by Denise Mina
Margo has dissected corpses. She has removed and weighed livers and lungs. She isn’t shocked by the sight of death or injury but she isn’t ready for Susan’s vulnerability and how young she is. She’s small for nineteen, childlike, and dead and dumped, naked on frozen mud.
It doesn’t feel as if she’s looking at someone else at all but a younger self, a splinter Margo. No one was punished for this. They did this to a young woman and they’re still out there, walking around, eating biscuits, drinking tea, having Christmases. She feels the injustice of it deep in her gut, the way Nikki must have for decades, a cross between fear and nausea. It’s wrong.
That picture should not be in the public domain. How did a police photograph come to be on the web? What purpose does it serve? At medical school students were tutored over the course of a full term in how to approach a cadaver with respect, but Susan’s body is just an object, up on a web page for people to use. What are they using it for? A cheap, horrified thrill? Are men masturbating to this picture? Susan’s just a kid. They wouldn’t have posted it if she had a family who were able to stand up for her.
A flash of silver skin catches Margo’s eye on Susan’s lower abdomen. It’s a stretch mark, the trace of a full-term pregnancy. It starts just above her pubis and branches out, growing and widening over her stomach like the ghost of a silver birch.
Margo touches the screen, feels the warmth as if it’s from skin, from her mum, as if she has wished her alive again. Foolish. Magical thinking. Silly.
She drops her hand, and sees it then. A yellow puddle.
Footprints in the mud by her head, two of them with clear treads, big, about a size ten or eleven, and deep, as if someone has been standing there for a while looking down at her. It’s urine. Someone peed on her.
She slaps her laptop shut. No.
She goes and climbs into the barely warm, shallow bath, hugging her knees. No. When she gets out she’s careful to keep her eyes down to avoid the mirror.
She crawls off to bed, sad and sorry she ever went to meet Nikki, and listens to a podcast about the myths surrounding the Ark of the Covenant to stop herself thinking as she falls asleep. She can’t think about that. She doesn’t want to know about that. She wakes in the middle of the night, the phone still burbling about a completely different topic now–she’s been listening for hours. She slaps it to turn it off and rolls away, settling into a warm, delicious foetal position. Then she realises that she really, really needs to go to the toilet.
Drowsy, she staggers a little as she lumbers from the bed to the corridor, steadies herself on the wall as she crosses the hall. It’s six thirty and she leaves the lights off, trying not to wake up too much so that she can get quickly back to sleep, and sits on the loo. A vague, nagging awareness makes her glance back out to the hall.
There, lying on the floor, is a letter.
The envelope is blue, small, from an old-fashioned letter-writing set. It has been dropped in through the letter box and slalomed halfway across the hall. Puzzled, she goes out and looks at it. The envelope is lying face up and the writing is unfamiliar. There’s no stamp on it. It has been hand-delivered. She snaps the hall light on and reads the address.
BITCH PATSY BRODIE
TOP RIGHT FLAT
3 HOLLY ROAD
Nikki Brodie must have done this.
She’s the only living person who knows Margo’s birth name and she’s trying to scare Margo. She’s trying to rope her in.
7
MARGO PICKS UP THE letter carefully, holding it out in front of her like a dead mouse as she carries it into the kitchen, puts the lights on and drops it on the table.
She looks at the address again. Is Nikki angry? Is she dangerous? Calling her ‘BITCH’ does sound angry. How did she get into this building? How did she even find out where Margo lived? Because all their correspondence has gone through the adoption agency and they sent her letters to Janette’s house, not to here.
Margo makes a big mug of tea and thinks through the mechanics of what happened last night.
She was in the street with Nikki, then she was in a taxi, came straight here. She was looking at her phone most of the time, a bright screen in a dark cab. She wouldn’t have noticed another taxi following them. There were lots of cabs around George Square at that time of night, Nikki could easily have followed her.
Then she’d have to get through the keypad security entrance downstairs. She imagines herself arriving, seen from behind, getting out of the cab and standing on the pavement, looking at the building, hating it.
Approaching the door, keying in the security code. In the early-morning kitchen Margo lifts her hand and mimes thumbing the code in, she is muscle-memory remembering how she moves when she does that. Her arm reaches out quite far, there’s more than a foot and a half between hand and shoulder. She does tend to stand quite far back when she keys it in, anyone watching carefully enough could see the numbers she was punching in–2 7 3 9. The numbers are widely spaced–they could probably see that from across the street. Nikki could easily have seen that.
Watching from the street then to see which lights go on after Margo goes in. ‘Top Right Flat’ sounds like a description from the street. Her actual postal address is 3/3.
Nikki’s a nut job. Maybe she killed Susan.
She rips the envelope open and takes out a single sheet, flattens it on the table and reads.
The letter says she looks like the fucking whore, Susan, like the whore Patsy too, though Margo doesn’t understand that reference. It threatens to batter her, rape her, to stab her fucking tits until her whore blood pours out and then piss on her. It seems to have been written in a rage but still sounds stilted, staged, like a disguised voice. The grammar is woeful, the spelling not much better. It’s signed ‘the Ram’. There’s even a PS, added on in a different pen at the end: ‘I can smell youre cunt through this door. I will bleach you clean.’
More swearing, she thinks to herself, and hears Janette’s voice in her head: neither shocking nor clever. You’ll have to try harder than that. Swear words are for people with a limited vocabulary. Margo doesn’t really believe these things, she likes a good swear, but she’s invoking her mum because she’s a bit frightened by the raw venom in the letter. She’s frightened that Nikki found her here.
She should call the police but it’ll take them hours to get here and it’s not that serious. It’s a rude letter, people hear worse online all day and nothing has actually happened, but she gets up and starts pacing the kitchen for reasons she can’t quite fathom. She gets out one of the letters Nikki wrote to the adoption agency and puts it on the table.
Nikki’s handwriting is big and uneven, joined-up, and tumbles gracefully across the page. The threatening letter handwriting is small and square, individual letters stand apart from their neighbours and the full stops are punched almost through the page. This handwriting looks different but how can she really tell?
Would it be an escalation to call the police? She knows Nikki will be at the High Court later today, she could just go and see her there. Be straightforward, just address the thing head-on. It’s not a bad idea. The court is a public place, it’s safe and she could tell her that she’ll call the police if it happens again. That’ll let Nikki know that she’s not scared of her, not scared one bit.
She goes back to bed and tries to sleep but can’t. She tries the podcast trick again but it doesn’t work this time. Finally, she just gives in and gets up and makes herself some porridge. It’s a quarter to nine.
The letter is still sitting on the table as she turns the radio on for the morning news. More bad stuff. She sits down, keeping a wary eye on the letter. But she’s not scared, she’s not even going to move it. It doesn’t bother her–Nikki’ll have to do better than that. She got a creepy letter. It’s not that big a deal.
Her mobile rings loud and she fumbles and jumps and throws the bowl of porridge at it, spraying milky lumps across the table. God, she’s wired, but it’s only
Tracey at the adoption agency, calling to see how she is after her wee meeting yesterday. Did it go all right in the end there?
Managing to sound calm, Margo gives her a brief outline of all the mad things Nikki told her about Susan’s murder by a serial killer policeman.
Oh, says Tracey, that’s a new one. Well, poor you, that’s not very nice, is it?
Margo says, well, it gets worse: this morning she got an abusive letter and she’s sure it’s from Nikki and it was hand-delivered.
Oh dear, that’s worrying.
Well, no, she explains, it’s not worrying at all, actually, because she knows where Nikki will be this afternoon: she’s going to watch a murder trial at the High Court and Margo is going to go and see her and give her the letter back and tell her to stop it.
That’s a really bad idea, says Tracey, please don’t do that. Stay away from Nikki because, to be honest, you don’t really know anything about this woman and you have no idea where that might lead. Margo should call the police and they can go and find Nikki and warn her to stop.
Margo says she has considered that but, on balance, being completely straightforward seems the better way to go. If she gets the police to confront Nikki that would make Margo look intimidated, which is exactly what she thinks Nikki wanted. Better to go and say, in front of everyone, look: fuck off, take this letter and don’t do it again or I will involve the authorities.
No, says Tracey, don’t. Just, please, don’t. Do not do that. You don’t know her.
She says it so adamantly and solemnly that Margo wonders if Tracey knows something about Nikki that she doesn’t. Margo hums and says she’s sure it will be fine. It’s a public place and is probably full of police officers.
Sounding panicky, Tracey tries another tactic: perhaps Margo would like to come in and talk about it first? Bring that wee letter in and they can look at it together? Or Tracey could come to Margo’s house this morning if she’d prefer? Where is this she is now, Marywood Square? Tracey only lives round the corner, it’d be no trouble at all.
Janette’s house is in Marywood Square. Tracey thinks Margo is there and she doesn’t want to correct her.
No thank you, says Margo, but she’ll call back if she needs to talk. Thanks for the offer, it’s not necessary, seems over and above. A very kind offer though.
Look: to be clear, says Tracey, I really think you should stay away from Nikki. Going to the High Court, that’s what she wants. She wants a reaction and more contact and that’s what you’re giving her. Please call the police?
Margo says she’ll think about it but she won’t. She’s not going to do that.
Tracey says, anyway, all that stuff about murder must have been frightening? Not really what you came here for, is it?
No, says Margo, not really. She thought Nikki was making it all up until she checked the Internet and found the articles and a crime-scene photo of Susan’s dead body. That part makes her cry because Susan’s so young and vulnerable in the picture. She can’t bring herself to mention the cluster of gaping wounds on Susan’s chest so she says it was the piss that really upset her. That someone would do that. It’s so denigrating, so dismissive, and she looked so young.
Tracey is kind and says nice things, she’s sorry, it’ll-be-OK, and waits for her to calm down.
Why is that photo even up there? asks Margo. Why is it in the public domain? What purpose does it serve and who’s looking at it?
I don’t think it should be there, says Tracey. But there might be something I can do. Would it be all right for her to contact the website on Margo’s behalf and ask them to take the image down? Worth a try anyway?
This is actually really helpful. Margo says thank you, she’d appreciate that.
She gives Tracey the domain name and the misspelling of Susan’s name. As she’s spelling it out she gets weepy again. They didn’t even spell her name properly.
‘OK, well now, I’ll call you right back about that as soon as I hear anything, let you know how I get on. OK now?’ says Tracey. ‘Don’t go to the court. Call the police.’ And she hangs up.
Margo dries her face and admits that this is upsetting, it’s an upsetting situation and she’s not in a good place anyway. She shouldn’t go to court or try to see Nikki. She should go and see Lilah and the dogs and then just go straight to Janette’s and start the clearing out.
She scrapes up the porridge and folds the letter away, puts it in the envelope and puts it in her handbag, more to hide it than because she wants to take it anywhere. She gets dressed and puts on make-up, looking in the bathroom mirror, insisting to herself that this is her face, only hers, and the unlikely spotting of Susan Brodie last night was just because she was surprised and blindsided by Nikki, by the articles, by the mad story. It’s a cruel story to tell a stranger. Asking for things. Demanding things. It’s not her problem, all these long-ago things. She’s got enough going on.
She’s thinking all these sensible thoughts when her phone rings in the kitchen and she goes to answer it, expecting it to be Tracey again.
It’s not. It’s Joe.
Margo’s thrilled to hear his voice but tries to sound offhand.
‘Oh, yeah, all right?’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘How’d it go yesterday? OK?’
‘Odd. Very odd.’
‘Good odd or bad odd?’
‘Dunno. Interesting. Bit mad.’
Margo thinks she’s bad to Joe. Joe thinks she’s bad to Joe. Margo has all the money and all the power and she doesn’t know how to stop being so controlling. He’s a lovely man, he deserves her respect, but he terrifies her. Joe doesn’t know she’s pregnant. When she tells him he’ll be delighted. He’ll accept her behaviour, disregard the meanness, tolerate it for the sake of the baby. Now every word from her mouth has the world-changing phrase I am pregnant behind it so she sounds stilted all the time.
‘Are you OK though?’
She sighs. ‘Well, yeah, I’m OK. I’m tired. Didn’t sleep much.’
‘Was the prick downstairs calling forth mighty thunder all night?’
The hum of Joe’s voice tickles her ear. She slowly bends her head to her shoulder, trying to trap it, shuts her eyes and conjures his bare back in bed. He’s asleep on his side, facing away from her, she’s close and his shoulders rise like a wall. It’s early in the morning and she watches each breath spread the ribs and bring them together. His skin is a galaxy of freckles.
‘How was the baby shower?’
‘I didn’t go. Lilah texted me and said that the police were called.’
‘Did you hear about Richard? He turned up and smashed a window.’
‘Shit!’
‘Yeah, he was trying to get in, to get to Lilah.’
Richard is Joe’s half-brother. He was a wealthy antiques dealer in London but is currently Lilah’s full-time ex and stalker. Joe has tried to intervene but is mostly paralysed with shame and worry about him and what he’ll do next.
‘Joe, how did Richard find her?’
‘She must be telling him, he finds her all the time.’
Richard’s stalking was not spontaneous. He and Lilah lived together for four years until she left him and ran away back to Glasgow. He claims she stole from him and he just wants the money, which is almost certainly partly true, Lilah does steal things, but it’s not just about that. He was threatening suicide for the first couple of weeks. Joe said he was holding himself hostage to get her back. It’s messy and they’ve all been sucked into the collapsing star of Richard and Lilah’s relationship, but they can’t just opt out because it’s so tangled. Richard is Joe’s brother, Richard and Lilah introduced Joe and Margo, Thomas and Joe are best friends. It used to be cosy but is suddenly suffocating, like a wet duvet over the face.
‘How’s the clear-out at Janette’s going?’
‘Really well. I’m getting it done. I have to go, anyway, I’m dog walking with Lilah.’
They listen to each other breathing for a moment. The tension bu
ilds in her and she tries not to scream that she’s pregnant.
‘Get off the fucking phone, you weirdo wanker,’ she says and flinches at the edge in her own voice.
Joe laughs, because what else can he do, but when he speaks his voice sounds tired and miserable.
‘OK, Margie. Talk later.’
And he hangs up.
8
‘IT’S ONLY FIFTY FUCKING quid,’ says Lilah.
‘I’m not going to Iceland tonight, no.’
They’re walking up to the first floor of a close with an oak balustrade and exquisite wall tiles in watery green and yellow. Lilah gets out a set of keys with a balding rabbit-foot key chain, makes a disapproving face about it to Margo and does a squeaky voice, ‘Thanks for the leg, Mr Bunny!’
‘Whose flat is this?’
‘Some old bloke, I think.’ She opens the wooden storm doors. ‘Judging from the coats in the hall cupboard. Got a pair of gorgeous corgis though.’ She slips the key in the inner glass door and swings it open to a musty-smelling hall with a threadbare antique rug on the floor and dark wood dressers with so much unopened correspondence piled on top that the horn-handled letter openers and stained glass lamps have been shoved over to one side.
Margo hasn’t been to this flat with Lilah yet. It’s one of those Victorian West End flats that seem to go on forever: a huge hallway with lots of doors into large, bright rooms and a low corridor at the end. She has been in flats like this before and knows that it will lead to a more modest set of rooms for the servants.
Two old black-and-white corgis mosey out of a front room to greet them. One of the dogs attempts a jump onto Lilah’s thigh but he doesn’t make it, lands heavily on his front paws and seems to instantly regret trying.
‘Oh, Mr Muttley!’ Lilah crouches down to him and cups his damp jaw. ‘Poor old dear, did you do a big jump and hurt yourself?’