Deception aka Sanctum

chapter thirty-eight

IT’S THREE-TEN A.M. I WAS LYING IN BED JUST NOW, LISTENING TO the cold wind shake the dry leaves from the trees, and a thought occurred to me out of the blue. I carefully worked my arm out from under Yeni, slid out of the bed, and pulled on some pajama bottoms and a sweater. I left her in the warm dark, snoring softly in Spanish through the ripe segments of her lips, and went into the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror, at my red eyes, round shoulders, and sagging belly.

Do

I opened the Gow correspondents research file. Three-quarters of them are men and can be discounted immediately. Then there are fifty-six women, thirty-one of whom first contacted Gow around the time of his wedding, when he was in the papers a lot. From the twenty-five women who contacted him before, only twelve of them were before the Do

1. The first is a psychic who wrote only once and said she had seen what he did to those women through a spirit guide. She was going to kill him through sending out bad thoughts (no request to visit). Her brain must have fried when he died a gruesome death.

2. There were a series of sexy letters from a Linda Slaintan. The file notes “photo encl., sexually explicit.” She wrote nine times and asked him to call her back. She then wrote several angry letters after Gow’s engagement to Do

3. Patricia Gallon was a member of the Plymouth Brethren in Lewisham. She wrote only once, saying that she would pray for his salvation.

4. A woman from the Isle of Harris believed her husband was Gow’s accomplice on the first murder. The couple were separated, and she promised not to tell the police but wanted to know. Her husband was called Hugh Kean and he drank in the Park Bar.

5. A web designer with a vowel-free surname (A

6. Mrs. Tate, a teacher from Bridgeton, knew him when he was a boy. She wrote once to ask him where he went wrong.

7. Brenda Rumney from Newcastle thinks he met her mum once.

8. Nine plaintive letters from his little sister, Alison, asked him to contact her and told him family news. She’s had a miscarriage and was quite ill but recovered before the file ended.

9. Three letters from a woman in London who offered to be his manager. She said she’d give him a ninety-ten cut of all profits and get him more coverage than Stevie Ray.

10. Doreen Armitage wrote sexy letters with “photo encl., featuring bondage.” Some cheeky scamp has noted in the file “correspondent breathtakingly unattractive.” Doesn’t sound like Tucker, somehow. Doreen wrote four times.

11. Marti Gibbon, a priest from America, may or may not have been a woman. Marti wrote a few times, proposing to write a screenplay of Gow’s life. The return address is Santa Monica. I guess that deal fell apart when Gow was acquitted.

12. A woman from Lanarkshire asked whether her dad was involved in the first few murders. She gives a detailed account of her father’s movements around that time, where he was and what he did for a living. “Photos encl.” The file doesn’t say whether the photos were of her or her father.

I don’t know how to discriminate among these. It’s four-thirty in the morning and I’m on my third cup of coffee. I shouldn’t be drinking coffee, it’ll just keep me awake, but I need something to keep me warm, and decaf doesn’t seem determined enough for sorting through this file.

NOT EXCLUDED BY SECURITY CHECKS:

1. His wee sister.

2. The American priest.

3. Manager woman; I think he would have seen her.

4. Sexy lady 1.

5. The brethren woman didn’t ask for a visit.

6. Neither did the web designer.

7. Nor the psychic.

EXCLUDED BY SECURITY CHECKS:

1, 2. Both women who thought they knew his accomplice. Gow refused to see them because he was maintaining his i

3. Sexy lady 2: Doreen would have thought that the promise of sex would get her an invite to visit. She would have been rejected by Susie and Tucker because of their antihubristophiliac stance.

4. Mrs. Tate rejected by Gow. No one would want to see an accusing old teacher.

5. Brenda was rejected, presumably by Gow, for having a boring co

That’s it, down to five, but not one of them had a return address in Leicester.

The perfect fit of Do

I feel completely detached from Susie now. I can’t even conjure up good feelings toward her when I think of her as Margie’s mother. Even that. It leaves me cold.

chapter thirty-nine

I SPENT AN HOUR ALONE THIS MORNING SITTING IN THE KITCHEN, looking out the window. Yeni took Margie to nursery. I sat still, staring out the window and thinking vaguely about everything. I came up here to get a note of the phone numbers of the women who might have been refused access.

Before I started calling the numbers, I phoned the bank and the investment firms and asked them to send detailed statements for all of our accounts going back over the full five years of our marriage. Then I made some phone calls. My interview with Alistair Garvie is tomorrow. I’m flying down to London in the morning and coming back the same night. I’m not going to say anything interesting; I’ll keep it all as bland as possible.

I phoned each of the women’s numbers in turn. I had worked my story out: I would claim to be a friend from Leicester, say that I had a silver necklace belonging to Doreen/Mrs. Tate/Brenda/etc. that I dearly wanted to return. It was early afternoon.

Doreen had a baby crying in the background and two small children shouting at each other in the foreground. She sounded exhausted. Mrs. Tate was about 110 years old. Neither of the women who suspected members of their family was in. And then I came to Brenda Rumney.

Brenda’s phone was answered by an old woman. She warbled like a deaf canary, and occasionally, during the course of the conversation, I could hear her dentures clack together.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hello, Brenda?”

“Brenda? No, dear, I’m not Brenda. She’s not here. I’m Mrs. Rumney.”

We paused momentarily while I took this in. “Will she be coming back soon?”

“No. She doesn’t live here anymore. She lives in London now. She’s gone back to live in London.”