He nods towards where a narrow strip of rubble pretends to be a beach. ‘Half in, half out of the water,’ he tells her. ‘Probably washed up, because this cave gets a lot of visits and if she’d been there since she went missing, she’d have been found a lot sooner. So, Maggie, are you staying down here long, or would you like to get a coffee?’
Maggie opens her mouth to say that she has to get home, that she has a dozen things to do. Instead, she finds herself taking one last look around. ‘I’m done here,’ she says. ‘Coffee sounds good.’
Chapter 12
DRAFT
THE BIG, BAD WOLFE?
By Maggie Rose
CHAPTER 3, THE FOOLING OF CHLOE WOOD
Chloe Wood became the third plus-sized woman to go missing, on Wednesday, 11 September 2013. Her disappearance took the investigation into a new league – that of the hunt for a serial killer.
Chloe was thirty-two, a self-employed jewellery designer, running a moderately successful small business from her home on the outskirts of Glastonbury.
She lived with her boyfriend of eight years, Jeremy, a barrister. By all accounts, the couple were happy and Jeremy was never a serious suspect.
Not quite as large as the other three, Chloe had long auburn hair and very good skin. The photograph used most often in the police hunt shows her in a floaty, teal-coloured dress. Her listed hobbies included power walking and yoga. She was also a vegetarian. She seemed living proof of the much-repeated adage that it is possible to be big and healthy.
For some months before her disappearance Chloe had been ‘talking’, first of all via her website and later, by email, with a woman called Isabelle Warner, managing director of JustOffMainstreet.com, a jewellery distribution company that wanted to mass-produce and distribute Chloe’s jewellery around major stores and high-street retail outlets, starting in the south-west, but with a potential roll-out nationwide. Had it been real, this would have been a big deal for Chloe’s small business.
The two women arranged to meet on Wednesday, 11 September at the public library in Cheddar. This may seem an odd choice of meeting venue, but according to Chloe’s boyfriend, there were plans to go on from there to the company headquarters.
Her boyfriend reported her missing that evening. The desk sergeant knew of DC Weston’s interest in the possibly linked cases of Zoe Sykes and Jessie Tout and his antennae pricked up. He phoned Weston immediately and the hunt for Chloe went into top gear.
At this point, remember, neither Zoe’s nor Jessie’s bodies had been found. They were still just missing persons.
Chloe’s computer was taken away, and it became the work of minutes for the police to establish that the emails to Chloe from ‘Isabelle Warner’ had been sent from the same computer that hosted ‘Harry Wilson’s’ Facebook page. The two women had fallen foul of the same predator.
Chloe’s body was found in January 2014, in Goatchurch Cavern, a well-known Mendip cave.
Chapter 13
THEY FIND A table in a café that has a river running beneath its reinforced glass floor.
‘Same river?’ Maggie is watching the play of water over stones as Pete takes his double espresso and her flat white off the tray. They’d had a brief argument about who would pay for the coffee. He liked that she hadn’t taken his willingness to pay for granted. And also that she’d let him win.
‘Possibly a different branch.’ He shrugs off his coat. ‘Only way to know for certain is for you to go back to the cave and send a toy boat down. I’ll wait here for it to come through.’
He waits for her to smile. Her sapphire eyes are startling against the pallor of the rest of her face.
‘Are you from Somerset?’ She breaks the uncomfortable silence.
He nods, gulping down his coffee too quickly. ‘Born and bred. Grew up in Weston-super-Mare. Whereas your accent suggests the north to me. Just occasionally. The odd word.’
‘My father was a Yorkshireman, but we never lived there. He was in the army. We lived abroad for much of my childhood.’
‘So what brought you here?’
‘I was a bit New Age, when I was younger. The idea of Glastonbury fascinated me. The convergence of the ley lines, that sort of stuff.’
‘I’d never have guessed. You look so conventional now.’
There’s a smile bubbling beneath that icy composure. She’s just remarkably good at keeping the lid on it.
‘I pestered my parents for months to let me go to the music festival when I was seventeen,’ she says. ‘They finally gave in and I never dared tell them I hated it. I liked the place, though.’
‘Have you heard anything from Hamish Wolfe or his fan club?’
A tip of pink tongue licks coffee froth from her upper lip. ‘A couple of emails from the group. They’re meeting tonight in Minehead. They’ve asked me to go along.’
‘I strongly advise you not to. But if you do, don’t go alone.’
‘I’ve met people like them before, you know.’
He does know. She goes into prisons, talks to some of the worst offenders there are. She doesn’t need him to look out for her.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he says.
‘You can ask me whatever you like.’
‘You told me you live on your own.’