Flowers for the Dead (5 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

~ Rose Of Sharon ~

Consumed By Love

PRESENT DAY

Blue lights blaze, a siren piercing the summer air and leaving behind a tinnitus impression. Mike watches the squad car nose its way through the heavy congestion that always builds up around the traffic lights outside the station, and wonders where it is heading.

He will find out if it is anything interesting when he goes back inside, but currently he is busy having a sneaky fag, making the most of not only the rain stopping but the August sun popping out briefly. There is a small patch of grass nearby, and he stares at it absently, watching a bumblebee hypnotically moving from clover flower to clover flower. He looks without seeing, though, lost in thought over a case he is working. His wedding ring twinkles in the sunlight occasionally as he brings his cigarette up for another drag.

Ring! Ring!

Mike visibly jumps then smiles at himself as he fishes his mobile from his pocket. It is Simon.

“You working? Or you all right to talk?” his friend asks after they have exchanged greetings.

“Fag break. Just wondering if I can hand a case over to Trading Standards. We’ve a load of counterfeit goods flooding the area at the moment.”

“Hah, don’t blame you for trying to get rid. Wish I could get rid of Operation Blaze.”

“Still no break through?”

“Nope.”

“What about the driver of the light-coloured Ford Focus seen in the area? It sounded promising.”

“Tracked down the driver and eliminated him from our enquiries.”

Mike takes another gentle drag, then stubs the cigarette out on the wall he is leaning against. The brick is blackened from such use. He knows that right now what his friend wants is someone to talk to who is nothing to do with his case, so that he can unload some of his frustration. In front of his team, Simon must remain confident so that they continue to have faith in him but the pressure of leading a murder investigation is great. So Mike stays silent, allowing Simon to fill it.

“Detectives have tracked the movements of several hundred registered sex offenders within our jurisdiction to determine the individuals’ whereabouts on the day of Julie Clayton’s death.”

Mike nods to himself. Although she had not been raped there was a strong chance the attack had a sexual element to it. But the detective sergeant’s instincts are tingling, telling him Simon has more to say.

“You worried he’ll strike again?” he probes.

Simon sighs down the phone. “Worried he already has. Obviously, we’re looking into the vic’s background: friends, family, lovers, colleagues, the usual suspects, just in case it is a straightforward case. But… I know I don’t need to tell you to keep it under your hat, but it looks like we may have a serial killer on our hands.”

“Rare,” breathes Mike.

“Rare, and a bloody nightmare.”

Both men know that if it is a serial killer the chances are there will be nothing at all connecting the women. That sort of murderer tends to pick victims at random. The police’s only chance of catching him is him killing again, and again, and again, until he slips up or they get a lucky break.

“The MO is fairly unique, with him cutting off the victim’s lips,” continues Simon. “So we’ve been scouring the country for similar open cases. Turns out there have been a few. A Sandra Yang, killed in Sheffield, in April 2012. Then two in 2013: Alex Deane, from Skegness in Lincolnshire, murdered in the February, and Sharon Humphreys in Wimbledon, South London, in August. Lips removed every time. We’re looking for connections between the women, but so far there doesn’t seem to be anything. I’ve eighty people on this, but…”

But it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Without something definitive, some firm physical evidence or a way of connecting the women, all anyone can do is wait for the killer to strike again.

Mike cannot help thanking his lucky stars that his biggest case right now involves fake iPads, and that he is merely a spectator in the investigation into Julie Clayton’s death.

***

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

The door was only slightly ajar, but it was enough for the sounds of the argument to float through to six-year-old Adam, who was curled up on the floor, face pressed to the crack.

“He barely says two words! How can you say he doesn’t need help? It’s not normal,” said his gran. She wasn’t shouting, simply speaking, but there was an authority in her voice that made it carry.

“And I suppose that’s my fault, is it? Graeme, how can you stand there and let her accuse me of being a bad mother?”

“She isn’t saying that…” his dad began, but got cut off.

“Oh, of course you’d side with her.”

“Bickering isn’t helping anyone,” Ada said. “Adam should be seen by a doctor or child expert or something.”

But his mum was not listening. Adam could hear her starting to cry gently. “Of course it’s my fault. I’m a terrible mother. I just don’t know how to be a mother, I never had anyone to learn from.”

Her voice grew muffled and Adam knew it would be because his father was holding her, comforting her.

“I-I was pushed around from pillar to post, different foster carers, different homes,” she snuffled.

“This isn’t about you…” said Ada.

“It is; it’s about my parenting skills. I know I don’t have any. I was so young when I had Adam. But I’ll try harder, I’ll…” The words disappeared into sobs.

“Mum, leave it for now. You’re upsetting Sara.”

“For goodness sake, Graeme, this is about your son.”

“Mum.” Adam’s dad’s voice was sharp. He realised it, started again. “I’m sorry. You’re right, we need to pay a bit more attention to Adam, but now is not the time to discuss it. Sara’s tired and upset.”

“And a little tipsy, I’d wager.”

The room disintegrated then into a wall of shouting. Adam couldn’t make out a word until his mum’s shriek rose above everything else.

“I want her out of my house now, Graeme. Right now!”

Adam closed his door, clambered into bed, and cried beneath his duvet.

When he woke the next morning there was no sign of Gran, but his mum was in a wonderful mood. She made him his favourite breakfast of pancakes with maple syrup, humming merrily the whole time.

But that night he heard the floorboard squeak, even though Daddy was home. He kept his eyes shut so hard that his whole body was clenched, but still it did not fool his mother.

She climbed under the Winnie the Pooh duvet with him and reached quickly into his pyjamas in that way that always made him feel squirmy and wrong.

He did not know the words for what was being done to him, but he could not remember a time when it did not happen. It was a part of his life: a horrible part, but there was nothing he could do anything about.

Sometimes she did things to him, and that was bad enough. Worst, somehow, was when she made him do things to her. It was harder to escape in his head then because he had to listen to all her instructions. She told him exactly what to do, but he was always a bad boy who didn’t do it right, who should want to make his mummy happy, but he hated it.

“No, Mummy, please,” he begged.

She stopped, but did not take her hand away. Instead she cosied up even closer to him so that her whole body encased his, spooning him, and her mouth was against his ear.

“Do as you’re told. Or do you want to be punished for being a bad boy?”

“I’m a good boy, Mummy. I am, I am,” he replied quickly.

“Prove it. You know what good boys do.”

So he did what he had to, just as she had instructed, because he wanted to be a good boy. Her breath started coming fast and heavy, like Dad when he was doing one of the steam trains in the Thomas the Tank Engine stories he sometimes read aloud to Adam.

But Adam was no longer there to hear. His mind had managed to flutter away after all, far away to the special place filled with magic. He thought of fairy tales, of princes rescuing damsels in distress, just like his daddy did; of bad people being punished for doing wrong; of dragons, and phoenix rising from the ashes; of true love which survives anything. It was what he clung to, because the real world was too awful for him.

***

PRESENT DAY

Soon she is going have to write down the memories of That Night. But not yet.  Please not yet. Laura feels utterly exhausted as she pushes the pen and notepad away, and tries to free herself from the emotions that have controlled her for four long years. Her aunt had told her she had to try, and she had meant it when she said she would. But one step at a time.

Writing about her accident has been hard enough; she cannot face putting down into black and white the details of the night her family was wiped out. But there is a restless urge to do something else. Something she promises herself will be the last time – or that she will at least try to make the last time.

She is going to have one last wallow, in order to face down her demons. And it’s going to hurt like hell.

Laura hurries into her bedroom and opens her wardrobe. Reaches up onto her tiptoes, and pulls down a big cardboard box stuffed with photographs. Then, despite the fatigue weighing her down, despite it being past midnight, she sits cross-legged on the rug and starts leafing through. Her mum, her dad, her brother, holidays and days out, school plays…. So many memories come flooding back.

This is what she does most nights. Embraces the hurt and pain in order to keep their memories alive. But she realises now that her aunt is right: she has been using the pain as a memorial to her family, when she should have been thinking of the fun times they had together. She should have been remembering the way they lived, not the way they died.

Laura has been grieving all wrong, she realises.

But she needs to do this once more before she can move on. One more time in order to say goodbye to the pain, bitterness, and gnawing guilt.

Leaning against the wall, she holds the last photograph she has of all four of them together, their four faces crammed into the frame, cheeks pressed against each other, grinning. A selfie she had taken and posted on Facebook with her new phone, just days before That Night, and which her aunt had printed for her, thinking it would be a nice thing. Laura had almost torn it up when she had been given it on the day of the funerals.

Now, she crumples over it and sobs as the memories wash over her; less waves, more a tsunami. She cries until her stomach hurts, until her eyes hurt, until she can barely breathe. Finally, exhausted, she curls up on her nest of photos and dreams…

The whole family stood in the hallway laughing at one other, each looking like an impression of the Michelin Man because they were wearing so many layers. Cheeks rosy red in the heat of the house.

“Are you almost done?” chivvied Seamus. “I’m going to pass out from heat stroke if we don’t get out soon.”

“Just a sec, I want my thermal hat,” Laura told her dad, searching through the chest of drawers in the hallway. “Got it!”

“I’m not sure I’ll fit through the door; I’ve got my whole wardrobe on, I think,” sighed Jackie. Then she cast a stern eye on her son. “Go get a hat like your sister.”

“Mu-um! It’ll flatten my hair!” groaned the 16-year-old.

“Marcus, get on with it. We’ll be late at this rate,” Seamus said.

Finally they were all ready, and bundled into the car. It was a freezing cold night, a heavy frost making everything as white as snow. The car glittered under the house’s security light, and Seamus had to scrape the windscreen and let the engine run for a couple of minutes before the windows had cleared enough for him to drive. Normally they would not be out on a night like this, choosing to stay in in the warmth instead, but it was bonfire night, Laura’s favourite night of the year.

Marcus got in behind the driver’s seat, and whipped his hat off, preening his hair back into shape. Laura took her usual seat behind her mum, teasing her little brother even as she clipped her seatbelt on and they set off.

“Take it Lily’s going to be there tonight? That why your hair’s got to be all perfect?”

“I’m perfect enough, I don’t need to try,” he countered.

“Er, ducking the question! Look at you, you’re blushing.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not!”

“How old are you two?” laughed their mum.

Laura grinned and lowered her voice a bit. “So…is Lily going to be there?”

Marcus’s face screwed up like a paper bag, wrestling with himself about how much to say. Then nodded. “Yeah.”

“You really like her don’t you?”

He nodded again, face earnest this time. “She’s cool. I mean, cool because she doesn’t even care about being cool. She loves drawing, and-and she’s shy but once you get talking to her about art she lights up. I….well, I’ve liked her since I was 14, when I used to see her walking down the school corridors or down the street, with her arms folded, head always down, lost in thought, hair up in a ponytail that shows off her ears. They stick out just that little bit, you know, and it’s so cute…”