Daisy in Chains(87)

‘They left a paper rose behind,’ Maggie goes on, ‘which I’m guessing they stole from Sandra, because I know it originated with Hamish, and they wrote something on the underside of my kitchen table.’

A sly smile creeps over Sirocco’s face. ‘Did it freak you out, knowing they’d been in your house while you were asleep?’

‘Oh, I’m used to dealing with crazy people. I’m just not sure what the purpose was.’

They are high above the ground. When Maggie looks directly ahead, she can see nothing of the fairground, just the black sky and some darker shadows where clouds might be. She is beginning to doubt that this woman has anything useful to say to her, and the strain of shouting is starting to tell in her throat. ‘Sirocco, I know this group is a bit unorthodox, and frankly I don’t care as long as you do no harm, but coming on to my property is harming me and I want to know why it’s happening.’

‘If it was Odi and Broon, it can’t happen any more, can it? They’re dead.’

This is going nowhere. If Sirocco was the intruder, she isn’t about to admit it. ‘I don’t think it was them. But it’s quite possible that Odi and Broon knew something, or that someone thought they did. Either way, it could have got them killed.’

‘Exactly. So what was it?’

The wind is getting stronger. ‘I have no idea.’ Maggie is beginning to wonder who is doing the interrogating. ‘She didn’t tell me.’

‘You saw her, just before she was killed. You were probably the last person to see her alive.’

An alarm bell is ringing. Not a real one. An alarm in her head. ‘How do you know that?’ she asks.

‘She told you something, didn’t she?’

‘She told me nothing. I was trying to persuade her to see a hypnotist, but she refused point-blank. I thought she was scared. Sirocco, I thought you had something to tell me. This is just wasting my time and it’s freezing up here.’

Maggie twists around, to see that just one chair is higher than theirs. She catches a glimpse of the ground and is surprised by a wave of nausea. She has never suffered from vertigo, in spite of what she told Sirocco earlier, but there is something about being so high, surrounded by so much dark wind, that is throwing her off-kilter.

‘I was talking to her,’ Sirocco shouts, ‘trying to get her confidence. I knew there was something she wasn’t telling us. She’d have told me in the end, I know she would.’

‘Sirocco, you are neither the police, Hamish’s lawyer or a member of his family, it really isn’t your place to be interfering like this.’

‘What are you saying, that I got Odi and Broon killed?’

‘No, of course not.’ But how did she know that Maggie and Odi had spoken? Had Sirocco been in Wells that night?

‘Maybe you got them killed? Maybe someone saw you talking to them, figured she’d told you too much, so they had to be got rid of.’

‘If that’s the case, whoever did it will have to kill me too, and I’m still alive.’

Sirocco’s black stare deepens and Maggie can practically hear the thoughts behind them. Still alive but at the top of a Ferris wheel, on a dark night. The wind is buffeting this flimsy seat and she is suddenly very conscious of all the joints and rivets, the nuts, bolts and screws that hold this steel seat together. Salt air, sea spray, rain – all have a corrosive effect on metal. How sound is this seat, the structure beneath it? How stupid has she been, agreeing to get on board?

‘Maybe you killed them,’ Sirocco hisses. ‘Maybe you’re the killer, and you realized they knew too much. You were the last person to see them alive. You knew where they were. You gave them food, maybe it was drugged. Maybe you didn’t go home, maybe you waited till they were asleep and slit their throats.’

This woman may not be entirely sane. Even more alarming is the fact that the wheel seems to have stopped turning. Maggie finds a fixed point on the horizon, the light on a radio mast. She is right. They aren’t moving any more.

‘I was at home, nearly forty miles away, when the bodies were discovered. I called Detective Sergeant Pete Weston on my landline, so there will be a trace of that call. A woman police constable knocked on my door while I was talking to Sergeant Weston.’

‘You had time to get back. They were killed hours before they were found.’

How does she know this?

‘The contents of their stomachs were examined during the post-mortems,’ Maggie says. ‘Traces of any drugs would have been present. The pathologist found nothing but alcohol – and they bought that themselves. The police found a Tesco receipt in Odi’s purse.’

This last is a lie. The last she heard, the police have no idea where the rum came from, but the wheel has definitely stopped moving and this woman is growing increasingly agitated.

‘Sirocco, if you really care about getting Hamish released, then we have to work together. Cooperating with me will achieve much more than flinging wild accusations around. Why has this ride stopped?’ Maggie peers over the side, trying to see something below that can explain the cessation of the ride. The boarding platform, some fifty feet below, is empty.

The seat, which is almost certainly not designed for strong winter winds, rocks on its axis. There is a reason why fairgrounds and amusement parks close in winter. Wind and ice play merry hell with safety. When she looks back at Sirocco the woman has another of her maddening smiles plastered across her face.