The Flower Girls Read online

  ‘But you were there, weren’t you?’ she says. ‘Even if you weren’t put on trial. You were there when Kirstie Swann was brutally murdered.’ Hillier leans back in her chair and considers the woman before her, wilted, soft, as if you could put your hand right through her, into her, and you wouldn’t feel a thing.

  ‘So you tell me, Hazel,’ she says. ‘Tell me why I shouldn’t think you’re the most likely person to be involved with the disappearance of Georgie Greenstreet?’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘Welcome back to The Daily Talk Show with Jeremy Williams. Today we’re having our annual – and, traditionally, rather contentious – New Year’s debate. This time we’re talking about justice, about sentencing, and about the application by notorious Flower Girl Laurel Bowman to challenge the recent decision of the parole board to keep her incarcerated. This is, I believe, the third application of hers to be released, which has – like the two previous – been denied.

  ‘She has never explained her actions at the time of Kirstie Swann’s murder. She has always remained silent as to what actually happened on that day. Nothing about this application will be of any comfort to Kirstie’s parents, Debbie and Rob, I’m sure. But what it does do is raise the possibility that – perhaps – Laurel Bowman has served her time and should be set free.

  ‘With me in the studio is Joanna Denton from the non-governmental organisation Bang to Rights and full-time campaigner for Justice for Kirstie. As Debbie Swann’s sister, Joanna was also, tragically, the aunt of little Kirstie.

  ‘Joanna, firstly, I must ask how you and the family have coped over the years with the impact of this terrible crime? How does your sister Debbie carry on, day after day? And particularly given all of the media interest in Laurel Bowman and the Flower Girls.’

  ‘Thanks, Jeremy. And thank you for having me on the show. I want to say that Debbie is an incredibly strong woman. She’s had to be. Everyone in our family – including and especially her – has learnt that the only way we will get justice for Kirstie is – not to forget our emotions, we could never do that – but to put them to one side, so that we can fight for our daughter and niece and ensure that Laurel Bowman can never prey on anyone else.’

  ‘I see. And so what is your view on this argument on Laurel Bowman’s behalf that the parole board are wrong to deny her release and an eighteen-year prison term is more than enough to have served? Particularly given that Laurel was only ten years old when she was first sent to prison. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘No.’ Joanna is adamant. ‘It’s not. Laurel Bowman is a murderer, and a person who takes the life of another human being should have to live out the rest of her days in prison. If you consider other child murderers with the same profile – Ian Brady, Ian Huntley, Myra Hindley – these individuals were all given life sentences that actually meant life. Why should Laurel Bowman be any different just because she was a child when she was convicted? Debbie and Rob are the ones who are serving the true life sentence. They have to live every day for the rest of their lives with the fact that their daughter was taken from them in the most horrific and brutal way. That’s a life sentence. If Laurel Bowman is released now, it would be a joke.’

  ‘I see your point,’ Jeremy counters into the microphone. ‘But some would say that when the crime was committed, Laurel’s life effectively ended at that point. She’s had her freedom curtailed for eighteen years. Isn’t it preferable for society that she now contributes to it? That she’s rehabilitated and joins us as a better person, rather than draining our taxes. What purpose does it serve, locking her up for the rest of her life?’

  ‘She’s not rehabilitated,’ Joanna points out sharply. ‘She’s been refused parole on her last three applications. She gets into fights, she’s aggressive. She’s beyond the pale, Jeremy. She’s never apologised, much less admitted what she’s done. And, frankly, I don’t want a person like that walking down my local high street. I’d rather keep her where I know she can’t hurt innocent people, in a place where she can be controlled.’

  ‘OK, some strong points there. Thanks, Joanna. Obviously a tough issue. So, we’re going to open this up to the phone lines. And I’ve got Derek from Sanderstead on the phone. Derek, what’s your view on all of this?’

  ‘Hi, Jeremy. Well, I think she should have been hung from the start.’

  Jeremy raises his eyebrows at Joanna, who remains impassive. ‘You’d have had Laurel Bowman hanged at ten years old?’ he says.

  ‘No,’ Derek says. ‘I’d have had her in prison and then hanged when she was old enough to understand properly what she’d done.’

  ‘Thanks, Derek. Joanna, do you agree with that? Is the death penalty the only appropriate punishment for crimes of this kind?’

  ‘I’m not going to discuss that here, Jeremy. A debate on the death penalty is a matter for a different forum. I’m here to talk specifically about Laurel Bowman and whether the time she serves in prison can ever make up for the terrible murder she committed.’

  ‘OK. But it’s obviously an emotive subject. Crimes involving children tug at our very heartstrings. Do you think that that should necessarily affect our attitudes to punishment and the rational way in which we deal with criminals and their crimes?’

  ‘Again, Jeremy, I’m not here to discuss crime and punishment in general. It is my view, and that of many, many other people, that Laurel Bowman has not been adequately punished for her culpability in Kirstie’s brutal murder. My niece was two years old. Kirstie didn’t get to live her life because of Laurel. She was horribly abused by her. She suffered beyond anything we can imagine. To put the perpetrator of that horror in a comfortable environment where she is cosseted, given a television, an iPad, an education, a swimming pool . . . All of those opportunities were denied to Kirstie. She is dead. Taken from all of us before she could live her life.’

  ‘So what would be the appropriate punishment then? Let’s move back to the phones. And I’ve got Carol from Leeds on the line. Carol, what’s your view on what Joanna is saying? Do you agree that Laurel Bowman has been punished adequately?’

  ‘No, I don’t, Jeremy. I lived in Grassington when poor little Kirstie was killed and I can tell you that we will never forget it. We were there, Joanna. I don’t know if you remember us? But I was so sorry for you all. We will never forget that poor lass or Debbie and Rob. We pray for them every day.

  ‘The Bowman girl is evil. She is wicked and vile and she should never be allowed to leave prison. What she did to that poor little child . . . I can’t even bear to think about it. We hunted for Kirstie when she went missing, the whole town did. We were out until midnight that night. It was heart-breaking. And to think that Laurel Bowman will be out and allowed to go and live amongst us makes my heart grow cold, it really does. I don’t care what some stupid people say about it. She is wicked through and through and I agree with your last caller. She should have been hanged.’

  ‘Thanks, Carol. Obviously you feel very passionately about this. So you were there when Kirstie went missing? What was that like? It must have been dreadful.’

  ‘Oh, it was, Jeremy. At first, we just thought she’d wandered off, you know. Maybe tripped over. Fallen asleep and woken up in the dark and couldn’t find her way home. But then time went on and you started to think, well, it doesn’t look good. It’s probably some paedo or weirdo. I couldn’t bear to think about it too much myself. But then …’

  ‘Joanna, you’re nodding at this. Do you want to jump in?’

  ‘Yes . . . hello, Carol. The reason we all feel so strongly about this is that Kirstie wasn’t taken by a weirdo, as you put it. She wasn’t taken by a sad old man. She was taken by a child. A child.’ Joanna pauses briefly. ‘And what makes a child do that? Lure a toddler away from her mother, lead her away, keep her hidden for hours and then subject her to systematic beating . . . lacerations . . . torture. The pathologist had to use Kirstie’s dental records to identify her, she had been beaten so badly. What does it take for a ten year o
ld to do that? What does it take?’

  ‘Evil,’ Carol says. ‘Pure evil.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The red bricks of the prison always make Toby Bowman think of a 1980s office block. He parks a few streets away and approaches it through a light drizzle, the January weather doing nothing to dispel the month’s miserable reputation.

  The reception area is always uncomfortably hot and, knowing this from experience, Toby removes his jacket to sit and wait in shirtsleeves with a stack of the files he invariably brings to read, using the time he will sit in this room waiting for Laurel as usefully as he can.

  On New Year’s Day the wait is unusually quick. Normally Toby wouldn’t be given permission to visit on a public holiday but he has been granted special dispensation due to his client’s upcoming court hearing. The air is stultified, thick with resentment, but the waiting area is unnaturally calm. Usually the room is packed with scowling inhabitants, slumping in their chairs, bulging plastic bags at their feet. Today, though, the grinding of the vending machine’s organs slams loudly into the quiet, normally filled with the low hum of chatter, of noses being blown, of children whingeing that they are bored.

  Toby tries to concentrate on the papers he has received from Laurel Bowman’s barrister concerning her recent challenge to the parole board. He reads rapidly, the papers resting on his – as he would admit – rounded stomach. He has dark half-moons of sweat under his armpits and his pate is shiny with moisture. His stomach rumbles but he refuses to buy a chocolate bar, forcing his brain to focus on the legal arguments in front of him, knowing that he has to lose two stone before his prostate can be operated on. So successful is his mindfulness that the guard has to call his name twice before he lifts his head.

  Quickly he gathers his papers, stuffing them into his satchel, and moves to the other side of the room where the security barrier stands like castle gates. He leaves his bag and jacket in a locker, placing his watch in a plastic tray, walking through the scanner without issue. The guard is sour-faced, ushering him through without recognition, despite the fact that Toby has come here pretty much every month for the last ten years. Then again, once people know he represents Laurel, he is generally given a cold shoulder, if not outright abuse. Toby proceeds through three sets of doors and into a musty white corridor, which seems to stretch to eternity. Halfway down is a framed poster of a sunset over water with the words Believe you can and you’re halfway there. Every time he visits, Toby wonders why the powers that be believe a motivational quote from Theodore Roosevelt will have any influence on the prisoners. He doubts they have ever heard of him and, even if they have, the fatuousness of the statement always drains a little more hope from Toby’s well.

  He waits for a buzzer to sound before the gunmetal-coloured door in front of him clicks open. He walks into a long narrow room filled with lines of small tables, a single chair to either side. Laurel is already at a table, waiting with her legs apart, her tattooed arms folded across her chest. As he walks over to her, a smile fixed on his face, he wonders, once again, whether she has the strength to survive what she is about to go through with this application.

  Laurel looks ghostly, dark shadows under her chocolate-brown eyes. Her blonde hair is scraped back into a tight knot on the top of her head. There are nicotine stains on her fingers, her eyes like a rifle trained on her lawyer.

  ‘All right, Toby?’ she says, leaning back in her chair, a grim smile on her face. She plays with an unlit cigarette in her fingers. Smoking is only allowed in the cells and the exercise yards. ‘Shit, isn’t it?’ Laurel says, looking down at the fag. ‘This is just when I want one the most. When I’m talking to you. Could pretend we were in a pub or something then,’ she snorts. ‘’Bout as close as I’ll ever get to one, of course.’

  Toby nods, settling himself into his seat. He doesn’t mention that smoking was outlawed in pubs ten years into Laurel’s sentence. ‘Happy New Year. How are you, L?’

  ‘Yeah, Happy New Year. Good one.’ She looks up at him from underneath her eyebrows. ‘I’m all right. Missing my four-poster bed as always.’

  ‘I came last month, did they tell you? For Christmas. But you were denied privileges, they said. What happened?’

  Laurel shrugs. ‘New girl on the block racked me up so they put me on basic.’

  ‘But they told me you were segregated?’ Toby says. ‘Not just confined to your cell.’

  Laurel looks down at the cigarette and twirls it between her third and fourth fingers. She is thin – too thin – Toby thinks, and he has a dull sensation that he knows what she is not telling him. He bites his lip and leans forward.

  ‘L, look,’ he says. But she doesn’t, her gaze is fixed downwards. ‘You’ve got to start helping yourself. If you keep getting into fights, it gets harder and harder for me to help you. Every time we make representations to the parole board, they just point to a long list of infractions and tell me that you’re still violent, you’re aggressive, you remain a risk.’

  ‘Well, maybe I am,’ Laurel says, her mouth a stubborn line.

  ‘You’re not,’ Toby sighs. ‘And it’s no use to anyone if you act like a sulky child. Is it, Lulu?’

  Laurel’s lips twitch at that.

  ‘You’re a bright young girl with a great deal to give,’ he says. ‘And I want to help you. It’s not right that you’re here. Stuck in this place.’ He scratches the back of his neck, aware of his body odour, his hunger and increasing frustration. God, he hates prison. ‘Have you started up the GCSE course again?’

  Laurel nods. ‘I’m a couple of weeks out because of . . . you know, the basic. But I’ll make it up. I’m sorry, Uncle Toby.’ She looks at him and her eyes soften, losing the brittle glare that normally shields her from friendship, from any attempt to bring her on side.

  ‘I want the world to see what I see, Lulu,’ Toby says. ‘I really do. We are appealing the parole board’s decision, as you know. And I think, this time, we’ve got good grounds for gaining permission for judicial review. It’s not just a shot in the dark. But a lot of people are still angry about the past.’ He shakes his head. ‘You should have heard Debbie Swann’s sister – that Joanna Denton from Bang to Rights – on the radio this morning. The woman is sadly deranged . . . But, look. You’ve got to work with me. Everything we’re trying to do will mean nothing if you’re acting up the whole time.

  ‘We’ve got to think about the next few weeks. The application for review. If the court grants us permission, we’ll have an oral hearing. We can bring in evidence then that proves you’re not such a risk as everyone keeps making out. You want that, don’t you?’

  Laurel sighs, putting the unlit cigarette in her mouth. ‘What’s the point? No one’s going to believe me anyway. They want me in here forever.’

  ‘I could lie. I could say no, but you know the truth as well as I do.’ He leans back. ‘But it’s worth the fight, isn’t it, L? Worth fighting for your freedom?’

  Laurel looks at him for a long moment. ‘Depends whether you think I deserve it or not, doesn’t it?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Wailing pierces the quiet of the hotel restaurant where Hillier and Hazel remain sitting opposite each other. A primeval sound that seems so animalistic it can only have originated from the snowy woodland outside. But the noise draws nearer as Hazel stiffens in her seat. The door, which had been so delicately closed by Max, is thrown wide open, banging against the wall and rattling the sepia photographs of the Devon coastline in times past.

  ‘Where is she?’ Jane Greenstreet roars at Hazel, eyes wild, sucking in oxygen in deep rasping breaths as she advances. ‘What have you done with her, you evil bitch?’ She pulls up then, noticing Hillier. ‘And you! You let this monster come here, to this place. Knowing who she is. What she’s done. You let her come here and take away my baby . . .’ Jane is sobbing now. She rubs one hand across her face, her eyes screwed up in pain. ‘How could you? How could you?’

  Hazel and Hillier are dumbstruck
. Behind Jane stands Max, open-mouthed and appalled. Next to him, Declan Greenstreet flexes his hands at his thighs, as if he wants to reach out to Jane but can’t. As if some invisible shield surrounds his wife, her grief armoured against intervention. Ellis is visible behind him, a look on his face that Hillier doesn’t like. He isn’t trying to stop Jane, he’s letting her vent her fury.

  ‘Mrs Greenstreet.’ Hillier gets up, but it is too little, too late. Jane leaps for Hazel, flailing hands grabbing at her hair, pulling her down onto the floor. She lies on top of her, pummelling her in the chest, digging her fingers into Hazel’s face, screaming at her: ‘Where is she? Where is she? Tell me, you bitch!’

  It takes a millisecond for Hillier and Ellis to react then they both dive to pull Jane off Hazel. Georgie’s mother is hysterical, her words incomprehensible, batting at the air with clenched fists. Hazel lies on her back, her arms wrapped over her head. She is breathing heavily but she says nothing. When Ellis finally manages to get his arms around Jane’s waist and hefts her away to the other side of the dining room, Hillier kneels down at Hazel’s shoulder.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asks. ‘Here, let me help you up.’

  Hazel lifts herself into a seated position then and removes her hands from her face, revealing the three long and bloody scratches that Jane Greenstreet has gouged on her forehead and cheeks.

  ‘What the hell were you playing at? Letting Mrs Greenstreet come anywhere near me while I was interviewing Hazel?’ Hillier asks Ellis.

  ‘How was I to know?’ he responds sulkily. ‘You didn’t tell me we had the sister of one of the world’s most infamous murderers staying at Balcombe Court.’