Free Black Flowers by Steve Mosby

that wasn’t the only similarity to my father either. Wiseman’s wife had died the year before too.
    I read the entry a fourth time, but it didn’t help. I was tingling inside, both excited and scared. This couldn’t be a coincidence, but what did it mean? Had my father been trying to
emulate
Wiseman for some bizarre reason? Or had he been investigating the man’s history and then something else had happened? I needed to get online and look the entry up – make sure the details were right – and then get in touch with the police. There was something going on here. Something that people weren’t seeing.
    The other piece of paper.
    I picked it up carefully; it was yellow and brittle, and felt dusty beneath my fingertips. A quarter-page clipping, torn from a newspaper: the Whitkirk and Huntington Express. The date in the top corner said 6 November 1992.
    VIOLENT CRIME WRITER
    TALKS VIOLENT CRIME
    BARBARA PHILLIPS
    Robert Wiseman has made a very successful career for himself by writing about murder. His latest novel,
The Black Flower
, has sold to 10 countries and spent 8 weeks on the bestseller lists earlier this year. Its graphic killings and grisly subject matter appear to have struck a chord with audiences, but how does the author himself feel about violence?
    Speaking to me in nearby Huntington, Mr Wiseman is unmoved.
    ‘You have to remember that we’re not talking about real people doing horrible things to other real people. They’re fictional characters. Nobody actually gets hurt.’
    Fictional or not, the subject matter of
The Black Flower
is dark indeed. When a little girl, eventually named Charlotte Webb, appears on a promenade, she brings death and destruction in her wake. The detective who finds Charlotte mustprotect her from her father, who is hunting her down, while at the same time dealing with his own demons. So far, you may be forgiven for thinking, so familiar.
    ‘No, the book is different from many other crime novels,’ Mr Wiseman asserts. ‘In most books, you have a murderer hunting and killing people. But
The Black Flower
isn’t like that. It does have a serial killer, and a particularly horrible one at that, but it’s more about the little girl who escapes. Who is she? Where did she come from? And I like that the act of her telling her story is what sets events in motion.’ He is unable to suppress a smile. ‘That idea was hard for a writer to resist. A man becoming haunted by a story that may or may not be true.’
    However, when asked about perceived similarities between his novel and real crimes that took place in the 1970s, Mr Wiseman is reluctant to comment directly.
    ‘Ideas are everywhere,’ he tells me. ‘I grew up on a farm. I have friends who are borderline alcoholics. I’m a writer, after all! No, it’s not where the ideas come from that matters – it’s what the writer does with them through his work. You need to put a lot of effort in to transform ideas and experiences into a story. Think of it like wine. Ideas are the grapes, while the book is the finished bottle.’
    His eyes glitter at that. You get the feeling he would love to have said champagne instead.
    The Black Flower
is out in paperback this week.
     
    It was a strange little article, I thought – as though it wanted to be a hatchet job, but the journalist hadn’t quite had the heart to unload on him. Was that because of the date? If the wiki page was right, this article had been published the day after Vanessa Wiseman’s car crash. Maybe the writer had tempered it down slightly, out of respect.
    Barbara Phillips
.
    The name rang a bell – and after a moment I remembered why.The message I’d heard on my father’s answerphone: a journalist called Barbara, asking about an interview. I’d assumed she wanted to interview him, but perhaps I’d got it the wrong way around. Given she’d written this article, then, if my father had been working on something connected to Wiseman, maybe it was him who’d asked