The police version of events is that Hamish Wolfe, with murderous thoughts in mind, happened upon Zoe as she staggered in the direction of the station’s taxi rank. The two had more than a passing acquaintance already. Wolfe’s mother, Sandra, frequented the salon where Zoe worked and, more significantly, Zoe had become a patient of Wolfe’s some months earlier. Had Hamish offered her a lift, the police argue, she almost certainly would have accepted.
This is speculation, pure and simple. There is no evidence putting Hamish, or his car, in the vicinity of Keynsham railway station that night. On the contrary, he and his mother both claim they had dinner together that night, that she drove him home afterwards. However, as no one in the restaurant can confirm this (they were especially busy that night and weren’t even asked about it until over a year later), the alibi has largely been discounted.
Should it have been? It is a fundamental principle of British law that people are assumed to be telling the truth, until evidence suggests otherwise.
According to the police and prosecution, Hamish happened upon Zoe – tired, drunk, cold – and offered her a lift. He didn’t drive her home. He took her somewhere else and murdered her. The time frame remains indeterminate partly because Zoe’s body has never been found and partly because the remains of the other three murdered women were in a state of such advanced decomposition as to make a forensic examination practically worthless. We have no idea what happened to them in the final hours of their lives.
The search for Zoe
At ten o’clock on Saturday morning, Zoe’s sister, Kimberly, mentioned to her mother that Zoe hadn’t come home the previous night. Brenda got in touch with Kevin, who told her that not only had he not seen Zoe but that, to the best of his knowledge, she hadn’t spent the night at his flat.
A detective constable visited the Sykes’s home within two hours of Brenda reporting her daughter missing. Zoe had her purse and mobile phone with her. It was a smartphone, with a tracing application, but when the police activated it, they found it was listing the last-known location as the Trout Tavern on Friday evening. For some reason, Zoe had turned off her phone in the pub.
The hunt steps up
The next few days were spent interviewing Zoe’s friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Her boss at the salon described her as a conscientious and reliable employee. Kevin Walker was interviewed at length but maintained consistently that he had no idea of Zoe’s whereabouts.
The search was widened to the whole of Avon and Somerset constabulary by Monday evening. The local TV news programme carried a small piece. Nothing happened for several days.
The red boot
On Thursday, 14 June, a red cowboy boot was found on the roadside just outside the village of Cheddar in Somerset, a mere two hundred metres from the cave where Myrtle Reid’s remains were to be discovered, nearly two years later. The boot was identified by Zoe’s mother. Small bloodstains inside it suggested she’d been harmed.
At this point, the police search went national. All police forces in England and Wales were sent copies of Zoe’s photograph. Her disappearance made the national news and Brenda Sykes took part in a televised appeal for information.
Two weeks after the finding of the boot, three weeks after Zoe was last seen, the blood was confirmed as being hers. Kevin Walker was taken in for questioning, his house and garden were searched, as was Zoe’s family home.
Nothing. Zoe had pulled off as effective a vanishing trick as anyone had known. After time, as is largely inevitable, the police search was scaled back and Zoe joined the ranks of the missing. Arguably, that’s how she should have remained. There is not a jot of evidence that Hamish Wolfe, or anyone else for that matter, killed her.
Maggie saves the draft. It is all she has found on Zoe Sykes. Without access to the police files, it is as far as she can go for now.
‘So, you’ve decided, then?’
She closes Word and opens up her email. ‘Nope.’
‘Lot of work for a case you might never take on.’
‘Just organizing my thoughts.’
‘If I were a gambler . . .’
‘You’re not.’
‘I’d be placing my bets right now. Ten to one, Hamish Wolfe will be your client before the year’s end.’
Chapter 9
THREE HUNDRED FEET above sea level, above the hills, the quarries and the rivers, above the woods and meadows of the Somerset countryside, stands a painted-steel observation tower. Those who ascend to its octagonal platform can look directly down into the jagged cleft that is the Cheddar Gorge and watch it winding its way through the limestone mass of the Mendips.
The rusty old watchtower creaks and grumbles. Not with the wind, because today is quite still, but with impatience at the man who climbs its steps so often, but who never comes to look. The man who stands as still as the tower itself, with his eyes tight shut.