When the alarm woke her at seven o’clock the following morning, Flyte started the day as she always did. Turning to the framed photo on her bedside table, she put her fingers first to her lips and then to the face of Poppy, the daughter she had given birth to three years ago.
Stillborn – but still born.
The photo, which a kind nurse had encouraged her to take in the final hour she spent with her, showed a wise little face, eyes closed and one doll-like hand curled beneath her chin like a question mark. For more than two years after it happened Flyte hadn’t even been able to look at the image – had literally refused to look her loss in the face – but nowadays it made her feel as if her daughter was still with her. Her early feelings of near-unhinged grief and fury had gradually subsided, giving way to an ever-present sense of loss – but also a profound gratitude for her daughter’s brief existence.
Her marriage hadn’t survived the tragedy, not helped by the fact that her ex-husband Matt had been focused on ‘moving on’ from the loss – as if that were possible. While Flyte had still been deranged with grief and drugs, he had allowed Poppy to be cremated with two other stillborn babies, their mingled ashes scattered in the hospital memorial garden. An unmarked grave.
Her thoughts drifted to Green-Eyes, the young man fished out of the canal, lying in his cold drawer at the mortuary, unclaimed and unidentified. It was five days since he’d been found and still nobody had reported anyone of his description missing. Was it simply the anonymous nature of inner-city London? So many people seemed to drift here before moving on, often leaving little trace.
Before heading into work there was a call that she’d been putting off.
‘Hello, Mother. It’s Phyllida.’ Introducing herself averted an embarrassing silence while Sylvia worked out who she was.
‘Oh, hello, dear. How are you? Is it getting cold there?’
‘It’s only September, Mother.’ Her parents had moved to Cyprus for her father’s army posting, sending the thirteen-year-old Flyte to a girls’ boarding school in Northumbria. After her darling pops had died seventeen years ago, Sylvia had stayed on, later marrying another expat called Ralph.
What a crying shame her father had died first. These days, Flyte felt no guilt at this emotion. Sylvia was a cold fish, simply not cut out for motherhood; all her childhood memories of affection and fun emanated from Pops. ‘How’s Colditz?’ he would whisper to her, twinkly-eyed, when she came to Cyprus for the school holidays. ‘Have you built the glider yet?’ Clearly, he’d have taken her with them rather than exiling her to that chilly dump on Hadrian’s Wall peopled with dull-witted teachers and even dimmer classmates.
‘I’ve got a date for the ceremony.’
She could almost hear Sylvia racking her brains.
‘The memorial and naming ceremony for baby Poppy, your granddaughter?’ said Flyte.
‘Of course, darling. They are doing it in a church, you said?’
‘Yes, the local C. of E. priest has been really helpful.’
‘Oh, not a real church?’ Disappointment in her voice. Sylvia Ferrers had been born into a grand Catholic family who could trace their roots back to before the Reformation. ‘Do you know the family seat in Norfolk had a priest hole?’ she asked for at least the hundredth time. ‘Such a rich history.’ These reminders of Sylvia’s glittering forebears were always edged with bitterness, underlined by the unspoken reminder that she had ‘married down’ in choosing Flyte’s father, who had never risen higher than the rank of major. In marrying Ralph, she had at least traded up to a brigadier.
‘As you know, I don’t have a faith per se but it’s important to me to mark the fact she existed,’ said Flyte, digging her nails into her palms. The only way to do that was to hear Poppy Flyte-Howard named in church. Matt hadn’t entered a name on the stillbirth certificate and when Flyte tried to rectify that later she discovered that – for some cruel and unaccountable reason – giving a stillborn baby a name retrospectively wasn’t permitted.
‘Poor Phyllida,’ said Sylvia awkwardly.
‘So, I was hoping you might attend the service. Matt will be there, so it would be just the three of us.’
‘You mean fly to the UK?’ From Sylvia’s tone you’d think she’d been asked to board a rocket to Mars. ‘You know how I loathe flying, darling. And it’s so expensive.’
Flyte was determined to keep her temper. Sylvia’s attitude could be summed up by her astonishing response when she’d learned of Poppy’s death: ‘You could always have another baby.’ Her continuing insensitivity had recently caused the polite détente that characterised their relationship to crack open into outright conflict.
‘It’s less than five hours and you can afford to fly club class,’ Flyte pointed out. ‘You’re welcome to stay in the flat; I can take the sofa bed.’
‘Oh, no, no.’ Horror in her voice. ‘That’s so kind of you, darling, but I couldn’t put you to that trouble.’ Sylvia sighed. ‘I suppose I could stay at the Pelham, and visit your great-aunt in Kensington afterwards. Two birds with one stone as it were. All right, darling, send me the date and I’ll look into it.’
‘I appreciate it, Mother.’
‘And now I must rush because the man who cleans the pool is coming and Ralph is out playing golf. Chin-chin, darling.’
Flyte decided to call CID Camden, where she’d worked till recently, to hand back the drowned guy before heading into the office – she didn’t want Dean Willets finding out she still had the case. She had a feeling he’d leap at the chance to drop her in it.
‘Hey, Josh . . . Yes, all good, thanks. Listen, I helped out filing the report on a Cat 2 death, a John Doe fished out of the canal when you lot were busy last week.’
‘Oh, great. So I’m the lucky winner of an unidentified floater?’ he asked. In anyone else she might have objected to his tone but she liked Josh. He was the brightest of the younger DCs, and they’d had a good working relationship.
‘An artist’s impression has gone to the mispers database,’ she told him. ‘Nobody has reported him missing yet.’
‘Down and out?’
She pictured the upmarket brands listed on the inventory. ‘No. He had clothes worth six or seven hundred quid on his back. You’ll need to send a CSI to the mortuary to take a deadset from him.’ A deadset: aka fingerprints taken from a body.
‘Hmm. Sounds to me like the poor old taxpayer will be shelling out for his funeral.’ Josh sounded sceptical.
Flyte knew that Josh would do a competent job, but no more. She was gripped by a sudden impulse; she couldn’t let Green-Eyes go, not yet.
‘I tell you what,’ she said. ‘I’m seeing a reporter at the Gazette later about another case. Why don’t I give them the details, see if we can get his pic in the next edition?’
‘OK great, thanks for that, Sarge.’ Josh sounded delighted.
‘I’ll need to give your name as contact obviously, since technically it’s back with CID.’
‘Technically?’ Josh didn’t miss much. ‘The post-mortem didn’t find anything, did it?’
‘No, no, but I wouldn’t mind keeping a watching brief on it. I suppose I’d just like to know whether the guy gets reunited with his family.’
Josh was probably tempted to take the mickey out of her for such a sentimental admission but instead he just said, ‘Understood, Sarge.’
After hanging up, she bit her lip. It wasn’t like her to expose herself like that.
Of course she was risking a rocket from DCI Steadman, and before she’d even had a chance to prove herself, but she simply couldn’t abandon Green-Eyes. And not because of the feeling that he looked familiar. No. She simply couldn’t bear the idea of him being laid to rest with no one to mourn him, just as Poppy’s ashes had been scattered to the wind with nobody there who had loved her.