Black Flowers (32 page)

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-putt
ing 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.

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.

‘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.