Deception aka Sanctum

by Denise Mina

  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 par
ted, 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.

  chapter forty

  YENI WASN’T PLEASED AT ALL, EVEN THOUGH IT WASN’T OVER-nightthis time, just a day. Down at nine, back at six, home by eight with no delays. I gave her two hundred quid this time and promised to make her dinner. I have money. It’s the one thing I do have.

  * * *

  I came through the gates at Heathrow and was met by a driver dressed in a perfect, crisp gray suit and hat. Carrying my briefcase, he escorted me across the road to an enclosed parking garage and showed me into the comfy backseat of a large silver Benz. I sat there, anxious about the interview to come, watching the outskirts of London pass by the window. People must live like this all the time, I thought, be driven everywhere, be provided for, have teams of people to attend them. If I had all of Susie’s money, I could have someone to drive me all the time. I could pay for a nanny to do stimulating play with Margie all day. I could feel as good about all of my clothes as I do about my Armani coat.

  I asked the driver how long it would take to get into town, and after telling me about twenty minutes, he said it depended on the traffic, you know. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, you know, more often bad nowadays. He said he’d been in Glasgow for a wedding once and we sure knew how to drink up there, eh? I said yeah and looked out of the window.

  It wasn’t long before we were passing the Ritz hotel, crawling along toward Piccadilly Circus. The driver pulled the graceful car across the traffic, down a side street, and into a bay in front of the hotel. A doorman in a top hat and gray tailcoat opened my door, and I stepped out onto the marble concourse. My driver stood up and told me he’d park and wait to take me back to the airport, just ask the doorman, he’ll find me. The doorman tipped his hat.

  The hotel lobby was clean and smart but nothing special. A gaggle of fat tourists gathered at reception, either checking in or checking out. They were surrounded by suitcases and suit bags. They seemed to be having a dispute among themselves. A young woman behind the desk called me aside and asked if she could help. Alistair Garvie had taken a room on the eighth floor and was expecting me. Go right on up.

  The mirrored elevator had posters for Cats and Starlight Express and Les Miserables on the walls. I smoked a cigarette on the way up, trying to get my heart rate up a bit, get ready for a fight, but I needn’t have. Margie could have beaten Alistair Garvie in an arm wrestle.

  He is tall and skinny, with a shock of gray hair and a smoker’s pasty pallor. I was expecting a young man, and it was only as I sat and smoked and drank the beer and vodka provided that I realized: Alistair Garvie is a young man. He’s a young man who has taken extremely bad care of himself and smokes more often than he breathes. He asked me to sit down. They were going to do the pictures first because the photographer had to be somewhere else at one o’clock.

  The photographer asked me to take my coat off. I didn’t want to, but it would have sounded vain and stupid to insist, so I left it on the bed and sat on a low chair in my shirtsleeves and tie, looking out of the window over the London rooftops, resting my chin in my hand. Big silver umbrellas reflected the lights onto me, and I became very hot. Garvie sat on the end of the bed all the while, watching a chat show on telly as he sipped vodka and chain-smoked.

  I stared out of the window for half an hour while the photographer took my picture. It was amazingly boring. I asked if I could have a cigarette and, while I lit up, suggested to the photographer that we could take some of me wearing my coat, standing in front of the smart dresser over in the corner. He looked at the dresser for a moment and then said, “Yeah, okay, why not? Let’s just get these ones first.”

  Garvie picked up the phone and ordered another bottle of vodka from room service and two packs of cigarettes. We hadn’t drunk half of the first bottle yet. I think he wanted them to take home.

  The photographer took a long time to finish. He took four rolls of me looking out of the window, sitting in front of the white background, drinking vodka out of a mug that was supposed to be tea. By the time he had packed up and left, my face hurt from maintaining a sad frown for him. It was only when I was sitting on the plane coming home later that I realized he never did take the pictures of me with my coat on.

  As the photographer packed up, Garvie turned the telly off and talked, topping up my vodka and orange. His marriage had split up, too, so he understood what I was going through. His missus had an affair, with a window cleaner of all people. The guy was old, that was what really got to him, and he was a window cleaner. How much could he have been making a year? Fifteen thou tops. He couldn’t believe she’d done that to him. They’d been childhood sweethearts and had three kids. I asked what ages they were, and he said three, six, and nine. As a joke I said that was pretty precise spacing, wasn’t it? He hesitated and laughed. Yeah, he said, it was. I was starting to doubt the story about his wife. I think he was trying to get me to have an outburst and give a whole load of stuff away. I trusted myself to say nothing interesting (never a problem for me) but didn’t know if that was what they’d print. I fumbled in my briefcase and took out Susie’s Dictaphone.

  “I hope you don’t mind my using this?” I said sheepishly. “But my lawyer insisted. He won’t speak to me if I go home without it.” I whinnied a stupid laugh, and Garvie stared at the machine. He seemed hurt.

  “Don’t you trust me, Lachlan?”

  “Of course I do,” I said. “It’s for my lawyer. He wants to know what I say in case it has a negative impact on the appeal. I’ll do anything I can to help the appeal.”

  Garvie nodded and lit another cigarette. “There’s going to be an appeal, then?”

  “Oh, yes, definitely. We’ve got to keep hoping.”

  “Right? See, I’ve heard that there won’t be an appeal.”

  “No, there definitely will be. We’re just looking for the grounds at the minute. Susie’ll be coming home soon.”

  “And how will your mistress of several years take that?” He laughed unkindly, and I wanted to say fuck you, you’ll be dead at forty-five, but I knew I couldn’t be rude. He’d gut me if I was a smartarse.

  “That was a misunderstanding. Stevie Ray asked me about the allegations in court about Susie and Gow having a love affair, and I didn’t want to talk about it. He took it the wrong way.”

  “So the other papers are lying?”

  “Well, no, I-”

  “Do you think your missus was having an affair with Gow?”

  “I know they weren’t. Susie is innocent of this terrible crime and I don’t doubt that she has been faithful to me. We love each other very much, and we’re looking forward to our future together.”

  Listening to the tape again this evening, I sound as if I’m writing the headlines for him, I realize, but what I was doing was saying things I wouldn’t mind Margie hearing from my mouth when she is a little older, in say ten or fifteen years’ time. These are the things I’d like her to hear me say about her mother. These are the things I’d like to be true.

  The tape goes on for quite a long time afterward. Garvie tries different ploys to get me to say something nasty about Susie, but my guard is up. He never mentions his faithless wife or equidistant children again. I’m sure it was a lie. We smoked and drank, and I said nothing. Eventually I saw the fight go out of Garvie’s eyes, and he dismissed me. He gave me a check for four thousand pounds, which doesn’t seem like much to me.

  As he handed it over, he smiled. “You should have given
us an interview a month ago,” he said. “You could have got three times that.”

  I told him the check was going to charity, and he suddenly looked very angry. It will be in the paper in a couple of days, apparently; they’re going to serialize it over three days. He’ll let me know. I don’t think he will.

  Dizzy with smoking and midday alcohol, I stood in the elevator and gathered myself together. I should have eaten, but there wasn’t any time. I noted a spark of alarm in the doorman’s eyes as he looked at me. I straightened myself as best I could. The afternoon light seemed impertinently bright, and I felt stale and soiled, as if I had spent the last two hours having sex with a reluctant partner. Or maybe I was the reluctant partner. It didn’t feel very nice, anyway. The driver pulled the Benz under the carport and jumped out to open the door. I opened the door myself before he had a chance to get around the hood, and he had to jump back in.

  “Thanks, anyway.” I smiled into the rearview mirror, pleased to be with anyone who wasn’t Garvie.

  “Straight to the airport, is it, sir?”

  “No, I want to…” It was an exaggeration. I didn’t want to. I specifically didn’t want to with a belly full of cold vodka and no lunch, but I would never forgive myself if I didn’t take the chance. I would always wonder about it. “I want to stop at Selfridges. Could you wait outside for ten minutes while I pop in?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Thank you.” I nodded. I saw him cast a concerned look at me in the rearview and I hoped I wasn’t much, much drunker than I thought I was.

  * * *

  Selfridges’ candy department is tucked away behind the cosmetics. The ceiling is lower than the rest of the shop, and it’s a dizzying array of bright colors and deliciously enticing smells. It is a subfranchise arrangement: different chocolatiers have stalls there, and they’re all very expensive. The servers are handsome young women, well groomed and nicely presented in clean white shirts and black skirts, using plastic gloves and mock silver tongs to pick up the merchandise. Freestanding tables on the shop floor hold displays of different brands of sweets: there is a pile of organic licorice, a wall of jelly beans in clear plastic dispensers, a papier-mâché mountain forested by pink and green lollipops with a small tin train running endlessly around the base.