The Less Dead

by Denise Mina

  ‘I barely fucking know ye, hen,’ says Lizzie and laughs to mitigate the rejection, but she kind of means it.

  Margo knows it was a presumptuous thing to say but she’d like it to be true. ‘Can I show you something?’ She takes out the letters from her handbag and hands them to Lizzie.

  Lizzie’s face falls as she reads them.

  ‘Oh no,’ she says and looks up at Margo. ‘Oh no. Where did you get these?’

  ‘They were hand-delivered through my door. I got the first one the day after I met Nikki. I didn’t tell her, I thought it would scare her.’

  ‘Oh, honey, no.’ Lizzie stands up. ‘We need to show these to her. We need to go right now.’

  42

  THEY’RE PARKED OUTSIDE A white bungalow in the posh part of the East End, on a street lined with villas and well-tended gardens. It’s early evening in old-lady suburbia and nothing moves. Front windows flicker with the lights of the evening TV news. In the far distance a tired grey man smokes a pipe and walks a tired grey dog along the street.

  Number 52 sits high over the street, built squarely in the middle of an artificial hillock. A lawned garden runs around three sides of the building, separated from the street by a low wall. The bungalow is solid and whitewashed, with new plastic double-glazing and vertical blinds in both front windows.

  Lizzie says it would be a bit of a shock to Nikki if they just knock on the door. She might start crying and embarrass herself. She makes Margo call on the landline number to warn Nikki that they’re here and they’re coming in.

  It’s answered after one ring by a breathless old woman. Margo asks for Nikki. The woman asks whom may she say is calling, please? Margo gives her name.

  ‘Oh, for fucksake,’ mutters the woman and yells, ‘Hey! Nikki! Phone! Quick!’

  Margo can hear talking and then Nikki grabs the phone. Oh! Is it Margo? She’s surprised to hear from her, to be honest. She tries to hide her annoyance about the wrong phone number but it tumbles from her mouth. Unob-tainable, she spits. Margo tells her the truth: she was frightened and didn’t know if she could trust her. She says that she felt a bit swamped and overwhelmed, when Nikki shouts at someone in the background to SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU OLD BITCH. Not you. There’s someone else here. Margo doesn’t feel she needs to excuse her reticence now. Nikki has made her case for her.

  ‘I’m outside your house in the car. Lizzie’s with me.’

  ‘Whit!’ The vertical blinds on one of the windows gape. She can see a long slice of Nikki’s face. ‘Is that you? In the Mini?’

  Margo waves. Nikki waves back manically and beckons them to come in.

  They get out and lock the car. The street is completely empty.

  ‘Fucking creepy place to live if you ask me,’ says Lizzie as they walk up to three brick steps leading into the garden.

  ‘D’you see your family, Lizzie?’

  ‘Well, most of them are dead. One in prison down in England.’

  ‘You in touch?’

  ‘Nah. Never really got on. Wasn’t like Hairy and Nikki. There was always a bit missing in my family, you know? We didn’t really like each other.’

  ‘Were Nikki and Susan close?’

  ‘Aye.’ She stops at the front door. ‘Nikki’s the nicer of the two by far. Susan was a mental bitch. She was brave though. Took zero shits from anyone.’

  Nikki opens the door to a white hallway. The carpet is white, the walls are white, a small white table sits off to the side. A very old woman is behind her, leaning over a standing frame. Age-related degenerative disc disease. She’s so stooped that she has to strain her neck to look up and she has been like that for a long time. Gravity has marked her face, so that her jowls and cheeks sag forward instead of down. She’s smiling at the floor.

  ‘Oh, aye, yeah: this is Betty,’ says Nikki. ‘Our auntie. Isn’t that right, Betty?’

  ‘Aye,’ Betty tells the carpet.

  ‘So she’s your… great-aunt?’

  ‘That’s right, aye, that’s right enough.’

  Nikki takes Margo’s coat in the narrow hall, opens an immaculately tidy hall cupboard to hang it up on a wire hanger, while Betty shuffles about on her frame trying to follow the action but getting in the way.

  Nikki asks Lizzie how come she’s here with Margo and Lizzie covers up kindly by saying that Margo wasn’t too sure where it was and wanted to see her. She needs to ask her about something.

  ‘What about?’ she says as Betty jostles her trying to turn around and face the company.

  ‘Maybe we should sit down?’ suggests Lizzie.

  ‘Oh.’ Nikki thinks it’s something ominous. ‘Aye, OK. Come away in.’

  She opens the door to a pristine white kitchen with a big white table and six high-backed chairs. Everything in the house looks brand new.

  ‘This is a lovely house,’ says Margo as they file through.

  Lizzie smiles. ‘Nikki keeps it lovely.’

  There’s a faint citrus tang of Flash coming from black granite worktops that sparkle under white cupboards and another smell too, a comforting smell of melted cheese.

  Nikki is helping Betty manoeuvre her walking frame through the doorway and Lizzie says that Nikki cleans all day and spends every night making lists of things she can clean tomorrow. She’s one of those obsessive compulsives. ‘She’s a bit OCD.’ Margo says she’s not sure that’s what it’s called but Nikki takes the odd diagnosis as a compliment. ‘I do my best.’

  Betty stumbles twice on the way through and Nikki scolds her. She shouldn’t be out of her chair after the bad night’s sleep she’s had, she’s just showing off in front of Margo.

  ‘No one’s impressed,’ she says.

  ‘She’s a bit impressed,’ says Betty, grinning at the floor.

  ‘I am, actually,’ says Margo.

  ‘My next trick’s a handstand so get your pennies ready to throw.’ Betty delivers these jokey asides like a tired parent who is jollying themselves along rather than trying to appeal to an audience. When they get to the table Nikki pulls out a chair and Betty backs in carefully, making a beeping noise like a lorry in reverse. No one laughs or even acknowledges that she’s doing it which makes Margo think she’s probably made this joke many times. Nikki hovers until the back of Betty’s legs make contact with the seat and then holds it steady as Betty counts backwards, 3–2–1, and drops onto it. Effortlessly, as if it was on wheels, Nikki pushes the chair with Betty in it to the table.

  ‘OK. Tea.’ Nikki seems very different in this context, solid and distracted. As she makes everyone tea in matching mugs Margo asks how they came to be living together.

  Nikki says that when she got clean she had to move out of the flat she shared with a load of other addicts. She was homeless and Betty needed a carer. ‘It’s nice.’ She smiles. ‘Nice way for things to end up. We get on OK, don’t we, Betty?’

  Betty turns her shoulders to Margo. ‘She has me prisoner here. Call the filth.’ And they all laugh, though it might be true for all Margo knows.

  The tea is served and finally the parliament is assembled at the table. Nikki asks her what it was she wanted to talk to her about.

  Lizzie steels herself. When Margo brings the letters out of her bag and puts them on the table Nikki’s hands retreat across the table.

  They stare at them. The letters are folded but unfurl as they watch. They can see some words: Ram, PS, smell, youre cunt.

  ‘Is this a dagger I see before me?’ It’s Betty, singing in a wavering, theatrical voice.

  ‘Fuck off, Betty,’ snaps Nikki. ‘This isn’t funny. Where did you get these?’

  Margo goes through the times and the two different addresses.

  ‘So they’re following you?’

  ‘I think so. I saw a green car a few times. I think it chased me once.’

  Nikki nods at the table. She’s tearful. ‘I got one when I first moved in here, didn’t I, Betty?’

  ‘Hm.’ For once Betty doesn’t make a joke. ‘It was to scare h
er.’

  ‘So,’ says Lizzie, ‘who is writing these letters?’

  ‘Who has been writing them for all these years?’ says Margo. ‘Are there consequences? Did anything happen after you got the letters?’

  No, Nikki says, there wasn’t anything really. Just upsetting her, letting her know they knew she’d moved, keeping the wounds open.

  Margo tries to minimise it. ‘What if they don’t do anything?’

  ‘I know,’ says Nikki. ‘It was the thought that someone who knew you would stoop so low. It was so mean.’ She looks at the letters again, fearful, blinking back tears.

  Feeling as brave as Susan, Margo picks them up from the table and crumples them into a ball. She shoves them back into her handbag. ‘This is crap. I’m going to put them in a bin on the way home. No more significant than a supermarket receipt, are they? I thought they might be from Barney Keith.’

  ‘Barney?’

  ‘Barney’s still alive,’ says Lizzie. ‘She’s found him on the Facebook. Show them!’

  Margo pulls up his profile on her phone.

  ‘God!’ says Betty, her face uplit by the phone. ‘He looks as if he’s melted. He’s a lot fatter than he was though. Must have got clean. I just assumed he’d be dead, being so old and that.’

  ‘He’s younger than you,’ says Lizzie, ‘you’re still alive.’

  ‘Yes, see: I’m immortal.’

  ‘Really?’ Lizzie sounds interested.

  ‘Yes,’ says Betty casually.

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘Ironically, I crave death’s sweet embrace.’

  ‘Do ye, Betty?’

  She tuts. ‘Auch, jus’ in the mornings. Afternoon I’m usually right as rain again.’

  ‘But Barney loved Susan,’ Nikki nods to Margo. ‘He was good to her in his way. God alone knows what he’d have done when she got it together and left him.’

  Margo isn’t willing to accept him as a tragic hero. ‘He got her pregnant when she was thirteen. He sent her out to make money on the streets.’

  Nikki sighs and sucks her teeth loudly. ‘Hm. Susan wasn’t really one to be pushed around. She had the upper hand there, really, I think. See, Barney was the one doing the cleaning and all of that. He kept the house and she did what she wanted. He was on the sick. He was never very well. He wasn’t in charge of Susan, not by any stretch of the imagination. She was a wee besom at times, your mum, you know.’

  Margo sits back. ‘Has anyone got anything good to say about Susan?’

  The three women struggle to think of anything.

  ‘Well, she had you,’ smiles Nikki.

  Lizzie and Betty grin but it’s Nikki they’re smiling appreciatively at.

  ‘I do,’ says Betty and sits forward, hands clenched in front of her like a newsreader. ‘She got off the drugs and that was hard and she did it because she thought she’d see you again.’ She stops and clears her throat, looking at the table. Then she clears it again. This, Margo thinks, is Betty in a state of high emotion. ‘She thought she’d maybe get to see you again one day. When you were grown up.’ She struggles again with her throat and blinks hard, her eyes reddening. ‘And she wanted you to find her in a nice house, a nice clean lady. It’s what she wanted. She tried so hard for you.’

  Margo feels the spirit of Susan at the table with them and reaches out and squeezes Betty’s hand. Betty can’t look at her but squeezes back.

  ‘She wanted you to be proud of her,’ whispers Betty. ‘She was never proud of where she came from. She was changing her life for you, getting off the streets, away from Barney, for if you came to look for her. But that never happened.’

  Margo squeezes again. ‘It’s happened now.’ She gestures around the kitchen. ‘And look what I found.’

  Betty smiles gratefully up at her, shy, because she’s being sincere.

  ‘Did Barney know she was leaving him?’

  ‘Yes, I’d think so,’ says Betty, ‘Susan wasn’t famously diplomatic. Barney was part of the shit she was shedding.’

  ‘Wasn’t he angry about it? Why is everyone sure he didn’t kill her?’

  Betty tuts. ‘She was physically restrained. Barney Keith couldn’t hold a tissue down in a high wind. Susan was very strong.’ ‘Anyway,’ says Nikki, ‘he was in Amsterdam that week. He’d been there since the Monday or something. His passport was marked and everything. He showed us.’

  ‘What was he doing there?’

  Betty looks uncomfortable. ‘What do men do in Amsterdam? He wasn’t trying on clogs, was he?’

  Margo remembers the newspaper interview. ‘He was interviewed just after and said he’d seen Susan off in a taxi that night.’

  ‘No, he was in Amsterdam when she died. It came out later.’

  ‘Diane Gallagher didn’t think Barney knew Susan was about to leave him.’

  Betty shrugs a shoulder. ‘Well, cops get played all the time.’

  They get back to the letters. Whoever sent them knew Margo’s name was Patsy, they knew that she had seen the other letters. Who knew all of those things? Only Nikki and Lizzie. Did they tell anyone else? Nikki told everyone she met, apparently. Some people were told several times.

  ‘She was pretty excited,’ explains Betty.

  Nikki is worried about Margo staying in Janette’s house on her own but Margo says don’t worry, she’s staying –

  ‘DON’T TELL ME!’ Nikki shouts melodramatically and then explains.

  ‘You’re making yourself vulnerable. What if it was me? Or Lizzie?’

  There’s a dramatic pause. ‘Was it you?’ asks Betty casually, ruining the moment.

  ‘FOR FUCKSAKE, BETTY!’

  But Betty is chortling away to herself, laughing to them all, looking for an ally in mischief. Finding no takers, she whispers to Margo, ‘Drama: it’s a family illness.’

  Margo smiles at her. ‘Why don’t you have it then?’

  Betty raises her eyebrows. ‘I got it out of my system.’

  ‘When you were a stage psychic?’

  ‘Yup. I was good.’ She rolls her eyes around the nice kitchen. ‘Big in the eighties. Sold out Motherwell Civic Centre. I was kept busy. That’s why I was such a shite auntie to the girls.’ She reaches out to Nikki.

  ‘You did your best,’ says Nikki.

  Betty hums. ‘No. I abandoned them because I was scared of Patsy, their mum. However troubled Susan was, she couldn’t hold a light to Patsy.’

  Lizzie says she’ll call an Uber because she wants to get home. There’s some football match on and she can’t watch it here because Nikki doesn’t have the right channels. She orders a car and it’s four minutes away. Nikki goes out to the door to see her off and leaves Betty and Margo alone at the table.

  Betty grins at Margo, open-mouthed, eyebrows bobbing as if she’s encouraging Margo to do a trick.

  ‘So, Betty, are you psychic?’

  Betty frowns, drops her voice and glances at the door. ‘She said you were a doctor. You don’t believe in all that sort of thing, do you?’

  Margo was trying to be respectful of other people’s beliefs but Betty seems disappointed in her. ‘I don’t, not really. Nikki’s convinced though.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Betty lifts a shoulder. ‘It was a living. I started holding séances for fun and then for money and then I moved the act into halls and it took off. Lucky guesses, mostly. Like that Robertson man and his book, you can’t know because you weren’t there, but sometimes you can work it out. Variety hall entertainment. I made a good living at it, all legit. Bought this nice house.’

  Betty stays her with a hand when Lizzie calls goodbye from out in the hall. ‘Don’t quote me on that to Nikki,’ she hisses. ‘She’s a true believer. BYE, LIZZIE!’

  ‘BYE,’ echoes Margo.

  The front door shuts and Nikki comes back in. ‘Just nip to the loo,’ she says and crosses the kitchen to a large bathroom built onto the back of the house.

  Betty waits until she’s out of the room. ‘I was very lucky. I like to
think it brought some comfort. You meet a lot of people in pain, you know? But after Susan died my heart wasn’t in it any more. I had to keep going for the money. A lot of people thought I got better at it then, afterwards… I don’t know.’

  ‘Were you close to Susan?’

  ‘No. I didn’t really know the girls that well. Their mum was a piece of work, I’ll tell you. I didn’t want to be around Patsy. Our family –’ She glances guiltily at the bathroom door. ‘They’re nutters. Real hard cases. Getting away from them was my only ambition when I was young. I squatted in an old factory down at the docks because I knew they’d be scared to visit. They’d fight a gorilla but they couldn’t take spooky. There was a deserted factory below us and no lights in the street or anything. Banging noises all night from the old pipes and holes in the roof. Spookiest place I’ve ever been. I was away from them and that was good but I didn’t get to know the girls. I was scared of their mum. She used to batter me and steal my money. She died coming up to rob me. Fell off a stair. I felt like I’d won a watch. She was a scary bitch. I remember sitting on that broken floor looking down at her, wondering if it could be true.’ She smiles softly to herself. ‘Best night of my life. Never felt religious but I said a prayer of thanks that night. I didn’t do right by the girls, though. I visited them in care sometimes but I was young myself and before I knew it they were off doing their own thing.’

  ‘How did Susan’s death put you off it then?’

  ‘I saw another side. Psychics, people I knew, they were on telly getting involved in Susan’s case. I know what they were doing, I was in the game. So I see them, people I know, people who know me, call in tips, ringing the papers. These are people I’ve talked to about what we’re doing: guessing, talking shit, working the crowd, you know? People I’ve been honest with. On telly doing that. That soured me.’

  ‘Maybe they were genuinely trying to help?’

  Betty sighs and shakes her head. ‘No. We talked about that con between ourselves, how you’d get great publicity if you were right, but I thought it was harmless. Just say something vague like “a place of water”. See the grammar in that? Spooky. Not “a pond” but “a place of water”. It’s an act but if you get lucky and the body is found in water, it could make your career. I mean, to some that’s worth a punt. OK, fine, it’s part of the game, they’re trying to get publicity for a tour of Fife, but it feels different if you’re in it and the police’re looking for “a place of water” instead of the person who stabbed your niece to death. Everyone has a limit in a game and that was mine. It’s about power, having power over other people. I never really wanted that. You have to not care about the people you’re working. Turns out: I was the people.’