The Flower Girls Page 3

  The policewoman sniffs and dismisses her for now, stashing her papers away, her mind still whirring with what she has gleaned from the interviews tonight.

  One by one the lights are switched off, first downstairs and then above, as the guests all go to bed with tired eyes open, staring into the dark, wondering about the missing little girl and where she might be.

  Ellis puts snow chains on the car and he and Hillier drive off into the Devon countryside. She doesn’t look back, as the pale outline of the hotel fades into the ghostly snow-filled night.

  She will return first thing in the morning.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  New Year’s Day in South London is slow. Coffee and more coffee and a shower turned blistering hot and then freezing cold. Joanna Denton bites her lip, shutting her eyes to the physical sensation, welcoming the pain and discomfort. This is what will make the hangover dissipate. Caffeine and agony.

  Last night in the club she’d drunk tequila shot after tequila shot, trying to reach that place in her head where she could forget everything – as ‘Auld Lang Syne’ so aptly suggests. But the buzz had eluded her as she’d stood on the periphery of the club where her friends were jumping like jacks to House of Pain and she’d thought, Yeah, that sums it up.

  So she’d left the club. Walked alone on the Embankment in shoes soaked with booze, breathed in the frosty London air and watched the lights of the city burn. As she’d left the river, she’d had the usual thoughts. The fear that her life was meagre in contrast to that of her friends. Where their lives gush with invitations – to parties and dinners; gallery openings; children’s birthdays; beach holidays – Joanna merely subsists. Day after day, rousing herself to do battle with better-paid lawyers in nicer offices with, unlike her, a supportive partner at home who listens sympathetically to tales of their day whilst pouring endless amounts of red wine.

  Where was the joy for her? she’d asked herself for the millionth time, her feet sore and cold from the walk. For a brief moment, glancing up at a broken street light, she had felt like crying. Where was the sense that her life had meaning? That it fed something inside her, apart from the anger she had clad in armour for all these years?

  She had wiped a hand across her cheeks crossly. What was the point of crying? She can’t forget her job. Can’t go and do something painless, something mindless, because always the loop returns to the fact that she can’t let it go. She can’t ever stop thinking about those people who leave so much pain in their wake, so much chaos. Those criminals who, in their selfishness – or their madness – reach inside another human being and rearrange the configuration of their spirit. Change them indelibly so that they are never the same soul as they were before it happened.

  At last Joanna had arrived at her flat, wanting desperately to sleep but unable to block out thoughts of the stack of paperwork she could envisage waiting on her desk at the office or the memory of what drives her every day.

  The image of two-year-old Kirstie Swann.

  Her niece.

  Brutally murdered in the gully of a long-disused canal. Beaten to death and then left to rot while her killer went home for dinner.

  Joanna’s always thinking about her.

  Kirstie’s killer.

  And how she will never be allowed to leave prison while Joanna Denton has anything to do with it.

  She dresses quickly, pulling on jeans and flat boots; an old university hoodie over a plain white T-shirt. Her only concession to vanity is to brush her long brown hair and tie it up in a bun, but then she is out of the door and striding for the Northern line back up towards Borough, where the Bang to Rights office is situated. As it is New Year’s Day, everything is shut up and quiet. The café where she normally buys her daily croissant is closed and the Tube is empty, seats stretching beside her filled with nothing more than the ghosts of the usual thousands of commuters.

  Joanna reaches the office after she’s found an open Pret A Manger at Borough Tube and bought another coffee and an apple. She can’t stomach anything more. The tequila from last night still churns inside her, making her feel as though she could throw up at any moment.

  She doesn’t expect Will to be there, but he is. The door is unlocked and his bike is blocking the tiny corridor of the small space they rent. Joanna and Will met at Manchester University over twenty years ago in their first contract law tutorial. In the Union bar they had become friends, drinking pints of beer and planning their future. They would both leave their childhood homes in the North and come to seek their fortunes in London. Will would work for a City law firm, learning how to merge and acquire, and – as Joanna would point out – survive on minimum sleep while making money for a bunch of men in suits who would barely know his name. She, on the other hand, would train at a high-street firm that specialised in immigration and criminal law, earning approximately a quarter of what Will would be paid.

  Joanna would tease him that he would become a sell-out, wasting his life lining the pockets of people who didn’t deserve to benefit from his brain cells.

  ‘And what about you?’ he’d ask, fixing her with a stare. ‘How are you going to change the world, stuck out in Shepherd’s Bush helping a bunch of crims?’

  Joanna wouldn’t answer this but sat silently instead, curled up on the ratty leather sofa, a cigarette dangling over the edge of one arm, ash lengthening until it dropped into the ashtray on the floor.

  Then, just before they graduated, she had received the telephone call that had changed her plans forever. As intended, she had moved down to London to work.

  But Joanna did not become a lawyer.

  Throughout the entire trial of the killer of her niece, Joanna had sat holding her sister’s hand, making sure she ate enough; helping her to stand and leave the courtroom when it all got too much. And after that, she had begun working for Bang to Rights.

  It was a tiny organisation that lobbied the government on behalf of victims. BTR liaised with Victim Support, it mediated between victims and the police, and it campaigned tirelessly for longer sentences proportionate to the crimes committed. Eventually, Joanna’s old boss had retired and she had taken on the running of the lobbying group herself. In that time, Will had married and, upon the birth of his daughter, resigned from his City law firm and come to work with Joanna. It meant that he took home far less money, but he insisted that he would at least be able to see more of his family and do so with a clear conscience.

  Old habits die hard, though, and a workaholic nature is hard to tame.

  ‘But I’m not here for long,’ he says as he hears Joanna jogging up the stairs to the minuscule office they share. ‘Lucy’s at her parents’ house today with Jemima so I thought I’d put in an hour or two before heading there for lunch.’

  ‘I would have got you a coffee if I’d known,’ Joanna replies. ‘Thanks, Will. There’s so much to do,’ she continues, looking round at the piles of paper on every available surface. ‘We really need a secretary.’

  ‘Fat chance on our budget. How was last night?’

  ‘Oh, all right. Too much booze.’ She grimaces and puts her coffee to her lips. ‘There isn’t enough caffeine in the world today, frankly.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stay in bed then?’ Will asks, knowing what the answer will be. ‘One day isn’t going to hurt.’

  Joanna sits down at her desk and reaches across to turn on her computer. ‘Yes, it will,’ she says. ‘Remember Mo Farah, William. Let us always remember Mo.’

  Will grins, turning back to his own screen. Joanna had once read that the Olympian Mo Farah always trained on Christmas Day because, he said, other athletes would take it as a holiday, meaning he would be one day ahead of them in training.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve got that radio show today. Remember? The New Year’s debate on justice and sentencing?’

  Joanna takes a gulp of coffee before clicking on to the BBC website and then exclaims, sucking in a breath. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she says in a voice like lead. She swings the computer scr
een around so that Will can see. It’s the third headline on the site, after the announcement of the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list and a bus crash in Wolverhampton. Joanna’s eyes scan Will’s face as he reads what’s before him.

  ‘Fuck,’ he says at last.

  ‘Yep,’ she answers, rubbing her palms over her face before staring up at the ceiling. ‘My thoughts exactly.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘I think we should leave,’ Hazel says. Their bedroom is glaring white from the fresh snow that covers the ground outside. ‘There’s a poem,’ she says, running her hands over her face. ‘I can’t remember who wrote it, but it’s stuck with me. It says the snow is winter folding her linen. But it’s not, is it, Jonny? It may as well be a pit of writhing snakes. Where we are. Now, I mean.’ She turns round to look at him, propped up in bed, bare-chested, sleep-tousled. ‘We’re stuck here and the snakes are coiling round our ankles. It just seems crazy to stay when they’re going to say it’s me, pin it on me. Say that I’m involved at least. And . . .’ She looks at him, panic shadowing her face. ‘I want to go. Get out of here.’

  ‘We can’t,’ he answers, his eyes fixed on hers.

  The early morning is quiet, the winter sun just above the horizon. The sounds of the hotel are muffled: the occasional clang of cutlery on glass, the aroma of coffee percolating up through the floor. The air has that stillness, an atonal hum of peace, which lengthens languidly before it is overtaken by the clamour of industry and the brio of a day that is gathering momentum.

  ‘If we leave,’ Jonny says, ‘we look guilty. It’s obvious. We have to stay and see what happens. See if the girl is found.’

  Hazel extends her arms to him, splays her palms as if presenting him with the room. ‘But all of this, Jonny – all of this will be gone. You don’t understand. You haven’t been there. I have. Once people know . . . all of this – all of my life as I know it now – will be taken away from me.’

  Jonny breathes in deeply, pushes back the covers and gets out of bed. He pulls Hazel towards him. Her arms drop down by her sides, limp as a doll’s.

  ‘You can’t hide forever,’ he says into her hair.

  ‘But this,’ she says again, pushing him away, ‘isn’t the way. With a girl missing it’s too similar. To before. They’ll attack me – attack us. They’ll say it was me.’

  ‘But we know it isn’t.’

  Hazel looks at him. ‘It doesn’t matter. Once the press come – and they will – they’ll be like a pack of dogs.’ Her voice begins to rise. ‘You don’t know what it was like. For my parents. For all of us. They won’t let it go.’

  ‘They will.’ Jonny’s voice is firm. ‘They’ll have to. There’s nothing to link you to this girl, to what’s happened here. It’s just . . .’ He grabs a handful of his hair in frustration. ‘I do accept that it’s appalling timing. I’m sorry.’

  Hazel manages a small smile for him. It’s all she can do as she realises that Jonny is on a different path from her. He is hoping that this is an aberration, something that will pass in the night like a fever. He doesn’t see that nothing will be the same for them ever again. ‘Oh God, Jonny,’ she says and turns her back on him, looking once more out onto the snow. ‘God help us now.’

  Max is up too, sitting at the desk in his room, eyes glazed as he faces his laptop. He slept badly last night, staring up at the dark ceiling, thinking about Alison and his girls.

  And Georgie.

  Is she out there? he kept wondering. Huddled near the rocks, trying to get warm. Or is she being held somewhere against her will? Little Georgie, crying for her mother, not understanding why she’s been taken away from her. Eventually he had got up and paced his room. Memories of Polly and Grace as babies, as toddlers, chubby, built like tanks, scattered through his mind. That utter dependence, no concept of fear, of any insecurity. He remembers them waddling around, big-eyed and messy-haired. Their smell of Johnson’s baby powder, dried milk, lavender shampoo.

  Now it is light and the night before seems like a dream. The New Year has come in less like a lamb than a phantom, a reckoning over a line drawn in the deep snow banked outside. Max can hear the sound of shovels as staff clear a path from the front door down the driveway. They are trying to lead the hotel back to reality, exorcising the spectres that floated above its medieval walls last night.

  Balcombe Court is already filled with ghosts. Max has done his research. Headless coachmen; gluttonous gargoyles feasting on the entrails of maidens; lost loves of dead sailors; hung, drawn and quartered pirates. It has them all.

  And now it has the spirit of Georgie Greenstreet. A half-spirit as yet, calling to them from wherever she is, alive or dead or somewhere in between. Max rubs his face and takes a long gulp of instant coffee made from the tiny kettle in his room before swigging from a bottle of Gaviscon, trying to quell the constant heartburn he has felt for weeks now. He has to work. He has fifteen hundred words to write today, missing child or not. His deadline looms just the same as it did yesterday and if he wants to make it back to Alison and his girls by the middle of January, he has to finish this book.

  He opens up the document and stares at the last paragraph he typed yesterday lunchtime. He had shut down the computer and then gone to the dining room to stretch his legs and order a sandwich. He had seen Georgie, sitting with her parents attacking a plate of spaghetti bolognese. The dining room was fairly empty. The only others in there were the people he had seen again last night, huddled together on the window seat. The pretty woman he now thinks of as Ingrid Bergman, and her partner and the teenage girl.

  Max frowns and then closes his eyes. Where has he seen that woman before? Maybe in London when he was working there a few years ago for a literary magazine? A friend of a friend? He prods his fingers into his forehead, straining to remember, before sighing and giving up. Reminding himself that memory never works to order, he turns his thoughts back to The Buccaneer’s Daughter and the scene he was struggling with the day before, where Constance Mandeville discovers that she is bound in marriage to Jago D’Aubert despite her love for Santo Perowne.

  Max begins typing, his lips moving as he does, writing the scene again from the beginning, changing the location to the top of the cliffs where Santo climbs down to his ship, abandoning Constance after hearing of her betrothal. As he climbs, Constance – in her grief and despair – tosses a flower down after him. She chooses a primrose, the county flower of Devon.

  Primrose.

  Max’s hands hover above the keyboard, his whole body frozen as the memory ricochets back to mind at last.

  Minimising his manuscript, he brings up the internet and does a rapid search.

  Of Primrose.

  And murder.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Hillier and her team arrive in a cacophony of slamming car doors and the crunch of boots on snow. She is the first into the hotel, removing her heavy black jacket and gloves as she steps into the fug of the reception hall.

  The panelled walls of Balcombe are oppressive today, the lights on the Christmas tree glitter in the gloom, but Hillier doesn’t register any of this. She heads straight upstairs to where she will find Georgie Greenstreet’s parents, calling to the receptionist to let Mr Lamb know the police have arrived.

  The hotel is doing its best to maintain an air of normality. Breakfast has been served as usual and guests are permitted to move around freely, although the severity of the weather restricts what they are able to do outside.

  ‘People are asking to leave.’ Mr Lamb appears, looking harried, calling after Hillier, scurrying behind her as she makes her way along one of the upstairs corridors. ‘What should I tell them?’

  Hillier stops and turns on her heel. ‘They can’t check out yet,’ she replies. ‘Let me talk to Jane Greenstreet, fill her in on what’s happened overnight. Not that much has,’ she concedes. ‘But there are a couple of people I want to talk to again and I don’t want them leaving before I do. So just hold fire, OK?’

  He nods a
nd backs away. ‘Do tell Mrs Greenstreet that she is welcome to order anything from the menu. On the house of course.’

  A moment later Hillier is knocking on the Greenstreets’ door, opening it slowly as Declan Greenstreet calls for her to enter. His wife is sitting on the four-poster bed, her knees curled up to her chest. The curtains are half-drawn and Hillier can just make out the shape of the couple’s youngest child asleep in his cot.

  Seeing the door open, Jane Greenstreet swings her legs off the bed in Hillier’s direction. Her face is wild and tear-stained, her hair coming loose from a raggedy knot at her neck.

  ‘Have you found her?’ she blurts hoarsely.

  ‘Sssshhhh,’ Declan says, gesturing to the cot, but Jane doesn’t listen, crossing the room to where Hillier stands.

  ‘Have you?’

  Hillier tilts her head. ‘I’m sorry. The coastguard sent the helicopters up at first light. You can probably hear them. The boats are out too and we’ve got search parties down on the beach. We’re doing everything we can, I promise, Mrs Greenstreet.’

  ‘It’s been too long. She’ll be cold and hungry and frightened . . .’ Jane’s voice rises, her fingers clawing at her face. ‘I can’t bear it. I can’t think of her like that. I just can’t . . .’

  Hillier glances at Declan, who stands pale and immobile, apparently unable to approach his wife and comfort her. ‘You’ve seen a doctor?’ she asks him quietly.

  He nods, rousing himself from his trance and moving over to Jane to lead her back to the bed. ‘One of the other guests came up. They’ve given her some pills.’

  ‘I know it’s hard,’ Hillier says, glancing over at the cot. ‘But you need to look after yourselves and Charlie. Try and rest. We are doing everything we can,’ she repeats firmly. ‘Please trust us. We know what we’re about.’

  ‘What about one of those child rescue alert things?’ Declan asks in a low voice. ‘Have you done one of those?’