Black Flowers

by Steve Mosby

  There were more photos from the riverbank below. Closer now, you could tell the man was lying on his back, his head turned sideways. His cheek was a flat, pale stone visible just below the surface of the water. One white forearm stuck up like a tree branch, and his abdomen appeared to have flopped back towards the shore, distended enough to stretch open the buttons of his shirt. Out of the water, one thigh was already bloated tight inside the suit trousers.

  ‘We don’t have an exact time of death yet,’ she said. ‘Most likely, he’d been dead between two and three days at time of finding.’

  Click, click, click. Finally, a sad close-up of Dawson’s mottled face was replaced by an overhead shot from inside the mortuary that showed the clothing and possessions cut from his corpse.

  ‘Due to the deterioration of the body and the availability of other corroborating evidence, we decided not to obtain a formal identification from Christopher Dawson’s son. However, Neil Dawson identified these items of clothing as belonging to his father. Also, the keys you’ll see in the bottom right-hand corner match the vehicle we found, and the wallet contains a credit card in his name.’

  Barnes’s gaze hadn’t left the screen the whole time.

  ‘A positive ID, then.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘We’re still waiting for the coroner’s report, but it appears that Mr Dawson died as a result of a fall, presumably from the viaduct above. The injuries I observed on scene are consistent with that.’

  ‘A jumper.’ Barnes nodded. ‘That’s what we have.’

  ‘It looks that way,’ Hannah said.

  Clearly, he’d already made up his mind about the case, which irritated her, even though he was right that all the evidence pointed directly to suicide. Neil Dawson had told her about his mother’s death the previous year, and Hannah had found prescription drugs for depression in Christopher Dawson’s hotel room. So it was what she would have concluded herself, if it wasn’t for …

  The other thing.

  Barnes picked up on her indecision. ‘But?’

  You should leave this.

  She said, ‘But I have some doubts.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, there’s the car. Dawson parked it in a spot where he’d be able turn around, which obviously suggests he intended to drive away again.’

  ‘People are creatures of habit,’ Barnes said. ‘And suicide is an extreme course of action, isn’t it? Obviously he hadn’t fully committed at that point.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Again, she could leave it there. And yet she found herself plunging on anyway. ‘But there’s something else.Christopher Dawson was a writer. His son believes he was working here in Whitkirk. And his laptop is missing.’

  ‘His laptop, DS Price?’

  ‘His computer.’

  ‘Yes,’ Barnes said slowly, ‘I know what a laptop is.’

  She swallowed his sarcasm. ‘It’s not at his home address, sir. It wasn’t in the hotel and we didn’t find it in the car.’

  ‘So he took it with him when he jumped.’

  ‘Yes, sir. That’s what has to have happened. But we haven’t located it, when all of his other possessions have been accounted for.’

  ‘We wouldn’t. I’m familiar with that river, DS Price. It’s very deep and very fast, and it flows straight into the sea a little way down the coast. Do you know what that means? It means we’re lucky a small child didn’t trip over Christopher Dawson’s corpse on the beach.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He was right, and it had been stupid to press the point. As it happened, the laptop didn’t interest her in the slightest; it had just seemed like a convenient hinge on which to swing open an investigation.

  One she wasn’t even sure that she wanted.

  ‘What about the woman?’ Barnes said.

  Hannah shook her head. ‘Sir?’

  ‘The anonymous caller. This woman said she saw the body while jogging, but called from a phone box on the seafront. That’s strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Of course it’s strange. For one thing, it means she was out in the middle of nowhere without a mobile phone. But then she came all the way to Whitkirk to use a payphone.’ He stared at Hannah. ‘So have we got an image of her? Is she on CCTV?’

  ‘I’ve not checked whether that phone’s covered, sir.’

  ‘Well do that, then. Let’s see how anonymous she stays.’

  He headed for the door.

  ‘In the meantime, coroner’s report, as soon as it arrives. Then let’s draw a line under this.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘All of this.’

  The door rattled shut in the frame behind him.

  Hannah sat down, frustrated. As irritating as Barnes could be, she was more annoyed with herself. What was she doing? Vaguely pushing to extend the investigation, when she should have been trying to forget all about it.

  But the truth was that, however much she tried not to think of the other thing, she couldn’t do anything but. Five tiny crosses. They had knocked a hole in her life, and when something like that happens you can only tiptoe around the edges for so long before peering in.

  She caught herself reaching for the drawer. Stopped.

  It wouldn’t help; it wouldn’t solve anything. Looking through it was just storytelling, really – repeating a fiction in the hope it would become true – whereas what she’d found at her father’s house was reality, there whether she looked at it or not.

  I’ve not checked whether that phone’s covered, sir.

  She had, of course. Hannah might have been terrified half the time and grieving the rest, but she wasn’t an idiot. No cameras. That was why she’d picked that particular payphone to place her anonymous call from in the first place: no cameras. Although she wasn’t going to tell Barnes that. Obviously.

  She sighed to herself.

  If her emotions hadn’t been so shot, though, she might have come up with a better cover story than pretending to be a jogger.

  Hannah sighed to herself and tapped the mouse. The monitor had gone to screensaver, and it came alive again now, showing Christopher Dawson’s belongings.

  Why there? she asked the dead man.

  Why did you have to choose there of all places?

  Because anywhere else and she wouldn’t have this problem. What Hannah had found had led her to the viaduct – but if she hadn’t spotted Christopher Dawson’s body lying on the riverbank below, she wouldn’t be faced with the predicament she was in now: wondering why Dawson had ended up there out of all the places he could have chosen to end his life, and whether his death was connected to what she’d discovered in her father’s attic.

  Whether it was connected to his crosses.

  Chapter Four

  Cartwright could feel himself dying.

  In one sense, that was nothing new. Ever since he was a boy, he’d been aware the world was different from how ordinary people saw it. Normal people packaged life up with a beginning and an end. They used words like birth and death, as though a person’s life was linear and contained: something that started in one place and then stopped, later on, in another.

  His father had taught him that was wrong, and helped him to see the truth: that life was not something that began and ended, but ever-present. It was the forms life took that rose and fell. But before Cartwright was born, he had existed as something else. His matter had been spread far and wide, and it was just happenstance that it had come together now in a form capable of understanding that. The atoms of his body were a crowd, summoned briefly into a room. After his death, that crowd would disperse to different places. That was all any form of life was. Just the universe at play, making shapes with its hands.

  Of course, his current form was very old now. And while he had always been aware of the continuum, like a constant rush of wind in his mind, this sensation of dying, right here and now, was different. This was what ordinary people meant by the
term.

  He looked around the café.

  It was even smaller inside than it had looked from the street: barely the size of a living room, with seven tables cramped in so close together that the wicker chairs were pressed back to back. Oak beams were exposed across the ceiling, and dark wooden shelves lined the walls, covered with old tea tins and ancient toy cars.

  Most of the clientele appeared to be elderly ladies in flowery blouses, their waists thick as barrels and their conversations either murmured or simply dispensed with altogether. There was a crutch leaning against one wall. The loudest sound was the tink of a teaspoon tapping round a china cup.

  If he was dying, then, he had chosen the right place.

  But it was other circumstances that had dictated his choice. Cartwright had managed to secure the window seat. To either side, the curtains were rolled open, as thick and soft as cushions. On the glass itself, the name ‘Flanagan’s’ curled in reverse. Across the road from the café, there was a row of exhaust-blackened cottages. They were nice, he thought. Homely. Each had its own individual character; each looked like it had a story to tell and wanted to do so. One had an old wooden cartwheel, painted a glossy black, bolted to its outside wall. That was the one he was watching.

  ‘Would you like a refill, sir?’

  He looked up to see the owner had come from around the counter and was offering him a fresh pot of tea. Cartwright had not formed a very positive opinion of her. She was middle-aged and astonishingly happy with herself: as polite and insincere as he had been led to believe air hostesses were. In her conversations with the other patrons, he’d heard her employ the same sing-song voice each time, as though she was talking to children.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Not a problem.’

  She put the pot down and picked up the old one.

  ‘Surfing are we?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  She nodded at his computer. ‘Silver surfing, I think they call it. Terrible term. I know the library is having a big push at the moment though.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Cartwright forced a smile, and tried to sound as doddery as she expected. If that was how she saw old people, then he didn’t want to stand out and be remembered. ‘I can’t recall. Perhaps I did see something about that.’

  She smiled back. He was far better at acting than she was.

  When she’d returned to the counter, he poured himself a fresh cup of tea. Energy dissipated in the form of steam and in the sound of the slight rattle as the cup filled.

  A faint heat.

  The aroma of the leaves.

  Everything shifting constantly.

  But as he placed the teapot back down, he felt it again: a jab of pain in his side, which set off a chain reaction of smaller bursts across his stomach and through his chest. It was excruciating, but he didn’t let it show. Anyone watching would just have seen an old man pouring his drink. Nobody would sense the multitude of cancers blooming inside him: so many by now that they surely half filled him, pressing against his skin like flowers overgrown behind glass. He could practically smell the pollen in his sweat.

  Cartwright sipped his tea. A tube of heat materialised at his centre, and the pain gradually subsided.

  Despite the discomfort, he appreciated the tumors for what they were: just a stage in his change. His body was transforming itself. New life was blossoming within. It was nothing to be afraid of, really, this ordinary version of dying. He had only two real regrets. The first was the question of what would happen to his family when he was gone. They were not as capable as he was. For the most part, they never left the farm and they lacked the necessary familiarity with the outside world to survive in his absence. He knew he should have prepared them better.

  There was nothing to be done about that now.

  The second regret, though, was a different matter.

  On the far side of the street, the door to the cottage opened. Cartwright sipped his tea and watched with interest as the woman emerged. She was in her mid forties and very beautiful, with a sweeping rush of brown hair and a slim frame. But she had aged considerably in the year since he had last seen her. The thinness had become unhealthy; he could see her hip bones jutting below her dress. Her face had weathered too, so that she looked far older than her years.

  It will be all right, he thought.

  You’ll see.

  She did see – or, at least, she spotted the envelope on her doorstep. He watched as she stared down, then crouched to retrieve it, picking it up a little too quickly. He turned away just in time as she looked across at the café. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her looking up and down the street, cars flashing past inbetween them.

  When he risked looking back, the woman had retreated inside. That was disappointing: he’d hoped to see her open the envelope. She looked so very sad, and Cartwright liked pleasing people. He liked helping them to understand.

  He turned back to the laptop, open on the table in front of him. It was a battered old thing, the kind of device that most people would have thrown out and replaced by now, but it served its limited purpose adequately enough. It was also the only useful thing they’d salvaged from the debacle at the bridge – beyond the fleeting glimpse of her, escaping into the trees. That glimpse had only made things worse. It was his second regret. Cartwright hoped he might have what he wanted most in the world before this ordinary way of dying had finished. Even after all these years, he just wanted his daughter back where she belonged.

  In the meantime, he had what was before him right now. One of the benefits of seeing the world properly was noticing the beautiful echoes the universe produced, seemingly for its own pleasure. Patterns created for their own sake. Reading what was in front of him, Cartwright knew that people could do that too, unwittingly or deliberately, and that there was joy to be had in hearing the chimes of coincidence and adding to them. Just as the universe played, so could he.

  He read the story again.

  Goblins. Changelings.

  Cartwright liked the story, and he liked the idea of bringing it to life, especially as it might help him to do so. And the best part of all? His son wouldn’t even need a mask.

  People would be terrified enough of him already.

  Chapter Five

  My flat was too small to store lots of books, so I didn’t have copies of all my father’s work, but I did have Worry Dolls. Like all my books, it was stored in a pile on a shelf in the wardrobe. I slid it out now, and opened it gently to the dedication at the front. The spine creaked: a soft, comfortable sound. It made me think of an old man sitting down on leather upholstery.

  For Laura.

  I never want to be without you. I tell you every day in person.

  This is to tell you in print.

  I noted the present tense, although I also knew my mother died before the book was published and would never have been able to read it. Even so, he’d addressed it to her as though she could hear, as though she was still with him. I tell you every day in person. I believed that. My father had been repeating the words that defined him, no matter that the person they were directed to was no longer able to hear.

  Obviously he took Mum’s death hard, but he’ll be channelling it into his writing.

  What I’d said to Marsha on the phone that night sounded so stupid to me now. On top of the guilt it conjured up, it also made me feel like a fucking idiot. As a kid, I’d absorbed all his romantic ideas about the power of writing, and as an adult, I’d begun to build my life on their foundations. But when it had mattered, those ideas had been shown for exactly how empty and meaningless they were. He’ll be channelling it into his writing. Except he wouldn’t, because writing was just writing, not magic. And so I felt naïve – like I’d spent my life believing in the Tooth Fairy.

  I closed the book and caressed the cover once, as though sealing it. Worry Dolls. The story of a man who was terrified of living and dying alone, whose wife came to hold his hand as he passed away. I never
want to be without you, my father had written. It didn’t seem so wrong to hope that maybe, in those last few moments, he hadn’t been.

  ‘Hey there, you.’

  I almost jumped as Ally walked into the room. I hadn’t heard the front door open: the echoing booms and bangs from the flat below had obscured it. In fact, I hadn’t even realised it was after five now and work was done with for normal people. Time had just … passed. Despite everything, it kept doing that. When something awful happens, you half imagine everything should slow down respectfully to take note, but of course it doesn’t work like that. The days just disappeared around me.

  ‘Hey.’ I put the book back. ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Crap.’

  She let her handbag fall down her arm onto the bed, then sighed to herself. I sat back in front of my laptop, and a moment later she walked over and put her arms around me from behind. The smell of her perfume was a shock after being on my own all day. Her chin jutted against the side of my neck as she spoke.

  ‘The usual crap, to be more precise.’

  ‘No excitement?’

  ‘Ha! No. Although Ros phoned. She wants to know when you’re coming back. She’s sympathetic, but stressing out.’

  ‘Monday,’ I said. ‘Probably.’

  ‘Yeah, I told her. But you know what she’s like.’

  I reached up and ran my hand over Ally’s forearm: over the fine hairs there that she hated but I loved. There’s something especially comforting about being hugged from behind. Maybe because, by definition, you don’t ask for it, so it always feels honest.

  I hadn’t had to ask for anything these past few days. It must have been obvious to Ally how badly I needed her right now, and so she’d just stayed, looking after me in imperceptible ways ever since we’d returned from Whitkirk. Food would appear. Phone calls and arrangements would have been made without my noticing. All the things that could easily have been overwhelming – that might have caused me to buckle – I’d emerge from my dazed state, begin half panicking about them, and then realise she’d already done them.