The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel (24 page)

“You have an intravenous drip in your right arm. Do you understand what I mean by that?”

She nods. She’d like to tell him that she isn’t a bloody idiot, but her throat won’t cooperate.

“I had the sister tape down the tubes so they stayed in while you were unconscious. But I’ve moved them so you can sit up … can you try for me? We do have a lift we can use at the back.”

Patty slowly sits up and an arm snakes behind her to help. Under normal circumstances she would recoil from the forced intimacy of the touch. Under normal circumstances, but she’s too weak and so she allows the unseen arm to sit her upright. She can see down her
body. She’s dressed in a hospital gown, hence the lack of underwear and basic dignity. The doctor continues to prod and poke her like a cow being valued for a quick sale.

“You’re a bit of a mystery, you know,” he says as he lifts first one foot then the other and pinches her toes. “We don’t even know your name. Could you tell us your name?”

Patty looks blankly at him.

“You had no form of identification on you, no bag, no purse, nothing. Were you robbed?”

Blank.

“Not sure? You had a fall, there’s a bang to your head—nothing serious. We were more worried by how dehydrated and undernourished you were. So we sedated you and we’ve been feeding you by drip and line. Do you understand?”

Blank.

“Now you’re awake, we would like you to start eating. We need to build your strength up.”

“How lon—”

“I can’t hear you,” he tells her gruffly. She motions to a water jug and glass on the cabinet. He pours a little water for her and hands it over. She rolls the water around her mouth. It feels better but she can’t swallow and has to spit back into the cup. Dr. Frobisher grimaces.

“How long was I sedated?”

“Twenty-four hours—just over, maybe.”

“Twen—” Her throat fills with the bile of a scream. Weight bears down on her chest. A day lost. They’ll have found him and …

“No. Naaaaaa …” She remembers Roberta’s words. Her wail fills the ward.

“Now, I—” Dr. Frobisher starts to panic in the face of raw emotion. “I’ll get …” He runs off to find help. The inhuman sound
gets even louder. Two women in their nineties begin to cry, both believing a bombing raid is about to start. One whimpers with fear; the other sobs for the man she loved and lost so long ago.

The ward sister rushes over. “What the hell is going on?” The sister grabs hold of Patty and shakes her. “What? What’s the matter?”

“It wasn’t him.”

“Who?”

“It …” Patty’s eyes are wild, snapping back and forth. “The killer, he was …” she feels the ward sister draw away …

“Killer?”

… and that snaps Patty back. “Can’t get caught now—the killer is still out there. I kidnapped the wrong man,” she thinks.

“It … it was a bad dream. I had a bad … please excuse me.”

“I don’t understand.” The sister eyes her patient with some suspicion. “You’re okay? Are you in pain?”

“No. No pain.”

“Okay, then please lie down, I’ll go and prise our Dr. Frobisher out of the toilets and we can see about getting you something to stabilize you. Maybe get some meat on the bones, eh?” She smiles. “Okay?”

Patty nods. The sister leaves and Patty lies back, feeling her heart pulse—reliving Roberta’s words—the mouth moving and the air suddenly becoming hot and toxic. “Not a match.” Not. It wasn’t him. Duncan Cobhurn didn’t kill Dani.

“Oh, Christ.” She allows the dam to break and the tears to flow free. She sobs for ten minutes and then, with an absolute force of will, pushes the wall of self-pity away and starts to drag herself up from the pit.

When she is almost herself, she begins to look around and plan her next step. To her side there is a locker. She leans awkwardly over and pulls the door open. No clothes—but her glasses are there—she puts them on and the world becomes slightly less blurred. She can see a ward of maybe eight beds. Old people. Bloody old people. It’s the ward her mother-in-law died in.

“I am not old,” she croaks, but nobody acknowledges her. She pulls off the covers; she needs to get away. She tries to swing her leg out, but the tubing pulls and pain burrows deep. She has a catheter.

At some point a woman, possibly the first voice she heard, approaches with a mug of tea and places it on the tray next to her. Patty takes it. It’s sweet but very refreshing. She closes her eyes again and listens to the staff as they patrol the ward. She begins to distinguish the voices, gets an understanding of who’s in control. What they do there. Twenty-four hours. “So it’s Sunday—morning or night?” she thinks to herself. She looks at her wrist and then in the locker, no watch—she wore no jewelry. Even the bifocals were an off-the-peg pair from the chemist’s. No prescription, nothing that could be used to trace her. Except her, of course. Except for the fact that she’s lying down like a fucking dog waiting to be found. Obviously Duncan Cobhurn will be free—when? He would have woken up at some point on Saturday afternoon. If she was lucky he would have slept until the evening, but as soon as he’d woken he would have started making a lot of noise. Enough to wake the dead. So he’d have been found at some point last night—the best she could hope for would be this morning. Then what? She tries to rifle through the filing cabinets of her mind for all the cases she’s reported on over the years. How long does it take to take a statement? Make a photofit? He saw her for only a minute and she
was in disguise—what would the police have? Nothing more than a general description: woman in her mid-sixties, tall and thin. But they’re not idiots. At some point they will work out what the cut in his hand was for. Maybe it was good that she cut so deep—it isn’t obvious that it was for a blood sample. But they will realize it quickly, and then they’ll check all testing facilities. The lab will be discreet, but an ambulance was called from there for a tall, thin woman in her sixties who had collapsed. Christ, the trail leads directly to her. It is only a matter of time.

“Nur …” Patty croaks and looks up, and sees not just a nurse walking at the end of the ward but a man too. A policeman. Patty feels a tremor start to build.

“Oh fuck. Calm. Calm, Patty.” She lies back and closes her eyes, trying to keep the shakes away.

“I understand she’s awake,” a male voice says.

“She was, but now she’s resting.”

“Well, I’m happy to wait.”

Patty opens her eye a crack to see him.

“Ah, there she is.”

“Ahh!” Patty screams and rolls her head, kicks her legs, looks terrified.

“Officer, move back.” The sister dives in, shoving the policeman back and grabbing Patty’s hand. She writhes and screams—not sure herself what part is real and what an act.

“It’s okay, he’s leaving. Don’t worry,” the sister says, trying to reassure her.

“I’m sorry, love, didn’t mean to frighten you.” But he doesn’t back off.

“Ahh!” Patty screams again and thrashes harder.

“That’s it. Out.” The sister shoves him back.

He holds his ground. “Just a few words.”

“Now.” The nurse uses her body and literally bumps him back. He looks angrily at her but can tell she won’t budge. “Out, Officer. Come back tomorrow morning,” she says with an edge of threat to her voice.

He nods and walks away slowly from the ward.

Patty starts to calm as he retreats. What does he know? Will she be arrested in the morning or does she have time? Time, what the hell is the time …? So Cobhurn wasn’t the killer?

The ward sister returns and sits on Patty’s bed. “Well, you’re quite the enigma, aren’t you?”

“What’s the time?” Patty asks softly.

“Six twenty.”

“Sunday … morning?”

“Night. It’s pitch-black out. Do you need to know the month too?”

“I know the month, and I know who’s prime minister.”

“Then you know more than most people here. But do you know your name? Your address? Do you remember anything about what happened?”

Patty shakes her head.

“Are you on any regular medication? If you are then you should be taking it. Warfarin, maybe?”

“I …” She almost tells her that she takes 9 mg of Ropinirole, but can’t let even a crack of her real self open. “Nothing. I’m tired,” Patty tells her, noticing her own voice for the first time. It sounds empty and hollow, like her grandmother’s before she died.

“Okay.” The sister leans over her and pulls the bedclothes up and tucks them in tight. Patty notices her breath is Tic-Tac sweet. She must be covering something. Smoking perhaps, or booze.

“I’m going home soon. But I’ll ask the night shift to look after you, and I’ll see you in the morning before the police get here.” She
pauses. “If you have anything you need to tell, to anyone, I urge you to speak soon. The police are quite unsympathetic when they have to do all the work.” And with that, she walks away. Patty listens to the click of her heels as she walks as far as the nurses’ station and then talks to one of the newly arrived night staff. Patty strains her ears to hear.

“Bed three … malnourished … quite possible she’s had a mini-stroke … what caused her to collapse … seems not to have directly affected her speech … recall has been degraded … possibly. She may be faking that, or at least making it appear worse than it seems. Not sure why, but she seems afraid. We need to keep a close eye on her.” Then the ward sister leaves.

Patty lies there for some time as the staff change over and medicines and cups of tea are brought round. All the time, she’s thinking she needs to get out before morning. The fact that they sent a constable means they don’t know exactly who she is or what she did. The ward sister wouldn’t be around for the night; she has her suspicions that something is wrong, but didn’t convey that directly to the night staff. They just think she needs extra care. Maybe Patty can work that to her advantage. She looks around the ward and quickly sees what she needs. A mobile phone sits on the short wardrobe between one of the sobbing old women and a skeletal woman who has not moved. She can make this work; she knows she can. In fact, she feels more confident, stronger than she has in a long time. Maybe she needed a day in hospital. But no more.

At 10 p.m. they turn down the lights. Patricia has no intention of sleeping, which she thinks is lucky because the last place that encourages sleep is a hospital. She continues to watch the nurses buzz around, waking the poor old dears every damn hour to stick
something in them or make them swallow this and that or just fiddle. Because they can. But she learns quickly about the routines on the ward and which nurses will bend the rules if you annoy them enough.

She waits until midnight, when things start to slow. She props herself up in the bed and looks around. Everyone seems to be asleep in the ward. Her bed is halfway down the room, too far from the light switches. Above her bed is a large, extending lamp. She can’t reach up to it, but there is a cane hanging from the handle of the chest of drawers to her right. She reaches over to it and loops the leather cord at the end around her wrist. Then she takes aim and swings the cane violently at the light. She means to turn it on. Instead the cane swings like an executioner’s axe and lops the head of the lamp off, flinging it out into the center of the ward where it crashes to the ground with an explosion of metal and glass.