They don’t just want her to meet him, though,’ Latimer says, ‘they want her to get him out of prison.’
The road straightens and Pete is able to pick up some speed. ‘As she says herself, Wolfe hasn’t asked her to take his case. She’s only had one letter from him, and all he did in that was thank her for saving his dog.’