The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel (31 page)

“Will do.” She smiles.

“And call Ronson and ask him to come and see me ASAP. Oh, and I want all the murder team members cross-referenced with a London officer—DS Tom Bevans. He was a PC back then.”

Lauren stops making notes.

“He’s the one who—”

“Yes. Yes, he is, so do a thorough job. Okay?”

She smiles and moves to walk around to the back of his chair; she stretches her fingers as she walks and reaches out for the back of his neck.

“Not now.”

She blushes at the rebuff. “Of course,” and she leaves.

Marcus Keyson sits back in his chair and dares to dream—of revenge. A chance to get back at the man who made all this
happen—who destroyed his career, tarnished his reputation and betrayed him. His Judas. Maybe all this could be turned to some financial advantage as well. Tom Bevans should pay. Maybe Patricia Lancing should pay too; he could do with clearing some of the debts—even get away from this awful place.

“This is so good. So good.”

Monday, October 11, 2010

Keyson pushes the heavy doors open and stands on the threshold of bedlam. He whistles “The lunatics have taken over the asylum” as he steps inside the special ops room for Operation Ares. As he does so, he slips the ID card from around his neck and drops it into his pocket. It’s a fake, of course, and impersonating a police officer is a serious offense. He smiles.

For all the chaos, it’s the sound that really makes an impact. Officers howl into their phones, each having to project over the din of colleagues and the incessant squawking of dozens of unanswered phones demanding attention. Added to that are the slams of filing cabinets, the squeals of felt-tip markers and the pacing of a lot of nicotine-deprived, overweight men.

The air is sticky with testosterone and cheap aftershave, knockoff Calvin Klein from Petticoat Lane market. Keyson had forgotten its pungency. He takes a deep breath and heads for the center of the web. This had never been his office but he’d spent so much time here it had almost been home—once. For three years, unless he was actually scrutinizing a cadaver, he had been here, among the living. He’d believed he’d made friends. For a while, he thought Detective Inspector Jane Thorsen might be the one. Not a long while, though. He reaches the heart of the operations room, unnoticed, and stands there waiting.

He watches his ex-colleagues and imagines them all dead. Violent, blood-splattered deaths, and he’s the man brought in to solve their murders. It cheers him enormously. Finally he’s noticed. A nod, a shake of the head, a whistle, someone pointing and then the wall of sound deadens and flatlines. Close by there is a chorus of “I’ll call you back.” Phones are replaced on their receivers. The room is quiet.

“What the fuck do you want, Keyson?”

He turns. Of course, it’s Clark. Clark, who used to call him “Marcus.” Who had invited him to both his stag night and his wedding. Clark, who had once vomited on his shoes—suede shoes—and told him he’d never loved his mother and now she was dying of cancer and what could he do? Clark, who had practically offered him his own sister once, but who had spat in his face after the tribunal. The two men square up. Keyson would be only too glad to fight Clark.

“Clark,” Thorsen barks through a megaphone. The sound echoes off the walls filling the room. “If you lay a hand on a civilian, you’ll be on a fucking charge so fast.”

“But—”

“Get back to work. Stay where you are, Keyson.”

Grumbling, the crowd dissipates back to desks and phones. The noise level builds again and all is back as it had been. Thorsen waits to make sure everyone has obeyed, then walks over to Keyson. As she approaches him, she notes the small changes. He is still well groomed, always spent freely on his hair and skin, but his clothes are a little shabbier than before. The coat is the same he had three years ago and his shoes are worn. There is a shine to the knees of his suit—not worn-out, but the old Marcus Keyson replaced his wardrobe every year. Interesting—life in the independent sector not quite so sparkling for God’s gift to forensic science.
He is still bloody handsome, though, she thinks as she stops in front of him.

“Why the hell are you here, Marcus?”

“Good to see you too, Jane,” Keyson says, with what he believes is a winning smile.

Thorsen crosses her arms and glares at him. Keyson notes how she hides her chest, breast reduction in her late teens due to backache. In bed he had kissed the tracery of fine scars. He never told anyone, not even after she’d maced him. That should have earned him something, shouldn’t it? He’d even met her mother.

From behind DI Thorsen, a small, bespectacled man emerges, looking a little mole-like: DI Jenkins.

“I think, unless you need something, that you should turn around and get out, Dr. Keyson.” Jenkins—the voice of reason. The only one who didn’t turn against him after the tribunal. How he hates Jenkins.

“I’m here to see the Sad Man,” Keyson says to Jane, ignoring Jenkins altogether.

“I’m sure the guvnor has no desire to see you again,” she says, her voice level but full of fury at the disrespectful use of Tom’s nickname.

Keyson nods, then takes a pad and pen off an adjacent desk and quickly scrawls a note. He folds it in half and hands it to Thorsen.

“Please give him this. Tell him I’ll be over the road in Munchies. I’ll get him a tea. Four sugars, if I remember correctly.”

He turns on his heel and walks back toward the door. He feels the daggers in his back from all quarters, but he’s pleased with how it went. If he can avoid food poisoning in Munchies, this will be a good day.

DI Thorsen stops for a second outside Tom’s office; she’s shaking a little. She feels so angry at the ex-pathologist that she needs to pause. Marcus Keyson betrayed them both, but in a funny way it’s Tom who has been more deeply affected. She was the one who’d slept with him, had even taken him to meet her super-judgmental mother—and annoyingly her mum had been thoroughly charmed by him—but she has other friends, real friends. She’s been on a lot of dates since, slept with a number of men, and it’s water under the bridge as far as she’s concerned. But Tom doesn’t make friends, at least none that she knows of, certainly none in the force. That was why it had seemed so strange that he and Keyson had become close. She knows better than anyone how seductive Marcus Keyson can be—clever, funny and a great listener. She remembers that Tom and Marcus had even talked about holiday plans, a long weekend in Copenhagen for some conference. Didn’t happen in the end. Instead, Professional Standards took Keyson into custody one afternoon and closed the unit down for three days while they investigated accusations of gross professional misconduct. They had all been questioned. The entire department had fallen under suspicion, especially Detective Inspector Jane Thorsen, the idiot who had been dumb enough to sleep with him, and Detective Superintendent Tom Bevans—his friend. Detectives from DPS had been through both of their files and their personal lives with fine-tooth combs. It took months, but eventually the only person reprimanded was Keyson, though there remained a stain on the reputation of the whole Serious Crimes Unit and Operation Ares in particular.

It was hushed up, of course. No press got wind of it. They discharged Keyson with no pension, but there were no criminal charges. She still doesn’t know how the slimy bastard managed it. That had been three years ago. Since then she had barely thought of Marcus Keyson. He had no lasting power over her life, though she
feels that Tom is still hurt by the loss of his friend. So, how would he react now? There is only one way to find out. She knocks.

“Come in,” he calls.

Tom Bevans stands by the window looking out onto the street outside. The gray December light makes him look even paler than normal; his silver-white hair shines a little. He turns toward her, his face seeming to contain both a little boy and an old man simultaneously. Though he is her superior officer, she wants to hug him to her and make him eat some soup.

She holds up the note. “Marcus Keyson just slimed in.”

“Keyson. Why?”

“He asked me to give you this.” She waves the note. “And to tell you he’d be in Munchies and would get you a tea.”

He walks over and takes the note.

“Cheeky bastard, well, he can go—” He unfolds the paper and dries up.

“Guv? Guv, are you okay?” She thinks he’s seen a ghost.

“You said he’s there, now?”

“He came in, gave me the note and left.”

“Well, how the fuck did he get in here? He doesn’t have clearance.”

“I don’t know, sir.” He had never shouted at her before; she feels herself contract a little, like when her father had come home.

“Okay.” He sees her flinch from him and immediately feels guilty. “I’m sorry, Jane. Thanks, thanks for bringing this up to me. You go back to work, I’ll … you go back.”

She nods and walks toward the door, feeling the tension in the air. She can see he wants her gone. She’d like to offer help, but she leaves instead.

Tom waits until Thorsen has gone and then calls down to security for them check the log. There’s no Dr. Marcus Keyson entered.

“Well, he was just here,” Tom tells them angrily. “Read me the names of everyone admitted into this building in the last half hour—I don’t care how fucking busy you are.”

The sixteenth name strikes a bell: Lewis Mason. There’d been a detective about ten years ago with that name but he’d transferred to Cardiff and then left the force. He’d become a hypnotherapist, specializing in helping the gullible and weak give up smoking and lose weight.

“Check Mason right now,” he ordered. Security checked—Lewis Mason’s level one clearance was still operative; it had never been rescinded.

“Well, bloody do it now!” barked Tom. “Then, start going through all existing access and check that the officers are alive and still work here … I don’t care how long it’ll take. We just had someone break into the Ares op room; he could have been a suicide bomber.”

Tom slams the handset down. In all likelihood this was probably worse than a suicide bomber. Damn Keyson. The scrap of paper Jane had handed him was still lying on his desk. He picks it up and opens it again. Two words, but they make the pit of his stomach lurch.

Danielle Lancing.

Monday, October 11, 2010

From somewhere a trumpet plays “Joy to the World,” but plaintively, as if performed by a heartbroken elf.

“It’s only mid-October,” Tom grumbles under his breath as he stands under a grocer’s awning and scans the road. The rain is falling harder now and the street ahead’s a wind tunnel, threatening to slice anyone salami-thin if they venture into it. Tom’s hand slides through his white hair. He should have brought an umbrella. From where he stands he can get to Munchies in about two minutes—but he will arrive looking like a drowned rat. Normally he wouldn’t mind—he’s not a vain man—but Marcus Keyson brings out the worst in him.

“Come on, calm down for a couple of minutes,” he tells the rain. Of course, it gets harder instead. “Typical.”

He can’t delay this much longer. It’s already forty-five minutes since Thorsen gave him the note. After checking security, he quickly scanned the last six weeks of crime digest—an online summary of crime. He filtered it using as many keywords as he could think of: Keyson, Lancing, Durham University, Durham gang, Merchant and Cobhurn—nothing came up.

Then he washed in the gents—used Fat Eddy’s deodorant and razor—and put on the spare shirt and tie he kept for snap inspections. Waste of time. The new shirt is now completely soaked and he already smells a bit.

“Over the top,” he sighs, and makes a dash for it. He hits a paving stone and it rears up, shooting mucky brown water up his leg and into his crotch. He remembers his old religious education teacher, Vicar Tim, standing in front of them intoning in his deep somber voice: “With pestilence and with blood, I will rain down upon him.”

“What shit has Dr. Marcus Keyson come to rain down on this sinner’s head?” Tom wonders. Then he catches himself and realizes he’s in full-on apocalypse mode. “Really, Tom. Really—Bible quotations now? You need to get out more. And you need to stop thinking about yourself in the third person.”

He walks on, waddling like a duck as the muddy water soaks through his crotch.

Finally he reaches the cafe, but stops short of the door. Rain runs off him in little waterfalls, his socks are wet and his underpants squelch. He wants to shake like a dog but where’s the dignity in that? Instead he squeegees his hair with his hand and composes himself. At least there are unlikely to be any of his colleagues inside the cafe.
Real
coppers went to Fred’s—a large greasy spoon just around the corner. Fred’s is cheap, decidedly cheerful, and gives you the kind of home comfort that most coppers don’t get at home. Unpredictable hours, and the fact that most of the women they know work long hours too, means most male coppers defrost and microwave their own suppers in front of the telly or computer. Or they eat at Fred’s and flirt with his two plump daughters. The women coppers are similar; they either go home and heat up ready-meals for their husbands and kids—who are jealous of the time they spend on the job—or they eat a super-food salad from M&S on their own, knock back three or four vodkas and fall asleep in their clothes. This is modern policing.