Deception aka Sanctum

by Denise Mina

  Maybe Susie did kill them and genuinely doesn’t remember. She often used to talk about patients who had blanked out committing their offenses because it was too painful. There’s nothing in post-traumatic stress disorder that says they can’t be responsible for the trauma; it just means that they were upset by it.

  Still, possible possibles aside, I drove home happy. They announced on the radio that the remains of Donna McGovern, from Highfields in Leicester, had been found in Sutherland. I turned it off. I didn’t want to hear about that. Susie may have said terrible things about me and Yeni, but she’s not dead, she definitely wasn’t fucking Gow, and she wasn’t in love with him. I feel like I’ve been undivorced, uninsulted, uncuckolded. I’ve never felt more horny; it was like being a teenager again. Every time I passed an attractive woman on the drive home, I thought about Harry’s little blond mum. I’d think of her being a little bit pissed and out of order, giggling and pulling down the hem of her top so that her round little tits pop out. I’ve struggled all evening not to open the kitchen drawer and find the birthday party list. It’s eleven o’clock now, getting to the point where it’s much too late to phone. It would be dangerous to start anything just because I’m relieved. She could so easily go straight to the papers. I’ll leave it. I’ll leave it for a bit.

  chapter twenty-eight

  I DON’T WANT SUSIE EVER TO READ THIS, BUT I NEED TO WRITE about it. I’ve changed the computer password to “Marzip.” It wasn’t meant as a big symbolic gesture or a shift of loyalties or anything. It doesn’t mean anything, not at all. It’s just that wrappers from marzipan bars are lying around the desk and I’m a bit nervous today, my mind’s gone blank. I’ve slept with Yeni.

  There, it’s in the file now. I slept with her and liked it. We stayed up all night having fun and being nice to each other. I know she’s young. I know she’s lonely, and she probably did it because of that, and I’m older and it’s wrong of me. But for the first time in weeks I was present in the moment, not speculating about the future or rewriting the past, and it felt like a month-long holiday.

  I don’t want Susie to stumble across this file the way I did hers. I suppose it would be just as bad if she found the stuff I’ve written before, about not trusting her and how I felt during the visits. I’ll get rid of this computer. I’ll say this one’s broken and buy her a new one. I’ll pretend it’s a nice treat.

  I said to Yeni this morning at five-thirty, “Yeni, we can’t have an affair, I do have a wife.”

  And she said, “Hmm, Lachie, afster this day we’re not talk about it again. This… hmm.” She paused and dipped her chin to her bare knee as she tried to think of the words. “Friendly fuck, for friend.” And she stroked my face.

  It sounds sordid when I write it down, but it wasn’t when she said it. It was tender and kind and sweet. Even her mustache looks kooky and sexy now. She is an amazing woman.

  Before I left to drop Margie at nursery, I nipped back upstairs to her bedroom to tell her quickly that we were heading off. She was on her side, the duvet curled around her curves like a flattering strapless dress, her black hair fanned out over the white pillow. The moist air in the room was thick with pheromones and vigorous sweating. I crouched down and rolled my face into her soft hair, nuzzling her neck, and said I might come back from nursery and snuggle in beside her. She said no, she’d be asleep and now we were just friends. I love that. I keep wanting to wake her up and ask her if it’s still all right, if she still likes me, if I’m a horrible predatory old bastard. But it wasn’t me who started it.

  I’d finished working up here at about eleven-thirty yesterday evening. I’d actually finished at eleven and went downstairs to get the phone. Bangor phoned to cancel our drinking session on Sunday: Evelyn’s taken Morris back and he’s not allowed out at night. She won’t even let him work evenings. I came straight back up here because I didn’t want to phone Harry’s mum. I read a bit of the book about women who marry murderers. Maybe I should have chugged off, but it didn’t occur to me. I thought Harry’s mum was the danger, not me.

  When I came down, Yeni was sitting watching television, some film with Kevin Bacon in it. I sat down in the opposite chair and said, “Oh God, how much longer does this crap go on for?”

  She laughed and said, “Shut up, Lachie, it’s very sad.”

  I pretended to cry, covering my face (a bit like Susie had during the day) and saying oh, poor Kevin Bacon, he so brave; Holy Mother protect him from the other actors, boo hoo. It got a laugh, but she was obviously engrossed, so I shut up and went to the kitchen. I got the two hidden marzipan bars out of the fridge. When I went back into the sitting room, I sort of went “ta-da” and held them up. She beamed at me. She reached out to take one with her right hand, and then her left hand came out of nowhere and snatched the other one as well. We were wrestling down by the side of the settee when she straddled me and sat up, panting and looking down at me with such an expression of approval and affection and, well, enjoyment. She wasn’t tolerating me or being kind or keeping things going or hiding feelings from me. She genuinely enjoys me. I put my hand on her thigh and we looked at each other for an electric moment. Then Yeni toppled forward from the waist and kissed me hard on the lips.

  Within minutes we were upstairs, in her room because it has a lock on the door, wrestling on the bed and giggling and eating marzipan and feeding it to each other. Before I had even touched her, she whipped off her top, yanked one of the cups of her bra down, and balanced a nugget of sweet golden paste on her tit, lying back and grinning. Her cherry nipple was the center of a swell of coffee skin, lighter than her caramel tummy, warmed in the sun for eighteen summers.

  I climbed off the bed, unable to take my eyes off her breast (or indeed the marzipan- they both seemed enormously exciting to me at that moment). I stood there, bent over and panting. I asked if she was sure she wanted to do this. She seemed surprised at the question. I said that she was young and the house was mine and I didn’t want her to feel she needed to do this or that it couldn’t stop right now. She thought about it for a moment and looked at me, gasping like a man having a stroke. She laughed and made her delicious tits shudder. Looking up, looking me straight in the eye, she reached out and stroked my cock through my trousers.

  Yeni is fat. She has big tits and love handles you could hang a bike on, but she doesn’t care. Her stomach creases above her thighs, and a roll of flesh hangs down over her pubes, but she doesn’t look like a second prize. She looks like a fertility goddess because she’s so proud of herself. It makes her seem unbelievably dirty and sensual, like you could fuck her all night and then eat pizza off the cheeks of her ass, and she’d still laugh and like you.

  I did ask her if it was all right, I did, but I feel I’ve done something unconscionable that I’ll be held accountable for at some point in the future. The odd thing is, I feel as if I’ve done something bad to Yeni, not Susie. Susie barely comes into it. The only time I don’t feel ambivalent about what happened is when I’m with Yeni. When I’m with her I know it’s fine.

  * * *

  On the way to nursery all the newspapers had headlines about Donna’s body being found. I bought one on the way. It said they’d found Donna’s body, that she was from 18 North Street, Highfields, in Leicester (so she was telling the truth in the video). As a special-value bonus, there was a picture of Donna and Susie, and one of Gow, and the whole terrible tale again.

  At the nursery everyone patted my elbow and said they were sorry to hear about, well, you know, as if Donna was a friend of mine.

  Harry’s mum was there and smiled over at me. I didn’t want to encourage her attentions, so I sort of waved and yanked Margie out of her coat, trying to effect a quick getaway.

  I was easing past a small boy when Harry’s mum sidled over, calling, “ Lachlan, hi.” I turned back into the room so that we were talking publicly.

  “How are you?” She smiled.

  “Fine,” I said. “How are you?”

  Sh
e said, “Fine,” and dipped her head down, dropping her voice. “I was wonder-”

  “How’s Harry? Is he okay?” I said it loudly, making it clear that I didn’t want to have a private conversation, not today.

  I was talking so loudly that Mrs. McLaughlin looked over. She had a sleeveless top on, one of those button-up ones with a collar. Her fat arms are red with angry stretch marks down the back like little lava flows.

  “She should buy a shirt,” said Harry’s mum quietly, nodding over at her, “and hide her bingo wings.” She smiled at me, raised her eyebrows a little, expecting me to laugh.

  In hindsight I can see that she was trying to re-create the success she’d had with the “tanorexic” crack, but coming so soon afterward, it made her seem routinely unkind and wordplay obsessed.

  I was tired and distracted and didn’t get the joke this time. I nodded and pressed my lips together, and she had to explain- fat arms, bingo wings. “Oh, yeah, yeah,” I said. “I see, yeah.”

  Harry’s mum was wearing a tight red pencil skirt and little heels, which didn’t seem all that appropriate. I know she’s dressing like that for me, but looking at her today, I realized that she’s not my type at all and would probably go to the papers if I as much as touched her bum.

  I’m not sure why my interest in her has evaporated. I think it’s because I’m not desperately horny anymore, because of Yeni. I don’t want to feel that I could have shagged either one of them. I want my night with Yeni to mean something and be about more than me being selfish and betrayed and sexually frustrated, but maybe that’s all it was. How depressing.

  * * *

  Yeni has kindly gone to pick Margie up because I was on the phone with Fitzgerald. He takes sooo long to say anything at all. I’m sure it’s a lawyer’s trick, because they charge by the hour. Yeni stood in front of me in the hall and touched her watch, motioning to the door. I raised a finger. She slumped her shoulders and dropped her head to the side. I shrugged helplessly as Fitzgerald droned on and on and on. Yeni pointed to herself, picked her jacket off the coat rack, and pointed at the door, tipping her head inquisitively. I nodded a thank you, I owe you one, and she kissed the tips of her fingers and wiggled them at me as she opened the front door and set off. I watched her through the window, walking away down the path. She has magnificently pear-shaped buttocks. When she wears those thin trousers, her bum looks like two jumbo plums quivering in a silk hankie.

  Fitzgerald kept on talking about the sentencing hearing on Monday, telling me which court, what time. He reminded me not to expect any outcome other than the life sentence and said that there might be journalists there, I might like to think about whether I wanted to give them a statement this time. Every time I brought up the subject of the appeal, he swerved around it.

  Finally I said it outright. “Well, Susie won’t be in there very long, anyway. You know, because of the appeal.”

  Fitzgerald hummed gruffly. “Dr. Harriot, it was my understanding that you were going to visit your wife yesterday afternoon. Did you not go to see her after all?”

  I said yes, I’d been out to see Susie in the Vale, although it wasn’t a very satisfactory visit because the police had turned up at the same time and Susie had to see them first.

  “So,” he said (and he even took his time about that), “you are aware of the recent developments in the case, specifically those regarding the discovery of Donna McGovern’s whereabouts?”

  “Look,” I said, “I know they found her body up in Cape Wrath.”

  He paused for a moment, as if waiting to see whether I would be adding to that statement. “Did your wife tell you, Dr. Harriot, that her wedding ring was discovered under Ms. McGovern’s body?”

  I was shocked and defensive. “What? That’s rubbish. How could they possibly know it was Susie’s wedding ring? They all look exactly the bloody same.”

  “No,” said Fitzgerald, getting to the point. “When your wife was sacked from her job, she reported her wedding ring missing. She was quite concise about the inscription inside when she gave a description to the prison authorities. The ring found with Ms. McGovern has S amp;L’92 CORFU4EVER engraved inside it.”

  The inscription sounded puerile when he said it. It was a secret wedding vow, a commitment to keep on loving each other as we had that first holiday. I asked him whether Susie knew about this yesterday.

  “Of course, Dr. Harriot. The police would certainly have mentioned it to her yesterday. It’s a tremendously significant find. It certainly alters any possible course of action we might take over the case. In the event that we pursued an appeal against your wife’s conviction for Mr. Gow’s murder, she would inevitably be tried for Donna McGovern’s death. We need to ask ourselves whether that is an efficacious use of your resources and funds, given that a success in one suit can only lead to another charge being levied and, in every potentiality, proved against your wife.”

  I put the phone down and came up here just to be alone for a while. Margie and Yeni are back. I can hear them playing in the back garden.

  I’m trying not to take onboard what Fitzgerald said and what it all means. No wonder Susie was beside herself at the visit. No wonder. I can’t even mentally berate her for not filling me in, because she would have had to explain the consequences, and I can’t even think about them.

  chapter twenty-nine

  I CAN’T SLEEP, AND NOW I DON’T HAVE ANY OLD PEOPLE TO BLAME it on. The smoking isn’t helping, that’s for sure. Alarmingly, the crown broke off my tooth and fell out in my mouth at dinner this evening. It’s a lower molar. I was eating some microwaved lasagna, bit down, and the porcelain on the cap just snapped off. I had a flush of adrenaline and thought for a moment that all my teeth were flooding out of my mouth. When I looked at the lump of porcelain on the tabletop, I found it was a dull yellow, yet it matches all my other teeth. The dentist’s receptionist suggested that it could have been from grinding my teeth when I’m asleep. The only time they can take me is on Monday, after Susie’s court appearance. I can’t imagine that day getting any worse.

  I still think we should give the Donna letter to Fitzgerald. I’ll see what Susie says when I go to visit her, but I’m sure we could base an appeal on it. At least it shows that she was telling the truth.

  I was watching telly with Yeni, sitting on the opposite settee so that she didn’t think I was expecting anything. She winked at me a couple of times during the commercials, but I didn’t respond. I was sort of waiting for her to take offense, but she didn’t. She stood up at nine-thirty, said goodnight, and slipped out of the room. I watched the news and put the telly off, ready to come up here to work.

  I stopped on the landing and knocked on Yeni’s door. I wanted to say sorry for ignoring you there and thanks for a lovely time last night or something. I don’t know what. I just wanted to see her, I suppose. She shouted, “Come in,” and I put my head around the door. She was sitting in her bed, wearing a T-shirt nightie with pink bunnies on it and reading Hello! She dropped the magazine to her lap and wobbled her head back and forth in exasperation. I braced myself for trouble.

  “Stephanie of Monaco is trash,” she said, pronouncing it “trush,” saying it as if they’d had a fight and Stephanie was refusing to give back Yeni’s favorite jeans.

  I went in and sat next to her on the bed. It felt very exciting, sitting right by her, not knowing whether we would ever touch again. We both had faint smiles on our faces and avoided looking straight at each other. She showed me a picture of the princess looking sulky at a party.

  “Is that bad, what she’s doing there?” I pointed to the picture unnecessarily and brushed the back of her finger where she was holding the page. A slight tremor ran through her, emanating from her hand. She blinked slowly and smiled at the page.

  “Not so bad, but”- and she shook her head in disapproval, a curl of black hair falling over her face-“trushy dress.”

  I smiled and pushed the hair back. “What would you know about trashy, Yeni?”
I love the language barrier between us. She doesn’t know my chat-up lines are crap, and we can’t possibly have big conversations about ourselves or our relationship.

  She put the magazine down and slid down in the bed, pulling the covers up over her face. “Good night, Lachlan.” She giggled.

  I leaned forward to kiss her. I only meant to kiss her on the forehead, but she pushed me off, giggling, and said, “Jyou piss off,” in a heavy accent.

  I stood up and pretended to cry. “I’m as sad as Kevin Bacon.”

  She was laughing as I shut the door behind me, that big dirty laugh that makes her tits wobble. I won’t try to kiss her again. I don’t want to be pushy, but I hope that it isn’t over between us. Her unavailability coupled with the complete sexual abandonment that lies beneath it is tremendously erotic. I can’t remember if having to strive for sex was always this exciting. It feels as though there’s a live possibility tingling between us in a way that never happens when you know for certain you’re going to touch each other again.

  * * *

  I’ve been reading the prison-lovers book since I came up here and looking at the pictures of Donna, trying to feel sad about the fact that her body has been found. I can’t remember what I came up here to say, but it was important enough to peel my carcass off the sofa and propel me up three flights of stairs. Possibly I had nothing to say, possibly I just had an urge to be up here, in this small space with a locked door between me and the rest of the world, restoring order through the cunning application of my rudimentary secretarial skills.

  * * *

  It seems bizarre that this article was published only three months ago:

  Box 2 Document 12 “ Riverside Ripper Appeal to Go Ahead,” Scotsman, 8/30/98

  This box is getting a bit full. I should get a new one.