The Flower Girls

by Alice Clark-Platts

  ‘Less of the backchat, Ellis,’ Hillier snaps. ‘I’ve got about twenty years’ experience on you, so a little respect if you don’t mind.’ She sighs, sinking down into yet another empty seat at a table in the deserted restaurant. Jane and Declan have retreated to their room upstairs and Hazel is behind reception having first aid applied to the cuts on her face. Jonny had appeared at the end of the brawl, scooping her up and away from the Greenstreets.

  ‘How did Jane find out that Hazel is Rosie Bowman?’ Hillier asks in a tired voice.

  Ellis’s mouth turns down.

  ‘Ah, let me guess. Marek Kaczka?’

  The policeman nods.

  ‘Yeah, makes sense. Thought he’d take the heat off himself, didn’t he? Must have been listening to us from the kitchen. Fucking hell!’ Hillier bangs the table with the heel of her hand. ‘What an absolute mess.’

  ‘Forensics and DS Gordon should be here any minute,’ Ellis says, referring to Hillier’s direct superior. ‘The roads are finally clear from Torquay.’

  ‘I don’t need Mum and Dad to come and sort things out,’ Hillier snaps at him. ‘We should be able to handle this ourselves. You should have stopped her coming in here. You must have known she’d want to beat the crap out of Hazel Archer.’

  ‘In all fairness, I didn’t. She said she wanted a coffee and was coming downstairs. She must have met Kaczka in the hallway and then come storming in here. We chased after her but it was too late. And anyway . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I don’t blame her, frankly. If it was my kid that’d been hurt, I’d want to kill the person who did it. Stands to reason.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t, Ellis.’ Hillier gets to her feet and pulls her jacket straight. ‘At the moment, we have no evidence that Hazel Archer has anything to do with what’s happened to Georgie. For all we know, Kaczka could be telling all and sundry about Hazel’s true identity in order to take the heat off himself.’

  ‘With her background, though.’ Ellis shrugs. ‘It makes a lot of sense.’

  ‘Facts and evidence leading to logical deduction, Ellis.’ Hillier walks past him to reach the doorway. ‘That’s what policing is, not some gutter-press version of events.’ She pauses as she hears something, her head on one side. ‘That’s a car engine.’

  ‘Looks like Mum and Dad have arrived,’ he says.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  1997

  They trip along the line of the grass- and daisy-filled canal, the sun dipping ahead of them, pushing its light through the leaves above. Night is far from fallen but there is a low moon in the sky, hanging there as a warning that soon it will be dark.

  They hold hands, teetering on tiptoes, swinging on their own weight away from each other. Their feet trace the narrow meander of the canal, one after the other, one after the other. It is quiet now. Leaves brush against each other in furtive whispers. There is the occasional rattle and high-pitched call of a starling, but otherwise the air is soft and kind, and the girls say nothing as they walk along hand in hand.

  They reach the part of the path where the willow tree weeps over their fence, then they stop and turn like ballerinas on a child’s wind-up jewellery box until they are facing the gate at the bottom of their garden and they know it is time to go inside.

  Once inside the parameters of the fence, it is as if the magic has gone. The spell washes clean off their clothes as they cross over the boundary from the wild, untended land outside and step onto the neat, trimmed grass of the postage-stamp-sized lawn that their father mows religiously every Sunday. The calm on their faces fades as they push the gate open, falls from them like dress-up clothes, and they run across the garden like two happy playful girls, over to where their mother waits.

  The gate swings behind them, slamming back against the fence in the breeze. Beyond it lies the canal, all-knowing and all-seeing, silent guardian of the secrets slithering on their bellies along its length.

  As the sun sets and the windows pop with light in the house where the girls eat their tea and watch television, night eventually comes, lush and perfumed, the gate still banging in the breeze.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Can I have a word, mate?’ the man says, his breath frosting in the air as he moves off from where he has been leaning against his car. It is a beaten-up navy blue Volkswagen and the man is tall, big around his middle, wearing a fur cap with flaps that dangle over his ears.

  Max has retreated outside the hotel for a cigarette, trying to calm down after the drama of the attack on Hazel in the hotel restaurant. His heart is thumping painfully in his chest as he replays the scene and there is a lump in his throat as he acknowledges his own culpability in the matter. They should have been much more discreet. He should have spoken to DC Hillier by himself first and then she could have interviewed Hazel privately in her bedroom, instead of publicly where anyone could overhear and stir up trouble. Everything that Hazel feared has come to pass and, ultimately, this is a huge distraction from the bigger issue of where little Georgie is. The search is continuing, down on the beach and on the cliff tops. Above him, the coastguard’s helicopter circles, peering down through the clouds like a telescopic eye. The hotel guests remain trapped inside the grounds on police instruction, waiting for the news that they can either get on with their holiday or go home.

  Max exhales smoke and grinds out the butt in the snow at his feet. He can’t help but admire the beauty of the landscape in front of him. The ice storm has frozen the countryside in time. Mini mountains of snow are dotted around the car park, covering the vehicles parked there overnight. Handlebars from a bicycle poke up from one mound. The trees look like crystalline scarecrows, reaching up to the white and heavy sky.

  Now Max studies the stranger suspiciously as he approaches and first impressions are not good. The man has a squashed red nose, broken veins in his cheeks, and his eyes are beady, rich with greed. ‘Yes, what is it?’ Max asks in a neutral tone.

  ‘Are you a guest here at Balcombe?’

  Max shoves his hands in his pockets and sets his mouth.

  The other man shoots him a brief smile. ‘Let’s assume you are,’ he says. ‘Look, pal. I don’t want to cause any trouble. But there’s a few of us up here now.’

  Max looks over and sees the distant huddle of grey shapes, indistinct in the frosty air. Journalist vultures, he thinks with disdain, knowing from experience that they will have heard about the search for Georgie from scanning police radios. Then his pulse quickens as he realises it’s imperative to keep the fact of Hazel being here completely hidden from the press. What he holds in his hand isn’t so much carrion as dynamite and if the descending hordes discover that one of the Flower Girls is staying in the hotel where another young girl has gone missing, he’ll lose this story. And it’s his.

  Hazel is his.

  ‘We just want to help, is all. Get the information out there so that people can pitch in, provide information. That’s all.’ The man splays his gloved hands as if to reassure Max. ‘If we get the story out by close of play today, the communication lines will be up and running. We can start asking the public what they know.’

  ‘And what can they know?’ Max asks. ‘I mean, what is someone in, let’s say, Hull, going to know about what’s taken place here in the hotel over the last twenty-four hours?’

  The journalist shrugs. ‘People might recognise a guest. They might know about their backgrounds. You know . . . have something to contribute in that sense.’

  ‘Label someone a risk, you mean?’ Max tries to level his voice, to look normal.

  ‘Well, maybe.’ The man exhales a long glacial breath into the air. ‘Look, pal. Where a child is concerned, you’ll do anything, right? Isn’t it better that we know about the guests here? Work out if anyone is a risk? Someone who might potentially have a reason for harming the poor child? If we find out who they are, we can start putting pressure on them to say where she is. What they’ve done with her.’

  ‘What abo
ut me?’ Max asks.

  The other man looks confused. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Well, couldn’t I be the person you’re concerned about? Why are you so sure that I’m not the sinister paedophile you’re referring to?’

  The journalist frowns. ‘You don’t look the type, mate.’

  ‘What does the type look like?’

  ‘Point taken,’ the man sighs. He looks over at the hotel entrance, longing in his eyes. ‘I see that you’re wasting my time.’

  ‘No,’ Max says as he turns to leave. ‘You’re wasting mine.’

  He walks briskly away, his heart still hammering, but now he doesn’t know if that’s from the adrenaline of the fight inside the hotel, the visceral fear that someone else will work out Hazel’s identity before he has a chance to do anything about it, or his anger with the so-called journalist. Bloody predators, he thinks. How dare they?

  He walks back into the warmth of the hotel, shutting the door behind him with relief. Through an archway, he can see Hillier talking intently to two men in suits. In the reception area are huddles of suitcases and weekend bags. People must be asking to leave, he thinks. To be released by the police and allowed to go back to their homes. Even though there is no Georgie. Dead or alive.

  Max turns the other way and heads to the lounge, glancing at his watch and wondering if it’s too early for a whisky. Sod it, he thinks. It is New Year’s Day. He orders one at the bar and sinks into a chair by the fire in the blessedly empty lounge, resting his head on the cushion behind him. Heartburn rears its acidic head up his gullet but he tries to ignore it. The hotel still has the feeling of a party halted before it began. Tension hangs in every room, thick as the ice clouds outside. There is an ever-present hum of sound, tight, clipped voices issuing instructions, trying to quell the panic which creeps along underneath it all.

  That poor woman, Max thinks, sipping at his drink. He isn’t sure if he means Jane Greenstreet or Hazel Archer. Both of them, down there in the dining room, had seemed so bewildered, so at sea. Their faces were pale and exhausted, from fear and from trying to control a situation that was rapidly slipping away from them. He inhales deeply, the smell of woodsmoke from the fire and recently polished furniture incongruous against the awful thoughts that converge in his head.

  Rosie Bowman.

  How can she be here? Max thinks. Of all places when such a terrible thing has occurred. But not since he first realised who Hazel Archer really was, has he considered that she might be responsible for Georgie’s disappearance. Aside from the fact that Max can’t comprehend why anyone would want to take and harm a child, it seems such an outlandish act for a woman to undertake, on New Year’s Eve, with her boyfriend and his daughter in tow – on her birthday, for Christ’s sake. Regardless of any of this, it would also be beyond stupid as the whole episode has served only to bring her to the attention of the police and potentially the press. The last thing she must have wanted. And look how terrified she is about those emails she’s been receiving. Max is confident in his assessment that Hazel is innocent of any wrongdoing towards Georgie.

  But this doesn’t explain what has happened to the child. As time ticks on, it seems the likely solution is that she wandered off into the night and fell down the cliffs and has been swept out to sea. It is the logical conclusion and one Max is fairly sure will be reached soon.

  He stares into the flames, glancing at his now empty glass, thinking about Hazel. The whisky sits hot in his chest, burning through him, fuelling the sharp indignation he also feels. That the poor woman should never be able to escape her past is appalling; that she should be tried by the media for a crime she has had absolutely nothing to do with is equally so. That she is getting these emails from someone who wants to torment her, try and make her insane with worry; that these so-called journalists are leeching information from the hotel like blood-sucking vampires.

  He leaps up, galvanised, and exits the lounge abruptly, leaving his empty glass behind him, determined to do something to help Hazel. He will go and find her and Jonny, talk to them about a strategy to protect them from the press. That idiot outside – all of those blood-suckers – would give their eye teeth to be where he is right now.

  But as he climbs the stairs, an earlier, guilty thought resurfaces. It keeps returning, like a barrel bobbing on the waves, refusing to sink.

  This story will make his career.

  This story will change his life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  It is only just past lunchtime but already the day is darkening again. The waves continue to crash onto the shore in angry bursts, the sound a constant rebuke to the coastguard that what they are doing isn’t enough. Twice now, they have had to call off the search by lifeboat, the foam-crested waves too high for them to be out there safely. Sea spray hampers visibility to impossible levels on the beach and in the water. Conditions are not yet as treacherous as they were yesterday, but the gale is once more heightening to a storm and the coastguard’s helicopter is grounded yet again.

  Hillier has been standing on the cliff top, looking down at the shapes on the beach scuttling forward and back, battered by the wind. Her feet are like ice in the boots she has put on to come outside and she can no longer feel the tip of her nose. Her boss, DS Gordon, has arrived and declared himself Senior Investigating Officer. Having updated him, she has retreated outside to think, breathe in the landscape, and wonder again where Georgie has gone.

  Once Gordon heard about Hazel Archer’s identity, he was convinced she was behind the little girl’s disappearance. But, Hillier thinks, even if that’s true, there’s every chance Georgie is still alive. It is still less than twenty-four hours since she went missing. Looking down at the sea, Hillier doesn’t believe that the girl is in those gritty, frightening towers of water. Some instinct in her feels certain the child is huddling somewhere out of view, cold and terrified.

  But alive.

  Something at the edge of her vision catches her eye and she spins round. Marek Kaczka is standing outside the kitchen door at the back of the hotel, exhaling smoke into the slowly bruising sky. Meeting her eyes, his lips flicker in a smile before he casually drops his cigarette where it fizzes out in the snow.

  Filled with disgust at the insouciance of the chef, and frustration that the investigation is now out of her control, Hillier spins round and strides towards the beach. What are the coastguard doing, for God’s sake? She will look for Georgie herself, and she will find her. The feeling grows in her gut, propelling her down to where the waves crash like toppling skyscrapers onto the shingle. The wind is dogged in her face and she bends her head against its strength. The pathway is bracken- and briar-filled and the ice underfoot causes her to slip several times. She can make out the full curve of the beach by now, a scythe of melancholy, bending away from her in the wintry light. The ochre sandstone of the cliffs appears almost bleached in amidst all of the snow. She peers out, searching the white-blanketed terrain before her, for any nooks or holes where a small child might be cowering.

  Or lying unconscious.

  She carries on for a little while, running over the events of the last twenty-four hours in her mind. She thinks about Hazel and Kaczka. About how Georgie could slip away from her parents and the timings of it all. It gets dark at four p.m. at this time of year. It would have been easy for the child to have become disorientated outside as the ice and the rain descended.

  Hillier stops to catch her breath. She looks ahead of her and then behind, chest heaving, her anger dissipating. Snow again is falling from the sky and, reluctantly, she decides to return to the hotel and succumb to Gordon’s control of the situation. As she turns, just along the coastline, about a metre down from the top of the cliff, she spies what looks like nothing more than a dark shadow. But something about it makes her heart-rate spike.

  She leans forward, trying to make out its edges, discern its shape. Tilting herself too far, she overbalances and stumbles. With sheer effort, she digs in her heels so that she
lands on her rump and not face-first, sliding into a frozen bramble bush. She is now perched on a ledge, boots hanging into the void. Breathing hard, she pulls herself back up onto the flat cliff top. Mumbling swear words, she fixes her sights again on the dark shape below. Is it a cavern in the cliffs? Or is it a tiny figure?

  She bites her lip, fumbling for her radio, relaying her sighting to the coastguard, trying to describe the exact location of the shape.

  ‘It might not be anything,’ she says with urgency. ‘But you need to check.’

  She hauls herself round, onto her knees, trying to get a purchase on the icy bracken. Getting to her feet, a particularly violent gust of wind buffets her and she wobbles precariously. The weather is vicious, howling around her, biting into her cheeks, causing her eyes to water. As she carries on towards the shape, she begins to doubt herself. Maybe it was just a hollow in the side of the cliff? Maybe, in her desperate need to find Georgie, she has fabricated a place where the girl might be hidden. Can it be possible that she alone has seen what a trained search team has failed to spot? But then again, the force of the storm has meant they have been combing the beach from the bottom. They wouldn’t have reached the cliff edge last night. They wouldn’t have had the same perspective.

  Hillier mutters to herself as she struggles on, hot and out of breath. She has now nearly reached the curve in the cliff top that would be above where she saw the dark hollowed-out shape. She trudges across the hardening snow through the sea mist, stopping for a moment to catch her breath. And that is when she sees it. The dark spot she had noticed is moving. Hillier’s eyes narrow, her stare trained on the approaching figure. She shakes her head like a dog worrying a rabbit, trying to see past the spray shooting up from the beach and the rocks. The shape is shimmering in the white but as it gets closer, she can see its arms tucked round its body, its shape hunched into itself, a tiny, tramping figure. She violently pushes back her hood and starts to run, pounding over the snow in her boots, tripping over herself, arms flailing.