The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel (45 page)

Patty sees Tom’s mouth move but she doesn’t understand. The drugs have slowed everything, disengaged her eyes from her ears.
The words make no sense. Then she looks to Jim and she knows what Tom is saying. Jim’s face says it all.

Patty closes her eyes and her heart.

“I never said anything to Duncan about what I’d done. But in those early days I saw what it did to him. He thought he’d let her die and it was killing him. That’s when the charity work started: young offenders, drug addicts. I helped him with it and we slowly became a team again.”

For a few seconds Audrey Cobhurn is lost in her thoughts, memories of the two of them fighting the system, the dynamic duo. Then she is back in the cold reality.

“I thought he’d forgotten her. That it was all over. Then he dies, my poor lovely man. And you show up at his funeral. I hadn’t even put him in the ground and you were there. Of course I recognized you right away—knew you were her mum. Then the policeman comes and shows me the photo—this photo.” She holds up the picture of Dani and Duncan.

“Now I don’t think he ever got over her. I think he loved her for twenty years.”

She looks lost, caught in a maelstrom of memories—reaching out to touch them and judge if they’re real. Remembering each kiss and thinking—did he mean that for me or for her? Suddenly her face changes—pain streaks it.

“The policeman told me you killed Duncan.” Her eyes flash naked hatred for a second, directly at Patty.

Patty closes her eyes. “I thought your husband killed Dani, all those years ago. I kidnapped him to force him to tell me and … I killed him. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t—” but her words sound empty. Patty knows she wanted him dead.

The widow sighs and folds into the earth, whispering softly, “I might as well have killed them both.”

The two women are quiet, both locked in their own grief. Until something in Patty’s brain switches on. She suddenly feels a chill in her chest, realizing the importance of something Audrey had said.

“What policeman?”

Audrey Cobhurn says nothing, lost, dancing somewhere far away with her Duncan.

Patty grabs at her coat and pulls her up. “What policeman?” She feels something under her hand. She pulls at the coat and jumper; there’s a box tucked into Audrey’s waistband—a wire runs out of it to a microphone taped to her chest.

Patty panics, she pushes Audrey away from her, and she staggers but doesn’t fall.

“That policeman.” Audrey points to a figure on the other side of the Cathedral Square, walking toward them.

“He told me you did it, killed Duncan, but he was wrong … it was me. I killed him—all those years ago. Killed the baby, killed our love and then killed him.”

Patty is superglued to the spot—watching the figure get closer and closer—until …

“He isn’t a policeman,” she calls out to Audrey. She knows him. This is all wrong. She backs away, her eyes searching for an escape.

“Don’t run, Mrs. Lancing,” Marcus Keyson calls out as he walks closer. He waves a box in his hand. “I have you on tape, confessing to the murder of Duncan Cobhurn. Stay right there.”

He is almost on her. She can’t run anyway, not in these stupid shoes. She pulls her leg back …

Keyson calls. “There’s nowhere to—”

Patty lashes her leg out with all the speed and agility she has.
The shoe flies off her foot, streaking like a bullet and slams into Marcus Keyson’s face.

“Hell.” He staggers and drops to his knees. Patty kicks the second shoe off and runs as fast as she can. She can see, by the side of the graveyard, there’s a path that leads back down into town. She goes hell-for-leather toward it.

Marcus Keyson feels his nose. It’s tender but not broken. There’s a dull ache and he will have quite a bruise there tomorrow, but he doesn’t care. He watches Patty run to the side of the graveyard and drop out of view. He could probably catch her, she’s in her sixties and he’s twenty-five years younger, but it doesn’t seem worth it. He’s got what he needs. The thought makes him all warm inside. He walks over to the other woman, kneeling on the cobbles.

“Hello, Audrey, thanks for finding Patricia for me. I have her confession on tape, well not tape, of course, all digital now—but you get my point. You should be happy.”

He smiles. Audrey curls into herself a little more, wanting him to go away.

“I do have a teensy confession to make though. Patricia was right: I’m not an actual policeman. Sorry. I really wanted her confession—and as a bonus, I got you too, ouch nasty. Having a young woman almost beaten to death and her pregnant. Not good, really. Not something we want in the papers, is it—and they would love it, I’m telling you.” He laughs. “It’s been a bad Christmas for you, hasn’t it?”

Patty runs as fast as she can, on cobbles that threaten to tip her over and break an ankle at every step. She almost falls as she reaches the Market Square. If she can only …

“I see her,” a shout comes from somewhere to her left. She veers
away from the voice, toward the little church at the end of the square. To the left, in the shadows, is the entrance to the indoor market.

“Where is she, Ronson?” Keyson calls out from somewhere behind.

She slams into the wooden door—it’s chained and padlocked. The wall curves into a black corner—a dead end, she can’t go that way.

“No!” She slams the heel of her hand into the gate. A slat gives ever so slightly. She pushes at it, and a tiny gap appears; barely wide enough for a child to crawl through. Patty scrapes through it, and tumbles into the dark of the market hall.

She lies where she’s fallen; her hands are scraped but there’s nothing more serious. Her eyes strain into the dark, trying to see something, anything, of her surroundings. She can see nothing. The only sound she can hear is the pounding of her own heart. Suddenly she is hit again by the awful knowledge that Dani was pregnant—it folds her into a ball, clawing her stomach. She wants to scream, howl, but she can’t. She needs to get away first, that is the priority. Any thought of confessing to the police for the murder of Duncan Cobhurn has evaporated, this is survival now. She wants to live and she wants to be free. She wants Jim.

With a supreme effort of will, she pushes herself onto her hands and knees. Grief can wait. The drumming of her heart begins to lessen and she listens. To her right she hears footsteps—they’re so close, but they’re on the other side of the fence. Slowly her eyes adjust to the darkness and she can see she’s in some sort of walkway between stalls. She can just about see a large pile of secondhand books and a tray of CDs and DVDs. It will be difficult to get past them without making any noise—and she will need to be totally silent as the men chasing her are so close. From behind her she hears
the slam of boots on the gate into the market, testing it to find a way in, just like she had done.

“Where the hell is she?” a voice she doesn’t recognize calls out.

“She can’t have gone far—keep looking,” Keyson yells back.

She can’t stay in there, they’ll find the way in soon and then she’ll be trapped. She crawls on, through a mass of dropped clothes hangers and past a stall smelling of fish. Up ahead she can see a light, spilling through from somewhere. It may be a streetlight. She can …

Her phone rings. “Oh shit.” She rolls onto her side and scrambles in her pocket, desperate to extinguish the sound as quickly as possible.

“I hear something, boss,” the unknown man shouts. “She’s in the market. How the hell did she get in there?” He starts thumping on the fence, hard and loud.

The phone screen shows Lorraine Cobhurn’s number.

Patty answers in a whisper. “What?”

“I asked you to forgive me,” Audrey Cobhurn’s voice sounds far-off, barely audible above the wind and sounds of traffic.

“I heard you,” Patty answers in as low a voice as possible. “I can’t forgive you.”

“I didn’t really expect you to. I wouldn’t if I were in your shoes. And I don’t forgive you either—for Duncan. I just don’t blame you. I can’t imagine twenty years of feeling like this.”

Patty could say it gets better. But it doesn’t, time heals nothing.

“I … I am sorry. For your loss, I—” Patty falters.

“Don’t, you cannot have the right to apologize. There is only one thing you could do to make it up to me.”

“What?”

“Kill yourself. That would do it. I think you should kill yourself, really I do, and I think it would make you happier.”

“You’re crazy.” Deep down Patty knows it’s her grief talking and she understands the urge to make the pain stop.

“Maybe I am crazy, honestly I could be,” Audrey tells her. “But it seems very clear to me that I cannot live like this and I’m pretty sure you can’t either. How you have coped for twenty years I can’t imagine. So I think we should die together. A pact.”

“Audrey, don’t be an idiot.”

“I think it’s the best way for both of us, but if you won’t then you have to live with what you’ve done—to Duncan and Lorraine and me. If you can live with it, then great. I know I can’t live without Duncan, not now I know that I’m to blame.”

“Audrey—what are you saying?” Patty hisses. Scared to be too loud.

“Will you do something for me?” the widow asks.

“Audrey, think straight—Lorraine—”

“Say goodbye to her. Tell her I love her.”

“Audrey!” Patty shouts, forgetting the two men hunting for her.

“Goodbye.”

Suddenly the noise of the wind screeches in the phone, then a blare of an airhorn as a truck bellows into the night—a scream of brakes and a sickening thud as the truck strikes Audrey Cobhurn’s body. There is an explosion of sound and the phone goes dead.

Simultaneously, from outside the market, somewhere on the ring road behind the cathedral, Patty can hear an enormous crushing sound of metal on concrete; almost immediately followed by a cacophony of car horns and car alarms. Patty’s hands start to shake.

“She’s right here, I heard her,” shouts the unknown man. Then there is the crash as a part of the fence gives way under the crunch of his boot.

“I’m in,” he yells.

“Oh my God. Oh my God.” Patty starts to crawl again toward the light. Fighting to put thoughts of Audrey’s death out of her head and concentrate on getting away. The floor is gritty and she feels pieces of glass cut into her left palm, her knees feel shredded. She will have to stand but then she’ll lose the cover.

“Come out, my little piggy.” The unknown man laughs and then starts to hit the plastic tubs.

Patty almost screams. She feels the blood soak into her trousers as her knees are cut. She needs to get up and … there’s a doorway up ahead. She can make out a blob of light that spears through it. It looks like it leads to an outside area and maybe to freedom. If she can only … there is a crash to her left, as she sends a tray of CDs spinning to the floor.

“There you are.” The unknown man screams and heads toward the sound—crashing into a stall himself and sending it flying. Suddenly a line of light shoots out—he’s got a torch. He catches her in the arc of light and her eyes widen in fear.

“Got you.” He whoops in delight and lunges forward, grabbing at her arm … but the stalls are in the way and she is just out of his reach. He grunts in frustration, bats aside a pile of clothes and forces his way into the aisle directly behind Patty. She had been frozen for a second but now the spell is broken and she runs forward at full pelt.

There are stairs to her left. She bolts up them, trying to stay out of the beam of light that tries to track her like a searchlight. She has to keep moving. Below her, on the other side, there is another crash as part of the fence falls into the market and Keyson steps inside.

“Ronson!” Keyson yells. “Where is she?”

“Up the stairs, she’s gone up to the second level.”

“Go up after her. I’ll look for another staircase.”

Patty hears Ronson start to head up the stairs. It’s too dark up here for her to blindly stagger about, but she knows that as soon as he gets up with the torch, she’ll be a sitting duck. There is only one thing to do. She rolls to the top of the stairs and flattens herself as low as she can get. Then as Ronson’s head gets level with her foot, she lashes out, kicking him in the side of the head.