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By Root 275 0

in and out of the stationary cars, wishing he had half of the Irishman’s luck. But the past was the past and, like his mother always said, sometimes you have to put the cork back in the bottle and forget about it. He had always assumed that the funny expressions she came up with were phrases lost in translation from her original Jamaican roots. Nowadays he was convinced that she just made them up. ‘When the polar bear he shiver, then the whole world be cold,’ was another one of hers. As Danny felt the snowflakes sticking to his cheeks, he reckoned she might be right. So he was going to Selfridges to buy a bottle of Sally’s favourite perfume. It was going to cost him an arm and a leg but he figured she deserved it. A smile was good enough for him. He was picturing her face opening the present, when a woman ran straight out into the road and he crashed into her.

The woman collapsed to the floor and Danny Vine went sprawling across the bonnet of a stationary Volvo estate and smashed onto the pavement. Luckily he wasn’t cycling anywhere near full pelt. He stood up painfully and the woman was already on her feet, and shouting in his face. She was tall, and was dressed in what looked like a real fur coat.

‘I’m sorry, are you hurt?’ he asked.

‘Never mind me – that man’s stolen my bag. Get him.’ She spoke with a slight Scandinavian accent and was clearly used to getting her own way. She pointed to a man who was trying to make his escape down the street, his progress impeded by the multitude of Christmas shoppers.

‘Okay, I am a policeman,’ Danny said.

‘Go and arrest him then!’ said the woman, encouraging Vine on his way with a small shove as he mounted his bicycle.

Danny gradually picked up speed as he rode down the middle of the road, the traffic crawling in both directions on either side of him.

‘Stop, police!’ he called out.

The man, in his twenties dressed in a grey hoodie, filthy denim jeans and distinctive yellow running shoes, looked back over his shoulder and crashed into a group of middle-aged women, knocking one of them to the pavement.

PC Vine stood up on his pedals and pumped his legs.

The man ahead of him threw another backward glance at his pursuer and darted through the traffic across the road, turning right into Kendal Street. Danny jumped off his bike and followed him, threading his way through the cars which were picking up a bit of speed now that the bottle-jam at the Marble Arch end of the road had cleared.

As he turned the corner, Danny jumped back on his bike as the man turned left into Portsea Place, then left into a cul-de-sac.

As Danny swept into the cul-de-sac himself, the man was some thirty yards ahead, looking at the wall at the end of the street and wondering if he could make the climb. Suddenly he turned, and came charging back at Danny. Danny pedalled straight at him but, at that moment, a cat ran out and he swerved to avoid it, clipping the man as he went and knocking himself off balance to land in a pile of black bin bags. Danny took a moment or two to disentangle himself and cursed as he saw the man dashing out of the street. But he grinned when he noticed that the thief had dropped the bag he had stolen from the Scandinavian woman.

His grin disappeared, however, when Danny attempted to stand up and spotted the pale white arm he had uncovered. He moved the rubbish bags aside to reveal the young woman’s body that the arm belonged to. Her skin was white with cold, the veins showing through its pearly translucence, the colour drained from her perfectly formed lips. Her eyes frosted, cold and immobile. The lashes brittle and her long blonde hair fanned out around the black bag beneath her, as though she were floating on some dark lake.

Danny Vine took a deep breath or two, checked for a pulse, even though he knew it was futile, then pulled out his mobile phone.

59.

DR KATE WALKER was back in her police surgeon’s office at White City.

She tapped a pencil nervously on the desk as she sorted through the reports. Tap. Tap. Tap. Realising what she was doing, she put the pencil down,