Deception aka Sanctum

3.2 On May 19, 1993, did assault Karen Dempsey, then residing at 46 Glen Tanar Street, Lambhill, Glasgow, repeatedly punch her on the head and body, repeatedly strike her on the head and body with a hammer or similar instrument, abduct her from Waterloo Street, Anderston, Glasgow, abandon her at the Netherton canal bank, Temple, all to her severe injury, whereby she died of her injuries there, and did murder her.

3.3 On June 12, 1993, while acting along with people or person unknown, did assault Martine Pashtan, then residing at Flat 1/1, 236 Saltmarket, Glasgow, repeatedly punch her on the head and body, knock her to the ground, forcibly detain her in motor vehicle registered number B513 DSF, and abduct her from the bus station at Anderston, Glasgow, and there, or elsewhere in Scotland, repeatedly strike her on the head and body with a hammer or similar instrument, repeatedly strike or slash her in the chest and face with a knife or similar instrument, all to her severe injury, and in Water Row, Govan, Glasgow, did remove said Martine Pashtan from that motor vehicle and abandon her there, whereby she died of her injuries there, and did murder her.

3.4 On July 28, 1993, did assault Alice Thomson, then residing at Flat 16/3, 5 Calder Street, Polmadie, Glasgow, repeatedly punch her on the head and body, and there repeatedly strike her on the head and body with a hammer or similar instrument, forcibly detain her in motor vehicle registered number B513 DSF, and abduct her from Dundas Street, Glasgow, all to her severe injury, and in Millerfield Road, Dalmarnock, Glasgow, did remove said Alice Thomson from that motor vehicle and abandon her there, whereby she died of her injuries there, and did murder her.

3.5 On October 1, 1993, did assault Mary-A

PREVIOUS CONVICTIONS

4. Mr. Gow had six previous convictions, including theft (x 4), taking and driving away (x 1), breach of the peace (x 1), and drunk and disorderly (x 1). The convictions were disposed of by three short periods of detention and two fines. The last sentence was completed in 1990.

SITUATION AT TIME OF OFFENSE

5. Mr. Gow was aged 28 at the time of the indictment.

The police found samples of blood in his car from all but the second woman. Gow started off with someone else helping him sometimes, and then he killed alone. The killings got closer and closer together and more frantic. He cut their tongues out, initially, it was thought, as a symbolic gesture so that they couldn’t talk if they survived. The tongue became part of his fetish, though, and they found evidence that he watched them bleed to death. His DNA was found on several bodies, although I heard that the bleach he threw on them degraded the semen samples. I remember them showing a cheap bottle on a TV crime show and asking for information. Dowsing a cut on someone’s skin with bleach- the intrusion of that small, imaginable domestic detail, somehow makes him seem unimaginably callous. The bleaching seems much worse than what was done to Gow himself, much worse.

It was all over the papers around the time of our wedding. They called him the Water Rat because the bodies were always abandoned near the River Clyde. The name was alarming; it sounded as if the killer was climbing out of the water, hunting people, and then slipping back into the dark river. A historian on television at the time said that when the River Clyde stopped supporting Glasgow, when the ships went to be built elsewhere, then the brokenhearted city turned its back on the water. I realized that he was right: everything in Glasgow faces away from the river, all the buildings have their backs to it, and the fast roads skirting it keep pedestrians away. The Water Rat felt like the river’s revenge on the faithless city. The name stuck until the national press got hold of the story and changed his nickname to the Riverside Ripper. I think Water Rat was better.

The city changed during that time: women wouldn’t go out; men were afraid to slow their cars down in dark streets in case they attracted suspicion. Everyone who had been in the city on the nights around the killings claimed that they saw something, a shape, a car, felt someone watching, smelled fusty river water a mile from the bank. The city glowered, every dark corner and deep shadow became a moist and needy mouth waiting to swallow the careless. Our wedding reception was in a riverside hotel. Later on, when the band had finished, I remember groups gathering around the glass walls, looking out at the dread water sneaking past the window, exchanging gossip about the case in an undertone.

It stinks in this study this evening. I’ve regressed so completely to teenage sulkiness that I’m smoking a cigarette up here in the dark. I resisted starting again for a whole year after Susie did. She used to smoke up here. She started again one year to the day after Margie was born, as if she were celebrating having her body back. I read somewhere that it’s a sure sign a woman is having an affair: weight loss and starting smoking again, going back to old habits. I didn’t think she could possibly be seeing someone at the time because all she did was work, and I knew what her colleagues looked like.

The last year and a half have been coming to me in flashbacks all day today. Every minute we spent together since she went back to work after Margie. Every word she said to me has another aspect now, an extra side that I knew nothing about at the time.

The day she got fired I found her in the kitchen drinking brandy and smoking a cigarette. It was late June, and the door to the garden was open. The delicious smell of freshly cut grass wafted around the room. I recall the kitchen as dirty for some reason; maybe Mrs. Anthrobus was on vacation.

“How can they fire you? Don’t they have to give you warnings before they fire you?”

She didn’t answer me. She shut her eyes, pursed her mouth, and sucked on her cig, holding the smoke in her lungs, exhaling reluctantly. She had been warned, however many times they have to warn you- it’s usually three, I think. A trinity of warnings, and she never told me. When I think back, she didn’t tell me very much about anything. She’d say, “Oh, yeah, by the way, the car needs oil,” or “I met so-and-so at Sainsburys on the way home.” I suppose I thought I was getting the big picture because she told me the details.

“Fucking Sinky has been putting in reports about me behind my back. It’s like an orchestrated scheme to oust me from the department.” She slapped the table, a gesture that now seems overemphatic. “D’you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he stole those files himself.”

“Why would Sinky do that?”

“Because”- big inhalation, eyes closed-“he can’t fucking stand to have a woman on staff in a position of power. He’s the most misogynistic man I’ve ever met. He honestly loathes women. That’s one of the reasons he works at fucking Su

I wonder if it was just luck or she knew the impact this assertion had on my ego. She has known me long enough. She knew how it would blind me.

“It’s just a dreadful shame”- big sigh, sad nod-“that all men don’t appreciate the wonder of women the way I do.”