by Steve Mosby
After that, I hit Google. I wanted more information about The Black Flower – ideally something else about the real crimes it was supposed to be based on. Barbara Phillips was my natural contact there, but I wasn’t sure about talking to her. Not yet. Because all I knew about her for sure was that she’d been in contact with both Wiseman and my father – and they’d both ended up dead. I would talk to her eventually, but I wanted something independent first. Something I’d be able to measure against whatever she told me.
The problem was I couldn’t find anything much at all.
The Black Flower was supposed to have been a minor bestseller, but its success was all pre-Internet, and it didn’t appear to have been a book that had lasted. Most of the links I found in the search engine went to auction and marketplace sites, where paperback editions of the book were being sold for tiny amounts of money. There were no reviews or essays to speak of. Aside from occasional mentions, nobody was namechecking The Black Flower online; it didn’t feature in any genre retrospectives, and nobody was hailing it as an inspiration to their own careers. It wasn’t some kind of forgotten masterpiece. It was just forgotten.
Mostly forgotten, anyway.
I did an image search next. Predictably, I got a long series of tiny book covers: screen after screen of small faces crying out in pain. I didn’t want to look at any of them; that image started the panic rising in me. But after clicking through a little way, I managed to find a couple of photographs of Robert Wiseman himself.
Obviously, both were old. The first and then most frequent was a mannered head and shoulders portrait. Black and white. I guessed it was the publicity still Wiseman had used on his book covers. His hair was coiffed, curled at the front like a breaking wave, and he was looking at the camera from a slightly sideways angle. A handsome man who knew it. A bit arrogant.
You get the feeling he would love to have said champagne instead.
The second photograph I found was more interesting. It appeared on a much smaller number of websites, so I found the largest version and clicked through to that. This image was in colour, and it showed four men and a woman stationed around one side of a circular table. Wiseman was in the middle, his elbow on the table, his chin resting in the cup of his hand, looking at the camera with a roguish glint in his eye. There was a glass of wine on the table in front of him.
The woman was sitting beside him. She was much younger – perhaps twenty years old, at most – and pretty in an ethereal way, with dark hair that hugged the contours of her face. She was also staring at the camera, but with such an eerie intensity that her eyes had stolen Wiseman’s thunder and become the focus of the shot. Two other men were sat on the far side of him, turned towards each other, engaged in private debate. And at the other end of the shot, on the far side of the woman, was …
Dad.
My throat tightened.
I hadn’t even recognised him at first glance. He was a young man here, younger than I ever remembered him. Boyish and bleary-eyed – there was wine on the table in front of him as well. This was the Christopher Dawson from the emails people had sent me, rather from my own memories. He was wearing a slightly old-fashioned suit, with both forearms resting on the table, so that the sleeves were pulled back slightly, revealing a watch and dark curls of hair on the backs of his wrists. He was looking down at them, his mouth twisted slightly at one corner.
So: he and Wiseman had known each other.
It made sense, I supposed; they were both writers, both around at the same time. Maybe that was why my father had decided to write about The Black Flower in the first place, to investigate what happened to someone he had known.
Maybe.
The text underneath the photo read:
Robert Wiseman (centre) and the gang.
When had it been taken?
There was a ‘back to photos page’ link below it, so I clicked on that, and the screen was immediately filled by placeholders for thumbnails of images, a line of text written underneath each one. The top of the screen read:
Carnegie Crime Festival
20 Years of Murder and Mayhem at The Southerton, Whitkirk
The Southerton.
Christ – another connection. An annual crime convention, held in Whitkirk: one that both my father and Wiseman had attended. And from the little I’d read, Wiseman’s novel was set in a thinly disguised version of Whitkirk. If the book was based on something real, it was something that had happened there.
The tiny images loaded slowly, appearing one by one. Divided into sections by year. The images at the top of the page were for 2003 – presumably the last year that the festival had taken place – while scrolling down to the bottom revealed the first had been held in 1983. After the photos had all finished loading, I scanned through until I found the thumbnail with Wiseman and my father on it. It was from September 1989. I searched through the other photos for that year, but that was the only one either man appeared in.
I opened it up again, and, as before, my attention was drawn to the woman. She seemed to be looking straight into my eyes, across the years. Was it my imagination that, on one side of her, Wiseman looked intrigued, excited, caught out, like he’d just had an idea of some kind? Whereas my father, on her other side, looked concerned, anxious, uncomfortable: as though something was beginning to unfold at that moment, and he’d just had a glimpse of what the consequences might be.
And the woman between them, the centre of it all.
Wiseman had published The Black Flower in October 1991. So this was probably around the time that he’d started writing it. A book with perceived similarities to real crimes in the 1970s. Which would make the woman in the photo about the right age.
I stared at the screen for a few more moments: stared at her, wondering. Assuming she was real, could this be her?
It could be.
I sent the image to print.
Of course, I had no way of knowing if the woman in the photo was the woman I might be looking for. It could have been Vanessa Wiseman. For all I knew, it could have fucking well been anyone, and there was no way of tracing her anyway, whoever she was.
Regardless, I couldn’t find the slightest evidence online that The Black Flower had been based on real crimes.
It didn’t help that I didn’t even know where to start, coming at it from that end. In the book, Sullivan had talked about another victim – Jane Taylor – but if she was real then Wiseman would surely have changed the name. I checked anyway, and found nothing. I checked all the other names as well, but the result was the same. Nor did I find anything in archived news articles about serial killers who lived on farms or little girls appearing on promenades telling stories about them. If Wiseman’s book was based on actual crimes, they hadn’t been well-publicised ones.
So that just left me with my father’s contacts.
Barbara Phillips.
I leaned forward and typed her name into a Google search. Predictably enough, there were thousands of hits, and most of them weren’t for her, but I found a handful linking to articles from the Whitkirk and Huntington Express. They were few and far between, though, and on random, inconsequential topics. It was a free local paper and the website was correspondingly shit and incomplete. But then, maybe she didn’t do much journalism any more. I didn’t even know how old she was. Once again, all I knew for sure was that she was linked to two dead writers who’d stayed at The Southerton.
What choice did I have, though?
I took out my father’s address book and found her number. No point hesitating if I was going to do it, so I just took a deep breath and dialed.
The number rang and rang.
Then clicked to voicemail.
‘Hello. You’ve reached the Phillips residence. I’m afraid we can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’d like …’
Frustration clenched up inside me but at least it was the same woman; I recognised the voice from my father’s answerphone. After the recorded part had stopped, I left a mes
sage after the beep. I gave her my name and mobile number … then hesitated. Unsure how much to say.
‘It’s about my father,’ I said finally. ‘If possible, I’d like to meet up to talk about something. I’d really like you to call me back as soon as you can. It’s really urgent. Thanks.’
I hung up, that frustration still tight in my chest.
Andrew Haggerty, then. That’s who my father had gone to see first, before ‘Ellis F’ and his trip to Whitkirk.
Let’s see who you are, Andrew.
I looked him up online, without the slightest expectation of getting a result. I didn’t even know how he was connected to this. Was he another journalist? A writer – maybe one of the other men in the photograph? Maybe he and Ellis both were. It took a few minutes to combine the right search terms until I found him, but eventually I did.
And when I read the information on the screen, my father’s interest in Haggerty became obvious. In the darkness of the office, something fell away inside me, leaving me with an ache in my stomach. In my heart.
Oh God, Ally.
Because suddenly, this was all very real. There was no denying it any more: these were real crimes I was reading about on the screen right now.
Just not from the 1970s.
Extract from The Black Flower by Robert Wiseman
‘Hello, Detective Sullivan,’ Mrs Fitzgerald says.
‘Hello again.’
He steps over the chipped wooden doorstop into her home. Mrs Fitzgerald is a foster carer: a plump, slightly stooped woman in her early forties, with hair so frizzy that it hangs around her head like rusty mist – or perhaps a halo. She lives slightly out of Faverton, further along the coast, in a property that backs onto the clifftop. The distance from town is the single concession to the little girl’s safety that Sullivan managed to wring from DCI Gray.
‘How are you this evening?’ he asks.
‘Oh, I’m fine. I’m always fine.’
Sullivan nods. Mrs Fitzgerald is always fine; it is a gift she has. He takes off his hat and stamps his feet on the wicker mat. A gloomy staircase extends up on the left. Ahead, at the end of a shabby downstairs hall, the worn carpet gives way to the old Formica floor tiles and cracked white porcelain of the kitchen. Out back, the garden ends where the cliff-edge allows it to.
The house is in disarray, and one day erosion will take even this from her. It hardly seems fair. Sometimes, when he visits, a clothes press is set up on top of the kitchen counter; Sullivan has seen Mrs Fitzgerald there, sleeves bunched up, feeding sopping wet clothes through the slick, pale-blue rollers, water dipping down into the sink. Her round cheeks will be red with the effort, the machine hot and grumbling, and Sullivan will wonder how she does all of this without a single complaint.
I’m always fine.
‘Charlotte is in the front room,’ she tells him.
He pauses, just as he’s about to hang his coat by the door.
‘Charlotte?’
Mrs Fitzgerald leans in to talk quietly. ‘We talked about it last night after you left. We agreed that she needed a name. So I let her look at the bookcases until she found one that she liked. Charlotte’s Web.’
‘Charlotte.’ Sullivan nods. It suits her. ‘Can she read well, then?’
‘Not as well as a girl her age should,’ Mrs Fitzgerald tuts, as though this means anything in the light of what she has gone through, ‘But certainly more than a little.’
Sullivan nods again, more thoughtfully this time. In his spare time, he has been reading about feral children, foundlings, children who have grown up in extreme deprivation or isolation from the outside world – sometimes even literally raised by animals, as part of a pack. One of the key features of the research is the impact of such an upbringing on learning. The consensus seems to be that if language is not learned soon enough, through companionship and interaction, it is not learned well, or even at all. Children who have been raised in such circumstances can often barely talk, never mind read or write.
But he has never read of anybody growing up like Charlotte has. According to her story, her father made an attempt to raise both her and her little brother – albeit in his own way and according to his own rules. And her mother had been present. Reading between the lines, it sounded as though the woman was very much a slave: a victimised subordinate. But she may well have taught the child to read.
‘How has she been today?’
‘She’s been quiet, but she’s eating better. And we had a little play earlier on.’ Mrs Fitzgerald raises her voice slightly. ‘Didn’t we, Charlotte?’
Sullivan turns to see her standing in the doorway to the lounge.
Over the past week and a half, there has been quite a transformation. Mrs Fitzgerald visits second-hand shops every weekend and buys what she can, and many people donate their cast-offs, so the doll’s dress has been replaced by blue jeans and a simple white T-shirt. Elsewhere, more personal wonders have been worked. The girl’s tatty hair is now combed out straight and full, falling halfway down her arms in a golden sheen. The bruises have faded from her face, and any dirt has long-since been washed away. In many ways, she looks like a normal little girl. Except in the eyes, which are beautifully blue but wary, and in the blankness of her expression, which remains much as it was the first time he saw her.
At least now, rather than the handbag, she is clutching something more appropriate. A battered, old teddy bear.
‘Hello, Charlotte,’ he says. ‘That’s a nice name, isn’t it?’
There is a familiar moment of coolness, of not quite trusting, but he has visited every night and she is more used to him now, so it only takes a moment for her to relax. Without saying anything, she reaches out a small hand. Sullivan walks across to take it and, while she is only capable of the gentlest of tugs, he relaxes his big frame and allows her to lead him into the lounge.
For half an hour, they sit in the front room playing.
Charlotte is cross-legged on the floor; Sullivan sits in an armchair, leaning forward and watching her, responding to her, talking as and when required.
Mostly, she wants to show him things. Mrs Fitzgerald keeps a long Tupperware box full of toys in the corner by the hearth, and Charlotte picks from it at random, scrutinising the toys one by one. Sometimes she cradles and talks to them; other times, she purses her lips, leans forward and gives them to him, then goes back to look for something new. She grows more and more bold, more playful, more normal. He accumulates the toys on the arms of the chair, or in his lap, or wedged next to the cushion, unsure on the surface what is required of him but understanding deep down that nothing is.
He wants to ask her about her father, but does not.
Instead, he quietly takes each toy she passes to him. Watching her increasing ease with a feeling akin to privilege. In some ways, by the time he leaves this house, Sullivan feels younger than she is: renewed in some way. Charlotte, he thinks. You’re going to be okay. But it is not entirely clear to whom he is directing the thought: to her, or to the memory of Anna Hanson, the little girl he failed to save. He recognises this mistake even as he’s making it but it is so easy to do, so very easy to do, and he lets himself do it night after night.
And so, every night, he arrives back home late.
His wife says little; they drift around each other in a carefully coordinated dance, subconsciously avoiding touching. They fail to find anything that needs talking about, beyond the perfunctory and the practical. She is drinking, although neither of them ever mentions it. Often he is as well. Recently, it feels as though their lives have schismed: been split in two, like a trunk by an axe, and they are now beginning to grow irrevocably in different directions, sprouting fresh buds destined never to touch.
You would be better off spending your time at home.
He tells himself there are two reasons he visits the girl.
The first is so he can make sure she is safe. Even though Mrs Fitzgerald has an enforced door and an unlisted address, he feels better
seeing the girl for himself and making sure she is all right. He has promised to keep her safe, and he will.
The second reason comes on the journey itself, as he watches his rearview-mirror driving out to the foster home. Sullivan’s name is the official contact for anyone coming forward on behalf of this little girl, and, while he does not expect the girl’s father to contact him through official channels, he thinks it’s possible the man will try to discover his daughter’s whereabouts in more furtive ways. So he takes odd, winding roads, but so far he’s seen nothing unusual behind him. Nothing follows him, certainly no rusting red van. Not the vehicle he imagines smoking and rolling, silhouetted against a setting sun, as though emerging from Hell itself.
There has been no official progress either. The relatively small amount of press coverage has resulted in little more than the expected fake phone calls and time-wasting counter visits. The cranks; the attention seekers. People who clearly know nothing about the little girl, her handbag, the flower, and are just desperate for attention, even of this low kind. Steadily, they have been weeded. And as the days have passed, Sullivan has become more and more anxious, more certain than ever of the girl’s story.
Finally, other people feel it too. Gray’s prediction has quietly begun to haunt the department. Parents tend to want their children back – and yet a parent has not come forward. What does that mean? Why does nobody want this little girl?
Anna, he thinks.
Except, of course, not Anna. Charlotte.
Lying awake in bed that night, he tells himself: you’re becoming too involved. And yet he observes this fact with the same detachment with which he stares at the bedroom ceiling. His own workings are all too clear to him, the problem apparent. But he can’t stop. Whenever he tries to remember Anna Hanson, it is harder and harder to conjure up her small face; but whenever he pictures Charlotte, it is Anna who appears instead. His heart throbs with alarm. He is afraid not just that something terrible is going to happen but that, when it does, it will somehow be his fault.