Black Flowers

by Steve Mosby

  But he did. And it had to be him because he had Ally’s phone.

  I opened the door and stepped into the room.

  It was small and amber-lit. The main overhead light was turned off, but a wall-mounted block shone softly down on the bed and its occupant. With all the clutter of machinery, and the pastel blues and yellows of the wallpaper, it reminded me of a child’s room. But the man lying asleep in the bed was far from that.

  I paused for a moment, unsure what to do now I was here, with the old man in front of me. Then I closed the door quietly behind me and stepped across to the edge of the bed and looked down at him.

  He was stick-thin beneath the covers, and almost bald aside from wisps of greasy grey hair at his temples. His eyes were closed but horribly prominent, as though a thin layer of skin had been draped over marbles, while the lower half of his face was obscured by a soft plastic mask, a tube connecting it to a cylinder that was bolted on the wall. His head was tilted back slightly on the pillow, so that his neck was exposed; the skin there was baggy and lined. His Adam’s apple was solid as a knuckle; the tendons around it taut as cables.

  He wasn’t dead – that was obvious from the steady, pulsing lines of light tracing his heartbeat on the display beside the bed – but he looked closer to a corpse than a living man. Lying very still, his skin waxen and yellow.

  He was also much smaller and more emaciated than I’d been imagining. Because of the book, I’d pictured someone strong and fearsome, but this man seemed feeble. Of course, anybody would look feeble in these circumstances, with their life supported solely by bags of solutions and tubes punched into their veins, but even so. It was hard to believe he was the monster I’d been reading about. He looked like … nothing.

  But that is what monsters look like, I thought.

  The same as everyone else.

  My fists kept bunching: fingers stretching then clenching.

  ‘Where is she?’ I whispered.

  One of his eyelids flickered. Just a little.

  I took a step closer, about to repeat my question, and the door opened behind me. I stepped back, then turned to see a middle-aged woman dressed in pale-blue scrubs.

  ‘Hello there.’ She smiled and extended a hand.

  I reached out and shook it.

  ‘Doctor Matheson?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks for coming – for getting here so quickly.’

  ‘I didn’t know how long he’d have.’

  ‘Oh. Well, he’s stable for the moment.’ Matheson closed the door then stepped around me to look down at her patient. ‘We won’t be sure of the damage to his heart until we get the results of the blood tests, but in the meantime we’ve got him on painkillers and anti-clotting agents, and we’re keeping him hydrated. Keeping an eye on him. Aren’t we, fella?’

  The last comment was directed almost affectionately at the old man. Fella. Matheson, of course, knew nothing about the kind of man her patient really was.

  ‘You know him, I presume?’

  I’d been thinking about this, how to handle it. I couldn’t give him a false name, as I assumed the records were computerised, but given that he had hold of Ally’s phone it was going to raise questions if I claimed not to know him at all. I was going to have to call the police now – obviously I was – but I didn’t think Doctor Matheson was the first person to confide in and explain all this to.

  ‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘He’s my girlfriend’s uncle. His first name’s John, but I don’t know his surname. The family’s all split up. I’ve been trying to get hold of her, but she’s not at home right now. And obviously, he had her mobile for some reason.’

  ‘Does he have a history of dementia?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘The reason I’m asking is because of his behaviour before the ambulance arrived. Throwing his things away. By all accounts, he seemed very confused and disorientated.’

  Yes, I thought, that was how it would have looked to people: an old man acting strangely, not knowing what he was doing. But that wasn’t what had really been happening, was it? No, caught out away from his home, and thinking he might be dying, he’d been trying to remove anything that might lead authorities to his door. So they wouldn’t find his home and discover what was kept there.

  Keeping his family safe.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know what he was doing in Thornton?’

  ‘No. Have you not been able to ask him anything?’

  ‘He’s only been semi-conscious. And not often.’ She looked back down at him. ‘At the moment, I’m happier letting him rest and settle. I was just curious.’

  I nodded: I was curious too. Not so much about what he’d been doing. The real question was where he’d come from to get to that bridge in the centre of Thornton. Did he live just a few miles away? Was it hundreds? It was frustrating to think the farm might be nearby, perhaps just minutes from where I was standing, and yet there was no way of discovering it. I might be so close to where Ally was being kept right now and never know. Or not know in time.

  Where did you come from?

  Something occurred to me.

  ‘You said he threw everything in the river?’

  ‘That’s what I was told, yes.’

  ‘Car keys?’

  She thought about it.

  ‘I don’t know. Somebody mentioned keys. They might have been house keys. Why?’

  ‘Just planning ahead.’ I did my best to smile. ‘Working out what we’re going to have to do when he’s back on his feet again.’

  ‘Oh, of course. I get you.’

  What I was actually thinking was whether there might be a vehicle parked up somewhere: a rusty, crimson van he’d been forced to abandon. Because if that could be found, maybe the police could trace the license plate. Get an address from it.

  ‘Listen,’ Matheson said. ‘I need to do the rounds. It’s fine for you to sit with him for a short time, if you like? Not for long though please.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Maybe I will, just for a little while. I’ll chase up the surname too.’

  She closed the door very gently behind her, and I was left alone with the old man.

  Silence.

  The only movement in the room was the display on the monitor, the beep as it registered his vital signs faltering onwards. I watched the bony cage of his chest rise and fall under the blanket for a minute. Then I leaned down until my mouth was close to his ear and spoke quietly.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  There was no response. Just the same steady breathing. The same undulating trails of light beside the bed.

  ‘Where is she?’ I said. ‘Where did you come from?’ Again, no response. I stepped away.

  Then took a deep breath and went downstairs to phone the police.

  Outside, back in the car, I dialed the number I had for Hannah Price: the number for the investigation into the bodies found at the viaduct.

  If I was going to talk to the police, it had to be her. For one thing, she was in charge of the investigation at the viaduct. If the murders of Dennison and Wiseman were coming to light, then it meant she couldn’t have been involved in them originally – or else she’d surely have been trying to cover them up right now. She was also the easiest person to talk to, because she already knew at least some of what I was going to try to explain. How much, I’d find out shortly.

  A woman answered.

  ‘Whitkirk Police Department. How may I help?’

  ‘I need to talk to DS Hannah Price please.’

  ‘One moment.’ There were ten seconds of silence on the line, and then: ‘I’m sorry. DS Price isn’t available at the moment.’

  Fuck.

  ‘Can you ask her to phone Neil Dawson back as soon as possible?’

  ‘What’s it regarding? It’s possible that another officer can assist you.’

  ‘No, I have to talk to her specifically.’ I thought about it. I needed to get her attention, and there
was one obvious way to do that. ‘You can tell her it’s in connection with the bodies of Charles Dennison and Robert Wiseman.’

  ‘With Charles—?’

  ‘Dennison,’ I said. ‘And Robert Wiseman. I’m driving back to Whitkirk now. Tell her to call me as soon as she can – on this number, my mobile. It’s very important. Urgent. Have you got all that down?’

  ‘Umm … yes, sir. I have. Can I just—’

  I hung up.

  Then picked up my father’s road atlas from the passenger seat. I’m driving back to Whitkirk now. That was exactly what I was going to do, but the centre of Thornton was only a few miles from here, and it was more or less in the same direction as Whitkirk. Only the slightest of detours.

  It would help my story a lot if I could find that fucking van.

  My fingertip traced the roads, searching out the route I’d have to take – even though I knew, realistically, I had no chance of locating the vehicle once I got there. The old man might not have driven to Thornton at all, or he might not have used the van. Even if it was there, how the hell was I supposed to find it? He could have parked it anywhere in a town I’d never been to before.

  Hopeless. But what else was I going to—

  I saw something else, and my finger stopped moving.

  Halfway between here and Thornton, where the map showed little but space and thin, empty lines for roads, my father had drawn a tiny cross on the page in black biro. It was almost impossible to see, which must have been how I’d missed it on the drive over, but it was there. Just beside a tiny village called Ellis.

  Ellis F??

  I stared down at the map, feeling cold, my heart tingling. Dad’s calendar – the itinerary he’d marked on it. The first note had been ‘Haggerty A’, and then, on the day he was to travel to Whitkirk, he’d written ‘Ellis F’ – with two question marks afterwards, as though he wasn’t sure whether it was worth going or not.

  I’d presumed it was another appointment to see a person, the same as Haggerty, but as I looked down at the cross he’d drawn, right there in the open countryside, another idea began humming inside me. One that didn’t necessarily make sense, but which wouldn’t go away.

  Ellis Farm?

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Patterns, Hannah thought.

  It was so easy to be fooled into seeing them. A long time ago, her father had taught her some of the constellations in the night sky, and then told her the truth about them: that in reality the stars people grouped together were light years apart and had no actual relationship to each other. But our ancestors found patterns in the sky and named them after gods and animals and heroes. They named them after stories, or else made-up stories about them. And yet, even now, when we look up we see constellations, and believe they’re real, because that’s what we’ve been taught to see.

  She’d made a mistake with her father’s map. From what was found at the viaduct, she’d imagined it showed the location of bodies, but all she’d been doing was forming her own pattern from those crosses. In reality, it marked the distressing, final path a little girl – Anna Price – had taken one afternoon a long time ago. It was a record of her father’s grief and anger and self-recrimination.

  Hannah stood in his kitchen again now, slowly turning the pages of her treasured photograph album. She started at the beginning, with what she now knew was a picture of another girl entirely, cradled in Colin Price’s arms, and worked her way through to the page that Barnes had stopped at earlier.

  You would have been five years old when all this happened.

  The little girl, riding her bicycle unaided for the first time, with her knitted red jumper and a face creased up with a huge smile. Her father in the background, equally delighted. The last photograph of Anna Price.

  Feeling blank, Hannah turned the page.

  The girl in the next photograph was older, but not by much: not enough to arouse suspicion. This girl had been caught sideways on, kneeling down in the lounge by the fireplace, dressed in jeans and a pale blue T-shirt. Her hair was the same colour. Her face – it was impossible to tell.

  Hannah flicked through a few more pages, searching for a shot of herself facing the camera head-on. Page after page, there were none. Not until she reached her early teens, by which time it was pointless to compare faces and evaluate their likeness.

  He was a very clever man.

  Yes, Hannah realised now, he was. He’d been very careful in his construction of this album. Again, patterns. It looked like a straight line from the beginning to the end, one whole childhood, bookended by creaking leather covers, and there had never been any reason to question that because the lie inside was so well concealed. The edges of the ground where it was hidden had been smoothed over, so it was almost impossible to see the join.

  She rubbed her face.

  I don’t know who I am.

  The album showed an amalgam of two girls – and perhaps that was right, that she was a mixture of both. In some ways, she really was the little girl her father had loved so dearly in that first photograph, or at least she might as well have been. But she was also the grown woman who could look at death and violence and see it as matter of fact, just a progression, one thing transforming into another. Born as “Charlotte”, then raised as Anna in all but name, and nearly even in that as well. Her father had told her stories as truths and truths as stories, and now she was an unweavable tapestry of both.

  He had done so with good intentions. She kept telling herself that – that as well as healing himself, he had done it to heal her. He had taken the horrors of her childhood and hidden them away; kept her safe and changed her from a hurt and scared little girl into a woman who could do anything.

  You are DS Hannah Price. Daughter of DS Colin Price.

  Except she wasn’t.

  It wouldn’t matter how many times she told herself that any more. Her father’s words had been designed to make her feel safe and untouchable, but they were lies. She couldn’t remember her early years on the farm right now: all that came to mind was the story he’d told her, and the familiar, now growing, feeling of dread and fear. But the story was a lie, and it wouldn’t last. There was nothing to stop the dread taking over. Hannah Price’s life was built on the foundations her father had laid, and those foundations had been destroyed.

  She closed the album, leaned down on either side of it and rested her face in her hands.

  And she began to collapse.

  A little time later, her mobile rang. She ignored it. Shortly afterwards, it beeped to let her know she had voicemail, and this time she took it out and listened to the message.

  ‘DS Price? This is Simon at the office. I’ve got the files up now, and … I don’t know, maybe you’re on your way in like you said, but if not can you give me a ring? It’s about DCI Barnes. I really need a word.’

  Beep.

  Simon was one of her sergeants. She stared blankly at the phone for a few moments, unsure what to do. She didn’t feel up to having a conversation about the case right now, but if it was about Barnes she should take the call. His words came back to her. There’s one last thing that needs to be taken care of.

  What had he done?

  She hesitated for a moment longer, then called the office.

  ‘Simon,’ she said. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Hi there. Thanks for calling me back so quickly. This is … it’s a bit of a weird one actually. Have you seen DCI Barnes today?’

  ‘No.’ The lie came easy. She had no idea if it would come back to haunt her. ‘Why? What’s “a weird one”, Simon? Spare me the fuzzy talk.’

  ‘Sorry, boss. It’s just that a witness reported seeing someone fall from the clifftop earlier on. A possible jumper.’

  Hannah went cold inside.

  There is a way out of this. It won’t protect you from the truth, but it might at least protect your father’s reputation. Barnes’s name was all over the file on Dennison too. He’d been questioned. He’d be a suspect.

 
; I’ll never go to jail, Hannah.

  She forced herself to ask the natural question.

  ‘What’s that got to do with Barnes?’

  ‘Well, his car is in the car park at the top.’ The sergeant gave a nervous laugh, as though he couldn’t quite believe the implications of what he was saying. ‘It’s locked up and everything, but it’s just abandoned there. I’ve tried various numbers and he’s not answering.’

  I needed to make sure you did what I wanted you to.

  Hannah closed her eyes. Barnes was going to take the responsibility, she realised. Paying penance. He’d told her everything he could bring himself to, and planted the photograph in the file to make sure she read the rest before anyone else did. He’d made sure she was prepared for what was to come. And then he’d done this.

  You’ll understand when you read the details. It’s not going to be easy though.

  I’m sorry.

  She said, ‘You’ve got the coastguard out?’

  Simon had, but Hannah barely listened to his answer.

  Where did this leave her, if Barnes really had done what she thought? Was it possible to save her father’s reputation? Once the bodies were identified as Dennison and Wiseman, questions would get asked, and in the light of his suicide the answers would now point towards DCI Graham Barnes.

  Hannah’s real identity – or, at least, the murder of her father’s real daughter – might be revealed when people put the details in the files together, but technically that was a separate issue. She hadn’t committed a crime by being adopted, presuming that was what had happened, or by forgetting where she’d come from. Nobody had broken the law. Regardless, she could certainly lobby hard to keep it out of press announcements, and the force would close ranks to protect their own.

  Your father was a good man, and he always kept you safe.

  Now it’s your turn to repay that.

  Yes, she thought. Whatever he’d done, and whoever she had been once, Hannah Price probably owed him that much. There was the slightest of possibilities that she could weather all this. On the outside, at least.

  ‘All right.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Let’s try not to worry too much in the meantime. I’ll be in shortly.’