C. Williams - Flowers for the Dead

I look at her. Clutching that flowerpot to her chest and trying very desperately to smile. I haven’t seen Linny in years. Recognised her straightaway, though, when she walked in, and what a shock that was. To see Linny back here, Linny of all people, after all these years. How long has it been, twenty years, nineteen? Hellfire! Nineteen years since I last saw her. I mean, not even at the funeral. Can you believe that? The only child not showing up to her parents’ funeral? And that house of theirs just sitting down in that hollow at the end of that dirt road, all empty and nobody using it?

So, you know, a right shock, seeing her again. But shock’s nothing new to a policeman, is it? So, when Linn shows up like that and tells me her parents’ door was open, not just unlocked, I thought it was serious, I really did. But then we drove there together and went inside, and nothing had been stolen or damaged or even moved, and I looked at that rusty old thing of a lock and have to say I’m not surprised it didn’t hold.

Didn’t say that, though. We’re back at the station now and I want to help her, I do. She’s always been a darling of ours, Little Linny from Down-in-the-Dip. That’s what we used to call her parents’ house, Mark’s and Sue’s, because of how they built it right at the bottom of that hollow in the woods. It’s the only house on that road except the Kenzies’. But the Kenzies don’t live there any more. Mind you, it’s none of my business whom they sell their house to. I only know, I wouldn’t have picked that one. That’s all I’m saying. But I guess they didn’t want to stay after Mark and Sue were gone. Bloody hiking accident.

‘You’re in good hands here,’ I tell Linny as I take out a form from the shelf behind me. The police station has been renovated. It’s all white and modern now and there are neat lines on the floor telling people where to stand and where not to go. Not to come too close to the counter, for example, unless they’ve been asked to. That must be a London thing. Where they have shootings at police stations when someone from Tower Hamlets comes walking in. Or Leeds, at the very least. Here, I tell everybody to just come up to the counter. Right up.

‘Come here, Linny,’ I tell her. She’s in ratty jeans and a worn coat that used to be quite nice, I think. Her hair has turned a little bit lighter. Thinned out, too. I remember her hair as black as the forest up by her house, and her eyes as large as a doe’s, even when she was a teenager. Pretty girl, that. She moved away pretty early, right out of school. With her boy. Her man. Oliver. Good man, that one. Promising swimmer, he was, and I should know, I coached the team for a while. Shame he didn’t go into swimming professionally. He could have really made it as a swimmer. Better than Jacob Mason, even. Olympics, absolutely. Gold for England, that would have been something!

So, we were sorry to see them go. Her parents especially, of course. But I did not blame them. How could I?

I knew it was my fault. Know it was my fault she never came back, not even to visit. I tried to do all I could to help, but she didn’t want to stay after all that.

All the more reason why I want to help her now. That’s why I don’t say, You know, the fair was in town a couple of months ago, may have been a few teenagers out for an adventure, or just time passing and wearing down that old lock, you know? Taking the chimes as a bonus, so to speak.

Besides, I get it. Alone as a woman, you’d get flayed easily, wouldn’t you? Scared, I mean, you’d get scared easily. So I hand her a form and when she’s filled it all out, I fax it straight up to Northallerton (tried and true, a fax machine). Looks like it puts her at ease. She’s smiling again, and that’s all I want.

Let me tell you about all the ways this girl could smile. She had the most expressive face as a kid – you could always tell there was something going on in that bright mind of hers. Especially when she’d played a trick on you and you hadn’t found out yet. There was that twitch in her face. She loved to play tricks, Little Linny did. Now, her smile’s friendly, maybe a little shy. I walk around the counter to show her out, putting my hand on the small of her back to reassure her. Let her know I’m here.

‘I’ll keep you posted on any developments, Linny,’ I say.

‘Thank you, Detective.’

Something tugs at my chest as I remember her as a little child, coming to play knock, knock, ginger with her friends in the town centre, giggling behind the bushes on the other side of the street as I pretended not to see them. Ding, ding, ding, that’s how they always rang the doorbell. Everybody in the village knew it.

‘Please, Linny, call me Graham.’

There was that boy with them, too. A bit weird, wasn’t it? Even as teenagers, they still stuck together. Linny and Anna and that boy. Teoman Dündar. He didn’t play footie or go loitering around pubs with other young men his age, smoking cigarettes. Wasn’t that what folks of his background did? Instead, always trailing those lasses. Maybe that’s what people do where he’s from, though. Don’t take women seriously, do they? Linny’s parents were worried, in any case, I remember that.

I watch her leave, still trying to smile, dropping purple petals where she goes, watch her through the bulletproof windows (another London regulation, that, I’m sure). There is a feeling just beneath my skin. A prickling sensation.

Just a set of chimes.

I return to the counter, tell Angela, I mean Constable Johnson, that I’ll be right back. Then I go into the back. Down the set of stairs, grey concrete, low ceilings. Along the narrow corridor, dark walls and blue doors with a couple of cells behind them. At the end, the only wooden door, the one leading to the archives.

Takes me a while to dig out her file. It’s still on paper. I can’t believe I haven’t looked at it in so long. The prickling turns stronger.

I have sharp instincts, I do. I wonder if it’s coincidence. I wonder if she knows.

That Teoman is back as well.

I know it’s silly to have gone to the detective. To Graham. I couldn’t believe it at first, when I saw it was him standing behind that counter. Not because of how much, but of how little he seemed to have changed. Sure, he looked different, but he still talks, moves, listens exactly like he did all those years ago.

I try to relax my hands around the handle of the suitcase. Graham was kind enough to take note of my complaint, and the lock was very old. It may have come undone, simply, like the chimes. It gets fairly windy here, even down in the hollow in the woods. We’ve arranged for a new one to be put in. The locksmith will be by later today.

Now I am standing in the hall of the house, clutching my bags. The house I have not been in for nineteen years. Slowly, I put down the bags and push open the first door on the left. It leads to the mud room. Cloakroom, my mum called it, a euphemism if ever I heard one. There is the low wooden bench we threw all of our coats on, and the rack for the shoes and the wellies, and the shelf for the gardening tools that Mum said she needed at hand, not all the way out in the shed in the garden. All of it is covered under white sheets. The Kenzies must have done this after the funeral. I pull off the sheets, one by one, dropping them onto the floor. The tools are still up on the shelf, some of them rusty, some of them still shining bright, bought only recently, never to be used.

I put my coat down on the bench and toe off my shoes. A pair of trainers sits on the rack still. They were my father’s.

I go back out into the hall, the kitchen the first door on my right, the staircase to the first floor right ahead. I go into the kitchen first, pulling away sheet after sheet, uncovering birch wood and local pottery, the blue heavy plates and mugs from my childhood. The sitting room next, windows and the back door leading out into the garden, framed by high bookshelves. Looking out, I can see the shed behind the house by the tree line, blue paint flaking away.