The Less Dead

by Denise Mina

  Margo smiles.

  ‘D’you want a wee cup of tea, Tracey?’

  They sit for a while at the grand old table and Margo doesn’t promise her anything but she likes her very much. Tracey, outside of work and without a secret agenda, is lovely.

  She tells Margo about meeting her own birth mother, how the woman told her she’d been in prison for fifteen years for being an active member of the IRA. Tracey was quite impressed by that until she read a book about Dolours Price and realised she’d stolen her story. Turned out her birth mother had beaten her boyfriend to death with a saucepan when she was blackout drunk. She covered him in blankets and left him lying in the kitchen. Cooked for the lodgers, stepping over him, until someone called the police on her weeks later.

  ‘But that was in London, right enough,’ she says, as if such things were common there.

  Margo tells her that she can’t empty the house. She can’t even call in a clearance company because she knows they’d sell off all Janette’s stuff to junk shops and she keeps imagining patients coming in to surgeries she’s taking, wearing Janette’s brooches or carrying one of her plastic handbags. She’s scared that she’ll be walking past second-hand shops and glance in and see their best china service yellowing in the window, that she’d be broadcasting the seeds of Janette over the city, leaving them to flourish, setting up ambushes for herself in the future.

  ‘No,’ says Tracey, looking around, ‘that just means you’re not ready to do it yet. Sometimes you just have to sit and feel things for them to pass. It won’t always be this bad. Give it a month or so.’

  ‘I don’t have a month. My brother thinks it’ll be done by next week.’

  ‘Did you tell him how hard it is?’

  She hasn’t.

  ‘Tell him,’ says Tracey. ‘You take your time.’

  She gets up to go and Margo says she’ll think about selling her the house but Thomas’ll have a say.

  ‘Listen,’ says Tracey on the top step, ‘you know, I’m only here because I’d kick myself if I didn’t ask. There’s no rush now, just take your time and think about it. Whatever you decide is grand.’

  They hug on the step and Tracey hurries off to get her kids from afterschool. Margo waves from the top step.

  Tracey wants a nicer house. Margo thought her motives were sinister but they’re banal as milk.

  She has a long bath, watches TV for a while, then gets ready for bed. She tries to call Lilah but she’s turned her phone off.

  She texts her:

  Again with the phone off? Or is it off? Where are you?

  Margo stares at her phone but gets nothing back. While she’s waiting she texts Diane Gallagher, asking to meet up, thinking she might reply in a few days but she gets an immediate answer:

  Are you free tomorrow?

  A little bit surprised, Margo says yes thanks, that would be great and Diane texts her a time and an address.

  Margo goes to bed, glad to see the back of the day, and falls asleep listening to a podcast about the invention of rayon.

  While she’s asleep, deep in the middle of the night, the person who stabbed Susan to death creeps up the creaky stairs in Janette’s house. They come into Margo’s room and slide along the wall to the very darkest spot and they watch her.

  32

  IT’S LATE AFTERNOON AS she takes a turn for the steep valley between Maryhill and Cranstonhill. Margo knows that she must have been background-checked fairly thoroughly before being invited here, that maybe Gallagher knows someone she knows or worked with. Scotland is a small place and all you need to do is listen. Either way, she knows she has been vouched for, because ex-DCI Diane Gallagher has invited Margo to visit Gallagher in her own home.

  The entire estate is new. It’s so new that the red-brick roads aren’t even dirty yet. Margo follows the GPS to the address at the end of a long, downhill sweep past houses built of cheerful yellow brick.

  The houses are small and pretty, all designed with minor differences from their neighbours to mimic the organic development of a proper village but the fiction doesn’t take: they’re all built of the same materials and have the same windows and doors.

  Margo finds the address. The newly laid lawn is so perfect that it looks like AstroTurf, and white hellebores flourish in pots around the porch. She parks, undoes her seat belt and lifts the box of biscuits from the passenger seat, turning to find the front door being opened by Diane Gallagher. She’s wearing a pale lavender sweater and cream skirt and she’s smiling.

  Margo suddenly wonders if she should text this address to Lilah for safety but Gallagher’s not going to strangle her. The address is in her car’s GPS and Gallagher texted it to her.

  Gallagher welcomes Margo to her home with a firm handshake and a warm smile, takes the box of biscuits, thanks her and leads her into a warm, bright kitchen where a pot of tea is already made and shortbread biscuits are fanned out on a plate. Large grey clip files are sitting at one end of the table. Two cups and saucers and side plates are set on the table. Gallagher is so ready it’s a little intimidating. She’s a careful person, a strategic thinker, still very much a police officer. Gallagher seems sure. After her stint in Accident and Emergency Margo didn’t have much to do with police officers but she recognises as familiar Gallagher’s delicious certainty, her military grooming. She looks tidy and has a tidy home and a tidy mind. Everything is in its place: good guys, bad guys, impropriety. Joe would have made a good cop if he didn’t have such a problem with authority.

  ‘Do tell me all about being a doctor,’ she says, pouring milk into a jug at an open fridge. ‘What an interesting job.’

  They’re not going to talk about Susan straight away, it’s clearly further down the chat-agenda.

  ‘Not compared to being a police officer,’ says Margo.

  ‘Still,’ says Diane. ‘Still–a doctor!’ She nods at Margo and her eyes stray to Margo’s hair, to her eyes, to her eyebrows. She’s seeing Susan in her and Margo loves that. She hopes she’s going to say nice things about Susan, the way she did to Jason. She doesn’t care if they’re hollow, she just needs something to hang on to.

  So she sits down in the kitchen chair she has been assigned and then realises that she is facing a blank wall. This is an informal meeting with all of the props and flummery of two women having tea and biscuits together but she’s still facing a blank wall and sitting in an assigned chair. It’s probably an interview technique, to make her concentrate. She thinks Diane must have been a very good police officer.

  ‘I might just sit over here.’ Margo moves to the other side of the table opposite the window. ‘So I can see your garden. It’s so pretty.’

  Diane sees her taking charge and shifting the power in the room. A smile flits across her eyes. ‘Do you garden?’

  ‘No. My mum was a gardener. She died quite recently.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. How old was she?’

  ‘Sixty-eight.’

  ‘Young.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Did that prompt you to contact Nikki?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  Diane looks at her a couple of times as she pours the tea. ‘What do you know about the Brodies?’

  ‘The family? Just that Patsy died in a fall, and Betty–is it Betty?’

  Diane smiles. ‘Yes.’

  ‘That Betty was a stage psychic?’

  Diane titters to herself. ‘She was good! I heard–I never saw her show but she was very popular. The Brodies were kind of famous. Tough nuts. Clever–criminal but clever. Scary people. Patsy couldn’t even read and now you’re a doctor. Imagine what she could have achieved if she’d been given a chance. You look very like Susan, you know.’

  ‘I’m glad you knew her.’

  Diane nods at the table, remembering. Margo gets the impression that she is struggling to find something nice to say. ‘She was a very strong character. Took no nonsense from anyone, I’ll say that. I was looking forward to seeing what happened to her but then�
�� well, you know… she was a force to be reckoned with.’

  She’s struggling to say anything positive about Susan. She’s a police officer who has comforted devastated people many times and must have a ready collection of soothing bullshit. But she’s Diane Gallagher and she won’t lie. She has integrity.

  ‘You didn’t like her?’

  ‘Well, it’s a strange relationship, cop to crim. It’s not a rounded look at anybody. I’m sure there was more to her than I saw. Let me think now…’

  ‘It’s OK, you don’t have to lie. I’m sad that she wasn’t very nice, not the, you… you know…’ She takes a bite of a biscuit that she doesn’t want.

  Diane sips her tea.

  ‘You know, people often ask sex workers why they do it. The answer each woman gives is very telling. It’s like a little personality test. Some say “I like it”, they’re defiant. Some say “I have to”, they’re fatalistic. Susan used to say “I’m saving up to buy a house”. She was in control, or that’s what she wanted people to think.’ Gallagher smiles to herself. ‘People hated her for that. Officers hated her for that. I did a bit. But the older I get the more I think about her and why she made us all angry. We were trying to save people, you know? Some of us. It’s a mission for some of us. Not the ones who do well, they’re politicians, but you have to feel you’re reaching down to save people and Susan was always–you know, so proud. She was in getting booked one night and she asked the arresting officer what he earned. Told him she made twice his salary every week and she was right. That makes people angry.’

  Margo thinks of Lizzie and tries not to smile.

  ‘Because most of them were in a bad way and did need our help,’ says Diane, ‘Susan was unusual. Most of them had to take drugs to be able to do it.’

  ‘I thought they did it to buy drugs?’

  Gallagher shrugs. ‘Chicken and egg.’

  The ghost of Susan sits between them, fitting into no one else’s story, not trying to be likeable, making wrong choices and refusing to be sad or sorry about them.

  ‘Nikki says they did it because they were poor and addicted and that was all.’

  ‘Yeah, takes a special kind of person though, special mindset. Lots of addicts don’t do it. They were the toughest, most resilient human beings you could ever meet. They could ignore the cold, their bodies, the violence, the way they were treated and the dangers.’

  ‘Did McPhail kill her?’

  ‘No. Look, I know you’re interested because she was your mum but those were strange times and you might be better leaving –’

  ‘I’d like to but I can’t. Since I met Nikki two houses I’ve been staying in have been broken into. I’ve been sent anonymous threatening letters. Was it McPhail?’

  ‘No. He had an alibi. Have you reported these things to the police?’

  ‘I have. Robertson thinks McPhail’s alibi is fake.’

  ‘Robertson.’ She nods slowly. ‘Why does he think we’d give McPhail a fake alibi?’

  ‘Because McPhail was a police officer at the time. Because the police would be liable.’

  ‘For what?’

  Margo hasn’t really thought about that. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We’re not liable for anything. McPhail was already on suspension. He got his books shortly afterwards. But if the alibi isn’t fake then what? That means Robertson wrote and published a book slandering a man who maybe deserved it. He’s a bad man. He’s been convicted of rape, might be overturned on appeal, we’ll see, but trust me, when Susan Brodie died he was in hospital with a collapsed lung. He had a bad drug problem. McPhail was a pathetic specimen but he wasn’t a murderer.’

  ‘I met him. He’s in a wheelchair.’

  ‘Oh?’ Diane can’t look at her.

  ‘Did he have a stroke or something?’

  ‘No. I believe he was attacked several times. Assailant unknown. Brain injury. Just awful. Whatever you think of him.’

  She busies herself pouring more tea. Milk? Help yourself. Everyone likes their tea different, don’t they?

  ‘This is lovely of you to have me over,’ says Margo. ‘Thank you. I really appreciate it.’

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ says Diane, looking her in the eye. She snaps a biscuit between her teeth.

  ‘You must have known Robertson back in the day then?’

  She chews and sighs. ‘Yes. He was young then but just the same…’

  ‘I think he’s a weapons-grade shit.’

  Diane laughs unexpectedly, blowing biscuit crumbs across the table. She chortles and wipes them up and puts them in a saucer. ‘Well, I couldn’t agree more. That book.’ She shakes her head. ‘That book…’

  ‘It has a picture of the crime scene in it. It must be a police photo. How did he get that?’

  She’s embarrassed as she says, ‘He’s in with a few of the, you know –’ she points up to the gods–‘them. They must have given him access to files. They shouldn’t have. Unprofessional. And then he writes that. Making an entertainment out of what those poor families went through. Darkest days of their lives.’

  ‘Maybe he thought it would make people care, if it was an entertaining story.’

  ‘Some of us already cared.’

  ‘Not enough of us though, some people caring isn’t enough. Those stories will be forgotten otherwise.’

  Diane doesn’t agree. It’s not proper, she says, to write it like a story. It’s not respectful. It’s different if you actually know the people. It’s not an entertaining story. It’s their lives. And they’re always written by idiots who get basic things wrong.

  Well, says Margo, she’s a doctor but she quite likes medical dramas even though they’re all rubbish, thinks they have educational value, but Diane says this is policing and policing is different. Anyway, Robertson accused a man of murder in print. The reason he could publish those things was because he self-published. A real publisher would have said no.

  ‘And now he’s being sued,’ says Margo. ‘He thinks he’ll lose his house.’

  ‘Publish and be damned. Well, he’ll be damned.’

  Margo thinks he probably will.

  ‘You know, Susan grew up in a hellish situation. The children’s home they were in was shut down after an inquiry. She was one tough lady.’

  ‘She was pregnant at thirteen, I know that much.’

  ‘Didn’t know that. By Barney?’

  ‘Nikki thinks so.’

  ‘Barney said she was his carer more than his girlfriend towards the end. He said she helped him. He didn’t know she was actually saving up to leave him.’

  ‘How could he not know that?’

  ‘Barney didn’t know much. We brought him in for questioning and he was asleep most of the time. I’ve never met a more pathetic individual, and I was a Glasgow copper.’

  ‘Nikki said he might be my father.’

  Gallagher looks at her face, reading her features. ‘Hm. I don’t know. I can only see Susan in you.’

  Margo thinks Diane can probably see traces of Barney in her but she doesn’t want to say so.

  ‘You never suspected him?’

  ‘Barney? No, I don’t think we did.’

  ‘Did he have an alibi?’

  ‘Yeah. He was out of the country, Holland, I think. We had to pour him into a car to get him in for questioning, I remember that vividly. You’d have to meet him to know why he was never in the frame. Anyway, I don’t think he’d turn up at the High Court like he did the other day if he was guilty.’

  ‘Barney was there?’

  ‘Yes. I was surprised he’s still alive.’ She puts her cup down and sits forward. ‘So,’ she says, ‘tell me about these letters. What did the police say?’

  ‘I really only told them about the break-in. I’ve brought the letters with me, actually.’ Margo takes them both out and puts them on the table. ‘I’ll be honest, Robertson is so keen for the police to know about these I have wondered if he wrote them.’

  Gallagher isn’t worrie
d about contaminating DNA or traces of fibres. She opens them, flattens the paper with the edge of her hand and reads. She nods as she reaches the end. ‘Uh-huh. Well, that seems consistent, from what I remember. Same writing as Nikki’s letters, same bad grammar. See here: “brung”? Yeah, that’s consistent. I remember because it was the first time I had even seen that word written down.’ She shrugs. ‘I don’t know what to say about these. I doubt Robertson’s responsible. He’s not that good a writer.’

  ‘Did you test Nikki’s ones for DNA?’

  Diane tries not to smile. ‘No. DNA wasn’t a thing then and we didn’t think they were related to the killer. They were nasty but they didn’t seem to know much about the other murders at all. I see this one mentions the bleach.’

  ‘Does that suggest that it’s from the murderer to you?’

  ‘A more likely explanation is that the information was leaked.’

  ‘I got that one yesterday morning. Had a bit of red tartan rug in it.’

  ‘An escalation…?’

  Margo doesn’t really know what she means by that so she takes out the greasy scrap of material and shows it to Gallagher in her hand. She doesn’t want to put it on the nice clean table.

  Gallagher nods at it. ‘Didn’t Nikki get one of them in her letters?’

  ‘Yeah. She also got bits of Susan’s clothing from the night she was killed.’

  ‘No. We didn’t know what Susan was wearing that night. She was found naked. There was nothing to compare. Barney wasn’t in the country but he told everyone what he thought she might be wearing, it was in the papers and everything. The letter writer could have read it there. You get a lot of false confessions in these things–we had a very credible confession in that case. A woman came in a month after Susan was found and claimed it was her. Took us a week to realise that it was mince and she’d been in the locked ward at Woodilee Psychiatric Hospital at the time of the incident. What I’m saying is that a confession didn’t necessarily mean the letter writer was the killer.’

  ‘Who would write those horrible letters to Nikki?’