Denise Mina - Deception aka Sanctum

I put the iron down. I didn’t think he was attractive, but in the old mug shot they used to use on TV, he was scowling, looked very malnourished, and had black bags under his eyes. (He was working nights, she said. Driving the cab. That’s why he looked so tired.) But in the new photos, taken more recently, he was smiling and seemed healthy.

Susie nodded into her lap and stood up, announced that she was going outside for a smoke, and left me alone to finish her blouses. At the time, I didn’t think Gow’s case was particularly relevant to us. Susie worked at Sunnyfields and knew him, of course, but everyone was talking about the campaign. It was big news.

I only remember one other specific conversation. We were out for dinner with Evelyn and Morris. I remember it because afterward Susie said she didn’t want to go out with them again, that she didn’t like getting that drunk anymore. It shocked me because I didn’t think you could drop friends you’d made at university. I hadn’t stopped to think what they were like- they were just Morris and Evelyn. But Susie was right: they are a bit seedy. They always remind me of how old we’re getting and how undignified and ugly being pissed in a restaurant is. That night Evelyn needled Morris incessantly, making digs about money or something. They’re not nice company, but the blessing is they both like a drink, so you can get pissed and not listen. I have to admit that they used to make me feel smug because at that time we were happier together than they were, and Susie hadn’t let herself go and get massively fat like Evelyn did after the kids.

We were all extra pissed because we went to a new restaurant and there was something wrong with the food so they gave us a couple of bottles of free wine. Morris kept asking Susie about Gow and the murders, and Susie insisted that she couldn’t talk about it because of her professional interest. Morris thought her unwillingness to gossip was ridiculous, and they had a heated argument about confidentiality. Morris said that it was just a principle, not a law, and wasn’t meant to be applied absolutely. Susie said it actually was a law and she’d bloody hate to be one of Morris’s patients. He was quite annoyed by that, which is unusual for him, and he insisted that his patients didn’t deserve the level of care he gave them. They were assholes. Anyway, if she was half the psychiatrist she made out she was, she’d have spotted that the guy was innocent before the real murderer started up again.

Susie leaned across the table. “He is the real murderer.”

“How d’you know?” said Evelyn. “Really- how d’you know?”

“For God’s sake,” said Susan quietly. “There was DNA evidence that he did it.”

“Nah,” said Morris, wagging a smug finger. “The bleach spoiled the sample.”

“Morris, you’re supposed to be a scientist,” said Susie. “Bleach can kill cells stone dead, but it can’t reconfigure the structure of DNA strands.” (She said something like that. It was actually a neater summation of the scientific impossibility in six words or less.)

“Bullshit!” shouted Morris, who really was very drunk. “He’s an innocent man. We should let the guy out so’s he can bang his new missus.”

But Susie was leaning over her plate. “He is a killer.” A vein stood out on her temple, and I knew she was absolutely furious. None of us, myself included, knew whether she was really certain of his guilt or indignant about the slur on her professional reputation.

Morris, never a man to sit back from a fight with a woman, topped up her glass. “Oh, yeah? Why would someone kill this new lot then?”

“Well, obviously someone wants him out,” said Susie.

Morris snorted. “That’s ridiculous.”

“So,” said Evelyn, filling her wineglass. “Do you think it’s- what’s her name- Maria?”

“Donna. Her name’s Donna, and no, it’s not her.”

“’Cause that would be quite romantic,” slurred Evelyn. “In a sick way.”

“He cuts their tongues out,” Susie said flatly. “He rapes them and cuts their tongues out and douses their wounds in bleach and leaves them to bleed to death. Is that romantic?”

It would have been the start of a big scene if we’d been sober, but, too liberally lubricated, the conversation jolted onto another track.

Although those are the only two conversations I remember in detail, when I look back over the whole spread of things Susie said at the time, I know she was sure of two things: that Gow’d committed the original murders, and whoever was killing the new lot of women wanted him out of prison. She was probably right, because the murders stopped as soon as Gow was released.

I hunted about in the boxes and found this Fergus Donagh article from the same time. This article isn’t as good as the previous series of articles. The Guardian prints photos of their featured writers, little disembodied heads next to their articles, and Donagh has ballooned since the ’94 series. He has that bug-eyed look of a drunk whose liver is about to explode. Come to think of it, I never see his byline anymore.

Box 2 Document 11 Article by Fergus Donagh, “The Revival of the Riverside Ripper,” Guardian 4/29/98

It is cold as I stand by the river. A damp wind picks up and blows my hair around. My ears are numb. The gawkers are gathered beyond the police tape, breathing in the rank smell of bleach, hoping for a glimpse of the raised platform where the girl’s mutilated body was found. We are standing under the Kingston bridge, a motorway overpass built in the seventies…

Well, that’s wrong, for a start.

and already crumbling. The workmen were adding support to the two giant pillars on either side of the river. On the one hundredth day of the job, they came to work and found the murdered body of a teenage girl immolated on the raised platform.

The talk in the crowd is of the ’93 murders, secondhand tales of women who narrowly escaped Gow’s hand, of the people who knew him, were at school with him, danced with him, sold him his daily newspaper. They swear it couldn’t have been him. Everyone has always known he was innocent. Even the people who brayed at his wife outside the court knew that he was innocent. We should let him go.

The police are certain it’s a copycat killing. The official line is that Gow is guilty and this is a one-off by someone who has read a lot about it. But Glasgow is a tight-knit community, and gossip spreads quickly. Aspects of the original crimes have been reproduced perfectly. There are rumors of a DNA match with the original sample.

QC Alistair Swindon has strong feelings about the way the original investigation was conducted. Gow was a habitual confessor, although admittedly for very minor crimes. Swindon argues that apart from his confession, the sole piece of evidence to link him to the crimes was the presence of blood matching the victims in the back of his cab. He had no history of violence, and the DNA sample used was too degraded to give a reliable match.

Swindon has been arguing for an appeal for several years, and as one of Scotland ’s most prominent human rights advocates, his voice carries a lot of weight. “Convictions based on confessions alone are rarely watertight, and this holds particularly true for high-profile cases when the police are under pressure to get a conviction.”

A blond man, Swindon has been a member of the Commission…

“A blond man”? This is rubbish. Donagh is jumping about all over the place. The germ of the article is that the conviction was a bit dubious and some people thought Gow should get an appeal. Donagh managed to drag it out for two pages with a supplementary column on page thirteen.