China Roses

by Jo Bannister

  She half expected that, in the obstinacy born partly of frustration, partly of being who he was, Sperrin would dismiss her concerns: laugh them off. He didn’t. He managed a little half-haunted smile. ‘I know you’re looking out for me, Hazel, and I’m grateful. But I can’t walk away from this. It’s too big. I can’t get on with my life without dealing with this first.’

  ‘We’ll deal with it for you,’ she promised. ‘Meadowvale – CID. It’s our job now.’

  ‘But you weren’t there, and I was. I need to know what happened. I need to know’ – the unbearable possibility – ‘if there was something more I could have done.’

  ‘You could have died,’ said Hazel simply. ‘You still could.’

  He thought for a moment before answering her honesty with an honesty of his own. She saw him digging deep for it. It wasn’t in his nature to bare his soul. ‘You think I haven’t thought about that? Of course I have. I’m not stupid. I don’t want people shooting at me. I’m an archaeologist, for God’s sake! – I only venture onto battlefields when I know that all the combatants, on both sides, have been dead for a thousand years. I’m nobody’s idea of a hero.

  ‘But that girl thought maybe I could be, just a little bit, just for a moment. The moment that mattered. She thought, if anyone could save her, I could. Well’ – his jaw clenched – ‘I didn’t. Maybe nobody could have. But I don’t know that. I know I was there, and I know that she died, and I know that I ran. Because she was already beyond any help I could give her? Or because I was too scared to stand my ground and fight for her?’

  ‘Would it be so terrible,’ asked Hazel softly, ‘if that’s what happened? Is it so wicked, to want to live?’

  ‘Wicked?’ He seemed to think about it. ‘No. It’s the common instinct of all living creatures: to stay alive. To do what it takes to survive. But …’ She could see him struggle to put his feelings into words. ‘Everything comes with a price. Every little meanness chips a sliver off your soul. Every petty barter; every squalid little deal you make with fate. Let me succeed: someone else’s failure will restore the balance. Let me have respect, my health, the freedom to live as I choose – someone else can put up with being ignored, sick and beaten down.

  ‘And you can do that – maybe we all do it, all the time – because you never get to meet the other half of the equation. The one who drew the short straw. Except this time I did. I met her face to face, closer than you and I are now. And she died, and I lived. And if that was because of a choice I made – if it was her or me, and I chose me – then the price was too high.’

  ‘David’ – Hazel reached a hand out to him – ‘how can you say that? You have family, you have friends. It matters to us that you didn’t die in that field, on that lonely lane.’

  ‘She had family too. Somewhere. Who don’t know that she’s dead, and maybe never will know.’

  ‘We’ll find them,’ she promised. ‘We’ll find out who she was, and where she came from, and we’ll find her family. When we do, it’ll be some kind of a comfort to them that at the end there was someone who cared enough to try to help her.’

  ‘If I did.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ Hazel said stoutly. ‘You could have hunkered down behind the standing stone and no one would have known you were there. We know you didn’t do that.’ She gave a little pensive frown. ‘David, what you said to my boss …’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About him trying harder to find the people who killed her. About thinking you could do a better job yourself.’

  Sperrin gave a rough laugh. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to go vigilante on you. I wouldn’t know where to start. I was just getting a bit irritated with all the questions. I suppose I mean, with not knowing any of the answers.’

  ‘He is doing his best,’ said Hazel. ‘My boss. If the inquiry has run out of steam for the moment, it isn’t because he isn’t trying. He’ll go on trying. Any information he gets, he’ll follow up. Whether you’re here or not.’

  ‘I keep telling you,’ gritted Sperrin, ‘I’m not leaving. Not until either I have some answers, or it becomes pretty clear I’m never going to get them. I know I’m a thorn in Gorman’s side: well, maybe that’s the best reason for staying right here. There’ll be other cases, easier to solve; there’ll even be other murders. But while I’m here, haunting him, your chief inspector won’t get the chance to forget about this one. Maybe that’s all I’m good for now – to be the burr under the saddle. Well, fine. I can prickle with the best of them.

  ‘And if there’s some risk involved in being in Norbold, I’ll take it. I owe it to her. I may never know if I let her down before, but damn sure I’m not going to let her down again. Doing that would’ – he flicked her the little smile again, exposed and oddly vulnerable – ‘finish what the train began.’

  He paused, marshalling his thoughts. Hazel held her silence.

  ‘You know about Jamie,’ he went on after a moment. ‘My mother won’t talk to me about him – well, she hardly talks to me at all, but never about him. About the fact that I fired the gun that killed him. Pete says I have nothing to feel guilty about – that no child of five can be blamed for anything, whatever the consequences. You’ve said the same thing.’

  ‘Of course I have,’ murmured Hazel. ‘And I’ll say it again, any time you need to hear it.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. He flicked her the tiny, fleeting smile. ‘Thanks. The fact remains, there’s a … a shadow on my soul because my brother died as a result of something I did. If this girl died because of something I didn’t do – because I was too scared to help her, or too stupid or too slow – it doesn’t actually matter if someone starts taking pot shots at me. Because I don’t know how I’d live with history repeating itself like that. I don’t think I’d want to live with it. That’s why I need to know. I need to know, not just to hope, there was nothing more I could have done.

  ‘And here – Norbold – is the only place I’m going to find out. Don’t ask me how I know that: I just do. Maybe there is a reason, but it’s buried along with all the other stuff I’ve forgotten. Something I saw, something I heard; something that makes sense of everything. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking: I have to believe that the key is here because there’s nowhere else I can look. I don’t know. I just know there’s no point going anywhere else.’

  Hazel met his gaze – flayed, desperate – and knew that he was right. He couldn’t pick up his life as if nothing had happened until he had the answers he hungered for. If no one could give him those answers, he’d waste his life looking for them: in Norbold, in the bottom of a whisky bottle, in a line of cocaine. He would never break free of the dying grasp of the girl they called Rose. Ultimately her death would consume him.

  ‘All right,’ Hazel said, a touch unsteadily. ‘So you’re staying here. House rules: I need to know where you are. When you’re up to going out, don’t do it without telling me. I don’t want anything to happen to you, David. Anything else.’

  His grin was a shadow of its old sardonic self, but it was better than nothing. ‘Hazel! I didn’t know you cared.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she sniffed. ‘Pete does, and I care about Pete.’

  When she’d recognised Sperrin in ICU, Hazel had given her own name as next of kin, partly for convenience and partly because she didn’t want the hospital phoning Byrfield to tell him his brother had died before she’d had a chance to prepare him. So it was her number they called when they wanted him back for a check-up. She undertook to take him the following morning.

  Predictably, Sperrin was dismissive. ‘I’m not spending half a day in Outpatients in order to be poked and prodded and finally told what I know right now, which is that I’m mending just fine. Tell them I’ll come in when it’s time to get the plaster off.’ He brandished his arm at her.

  ‘Another of the house rules that I forgot to mention,’ said Hazel calmly, ‘is, Don’t argue with people who know what you need better than you do. I’ll take you in on
my way to work. When you’re finished, get a taxi straight back here. Don’t try to walk it again.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ grumbled Sperrin.

  ‘Of course you are. Humour me.’

  She fully expected to have the same argument again over breakfast on Tuesday. But by then Sperrin was resigned to doing what was good for him, perhaps in payment for his board and lodgings. Hazel pulled into the hospital car park as the first of the day’s appointments were being called.

  Still suspicious of his uncharacteristic docility, Hazel wanted to see Sperrin as far as the waiting room, for fear he’d go AWOL once he was out of her sight. They still had ten minutes in hand, so she wasn’t concerned when he ground to a halt beside the sweets and magazines kiosk inside the front entrance. ‘They won’t keep you waiting long enough to need something to read.’ She’d clearly inferred from the phone-call that the quicker his medical team could do their duty and get rid of him, the happier they’d be.

  He made no reply. When she looked, she saw why not. He was rooted to the spot, staring at a bucket of cut flowers.

  ‘David?’

  ‘China roses,’ he said thickly.

  These weren’t roses either. ‘No,’ Hazel said, hearing herself sounding like a schoolteacher, ‘some of them are chrysanthemums, or possibly dahlias, and those white ones look like Michaelmas daisies …’ They didn’t teach much botany on Police Studies courses either.

  ‘No, look,’ he insisted.

  She did, and still she didn’t see what he was seeing. And then she did. The cellophane wrapping each bouquet was printed with the legend ‘China Roses’.

  ‘I’ve seen that before,’ said Sperrin. He was breathless, as if someone had punched him. ‘Rose wasn’t her name. I saw it written down somewhere.’

  ‘China roses?’

  He managed to combine a nod with a bewildered shrug. ‘China roses.’

  She phoned DCI Gorman. By the time she had his full attention and was explaining what had happened, what Sperrin had seen and the effect it had had on him, the revelatory nature of the moment was already slipping from her grasp and she thought he wouldn’t understand its significance. But – not for the first time – she’d underestimated him.

  Gorman heard her out, only interrupting with a couple of pertinent questions. ‘It was the words he recognised, rather than the flowers?’ And: ‘Could it have been printed on the side of the van? Or maybe as a badge on the men’s jackets? Ask him.’

  But Sperrin didn’t know. He just knew that he’d seen those words somewhere, about the time his world turned inside out. Seeing them again filled him with unexpected terror. It was carved into the lines of his face, intractable as scars, and haunted the hollows of his eyes. It had transfixed him like an arrow from a hundred-pound bow. When Hazel put her hand on his arm he was shaking. She didn’t tell Gorman that.

  ‘OK,’ said Gorman. ‘Stay with him. Have him keep his appointment – if the doctors think he needs any medication, tell them I don’t want his head filling with cotton wool. I’ll see you in the foyer in twenty minutes.’

  He was as good as his word. ‘Do we know where those flowers came from?’

  Hazel nodded, eyes dipped. ‘I’m sorry, Chief, I think I’ve brought you here on a wild goose chase. China Roses is the florist’s in Windham Lane. Everyone refers to it as Mrs Kiang’s, but it’s actually called China Roses.’

  ‘Good.’ He peered at her crestfallen expression. ‘Not good?’

  ‘You don’t buy a lot of flowers, do you? Mrs Kiang is a tiny, ancient Chinese lady who can’t lift her watering can if it’s more than half full. I don’t think she’s the head of an international gang of people traffickers.’

  They regarded one another in silence for a few moments. Then Gorman said, ‘So where did Sperrin see those words before?’

  It was confession time. Hazel had figured it out while she was waiting for her boss to arrive. ‘I think that’s kind of my fault. When ICU called to say he was waking up, I grabbed some flowers from Mrs Kiang on the way here. They were wrapped in cellophane, with the name of the shop printed on it, just like the ones in the kiosk. It must have been the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes. He mumbled something about roses. I thought nothing of it until he started talking about the girl, then we assumed Rose was her name. But I think he was just reading what it said on the wrapper. Somehow, in his head, the two things got confused – the events at Myrton, and the first thing he saw as he woke up.’

  DCI Gorman looked deeply sceptical. ‘Is that even possible?’

  ‘We’re talking about a brain injury, Chief,’ said Hazel wryly. ‘According to the experts, there are almost no effects too bizarre to be caused by a brain injury.’

  ‘Hm.’ Even for a man accustomed to setbacks, his grunt had a ring of finality. ‘Do we know if this Mrs Kiang has a van?’

  ‘I’m sure she has. Though I don’t know how she reaches the pedals.’

  ‘Go and look at it. Measure the tyres and take some photos – have Sergeant Wilson compare them with the ones he took in Myrton. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and it’ll be something really rare and distinctive.’

  ‘We’re due some luck,’ said Hazel diplomatically. In the privacy of her own head, though, she was thinking: Ford Transit, bet you anything.

  It was indeed a Transit, seven years old, standard factory issue except that the load bay had been fitted with an aluminium grid to keep the flowers from banging into one another. Apart from the China Roses logo discreetly emblazoned in silver on each side, there was nothing distinctive about the cream paint-job either, and the standard-issue tyres were neither brand new nor worn in significant and identifiable ways. The pedals, Hazel noted with a grin, had extensions fitted.

  Tiny, ancient, and by now rather annoyed, Mrs Kiang watched Hazel measure and photograph the Transit, tapping the pavement impatiently with the pointed toe of one red shoe. ‘You want to tell me again why Norbold Police are interested in my van?’

  ‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance, Mrs Kiang, but someone reported a van rather like this as having been involved in a crime. We’re trying to rule out all the ones it couldn’t have been.’ It wasn’t gospel truth, but it was close enough and it reassured the florist that she wasn’t being singled out for harassment.

  What it didn’t do was mollify her. ‘It’s a Transit,’ Mrs Kiang pointed out irascibly. ‘Everybody got one. Half everybody got a cream one. You going to measure them all?’

  ‘If I’m told to,’ said Hazel wearily. ‘Does anyone else drive it?’

  ‘My Bill, sometime. But flower markets start before dawn, and my husband lazy sod. No get up early enough.’

  Hazel smiled. ‘You’re doing it again.’

  The florist gave a puzzled frown. ‘Doing what? Oh – Widow Twanky? I’m sorry, dear,’ she continued in quite a different accent, ‘it becomes a habit after a while. The things you have to do to sell flowers!’

  ‘At least nobody makes you go round measuring people’s tyres,’ sighed Hazel.

  FOURTEEN

  Sergeant Wilson compared Hazel’s measurements with his own, studying both sets of photographs through a magnifying glass. At length he said, ‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’

  ‘That it’s a very common vehicle? That it’s a standard tyre as regards make and size? That the tracks at Myrton weren’t clear enough to make a definitive ID?’

  Meadowvale’s scenes of crime officer gave her an appreciative glance. ‘You’re getting the hang of this detecting lark, aren’t you? Right on all points. Plus, only the nearside tyres went up on the verge, so I can’t say how wide the vehicle was. But judging from the impressions of the nearside wheels, and for all the good it’ll do you, it could have been a Transit. Without any evidence at all, I’d still have risked a small wager on it being a Transit. They’re adaptable, reliable, and everywhere. Have you shown a picture of your van to the witness?’

  ‘I’ll take one home tonight. You know he’s staying with me? H
e’s an old family friend,’ she added, then wondered why she felt the need to explain. ‘I’m just not sure how much help it’ll be even if he thinks he recognises it. His memories are all scrambled.’ She told him about the cellophane wrapper on the flowers she took to the hospital.

  ‘I can see how that would complicate matters,’ nodded Sergeant Wilson lugubriously. ‘Oh well – if our job was easy, anyone could do it.’

  ‘Can you think of anything else I should be doing? You know – lines of inquiry I should be pursuing?’

  ‘Oh no, you’re asking entirely the wrong man about that,’ said SOCO, back-pedalling furiously. ‘I don’t do detecting. I never did do detecting. I gather evidence, analyse it and collate it. Detecting is a whole other ball game.’

  Hazel felt a surge of affection for the rotund sergeant – the title his by courtesy only now – a man who had been too slow to be a good beat officer and too amiable to be a good detective, but had found his milieu in the painstaking world of crime scene analysis.

  She thought they were finished and was heading for the stairs – SOCO’s lair was in the basement at Meadowvale – when he called after her, ‘Ask Gabriel Ash. He’s a rare hand at thinking outside the box.’

  To Hazel’s astonishment, it felt exactly as if he’d plunged a knife into her belly.

  After she’d put the boys to bed, Frankie Kelly asked to see Ash in his study. He ushered her in; she closed the door behind them. He had a good idea what was coming. He asked her to sit but she remained on her feet. After an awkward moment he lowered himself onto the edge of his desk, which put their heads at approximately the same height.

  She began without preamble. ‘Mr Ash, the current situation is not tenable.’ Perhaps because she was so small, or perhaps because she spoke perfect, classless English as only foreign nationals learn it, she could use words like ‘tenable’ without sounding pompous. She didn’t sound angry either, just resolute. ‘Your wife’s presence here makes criminals of both you and me.’