Denise Mina - Deception aka Sanctum

“What did the doctors do for her when she broke it?”

“Bandage.” She gestured to both shoulders, making the shape of a figure-eight belt. No plaster. Donna had broken her collarbone after all, but by falling off her bike and not at the hand of her father, as she’d told Susie.

Suddenly the woman started saying something that I had trouble making sense of. When I looked up, I saw that she was talking Urdu or something to a young woman behind me in the street. They nodded solemnly to each other, and the passer-by glanced at my legs as she moved off along the pavement. They were obviously talking about me, but the woman didn’t feel the need to explain herself.

She leaned out the door and looked down the street, then stood straight again. I took the photo out of my pocket and showed it to her.

“Who that in photo? Who girl? Your daughter?”

I MADE THESE NOTES ON THE PLANE ON THE WAY HOME.

FACTS

1. Donna McGovern lived in Leicester and grew up there. She lived with her father, who died, and she broke her collarbone when she was small.

2. A body was discovered recently that matched the dental records and medical history of the real Donna McGovern, whose blood was found in the Golf Polo.

Conclusion: Donna McGovern is dead.

The woman Susan has been dealing with was not Donna McGovern. I will now refer to her as Donna II.

FACTS ABOUT DONNA II

1. She knew Donna McGovern, well enough to know that she had broken her collarbone when she was little.

2. Someone set off from Leicester with Donna I in the white Golf Polo, but only Donna II ever made it to that house in Kirkintilloch.

3. Donna I’s body was apparently only recently dead, but she can’t have been kept as a prisoner in Kirki. Journalists were hanging around the house. Anyone could have found her. Could she have been killed in the Golf on the way up and stored in the humming deep freezer in the garage? As long as she was eventually deposited somewhere obscure enough and allowed to defrost properly, there would be no evidence of freezing at the cellular level unless she was defrosted and refrozen several times. It would explain Donna’s renting such an isolated cottage: she’d need somewhere private with a big deep freeze.

Conclusion: Donna II is probably not dead.

Having considered this list for most of the journey, I can now draw up the following list of important questions:

1. This woman passed herself off as Donna to meet Gow. Why would it be necessary to complicate it and pass herself off as someone living to get in? Why not go as a nonexistent person?

2. Who the fuck is she?

Did Susie know Donna II wasn’t Donna? I think she had an idea that something didn’t add up, judging from the video interview of Donna, the Evington title for her account of Cape Wrath, and the fact that she suspected Donna of the murders. But she didn’t tell anyone or hand over the hotel letter.

And why did Donna II need to pass herself off as someone else? She must have known that she, as herself, wouldn’t get through the security checks to see Gow. She needed a plausible, real identity that would stand up to scrutiny: when she met Donna I in Leicester, she must have known she would fit the profile. I imagine Donna I with downcast eyes and work-sore hands. For an Asian woman with a house that clean to say she was a good, modest girl, she must have been madly passive. And along comes Donna II and takes her firmly by the hand, introducing her to a whole new world of sensuality and control, until she pulls over in the car on the way to Scotland and kills her, the downcast eyes wild with fright and confusion, the work-sore hands scrabbling at a handle, at a seat, fighting back for once, and losing. During their time together, did Susie give Donna her wedding ring as a sign of loyalty and cover up by claiming it had been stolen? Susie said it was over in evington.doc. Perhaps Donna and Gow got it together and went up north. Donna called and Susie went for her, and maybe one more rejection drove Susie to kill.

It’s the audacity of Donna II that astonishes me. She gave interview after interview to the papers and charged a fortune, had her photo taken a hundred times. Donna II always covered her teeth. She covered her teeth when she smiled in the video, and she didn’t let Stevie Ray use photos where her teeth showed. She did that because she knew there must be no photographic record to compare with the body when it was eventually found. How much foresight and presence of mind must it take to always remember to cover your teeth? She had planned this months ahead, at least from the first videotaped interview, perhaps from the first untraceable letter to the discovery of Donna’s body.

She must have had a lot of nerve. She stood in front of the press, asking them to look at her, demanding their attention, charging money. There couldn’t be a better way to avoid examination.

There is a lesson there for me, and it’s a startling one. If I gave one interview to a paper and said nothing interesting, no one would bother me again. More important, they’d stop watching me.

I could go abroad. I could do what I like.

IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON WHEN I GOT BACK FROM LEICESTER. I sent Yeni over to the deli to buy us a late lunch, and she spent the entire twenty-quid note I had given her. She came back with twenty-three pence change and a bag of perishable groceries that needed to be eaten more or less right this very minute: dolmas and taramosalata, which she claimed came from Spain.

“No, Yeni,” I said. “That’s from Greece.”

“Sí,” she said nodding. “In Spain. Is very good.”

She had also bought a half-bottle of wine, a packet of Nabisco Grahams for four pounds fifty (!), some fresh smoked haddock soup, a very heavy loaf of brown bread, and two slices of chocolate tart.

We heated up the soup in the microwave, and she broke crackers into it and served it with bread and taramosalata. It’s the most expensive bowl of soup I’ve ever had, but it was nice. Not a tenner nice, but still nice. She poured us both a glass of wine, and we sat down opposite each other at the kitchen table and ate. It all felt very civilized. We didn’t talk. Her English is so bad that we’ve kind of given up. I think she must have a tin ear for language. She should be fluent by now, given the amount of television she watches.

The tarts had broken in the bag, so she put the bits on a communal plate in the center of the table. It was lovely bitter chocolate, smooth and rich and yet not filling. As we each broke off sweet nibbles, our fingertips touched, and then our hands. Yeni held on to my fingers and tugged at me, smirking languidly, trying to pull me across the table to her. I was angry and sickened by Susie. I like Yeni, I don’t want to use her to spite Susie; I really do like her, so I resisted, but then she stood up and came around the table, sitting next to me in a chair and bringing her soft big mouth to my tingling ear.

“ Lachlan,” she said, brushing the lobe with her lips. I heard the warm saliva slack under her tongue as she whispered to me, “Baby asleep. You come with me?”

She didn’t give me a chance to answer. She slid a hand between my legs, easing her fingers down my inner thigh and pulling me toward her. I was still a bit reticent, but when I looked at her, her lips stained with the wine and smelling of haddock, I knew it wasn’t about Susie.

I grinned at her. “Yeni,” I said, “you’re very bad.”

She smiled back. “ Lachlan, I’m want you to fuck with me.”

It’s the closest thing to a grammatically correct sentence I’ve ever heard from her, so I had to.