by Anne Coates
“Hello Hannah, I’m Pete, a paramedic. I just need you to focus on me for a few minutes…”
Pete shone a light into her eyes, took her blood pressure and temperature. Then gave her something to drink. “It’s just some rehydrating salts to make you feel a bit better.”
A blanket had been wrapped around her shoulders, and then Elizabeth was smiling up into her eyes. She’s alive. She isn’t hurt. The words echoed in her mind before they were led out of the house and into a waiting police car.
EPILOGUE
Over dinner a week later, Tom and Hannah compared notes about their respective holidays. It had been an attempt to return to real life – to a life before Caroline.
“I need space and I need to put some distance between myself and all that has happened,” Hannah had said three weeks before.
Now, Tom wondered if she’d go off again. It had taken several conversations to calm Hannah’s growing sense of paranoia. How had they known about Gerry Lacon’s plans and if they had known, why hadn’t they interceded sooner?
Tom had looked appalled. The armed back-up unit had been cancelled at the last minute. He and two colleagues had been listening in, when they heard the order.
They had managed to scramble together a second unit, but they had lost precious minutes.
The gunshot Hannah had heard came from an SO19 officer who blasted the gun from Gerry Lacon’s hand.
Lacon had been deported to South Africa with the minimum of publicity.
Hannah was furious. He had been going to shoot her daughter in front of her and they had let him go. What Hannah didn’t know was that he was arrested on arrival and charged with murder and crimes against the state. He was destined for a very long prison sentence.
There was so much that Tom couldn’t tell her – she knew why but it didn’t make it any easier to accept. Emotionally. What she did know was that he had been working under cover. But that also wasn’t up for discussion.
“So, what will you do now?” Tom asked as he poured more wine.
Hannah sipped her wine. “Well, thanks to The News I won’t have money worries for a while, so I’m going to write that novel I’ve always promised myself.”
“And us?” He waited for the answer, his face a picture of uncertainty. He looked younger, eager.
Hannah sighed. “I still need time and space –” She grinned. “I’d like to work on that too.”
Tom raised his glass and smiled.
Death’s Silent Judgement, Anne Coates’ thrilling sequel to Dancers in the Wind, will be published Spring, 2017 by Urbane Publications.
You can enjoy an EXCLUSIVE glimpse of the opening chapter ...
ONE
January 1994
The first thing that hit her was the smell and it made her gag. A mixture of odours, chemical and the metallic tang of blood, combined in an unholy alliance. An alliance which threatened to make the contents of her stomach evacuate in protest. She held a handkerchief to her face and tried to control her breathing – and the desperate urge to run out of the room. As her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, her glance took in the chaos, the overturned chair, the broken glass, the contents of Liz’s briefcase scattered across the floor and then her brain registered what her heart had cried out against – Liz’s inert body draped across the make-shift dentist’s chair.
She made herself walk the four paces which brought her to the body and the certain knowledge that Liz Rayman was dead.
◊◊◊
“Right, let’s go through it one more time. You arrived here at 6.50pm. There was no one around when you entered the church and you saw no one as you made your way downstairs to the room she was using?”
“No.” Hannah Weybridge sipped the glass of water that had just been handed to her by a young constable. “I mean yes, that’s right.” She could still taste the bile she had brought up, vomiting by the steps outside, just after she had phoned the police. Thank heavens for mobiles, she wouldn’t have trusted her legs to carry her to a phone box. She shuddered. What was the point of all this repeated questioning? It must be obvious – even to the police sergeant sitting at the other side of the table in the vestry – that she wasn’t the murderer.
“How long had you known Miss Rayman?”
Had. Hannah hated the man for his use of the past tense. What an insensitive pig. “About ten years,” she replied quietly. Forever, said her heart. Liz had been a real soul mate. They had met at a New Year’s Eve party given by a mutual friend who had a small flat in Fulham. Everyone had seemed to know everyone else – except Hannah and Liz who had gravitated towards each other. They had both come to the party alone but neither showed any interest in the spare males who hovered nearby then decided to try their luck elsewhere. That night they’d talked about books and books led them to the theatre that turned out to be a passion with them both. They toasted the New Year in champagne and parted in the early hours.
Liz had rung a few days later with an invitation to see the new Ackbourn play. Their friendship had flourished ever since through their various relationships with men and Liz’s decision to take a sabbatical from her dentistry practice and join a medical charity in Africa. A choice Hannah had found both unfathomable and hurtful. She had been away for the birth of Hannah’s daughter whom she’d named after Liz.
“Ten years,” she repeated in a whisper. She shuddered. The cold had penetrated her heavy coat and scarf. Bone-chilling. The shock of what she had seen was mind-numbing. Her hand began shaking so much that the water spilled from the paper cup she was holding. She put it down on the table in front of her.
“And what were you doing here this evening?” The sergeant’s eyes, with crow’s-feet at the outer corners suggesting a happier side to him, were bloodshot from tiredness or perhaps ill health. His mousey hair had outgrown its cut and curled slightly over his collar. But there was nothing mousey about the way he looked at her. More rat-like.
Hannah wanted to scream. She’d already told them what she was doing there: she had arranged to meet Liz at the “mission” as she called it, before going to dinner. “She had something important to tell me,” and she didn’t want to say it in the the nearby Italian restaurant where the tables were set so close together you could almost hear the other diners breathing let alone confiding secrets. Hannah had been intrigued both to hear Liz’s news and to see where her friend worked one day a week, giving free dental treatment and advice to the down and outs who inhabited the environs of Waterloo. The Bullring. Cardboard City.
Hannah, who knew the area well from her IPC Magazines days, had walked past St John’s countless times but had never been inside the church. To her it’s Grecian pillars were nothing more than a landmark on the south side of Waterloo Bridge. She was curious that Liz should be practising there. Apparently the priest ran a soup kitchen and, when he’d met Liz at some fund-raising function linked to the charity work she’d been doing in Somalia, had prevailed upon her good nature and inveigled her into opening a walk-in clinic.
Some clinic, thought Hannah. Liz had to carry all her instruments and supplies with her and had to do all her sterilising back at her Barbican practice. As she never had a dental nurse with her, she used to dictate notes about the patient’s dental condition into a small dictaphone.
“The dictaphone!”
“I’m sorry Miss?”
“Look for her dictaphone! Liz always used it to dictate her notes maybe it’ll hold some clue, maybe the murderer’s voice...” Hannah had half risen from her chair but seeing the sergeant’s patronising smile that was really more of a grimace, she sank back down and rested her head in her hands. Any minute now she would wake up and this awful interview would would fade from her consciousness.
Hannah closed her eyes and then opened them quickly to chase away the image of her friend’s lifeless body, her throat slashed, her eyes staring out of a face which looked remarkably composed for someone who had just been brutally murdered. It suddenly occurred to Hannah that if she h
ad arrived any earlier she might have been a witness – a dead witness an inner voice corrected. For why should whoever killed Liz leave Hannah alive to tell the tale?
“I’m sorry,” said Hannah as she just managed to turn away in time to throw up into a waste paper basket.
“I’ll get a squad car to take you home.”
Ashen faced, Hannah nodded her thanks. Within minutes she was being ushered through the church by a young policewoman. As they passed the room that had been Liz’s surgery, Hannah took in the blaze of lights and a photographer shooting the dead body from every conceivable angle. Hannah shuddered. There’s no dignity and certainly no privacy in death, she thought. At least not in a violent one.
The icy night air was like a slap in the face. A small crowd had gathered by the steps leading up to the church behind the police tape. Two policemen opened up a passage for Hannah and her companion to pass through. Hannah was aware of a murmur then a shout.
“Hey, Lady, what the hell’s going on in there?”
Hannah glanced in the the direction the voice had come from and her eyes were held by an imposing figure that seemed to stand a head above the crowd. His mane of white hair was brushed away from his lined and craggy face and he stood proud despite the fact that his clothes were rags and he carried his home in a battered suitcase.
Hannah shook her head, grateful for the steadying arm of the policewoman. As the car set off she looked back to see that the man seemed to be staring after her. Perhaps he was one of Liz’s patients. Silently the tears rolled down her face and as she tried to brush them away with the back of her hand. The policewoman handed her an extra-strong mint.
“I always carry them with me now.” She smiled and Hannah noticed the shadows beneath her eyes. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.”
“I hope you don’t,” said Hannah, wishing she could rid herself of the sickening image of her friend’s dead body and of the question resounding in her head. Why Liz? Why?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It is wonderful when a writer finds a dynamic publisher who is enthusiastic about her manuscript. I was so fortunate to find such a one in Matthew Smith and it has been a joy to work with him and Urbane Publishers.
Dancers in the Wind was a long time in gestation. First written many years ago, then put away in a drawer and forgotten but not quite… Rereading it one afternoon I realised I still wanted to write this story and so began a long process of rewriting, editing and changing until this version was achieved.
In its first incarnation, my friend Fiona Jack read each chapter virtually as it came off the printer and kept reading… I wonder what she will make of it now? My thanks also to Elizabeth Bull and Sue O’Neill who were enthusiastic in their praise for this version. I am grateful also to the support of Twitter friends especially Charlotte Sing and Debs Ramsdale who took the time to give me their views and to Debbie Scholes who proofread before submission.
If it takes a village to raise a child, the same could be said for creating a fictional world and I am enormously blessed with supportive friends who have helped me in so many ways not least by giving me quirks and characteristics that I have sometimes used for my characters.
My own daughter, Olivia, has grown up during the period of this book’s gestation and is a constant source of inspiration and love and it is to her that I dedicate this book.
For most of her working life in publishing, Anne has had a foot in both camps as a writer and an editor, moving from book publishing to magazines and then freelancing in both.
Having edited both fiction and narrative non-fiction, Anne has also had short stories published in a variety of magazines including Bella and Candis and is the author of seven non-fiction books.
Born in Clapham, Anne returned to London after graduating and has remained there ever since. In an attempt to climb out of her comfort zone, Anne has twice “trod the boards” – as Prince Bourgrelas in Ubu Roi when a student and more recently as a nun in a local murder mystery production. She also sings periodically in a local church choir and is relieved when she begins and finishes at the same time – though not necessarily on the same note – as everyone else. Needless to say, Anne will not be giving up her day job as an editor and writer.
Telling stories is Anne’s first love and nearly all her short fiction as well as Dancers in The Wind began with a real event followed by a “what if …” That is also the case with the two prize-winning 99Fiction.net stories: Codewords and Eternal Love.
Anne is currently working on Death’s Silent Judgement, the sequel to Dancers in the Wind.
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