Deception aka Sanctum

The guard looked me up and down. “She’s fine.” And then she walked away behind the screen and through a small side door.

They left me waiting there for twenty-one minutes. I knocked on the side door several times, thinking bloody visiting would be over if they didn’t let me in soon. When the guard finally came back, I was really a

“The old lady who was in here,” I explained, “she was very upset because we were held back.” The guard shook her head and left again just as it dawned on me. The old woman was already in visiting her daughter. I was the one they’d held back.

It must have taken four minutes before two male guards came in, but I was doing deep breathing to slow my heart rate down and wondering how to get through the next ten minutes without punching someone.

“We’d like to search you please, sir,” said the fat one.

I exhaled, bristling with relief because I realized that they wouldn’t be worried about my passing contraband to Susie if she was dead. Impatiently, I dropped my coat to the chair and stood like a starfish, no-no-no-ing while he asked me if I had any drugs about my person, any sharp objects or needles. He patted me down while his friend looked on and got me to kick my shoes off so he could feel under my feet. Then he flicked a finger, giving me permission to put my stuff back on, and turned to the outside door. I followed him with my heel still working its way back into the shoe, holding Margie by the waist.

The grass strip was wet, and I felt eyes watching me from the little slit windows opposite. A woman shouted something I couldn’t make out, and Margie shrieked a fu

When they opened the door from the inside, the first thing my eyes fell on was the old woman and the girl, sitting with a young woman, barely an adult herself, who was holding the child and beaming, pressing her cheek to the child’s. The girl had her eyes shut, savoring the love. The old woman looked up at me pityingly as Margie clambered down and ran across the room to her mummy.

Susie was sitting in the corner, head back, propped between two walls. A very long cigarette was burning in her limp hand, and she had a red nose and swollen eyes. She didn’t even put her cigarette down to pick up Margie, she just held her hands open and let Margie climb across her lap to the seat next to her.

In spite of what I read last night, I was pleased to see her too and scurried across the room in my half-on shoe, falling into the seat next to her. “Susie, Christ, are you okay?”

Her face crumpled and she sobbed against my chest, holding her cigarette up and away from me like an overwrought drunk at a party. I wrapped my arms around her and indulgently imagined that we were at home on the settee, she’d just been sacked and I was comforting her, and everything was fine, fine. We’d get the chance to spend time together now. We could take a new na

It took Susie seven minutes to cry herself to a standstill, and during that time I was as happy as a man sitting in a prison visiting room can be without having a wank. I opened my eyes and saw her cigarette had burned all the way down and the ash had fallen into my lap in a perfect skeleton.

Finally, Susie patted my chest and sat herself up. “You are so good to me,” she said, shaking her head and wiping her face. “It means so much, Lachie, I can’t tell you. Especially just now, when things are so bad.”

I took her hand and told her I loved her and would do anything- literally anything- to make things better for her. Carried away by my own rhetoric, I said it was the highlight of my life to come to this filthy room and see her. She looked beautiful, and, poor sweetheart, tell me why she was so sad.

“She’s dead,” she said, “Do

I said, “Yeah, we knew that already.”

No, Susie said. They found her body yesterday, on a hillside in Sutherland. A Ministry of Defense team on maneuvers had found her body at the bottom of a cliff. She’d been mutilated like the Riverside Ripper victims.

I didn’t understand. “Was she killed recently?”

“It happened at the same time as Gow. They’ve only just found her.” Susie sniffed. “The police have just left. I didn’t really believe she was dead. I imagined her off somewhere, carrying on her life.”

I didn’t know what to say. Everyone knew Do

I nodded. We only had six minutes left. “Are they going to charge you with it?”

Susie said no as she lit another cigarette. “They’ve got me already. Waste of money.”

We had four minutes left. “Susie,” I said, “I have to ask you something stupid. Were you having an affair with Andrew Gow?” It sounded more sissy than I expected. Susie laughed loudly, like the laugh on the Dictaphone tape about Do

Genuinely amused, she cupped my cheek in her hand. “Oh, Lachie,” she said, exhaling my name like she used to during sex, “Lachie, how could you think such a thing?”

“When you said to Morris that someone had killed those girls to get Gow out, who was it you were talking about?”

She fell forward slightly from the waist. “Do

“Do

She nodded.

“But you told Morris and Evelyn it wasn’t.”

“I only realized after. Anyway, I wouldn’t confide my suspicions to that pair of arseholes.”

(I didn’t think about it until now, but she didn’t share her suspicions with me, either.)

Shock hit her in a fresh wave and she started to cry again.

“But if Do

She was crying so much that she couldn’t talk. She tried but couldn’t bring her lips together. She made a slight wanking motion with her hand, and I understood.

“Are you sure?”

She shrugged and carried on crying. It seemed to be compulsive. She covered her open mouth and tried to sit as though she were having a normal conversation, but her eyes dripped tears and her breath came in gulps. I told her about finding the hotel letter but hadn’t the heart to give her a hard time about it. She carried on crying, listening and nodding but crying all the same.

“Shall I just hang on to the letter for now?” I said.

She nodded.

“For the appeal?”

She nodded.

Before I left she squeezed my arm tightly and apologized. “I am so, so sorry,” she breathed, “sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be silly.”

She shook her head and said she was sorry again. It was only later that I wondered whether she was apologizing for crying or something else entirely.

I find what Susie said about Do

It also occurred to me, during a moment when I was considering all the possible possibles, that if Susie believed Do