Flowers for the Dead Read online

  “Gran, I know about my great-great granddad and great granddad…but what about Granddaddy?”

  Ada looked tired as she sank into the deckchair. There was a long silence, and Adam started to wonder if she was fighting a buzz in her head like he often had to.

  “Sometimes grown ups make silly decisions,” she said finally. “Your father never met his father. But that is all right, because I loved him enough for two parents.”

  Adam had never heard this story before. He went very still as he absorbed it. Ada reached out, took his hand and patted it.

  “It’s all right, poppet,” she said again, seeming to be think carefully before her next words. “Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t love someone enough to fix them – and I love your father so very, very much. And even though he isn’t around often, he loves you very, very much too.”

  The sensitive child tried to understand, but it was all so complicated. Still, his little heart broke that bit more. Poor Daddy.

  A joyous shrieking overhead broke the sombre mood. Ada squeezed Adam’s hand and smiled. “Swifts! See how they soar!”

  The birds seemed to bring Adam’s gran out of her sadness. She leaned over and plucked a daisy from the grass, tucking it behind Adam’s ear. “Forgive an old lady for talking nonsense. You are as pure as that daisy, and I shouldn’t spoil you with sad tales. Did you know that flowers have meaning?”

  Adam shook his head, the movement involving his whole body twisting from side to side.

  “Would you like to know more about the language of flowers?”

  The language of flowers? They could talk? The idea intrigued him, and he nodded vigorously.

  “If you go to the big bookcase in the lounge, you will see the Tales of Faerie and Myth on one of the shelves. Beside that is a green book entitled Floriography: The Language of Flowers – it’s written in gold, and has lots of pictures of flowers embossed on the spine. Can you fetch it for me, please?”

  He darted inside, with Ada calling after him: “Be careful, it’s very heavy.”

  It was, but nowhere near as heavy as the fairy tale book. He was able to carry it, bending backwards with the effort and tottering only slightly as he exited through the French doors and re-entered the garden.

  “People have used flowers as symbols for hundreds and hundreds of years, but it became particularly popular with Victorians,” Ada explained. “Social niceties meant it was sometimes hard for them to say what they wanted, especially when they loved someone, so they would say it with flowers instead.”

  Adam did not always understand what his gran was telling him but he loved to hear her anyway. He always felt soothed. He went to sit cross-legged on the floor.

  “Get another deckchair, dear, you’ll see better then,” insisted Gran.

  Sat side-by-side, they pored over the thick, hard-backed book, and Adam learned about a whole new language that did not involve speech. He loved the idea.

  ***

  PRESENT DAY

  Rain trickles down the kitchen window, but in the distance Mike can see sunshine trying to break through the heavy black clouds. About time too. It’s the last week of August for goodness sake, the weather should be hot enough to crack flagstones, not wet enough for Arks.

  Daisy has been climbing the walls with boredom at having to stay indoors all the time, and Mike feels like he is wasting the holiday time he has taken off to be with her. He had been envisaging days at Southend fun fair, all deafening noise, flashing lights, and thunderous rides; and peaceful paddling at Mersea Island in front of the pastel-coloured beach huts, building sandcastles in the pale sand, then visiting the seafront café and munching on chips so hot they made his eyes water. All the things they had done with Mags, back when they had been a proper family: mum, dad, daughter.

  The famous seaside postcard line pops into his head and he smiles sadly. “Wish you were here, Mags,” he whispers.

  “Daddy, I’m bored,” a voice announces behind him. “So I think we should build a tent, then I can put on a play for you while you sit inside it.”

  He turns around very slowly, careful to arrange his features neutrally, as he learned to on a hostage negotiation course he had once attended many years ago. Daisy has her hands on her hips and looks like she will not be giving him an inch. Sometimes a good negotiator has to know when to give in to demands. Well, why not? Daisy’s idea is better than any he has come up with, though it pains him to admit it

  Two hours later, Mike is still sitting cross-legged on the floor, hunkered under a blanket he has rigged over the back of the sofa and a couple of chairs. His back aches from hunching over, and he’s fairly certain his legs are so dead he will fall over when he finally tries to stand again. Daisy is having a whale of a time though, so it’s worth it

  She is dancing around the room, high kicking and twirling, dark blonde pigtails bobbing up and down, and a big smile on her face as she sings various songs from Frozen. If Mike ever went rogue he would be tempted to take out whoever wrote all those songs. Daisy adores them though, knows the words off by heart, and movements too, it seems. She has been attending dance classes since her mum died and it has really brought Mike’s quiet little girl out of her shell.

  He cheers in all the right places, but genuine fear for the use of his legs makes him call things to a halt finally.

  “Look at the time,” he cries, glancing at his watch. “Time for me to make us some food, then it’s bath and bed.”

  His daughter’s shoulders slump, but then she throws her arms around his neck and gives him a massive hug.

  “I can still serenade you while you cook,” she says.

  “You can?! Oh, lucky me!” he smiles back.

  “You’re so funny, Daddy,” she giggles. Then she starts singing again.

  She has been fast asleep for hours by the time Simon calls Mike for a chat. The pair talk bad weather, good television programmes, and the time many years ago, when both had more hair and less belly, that they got so drunk together they almost got arrested themselves for an act involving several traffic cones, a neon light, and the car of a mutually-disliked colleague. Finally, they get round to work stuff.

  Simon sighs. “We’ve asked for help from the National Crime Agency, you know, for the Clayton case.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. They’ve got a specialist database relating to injuries and unusual weapons, expert research on potential serial killers, that sort of thing. We’re getting a clinical forensic psychologist in, too. Emma Cawthorpe, ever heard of her?”

  Mike has not.

  “She’s been involved as a criminal profiler in a couple of high profile murder cases, and we’re hoping she can offer us a new perspective, narrow things down a bit – we’ve established over one thousand lines of inquiry so far.”

  “A breakthrough will come. It’s just a question of when,” Mike offers. He hates platitudes, but it is the best the he can do.

  There is a short silence.

  “Well, we’re filming a Crimewatch reconstruction next week. Better get my best suit on for that.”

  “Which one will that be then?” Don’t say the grey one, don’t say the grey one.

  “The grey one; it’s a classic.”

  Vile, that’s what it is. A shiny number, like an eighties throwback. Still, it will definitely grab people’s attention and that can only be a good thing. Hopefully, this serial killer will be caught before he strikes again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ~ Gerber Daisy ~

  Hope

  It is the first week of September, and the children are back at school following one of the wettest, coldest Augusts on record. Now, with typical timing from the great British weather, a heat wave has arrived. A breeze as warm as a hairdryer makes the trees and grasses rustle as though hushing one another, and although sometimes the sun hides behind clouds, the air never cools.

  On such a day, the last place Adam wants to be is on a busy shopping street in central London. H
e knows, however, that if he does not apply himself he will never find the right woman – she certainly isn’t going to come to him, so he has made the journey into the city for her. As an acknowledgement of the heat, he has opted to go to one of the parks instead of Covent Garden.

  Green Park is one of his favourites, with its close up view of Buckingham Palace on one side, and the Ritz nearby. He had tea at the Ritz once with his gran and thoroughly enjoyed the very genteel English experience. Today though, he is sticking to the park, which is packed with tourists and locals alike who have flocked to the open space in order to make the most of the often all too brief British summer.

  Men strut around topless, while women wear shorts and little tops with spaghetti straps. To maximise their chance of tanning, most have also rolled their top up to expose their stomachs. Embarrassed, Adam tries not to be caught looking too closely, but safe behind his mirrored sunglasses he carefully turns his head away while staring from the corner of his eye at the beautiful flesh. He would love to reach out and stroke it. He would love to feel it beneath him, struggling. Feel his fingers sinking into the butter soft tissue as he strangles.

  No!

  The images are so vivid that they leak into reality and for a moment he sees them right in front of him. It takes iron self-control not to reach out a trembling hand and touch them. They shock him. What the hell has got into him? He does not kill because he enjoys it; he does it for the sake of the women he loves. He is not a monster, he is the hero of the tale.

  Sweat blossoms on his skin, but he shivers in the warm breeze. He forces himself to calm, to listen to the constant hum of the nearby traffic, the movement like blood in the city’s veins. Every now and again comes the mosquito buzz of a distant motorbike accelerating aggressively.

  Another deep breath in and out, and Adam focuses on the quieter noises. The sound of the breeze in the trees, the rustle of the leaves and tall grasses. They always remind him of Lisa, his first love. Sometimes he thinks they sound like a distant crowd of people, whispering to one another, judging him, talking about him. They know his secrets, they know the price he is paying for his quest. But everything worth having comes at a price.

  Calm again, Adam looks around slowly for his prey. Everyone is lolling about in the heat, too lazy to move, too hot to feel anything but relaxed. Their limbs loose and floppy as corpses’. Dogs pant in the tiny patches of shade they find dappled beneath trees, their owners too stupid to realise it would be far kinder to leave them lonely at home than in the searing midday sun of summer. The odd parent, mainly divorced dads from what Adam can tell, go by with their young daughters on bikes. Couples lie across one another despite it making them hotter, sweatier, stickier, and the sight of the physical contact makes bile rise in Adam’s throat.

  Sometimes he wonders why he is desperate to find a partner when sights like that turn his stomach so much. He cannot explain it; it is a compulsion, an instinct as strong as breathing. Why do salmon swim upstream? Why do red crabs walk across Christmas Island? Why do eels migrate all the way to the Sargasso Sea? Inexplicable instinct. That is what drives Adam too, and he searches for a new love with hope in his heart.

  Perhaps instead of his usual approach he should try striking up a conversation. The ice cream van parked by the entrance could provide the perfect chance. Standing waiting in the queue, bored, a nice woman might, just might be relaxed enough to chat with him, if he could get the courage up to speak.

  Yes, he can see it now: they would hit it off and start courting, and then get married and live happily ever after. After all this time and effort, he deserves to find love, surely. He tries so hard with women, but they simply do not respond. He can never understand why they get so freaked out once they realise it is he who has been doing all those lovely things for them. The scream one woman had given when she woke to discover him watching her sleep had been incredible. It was completely unnecessary. He had seen how popular Twilight had been, and how everyone had swooned over the main character, Edward - and he had broken in repeatedly to watch Bella sleep before she had realised what was happening. It was a nonsense that something so universally acknowledged as romantic seemed to be terrifying just because he was the one doing it.

  Besides, what was the big deal, all he had been doing was watching. It wasn’t as if he had had any intention of hurting her. Of course, when she had created that terrible rumpus he had had to hurt her in the end. He had had to shut her up. There was no other choice. Another woman who had brought doom on herself, another disappointment for him as he realised the woman he loved had failed to live up to expectations.

  Sandra Yang, that had been her name; primroses were what she was buried under. He thought of the garden, imagined the layout and immediately saw the primroses in a beautiful bed beside a wall that was a relic of the Edwardian original garden layout. Yes, her gentle smile lay beneath those blooms. When the flowers had come up in a slightly wonky line rather than the regimented fashion he could have sworn he had created, he had shaken his head and smiled wryly rather than feel aggrieved. It was a fitting tribute to Sandra’s smile, she had always had a habit of turning one side of her mouth up more than the other.

  Adam suddenly spots something that brings him out of his reverie. A man is surreptitiously taking photographs of a woman lying on her front, reading a book obliviously. He feels furiously protective on her behalf. How dare that stranger ogle her like that? Adam has a good mind to go over there right now and say something, come to the woman’s rescue.

  He stands smoothly, swiftly and takes a step forward, but at that moment another man strides over, brandishing two dripping ice-cream cones like weapons, and has a firm word. The pervert moves on swiftly, and the other man wanders over to what is clearly his girlfriend. Judging from the way she jumps into a sitting position and whips her head around to glare, he has told her everything.

  “Fucking pervert!” she shouts after the retreating man.

  Adam winces. Clearly she has no class. He is rather glad he has not expended any energy on helping her, after all; she isn’t worth it. Why do so many women these days swear and drink and spit like men? They should look to the hay day of Hollywood for icons to replicate. Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, all had been so perfect. Never a voice raised in anger, never a hair out of place. That is what a woman should be…correction, a lady should be. Classic, elegant, always knowing the right thing to say or do in any situation.

  For example, he cannot imagine Audrey Hepburn ever screaming her head off, even if she had found an unknown man in her room. She would have turned the light on and talked to him, trying to find his motivation, showing kindness. As they talked, she might then have felt an affinity with this stranger, as he felt for her. Through her gentleness and goodness, love would have bloomed…

  People are starting to stare at Adam. He realises he has been standing in place for several minutes, gazing into space. He decides to go to the ice cream van so that it looks like that had always been his plan, and he ostentatiously pulls out his wallet so that people will be fooled into thinking he has been wondering where he had put it.

  ***

  TWENTY-ONE YEARS AGO

  Adam raced up the staircase, running his fingers along the wooden bannister worn smooth by generations of his family’s hands, and burst into his bedroom. It wasn’t his really, but his gran always kept this guest room for him. She had even had it decorated his favourite colour, pale blue, and put a striped blue duvet cover on the bed.

  When he was very little she had given him a Winnie the Pooh cover exactly like the one he had at home, and hadn’t understood why he was so upset by it. She hadn’t made him explain though, instead she had got him the crisp, simple design that now adorned his bed, knowing that he loved things to match.

  As soon as he opened the door now, the ten-year-old spotted the little gift his gran had left on his bedside cabinet. A Gerber daisy in a simple glass vase, its pink showing up brightly in the all-blue room. That was not the reason why
she had chosen it though, Adam knew. It was for the meaning: cheerfulness.

  Ever since that afternoon four years earlier, when Ada had first shown her grandson the book on floriography, the pair had used the language of flowers to communicate. Adam would send a pressed bloom through the post to his gran, to tell her how he was feeling: a sprig of honeysuckle to show devotion to her, perhaps.

  Sometimes there were darker messages though, things he would not have had the courage to articulate any other way. Scarlet geraniums to illustrate his stupidity, lichen for dejection, mustard flowers to show he was hurt. These single forms of communication simplified things for him. He didn’t have to explain, didn’t have to elaborate, just pick the bloom that best described how he was feeling.

  Ada always sent back blooms of encouragement. Bells of Ireland for good luck, a Gerber daisy to keep him cheerful, a piece of hawthorn with the label ‘hope’ attached to it in Ada’s careful handwriting. It made him feel comforted. Calmed the gnawing fears he sometimes felt, the frustrations when he could not find the words to say what he felt.

  Even when she came to visit, or he and his parents went to her house, the pair would swap flowers. It was a lovely way for them to communicate with one another without him having to speak, as she knew he often got tongue-tied and embarrassed.

  Ada understood Adam like no one else in the world.

  He sniffed the bloom, smiling to himself, but froze when he heard a noise behind him. His mum leaned against the doorjamb, wearing a lurid green skirt that was so short it made him feel queasy. A smile closer to a sneer adorned her scarlet lips.

  “You and granny swapping flowers again?” Sara mocked in a low voice. “Is that because you’re a little pansy?” She sniggered at her own joke, then walked away, her perfect blonde bob swinging. Adam hurriedly closed the door.

  A few minutes later there came a gentle knock. Surely it could not be his mother, she would never have dreamed of knocking. Still, his call was hesitant.