The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel

by P. D. Viner

  “Of course,” he says softly. Monty had been Dani’s dog. One day, it must have been her last term or so of A levels, Dani came home with him. Patty was fine about it and Jim loved dogs, so Monty stayed. Of course, when Dani went off to university she couldn’t take him, so he stayed with them. Jim had thought that he would end up being the main carer for the big lump, but when it came to it, Patty had been the one to replace Dani in terms of walking and feeding. Jim hadn’t minded; he thought it was good for her and gave Patty and Dani something to talk about. In some ways it was a little bit of a bribe for Dani: don’t just come back to see us but to see Monty too. He’d been a great dog, adored Dani, so happy to see her when she came home. Until she didn’t, of course.

  Patty withdrew her love then. It was almost as if Dani’s death burned all affection out of her. She didn’t show anybody or anything any love. Maybe a cat could have survived the loss of love, but not Monty. He would literally howl into the wilderness that was Patty’s face, trying to get her to see him, to respond to him, but there was nothing. Jim thinks it broke the poor dog’s heart. They gave him to some friends about three months after Dani’s death. Within a year he had developed cancer and was put down. Jim never told Patty. By that time, he thought, the capacity for grief had left her.

  “I remember Monty.” Jim flicks his eyes to the rearview mirror but cannot see Dani’s face in the murk of the backseat.

  Where do we go after we die, Daddy?

  Jim tries to recall his exact words to his poor little girl who was losing her beloved gran.

  “Mrs. Henson said heaven was where Gran would go. Will she go to heaven, Daddy?” she asked him.

  Jim feels shame. He could have planted the seed of hope in his daughter. Let her believe that, no matter what terrible things happen to us in life, that death honored the just, good and blameless lives of ordinary people. But he didn’t.

  “Dani, I really don’t know. I think that Gran will have no pain anymore, which will be really good, but probably there is just nothing when you die, darling. Nothing.”

  Nothing? Had he really believed that? The man who lives with his daughter’s ghost? “I am such a bloody hypocrite,” he thinks.

  The moon slides behind the clouds once more and is finally gone. He sneaks another peek across at his wife. The closeness of her makes his chest burn a little. He has been so lonely. The worse loneliness had been in those between years—when Patty supposedly was still with him and yet she was so distant. Then he had no one. During that time he left his work—he even volunteered for the Red Cross. For a year he drove trucks of medicine and aid, usually flying to the nearest safe haven and then driving truckload after truckload of life and hope and aid to desolated areas. He delivered food and medicine to Sri Lanka, Turkey and Haiti. He saw so much destruction—but it hardly affected him. Whenever his truck had rolled into town, a group of children would follow. He always kept his pockets stuffed with energy bars so that when they caught up with him, he could hand them out. There were never enough. In those moments he didn’t feel powerful, no Santa or Jesus—not even some low-rent Robin Hood. Instead he felt needy, desperate to buy some love, to show himself he could do good in this shitty world. Just for a moment to see pain turn to a smile. That was what he failed to do in the years with Patty, after Dani died. To turn off the darkness inside his wife, just for a second. Even with those poor kids, he could do nothing. After a year of volunteering he stopped. Instead he drove a minicab in London. He liked to keep moving—he thought he might die if he stopped. Then Patty left him and … but tonight, when she needed someone, she called him. If it weren’t nearly four in the morning, and he hadn’t just broken someone out of hospital, he’d feel heartened by it. Maybe tomorrow he would. Right now tiredness was starting to sweep through him and make him feel nauseous. His introspection is broken by the sound of snoring. He glances across at Patty and allows himself a chuckle.

  Jim finally pulls up outside Patty’s house at 4 a.m. and cuts the engine. Next to him Patty breathes softly, lost deep inside some inner world. He opens his door and slides out of the car, his back crunchy from sitting. He slams the car door; it does the trick and wakes Patty. She drifts for a second in some calm waters and then, as memories flood back in, she tenses once more.

  Jim opens her door and bends down. “You’re home.”

  “Do you have the spare key?” she asks, her speech thick with tiredness.

  “Of course.” He hands it to her and watches as she walks into the house. She wobbles slightly as she walks, as if she’s on too-high heels. At the door she fumbles with the key, pushing and scratching, until finally the metal slides into its sheath and she goes inside. She leaves the front door open.

  “Dad,” Dani calls from the car.

  “Yes, darling.”

  “She’s left the front door open.”

  He nods.

  “You need to go and close it.”

  “True.”

  “I’ll wait. Don’t worry about me.”

  He nods to her and walks over to the house. He holds the door, feeling the heft of the wood in his hand. He could shut it and leave; deep down he thinks this would be best. But instead he follows Patty inside and shuts the door behind him.

  The house is dark. Jim tries to remember the layout from his brief visit earlier. Suddenly there is a cry, a scream of pain. Primal, animal, intense pain. In the darkness Jim is enveloped by the scream, the pain. It tears into him; he knows what it is. He rushes forward, unsure where to go. He sees a bar of light under a door and hits the wood. The scream rises in force, hitting him in the chest and ripping the years away from him. Patty is on the floor in the lounge. In her hand is one of the newspapers and she waves it around, then claws at the front page. She screams again, then rolls into a ball. She is having a fit—some kind of seizure—just like when she’d heard Dani was dead. A scream of pure pain. The intensity of loss, the hunger of despair—it cuts right through him.

  “Patty. Patty. Look at me, calm down.”

  He tries to put his arms around her and hold her, calm her, but she lashes out—forcing him back. Her body arches; she looks as if she could snap in two. He lunges again, trying to grab her arms, but she beats at him. The scream rises even higher.

  “Patty, Patty, calm down.”

  She writhes and twists. Jim holds on for dear life like a cowboy at a rodeo. She butts him in the face—so much pain. His lip is cut and there’s blood.

  “Mine or hers?” he thinks, frightened and not knowing whether to call the hospital or the police or to try and ride the roller-coaster to the end. He grabs her shoulders and pulls her closer, tighter.

  “Patty, we love you,” he moans into her hair. Then he starts to rock her, tiny movements he has not made since Dani was a baby. And he sings, barely audible, but he sings for her soul. Finally she starts to slow. Her screams collapse into shakes as her entire body vibrates. Slowly the muscles start to unwind, and she softens and curls into his arms from choice. She wraps her arms around his neck pulling herself into him, almost crushing his chest. Her sobs start to calm and she fades to black.

  They are still for half an hour. She lies curled in his arms while he breathes in the perfume of her hair and her skin. Then suddenly, as if a momentous decision had finally been reached, Jim lifts her, supporting her head as he would a child, and carries her upstairs. He lays her down on her bed. She rolls onto her side and curls. She is so thin, so small. He searches, first under the bed and then in the wardrobe. He discovers a large duvet and spreads it over her. He feels like forty-five years of his life have melted away—it is that first night once again. She is so beautiful. Her skin is aglow and her hair ripples down her back in cascading waves. She is once again his pre-Raphaelite queen on a bower. He cannot help himself, but leans forward and kisses her head, then strokes her hair. Then he lies down on the bed. He does not plan to sleep, just to lie there in case she wakes, just a few inches between them. He closes his eyes.

  Patty wake
s, and for one blissful moment, floats above the world like a newborn, innocent. Aware of the press of another body against her, she feels the warmth of contact and is drawn into that gravity, yearning for embrace, her arms folding around the other figure. Then the memories flood back, swamping her, stealing her breath as they have done every morning for more than twenty years, grinding her under their heel. She begins to shake.

  Jim feels the tremor beside him. Through the sticky curtain of sleep he holds out his hand and she grabs at it; they grip hard, harder. Just like they had done with her morning sickness. “Squeeze. Tighter, Jim, squeeze tighter.”

  He did, with all his might. And if it didn’t work, then he held the hair away from her face while she retched … then wiped her vomity mouth for her.

  “Oh, that’s disgusting, Jim. You don’t have to do that,” she’d say.

  “I don’t care.” He didn’t.

  He wakes. The pressure on his hand and the allure of the past draw him from sleep. For one terrible moment he is lost, buried, at the bottom of a hole as it fills with sand and he is running, scrambling, trying to climb out. Then the hand holding his own calms him. He remembers where he is. Their hands squeeze together, they roll face to face. Scared, needy, hungry and as old as the earth. Patty reaches out to his face and strokes it, feels the stubble, the gray stalks of hair forcing their way though his toughened skin. She could never have described it to another person, could not even have formed the words to tell herself about his face, his cheek. Yet she knows every contour of his face and body. A lifetime melts away, she does not see him now, not the sixty-four-year-old Jim, but he’s a boy in her bed. So fine, so fine.

  He opens his arms and she rolls into them, they hug so tightly. She feels so different in his arms, there is no curve and heft—now she is air and breath. Her once alabaster skin ravaged by loss, grief and despair. And yet.

  “You are so beautiful,” he whispers.

  “You bloody idiot.”

  He looks into her face. Her smile dazzles him like the sun and her lips caress his. He can taste the salt of tears.

  “I love you, Patty. I love you,” he breathes into her, overwhelmed by the rush of emotion and desire that he finds in his heart and mind and body.

  She leans into him, snuggles her mouth into his hair and whispers.

  “Jim. I killed a man.”

  REPORT OF SURVEILLANCE

  Monday, December 20, 2010

  3:58 a.m.: Car arrives outside residence. Red Saab. License plate: SD54 GRD

  3:59 a.m.: James Lancing (positive identification from photos) exits car and opens passenger seat. Helps woman out of car, she is incapacitated, appears drunk. (Positive identification of Patricia Lancing.)

  Img007/008/009 Three photos taken of couple.

  4:02 a.m.: Sounds of commotion, screams, etc., from suspect’s house. Next-door neighbor’s lights on for a few minutes. Lasted duration of 2–3 mins.

  Log end.

  Parked almost directly opposite Patty’s house is a white van with tinted windows. Inside, invisible to anyone in the street, is Grant Ronson. He sits in the driver’s seat writing up his log.

  It is now almost 4:30 a.m. and there has been nothing since the screaming. The house is quiet and dark. The young man is bored again. He had thought this job afforded some glamour, even danger, but it is mostly bloody boring. On the seat next to him he has yesterday’s News of the World, an iPod and a well-thumbed copy of Escort.

  There is a rubber tube coiled off the seat and onto the floor, which snakes back behind him into a large jug that is almost completely full of his urine. It’s starting to smell. He has another two hours until his shift is over and the day shift arrives. He yawns. He picks up the paper again and scans the front page.

  The headline reads: MURDERED MAN IDENTIFIED.

  He reads the article:

  The body discovered on Sunday at the Thursdowne Hotel close to Heathrow has been identified as Duncan Cobhurn, a businessman from Durham, owner of the Mediterranean furniture company Porto Pronto. He had been missing since Friday when he was due to return home via Heathrow from a business trip to Lisbon. Police have speculated that this was a kidnapping that had gone disastrously wrong. Police insiders have said they think that the perpetrators used too great a dose of narcotic and bound Mr. Cobhurn too heavily, resulting in death from asphyxiation before ransom demands could be made. There is, however, evidence of torture which has also prompted comparison with the Soviet spy Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned in London in 2006 …

  Ronson throws the paper down, bored. He yawns. If nothing happens soon he’s going to have to masturbate again. At least that will kill some time. Janet from Edinburgh deserves more attention. He sits for a few minutes and then unzips his trousers.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Tuesday, February 13, 2007

  “Two dog walkers found the body on the allotment,” DI Thorsen explains to Tom as they half-slide, half-drag themselves through the glossy mud. “They called it in at about 6:20 a.m. A local response officer was here in about ten minu—careful!” Thorsen grabs his arm as he slips sideways down an oozing incline. She steadies him. She’s got Wellington boots on. He wears black Oxford brogues. They both know which of them is the more stylish—and who’s ruined their shoes.

  “Luckily the kid was bright enough to radio it in as Operation Ares.”

  Tom nods. He walks with knees bent and feet splayed. They reach the bottom of the treacherous hill. Tom looks across the mud—rain falling a little heavier now. He sees a shoe lying alone, an evidence marker pushed into the mud alongside it. It’s the size of a child’s shoe—but the heel shows it was made for a woman. A shoe to dance in, have fun in. Not die in. It seems so alone, sitting there in the rain.

  Around them, officers buzz like flies, taping off areas, erecting tables—making an island of hi-tech in the mud. Over the body is a makeshift tent, not much better than the kind Tom had made as a kid, though then he’d used blankets and dining chairs and now it was plastic sheets and metal struts. Over to one side three officers stand, puzzling over a laminated manual, trying to build a tent wide enough to cover the body and surrounding area. Tom watches them slowly turn the manual 180 degrees, scratch their heads and slowly turn it back the other way. Christ, they’re idiots.

  “Could you?” he asks his efficient DI and points to the three stooges. She shrugs and trudges over to them, already barking orders. Tom knows she’ll get it built.

  He closes his eyes for a second and the world around him slows and disjoints, moves out of focus. Then he moves to the covered body—there is only the victim. He pulls aside the plastic sheet … a dead young woman. The latest in a litany of lifeless young women into whose eyes he has gazed. Another young woman he will silently promise to avenge. He looks at her face—her eyes are open—staring. Gray-blue eyes and the palest skin. In life she may have been ruddy, healthy, but now her lifeblood was a part of the mud that lapped at her face.

  “Guv,” Thorsen calls to him and he looks up to see the full tent ready to slide over the body. He nods and steps back, thinking it doesn’t matter much anyway—this rain has almost certainly washed away any really helpful DNA evidence. He sighs, watching his breath spiral up. It will be another long day. The SOCO team will start to gather evidence. Take photos, bag the clothes, take samples from the victim—trim her nails, swab her mouth, vagina, anus—nothing is private. Not today. And at the end of all this, Tom doesn’t expect there to be much more learned than he saw from a casual glance.

  The body is Sarah Penn’s. She’s been missing for three days. He recognized her from photos. Her mum and dad brought the snapshots in the day she was reported missing. Holiday photos from Ibiza last year, though death has wiped away her smile, and the rain has uncurled the bounce of her hair and left it smeared across the ground.

  She’s naked—her clothes thrown all around. She has been beaten and sexually assaulted. She is without most of the skull above her left eye. Claw hammer is To
m’s opinion, based on twenty years of seeing death and on having seen the same injuries twice before—Heather Spall and Tracy Mason. Sarah Penn is victim number three.

  “Guv?” DI Thorsen calls to him, miming a drink. He nods and she grabs a Thermos. He turns back to the body.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah.”

  He remembers thinking when he saw her photos, “what a pretty girl.” A tear runs down his cheek for all the pretty dead girls. It melts into the rain. Within an hour or two, he’ll be standing at the front door of her parents’ house about to tell them the news they’ve dreaded for the last three days, if not the last sixteen years. He knows there’ll be tears, maybe screams, denial, blame. All the while he will be there to share their pain. To show them that the police care about their loss, the country cares. That is what he does. He tells families they have lost someone they loved. He is the Sad Man.

  Thorsen holds out the metal cup. He takes it from her with a nod.

  “Same MO as Spall and Mason?”

  He nods.

  “I’ll send a FLO.”

  “No. I’ll go.”

  He doesn’t think of himself as much of a policeman; there are no little gray cells, no deductions and last-minute reveals. But what he is good at—what he is best at—is winning trust. Opening a dialogue with witnesses, family, their friends, and teasing out information. People look at him and trust him, especially the damaged and needy. They see a kindred spirit in Tom. They see someone else in pain and they open their hearts to him. No family liaison officer has ever opened up partners, kids, parents or friends like he does. That’s why he’s the Sad Man and why he runs Operation Ares. He named the unit himself—Ares the destroyer, the god of fruitless violence, a coward who kills for the sake of killing.

  Suddenly the tempo of the rain changes: more aggressive, faster and harder. Hailstones. The seventh plague of Egypt. Big chunks of ice slam into the plastic sheets. The officers buzz around more quickly. More plastic is stretched, arced over skeletons of metal. DI Thorsen yells, points—then men run for cover. Tom looks around the allotment. Any early buds are going to be smashed and splintered. Luckily there are no fruits yet, no tomatoes to crush, no strawberries to mash. Tom should get under cover too but he can’t leave Sarah. Something more than hailstones rained down on her. She deserves more than this, so much more than this. Little girl lost. Found in body, but forever lost. Tom waits out the storm, feels the ice bounce off his cap and splash mud over him, but he stands sentry over Sarah until the hail thins and is gone. Now it’s just rain.