The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel (4 page)

“And?” he asks himself. “The truth?”

Truth? He thinks. It has nothing to do with truth, or admitting anything. He knows why he’d been drawn to this woman. He knows why some women draw his eye and not others. Why he’d turned down at least two women who could have made him happy, who could have loved him. The truth was because he was in love. Still in love after all these years.

And that photo on the website had been so like her. So like Dani. He had made the date, wanting to see her smile again. Except in real life he didn’t see Dani’s smile. Instead there was a thin half smile, darting across her lips like an apology, and she dipped her head to hide how tall she was. Her voice had grated on him from the start too—rough sloppy diction—
you know, you know like
. But dinner had been fine. At the end they had walked to the Tube and she’d leaned into him and kissed him. He felt her small breasts push into his chest and a flick of her tongue brush his lips. She
called him the next day and they had agreed to meet again. She invited him to dinner at her place. Stupid. Her place—it was obvious where that was heading. Stupid to go to bed with her. Out of her clothes she was so unlike Dani. She had tattoos, which he hated. From the start she apologized for everything. Sorry for her M&S knickers, the sheets, the children down the hall, her inexperience, how cold her hands were. “Next time it will be perfect,” she whispered in his ear as he pushed himself into her.

Afterward she went to the toilet. He imagined her in there, crying for her lost life and the desperate compromises she’d been forced to make. He had to get out of the house. When she returned with minty breath, he told her he had to leave, still had a test to prepare for Year Four. He saw her flinch as he lied to her—clearly she was a woman who’d heard a lot of lies and had good radar for them—but he couldn’t bear to snuggle up with her and talk about the future. It actually made it worse that she looked like Dani. Only skin-deep though. He smiles at the thought of Dani and his cheeks tighten and ache. His eyes have little frozen lakes in the corners.

It wasn’t his first lie to this woman either. His profile on the dating site says he’s a teacher of history at an under-performing comprehensive. He never tells anyone he’s a policeman. Even those few people close enough to him to know he works for the police don’t know exactly what he does. Only a few other high-ranking officers know he heads a special unit, and that he looks into the eyes of dead girls and promises them he will try to find the men responsible. And he tries. He tries. Detective Superintendent Thomas Bevans. The Sad Man.

He walks, feeling the snow give way under his feet.

“I should’ve put a bet on a white Christmas—the odds will be useless now,” he tells the trees.

He loves the silence. Of course, at almost 4 a.m. on a Saturday morning, it is going to be pretty quiet—but the deadening effect of the snow and the low cloud has removed all trace of the world. No music of the spheres. He stops and closes his eyes. He’s a boy again, remembering the first time the silence descended, a truly white Christmas. 1976.

He was eight and pretty sure he’d never seen snow before—not real snow that settles on the ground. But he remembers the rush of excitement that morning, like man had landed on Mars or something. The road outside their flat was amazing. Nothing had driven through it, not even a bike. Pure. Virgin. White. He ran out. His mum was still asleep and he ran and ran through the snow, then turned to see his tracks—the only human being on earth. Until he got to the park. And there she was. He remembers thinking, “What the bloody hell is she wearing?” She was in a white nightdress, flimsy and sheer. He could see the curves of her body beneath it—but is that just wishful remembering? No, she was fully clothed underneath, with a big sailor’s jumper. She wore the nightdress over the top. She was lying in the snow waving her arms. He saw her and hid in some bushes, watching. She lay there for a while and then got up and walked away—her dark hair streaked with snow. He waited until she was out of sight and walked over to where she’d lain. There was an angel in the snow.

Christ, even at eight years old, she had done something to him. Danielle Lancing, the girl he loved. Loves.

As memories of her flit through his mind he feels a shiver run though him as if somebody is dancing on his grave. But it’s just the vibration of his mobile on silent. He pulls it out and reads the short message, a missing person report. Normally he wouldn’t be notified unless it was a high-profile victim. This isn’t, just a Durham businessman who’d been reported missing by his wife. But the name is
one that he’d recently added to a high-security alert list: Duncan Cobhurn. And the memory slots into place—the woman he thought he saw in the swirling snow on the bridge, Patricia Lancing. Dani’s mother. He feels lost.

“Christ.”

He turns to head back the way he’s come. He begins to run.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Patty sits in the dark. She had to turn the lights out so she could no longer see him—she wants to cut his throat. She needs to get calm so she can go and check the blood, to make—

Light snaps on outside the room, headlights from a car skidding into the car park behind the hotel. The glare spills around the edges of the curtains. The blood pooled at his feet glows. Her heart somersaults. Panic. She hadn’t considered the curtains; they’re a cheap fabric and don’t fit very well. There must be no chance someone can see inside. She grabs the gaffer tape and begins to run it across the gaps, sealing the two of them in a cube. It takes a few minutes to remove all vestiges of light seeping in from the outside world and plunge the room into pitch-black.

Dani is standing on a chair; she’s eight and looking intently at the problem before her. Jim has sunk a little so that she can reach around his neck. He’s wearing a rented tuxedo that’s a little snug in places. Dani has the two ends of a bowtie in her hands and a slip of paper with instructions on how to tie it.

“I think …” Jim starts.

“Shh!” Dani holds her finger to her lips and then frowns back at the paper.

“If you …” he tries.

“Shh. If you want this tied properly you need to keep quiet.” She reads, “Fold the left over the right …” She proceeds to follow the directions carefully, concentrating on the diagrams.

“Eureka!” She jumps up and down doing her happy dance. It’s a little loose, but a recognizable bowtie. Dani beams broadly, proud of herself. From the door there is a wolf whistle. Jim turns to see Patty. He gives her a twirl.

“I could rent you out as a gigolo,” she says huskily.

“Sorry, I’m a one-woman man. You look fantastic.”

She rolls her eyes; compliments are not something she likes to hear.

“Cab will be here in five minutes.”

“Will Jenny be here soon?” asks Dani.

“Any minute. She’ll give you some supper, then into jammies, stories and bed. Got that?”

“Yes,” says the eight-year-old with a little roll of her own eyes, as if to say:
I’m eight. I can understand simple instructions and I don’t really need a babysitter anymore anyway
.

“If you win will you wake me up and show me your prize when you get home?” she asks.

“No.” “Yes.” Patty and Jim answer simultaneously.

“I won’t win—it’s just stupid.” Patty shakes her head.

“Daddy says you fight for truth and justice.”

“Oh does he? I just write stories in a newspaper.”

“I’m going to be a superhero when I grow up,” says Dani as she jumps off the chair and lands with a slam at her parents’ feet.

“And what superpowers will you have?” Patty asks her. Dani thinks for a moment.

“To make people be nice.”

Patty snaps the light back on in the room. She checks the tape again. His mouth’s totally covered, but just to make sure, she pulls his head back to rest on the chair and wraps layer after layer of tape around and around. He can’t possibly move now. There is no dignity. He’s wet himself; it drips down the chair and onto the floor, joining his blood. The smell is rank. It looks as if he’s melting, like the Wicked Witch of the West.

When she’s finished with the tape, she turns her attention to the room. A double bed dominates. She has lain on it; it’s lumpy. She didn’t pull back the sheets, sure they wouldn’t be clean and not wishing to leave any evidence. She wears gloves, has done each time she’s entered the room. She also wears a shower cap and plastic pinafore, as if she works in a meat-pie factory. There’s a bedside table with alarm and telephone, a chair by the window, a wardrobe that contains a mini-safe and an ironing board. She looks down. The blood will be difficult to get out of the carpet.

“Maybe when I’m finally done with this room I’ll leave a pile of money for the poor cleaner who finds all of this … If all goes well,” she thinks.

According to the plan, she should return in less than eight hours to find nothing disturbed and her prisoner still unconscious. If not … then she must leave no trace. She checks all the drawers, they’re empty; not even the Gideons see any point in coming here.

She moves to the bathroom: cracked white tile and a faint smell of bleach over damp and mustiness. The shower curtain has mildew along the bottom. She brought no toiletries with her, has not touched the two small plastic beakers, nor the two small bottles of shampoo and body wash. There’s a hand towel. She wonders if she
used it and decides to take it with her just in case. She stuffs it into her bag.

“Better safe than prison,” she thinks.

She turns to leave and catches sight of herself in the mirror. Blood is smeared on her glasses and arcs over her cheek, sweeping across her right eye. She draws back from her reflection, horrified for a second and then … exhilarated. Fiery eyes blaze through a red cowl of his blood. She smiles at her bloody twin. She likes it, would like to keep it forever, a red badge of courage. Nemesis—the Red Revenger. But she’s no superhero. She wipes the blood away with a wet-wipe she pockets after. In the mirror is a crone once more. She gives the bathroom one final look and heads back to the bedroom. Everything is clean. She looks at her watch: 5:30 a.m. Time to go. She checks she has the room key and then switches the light off and plunges the room once more into darkness.

From somewhere far-off she hears Jim ask her: “Patty, what would your superpower be?”

She whispers into the dark. “To bring back the dead.”

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Tom sits at his desk. He should get moving—he doesn’t have much time—but he can’t move. For the last ten minutes he has read from a small purple book. The same page over and over. On the cover, written in bold black letters:
PRIVATE—DO NOT OPEN
. He takes the diary and slides it back into the safe in his desk. Inside there are two other diaries and a small photo album, full of pictures of Dani. He locks the safe and slides the desk drawer closed, then locks that too. No one knows he has a small safe in his desk; he fitted it himself one weekend.

Tom goes through his checklist one last time. He’d signed in twenty minutes ago, chatting to old Charlie on the desk for a while, asking about his daughter just as he always did. Then he took the lift up to his office on the third floor. He’d unlocked it and turned his computer on, logging in at 5:22 a.m. and started an e-mail. Now it is 5:36 a.m. Time to go. He heads into the corridor and takes the stairs down to the first floor, the main ops room for Operation Ares.

It’s a large room with floor-to-ceiling glass composing one wall. Almost every other inch of wall space is taken up with whiteboards covered with lists of names, photos of victims, schedules of surveillance, reports and statements. Seen from eye level it’s a mess, a Rorschach test in three dimensions. Yet from above it
resembles a hive city with maze-like avenues created from dozens and dozens of dividers forming little rooms or corridors where desks can congregate. Everywhere, everywhere is paper. Great, towering skyscrapers of paper. In some places they are still intact, in others smashed down or mashed into other towers as if Godzilla has rampaged through central Tokyo. Some of the paper skyscrapers spill onto the floor like a river that’s burst its banks. In other spots, reams and reams are scrunched into balls and lie under desks or scattered around empty bins. A sorry testament to the lack of basketball skills in Britain.