(2002) Deception aka Sanctum (36 page)

“For baby-sitting.” I pressed the money into her hand. “For baby-sitting for a whole night. Take it. You have a good time, honey.”

She brushed my cheek with the back of her hand and made a precious little “o” with her mouth when I called her that. She didn’t cringe or grimace or get pissed off. I heard the front door slam behind her. I hope she genuinely doesn’t want to talk and didn’t just say that so that I would like her more. I hope she never wants to talk.

* * *

Susie is a cunt. She’s a duplicitous, faithless, disloyal cunt, and she’ll leave me broken if I don’t do something soon. If this ever gets out, I will be the world’s biggest, most widely recognized, dickless idiot. She’s been laughing at me from the very beginning, from before Otago Street.

The gloves are off, as far as I’m concerned.

chapter thirty-eight

IT’S THREE-TEN A.M. I WAS LYING IN BED JUST NOW, LISTENING TO the cold wind shake the dry leaves from the trees, and a thought occurred to me out of the blue. I carefully worked my arm out from under Yeni, slid out of the bed, and pulled on some pajama bottoms and a sweater. I left her in the warm dark, snoring softly in Spanish through the ripe segments of her lips, and went into the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror, at my red eyes, round shoulders, and sagging belly.

Donna II knew that there would be background checks. That is why she knew she couldn’t just assume a made-up name but would need a plausible identity in order to get in to see Gow. But how could she possibly know that? Tucker and Susie’s security checks weren’t a matter of public knowledge. No one else knew they were doing the research. I think she had tried to get in to see Gow before and been knocked back. I think this occurred to Susie, and that was why she took the file and destroyed all the other copies of it. She was protecting Donna II, still protecting her, even after being charged with a murder she thought Donna had committed. When I think of how much she loved me in Otago Street, I don’t doubt that she would have done the same for me.

I opened the Gow correspondents research file. Three-quarters of them are men and can be discounted immediately. Then there are fifty-six women, thirty-one of whom first contacted Gow around the time of his wedding, when he was in the papers a lot. From the twenty-five women who contacted him before, only twelve of them were before the Donna McGovern letters started in February 1998.

* * *

1. The first is a psychic who wrote only once and said she had seen what he did to those women through a spirit guide. She was going to kill him through sending out bad thoughts (no request to visit). Her brain must have fried when he died a gruesome death.

2. There were a series of sexy letters from a Linda Slaintan. The file notes “photo encl., sexually explicit.” She wrote nine times and asked him to call her back. She then wrote several angry letters after Gow’s engagement to Donna was announced in the press, accusing him of misleading her.

3. Patricia Gallon was a member of the Plymouth Brethren in Lewisham. She wrote only once, saying that she would pray for his salvation.

4. A woman from the Isle of Harris believed her husband was Gow’s accomplice on the first murder. The couple were separated, and she promised not to tell the police but wanted to know. Her husband was called Hugh Kean and he drank in the Park Bar.

5. A web designer with a vowel-free surname (Anna Trsykt) asked permission to use Gow’s picture for a competition.

6. Mrs. Tate, a teacher from Bridgeton, knew him when he was a boy. She wrote once to ask him where he went wrong.

7. Brenda Rumney from Newcastle thinks he met her mum once.

8. Nine plaintive letters from his little sister, Alison, asked him to contact her and told him family news. She’s had a miscarriage and was quite ill but recovered before the file ended.

9. Three letters from a woman in London who offered to be his manager. She said she’d give him a ninety-ten cut of all profits and get him more coverage than Stevie Ray.

10. Doreen Armitage wrote sexy letters with “photo encl., featuring bondage.” Some cheeky scamp has noted in the file “correspondent breathtakingly unattractive.” Doesn’t sound like Tucker, somehow. Doreen wrote four times.

11. Marti Gibbon, a priest from America, may or may not have been a woman. Marti wrote a few times, proposing to write a screenplay of Gow’s life. The return address is Santa Monica. I guess that deal fell apart when Gow was acquitted.

12. A woman from Lanarkshire asked whether her dad was involved in the first few murders. She gives a detailed account of her father’s movements around that time, where he was and what he did for a living. “Photos encl.” The file doesn’t say whether the photos were of her or her father.

* * *

I don’t know how to discriminate among these. It’s four-thirty in the morning and I’m on my third cup of coffee. I shouldn’t be drinking coffee, it’ll just keep me awake, but I need something to keep me warm, and decaf doesn’t seem determined enough for sorting through this file.

NOT EXCLUDED BY SECURITY CHECKS:

1. His wee sister.

2. The American priest.

3. Manager woman; I think he would have seen her.

4. Sexy lady 1.

5. The brethren woman didn’t ask for a visit.

6. Neither did the web designer.

7. Nor the psychic.

EXCLUDED BY SECURITY CHECKS:

1, 2. Both women who thought they knew his accomplice. Gow refused to see them because he was maintaining his innocence.

3. Sexy lady 2: Doreen would have thought that the promise of sex would get her an invite to visit. She would have been rejected by Susie and Tucker because of their antihubristophiliac stance.

4. Mrs. Tate rejected by Gow. No one would want to see an accusing old teacher.

5. Brenda was rejected, presumably by Gow, for having a boring connection.

* * *

That’s it, down to five, but not one of them had a return address in Leicester.

The perfect fit of Donna McGovern and the profile of a prison romancer seems very sinister now. It feels as if Donna II went hunting for a front. She knew that by using Donna’s background and history she could easily pass the interview with Susie and Tucker. But what’s behind it all? Why bother to come up here at all?

* * *

I feel completely detached from Susie now. I can’t even conjure up good feelings toward her when I think of her as Margie’s mother. Even that. It leaves me cold.

chapter thirty-nine

I SPENT AN HOUR ALONE THIS MORNING SITTING IN THE KITCHEN, looking out the window. Yeni took Margie to nursery. I sat still, staring out the window and thinking vaguely about everything. I came up here to get a note of the phone numbers of the women who might have been refused access.

Before I started calling the numbers, I phoned the bank and the investment firms and asked them to send detailed statements for all of our accounts going back over the full five years of our marriage. Then I made some phone calls. My interview with Alistair Garvie is tomorrow. I’m flying down to London in the morning and coming back the same night. I’m not going to say anything interesting; I’ll keep it all as bland as possible.

I phoned each of the women’s numbers in turn. I had worked my story out: I would claim to be a friend from Leicester, say that I had a silver necklace belonging to Doreen/Mrs. Tate/Brenda/etc. that I dearly wanted to return. It was early afternoon.

Doreen had a baby crying in the background and two small children shouting at each other in the foreground. She sounded exhausted. Mrs. Tate was about 110 years old. Neither of the women who suspected members of their family was in. And then I came to Brenda Rumney.

Brenda’s phone was answered by an old woman. She warbled like a deaf canary, and occasionally, during the course of the conversation, I could hear her dentures clack together.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hello, Brenda?”

“Brenda? No, dear, I’m not Brenda. She’s not here. I’m Mrs. Rumney.”

We paused momentarily while I took this in. “Will she be coming back soon?”

“No. She doesn’t live here anymore. She lives in London now. She’s gone back to live in London.”

I was well practiced now, having given the story to a few people, and I started in on my spiel. “Ah, I see, well, the thing is, I’m trying to get hold of her because I have a necklace. It’s silver and she—”

“Oh God. . . .” The woman stifled a sob.

“I’m sorry?” I said, mentally racing back through everything I had just said. Was it the necklace that upset her? Had she been necklaced? “Are you all right?”

“It’s a shock, I’m sorry. You . . .” Her voice dropped, and she whispered as if broaching a terrible truth. “You’re from Glasgow, aren’t you? I can hear it in your voice. You are, aren’t you?”

I hesitated. “Yes?”

“Oh. Are you a relative of Brenda’s? Does she have a family there?”

I thought the woman was Brenda’s mother, and the question made no sense. I didn’t know what to say, so I stumbled on with the story I’d rehearsed. “I, um, I have a necklace for her. It belongs to her. She lost it when she was in Leicester and I want to give it back. We are talking about Brenda who was in Leicester, aren’t we?”

“She was there for a short while last year. She was transferred with her job, but then left. How did you get this number?”

“Well, Brenda gave it to me.”

The old lady’s voice lightened. “She gave you this number?”

“Yes, she gave this number.” It wasn’t a lie really, it was the number on the letter.

“Oh!” The woman was crying. “I can’t tell you what that means to me. . . . We haven’t seen her for over a year.”

She wept openly now. I apologized, but she sobbed that there was no need to be sorry. It wasn’t my fault. It was no one’s fault. She should have told Brenda sooner. I didn’t want to pry, so I asked if she was Brenda’s mother. She gave a little squeaky yes and shuddered as she inhaled.

“We got Brenda when she was just five weeks old. We hoped she would settle. We put off telling her she was adopted, but she was always a strange little girl, always cold and withdrawn. It sent her off the rails when we eventually did tell her. She was twenty. She left university and just disappeared.”

I thought about Margie and what I’d probably want to hear if she turned against me and couldn’t be found. “She loves you very much—” I said off the top of my head.

“I know.” I heard a hankie being dragged across the receiver and a slight nose-blowing episode.

“She loves you very much indeed.”

“I know. She’s just got a funny way of showing it. We should have told her.”

“But she does love you. . . .”

“You’re kind. What’s your name?”

I didn’t want to give my own name. “Um . . . ,” I said. “Morris.”

“Morris Roberts, then, is it?”

I hmmed again noncommittally. “Mrs. Rumney, did you receive a call about a year and a half ago from either Susie Harriot or Harvey Tucker at Sunnyfields State Mental Hospital?”

Confused by the change of topic, she hesitated. “Yes. I didn’t know where she was calling from, but a Dr. Harriot did call.”

“And what did she ask you?”

“About Brenda contacting her mother. I thought she was from the adoption people. Brenda was upset about the whole thing. We should have told her earlier. She just disappeared.”

“Mrs. Rumney, you don’t have an address for her in London, do you?”

“No, she wouldn’t give me one.” She blew her nose. “She doesn’t want me going after her, you see. She’ll only”— she paused to blow again—“only have contact on her own terms. She does phone here sometimes, but there’s a lot she won’t talk about. I’m surprised she’s not in touch with you. I didn’t know she had a relative up there.”

“Well, you know. I’d love to see her again.”

She tutted. “Our Sean met her old boss at the football, and he said he’d been asked for a reference for her. She’s working in the sweets department of Selfridges in Oxford Street. Is Mary-Ann still alive, then? Brenda won’t tell us a thing about how it went.”

* * *

It took me about ten minutes to put the two names together, and when I did, I felt sure I knew more about all of this than anyone else, more than Susie, more than Gow, more than Stevie Ray.

Mary-Ann Roberts. Mary-Ann Roberts, died aged forty-one. No surviving relatives; no one cared. The victim’s photograph is a blur, taken in a photo booth, overexposed. Heavy eyes looking upward, staring at the top of the frame. Thin lips drawn on with pencil, slightly parted, the pointed tip of her tongue just visible, glistening. Mary-Ann Roberts, twenty-two years scraping a living on the game, a face hardened by cigarettes and cheap gin. I cut the picture out of the yellowed newspaper clipping and put it next to Stevie Ray’s photograph. Two dimpled chins. Two sets of brown eyes. Two long noses, flared at the bottom. Brenda was fatter than her mother. She would have been eighteen when her mother was murdered. Two years later she went looking for her and found an overexposed booth photo, features washed out. Her mother’s eyes, bitter eyes, gone after she met Andrew Gow. Gone after Gow.