The Last Winter of Dani Lancing: A Novel (9 page)

Sunday, December 31, 1989

S-E-B M-E-R-C-H-A-N-T

She writes his name in her tiny, precise hand on a yellow Post-it note. In a zip-like motion she sticks it to the wall below the word BOYFRIEND? Above TORTURE. Her eyes flick across the wall—layers of photos, press clippings, witness statements, police reports—hundreds of documents pinned and stapled, all covered in questions on yellow notes. Always questions—why, how, who—almost a year of questions. She has stood before this board for months, adding nothing but dead ends, theories—nothing concrete. Ahab, standing at the wheel, scouring the infinity of the ocean for a sign. But today the whale has been sighted: Seb Merchant is found. She steps back, knocking a pile of frames that are on the floor. She kicks them further into the corner, hearing glass splinter. They used to hang in front of her—two diplomas and three awards for journalism. They had once been her proudest achievements, now they have no place on the walls.

She feels the broil in her stomach; this will end soon. She’s a little light-headed—she should probably eat something, can’t remember the last time she had, and she will need her strength for later. From downstairs she hears a clatter. They’re still here, she’ll wait for them to go before venturing out.

She falls into her old office chair, it tips back like an astronaut
waiting for the kick of G-force. The wall fills her vision, making her feel … she looks down. With a bent paper clip she digs into the quick of her fingernail. She watches the little bead of blood she’s teased from her finger, imagines it swimming with life, and then brings it up to her mouth and sucks it away. The taste makes her want to heave. Downstairs she hears another thud and crash—Christ, he is so obvious, she knows what he wants and she feels so tired of disappointing him, so tired of seeing his pain. He has no idea what she needs, what they need.

“Help. Professional help,” he had said with his big sad cow eyes, adding the killer blow: “Dani would have wanted this.”

She agreed and they went to see Alice Bell, for thirty-four minutes.

“Bereavement counselor. Fucking joke. Fucking joke, Jim,” Patty snapped at him afterward. “BACP, UKRCP. They aren’t real qualifications, might as well include the fifty meters backstroke.”

She remembers the pain in his face as she spat out her poison. It shames her now, remembering the vitriol. It was almost six months ago but the memory feels fresh. His pain feels so fresh.

“Fucking joke. And did you see that photograph?” she snorted.

He had seen it, the only personal item on her desk. It showed Alice Bell, maybe ten years younger, though you can clearly see it was her, with arms around a child in a wheelchair—they both beam with happiness.

“What the fuck does she think she’s saying with that? ‘I know pain too, I know what you are going through, but it isn’t all bad’? Bitch.” She spits out the final “bitch.” She sees Jim cringe at the coarseness of her language; he’s never heard his wife speak like this before. Jim didn’t sit on the news desk and watch her trade crude insults night after night with leery old men who hated working with her but wanted to fuck her anyway. She used to keep work and family life separate: Jim and Dani were like oxygen for her—
she needed them to live—but her career was food, the nutrients for a healthy Patricia. Now she had neither. Her editor himself had said she lacked focus, had lost her journalistic balance. He smiled, of course, offered a leave of absence. She told him to stuff it. She knew her “balance” wasn’t coming back. Not until she had revenge. That was what kept her going now.

She knew Jim had liked this Alice Bell, had found her calm voice and kind eyes comforting. Patricia had seen only danger in those eyes, the kind that could lull you into trust. Trust could kill them. She knew Alice Bell’s kind of help was not what she needed.

“To come to terms with Dani’s death—”

“Dani’s multiple rape and murder,” Patty interrupts her, bearing witness to the truth of it, the horror of it. She sees the blood drain from Jim’s face, a sadness creep across the professional Ms. Bell.

“Your loss is terrible …”

Patty hears the first few words and then drifts away—it’s all blah blah blah. She isn’t looking to come to terms with Dani’s death. She’s looking for vengeance and justice. Only then might there be peace.

Jim treads carefully up the stairs, virtually silent. As he reaches the top stair he can see Patty through the slats, sitting at her desk and staring at the wall. He hates that wall. He knows it’s totally irrational, how can you hate a wall? But he hates it. Hates the curled and flapping paper covered in questions, hates the lists, the accusations, the anger spewed over every surface. But worst of all are the photos—the room she was found in and two taken of her after. When there was no more Dani, just a husk that looked like his daughter but had none of her life. They make him die inside.

He needs to ask Patty one last time if she’ll come with them. He already knows the answer, knows she’ll say no just as she has done at least half a dozen times over the last twenty-four hours, but he’ll give it one last try. He’d be so happy if she would go with them.

“Patty,” he calls. Then waits. “Tom and I are going. Please come with us.”

She tilts her head, the tiniest movement, so she can look at him and then, without answering, kicks the door so it swings closed.

“Okay,” he says to no one in particular and walks back down to Tom, who is waiting in the kitchen.

“No?”

Jim shakes his head sadly. Tom nods to show he understands, then picks up his overcoat and they head out into the bitter cold.

It’s only ten in the morning but the sky is gunmetal gray. They drive to the crematorium. It’s the same route they took for the funeral but now they move faster. The heater’s on full blast to keep the windscreen from icing over. Nothing is said.

At the crematorium they park and get out. Tom slams the door, which echoes through the cemetery like a gunshot. The trees stand skeletal, waving fingers in the sky. Everywhere you look an angel stands sentinel over a fallen loved one. Tom pulls his overcoat closer to his throat, breath streams from his mouth. Jim carries a bouquet of yellow roses. Tom can’t imagine where he got them on a day like this. Tom carries nothing but inside his breast pocket he has a slim volume of poetry—Keats. He will read one and then leave the book for her.

They walk in silence, both knowing where they are going, neither knowing that the other has made this walk twenty or thirty
times already—alone. In the garden of remembrance there is a small plaque, chosen together in those first few days.

DANI, LOVED DEARLY AND MISSED DEEPLY

They stand close to it, her men, Dani’s men. Slowly Jim moves forward and places the flowers on a ledge just below the plaque. He whispers something to the air and then steps back while Tom draws out the slim volume and reads.

“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art.”

As the front door closes Patty gives an involuntary shudder. It’s time. She’s excited but there are other emotions too. Darker ones, that she holds just below the skin, willing them down until the time is right. She opens her bag one final time and checks the contents. Tickets, notebook, keys, whistle and pepper spray just in case. She feels the weight of the small canister in her palm and wonders if she will use it today. A big part of her hopes she will.

She’s not told Jim her plans. Not told him she’s going to Durham or that she’s done something the police couldn’t do: track down the elusive Seb Merchant, Dani’s ex-boyfriend. Secret ex-boyfriend that her parents never met, never heard her mention once. Patty only knows about their relationship from fellow students. His name has come up time and time again. Most of them say he’s trouble.

He was missed by the police in the initial trawl for statements, as he wasn’t a student with Dani—he’d been a student five years before but had dropped out halfway through his second year. He stayed in Durham, and each year he made noises as if he’d start his degree again but he never returned to college. No one knew how
he made his money; a few suggested he was independently wealthy. The police had finally put him on the list of people to talk to but they couldn’t find him. Patty has.

She feels something tingle, deep down. This is the breakthrough—she knows it. He has something, something to tell her that will reveal the truth at last. And. And. There is a possibility he is Dani’s killer. And … and …

“What would you do?” asks Alice Bell near the end of that thirty-four minutes.

“I don’t understand,” Patty says coldly.

“You say you are investigating Dani’s death.”

“Murder.”

“Dani’s murder. You are looking for her killer, yes?”

“Yes.”

“So what would you do if you found him?”

Patty is impassive. She watches the woman before her, the soft kind eyes and mouth that twitches a little—sharing the pain. Patty will not answer her, instead they will let the final minutes drain away into nothingness. But she knows her reply.

I will find him. I will kill him by cutting his heart out. I swear
.

“Should be a bloody florist,” the young man says, cocking his head toward the pile of bedraggled bouquets swept into a corner of the garden. Jim looks at his own yellow roses lying by her plaque. He will leave them here and they will rot and turn to mush. Who decided flowers were a suitable tribute for the dead?

“Instead of a copper?” Jim asks.

Tom kicks at the gravel, sending a shower pinging against the fountain in the center of the garden.

“More public respect, more useful, better hours.”

“Really.” Jim shakes his head. “No florist is going to find who killed Dani.”

Tom feels himself flush with shame. “No. Not likely.”

The two men stand in silence. Tom knows what Jim wants—some assurance that Dani’s killer will be found. He wishes he were anything but a policeman right now. Both men stand and think of Dani. At some point tears come for them both. They lose all feeling in their feet from the cold, yet neither wants to be the one to suggest leaving. Any connection with the girl they love is better than none.