The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel (14 page)

“I can’t help you, Mr. Lancing.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

She smiles. “Can’t, won’t—they’re the same thing. Now, please leave.”

Jim feels the blood pound at his temples. He opens his mouth to argue with her but at that second there is the slam of metal and brick from somewhere close by. A car alarm immediately sounds and various voices begin to shout. Jim and Karan both move to the window, three or four figures can be seen scurrying around the corner, heading to something. Jim looks down. Dani is in the middle of the road waving manically. From that distance he can’t really see her expression, it’s more like a smudge, but he knows something is very wrong.

He turns to Karan Noble “I have—” He doesn’t finish, but rushes out of the room.

“What the hell?” Karan Noble shouts after him but he’s gone.

He takes the stairs two at a time, bouncing off the walls of the narrow staircase until he hits the bottom. He tumbles out into the cold evening air. Dani runs to him, so panicked she runs through a parked car.

“Dad!” She looks scared, so pale—even for a ghost.

“What? What’s happened?”

“Dad, this way …”

She turns and runs into the road; Jim follows.

“Watch it!” the driver screams, as Jim swerves at the last moment to avoid being hit by the only car on the street. Dani runs around the corner. As he gets into Drury Lane, Jim sees a group gathered around a man lying in the middle of the road. A car has crashed into a wall to the left of them—the driver has got out of the car and is swaying slightly—he looks both dazed and angry. Jim slows and comes to a halt next to Dani, who watches the group.

“I should help.”

“No need, he’s dead,” she tells him in a small voice.

“How …?”

“I saw it.” She turns to Jim. “He collapsed right in front of me, but …”

“What?”

“He … his body fell but another part of him stayed up, standing there. Like his flesh just fell away and his spirit was still upright. He looked right at me—could see me. He looked shocked, confused … he looked down and saw his body and then …”

She screws her face up, the memory cutting into her.

“Then he just seemed to freeze. The spirit part of him that was standing opened its mouth. I think he was going to say something to me. Ask what had happened, but he just suddenly seemed to shake—like a huge current was running through him and he lit up like the sun—and then …” She struggles to express it. “He turned to steam, or something like smoke, and was gone.”

She closes her eyes, replaying in her mind what she’d seen.

“I don’t understand, Dani,” Jim tells her.

“He was gone, Dad. Gone.”

“What?”

“Not like I can—he was gone. Nowhere. His spirit just went.”

“Dani …”

“Then the car came—the driver saw the body in the road at the
last second and steered away, hit the wall. Lucky he was moving so slowly.”

“Oh” is all Jim can say.

They stand silent while the wail of the ambulance builds around them. It trundles through the still treacherous streets. As soon as it arrives two paramedics jump out. Dani finally lifts up her face to meet her father’s gaze. Her eyes seem to dance with a firelight Jim has never seen before.

“I don’t remember it, Dad. I don’t remember my death. I don’t know why I’m here. Why didn’t I go like he just did? What …?” She can’t complete the sentence. Instead she turns and starts to walk away.

“Dani,” Jim calls to her. “Please don’t go.” But she fades from sight.

He waits for a while, hoping she will come back, but after half an hour his fingers and feet are frozen. Full of questions he trudges back to the Lost Souls building. Now it looks totally dark. He knows Karan Noble would never let him back in. But she had confirmed something was going on—“Patty has made her own choice. She needed to act and she has done so”—that was what she’d said, but what did it mean?

He sighs heavily. He’s no closer to finding Patty, and is even more worried than he was that morning. With a heavy heart, Jim heads slowly up Dryden Street toward home.

Patty suddenly sits up like a marionette, her strings jerked—ready to perform. She has no idea where she is for a second, the sound and images so alien—then it all rushes back: the knife, the blood, the drive through the snow, handing the sample over, the end to her long, long wait.

On the table the superskinnysoymoccacinolatte is cold, a film formed over the top. Her hand reaches up to her lip and she feels drool. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a packet of tissues to mop her lips. She looks at her watch—11:30. The four hours are almost up. It’s time to go back to the lab.

She feels like she’s moving through mud; the air is sodden with the weight of loss: lost laughter, lost moments, lost … She moves slowly through the streets, almost like a bride moving down the aisle, she feels like she is about to shed her old life and become someone new.

She climbs the stairs to the lab. She asks for Roberta, again trying to smile and affect the cheery Home Counties voice.

Roberta enters. She is all frowns, but as she sees Patty she smiles.

“It is good news, I think.”

Patty imagines the blade in her hand, sees herself slide it into him, spit in his face. She cries her tears that splash down upon him as his life slimes away. The blood and tears mingle, bloodred pain and crystal joy. Both will free her.

Roberta, still smiling, tells her the result. Her lips move but the sound is distorted. Patty starts to sway; she looks down at her hand covered in his gore. Blood spews onto the floor like broken waters as a baby squirms in the dirt, fighting for breath. She tumbles forward. All is black for Patricia Lancing.

Monday, February 8, 1999

She stands on the threshold. The train station behind her, looking down the path that winds into the middle of town. She’s made this walk so often—dozens of times over the last ten years—but today her legs feel like jelly. She has come to despise this city and its occupants, maybe not all but certainly the young ones, with their long limbs, super-white teeth and clear skin. They strut around like they own the place—she hates it—the arrogance of the young and privileged. Even the student selling the
Socialist Worker
sounds like a refugee from the House of Lords.

She pushes herself forward and starts to trundle down the path. It’s five months since she was last here, then it was the start of the new university year. She had quizzed the staff for the thousandth time—nothing. Very few remain from Dani’s day, a couple of secretaries, two senior masters and no students; they have masters and PhDs now and are scattered all over the planet. The police gave up on Dani long ago, even Tom has moved on. And Jim … Patty suddenly stops and grabs hold of the metal rail. Behind her a Japanese student with a large trundling suitcase has to make an emergency stop.

“Excuse me.”

Patty takes no notice. The path ahead swims, she sits down—feeling damp from the ground seep into her jeans. The diminutive Japanese student swears under her breath as she manhandles the enormous suitcase around the madwoman sitting in everyone’s way. There is no way forward—that is the only thought in Patty’s head. Ten years. There are no leads, no evidence, no chance. She
feels sick. Tired and sick. She hates Durham. Before Dani came here Patty knew nothing about the city. No, that isn’t quite true—she had known one girl from Durham, a prostitute who worked out of a slum in King’s Cross. Tina. Tina? When Patty first met her she was still pretty, only twenty, slight but not addict thin. She’d arrived from Durham a few weeks before—running from someone or something. Running to the big smoke where the streets were paved with gold. Stupid girl. She had a son who was in care—she swore she’d get him back. She begged Patty to help. What a fucking joke, he was better off without her. Fucking Durham.

Patty sits on the step and lets the day slide away from her. At some point her stomach grumbles so loudly that she gets up and walks down the path to find something to eat. In a greasy spoon she orders a cheese sandwich and glass of milk. There’s a phone box outside and she considers calling Karan. She wants someone who might understand. Might appreciate what ten years of death feels like … but she doesn’t ring her. Truth is there is no one who can know what she has gone through, feel the frustration of her failure to find Dani’s killer, know the guilt she feels about those first few days when she was drugged up to the eyeballs and no help. She feels the shame nuzzle her heart even now, gnaw at her: “You fell apart when you were most needed. Ninety percent of all crimes are solved in the first twenty-four hours and you were no use—you might as well have killed her.” That is what her head tells her. The milk seems to curdle in her mouth. She takes one bite of the sandwich but can’t force it down. She spits it into a napkin. Why did she come here? She envies Karan Noble. She lost her daughters but at least she knows who to blame, who to hate. She has the pleasure of knowing his life is being made a hell in prison—that she pays for him to be beaten and worse every week. That is something. Something.

“Really. Would that make you happy, Patty? To have a man raped and beaten for your pleasure?” Jim-in-her-head asks.

“Yes.”

“Are you so lost?”

“You have no idea who I am these days.”

“I am so sorry for you.”

Patty gets up and pays the bill. Outside it is quite dark. The day is lost. She stands there stuck. She could go to a hotel and start early in the morning. Maybe the local paper has … but instead she turns toward the path back to the station. The chance to avenge Dani has gone. There is no revenge for her. This has been a long way to come for a bite of cheese sandwich.

“Sorry,” the man says as he hits her shoulder, walking the other way.

“Watch where you’re going,” she calls back to him.

He goes a few steps more and looks back. He recognizes her immediately from the church. Ten years—but it’s her mother. His chest tightens as he watches her walk up the hill. He feels a force, like a rubber band stretched between them. He follows her, keeping his distance as she heads up the hill.

In the station she turns to the platform heading south, and he walks to the opposite platform and sits, watching her across the tracks. She has a thin jacket on; she looks frozen but seems oblivious to the cold. She’s lost a lot of weight since he last saw her; she looks lean now, like a runner. She looks more like Dani—how Dani might have looked when … if … he feels a tear breach his defenses and roll down his cheek.

Patty looks across the train tracks and sees a man crying. He reminds her of Jim for a second—so close to tears all the time. She
wonders why he’s crying … and then the London train rattles into the station wiping the image from her sight. Was the man real—or just Jim-in-her-head? She will not admit to missing him. Not allow the loneliness to flood back in. She had to leave him; the closeness was killing them both.

She rises slowly and walks to the train. She will not make this journey again. There are people she can help through Lost Souls, there are men she can punish, laws to change and young women like Dani to protect. Maybe she could even write again … maybe …