The Less Dead

by Denise Mina

  Lilah smiles. ‘I’ve always got a stash on me. Bet you’re glad now.’

  Margo doesn’t feel right taking the money. She feels she’s being implicated in something, somehow. ‘Why doesn’t Richard want the police involved?’

  ‘Well, maybe he’s not snowy white either. Antiques dealers don’t like the cops much.’ Lilah looks around the living room. ‘You need to tell the police everything, OK? Don’t be brave or downplay it, it’s OK to be scared and ask for help. Remember: they’ve killed before.’

  But Margo knows whoever killed Susan didn’t break in. ‘Let’s go and wait in the car. It smells like Elizabeth Taylor exploded in here.’

  23

  THEY’RE SITTING IN MARGO’S Mini. They’ve been there for an hour and ten minutes, waiting, and now they’re speculating about who could have done it.

  ‘It could have been the auntie.’ Lilah gasps and grabs her sleeve. ‘Oh my God! She did it!’

  ‘No, wasn’t her. I was with the aunt tonight. I just left her at her friend’s house. I’ve been with her for hours.’

  ‘You saw her again? If I could move my forehead, my eyebrows would be in my hairline right now.’

  They watch the street for a moment. A young drunk couple sway and giggle past the car door. A street light blinks frantically at the far end of the road. Margo can hear the bass-heavy thunder soundtrack from her neighbour’s computer game even here, out in the street.

  They see them at the same time: two uniformed police officers walk up Margo’s street, a man and a woman. Both officers wear bulky hi-vis vests and carry a lot of equipment on their shoulders and belts. They look around for Margo’s block of flats and find it, approach the door and ring her buzzer. She opens the car door and Lilah offers to come up with her, to show she isn’t avoiding the police, but Margo can’t deal with navigating Lilah and police officers at the same time.

  She leaves her in the car and hurries over, explaining to the cops that she was waiting in a car over there with a friend because it’s quite creepy up there, and then, just because they seem so humourless, she giggles.

  The male and female officers glance at one another. She knows she seems suspicious. The man is doughy and the woman short and slender, her dark hair is pulled up in a tight bun. They’re both wearing stab vests which seems pre-emptively accusing. They ask her for her name and whether she called them, talking in a strange language, their grammar alien and strangled. She thinks they’re being filmed or recorded.

  ‘We would like,’ says the man, ‘to take a statement from yourself about the course of events.’

  Margo wants to reply in a nasal voice, to say that she, herself, will be willing to cooperate in the giving of such a statement on the course of events, but realises just in time that taking the piss out of the police is probably a really bad move.

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Indeed…’

  She keys the code into the security pad and points out how unsafe this whole keypad thing is. She goes on too long about it, which makes her nervous, which makes her go on even longer about it. They follow her upstairs. When they see the broken front door, the female officer says, ‘Top marks for effort anyway.’

  They examine the deadlock. The wood is compressed where an instrument was used.

  ‘Brought tools with them,’ says the man.

  It’s not a heavy door and wouldn’t have been hard to smash open. It doesn’t look as violent on a second viewing. When they get inside the flat the smell has dissipated because of the open windows. She feels a bit silly and melodramatic and tries to excuse herself. ‘I got a fright, to be honest. I just wanted to get out of there. I don’t know why anyone would do that and not take anything.’ She takes them around and shows them all the items of value that they might have stolen.

  ‘So I don’t know why they did it,’ she concludes.

  The female officer holds Margo’s eye and nods as if she has said something very profound. Then she says, ‘Yes.’

  Margo knows that she is doing that to validate her feelings. She has been on an engage-with-the-public course too.

  They follow her into the bedroom and stand in a solemn line at the foot of the bed looking at what, quite suddenly, looks like a bed someone accidently spilled perfume on. Margo feels stupid but she knows why she finds it so alarming. It has distinct, deliberate echoes of Susan’s crime-scene photo.

  ‘Could a cat have knocked the bottle over?’ suggests the woman officer.

  ‘No, I think it was poured there to look like something else. I didn’t call you because I spilled my perfume,’ says Margo. ‘The bottle is nowhere near the bed.’

  She points out the empty bottle on the floor, wondering if the officer thinks this is just how her bedroom always smells. She tells her that she also got a threatening letter yesterday, hand-delivered through the door, and explains the context, about meeting Nikki and finding out about Susan. She shows them the crime-scene photo in Robertson’s book and points out the similarities to the bedroom. By the end of it she feels like a fool.

  ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of this,’ says the female cop, showing it to the man, ‘I’ve heard of this book.’

  He mutters to her, ‘That’s who that ex-CID guy is suing, isn’t it?’

  The officers glance at each other but change the subject. He addresses Margo formally, ‘Might we see the threatening letter?’

  She explains that she gave it to the guy who wrote the book, he wanted to check it out in case it was from the ex-CID guy. They look at each other again, more wary of Margo now.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘can you get it back and bring it in to show us?’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  Margo sounds like a panicky idiot who watches too much telly. She wants to tell them she’s a doctor but doesn’t know how to slip it in without sounding like a grandiose, panicky idiot.

  The male officer takes photos of the bed on a phone. He takes them from several angles.

  ‘It is horrible, being broken into,’ says the policewoman, a rare moment of informality breaking through her professional mask.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ says Margo, glad of the human contact.

  ‘Have you got somewhere else you can stay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ and she gives them Janette’s address and her mobile number. She can tell from the amount of nodding they’re doing that they’re assessing her, wondering if she’s a madwoman who smashed her own door in and trashed her own bed. It all sounds overly elaborate and unlikely, especially when she tells them about the court case. As she’s telling the story she imagines a splinter Margo whose mum just died, a broken woman who went into the High Court and saw all the drama around the murder case and thought she’d like some of that and then came home and pretended to get a letter. She looks up and sees the cops nodding at her, taking notes, their eyes a little bit glazed as they have private, reflective thoughts about her. She thinks about Nikki and Lizzie and wonders how the police would react if they called them over a trifle like this.

  ‘Those other letters you’ve got there.’ The female cop is looking into her handbag. ‘What are they?’

  They’re Nikki’s letters to the adoption agency. She feels stupid enough already.

  ‘They’re just letters from my mum. She died recently. I like to keep them with me.’

  They both nod and take that in: recently bereaved, going slightly mad.

  ‘I’m sorry for your troubles,’ says the female cop, eye-contacting her half to death with training-course empathy.

  ‘Thank you for saying that,’ says Margo, doing it back.

  Once she’s finished telling them everything, they ask: can Margo think of anyone who would want to hurt her?

  No one.

  They ask about the neighbours, they know there were protests outside during the building of these flats. Have there been any incidents since she moved in? No, she says, and she doesn’t know the neighbours well enough to have a dispute with them. She’s only been here for a month.

  I
s there any CCTV in the building?

  No, everything here has been done on the cheap.

  They ask about ex-boyfriends. She explains about Joe, that they split up a few months ago and she moved out. They’re interested in that but she says no, no, Joe is a nice person and he would never, ever do that, not to her, not to anyone. They nod and say OK then. Can they have his address and phone number so they can rule him out? She gives it to them and they tell her not to worry, they’ll just have a word. Margo doesn’t want Joe being bothered with this. He’s a good guy and is very busy with his bike shop. She herself is a doctor, actually. There, she got it in and she looks up and sees from their expressions that they think she’s either making it up or mentioning it as a status grab, which she is. But the male officer writes it down and the female officer holds her eye and nods kindly.

  At the end of the interview the police ask her if she wants to say anything else. They stare at her, hoping, perhaps, for a revelation about Joe’s violent past, or that she’ll laugh and admit she spilled an expensive bottle of perfume and called them so she can claim it on her house insurance.

  Margo smiles as sanely as she can, which makes her feel as if she looks crazy, and says no, not really. Just the break-in and the letter. Sorry.

  ‘No,’ says the man, standing up and adjusting his stab vest, ‘there’s no need for you to apologise. This is exactly what we’re here for.’ And they glance at each other again.

  Margo doesn’t think they trained as police officers to search for spillers of Chanel No 5 but it’s nice of them to pretend.

  They’re leaving. The woman tells Margo she should get the door fixed asap because her insurance won’t cover the contents of her flat if she leaves it. An open door is an invitation to some. Then they leave her standing in the hall, listening to their receding footsteps on the clangy stairs. Thunder emanates from the floor. The cat downstairs starts whining. They open the outside door and a current of cold air streams up from the street, swirling around the flat, whipping up the smell. The outside door falls slowly shut.

  High notes from the perfume have burned off and the flat smells heavy but sweet. She feels like a fool.

  She’s standing in the hall, noticing this, when two things happen at exactly the same moment: her front door falls off completely, thudding to the ground with a great ear-slapping clatter, and the door buzzer goes. It takes her a moment to work out which noise belongs to which.

  It’s Lilah on the buzzer. ‘Let me in.’

  She comes up and helps Margo get her stuff out of there, goes around the flat with open boxes scooping everything in and carrying them down to the car.

  Several trips later her flat is empty of everything but the big furniture. She’s glad to get out of there.

  ‘You don’t ever have to come back here,’ promises Lilah. ‘Give me the keys. I’ll get the door fixed.’

  Intensely grateful, she gives her the keys and Lilah hugs her and tells her not to worry, OK? Get some sleep and don’t worry. ‘Phone if anything happens, OK?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘OK.’ Lilah can see that her mind is elsewhere. ‘OK?’

  ‘I will. Will you be OK in here?’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Just don’t tell anyone I’m here, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  Margo walks down to the Mini. When she gets to the bottom of the stairs she looks back up at the window, worried about leaving Lilah up there alone.

  24

  SHE’S BACK AT THIS house. It’s like a palace. There’s big bushes of flowers in the garden and a bit of grass. The house is old, solid, stone. The front door is painted bright red. The steps up have matching blue pots on the top step. Posh as fuck. And a worthless bitch like that in there.

  Called the cops back there. It was exciting. She must be terrified. Couldn’t believe she did that. The letter must have scared her.

  She’s read it and cried and called the cops. As if they’re going to give a fuck about a letter. They never did before.

  Moved out because of the letter, too scared to stay there. Just a letter, not a knife or a punch to the side of the head, nothing real. It’s thrilling.

  Born scared like her mother. She’s an easy mark, she shat herself when the guy tried to grab her at the Saltmarket. Easily frightened. Needs someone else to take control and tell her what to do.

  This new street is narrow and that’s a problem. There’s parking regs everywhere. Have to keep moving around. Can’t afford to get a ticket so have to keep moving, watching the house, watching the street, moving sometimes when a new space opens up so that no one gets too used to the car being in the same space.

  She’s alone in there.

  Park up for a minute. Out the car and slip through a gap in the hedge. A low window into the kitchen.

  She’s alone.

  See her through the window, moving around, making tea, sitting. She looks upset. Crying at the table. Got no one to tell her what to do. She’s all over the place.

  Back to the car and start the engine, pull it around to the main street and back for one last turn.

  There’s a shape, someone going in.

  The gate shrieks as the metal scratches along the concrete path. It’s a man, a thin bloke, wiry, tall, with a bike hanging on his shoulder and a cycle helmet on. A fucking bloke.

  Shit.

  25

  ‘AM I THREATENING YOU?’

  ‘Joe, it’s two in the morning.’

  He’s standing on the top step, his bike resting on his shoulder. She feels her pupils dilating as she drinks him in. He looks half mad in his cycling tights, hi-vis cagoule and white helmet. He only buys cycle gear in sales because he says it’s overpriced and, because he only buys in sales, his clothes are often the wrong size and always mismatched. Tonight he’s wearing black tights and a fitted cycle jacket with pockets on the back hem that are crammed with cotton hankies, packets of crisps, chewing gum and house keys. His thighs are overdeveloped and his leggings so tight that she can make out his shin bone.

  ‘I just want to know. The police came over to ask me if I was behaving in a threatening manner to you. Am I?’

  ‘No. Holly Road got burgled and they asked me if I had a boyfriend, that’s all.’

  ‘Burgled?’ He nods. ‘Have you been crying?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it OK, me being here?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘What are you, a vampire? Of course it’s OK.’ She pushes the door open wide. ‘Come in.’

  He looks in the hall for somewhere to put his bike down. ‘Bloody hell, lot of boxes. What is all this?’

  ‘It’s boxes of things from Holly Road and the stuff from all the rooms upstairs,’ she lies, ‘Janette’s things.’

  He shuffles in and props his bike against a dune of bin bags.

  She invites him into the kitchen. As she leads him down the hallway she’s so aware of his presence that it feels like a blazing three-bar fire at her back.

  ‘Did you hear about the Blythswood? Richard got lifted by the police again.’

  ‘Oh fuck, no.’

  ‘He’s being held overnight. Tried to fight the bouncer. His face is a mess.’

  Joe could be crowing about Richard’s fall from grace. He is the disappointing hippy and Richard was their parents’ pride and joy. He was a capitalist firebrand, making big money travelling around the world to buy rare antiques and wanted them all to know. He paid for meals for everyone and took fancy suites in boutique hotels whenever they came home to visit. He rented a bungalow in St Lucia for a month so that Lilah could invite her friends and family.

  When Joe moved up to Glasgow after they first met he wasn’t pursuing Margo, he just liked the sound of the low rent prices in the rougher areas. As if he was trying to let everyone down, he opened a bike shop and barely scraped a living. His passion is racing and teaching adults to ride bikes. Margo kept bumping into him in Queen’s Park when she took Janett
e out in her chair. They got to know each other slowly over the course of a year. Margo pursued him. She would go and sit in the freezing cold shop, talking to him while he worked, drinking tea and listening to the radio together.

  He’s eccentric, she knows that. He means well, she knows that too. She used to find it all cute and had never looked to a man to support her anyway. The split over Lilah and Richard would probably have healed in time but the moment she realised that she was pregnant everything shifted. Joe’s eccentricity went from being charming to seeming really quite mental. He disappeared for weeks at a time, following his racing team around the circuit, lived hand to mouth, refused to buy a house or even contemplate a mortgage. She was pondering all of this when a woman came into her surgery with three kids, all of whom were screaming with painful ear infections. The husband was dressed in a full Celtic football strip. He looked rested and took the only chair. He didn’t speak during the whole fraught consultation but just sat there, smiling affably while the frazzled mother comforted their kids and explained that the Calpol wasn’t helping and she’d been up for days.

  Margo does love Joe but everything feels so difficult. She thinks she might manage better on her own.

  ‘Oh,’ says Joe, looking around the kitchen at the boxes and still-full cupboards sitting open.

  Margo sighs. ‘I know. I’ve hardly started in here. So much stuff.’

  ‘Thomas thinks you should call a house clearance company.’

  ‘I should,’ she says. ‘I should do that.’

  Joe sits at the kitchen table and peers over inch-high tidy piles of things that need sorting out, correspondence from banks and Janette’s lawyers and friends who only-just-heard.

  ‘So what happened? The police said someone broke in and vandalised your bed.’

  ‘I think someone was trying to frighten me.’

  ‘Can I stay?’

  ‘Joe…’

  ‘Let me stay with you.’ He’s speaking calmly but his eyes are tracing the line of her neck, her hairline, his eyes are saying he loves her, that he’s thinking about touching her. Her eyes are saying that she remembers that too and the sight of Joe is balm to her, that she loves the smell of his coal tar shampoo. She can’t remember why they’re not together but knows it’s important.