скачать книгу бесплатно
Flowers for the Dead
C. K. Williams
I am the reason girls are told not to trust strangers. I am their cautionary tale. Nineteen years ago Linn Wilson was attacked. Seventeen-years-old and home alone, she’d been waiting for her friends to arrive when she heard the doorbell ring. But when she opened the door, Linn let in her worst nightmare. The culprit was never found. It was someone I knew. I am going to find out who did this to me. Now, Linn is determined to get to the bottom of the night that changed her life forever. Returning to the village where she grew up, she knows that someone must know something. The claustrophobia and isolation of small town living means secrets won’t remain secrets for long… A wonderfully tense and gripping suspense thriller that will have you hooked! Perfect for fans of D. K Hood’s Detective Kane and Alton series and Sheryl Browne.
Flowers for the Dead
C.K. Williams
Copyright (#uc37d2a70-1a8e-50ba-b650-149c08b4efc8)
Published by ONE MORE CHAPTER
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © C.K. Williams 2019
Cover Design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover Photographs © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
C.K. Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © November 2019; ISBN: 9780008354398
Version: 2019-09-23
Dedication (#uc37d2a70-1a8e-50ba-b650-149c08b4efc8)
for Thérèse
and for my parents
Epigraph (#uc37d2a70-1a8e-50ba-b650-149c08b4efc8)
No coward soul is mine
Emily Brontë
CONTENTS
Cover (#u1e5a8404-a8d2-5897-bf9a-bef42239b23d)
Title Page (#u3bac391a-29bb-56a5-98d1-bbc4bd33692f)
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
The doorbell rings … (#u4189aa3e-e5cb-5d44-8c10-b1d6ae0d585c)
I. LIES (#ua60cda52-109d-5226-857a-9d2de2a16ef5)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
II. TRUTH (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9
III. JUSTICE (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
The doorbell rings.
It sounds shrill in the small attic flat. The walls are slanted, lights turned off, the floral wallpaper barely visible in the dark. A small kitchen merges into a sitting room, an old dining table stuffed into the corner. The TV is on, but there is no one in sight. A pot of begonias is sitting on the windowsill. The flowers are drooping their heads. Outside, streetlamps cut stark shadows into the dark London street.
The doorbell rings again. Urgently, it resounds through the empty flat.
The bedroom door opens. A woman comes stumbling out. She must be in her thirties. She is dressed in floral sweatpants and a dressing gown, a little threadbare, the wool as dark as her eyes. Pulling it around herself, she stares at the front door. A shiver runs through her body, from the tip of her black hair to the soles of her bare feet, peeking out from the dressing gown. For a moment, she looks inexplicably frightened.
Then she takes a deep breath. Her lips are moving, although no words are coming out. You can do this.
Glancing at the windowsill for a moment, she then focuses on the door, rubbing the palm of her hand. It seems to be cramping. Her lips are still moving as she walks up to the door. Hesitantly, she presses the buzzer.
Through the peephole, the woman stares out into the hallway, cast in darkness. Someone is coming up the stairs. She can hear their steps ringing through the stairwell. Their laboured breaths. Their heavy boots.
The woman freezes. A drop of sweat runs down her neck, caressing her bare skin.
A dark figure comes into view. Distorted by the peephole. A man. Tall. Broad-shouldered, his face in the shadows. Breathing heavily. Raising a hand.
She takes a panicked step back.
The man’s hand finds a light-switch. Suddenly, the hallway is flooded with light.
He is wearing a delivery uniform. Carrying a parcel.
The woman lets out a breath, relief softening all of her features. Just a delivery man. Her muscles relax as she opens the door and steps out onto the landing. ‘Thank you for coming all the way up here,’ she says. Her voice is melodious if soft. She gives him a shy smile, which he returns. She is closer to forty than thirty, but men still like it when she smiles.
‘All right,’ he says. He makes her sign for the parcel, then hands it over to her. They say goodbye as strangers do. She watches him retrace his steps, making sure he’s left, then retreats into her flat.
The parcel is small, no bigger than a shoebox. She sets it down on the dining table, making the wood creak, and leans against the windowsill. Absent-mindedly, she feels the soil of her begonias, making sure they want for nothing as she looks at the parcel, careful curiosity written all over her face.
Until she sees where the parcel is from.
The moment she notices the address, her pulse quickens. It’s come all the way from Yorkshire.
The woman takes a step back. Her eyes race to the kitchen area, to the rubbish, the recycling bin. She could simply bury it deep, under carrot peel and the remnants of dead flowers. Her hands are shaking as she reaches for the parcel. Touches it. Hesitates. Looks back at the kitchen.
Again, her lips are forming words. You can do this.
She picks up the parcel and moves into the kitchen. For a moment, she is overwhelmed by an absurd urge to shake it. Hold it up to her ear and listen.
Then she turns away, forcefully, and reaches for a pair of scissors. Carefully, she cuts it open.
Inside the parcel sit only a few harmless items. Trinkets, really. A copper thimble, an old drawing of a wildflower, a few souvenir magnets from mountain villages all over Europe. A picture frame of an older couple, smiling into the camera, bearing an obvious resemblance to the woman. A letter sits on top.
As soon as the woman lifts up the letter, she sees it.
Underneath the paper lies a flower. Pressed and dried. Shaped like a bell, dark petals, black berries.
The woman recoils. Her breath is coming in hard, short bursts. A memory sears through her, like a crack in the walls of a dusty room. Sweat on her skin. Saliva running down her neck. A shout ripped from her throat and the taste of leather on her tongue.
She takes another step back. Her mouth is forming the words you can do this, you can do this, but the memories keep driving her back. Back until her body hits the wall. She digs her nails in, tries not to slide down. To keep herself upright. You have to fight it. But there is no way she can fight this. The dark berries, the purple petals.
The woman knows what sort of flower this is.
Her hands begin cramping. The soles of her bare feet. Her chest, her lungs, her windpipe. She reaches for her throat, the clammy skin as she tries to push the memories away.
This is deadly nightshade.
She knows because she has had it in her mouth. Tasted its sweet, deadly berries, nineteen years ago. Nineteen years ago, on a night just as dark as this one. The night when she opened the door to her parents’ house and let in her worst nightmare. The torn sheets. The shards of glass, the smell of lavender, the blood between her legs. Her raw throat and the taste of leather in her mouth.
The woman slides down the wall, silently, eyes fixed on the table. All you can hear is a soft swoosh as the dressing gown slithers along the wallpaper. The low noise of the telly. The occasional car driving by. Her finger, tapping on the floor.
It is only in the woman’s memory that another sound can be heard. And this is a new memory. Something she had burnt out of her mind as utterly as possible. Something she has not remembered until this very moment.
It is a doorbell.
And it is ringing.
Ding, ding, ding.
I. LIES (#uc37d2a70-1a8e-50ba-b650-149c08b4efc8)
Chapter 1 (#uc37d2a70-1a8e-50ba-b650-149c08b4efc8)
LINN
I am the reason girls are told not to trust a stranger. In the small town in the Yorkshire Dales where I grew up, the homes as lonely as the mountains, what happened to me is every parent’s cautionary tale. They tell it to their daughters, their precious little girls, their nieces, cousins, sisters, mothers. Don’t open the door to strangers. Don’t walk home too late at night. Don’t wear that skirt.
It has been nineteen years, and I’ve never been back there. It has been nineteen years, and I’ve never told anyone this story. That is why what I’m about to do is so utterly, breathtakingly stupid. Or brave. Maybe that’s one and the same thing, anyway.
I am in our bedroom, packing the rest of what I will need. Listening carefully for any sounds from outside the bedroom, I’m stuffing my things into an inconspicuous shopping bag from Tesco. In a hurry, I put the parcel that I received last night into the bag, making sure it is stowed away safely. The dried flower of deadly nightshade now sits in my pocket. My movements are harried. Frantic. Energetic. As they have not been in many, many years.
I’m about to go back there. Drive from our London flat onto the motorway and ever further north into the dark autumn night. To the lonely house where I grew up and the High Street in the village where I played knock, knock, ginger as a child with my friends under the red boughs of the rowans. Where we always used the same code when we rang the doorbell, until all of the village knew it:
Ding, ding, ding.
I take the book I’m reading from my nightstand and throw it into the bag next to the parcel. Quickly, I tie the bag closed and hide it under the bed, covering it with the extra bedding we keep there. I can feel the pulse in my palms, my heart beating frantically.
For nineteen years, I believed the official story. The police said it, and I believed it. At seventeen years of age, still living with my parents in Yorkshire, one night I opened the door of our house to a stranger. My parents were not at home, gone to see a show in Manchester. By the time they came back, the police were already there. Their daughter had already been raped, and could not recall anything except the pain splitting her open, blood running down between her legs. She could not remember how she had got there, or who had done it.
I couldn’t remember.
I straighten. Close my eyes. Listen to my heartbeat, trying to calm myself down. I am thirty-six now. For nineteen years, that is the story I believed.
But it is not the true story.
I turn to the dressing table, looking into the mirror, putting my hair back in order, strands that have come undone in my hurry. My face looks just the same as yesterday, but everything else is changed: when I looked at the dried flower in the parcel, a memory came back to me. Like a titan arum suddenly coming to bloom after years of nothing, the deadly nightshade made me remember.
It made me remember how the doorbell rang that night.
Ding, ding, ding.
That was why I opened the door in the middle of the night. Because I thought it was someone I knew.
