The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel (20 page)

She wades in her daydreams for about ten minutes before another car drives up the ramp. Keyson is at the wheel. He’s alone. She feels inside her coat once again to make sure the money’s still there. She realizes she’s enjoying the cloak-and-dagger aspect. Keyson parks his car and gets out; he wears a World War Two–style trench coat, slightly turned up at the neck. In his hands is a metal box.

“Mrs. Lancing.” He nods in greeting, then tips his head to indicate the box. “This is the sample.” He holds it gingerly. He hands it to her as if it might explode. She takes it with her fingertips. He hands her a wad of paper.

“These are the instructions on how to store the sample. You need to get it home and in your freezer quickly. Did you prepare it like I said?”

She nods. “I did everything like you said.”

She had stripped all the food out and taken it to a soup kitchen rather than throw it away. Then she’d bleached the interior and lowered the temperature to minus eight degrees.

“Good. That’s good.” He puts an envelope on top of the sample box in her hands, then reaches into his inside coat pocket and pulls out a file folded in half. “These are the case notes.”

He places those on the box too. Then he grins at her. “It’s a beautiful day and hopefully we’ll have a really nice week. Anything planned for the weekend?”

She ignores the question. Instead she walks to her car and carefully places the box on the passenger seat. From her pocket she takes the brown paper bag and hands it to him.

“Thank you. I hope you find what you’re looking for,” he says, offering his enormous hand for her to shake. She reaches up to him and lets him squeeze her fingers once. She watches him drive away and then she collapses.

She wakes some time later, freezing. She can feel foam fleck her lips. She has rolled herself half under her car, probably had a small seizure. She slowly rolls onto her side and then gets up, her joints straining and her teeth beginning to chatter. Her vision swims
slightly, her focus shifting, not too much but enough to worry her. She has barely eaten in three days.

“Get your bloody act together, Patricia,” she hisses to herself. She gets into the car and starts it up. No heat yet.

In her kitchen she stands by the sink and eats a packet of biscuits from her almost bare cupboard. She finishes them and forces herself to drink a large glass of water. Then she turns to the box. She tears the security tape from around it and takes out one small, squat jar. There is a label on the outside; the ink is faded and the paper dried-out from twenty years in a fridge. The faded and stained label around the jar reads: C
ASE
HTR234
Y
678
D
: D
ANIELLE
L
ANCING
. M
ULTIPLE RAPE AND
M
URDER.
7 F
EBRUARY
1989. S
AMPLE: SEMEN FROM VAGINA RECOVERED POSTMORTEM
.

She places the jar in the freezer and closes the door.

Patty switches on the lights and settles into an armchair, unfolds the document wallet and, as if curling up to read a good book, she begins. After half an hour she stops. Her heart is beating triple time. He had been right, Dr. Keyson. The officer in charge had felt there was a very strong case against this man, this prime suspect. He had been a client at the health club Dani had temped at in the summer after her first year at university. He’d been linked to her during a routine questioning of her colleagues. One of them had said that he’d given Dani a lift home once. He’d denied this, but his car was checked and hair, which seemed to match hers, was found on a jacket on the backseat and a partial print was found on the boot. That had been enough to question him but no further link
could be made. He’d argued that she could have just been walking through the car park and touched his car, and her hair was similar to his own daughter’s and it was probably hers. No charge could be brought. He was top of the suspect list for months and eventually the investigation petered out.

She reads the report again and again, at first becoming angry that the investigation had failed to make the final link: they let the bastard go. But soon the anger seeps away and is replaced by a steely calm as she settles into the knowledge of what will happen now. His name is here in black and white: Duncan Cobhurn.

When Patty finally looks at her watch, it is 3 a.m. She should sleep, but sleep’s for the dead. Now it’s time to plan.

Saturday, October 22, 2010

Patty finds him online. She ignores an actor Duncan Cobhurn, who’s a Winston Churchill look-alike, and there’s a guy who values property for some huge investment bank but he’s too young. She also disregards the evangelical preacher from Arkansas who believes God will produce a fireball that will purge the Earth of all homosexuals in 2020. But there’s a story from 2008 in the
Durham Chronicle:
LOCAL BUSINESSMAN RUNS FOR MAYOR
.

She clicks on it. Sixty-three-year-old Duncan Cobhurn, owner of the successful Porto Pronto chain of Mediterranean furniture design shops, is running for office. Blah blah blah … it’s him. Must be. A later story shows he lost the election; some kind of smear campaign was blamed. Another story about him has a picture; she clicks on it. The grain makes it hard to see details, but that is her Duncan Cobhurn. He’s shaking some teenager’s hand and handing over a check, blood money probably. He reminds Patty a little of Bob Hoskins and … Jim. A short, squat Jim.

She finds another photo from election night. He’s with his wife, Audrey, and their daughter, Lorraine. Patty examines the daughter—she doesn’t look a bit like Dani, but they must be about the same age. If Dani had been allowed to live, they would be about the same age. Patty can feel the blood around her heart boil. She googles Porto Pronto and finds the website. They open at nine. She calls at 8:50 a.m. and lets the phone ring a long time before a slightly distracted receptionist answers.

“Por—”

“Is Duncan there?” she asks in as friendly and girly a voice as she can manage.

“Sorry, no, we don’t actually open till—”

“Do you have the authority to book me an appointment with him?”

“I—”

“We’re old friends. I’m just in from Seville. My time is pretty limited. I’m about to jump on a train, I only have a minute or so.”

“Okay. Erm, let me see. Could you see him …? This week is pretty bad, he’s in Lisbon …”

“Oh, is he already there?” Patty asks as nonchalantly as she can.

“No, he’s in London today. He flies out from Heathrow Monday morning. So you could see him next Monday, maybe?”

“I’m gone then. Oh dear … I really wanted to see him, it’s been absolutely ages … well, it will have to be next time. Or maybe … Lisbon, does he fly there often? I have a holiday home there, you see.”

“Well …” The receptionist hesitates.

“Maybe I’ll call Audrey instead and try to see her.” Patty tries to make it casual, but planting the wife’s name works a treat.

“Well, he flies to Lisbon every month, mostly the last Monday so …”

“Oh, you have been so helpful. Tell me, sweetheart, what’s your name, I must tell Duncan how wonderful you’ve been.”

“Greta, it’s Greta.”

She calls back at 12:20, recognizes Greta’s voice immediately and hangs up. At 1:10, however, there’s another receptionist.

“Greta, please.” Patty tries to sound her most authoritative.

“Greta’s on lunch. Can I help?”

“Oh hell. Well, I bloody hope you can help. It’s Monarch Travel. Our computer’s gone mental and I know your boss is flying Monday morning out of Heathrow.”

“That’s right. Lisbon.”

“Well, we’ve got no records available so I’ve no idea if he needs a cab …”

“No, he’s driving himself. He leaves it in the long-term there.”

She rolls the dice. “And it’s the 9:20 a.m. BA flight?”

“That’s the one, and back on Friday morning.”

Patty quickly scans the BA printout of flights to Lisbon. “The 11:40 coming back.”

“That’s it.”

“Lovely, my darling. All right, let’s hope the IT department can get their fingers out of their arses long enough to get us back online.”

“Good luck,” she says, which makes Patty smile.