The Flower Girls

by Alice Clark-Platts

  ‘That’s enough,’ Jane says, getting to her feet. ‘I’m sorry but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Georgie is OK now. She’s safe and I won’t have her terrified in this way. It’s not on.’

  ‘Mr Greenstreet?’ Gordon turns and appeals to Georgie’s father.

  ‘You heard my wife,’ Declan adds. ‘Perhaps it’s better if you come back another time.’

  Gordon and Hillier exchange glances.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Greenstreet,’ Gordon says. ‘It’s really in Georgie’s best interests that we find out what happened. If there’s someone out there who wants to hurt . . .’ His voice trails away as he takes in the child looking at him wide-eyed from the bed. ‘Well, maybe we can wait a little bit. Just until she’s feeling better.’ He looks at Hillier nonplussed.

  ‘Good,’ Jane says as she moves to the door and opens it for them. ‘What Georgie needs now is rest. She doesn’t need to be reminded of this . . . this terrible time.’

  ‘All right, Mrs Greenstreet,’ Hillier says, bringing herself to her feet. ‘As you wish. We’ll come back soon.’

  She leaves the room after Gordon, closing the door behind them. Outside in the corridor, they look at one another.

  ‘Odd,’ Gordon says.

  ‘Odd?’ Hillier replies, a frown creasing her face. ‘Sarge, odd isn’t even the half of it.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  1997

  Laurel sat opposite the police officers. She swung her calves rhythmically, hands tucked under her thighs, chin raised a little in the air despite the tears staining her cheeks.

  ‘I don’t want to stay here any more,’ she said. ‘I want to go home with my mummy.’

  ‘I know you do, Laurel,’ the lady police officer said softly. She looked tired, they all did. Last night, Laurel had slept in a small detention room in the empty police station, which had been cleared of other prisoners, sent away to holding cells in the environs. Social Services had brought a thin mattress, blankets and pillows from somewhere and Laurel had curled up on them under high walls, her father dozing over the end of the bed, his hands resting on her ankles.

  In the morning, they had brought Laurel a bacon sandwich and a glass of Fanta. When she had finished her breakfast, she had rubbed her eyes and asked Gregor when she would be allowed home.

  ‘Not until you answer all of the police lady’s questions,’ he had said. ‘You must tell the truth, Laurel. You must tell them what you know about baby Kirstie.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about her,’ Laurel kept saying. There, in the detention cell, and now in the interview room. She sat in between her uncle, who was also her solicitor, and her father. The two police officers – a man and a woman – were on the other side of the table. A tape machine ran in the middle of them, whirring silently for forty-five-minute bursts. After each period, Laurel would be allowed a short break.

  ‘Tell me about the playground,’ the male police officer said. ‘You went there with Rosie and what did you do?’

  ‘We went on the slide and the old rocking horse. Then we went off. We didn’t see the baby. I wouldn’t hurt a baby,’ Laurel said firmly.

  ‘All right. But let’s take it one step at a time. Now, you know what true means, don’t you, Laurel?’

  She nodded.

  ‘If I said there are ten people in this room, would that be true or a lie?’

  ‘A lie.’

  ‘Right, because there are only five of us, aren’t there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you were at the playground, weren’t you? With Rosie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And we know that because you were seen there, Laurel. You were seen with Rosie, playing on the horse and on the swings, so we know that you were there.’

  ‘We went there in the afternoon. We were playing Mums and Dads. It was just a game.’

  ‘Right. And we also know you were there because we got something called a fingerprint of yours on the metal horse. Do you know what a fingerprint is?’

  Laurel looked down at her hands and held one up. ‘Like from here?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. When you touch something, you leave a special mark that belongs only to you. So when you came here last night, to the police station, do you remember putting your fingers in the black ink, and then pushing them onto the paper?’

  Laurel nodded.

  ‘That gave us your special mark, that can only come from you. And we also found it on the horse. So we know that you were there. We can see that you were.’

  Laurel looked in panic at her father. ‘I didn’t take the baby, Daddy! I swear it. I didn’t. I wouldn’t hurt the baby.’

  ‘Shush, shush, little one. I know you didn’t. I know you wouldn’t.’ Gregor put his arm around Laurel, squeezing her tight, tears in his eyes.

  She leapt up from her chair and climbed onto his lap, burying her head in his shoulder. ‘Tell them, Daddy. Tell them I want to go home. I want to see Mummy. I don’t want to be here any more. I didn’t hurt the baby, I swear. Please . . .’ Her voice rose to a wail, her fists curled and tight.

  Gregor looked over at Toby. He tried to convey his anguish, his desperate need to get his daughter out of this nightmare and bring her home.

  Toby nodded. ‘Laurel’s very distressed. I suggest we take a break.’

  ‘OK,’ one of the officers said, after a slight pause, and the tape was switched off. ‘Would you like a drink, Laurel?’

  She said nothing, sobbing into Gregor’s chest, her hands white and clenched on his shoulders. After a moment, the police officers stood. ‘We’ll give you fifteen minutes,’ they said before leaving the room.

  Gregor closed his eyes, stroking Laurel’s hair. ‘Shush now, baby. Shush now. Everything will be all right.’

  ‘The special mark, Daddy,’ Laurel said, her voice scratched and hoarse. ‘The special mark of mine that they’ve got. They’ll say it was me, won’t they?’

  ‘No, no. Not if you weren’t with the baby, sweetheart. They can’t say something’s there if it’s not.’

  ‘But supposing it is,’ Laurel said, sitting up and wiping her face. ‘Daddy, supposing they find it? And . . .’ stopped, looking deep she into Gregor’s eyes. ‘Daddy, can the special mark be found on somebody’s skin?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Laurel stares up at the ceiling of her cell. They call it a room but it’s a cell all right, even though the door is open onto the corridor. Coming from beyond it, shouts and scuffling, explosions of laughter and swear words from the other women assail her ears every minute of every day. The open door only leads to further confinement, to a rat-run of closed-off spaces denied natural light and fresh air.

  This box of a building has been her world for over ten years, since she moved here from Oakingham Young Offenders’ Unit with her tiny bag of possessions: a few T-shirts and pairs of jeans, a copy of Anne of Green Gables, and her old cassette player. She knows the cracks and the ripples in the plaster by heart now: the bed as hard as a concrete floor; the square of window that hovers enticingly close to the ceiling; the desk in the corner next to the aluminium toilet bowl. Her duvet cover is garish, depicting a yellow, one-eyed Pixar minion. Toby had sent it to her years ago, trying to encourage her to take an interest in her ‘bedroom’, as he called it. He used to send her posters, prints of landscapes, beaches and mountain tops. When she finally told him that she either used them to barter with the other inmates for ciggies, or just bunched them up and threw them in the bin, he stopped. Sometimes, a flicker of something inside her makes her feel bad about that. But then she moves on.

  It is never quiet in prison. Doors slam, televisions propagate any kind of silence with inane music and the peppery, jaunty trumpeting of news programmes and magazine shows that no one cares about. The air is thick with the smell of boiled vegetables from the kitchens. The canteen is a full ten-minute walk from the sleeping quarters but the funk of it has weaved its way along the corridors for so many years that the stench of cabbage
and potatoes is as layered onto the paintwork as the scrawls of the inmates. The place hasn’t been decorated since Laurel has been here. In the shower stalls, tags of inmates past are still indelibly marked on the walls, the names indicative of the era they were written in, Shazza and Julie giving way to Jamie and Kylie. Now the names are less nouns than adjectives, guttural sounds that people have thought fit to give their children as monikers – Unique, Des’Ray, Beauty. Laurel shuts her eyes for a moment, turning her head to find a patch of coolness on her pillow. Her name is a constant thorn. A fucking stupid, prissy name that has no place inside of prison. She calls herself L and when the other girls ask her what it stands for, she tells them it’s for ‘Leave me the fuck alone’.

  She swings her legs to the floor and comes to standing. She needs to go to the gym, to burn off the constant rage that carves solid grooves right through the middle of her, ball-bearings of anger that sink into her stomach, one after the other, making her feel heavy and sick all the time. Only sweat and effort and the relentless refrain of I can give her any kind of mental clarity, of peace.

  She changes into her kit and walks along the interminable corridors, past the TV room, the kitchen, avoiding the eyes of anyone in her way. She pushes into the gym, the smell of body odour, of stale oestrogen, a vague comfort, and gets on the treadmill, ramping the speed up to maximum, pounding her feet until her hair is wet and her vision blurred.

  The crappy television hoisted on a stand up in a corner of the gym is showing some programme Laurel is barely cognisant of as she runs. Then reality slams into her face and she hits the emergency stop button and halts, breathing hard.

  Rosie.

  Right there in front of her. The old photograph of her in her school uniform. Then, a photograph of a different little dark-haired girl appears. She is hugging her parents in the snow.

  Laurel jumps off the treadmill and stands underneath the television, squinting up at the images.

  The other girl is called Georgie Greenstreet and – the reporter says – she is now happily reunited with her parents. Despite losing her right big toe, she has miraculously survived a night in one of the worst storms to have hit the Devon coastline in over a hundred years. The image changes to show a reporter standing on a windswept cliff, a hotel behind her lit up with Christmas lights.

  ‘But there are further developments in this breaking story,’ she continues in a Welsh accent. ‘A source at the Balcombe Court Hotel has revealed that, when Georgie went missing, one of the guests at the hotel was the other – less famous but still notorious – Flower Girl, Rosie Bowman.’ Here the reporter pauses, as if anticipating the intake of breath across the country.

  ‘It’s certainly a coincidence, Roger,’ the reporter slyly suggests to the anchor in the news studio, ‘that a young child would go missing at the same time as the sister of a known child kidnapper and murderer was staying there.’

  ‘A big coincidence indeed,’ Roger back in the studio answers, nodding sagely.

  Laurel realises that her jaw is slack, the sweat turned cold on her face. The door to the gym opens and, gathering herself, she reaches up and switches off the TV.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ asks the woman who has just come in, her tattooed arms bulging. ‘I was going to watch that.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Laurel snaps, pushing past her. ‘Just fuck right off.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Two weeks later and Hillier and Ellis sit in the small canteen at the top of Brixham police station, rolling a Trebor soft mint back and forth between them.

  ‘Georgie’s going home today,’ Hillier says, catching the mint and popping it into her mouth. ‘Back to London.’

  ‘That was mine!’ Ellis exclaims, shaking his head. ‘Cheers very much. Another coffee, boss?’

  Hillier doesn’t answer, her mind turning yet again to Georgie and what happened to her on New Year’s Eve. She has been debating going one last time to the hotel the Greenstreets have moved to in Brixham while Georgie has been recuperating. ‘It’s not right,’ she says as Ellis returns to the table with a polystyrene cup. ‘DS Gordon should be insisting on her parents coming in to make statements. All the money we’ve spent looking for her, the resources . . .’

  Ellis sits down heavily, sipping on his coffee.

  ‘OK, I know it’s not the resources that bother me really,’ Hillier admits. ‘I just don’t like it. Why is Jane Greenstreet being so evasive?’

  ‘You think she had something to do with it?’

  Hillier sighs. ‘Not really. But it’s weird. And I don’t like weird. What reason could she have for not wanting to find out what happened to her daughter? It just bugs me that we still have no idea what happened to her in those twenty-four hours.’

  As she hears herself say the words, her cheeks flash hot with frustration. Why are they talking about this case as if it’s done and dusted, in the past? They should be down at the hotel, talking to Georgie again, trying to wheedle those frozen hours out of her memory.

  She had tried for the last time yesterday, only for Jane Greenstreet effectively to ask her to leave. It was too upsetting, she had said. For all of them – having to relive what happened over and over again. Georgie was safe and that was the main thing. Now they just wanted to go back home and forget the whole episode.

  Hillier pushes back from the table in exasperation. ‘I just can’t work it out.’

  Ellis shrugs. ‘You know what I think. The kid wandered off. Got lost on the cliffs and found that cave to shelter in. The weather was that bad you could hardly see in front of your face. She’s so small, she wouldn’t have had a clue where she was going. Once she got beyond the lights of the hotel, she would have been in all kinds of trouble.’

  Hillier looks at him without replying. The silence seems to mount in the room until Ellis shifts in his chair and Hillier finally says, ‘But then why doesn’t she tell us? Why doesn’t she just say that? What is it that’s making her mother keep her quiet? Or maybe the mother’s got nothing to do with it. Maybe it’s someone else.’

  ‘Someone like who?’

  ‘Kaczka, with his liking for young girls? Or what about Hazel Archer? Look at what’s been in the papers about her. There are just too many questions . . .’ Hillier murmurs, chewing on her mint, looking out into the fading light of the afternoon ‘. . . that haven’t been answered.’

  ‘I’m off, Hillier,’ Ellis says, picking up his keys and coffee and scraping his chair back. ‘I’ve got real work to do.’

  ‘If you took a child, Ellis . . .’ She holds up her hands. ‘Just bear with me a minute. If you did take a kid, why would you let them go? Having risked it – the fact you might be seen, the fact the kid might scream and resist – wouldn’t you want to deal with said kid?’

  Ellis puts his coffee cup to his mouth without answering.

  ‘Wouldn’t you want to hide the evidence? Be absolutely certain that child wouldn’t rat on you. Tell the police, her parents, what had happened? Point their fingers and say: he’s the one who did it.’ Hillier’s eyes flame at Ellis. ‘Would Kaczka have killed her? Possibly. Caught up in the moment, thinking he’ll get caught. Or Archer? She’s seen torture and murder before, that much we do know. But who’s the most likely to have let Georgie go? It doesn’t make any sense that she survived. Unless . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Unless the person who took her couldn’t go through with it.’

  ‘The parents?’

  Hillier shrugs. ‘It’s the obvious answer.’

  Ellis tosses his keys in the air and deftly catches them. ‘You know what the obvious answer is, boss?’

  She lifts her eyebrows.

  ‘The kid wandered off and got lost in the storm. End of.’ He gives her an apologetic grin and heads out of the canteen.

  Hillier watches him go, tapping her nails on the table. She thinks about Georgie’s little body, coming through the snow with the corpses of the kittens in her arms. She thinks about the night she went mis
sing; the panic in the hotel; the reactions of the guests to the news of the missing child. She thinks about Marek Kaczka working the afternoon shift, and Hazel Archer hiding herself for all these years.

  She thinks about them long after the canteen gradually empties and the day turns from dusk to black outside.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘What everyone wants to know is the truth.’ The barrister uses words like a masseuse uses her hands: strong but silken; persuasive but never too obvious. There is never a suggestion that the arguments posed are anything other than a conclusion that only the most intelligent can perceive. Toby watches the back of counsel’s horsehair wig, the tiny ribboned pigtails hitting his collar as he turns this way and that.

  Outside the court he had managed to fight his way through the press cordon, where photographers scrummaged in front of the barriers the court had erected to corral them. He had kept his head bent low, ignoring the hoarse voices shouting Laurel and Rosie’s names. He tried to keep calm, tried to put out of his mind the call he had received on route to the court from a writer called Max Saunders.

  ‘I’d like to bring them together,’ the man had said.

  ‘Laurel and Rosie?’ Toby had asked, amazed, struggling to hear what Max was saying over the thunderous traffic that surrounded him.

  ‘Laurel and Hazel, yes. I think it’s in Laurel’s interests. It could help in her parole application if she has the support of her family. She hasn’t had that for all the years she’s been in prison, has she?’

  ‘No,’ Toby admitted, hurrying round a corner as the Royal Courts of Justice came into sight. ‘But I’m struggling to see how it would help. Neither of them has ever spoken about the crime. Won’t it just open up Pandora’s box? Our position in the parole process is that Laurel has been rehabilitated, no more and no less.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Max had countered. ‘But what support does she have on the outside? What kind of community? She needs that, doesn’t she? Maybe Hazel could offer it to her?’