Black Flowers Read online

  Also by Steve Mosby

  The Third Person

  The Cutting Crew

  The 50/50 Killer

  Cry For Help

  Still Bleeding

  BLACK FLOWERS

  Steve Mosby

  For Lynn and Zack

  Contents

  Also by Steve Mosby

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Two

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  One Year Later

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks, as always, go to my agent Carolyn Whitaker, and to Genevieve Pegg, Natalie Braine, Gabby Nemeth and all the other people at Orion who have worked so hard on this book and the others. Thanks also to my friends and family, and to all the readers who have been in touch over the last few years with kind words about my writing. Also to Spinetingler magazine for inviting me to write the short story that gave me the idea for this novel.

  Most of all, thanks to Lynn for putting up with me and to Zack for being wonderful: this book is dedicated to both of you, with love and appreciation for everything.

  It does not happen like this.

  If there’s one thing that Detective Sergeant Michael Sullivan has learned during twelve years in the police force, it’s that little girls do not simply appear. In his experience, the world does not work that way; all he has ever seen, and all he continues to see, is the opposite, the slow disintegration of things that are good and right.

  People vanish – especially children. Sometimes they disappear in gradual increments, the decent, hopeful parts of them casually chipped away. Other times, those parts are poked out, suddenly and violently. And occasionally people simply vanish entirely. But however it occurs, those people do not come back, especially the children. Or at least not in any way you would want them to.

  No, the world as Michael Sullivan knows it – it only takes.

  It is early afternoon, September 1977. Faverton is a sprawl of a holiday town on the east coast. The old village on the hilltop spreads down cobbled streets all the way to the sea front, with its penny arcades and cafés. The road here is embedded with brown, metal tramlines. A slatted wooden promenade stretches along the front, dotted with curled, green benches, wire-mesh bins and beige ice-cream vans. Families stroll slowly along, sometimes approaching the waist-high stone wall and looking out over the beach. The sand is packed flat and hard, broken by occasional fluffed-up patches where a child has dug. In the distance, the grey sea crumples and folds beneath a white sky bevelled with gulls.

  It is an ordinary day with no hint of magic to it. And yet, in spite of Sullivan’s experience, it happens like this.

  There is an empty stretch of promenade. A tram trundles past. It is so old, and the metal carriage so frail, that you would expect the antennae above, where they track the overhead electrical cables, to crackle and spark, but in fact the only noise is the continuous weary crunch of the metal discs the vehicle grinds through town on. It is mostly empty, and reminiscent of a butler going about daily tasks in a household where all the children have left. The driver, behind the smeared front window, is holding the controls with stiff, unmoving arms, while a conductor waits at the open back corner of the tram, a ticket machine strapped to his chest like a tiny accordion.

  The tram does not stop. Nobody gets on or off. But when it has passed, the stretch of promenade is no longer empty.

  A little girl is standing there.

  She has long, dirty-blonde hair, pulled into rough bunches that rest to either side on her tiny shoulders. She is wearing a blue-and-white checked dress and delicate shoes: both look like something a doll would wear. Her eyes are ringed with darkness and sadness. In front of her, she clasps a small handbag. It is pale brown, leather, and far too large for her – an adult’s bag – but she clutches it tightly, as though she has somehow had it for a very long time and it is intensely important to her.

  The little girl stands there.

  Waiting.

  And that is how it happens. She appears on the promenade as though from nowhere: as if the world shifted in its sleep, then woke with an idea so important, which needed to be told so desperately, that the idea became real. And now that idea is standing there, waiting to be discovered.

  Waiting for someone to claim it.

  *

  Sullivan squats down in front of the little girl. His starched trouser leg forms a sharp contour up from his knee and over his thigh. Her small eyes follow him down. Their faces are now at the same height, and he smiles at her, trying to be reassuring.

  ‘Hello there. What’s your name?’

  The little girl does not respond. The expression on her face is like a shield. She is far too serious for a girl her age and Sullivan knows immediately that something isn’t right here.

  He looks away for a moment. The woman who noticed the little girl and alerted him is standing, slightly hesitantly, to one side. She is middle-aged, holding her own handbag in much the same way as the girl. Sullivan nods his thanks to her – It’s okay; I’ll take care of this – and then turns his attention back to the child as the woman walks away.

  He doesn’t know, at this point, that he’ll need to talk to the woman again and attempt to establish the exact circumstances of the girl’s appearance here. Although he recognises something is wrong, the idea hasn’t quite settled and become real. He’s still thinking: she’s lost her parents. That’s all.

  ‘My name’s Mike,’ he says. ‘What’s yours?’

  Again, the girl does not reply. But after a moment of staring back at him, she breaks his gaze and looks away, off to one side. And she does say something, but he can’t make out what. It’s as though she’s talking to a ghost, or asking advice from an imaginary friend.

  Can I talk to him? Is it safe?

  ‘What was that?’ he says.

  She keeps looking away. Listening now.

  Christ, Sullivan thinks – because he’s just realised something else: it really does look like her. Anna Hanson, the little girl who was murdered last year. They are both a similar age, about six years old, and Anna had the same straggly blonde hair. The recognition, coupled with the oddness of the girl’s behaviour, makes Sullivan shiver slightly. He has the odd sensation that this could actually be her, returned to her grieving, terrified parents.

  Of course, it can’t be, not least because Anna Hanson has already been returned. Her body washed up on the beach: tiny, grey and empty. The similarity is genuine, though, and he feels a sudden and urgent need to look after this little girl and keep her safe.

  She looks back at him. In all his twelve years of experience, he has never seen such despair.

  ‘It’s okay
,’ he says. ‘I’m a policeman. Have you lost your mummy and daddy?’

  ‘My daddy.’

  Her voice is impossibly delicate.

  ‘Well, I’m sure we can find him quickly—’

  But he stops. From the flash of terror that appears on the little girl’s face, it’s obvious that this is not what she wants to hear. Her small body begins trembling slightly.

  Instinctively, without considering how she’ll react, Sullivan reaches out and rests a gentle hand on her shoulder, feeling the rough fabric of the dress against his palm. The little girl almost flinches, but doesn’t. The fear is overridden by an innate, desperate need to be comforted. It is as though she hasn’t been touched with kindness or reassurance for quite some time, if ever, and it requires bravery – a leap of faith – for her to believe such a thing is even possible any more.

  ‘It’ll be okay, honey,’ Sullivan says.

  Again, he glances around. There are a few people watching the scene, but most are simply going about their business, either oblivious or confident that nothing is wrong. After all, a policeman is in control of the situation. It is his job to look after people, and he will. That is the assumption.

  Sullivan is about to turn back to the little girl and try to do exactly that, when he sees the man and instead he goes still.

  Clark Poole.

  The old man is walking awkwardly along the pavement across the street, on the far side of the tramlines. He is slightly hunched, and his cheap coat is stiff with grease over the slight hump of his spine, as though age is gradually forming his whole back into a boil that’s soft and wet at the centre. His head is bald and pale, but thin white hair clings to the side, while his face, out of sight now, is wide and unkind. Poole walks with a bound wicker cane that Sullivan suspects, but can’t prove for sure, the old man doesn’t really need.

  Tap tap.

  At first, Sullivan doesn’t think Poole has seen him. But the old man pauses outside the café, then turns to stare back at him. Poole smiles and gives Sullivan a nod – as he so often does; as he so enjoys doing – before turning back and continuing on his way. Tap, tap. People move for him, more from instinct than manners, and Sullivan fights down the familiar urge to dash across and grab hold of him. If he started shaking the old man, he knows he would never be able to stop.

  So he forces himself to watch the old man amble away. Was Poole involved in this somehow? It seems unlikely. After all, he didn’t return little girls, did he? He took them away, carefully and precisely, so that it was possible to know but impossible to prove. Regardless, Sullivan knows where the old man lives. He searched the flat after Anna went missing. But there have been times since when he has parked up a little way down the street, in the early hours of the morning, and spent time wondering what he might be capable of doing to the old man.

  Sullivan turns back to the little girl.

  He notices the handbag again. It is far too grown-up for her. It looks dirty now, as though it has been left outside somewhere, but he has the sense that it might once have been expensive.

  ‘Can I have a look in there, please?’

  She hesitates.

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ he says. ‘I promise. You can have it back again afterwards.’

  Still unsure. But she does pass it to him.

  ‘Thank you.’

  The zip is stiff: as he suspected, crumbs of dirt block the teeth. When he finally opens it and looks inside, he is expecting to find a small purse, handkerchiefs – keys, perhaps – but the handbag is almost entirely empty.

  Except for … a flower.

  Sullivan reaches carefully in and lifts it free. The stem is fractured and half broken; the petals, which at some point have been pressed, are grey-black.

  His fingers tingle.

  And there is that feeling again, only now far stronger than before. Something is wrong here. Sullivan looks at the girl’s dirty hair, the odd dress. For the first time, he notices there is the slightest hint of a bruise on her cheek.

  The little girl says, ‘Jane.’

  ‘Is that your name?’

  She shakes her head, then motions almost imperceptibly at the flower.

  ‘That’s Jane. She doesn’t talk to me any more.’

  Sullivan stares at her. He does not understand what she means, of course – not yet – but the answer is strange enough to send a chill shivering across his back. The next tram is rattling down the street; he can hear it growing louder. And in front of him, the little girl’s fragile resolve finally disappears entirely and she begins to cry.

  She says, ‘Please help me.’

  Part One

  Chapter One

  My father was a writer. I wanted to be one too, so I would have been thinking about him that day anyway, even without what happened later. But for most of the morning, I’d been thinking about goblins and changelings.

  Well – and students too, obviously.

  It was nearly lunchtime now. I walked round my desk and raised one of the slats in the blinds. Outside, an angle of midday sunlight cut across the flagstones below my office. A stream of new students was flowing past. They looked almost impossibly young. The boys all seemed to be dressed for the beach, wearing shorts and Tshirts. The girls wore floaty summer dresses, enormous sunglasses and flip-flops that slapped at the stone. It was Freshers Week 2010, so the whole campus was one big party. For most of the morning, I’d been able to hear music thudding from the Union building, more of a constant heartbeat than an actual song.

  I allowed the slat to click down, then returned to my desk. In comparison to the bright, carnival atmosphere out there, my office was small, drab and grey. The air in here smelled of dusty box files and the rusted metallic radiator that underlined the window. I’d wedged the door open. Ros – my boss – was down at the sports hall handling module admissions, and the common room was deserted. Aside from the thump of the music, and an occasional muffled bang echoing down the corridor, the only real sound in here was the electrical hum of my old monitor.

  Right now, I had two files open. The first was the student records database I’d been stringing out for weeks now, pretending it was far more difficult to construct than it actually was, while the second was the short story I’d been working on all morning instead.

  I scanned through it again now.

  By my standards, it had turned out pretty weird. At the beginning, a young guy finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. It’s an accident: they just got carried away in the moment, then grinned about it afterwards. ‘That was stupid, wasn’t it?’ they say. ‘It won’t happen to us.’ But it does happen to them.

  The girlfriend decides she can’t have a termination and the guy accepts that, even though it’s not what he wants. He tries to be good, but as time goes on he resents her decision more and more – and then he starts to notice hooded gangs huddled on street corners. They’re watching him, following him. He gradually imagines the existence of a shadowy crime lord – a kind of Goblin King figure – who is reaching out to him. Like the goblins of fairy tales, these urban equivalents will be more than happy to steal his child away: all the man has to do is wish for it to happen. Eventually, selfishly, he does.

  For two days afterwards, nothing happens – enough time for him to doubt it was real – and then the pregnancy mysteriously disappears.

  The story ends years later, with the main character encountering one of the hooded minions on a street corner and recognising enough in the boy’s face to know it’s his son.

  Pretty weird, Neil.

  It was, but I sort of liked it. And anyway, I was procrastinating too much. Weird or not, successful or not, it was as done as it ever would be. So I saved the Word file, and opened a quick email to my father.

  Hi Dad

  Hope you’re okay – I know it’s been a couple of weeks, so I’m guessing everything’s going all right? Meant to be in touch. Failed miserably.

  Got some news, but in the meantime I wanted you to have a look at this. I don
’t know whether it’s any good or not, but maybe you can have a read if you get the chance? I’ll give you a bell properly soon and we can chat.

  Love always,

  Neil

  I took a deep breath and pressed send.

  Oddly, I felt nervous. My father had published twenty novels over the years and was always honest about the technical side of my writing – that was why I sent him things in the first place. It wasn’t that; I wasn’t quite sure what it was. Just that, as I watched the email indicator circling, I wished I could take it back.

  Then it changed to a tick.

  That was that. My story had gone out into the world.

  Forget about it.

  When I checked my watch, it was close to twelve. So I minimised the email program, locked up the office and headed out.

  Ally was working at Education now, but today she had a conference on at the Union Hall building. It was on the far side of campus, so I had to follow the throng of students right through the thudding heart of everything.

  The combination of sunshine and the time of year made it feel like the first day of a festival. Outside the Union, the grass was bright and sunlit, and everyone seemed to be sitting around with plastic glasses of foamy beer. The tarmac around the steps was a multicoloured carpet of discarded flyers; speakers were balanced on the upstairs window ledge, pumping out music. A skinny boy in sunglasses and a pork-pie hat was standing up there with his foot on the ledge, shouting what sounded like static and occasional words through a megaphone, haranguing passers-by.