Daisy in Chains(69)

He takes a step towards her. ‘So what’s the story? Why did she run? Abusive boyfriend?’

‘Abusive mother.’ Maggie thinks back to Brenda’s controlling behaviour, the jumpy youngest daughter. The unmistakable signs of OCD in the house. This woman, though, wouldn’t be happy with controlling her house. She’d need to control her daughters too. ‘All three girls suffered, but Zoe always got the brunt of it.’

Hamish leans on the table towards her. ‘They didn’t think of something less extreme, like, I don’t know, reporting her to the authorities?’

She gives him a second. ‘They didn’t want to see her in prison. She’s their mum.’

He nods, reluctantly. As a doctor, he’ll have come across abuse of all forms. And the thousands of excuses the victims make for their abusers. Mum’s a bit of a bully. Mum has a bit of a temper. She doesn’t mean it, she just doesn’t always think. She doesn’t know her own strength.

‘And you guessed this, when you met her?’ he asks.

She points at the still-vacant chair. ‘When I saw the police photographs of the red boots I knew something didn’t add up. The blood spots were exactly where women get blisters if their shoes are too tight. I never saw the blood as necessarily sinister and when I looked in Zoe’s wardrobe and realized her feet were actually nearly two sizes larger than the boots, I realized that they were probably a gift from her mother and that Zoe herself hated them.’

He sits back down, and the chair creaks beneath his weight. ‘Why would Zoe’s mother buy her boots two sizes too small?’ His face is baffled. He has no idea what women obsessed with size do to themselves. To each other. Size five boots squeezed on to size six and a half feet. Of course they were going to hurt, but Zoe was going to wear them all the same, because her domineering, controlling mother had paid good money for them, money she could ill afford, and for heaven’s sake, if Zoe lost a bit of weight then maybe the swelling in her feet would go down and they would fit.

‘There were lots of clothes in Zoe’s wardrobe that were far too small. Her mother was always bullying her to lose weight.’

Maggie closes her eyes and, for a few seconds, is back in the coffee bar in Aberdeen. ‘She didn’t like me because I was fat,’ Zoe is saying as she clings to her older sister’s hand. ‘I let her down. Embarrassed her in front of the neighbours. She was always trying to get me to lose weight but somehow, when someone’s on at you all the time, it just makes it worse.’

Maggie wants to hold her hand too.

‘She used to weigh me before I went out. If I was over what she felt I should be, she wouldn’t let me go. She phoned Kevin to say I was ill. Some days, she just wouldn’t give me food.’

‘She made her sit at the table and watch us eat.’ Stacey says. ‘Kimberly and I sneaked food to her as often as we could, but it wasn’t always easy.’

‘Zoe met Stacey the night she disappeared,’ Maggie tells Hamish. ‘Stacey borrowed her boyfriend’s car and drove down from Aberdeen. Zoe threw the boots out of the car window, as they were driving through Cheddar Gorge. They realized it was stupid and went back for them, but only found one.’

‘And how are your two new best friends feeling about my serving time for killing one of them?’ says Hamish.

‘They feel bad.’ Maggie thinks a bit more, knows she has to be honest with him. ‘But as Stacey was quick to point out, you’d have been sent to prison just the same, if Zoe had still been living at home.’

‘If you knew this, if you guessed it before you got on a plane, why did you even bother going? I’m not paying you to swan round the country on wild goose hunts.’

She doesn’t point out that, for the moment, he isn’t paying her at all. ‘Two reasons. One, I had to be sure. I have very little to work with here and I can’t leave a stone unturned.’

He waits.

‘Two, I need you to trust me.’

He wasn’t expecting that. She can tell from the slight start of his head, the narrowing of his eyes.

‘I am very good at what I do, Hamish. A woman who has hidden, successfully, from the police for years, I found in a matter of days. I needed you to know that, so that you do what I tell you to and keep nothing from me.’

His head sways in what might be a grudging nod. ‘The trouble is, my one and only alibi vanishes like hot air when everyone realizes that Zoe’s disappearance was in no way connected to the murders of the other three.’

He’s right. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘So, what happens? Zoe stays in Aberdeen and I continue to get petitioned by her family to tell the world where her body is?’

‘If the time comes when the truth will help you, I won’t hesitate to tell it. In the meantime, I’m hoping they’ll tell it themselves. They’re planning to wait until the younger sister is old enough to move north and live with them, before they come clean.’

‘In the meantime, Zoe stays dead.’

‘I’m sorry, Hamish. It’s a setback, I can’t deny that.’

‘Actually, I’m encouraged. You’re right, it is very impressive that you found Zoe so quickly. It gives me every hope for—’

‘I’m not looking for Daisy.’ She checks her watch. ‘I have to go. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you better news.’