Black Flowers (17 page)

And I didn’t know what that would mean for Ally.

Ally …

I felt a sudden stab of frustration – of absolute powerlessness. Anything could be happening to Ally right now, and I just didn’t know what to do any more. Go to the police? Maybe they’d believe me more easily if they did know about the woman – except it might put Ally at even greater risk than I already had. I just didn’t know. My heart was tight in my throat, and as the panic hit me properly, it was almost impossible to fight it down. What was I supposed to do? What was I—

Everything blurred.

Come on
, I told myself. My fists were clenched so hard that my knuckles had gone white in the gloom of the car.
Come on
.

Hold it together.

But I couldn’t. To his credit, I guess, the taxi driver maintained the same careful silence as before, although he seemed to drive the car a little faster.

Back at The Southerton, every surface in the lift was either sleek black metal or scrupulously polished mirror, aside from the small video screen of an animated goldfish built in above the control panel.

I pressed the button for the third floor. It outlined in red, probably matching my eyes, and the lift began to glide gently upwards. On all sides, I could see reflections of myself stretching back to infinity. A man with a rucksack over one shoulder, and bin bags of clothes resting at his feet. A man with swollen eyes, head tilted back to stare upwards, avoiding catching his own gaze so he didn’t have to face head-on just how fucking lost he was.

After what seemed like for ever, the lift
tinged
and the doors slid open, and I stepped out into a corridor that smelled sickly sweet, like old flowers.

My bedroom was plush. Of course, for two hundred pounds a night, it should have been. I dumped all the bags on the bed, then stood in silence for a moment.

Come on, Neil
.

My father’s stuff was of little interest to me right now; nothing in the bags would help me. So instead of looking at that, I opened my rucksack. I’d bought my laptop and the notes I’d printed in the office last night, and also my father’s copy of
The Black Flower
. There had to be something I’d missed. There had to be.

For some reason, it was the book I turned to first.

Extract from
The Black Flower
by Robert Wiseman

 

When the call eventually comes, it is Sullivan who takes it, and that is not by coincidence. The man on the other end of the line asks for him specifically.

In some ways, that makes sense, because his name has been attached to the appeal for two weeks now. But most of the callers, seeking attention, have been happy to relate their lies to the first person prepared to listen. According to the switchboard operator who puts him through, this man is different. Far more insistent.
And creepy as hell
, she says, before giving a nervous, slightly embarrassed laugh that he lacks the patience to indulge.

‘Put him through.’

As he waits, Sullivan listens to the silence on the line. There is no way of knowing for sure this is their man, of course, but a part of him already does. A shiver runs down his back, as though an ice-cold fingertip is slowly, slowly tracing a snake there.

The sound on the line changes. The connection is made.

‘This is Detective Sergeant Sullivan. What can I do for you?’

In the background, he can hear the rush of the breeze, the crash of the sea. He checks his watch and the window. Outside, rain is stinging the glass. It is high tide; the weather is wild. The call is probably coming from somewhere nearby.

A phone box on the seafront?

And then the man speaks.

‘I’m phoning about the girl.’

It is a dirty, gravelly voice, as though the man’s throat is full of rocks that chip the edges off his words. The way he says ‘the girl’: there is a dirtiness to that, as well, but of a different kind.

‘Okay,’ Sullivan says. ‘Can I ask how you know her, please?’

‘I’m her father.’

He looks around the office. He already has Pearson’s attention, but he mimes clicking his fingers and captures the eye of a few others, then gestures with his head toward Gray’s office.

‘And what’s your name, sir?’

For a moment, there is no answer on the phone line beyond the crash of the sea in the background. Then the man sighs wistfully.

‘I was so annoyed to lose her. She’s never run away before. My little Annie.’

The chill Sullivan feels increases. Is that the girl’s real name, he wonders? It is a popular one, of course, but it is also impossible for him not to feel it as more than a coincidence. Anna Hanson and ‘Charlotte’, now Annie: two little girls echoing each other; the universe making a rhyme.

‘She ran away?’ Sullivan asks.

‘I’m afraid so. We were all together in that café, and when I looked up she was gone.’

The café on the other side of the promenade, directly opposite where Sullivan had crouched down in front of the little girl. The man must have been right there the whole time.

‘Your name, sir?’

‘It was very bad of her to run away. Very bad. She’s always causing problems for people, my little Annie.’

Around him, the office is buzzing with activity. Gray has emerged from his office and is leaning against his doorframe, arms folded. Sullivan decides to abandon his previous question.

‘Not at all, sir. We just want to see her home safe and sound, the same as you do.’

The man says, ‘I’d like to come and pick her up.’

‘That would be very helpful.’

‘When and where?’

Sullivan pauses at that. It’s an odd way of phrasing things: the sort of words a kidnapper might use, or someone arranging to exchange illicit goods.
Where can we meet, so that nobody will see?
Even though the girl is safe, and will remain safe, he feels a thrum of danger in the air and wonders, momentarily, if there is something he might be missing.

He forces himself to breathe slowly, calmly. The obvious answer, the one he would normally give, is that the father must come to the police station. But he knows the man will never agree to that.

‘Where would suit you, sir?’

Immediately, the man says, ‘How about that same little café?’

The implication within the words is clear:
I’ll take her back as though it never even happened
. There is a sense of symmetry to it, Sullivan thinks. The little girl disappearing again – stitched back into whatever crease of the world’s fabric she had escaped from.

He will not allow that to happen.

The man says, ‘In an hour.’

Sullivan only checked his watch a moment ago, but he does so again now. It is one o’clock in the afternoon. It is, of course, unlikely that the man will turn up, but they need to act as though he will. What can he organise by two? Obviously, the café will need to be watched. But there are other things to consider. Sullivan looks around the office, wondering who he can send to the Fitzgerald foster home to make sure the girl remains safe. There are so many things to plan out; so many approaches to consider. An hour isn’t enough.

‘Let’s make it three o’clock,’ he says.

‘No.’

Another odd response. And again, Sullivan bites down on the obvious reply. This is not a normal parent who has lost a normal child; in fact, the man isn’t even making a pretence of it. So what are his intentions? He doesn’t want to give Sullivan enough time to … do what?

What is he missing?

‘Okay,’ Sullivan says. Across the room, Gray raises his eyebrows. Privy to only one end of the conversation he is clearly concerned. He is right to be, but Sullivan says, ‘Two o’clock it is.’

Other than the breeze and the sea, there is silence.

Then the man says, ‘Fine.’

And he hangs up.

‘He’s not coming,’ Pearson says.

It is five past two, and they are standing in the same spot where Sullivan first kneeled down in front of the little girl. He pulls his scarf around him, wincing against the swipe of the sea breeze.

‘Maybe he’s already here.’

Despite the severity of the weather – cold rain whipping across; the sea, an angry foaming surge beyond the wall – the promenade is busy. It is a harsh day, but the sun keeps breaking intermittently through, and people are braving the elements, determined to enjoy it. Some of them are actually eating ice creams bought from the van further back along the promenade, when even the van itself is shuddering in the wind. It is hard to spot stragglers amongst them. The café across the street has its share of customers, but nobody there is obviously waiting. Nobody is watching them. Certainly, no men on their own.

And yet how could he be sure? Perhaps the man would bring his wife, or his little boy with him – or both. They have no real physical description of the family to work with.

Sullivan turns his wrist and checks the time again.

Seven minutes past two.

With Gray’s reluctant agreement, he has officers stationed along both approaches here, watching for single men, suspicious men, men. Miles from here, two officers are outside the Fitzgerald address. They have reported in already. Nobody has followed them and the street is empty. And whether she is Charlotte or Annie, the little girl is playing happily inside the foster home right now, entirely oblivious to the activity whirling quietly around her.

Pearson says, ‘Mike.’

‘What?’

Sullivan’s attention has been focused on the café, but he glances at Pearson now and sees the other officer is looking off to one side, caught by something further along the shop-side of the promenade.

A moment later, Sullivan sees it too.

‘Shit.’

A fractured chain of children is slowly approaching their position. The little girls are all wearing the navy-blue dresses of the local school; the little boys, the grey-trousered, blue-jumpered equivalent. There are fifteen, twenty of them. A couple of the girls are skipping; one of the boys is holding the hand of a teacher. In all, there are four adults accompanying them, two bookending the chain and the others forming
larger links within, corralling and ushering. ‘Come on, come on. It’s raining.’

‘Coincidence?’ Pearson says.

Sullivan says nothing. He isn’t sure. Instead, he simply watches the children and the teachers. They don’t come as far down as the café. Instead, they stop at the RNLI station a few units further up: an open garage where the flat, white nose of the lifeboat pokes out onto the pavement. The walls inside are festooned with inflated lifebelts and old photographs. Bolted to the wall outside, there are plaques and a collection bin. The children begin to go inside.

A school outing.

Can that be a coincidence? Sullivan doesn’t know what to think, or what the connection is, but the sight of the children has set a sense of unease humming inside him. The man on the telephone was adamant about the time, and here is a trail of school children, going about their day. That can’t be a coincidence. Perhaps it is some kind of threat. But, for the life of him, he can’t understand what the man is trying to say.

And then he sees something else.

The wind, still present, still biting, seems to fall away, and all he can hear now is the pounding of blood in his ears.

‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s not a coincidence.’

From the front of the lifeboat station, metal ridges run straight across the street, crossing the tramlines in the middle, all the way to a break in the coastal wall, where a stone ramp leads down into the sea. Just past that break, Clark Poole is leaning awkwardly against the metal railings on top of the wall. He is wrapped in his familiar raincoat, stiff with grease, and watching the entrance to the lifeboat station. Watching the children going inside, an ice cream in his hand.

Pearson follows his gaze and sees him too.

It is his turn to swear. ‘Shit.’

Sullivan nods to himself, understanding now. His name, attached to the appeal. His name, lodged in Clark Poole’s head as a figure of mockery, a figure of hatred, a figure to taunt at every opportunity. And
the unidentified caller. The insistence on this time, this place. The name of the dead girl.

He watches as Poole waves his fingers delicately at the children in the lifeboat station. The children don’t notice it, but Sullivan does. From the way he feels Pearson’s body tense up beside him, he knows his partner does too.

Poole turns to look at them.

Smiles.

And – just like that – the wind starts up again. The noise. The activity on the promenade. Except that Pearson now has a palm flat on Sullivan’s chest, pressing him backwards, holding him in place. He can see a bulb clenching in the corner of his partner’s jaw as he is wrestled backwards against the sea wall.

‘Stop it, Mike. Stop it.’

Gulls are reeling overhead. The sea is crashing.

Sullivan takes a deep breath and stares upwards at the swirling grey of the sky, trying to calm himself down. But he can’t. Even without seeing him, he knows that, further along the promenade, Clark Poole is still watching him and still smiling happily to himself, pleased with the work he’s done here today.