Black Flowers (27 page)

Which meant that I had no chance of tracking her down now.

I was about to say something – I don’t know what – when I felt a vibration against my hip.

And then another.

My phone was ringing. I scrabbled in my pocket.

Ally Mobile

I’ll give you a couple of days. After that, she’s mine for ever
.

I stared at the screen for a moment. My time was up, wasn’t it? And it meant the old man hadn’t thrown Ally’s phone in the water after all; he’d just turned it off. Perhaps I could have …

But that chance was gone now.

I closed my eyes for a moment, then pressed accept and held it up to my ear.

‘I’m here,’ I said.

But it was a woman’s voice that answered me.

Back at the department, Hannah had to go underground. The files from before the early 1980s were all hard copy, and archived in a large room in the basement of the building. It was possible to call up the references and tags from one of the computers upstairs, but she didn’t want to risk visiting her office and encountering any of her colleagues. For now, she was off the grid.

Maybe she would be for ever after this.

Some things are more important than the law, aren’t they?

Barnes had been right. Even if she hadn’t openly acknowledged it to herself, Hannah had been moving away from her profession at a tangent ever since finding the map and the hammer, and the events of the past few days had taken her fully into the area of misconduct. She’d lied, she’d withheld evidence then destroyed it, and none of it had really troubled her, because the truth about her father had been far more important. This extra step right now probably couldn’t be taken back, but it was an entirely natural one along a route she’d already begun.

There is a way out of this. It won’t protect you from the truth, won’t protect me … but it might at least protect your father’s reputation
.

She had no idea how that was supposed to happen, but Barnes had seemed sure. For now, she had no choice but to
trust him. And to find that photograph, assuming he was telling the truth about it.

The desk sergeant raised an eyebrow when she started talking: he was more used to being handed reference numbers and conducting his business in relative silence, and he seemed to resent having to use his own computer system for searching.

As he keyed in the details Hannah gave him, she looked around. It was the world’s most dismal library down here: row after row of grey shelving units stretching away backwards into the gloom, all of them bristling with documents, and all of those cataloguing crimes. Some large, some small, and almost all of them forgotten now. At night, she imagined the room made a rustling noise like beetles. For now, the only sounds were the squeak of a trolley, echoing back from somewhere between the aisles, and the clattering of the desk sergeant’s key strokes.

‘Charles Dennison is ticked,’ he said. ‘So’s Robert Wiseman. Either they’re in the pile or they’re due to be in the pile.’

He nodded at the stacks of files gradually accumulating on the desk beside him: the missing person reports being prepared for transit upstairs.

At least she’d got here in time.

‘They’re going to my office,’ Hannah said. ‘Can you either search through them for me, or else prioritise the names I’ve given you and make sure they get pulled out next?’

The desk sergeant pulled a face, but nodded.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, see if there’s a file for Charlotte Webb.’

‘As in the book?’

‘What book?’ She thought of Wiseman for a moment, but then realised what he was referring to. ‘Oh. I don’t know. Double “b”, I’m guessing.’

As his fingers clittered over the keys, Hannah remembered what else Barnes had said:
it’s not going to be easy for you
.

Why?
she thought.

After everything else he’d told her, what could be worse?

‘Charlotte Webb,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘Double “b”.’

‘You’ve found her.’

‘Indeed I have.’ He tinged the bell on his desk, then shouted off into the aisles. ‘Come on, Igor. Break off for a minute. Got a rescue mission for you.’

Five minutes later, Hannah was sitting at a battered old workbench that ran down one wall of the entire basement. It looked like something you’d see in the science lab of a poor secondary school: gnarled and dark, more tree still than furniture. There were plug sockets dotted along, with an angle-poised lamp positioned between each. She flicked hers on, and tried to ignore the echoing clatter of the trolley somewhere behind her.

WEBB, CHARLOTTE.

Hannah’s fingers seemed to tingle slightly as she opened the file. The first sheet inside was a record of the interview data.

Date of Interview:

7 September 1977

Location:

Whitkirk Police Department

Attending Officers:

DS Graham Barnes

DS Colin Price

Others:

Helen Daniels, Duty Child Care Supervision Officer

Interviewee:

Name not given
[Charlotte Webb
]

Beneath this, there were dotted lines where, under normal circumstances, the address, phone number and birth-date of the interviewee would have been filled in, along with any reference
numbers and details of associated cases. On this form, however, someone had drawn a diagonal line through those, crossing them out. Her father, she assumed, as it was his handwriting that had been added in to the side.

The subject of this interview is an unknown female, approximately five or six years of age. She was found, wandering alone, on the date of 07/09/77, by DS Colin Price, after he was alerted by a concerned member of the public. DS Price located the subject on the promenade of Main Street, opposite Lot-82, currently occupied by the Fisherman’s Drift cafeteria.

Subject is four-feet-two-inches tall and has blue eyes [see attached]. At time of finding, subject had unkempt blonde-coloured hair and was dressed in old-fashioned clothes, and was carrying an adult handbag containing a pressed flower [see attached].

When DS Price approached her, subject was uncommunicative. She was unable to give her own name, those of her parents, an address, or details of how she arrived at said location. Upon mention of parents, subject became distressed.

Interview takes place in Room 3.8. In accordance with section 4 (1967), interview attended by Dr Helen Daniels.

Note: Interview ‘informal’ in structure: gentle non-specific questioning; toys; breaks; etc. Summary follows. Audiotape included. Statement [see attached] agreed by attending officers and Dr Daniels as accurate, and signed accordingly.

Hannah put that sheet to one side and turned to the next.

And shivered a little. This was actually a blank page with two photographs paperclipped to the side. They were in colour, but noticeably aged. She was used to digital prints these days, and these seemed archaic and quaint, like old holiday snaps. But it
was the way they were laid out that disturbed her – just like the photographs in her father’s album.

But then, he probably did this too
.

The top one was a relatively informal shot, taken shortly after the then-unnamed Charlotte Webb’s arrival at the police station. She was wearing a dirty, blue-and-white checked dress, and her hair was straggly and wild, half knotted into dreadlocks. Hannah’s first impression was that the girl must have been sleeping rough – and possibly for a long time – but on closer inspection, her appearance wasn’t quite that of a runaway or a homeless child. It was more like a little girl who’d not been taken care of, and who’d been dressed thoughtlessly in whatever clothes could be scavenged. Her father’s introductory comments –
old-fashioned clothes
– didn’t go far enough. The dress in particular simply looked odd. It was out of time, like an outfit a child might wear in some Victorian etching.

‘Charlotte’ had been staring directly into the camera when the photo was taken, and her expression was hard to decipher. It wasn’t sullen, exactly, but it was certainly wary and untrusting, like a nervous animal that was ready to dart off if required, or else defend itself with tooth and claw if escape wasn’t an option.

Fierce little thing
.

The bottom photograph was more revealing because it had been actively staged. It was a portrait image of Charlotte’s head, taken from the shoulders up. Clearly posed and obviously captured a few days later. By the time this picture had been taken, her face had been cleaned and her hair washed, the tangles straightened out. However, the biggest difference was in her expression, where that initial wariness had visibly softened. It wasn’t gone entirely; the camera captured a flash of it in her eyes. But this fist of a girl had already begun to unclench slightly.

Hannah had a thought. Could this be the woman from the CCTV footage with Dawson? There was still no obvious connection between the cases, but, calculating it in her head, the age seemed approximately right.

Hannah squinted at the photo. There was no way of telling, though. Despite the ferocity – the wildness to her – the girl was very young, still growing into her features. If Hannah passed her now, as an adult on the street, she wouldn’t be confident of recognising her. And the woman in the footage with Christopher Dawson had been so far away and indistinct that the same could well be true of her.

Hannah turned the page. Another two photographs were clipped to the side of this sheet. The top one showed the handbag. The one below showed a pressed flower.

A black flower.

Something in Hannah’s chest tightened.

That wasn’t right. That couldn’t be right.

A coincidence
. It had to be. The human brain looks for patterns, and that was all this was. Just sheer coincidence.

It didn’t have anything to do with the story her father used to read to her. The one she’d been looking for on the day she’d felt afraid and ended up searching in the attic, finding not that book but a map and a hammer instead.

And yet, as she stared at the photograph, it felt like the shelves behind her were slowly receding into the distance, the noise of the trolley disappearing, until there was only her and the flower and the throb of her pulse. She just sat there, unsure what to do. Unsure whether she was capable of doing anything at all, never mind turning the page.

Do it, Hannah. Find out
.

You can do anything
.

The thought came with an urgency that shocked her back into the real world. She recognised her father’s voice, and with it the determination and resolve she’d inherited from him, just as surely as her looks, her blood. So she turned the page, found the interview transcript and started to read.

And it wasn’t a coincidence.

Even if it had to be, it wasn’t.

Q: Can you tell us how you got to the place we talked about? Outside the café on Main Street?

A: I ran away from my daddy and my brother. We were having an argument on the tram and I stood up and ran away and jumped off.

Q: What was the argument about?

A: I don’t know. I was just unhappy. I’ve been unhappy for ever. My daddy and brother do lots of things I don’t like. They hurt me. My daddy hurts me, and he makes my brother hurt me too.

Q: Hurt you in what way?

A: Not like they hurt the others. But we sleep in the barn, and they hit me, and sometimes I don’t have any food.

Q: When does that happen?

A: When I break the eggs or spill the milk. Or if I don’t clean up the stalls properly, because you have to sweep them just right or else the patterns end up wrong. If I don’t do things properly my daddy gets angry.

Q: Do they hurt you in other ways?

[No answer given]

Q: What about your mother?

A: She’s sad all the time because she’s unhappy too but I still like being with her. My daddy brings lots of books home, and she reads the stories to me and tells me everything will be okay.

Q: Was she there on the tram when you had the argument?

A: Yes. She was proud of me because I did what she wanted to.

Q: She wanted to jump off the tram too?

A: [Emphatic nodding] Yes. I saw her through the window as it pulled away and she looked scared but I think she was very proud of me.

Q: I’m sure she was. She should be. You’re a very brave little girl, aren’t you?

[No answer given]

Q: Can you tell me about your home? It’s a farm. Is that right?

A: [More animated] Yes. There is a house and lots and lots of fields. We have cows and sheep and people and chickens. And pigs too.

Q: You have people?

A: Yes.

Q: You look after them all?

A: Sort of. I do the milking, the washing and the cleaning. But I’m not allowed to do the killing and the changing. Daddy does that, and my brother will when he’s older.

Q: ‘The changing’? What do you mean by that?

A: [She has trouble explaining this] It’s like I have all my eggs already. Everything goes on and on, and nothing dies really. Things just change from one thing to another. That’s what my daddy’s experiments are to do with, but I don’t like them. Like with Jane. I don’t like what happened to her.

Q: What happened to her? Can you tell us?

A: Daddy put her under the house.

Q: And you didn’t like that?

A: No. He says it makes no difference, but it
does
. Because they stop talking and playing. I don’t notice it so much with the cows or the pigs, but the people are different, because the change seems to take things away that I like. Jane doesn’t talk to me any more and I miss her.

Q: You said that the flower you had with you was Jane.

A: It’s Jane after she changed. After she stopped talking to me.

Q: Can you describe Jane?

A: She was like her. [Motions to Dr Daniels; this seems to indicate ‘grown-up’ rather than an exact physical description].

Q: What did you talk about?

A: We talked about … she told me it was okay. She used to say she would get out of there and make me safe. A lot of the time when I wasn’t under the house she screamed and cried, and it made the floor hum. But when I was down there she told me she loved me and that I should … I don’t know.

Q: Do you think Jane was proud when you jumped off the tram?

A: Yes. [Emphatic nod] I think she still is, even though she can’t say so any more. She’s still alive, but in a different form now. But I liked Jane better before.

Q: Before?

A: Before daddy turned her into a flower.