Denise Mina - Deception aka Sanctum

Is Margie awake, she asked, what’s she doing? I described what Margie was wearing and tried to get her to talk into the receiver, but she wouldn’t. She didn’t react at all when Susie called her. I don’t know if she’s stopped recognizing the voice or the drugs make Susie sound different, but Margie carried on picking up and dropping the snake draft-excluder to watch its eyes boggle about. I picked it and her up and took them out to the quiet hall to settle her down a little, but she was tired and just dribbled onto the receiver, staring through the door into the bright kitchen as she picked at the corduroy on her little trousers.

Susie called to her again, hopefully, desperately. She called to her through a medicated smog, across a thousand miles and a dozen centuries, but Margie didn’t flinch. She was bored with me shaking the snake at her and tried to get down. I couldn’t hold her anymore, and she wriggled off my knee and wandered off into the kitchen.

She was all the way across the kitchen, crouched and picking at something that had spilled and dried on the floor by the stove, but Susie was still calling her name. “Can she hear me, Lachie?”

“Oh yes, she’s sitting up now. Yes, she is. Aren’t you, Margie?” I spoke in that instinctive, weird falsetto that people only ever use with small kids. “Where’s that coming from, hmm? Susie, I wish you could see her. She recognizes the voice but doesn’t know where it’s coming from.”

Susie was pleased and called her again in the same high voice. “Hello, darling, it’s Mummy. I’m your mummy, yes, I am. You remember me, don’t you? I love you, Margie, I love you, my lovely girl.”

“Where’s that coming from, Margie-Pargie, eh?” I said. “That’s right, it’s Mummy, your mummy.” I gave a hollow laugh. “Oh, she’s looking round for you.”

“I love you, Margie,” said Susie, and I could tell she was crying, “I love you, darling. You know me, don’t you? I miss you. I do. I miss your little face.”

“Yes,” I said, clutching the knitted snake, “you know that voice, don’t you? That’s right. It’s your mummy. Where’s Mummy?”

“Where’s Mummy, baby?”

“Where is Mummy?”

“I love you, baby.” Susie sniffed hard and banged the receiver- or her head- on something: she banged something very hard off something else.

“She can’t take it anymore, Susie. She’s gone off to look for you.”

Susie gave a wet gurgle of pleasure. They must have been giving her buckets of sedatives.

“That’s right,” I told the dark hall. “You go and find Mummy. Good girl.” I don’t know if she knew I was lying; if despite the medication Susie remembered that Margie is twenty months old and therefore intrinsically contrary. She sniffed and sighed. “Thanks, Lachie.” And she hung up.

I immediately called the prison and said that I thought she was suicidal. After leaving me on hold for a while, the prison officer came back and told me that she was on suicide watch and not to worry. I’m only quite worried. More than worried, I’m bloody exhausted. I want a holiday from my head.

Box Two is very full now. I could file all these things in the other boxes, but it’s best to keep the boxes thematic so that I can find things when I need to.

This article was interesting because the families of the later two women killed were much better off and had better representation. The press portrayal was more sympathetic, and the campaigning got under way immediately. This was a scant eight weeks after the second murder, and Susie had just been sacked.

Box 2 Document 14 “Families of Ripper II Call for Investigation,” 7/3/98

Gina Wilson and Nicola Hall never met when they were alive, but in death their families have come together to launch Families For Justice, an organization campaigning for the reopening of the original Riverside Ripper cases. Andrew Gow was convicted in 1994 of the spate of murders but has since always maintained his innocence, claiming more recently that his confession at the time was given under duress. Mr. Neil Wilson and his wife, Sheila, have pointed out that Gow had a history of confessing to crimes and this should have been noted at the time. “The police must answer for these deaths,” said Mr. Wilson yesterday. “They knew how slim the evidence was and yet proceeded against Gow, abandoning the original investigation.”

Neil Wilson went on to make something of a career of it. His organization Families For Justice (FFJ) developed into a body campaigning for more input from victims and victims’ families in court cases. I don’t think they ever got anywhere, but they were on all the debating shows. It was so different from the 1993 families and Karen Dempsey’s mother, but the earlier families were poor and unable to use the media or afford lawyers. It just shows that justice is a commodity: if there were a battle between the victims’ families from Lockerbie versus those from Zeebrugge, the Lockerbie families would win hands down every time because they had pricier tickets and are better resourced.

Neil Wilson was never off the telly at that time, I remember. We watched a lot of telly then. Susie was at home all day and gradually put the television on earlier and earlier. She got dressed later and later, as well. She was pretty depressed, I suppose, until the call came from up north.

I’ve been thinking about Donna and no one claiming her body for burial. How does a woman in her midtwenties with great tits and a chatty nature leave behind no one? Women can be friendless in their late forties, when they’re past it, but any woman in her midtwenties with a tarty sense of dress will surely have someone. The ex-husband hasn’t even surfaced to sell his story.

Mum and Dad have been on the phone telling me how awful everything is. Mum is embarrassed that it’s all over the press. I hadn’t the heart to tell her about tomorrow’s papers.

Yeni came back from a walk, and I sat down at the table and lit a cigarette (in the kitchen!). I told her that some lies about me were going to appear in the papers tomorrow and I was nervous about it. She made a sad face and patted my head and called me “sorry Kevin Bacon.” I made her sit down and asked her not to leave us, at least for the next couple of months, whatever happens. She said a very definite no and it took me five minutes of quizzing to work out whether she meant no, she wouldn’t go or no, she couldn’t give that sort of assurance. At the end of it she picked up my cigarette from the ashtray, took a puff and stubbed it out. Then she opened the French doors and made a sweeping motion to get the smoke out of the room on the grounds that “It’s stinks.”

Outside the French doors, across the green lawn, the Japanese maple and Boston ivy have turned a deep dark scarlet, making the back wall a frozen tidal wave of blood heading toward the house. Night falls very early now. My heavy heart feels as though I’m walking into a dark tunnel, and I wish today were over.

YENI’S BEEN OUT FOR MILK AND BROUGHT THE PAPER BACK WITH her. We sat at the table and looked at it together. They used that horrible picture of me leaving the court on the day Susie was found guilty, the one where I look like Paul Weller’s Fat Elvis years. Blinded by the low winter sun coming in through the French windows, I thought I caught Yeni looking at me strangely. I asked her if she believed all that stuff about me.

She said, “What is it?”

I couldn’t be bothered elaborating. I said, well, you’ve been in this house for a year now, you know what goes on in here. She said yes, don’t be angry, and, smiling, she stood up, leaned over, and kissed my eyelids. I pulled her onto my knee and thanked her. I said that I was so grateful for her support, I’d buy a truck made of marzipan for her. Happily such items are not readily available around here and she agreed to settle for a pizza later instead.