by Steve Mosby
Which you are.
Maybe. But I couldn’t wait for Hannah Price. Not when Ally might be down here right now. Not when anything could be happening to her, and when that ‘anything’ would be my fault.
I kept close to the treeline as I walked. After I left the pylon behind, the only real sound was the occasional snap of a twig breaking under my shoes. The trees to the right were tall and straight. Despite the sheer number, they had a dead feeling to them. There were no leaves that I could see, and the few branches were fragile and skeletal, as though someone had come through here, stripping them methodically for firewood, only to abandon it all on the ground. Even in the early evening darkness, I could tell the undergrowth between the tree trunks was thick with them.
Occasionally, out of the corner of my eye, I kept imagining I saw movement, as though someone was keeping pace with me in there. But whenever I stopped and looked, there was nothing.
Just shadows making me nervous.
Up ahead, the track rode over a hump in the land. When I reached it, I glanced behind me. I could see the wall in the distance, but it seemed a hell of a long way back now. The sprawl of field was shivering in the evening breeze, grey and drained of colour. Everywhere I looked, the night seemed to be seeping upwards from the ground, staining the world darker and darker, like black ink creeping slowly up a sheet of tissue paper.
I started walking again, over the rise and then straight on. Ahead, it was just more of the same, and it felt like there was nobody alive for miles in any direction. But that wasn’t true; there had to be. This road had to go somewhere.
A little further on, I found out where.
The first thing I noticed was the corner of the fence. In fact, with the darkness settling in now, I almost walked straight into it: a rusted metal pole, about twelve-feet high, poking up from the ground on the edge of the treeline. Chicken wire extended out from it, stretching away down the side of the dirt track, but also at a right angle, straight into the woods.
Someone had cordoned off a section of the trees.
I stepped closer to the corner of the fence, wanting a better look, and something crunched beneath my foot. But this was a different sound and sensation from the branches underfoot. I stepped back again and looked down.
Then stood very still.
A dead bird. Or the remains of one anyway: just a few dirty tufts of feather still clinging to the fractured bones.
Glancing around, I spotted another.
And then a third.
And also something else. At the base of the fence, there was a thin strip of wire running parallel to the ground, a couple of inches up. Carefully, I moved closer. The wire was clamped to the mesh by large metal crocodile clips, placed along it at metre-wide intervals.
An electrified fence.
Why would someone have an electrified fence? I looked around at the birds again. Was it to keep animals out, or maybe to discourage trespassers?
Or was it, just possibly, to keep something inside?
I listened carefully.
From somewhere in the thick of the woods, on the far side of the fence, I could hear a different noise now. It was far away, only just detectable. A gentle putt-putt noise. The sound of machinery left idling out by itself. A generator, I guessed.
I scanned the field, more nervous now, but the night was emerging so quickly that it was hard to see anything. But there was no obvious movement out there. No sound beyond the generator and the vacant hush of the breeze.
I walked a little further down the track.
What is this place?
I didn’t have to go far to find out. A short distance down, the trees thinned out and I came to a wide break in the fence. The trail of tyre marks veered out here before heading inside, as though whatever vehicle used it was large enough to need a turning circle. Beyond it, there was a wide corridor of dusty, light-brown ground. A sort of half-completed, makeshift driveway.
There were more dead animals at the side of the open gate, but they were rabbits this time, and these hadn’t wandered into the fence and been electrocuted. Instead, they were laid out in a neat row. Someone had caught them, or killed them somehow, then brought them here and left their tiny bodies in a line. The one nearest to me looked like a cat stretching. Except its tongue was poking from its mouth, and one black eye was staring everywhere at once. Flies darted around it. A moment later, I realised I could smell them.
It wasn’t odd to go hunting, especially out here in the countryside. But still. Something was very wrong here.
I looked at the gate.
Why had it been left open though? If this was the real farm from The Black Flower then that didn’t make sense. I kept coming back to the other question too. How could my father possibly have known about this?
And yet the air felt electric.
I stepped through the gate into the compound.
A little distance ahead, the driveway looked to open up into a slightly wider area. I could see a building of some kind, obscured by the hang of the trees to the side. I forced myself to walk forward, still keeping close to the trees. The further I walked, the louder the putt-putt of the generator became. It was the only sound I could hear now. Even the breeze seemed to have died.
As I reached the structure, I saw that it was an enormous, corrugated iron barn on the right. The driveway didn’t widen, so much as curl around to avoid it. The building was two-storeys high, and there was no door: just an arched black space large enough to drive a tractor into. The ground outside the entrance bristled with spilled hay. I crossed to the other side of the driveway to keep away from the darkness there. On this side, there were ridged strips of earth, topped with sprouting leaves. A neatly tended vegetable patch, several metres square.
Around the far end of the barn, I came into a larger clearing, ending in a wall of trees straight ahead of me. In the centre, there was a well. The generator I’d heard was on the right, putt-putting loudly inside an awkwardly constructed metal shack. To the left, a series of wooden sheds ran down from the allotment, with several gardening tools leaning against the nearest. I hesitated, then walked across. They looked ancient. The prongs of the garden fork were rusted brown and gnarled: like grotesquely long fingerbones that had been burned in a fire. The wooden shaft was mostly worn away.
I picked it up. Hefting it.
What the hell are you doing, Neil?
I really had no idea.
Putt-putt. Putt-putt. Putt—
Someone was behind me.
I turned quickly, almost bringing the garden fork up – and stopped myself just in time.
A little girl was standing about ten metres away. She was about six or seven years old, with long, dirty-blonde hair pulled into two bunches at either side of her head, and she was wearing an old-fashioned dress, like something a child would put a doll in. She was looking straight at me.
I shivered, convinced I was seeing a ghost.
But when I blinked, she was still there. There was hay all over one side of her dress. She must have been in the barn, I realised. She’d seen me – an intruder on her property – and come out. But she didn’t look scared by my presence. She was still just staring at me, as though not only did she not know who I was, but what.
‘Hello,’ I said.
She didn’t react.
‘Is your daddy home?’
Again, no response. I risked taking a step closer.
‘I was wanting to see your daddy. Is he here?’
This time, she shook her head, a little uncertainly.
‘Where is he?’ I said. ‘Do you know?’
‘He went out.’ Her voice was shy and quiet.
I said, ‘Do you know where he went?’
‘I think he went looking for grandpa.’
I realised I was holding the garden fork slightly raised. I rested the prongs on the ground, leaning on it.
‘What about your mummy. Is she here?’
‘Mummy’s always here.’
The words needed a moment to settle as I took in the implications. The old man – grandpa – hadn’t returned, and so his son had gone out searching for him. But the mother was here because she always was. Because she never left. According to Wiseman’s story – Charlotte Webb’s story – her mother had been a prisoner. But that would have been the old man’s wife. This girl’s mother must be younger than that. Which meant that at some point, the son had selected a wife for himself from their victims, and continued the family.
It couldn’t be true.
The idea of it made me feel cold, but an even worse one followed. Something else was wrong here too. The gate was open. The son had gone out. Perhaps this little girl didn’t know anything different from life in this compound, but if the mother was some kind of prisoner then why hadn’t she tried to escape? Why hadn’t she walked out of here?
Unless she didn’t know anything different either.
Unless maybe she’d grown up here as well.
Oh God …
‘Where is she?’ I said. ‘Your mummy?’
‘In the house.’ The little girl swivelled on her heels and pointed further into the farm.
‘Can you take me there?’
She swivelled back.
‘I’m not supposed to.’
‘It’ll be okay,’ I said.
She thought about it, then, without warning, turned and ran off in the direction of the trees up ahead. It wasn’t clear whether she intended me to follow, but I did. Not running, but walking quickly, trying to keep her in sight. As I did, I raised the garden fork a little, holding it horizontal. Got a decent grip on the wooden handle.
What the hell is this place?
She led me around the line of trees. There were chickens in wire cages on the left here, squatting down in the corners, the ground covered in spilled feed and dirt. As I passed, one of them fluttered into life, panicking against the mesh, squawking madly. Just past that, there were empty wooden pens and another line of trees. Something larger was behind these ones.
A house.
It revealed itself as I stepped around. It was a two-storey, wooden farmhouse. On the downstairs level, there was room for one window and a door. Two windows on the first floor. In other circumstances, the building might have looked homely and welcoming, but right here and now, it reminded me of nothing so much as some kind of hideous fairytale cottage in the woods.
The little girl was running towards it and I had an urge to call out, tell her to stop. But then her shoes tap-tapped up the wooden steps onto the decking at the front, and she disappeared inside.
I glanced to either side, then behind. Nothing.
Come on, Neil.
On the decking, to one side of the front door, there was a dirty old settee and a pot full of dead, wilted flowers. When I reached the steps, I saw that below the decking – below the whole house – there must have been about a metre’s worth of crawl space, obscured by posts.
Ally.
My heart thumped, and I crouched down. There was no chance of seeing much under there – it was too dark – but I peered in. From what I could see, the ground looked moist and rich – and it stank too. As I listened, I imagined I could hear beetles chittering, busy with their work. I started to whisper her name—
But then the front door creaked open wider, and I stood up quickly. Stepped back. The woman in the doorway was staring down at me in shock and fear.
As I stared back, I felt exactly the same.
Oh God, no.
Years might have passed, but I still recognised Lorraine Haggerty from the photo I’d seen online.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hannah was nearly all the way to Ellis by the time night fell properly.
For a while, she’d been driving straight into the dying strands of the day. In front of her, almost as she’d watched, the sun had lowered itself towards the land, then caught fire at the horizon, flaring like a struck match. As fast as she took the car down the motorway, it had felt like she was chasing the light, while the world turned away from her, pulling it steadily further out of reach.
The last threads of it were barely visible now: a slight glow that painted fading shreds of pink on the underside of the clouds. Overhead, the sky was blue-black, speckled with its meaningless constellations, difficult to see through the orange haze of the motorway lights. The route was busy with the tail end of the work-day traffic, but it was moving. Hannah had stuck to the outside lane the whole way, maintaining a fast, steady speed. She pictured the motorway from above: a vein full of white and orange lights, trickling across the land, with her shooting swiftly along one edge.
She had to drive quickly. If she stopped and thought about this for even a moment, she would turn back again. As it was, she was doing her best to ignore the widening spread of fear inside her chest. But she could still sense it there: that familiar dread, more focused now because of where she might be heading.
What are you doing? What are you doing?
The voice in her head fluttered like a bird. Her heartbeat mirrored it, keeping pace with the rising panic. She indicated, crossed the lanes, and almost flung the car down the turning towards Ellis.
What are you doing?
The exact opposite of what she should be. Dawson had been gabbling on the phone, but she’d understood enough. Whatever investigation he’d been on had run separately from her own, but the two were coming together now, converging at the same place.
At a farm.
That was where she was going – the very place her father had fought so hard to conceal from her over the years; the absolute definition of not being safe. The farm that was the basis for the story he’d told her, about a little girl who had been rescued and could now just play happily somewhere the flowers had colours. All of that had been to keep her from remembering the horrors of this place, and yet now that was what she was driving towards.
She tried to tell herself that – surely – there was no way Christopher Dawson could have located the farm she’d grown up on. That didn’t make any sense. According to the Webb file, Colin Price, along with other officers, had tried hard to find it but none of them had any idea where to even begin looking. So it was absurd to think Dawson had somehow stumbled onto her original family, or that something astonishingly obvious might have been missed.
But then, something obvious was often missed.
Which means you shouldn’t be doing this.
And yet, as much as the panic fluttered inside her, there was also something else, and it took her a moment to work out what. It surprised her, but there it was: an odd sense of exhilaration as she hit the outskirts of Ellis. DS Hannah Price. Daughter of DS Colin Price. Yes, that was a lie: a curtain built around a scared little girl to keep the real world out of sight. But the curtain was gone now and still here she was: driving straight towards the thing that scared her most, the source of that crawling dread. Maybe – just maybe – her father had given her something more than lies and illusions. Maybe he had also given her armour.
And it’s not your farm anyway.
It couldn’t be.
Ellis was exactly as small and rural as it looked on the map: little more than a row of old, conjoined cottages, a post office, pub and grocery shop. The road curled through the middle. Hannah drove past an old black church sitting in a yard dotted with gravestones, then she was out the other side. She glanced down at the map on the passenger seat.
One more turning and she would be on the right road.
It’s not your farm.
Well, she would find out soon enough. In fact, she would have been there already if, ever since the motorway, she hadn’t been stuck behind this old red van.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘Where is she?’
I’d rested the old garden fork against the wall beside the front door. Now, I had my hands on either side of Lorraine Haggerty’s upper arms. I was holding her gently but firmly, trying to be reassuring, resisting the urge to shake her. Suppressing the urgency
I felt. She was a victim here; I had to keep reminding myself of that, despite the fact Ally was here somewhere. I couldn’t even comprehend what she must have been through over the last … ten years.
Christ.
‘Lorraine. Where is she?’
But she wouldn’t look at me. She kept shaking her head, partly in confusion, partly in terror. It was as though she’d been living in a nightmare for so long that she’d forgotten it wasn’t real. As she spoke, she didn’t seem able to process what was happening.
‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘I am here. Where is she?’
‘No, you shouldn’t be here.’
‘The police are coming too. It’s going to be okay.’
But that was such a stupid, empty thing to say. Of course it wasn’t going to be okay. A long time ago, she and her son had been abducted. She’d been here ever since. If it’s a girl we’ll keep it, the old man had said. I had no doubt Kent Haggerty was dead – and that maybe she’d even seen it happen. I couldn’t begin to contemplate what she must have been through, but it was obviously not going to be okay ever again.
‘Where is she?’ I said. ‘Where is Ally?’
‘You shouldn’t be here. You need to leave now.’
I let go of her arms.
‘You shouldn’t be here.’
It wasn’t clear whether she was actually talking to me or just repeating the phrase to herself. Either way, she wasn’t in any position to help me, and I needed to leave her alone.
‘The police are coming,’ I said again. ‘It’s all over.’
Please, Hannah, I thought. Come down to investigate.
And please have a shitload of backup.
Lorraine was hugging her elbow, one hand to her mouth, but a look of horror passed over her face, as though she’d just remembered something.
‘Oh God.’
And then she ran back inside.
I picked up the garden fork and followed her. The front door led straight into a spartan living area. A staircase went up to the left – she was running up that – and an open doorway at the back of the room led into a fog-grey kitchen. I glanced around. In this room, there was another old settee and a circular red carpet lying half crumpled on the wooden floorboards. An old standing lamp in the corner was buzzing softly. Everything the light fell on looked dirty and gnarled and threadbare. I could almost smell the grain of the wood.