The Sad Man
Authors: P.D. Viner
Contents
The Last Winter Of Dani Lancing
Police officer Tom Bevans is nicknamed the Sad Man by his colleagues. As a Family Liaison Officer he is always the bearer of bad news – it is his job to tell the friends and family of victims the fate of their loved ones.
But Tom is weighted down by crimes both old and new – haunted by the death of his best friend Dani, whose murder has never been solved.
When a rare opportunity emerges for Tom to take the lead in a horrific murder investigation, he is determined to get justice for the victim. A young girl has been found in her own home, cut so badly – and so carefully – that she has bled to death, leaving a deliberate pool of blood in the shape of angel wings . . .
P. D. Viner is an award winning film-maker and creator of the highly successful SmartPass audio guides.
He’s married to an American Doctor of Linguistics and, along with their five year old daughter, he is her test-subject. He has lived abroad for ten years, working and studying in the USA, New Zealand and Russia, and has been a pretty bad stand-up comedian, produced mime shows for Japanese TV and written theatre for the Shakespeare Festival, produced in London and Verona.
The Last Winter Of Dani Lancing
is his first murder.
P.D. Viner
Wednesday 13 October 1999
He slides his fingers into his pocket. He feels the thin disc nestled there – a talisman, his good-luck charm. A
ban the bomb
badge – a gift from Dani a lifetime ago. His fingertip finds its sharp pin. He pushes, letting it press deep into the skin until there is a tiny bead of blood. A reminder of actual pain. It is time.
He walks those final steps slowly, with great dignity. At the door he stops for a last-minute inspection of himself. His uniform is immaculate; it is important to show respect. At home he has a full-length mirror. It stands on the floor, allowing him to see exactly how presentable he is, how his uniform fits, the creases, the shine on the buttons, how clean his shoes are – but it does not show his head. He does not like to look at his face in the mirror. He uses an electric shaver, part guess-work and part practice, and every week goes to the barber for a professional shave with a cut-throat razor. That’s just how it goes. He looks at his watch, just a few seconds. He never makes a call before 8 a.m. Her name is … her name was Chelsea Elizabeth Taylor. She was seventeen years old when she ran away from home a month ago. Now she is dead. He counts down the final few seconds in his head. It is 8 a.m. He reaches for the doorbell. In a few seconds he will rain a plague down on this house. He is the Sad Man.
He touches the small white button. From somewhere a dog barks, low and mean until a whack cuts it short. The door opens. A small face, feral and pinched, looks out and blinks. The skin seems young though you can see where it is dried and cracked, canals are etched
around the eyes and mouth – that is what forty cigarettes a day will do. Forty cigarettes and unimaginable worry. She sees the uniform – looks up into Tom’s face and—
‘Chelsea.’ Her daughter’s name is a wail. A bubble of snot appears, she cracks it with her palm and smears it into her cheek for the torrent of tears to wash away.
‘Can I come inside?’ His voice is so soft it travels less than a yard before it melts into the air. His words are just for her, Chelsea’s mother. She steps back into the shadows and Tom follows down a hallway that stretches like a spine into the centre of the house. Along the walls are photographs of a chubby, happy-looking girl. Tom can see it is Chelsea from the eyes; they are the same deep dark blue he has seen in the SOCO photographs. Except, in the crime scene pictures, Chelsea’s eyes are dead, here on the walls of her family home they are bright and sparkle with life. Her mother leads him into the living room – now more a war room as the clan gathers. The curtains are tightly drawn and the air is a swirl of fog: 90 per cent tobacco smoke and 10 per cent wet dog. Tom peers into the swirling mist and can make out two plants in the corner that look close to death and eight human faces, yellowed and sickly, gathered around a dining table. Sitting on the table before them are a pile of London
A–Z
s with slips of paper sticking out, each one breaking the city into sections to search, and a box of ‘missing’ posters to be pasted all over town. Too late. Much too late for poor dead Chelsea.
‘I am Detective Sergeant Bevans.’ He pauses, his eyes slowly search out each face in the room and make contact. Human contact. ‘Tom, please call me Tom. I’m what the police call a family liaison officer and … I have awful news for you, I am so sorry.’ A tear runs down his cheek. A man moves around the table and envelops Chelsea’s mother in his arms, she folds into him. He is older, maybe her own father. ‘We found Chelsea two hours ago.’ Tom pauses – this is the moment. ‘She is at peace.’
There is nothing. One elephant … two elephants … three eleph—
‘Did you fucking get him?’ One of the yellow-faced men screams at Tom, pushing his face directly into his so they are nose to nose. Tom almost pulls away – the overpowering stench of cigarettes, stale sweat and despair – but he holds his ground. Tom recognises him from the picture file: Andrew Jenks, Chelsea’s uncle. On another day he might be interested in the man’s assumption it was murder, wonder if it meant something more, but not today. Tom knows his response is not an admission of guilt or hidden knowledge. It just shows that Andrew Jenks is a man who understands how this scenario plays out, who knows how dirty and sordid life can be. Tom sees in his eyes that he knows, or has guessed, where his niece ran to. Mr Jenks is a man who has used prostitutes. He knows how precarious their lives are, what men like him can do to girls like his niece. Tom holds eye contact with the man and then smiles ever so slightly and gently nods his head as if to say:
I understand
. Sheepishly the man pulls his head away and slinks back to the shadows.
‘Was it?’ Another man speaks, this time his voice is fearful. Chelsea’s father. ‘Was it …’ He can’t say
murder
.
Tom reaches over and touches the man’s arm. ‘She was … attacked. It was very quick.’ Struck over the head while she was on her knees, her skull caved in and pierced her brain. Quick, like a finger click. They do not need to know the details. At least not today. ‘She would have known very little.’
‘She were a good girl.’ The voice comes from the mother, still buried in the older man’s chest. She resurfaces and grabs hold of Tom’s hand. She looks into his eyes, feels kinship there. She can see how much pain he is in, how this news touches him personally – how he cares for them, cares so deeply for them all. She sees the sadness writ large in every line and crease of his face.
‘You will catch him, won’t you?’
He nods gravely. ‘Of course. I promise you and Chelsea.’
She drops her head onto his chest and he puts his arms around her. She weeps tears and mucus all over the front of his uniform.
‘There there.’ He rocks her softly, like a baby. He does not attempt to disengage, but waits for her to stop needing him. After a minute or so, her husband puts his hands on her shoulders and slowly draws her off Tom.
‘Thank you,’ he whispers.
There was tea. There is always tea. Tom drank three cups, each one stronger and more sugary than the last. He sat in an armchair while they crowded onto a sofa. White dog-hair coated everything. He answered their questions slowly and calmly: about seeing the body and making arrangements with funeral directors; about how to talk to the police and what to expect from the press; about paperwork – and, of course, about punishment.
Now he stands on their doorstep once again, yet this time he is walking away. The plague has been delivered. Some families can survive the storm, over time it can bring them closer; give each a greater understanding of the world. The Taylors? More likely, it will devour them, they will become distant, less open with each other and the world in general. Less tolerant, more resentful – less human. That was often the legacy of violent crime.
‘You didn’t tell them the truth, did you?’ He hears her voice in his head: Dani Lancing. She talks to him every day. Questions him, but never really judges him. That’s his job. ‘“You will catch him, won’t you?”’ She mimics the mother.
‘Dani …’ he whispers softly, some pain creeping into his voice. ‘No, I didn’t tell them the truth.’ But he can’t lie to Dani, the woman he has loved his whole life, from the age of five until—
‘Until I died?’
‘That didn’t end it – I still …’ He can’t complete the sentence.
‘So what is the truth for them?’
‘The truth?’ Where does he start? How can he talk to a family about their daughter being so far off of society’s radar, sucking men’s cocks on abandoned ground behind King’s Cross station for twenty pounds a go, that she walked like a ghost in the hinterland of society. The police could afford very little protection to someone who chose to shun CCTV, keep to the shadows and have friends who would not speak to the police, not even to help find a killer. She had become expendable: her pimp will just cross her off his list and look for some other vulnerable girl he can use until she is drained or killed or crawls back home. That is the horrible truth and it makes Tom so angry.
‘The system will find her hard to care about. She will not be a priority.’
‘She was just a kid. Seventeen years old. She deserves—’
‘I know. I know, Dani.’ He hangs his head, afraid that this is a case that will either be solved quickly or— He stops that thought. Instead, he takes comfort in the positive side – that the killer is an idiot. He ejaculated in Chelsea’s mouth before he killed her. He cleaned up her face but they have DNA and partial prints. If he is in the database they will get him.
‘You want to avenge them, don’t you?’ Dani whispers. ‘All the pretty dead girls.’
He can’t tell if she’s mocking him – just a little, perhaps. He probably deserves a little mocking. But she is right. He does want to find the men who hurt them and … what? Make it right? Stop another girl meeting the same fate? He isn’t sure – he tries to avoid that depth of introspection. What he does know, however, is that being a family liaison officer isn’t enough, not anymore. He has been in the police for twelve years – when he joined he had no grand scheme, no career plan. He had acts to atone for – that is why he joined the police. He had hurt someone, a man who had struck at the heart of the girl he loved – had hurt Dani badly. He took the law into his own hands and … and afterwards – while he washed the blood away – he found he couldn’t take the guilt.
‘And then?’ Dani asks.
‘And then you …’ His stomach pitches and he bends forward, his face contorted by the grip of memories: Dani lost somewhere in the shadow of winter, the search for her, the pain and the longing and …
‘I was found. Dead, lost forever, and you cried and cried till the wind changed and you got stuck like that. Poor Policeman Tom.’
His hair had turned white almost overnight. His face cracked with the grief – like porcelain in a fire – and has remained like that. A perpetual mask of loss – that is why they call him the Sad Man. He remembers it so clearly – that was the first time he became the messenger of death. He had been the one to tell Dani’s parents, Patty and Jim, that she was gone, that their child was dead. And now that is his fate: to repeat that awful moment time and time again.
‘But you bring so much relief to these families.’
‘Because I’m the Sad Man.’