Daisy in Chains

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘There isn’t time. He’s on his way. You need to read it now.’ Agitated though she may be, Sirocco seems strangely reluctant to come any closer to Maggie. This time, it seems to be she who is afraid.

  He’s on his way. Maggie can hear a drumming in her ears as she backs into the kitchen. ‘Why should I be able to understand it?’ she asks. ‘If you can’t, what makes you think I can?’

  Sirocco approaches cautiously. The letter – Hamish’s last love letter? – dangles in the air between them. Then it is in Maggie’s hand. It is damp. Maggie glances down, then back up again.

  ‘I can’t I’m afraid. I need my reading glasses.’

  ‘I’ll read it to you. Give it back.’

  Still holding the letter, Maggie walks past her, out of the room, heading once again for the basement. ‘I left them downstairs just now. I won’t be a second.’

  ‘Get back here.’

  The stairs are seconds away and Sirocco is following her. ‘Where are you going?’ Her voice has risen, become shrill. ‘Is that the cellar? Are you going in there?’

  ‘You can wait up here,’ Maggie reaches the cellar door and pulls it open. ‘What did you mean when you said, “He’s on his way”? Why on earth would Hamish come here? This is the first place the police will look.’

  She looks back when she is halfway down the steps. Sirocco is hovering, uncertain, at the top.

  ‘He’s coming for me,’ Sirocco says. ‘He’s been planning it for ages. I’ve been helping. He wrote to me, telling me where to meet him.’ She points to the letter in Maggie’s hand.

  ‘So why am I involved?’ asks Maggie.

  ‘He said to ask you. He said he had to write in code, so the prison staff wouldn’t know what he was telling me. If there was anything I didn’t understand, I had to ask you. Let me just read it to you, please. We don’t need to go downstairs. I have to meet him now.’

  Maggie’s heart, which has been accelerating for some time now, is starting to beat painfully. She climbs back up four steps. ‘I may still need to read it for myself,’ she says. ‘But OK.’

  Sirocco pulls the letter open and leans back, to catch the overhead light.

  My darling, Sirocco begins, and then looks up, almost triumphantly at Maggie. Maggie nods at her to go on.

  I’ve been thinking about lovers of old, those who were real, and those who lived only in the hearts of those who knew the stories. Dido and Aeneas, Antony and Cleopatra, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Arthur and Guinevere.

  Sirocco stumbles a little over the names, as though they are unfamiliar to her. Maggie wants to tell her to get on with it.

  ‘They rarely end well.’ I can just hear you saying it, my little glass-half-empty girl!

  There is a tiny, annoying smile on her face now.

  But what of those we never hear about? The couples who fall in love in their twenties, who raise children and dote on their children’s children, who face life’s triumphs and tragedies together and who, at the end of a long and largely happy life of blissful anonymity say to each other, ‘I wouldn’t have had it any other way, my dear.’ Aren’t they love’s true heroes?

  Sirocco’s voice has fallen lower. Maggie takes a step up, so as not to miss a word.

  Blissful anonymity isn’t within our grasp, of course. If you and I are to be together, you will share my notoriety. We will be the new Bonnie and Clyde, as talked of as Fred and Rose West, as hated as Hindley and Brady. You will be tainted, my sweet girl, a monster by proxy.

  I cannot ask it. And yet I know that, were our positions reversed, I would give up my good name, my guarantee of freedom for you in a heartbeat. Believe this, my darling, if you never believed anything good of me before. I would give up my chance of redemption, to spend my life with you.

  You know where to find me, my Guinevere. Arthur will be waiting.

  All my love,

  Hamish

  Sirocco’s eyes lift and meet Maggie’s again. ‘What does he mean?’ she asks. ‘I don’t know where to find him. He’s never called me Guinevere before.’

  The world can transform in a matter of seconds, Maggie discovers. It just has. She turns away, so that Sirocco will not see her smiling, will not guess that her heart is racing, her head singing.

  ‘What?’ Sirocco says, suddenly confused. ‘What is it? Do you understand it? Where are you going? Come back up.’

  ‘Of course I understand it,’ Maggie takes the last step down. She turns the corner, but hears with satisfaction the sound of the other woman’s footsteps.

  ‘You know what he means?’ Sirocco is calling out as she follows. ‘You know where he’ll be?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Maggie hears the softer footstep that tells her Sirocco has reached the stone floor at the bottom of the steps.

  One of the most surprising aspects of this whole business, Maggie thinks, as she takes up position in the centre of the room, is how easy it can be to persuade women to do the dumbest things. Like stepping down into the basement of someone they do not know.

  With Jessie, she’d faked an injury. Jessie had been the most challenging, in fairness, because Jessie had stepped out that bright Saturday believing she was to meet a handsome doctor. She’d almost refused to go with the smartly dressed young woman who’d claimed she was Harry’s PA, and that he’d been unavoidably delayed in theatre, but would meet her later at his house.

  Chloe, on the other hand had been easy. Chloe hadn’t thought to question that the quirky jewellery tycoon had both workshop and office in her basement. Myrtle had never doubted the need to waddle below ground to view the Disney collection, or that the slender, blue-haired woman leading the way was Anita Radcliffe’s daughter. And now this deluded woman is proving as stupid as the rest.

  Sirocco’s flowing black form appears in the doorway as she looks nervously around. The basement is empty now, apart from the flies. The boxes of souvenirs – the women’s clothes and possessions – have long since been disposed of. Maggie is nothing if not a very careful killer. More recently, her old medical textbooks, her childhood things, have likewise been taken away. She will leave behind nothing that will link her to her former life. Or to what she has done in this one.

  There is nothing in this basement room that should alarm Sirocco. From where she is standing, she cannot see the disconnected bathtub in which the bodies of three large women decomposed and drained away until their remains weighed practically nothing. Hamish had been bang on about that.

  The two women stand and face each other. Sirocco looks on the verge of tears. ‘How? How come you know where Hamish is going and I don’t?’

  As Maggie steps forward she feels a fleeting moment of pity for what the girl has lost. She holds out her left hand, ostensibly for the letter, really as a distraction, so that Sirocco won’t see, until too late, what Maggie has in her right hand.

  The club hammer, identical to the one that killed Odi and Broon, cuts its way through the air and connects with the side of Sirocco’s head. The hard resistance of bone is more solid than Maggie expected and her arm feels a jolt of pain as Sirocco sways.

  Maggie swings her arm back, ready to strike again, but Sirocco sinks to the floor, her black clothes spreading around her like a stagnant puddle. She is unlikely to be dead, not after one strike, but Maggie can waste no more time. She has somewhere else to be.

  ‘How do I know where Hamish is going?’ she says to the motionless form on the cellar floor. ‘I know because these letters were never meant for you, I’m afraid. You were just the postman.’

  Chapter 102

  HE HAS LEFT A TRAIL FOR HER. The fluorescent stones start at the cave entrance and lead her, breadcrumb style, into its depths. She doesn’t need them. She has been this way so many times, she thinks she can do it in the dark. She steps into the cave, leaving light behind – or maybe she did that a long time ago. Either way, her path is clear.

  After a few yards, she picks up his scent. Not the one she remembers from so long ago, that
heady mix of aftershave and shower gel and something that was so essentially male, so completely Hamish, but the new smell, the one born of prison and violence and frustration.

  She likes them both.

  The trickling of the water over the rocks sounds like music. The first time he brought her here, there really was music. He’d carried a battery-operated CD player in his backpack, along with a padded mat and blanket, cold champagne and glasses, and lots of candles.

  ‘I don’t like caves. They make me claustrophobic,’ Daisy had complained, when what she really meant was that she didn’t like climbing up the sides of steep hills to get to them. She didn’t like the constricted feeling of squeezing her too large body through tiny gaps in the walls.

  ‘You’ll like this one,’ he promised. ‘There’s a pool where Arthur and Guinevere’s wedding rings were thrown hundreds of years ago. The rock grew around them and all you can see now are two small rings of gold in the rock face.’

  She’d gone willingly, after that, because who can resist a tale of enduring love. Or heartless betrayal. The legend could be read both ways.

  Twenty years ago, he turned the cave into a fairy grotto with dozens of tiny, sparkling lights. She’d sat on the rug and watched in wonder as this beautiful man went to so much trouble for her. She’d known in that moment, for better or worse, she would love him until the day she died.

  She hadn’t known then, of course, that it was going to be so very much for the worse.

  The narrow rock passage sweeps down low and she must too, but she knows he is waiting on the other side.

  The vaulted chamber is much darker than she remembers from that first time. He has had neither the time, nor the opportunity, to collect tea lights. All he has is a small torch and a travel rug, both of which are probably from the plane.

  He is sitting, his back to the river, watching her approach.

  ‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he says.

  She draws closer, reaches the rug and sinks down beside him. He is too pale, even in this weird absence of light, too thin. So much older than the boy she fell in love with, and yet so completely the man who has been in her head every waking moment for two decades. Only the sadness is different. The sadness at what she has become.

  ‘How long have you known?’ She asks the question, and yet knows the answer before he gives it.

  ‘Almost from the first,’ he says. ‘Someone planted that evidence. It didn’t take me long to realize you were the only one clever enough.’

  Of course. He’d known that Maggie Rose and Daisy Baron were one and the same, long before that first Parkhurst visit. She would have seen any gleam of recognition in his eyes, any sudden, sharp realization of the truth. He has been playing the game for as long as she. Only he has been playing it better.

  He tries to smile, doesn’t quite make it. It will cost him dear, this knowledge of what he has turned her into.

  ‘And the only one who hated you enough,’ she says.

  He is so very, very sad. ‘Still?’ he asks her.

  She shakes her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s something, I guess.’

  Twenty years ago, on this very spot, he’d barely been able to keep his hands off her. Now, he sits apart. She reaches out and traces her index finger along the back of his hand. He glances down at it.

  ‘Seriously?’ she says. ‘I was the first person you thought of? After all this time?’

  His hand turns and, after a moment’s hesitation, takes hold of hers. ‘The whole cave business more or less convinced me.’ He looks around. ‘Especially when Myrtle was found in here. Then you sent my mother those books. Did you think I’d forgotten you were called Margaret? That I never knew your middle name? The books clinched it. You never did get the hang of participles, did you? And it’s not, “too young an age”, it’s “too early an age”. How many times did I tell you that?’

  She edges closer. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still a grammar fascist.’

  ‘What happened to Sirocco?’ he asks her.

  She doesn’t reply and he sees what has happened to Sirocco.

  ‘You knew that,’ she says quickly. ‘You knew when you chose to involve her. When you sent her with that last letter.’

  He doesn’t argue. The darkness that seeped into her all those years ago has found its way into him too.

  ‘The police will get to my house soon. They’ll find her. They’ll work out that I killed the other three. They’ll know you’re innocent.’

  ‘Jessie, Chloe, Myrtle,’ he says, as though their names are seldom off his tongue. ‘Did there need to be three?’

  ‘Two could be coincidence,’ she says. ‘Three makes a serial killer.’

  He nods slowly and she thinks she will have to work hard to chase that sadness away. But that’s OK. They have plenty of time.

  ‘Odi and Broon? Did she see you coming in here? Is that why?’

  Maggie is getting bored, talking about dead people. This isn’t why she came. ‘Who knows? Odi was scared of me, but then again she was scared of everything. I just don’t like loose ends.’

  ‘Looks like I’m a free man.’ His face brightens, but the look of levity is forced and false. ‘Although, technically, I could still be charged with stealing a plane.’

  She smiles too. ‘Can’t help you with that one, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So, what was the plan? Leave me there to rot? When the police found that office you hired, that computer, that frigging pen with my fingerprints on it – how did you do that, by the way? – I thought that was it. That I’d have one last visit, you’d smile your little cat-like smile and I’d never see you again.’

  His gaze holds hers and doesn’t falter.

  ‘It was the pen you signed my contract with,’ she says. ‘I just changed the ink and removed the cap. And, no, I would never have left you to rot. I thought perhaps we’d fall in love, that I’d become a prison wife, devoted, loyal, working tirelessly for your release but never quite managing it.’

  ‘Keeping me exactly where you wanted me. Totally in your power.’

  ‘Something like that. Of course I also have enough evidence hidden away to have got you out at any time, should my mind have changed.’

  ‘Victims’ hair? Clothes? In a safety deposit box somewhere? Ready to plant on some unsuspecting patsy?’

  She smiles.

  ‘So what happens now?’

  She shrugs, feigns carelessness, even though her heart has never beaten faster. ‘You’re a free man. The dead woman at my house will ensure that. I’ll be the killer of six people, you’ll be the innocent man, wrongly accused. You’ll be a national hero. You can return to your profession, make a fortune from public appearances, start a family, have the life you used to dream about.’

  ‘And you’ll be behind bars?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t say that.’

  He looks long into her eyes and she knows he has guessed her intentions. If Hamish turns his back on her tonight, she will climb to the highest point of the Gorge. She won’t be the first wronged woman to seek solace on its cold, high edge.

  She makes a show of looking at her watch, although from the moment she entered the cave she has known exactly what the time is. ‘They’ll be hot on our heels, my long-lost lover. Which is it to be?’

  He breathes out a sigh so long, so heavy, that she half expects to see him deflating. Then, awkwardly, as though he has been sitting too long, he gets to his feet. He reaches down, takes her hand and pulls her up. For one, heart-stopping moment, she thinks he will kiss her. Then he takes a long step back.

  ‘I’m truly sorry about what I did to you at Oxford.’ His eyes lift, go over her shoulder and fix on something behind. ‘But you should have gotten over it.’

  Maggie spins round to see dim pools of light immediately in front of the rocky overhang. She can just about make out two forms. Pete.

  And Sirocco.

  Chapter 103

  ‘MAGGIE ROSE, I am arresting you for the murders of Jessi
e Tout, Chloe Wood, Myrtle Reid, Odi Smith and Broon Richards.’ As he speaks, Pete is thinking fast, measuring the distances between the four people in the cave, reminding himself where the dangerous places are, because he’s seen the look in Maggie’s eyes and he knows this could still go very badly wrong. She will almost certainly have a weapon and she is very close to Hamish. ‘You do not—’

  ‘Shut the hell up!’ It is Pete at whom she yells, but her eyes haven’t left the woman at his side. ‘Who the hell are you?’ For the moment she is ignoring both Pete and Hamish, but that won’t last long. Soon the full force of her rage will be directed at the lover who spurned her. A second time.

  The woman Maggie knows as Sirocco Silverwood opens her mouth to speak but Pete catches hold of her arm and stops her.

  ‘This is Detective Constable Liz Nuttall,’ he says. ‘Hamish’s liaison officer. You didn’t hurt her just now, you’ll be relieved to know, but she was wired up and we heard everything that went on in your house. Hamish is wired too, by the way.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Pete sees Liz allow her huge coat to gape open, to let Maggie see the body armour that was meant to protect her from knife wounds. All the same, he will never again send a constable into such a situation. The fifteen minutes that Liz was in Maggie’s house were the longest in his life. Especially when she went into the cellar and they lost comms.

  Maggie spins round to look at Hamish.

  ‘You knew? You were part of this?’

  Hamish bows his head once. His eyes leave her and settle on Liz. ‘It took me a while to persuade Liz, but I got there in the end.’

  ‘And Liz convinced me,’ says Pete. ‘It’s over, Maggie. I need you to come with me now.’

  He moves forward again, trying to block Maggie’s view of Liz, because he really doesn’t like the way the two women are looking at each other. Liz, though, is not about to be intimidated by the woman she’s worked for months to bring to justice. She lifts up both hands and takes off first the beanie cap, then the long black wig.