(2002) Deception aka Sanctum (2 page)

* * *

I’m in the papers this morning, hailing the taxi, looking shifty and portly and weird. I had no idea I looked like that. I’ve always thought having longer hair made me seem rakish and bohemian. Instead I look as if I’m inexplicably ashamed of the tops of my ears. I’m plump in parts as well, which is a surprise. A sagging roll of fat is perched on my belt, and my jaw’s indistinct. I look tearful, and my back’s rounded as if I’m waiting to be slapped across the back of the head. This may well be the only time in my life when I’m in the papers, and I look fat and ill-groomed and frightened.

I went out and bought all the other papers this morning to see if my strange appearance was the fault of a crooked lens, but it wasn’t. It’s bizarre being in the papers. I feel a thrill of something, a mixture of fear and pleasure. The pleasure is like the delight of seeing an unexpected photograph of myself at a party I don’t remember being at; it’s confirmation that I exist and am up to stuff. The fear is more real. People will know me from those photographs; people I’ve never met before; odd people. They’ll look at my photograph for too long; they’ll laugh at me for having a fast, faithless wife and for not working; make jokes about my hair and fatness to each other on the train on their way home from work; use me as a nickname for a misguided sidekick whose wife is fucking a serial killer.

The arrant stupidity of the coverage is astonishing. They’re selling it as a sexy story, making out Susie was a frustrated suburban type. One of the tabloids is telling people not to trust their doctors anymore.

I’ve brought all the papers up here to the study, to hide them from Margie. It’s irrational, I know, but I don’t want these stories near her. I don’t want her perfect, tiny hands with their rosy fingernails to touch the paper they’re printed on. It feels like an unforgivable act of brutality, to bring these terrible accusations into such a precious, innocent life. She’ll see them one day. She’ll be curious and look them up, and I can’t protect her indefinitely from articles like this one from yesterday:

SEX DOCTOR VERDICT ON PSYCHO LOVER’S MURDER

A verdict is expected today in the trial of Dr. Susie Harriot, 30, former psychiatrist at Sunnyfields State Mental Hospital. Dr. Susie is accused of the brutal murder of Andrew Gow, 33. Gow, previously found guilty of the “Riverside Ripper” series of murders but recently released on appeal, was discovered in an abandoned cottage in the Highlands, having bled to death. The prosecution claims that Dr. Harriot was in love with Gow and, enraged at his marrying another woman, killed him.

The body of his new wife, Donna McGovern, still has not been found, although her blood was identified from a sample in the couple’s white Golf Polo car. Strathclyde Police say that they would be willing to prosecute for Miss McGovern’s death if Dr. Harriot is acquitted on the present charges. A spokesman stated yesterday:

“During the summer months the hills of Sutherland are busy with walkers and we would ask people to keep alert and watch out for anything unusual.”

We’ve got this to look forward to all next summer. And every following summer if they don’t find Donna this time around. Every time they find the decomposed body of some poor depressed soul who has staggered off to the Highlands to die, Margie will have the whole story thrown back in her face. It’s not an uncommon occurrence either. Last year, before I was interested in such things, I remember they found the remains of a young French guy who had walked off into the hills with no ID and the labels cut out of his clothing. It was a suicide. He’d left a note in a hostel. He just wanted to melt back into the land, he said. In the same month they also found a woman from London who’d died of starvation while camping next to a loch. Apparently she was vegan and was giving airianism a go.

The coverage in the broadsheets isn’t much better. An intellectual phony has written three pages in a review section about the significance of Gow’s dying in Cape Wrath. Just because it has the potential to be a metaphor doesn’t give it meaning. He can’t have listened to a word of the trial, because Susie didn’t choose the venue; Gow went to Cape Wrath and she followed him. He talks about Gow’s head injuries, saying maybe all psychiatrists want to bash their patients’ brains in, smash the organ that offends.

I can’t answer the phone. Mum called from Spain and left a message asking how we got on and saying she was worried. I heard Dad clearing his throat over and over in the background, like a phlegm-powered car revving at the lights. He coughs like that to signal distress. I can’t stand it when he’s upset; it makes me feel so mortal.

The English papers will have arrived there by now, so they’ll know anyway. It might even be on the news.

* * *

I can’t bring myself to speak to anyone. Instead I remind myself of the need to focus on the positive things. I must:

1. Keep Margie away from the television so she doesn’t see pictures of me or her mother flashed up every two minutes. I don’t want her to remember this. I want it to pass her by for as long as possible because it’s going to be part of her life forever.

2. Remember to pay bills and keep going.

3. Get back into a routine. Routine is comfort and as close to normal as we can hope for over the next short while.

4. Have a purpose. Before, when we discussed the possibility of a guilty verdict (Me: “Oh, my Jingo, that’ll never happen,” followed by hearty laugh. Susie grinning heavenward: “No, darling, of course not. Nothing bad ever happens to young professionals like us,” followed by brittle, tinkling laugh and a little sip of sherry), Fitzgerald asked me to look through all of Susie’s papers and see if I can find anything that might give us grounds for an appeal. We can’t appeal against the sentence because life’s mandatory for murder. We can only appeal against the conviction. We have to show that the evidence was flawed and claim a miscarriage of justice. It’s the only grounds for appeal.

I’ve already spent forty minutes this evening in Susie’s study sorting through piles of newspaper cuttings and tapes and professional files. I’m going to come up here night after night, and go through every note and paper with microscopic care.

chapter two

I FORGOT. I WOKE UP THIS MORNING WITH TIRED EYES AND LINgered in my bed. I pulled the crackling duvet up to my chin, warming my neck against the crisp November air seeping through the window. I heard Yeni and Margie downstairs, la-la-singing the Happy Happy Hippo song together and the high tink of cutlery against crockery as Yeni emptied the dishwasher. I smelled bittersweet coffee brewing on the stove.

The house yawned and stretched as the heating warmed the wooden floors; beyond the garden wall neighbors backed their cars out of garages, wheels rolling over damp leaves. Then I became conscious of the cold, dead space next to me in the bed.

For a fleeting, cozy moment I wondered why Susie was up already. I saw her in the kitchen, sipping a mug of coffee and eating an orange. I thought, she’s been up long enough for the sheets to cool down, and then I remembered.

I couldn’t face breakfast or a shave. I got a mug of coffee, hugged Margie for a bit, and then came straight up here.

* * *

I’ve found a box file with Gow’s prison files in it, the ones the hospital sacked Susie for stealing from the office. Sinky Sinclair’s suspicions were right all along. I bet he still wonders about that. Despite being a senior member of staff, she still wasn’t authorized to take them off the grounds. She was adamant that she hadn’t taken them. She lied to me. She was so insistent that she said “fuck” in front of Margie. Now I’ve found them here, five paper files and a computer disk sitting in a box file, on the right of the computer where she could reach them easily.

There are a number of matters I want to raise when I go to visit Susie:

1. Why has she never denied having an affair with Gow to me?

2. Where are the insurance papers for the house?

3. What in the name of the almighty fucking bollocks was she doing stealing these files and then lying to me about it? Does she think I’m an idiot or something? Does she think I’m going to take an infinite amount of shit from her and still stand by and save face for her? Has she no regard for my dignity? Am I some sort of pointless prick she thinks she can push around?

I think those three months of us both knocking around the house after Susie had been sacked, before the phone call and her taking off to Cape Wrath, I think they were the happiest of my life. I knew she wasn’t happy; she was forgetful and ratty. She’d lost her wedding ring and was sure she’d left it at Sunnyfields. I bought her another one, a smaller one, which she never wore, and fooled myself into believing that she was adjusting to a new pace of life. I thought she’d get into it, slow the rhythm down. I thought, it’s okay, we’re fine for money, we can spend more time together, just the three of us. I even dared to wonder whether we might have another kid.

It was during that time that the mist came into the front room. It was July and I’d left the front-room window open when I went to bed. When I came down in the morning, the garden mist was all through the room, a swirling fog at chest level. I walked slowly through it, and the damp cloud closed in around me. As my bare feet came down on the red kilim carpet, they smashed the settled dust of water droplets and left perfect photographic prints. I told Susie when she came down for breakfast, but the mist was gone by then, and she listened but didn’t understand. It felt like a dream sequence, and now I think maybe it was. No one around me was living in the same reality. What sort of self-centered buffoon would mistake a cataclysmic event in his wife’s life for a splendid opportunity to spend quality time together? I’m a fool, a selfish fool. I hadn’t a clue what was going on. Rome was burning and I played Dixie on the spoons.

* * *

This study’s a mess. Susie’s left bits of paper everywhere, all over the floor, on the desk, Blu-Tacked to the wall; there are even some on the window. I haven’t been in for a while because she’d taken to locking the door and I didn’t want to pry (another clue I completely missed/rewrote/dressed up as a lady rabbit). There’s a photograph stuck to the glass on the skylight, a picture of Gow and Donna’s wedding, with Blu-Tack smeared angrily over Donna’s face. The light shines through it so it’s a translucent picture of Andrew Gow standing with a headless woman. It’s creepy. I’ll take it down.

These prison files trouble me intensely. I want to talk to Harvey Tucker, Susie’s colleague from Sunnyfields, to ask him if what he said in court was right, if Susie had been seeing more of Gow than could be justified professionally. I got the feeling he didn’t mean to insinuate that. During his evidence I looked up at him and he seemed uncomfortable, as if he’d been railroaded into saying things. I’ve got this in my notes:

PROSECUTION: How would Mr. Gow come to be spending time in Dr. Harriot’s office?

HARVEY TUCKER: I’m sorry, I don’t understand.

P: How would any prisoner come to be in the office of a psychiatrist? Can they just walk in and demand to be seen?

HT: No, of course not. They’d first of all have to approach an officer and ask to see someone. Then the officer would refer them on to the psychiatrist.

P: [looking incredulously at the jury] Is that the ONLY way? [He raised a hand in a rainbow gesture as he said it. He really was the most awful ham.]

HT: No, well, we could ask to see them as well.

P: A psychiatrist can call a prisoner to their office?

HT: Yes [faltering] within reasonable hours . . . some prisoners—

P: [cutting him off] We have submitted into evidence Dr. Harriot’s appointment book for the two months immediately prior to her dismissal. Is four hours in the space of three days a usual amount of time to spend with a prisoner?

HT: That’s hard to say [looking very shifty].

P: In this sort of case, where the initial paperwork is done, the risk assessment is done, no one has asked for a new report: would it be usual in such circumstances?

HT: I don’t think it’s poss—

P: JUST a yes or no will suffice, Dr. Tucker.

HT: No.

P: Not a usual amount of time?

HT: [quietly] Not usual, no.

Tucker was very uncomfortable when the prosecution dismissed him, as if he had something else to say.

Anyway, I phoned him just now but got no answer. I left a message asking him to call back, said it was important. I hope he doesn’t think I blame him or anything. I know Sinky Sinclair was responsible for Susie’s getting sacked, not him, but I don’t care about that either at the moment, I really don’t. I can see how the lawyer got Tucker to say what he did. I’m not in a blaming frame of mind, I just want to ask him about it.

It’s obvious in hindsight that Susie was going through some huge crisis before she took off for Cape Wrath. Looking back, it’s so clear. At the time I thought she was just being huffy and withdrawn. She was so insistent that she hadn’t taken Gow’s file, even after they sacked her. That was a massive, throbbing, neon-ringed clue. Sunnyfields only has one applicant per post. It’s so hard for them to recruit for forensic psychiatry, they wouldn’t have fired her unless they had absolutely no other option.

* * *

Margie’s gone down for her nap, so I’ve come back up here to do a bit more tidying. This is a nice room. I never thought that before. It’s more of a converted closet than a room. It’s warm because it’s at the top of the house, and there’s a wee stereo. The skylight Susie had put in last summer frames the top of next door’s oak tree and stops the room from being suffocating. The plain white walls and the low bookcase keep it airy and fresh. And of course there’s this computer, which I’ve never been allowed to use because I’m a Luddite and might break it. All I need is the word processing to write up the papers as I sift through them for the appeal. I know how to put the machine on and off and I can save the things I’ve written. That’s all I need to do, really.