‘Sirocco, aka, Sarah Smith?’ Pete holds open the door and she steps outside. His car is parked near by. ‘We’ll probably charge her with assault under the Offences Against the Person Act. That would mean magistrates’ court tomorrow, probably Minehead. There’s a good chance she’ll be released on bail, though, so you might want to think about a restraining order. In you jump.’
‘I need to find my own car. I expect it’s still at the fairground.’
‘It’s at your house. I had someone drive it round. Are you going to keep me out here all night?’
She sinks down. The driver’s seat groans as he joins her and starts the engine.
‘What if I need to talk to her again?’
‘You don’t.’ He is intent on the road, driving too fast, the way police officers invariably do. ‘We ran her fingerprints as a matter of course. Turns out they were the ones on that paper rose that we couldn’t trace before. Looks like she was the one who came into your house that night, leaving billets-doux under the table.’
This is not good news. ‘Her fingerprints on the rose establish a link between her and Hamish. They both touched it.’
‘She may have stolen it from Sandra Wolfe, but that seems less likely. I’m going to contact Parkhurst in the morning, see if there’s any record of Sirocco visiting Wolfe.’
‘You think she killed Odi and Broon, don’t you?’
‘It’s not impossible. How would she know you’d spoken to them unless she was in Wells that night?’
‘Could a woman have done that? She isn’t particularly big or strong.’
‘She took them by surprise, in the middle of the night. They’d have been dopey, sluggish, even without the rum they’d drunk. Sneak up behind, grab Broon by his hair. Odi would have been easier. Yeah, I’d say it was possible.’
‘Why, though? If she’s on Hamish’s side, why get rid of the one person who could testify in his favour?’
‘There was no way Odi could testify for Wolfe. She was a completely unreliable witness, a good distance away, on a dark night. Wolfe, being guilty, would know her testimony counted for nothing, but thought he could use it to his advantage. By having her killed, he suddenly makes her much more important. Now, we’re all asking what she knew.’
‘Sounds a bit far-fetched to me.’
He wouldn’t be the first dangerous prisoner to use someone on the outside to construct an elaborate defence though, would he?’
‘Who are you thinking of?’
‘Keith Bellucci and Vanessa Carlton.’
Before his execution, Bellucci was one of the Woodland Stranglers, two brothers who abducted, raped and murdered young women in woods above St Louis in the 1970s.
‘Remind me,’ she says.
‘Carlton met Bellucci while he was on death row. He persuaded her to kill another woman, in the same way he’d killed several, and sprinkle her dead body with his sperm. This was before DNA, so only his blood type could be identified.’
‘The plan being that the police would find a fresh body, killed in exactly the same way, apparently by the same perpetrator and conclude they’d got the wrong man locked up. Did it work?’
‘Fortunately not. Carlton made a mess of it, the victim got away and she got caught. The romance didn’t survive her imprisonment.’
Maggie is still reeling from the news that Sirocco might have been telling the truth when she claimed she was in contact with Hamish. And yet he has denied knowing her. Which of them is lying?
Pete says, ‘If Wolfe’s defence team – which I guess is you – can establish a connection between the Wolfe murders and what happened to Odi and Broon, then doubt has to be cast on his conviction. You don’t need me to tell you that, and Wolfe certainly doesn’t.’
‘So are you going to charge Sirocco with murder?’
‘No evidence as yet. We’re searching her flat as we speak. I’m going round there after I drop you off.’
‘Can I come?’
‘No, you bloody well can’t. Oh, while I think of it: Daisy Baron is not on the medical register, so she’s not currently practising as a doctor in the UK. Tracking her further isn’t going to be that easy after all.’
‘I’m honestly not sure why people are fixating on Daisy. It was twenty years ago. She’s irrelevant.’
They drive in silence for some seconds.
‘Hold on,’ Maggie says, ‘if Sirocco killed Odi and Broon at Hamish’s instigation, what was all that about tonight? I’m on his side. Why would she attack me?’
‘That engine is not firing on all cylinders. She doesn’t necessarily see you as someone essential to Hamish. In her twisted brain, she’s all he needs. No, you’re the opposition, with your wacky blue hair and your cute-as-a-china-doll face, and your unlimited access to him in prison. You’re the love rival.’
‘He loves me, scrawled in fake blood under my kitchen table?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I can’t believe Hamish had Odi and Broon killed. I just can’t.’
He shakes his head. ‘Oh, Maggie. I really hoped you were smarter than that.’
Chapter 88
NEXT MORNING, THE phone wakes her. Maggie knows it is Pete before she looks at the screen.
‘Don’t say I never give you good news.’