Denise Mina - Deception aka Sanctum

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Denise Mina - Deception aka Sanctum» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: Триллер, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Deception aka Sanctum: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Deception aka Sanctum»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Lachlan Harriot is in a state of shock. His wife Susie has been convicted of the murder of serial killer Andrew Gow, a prisoner in her care. Unless Harriot can come up with grounds for an appeal in two weeks' time, Susie will be given a life sentence, depriving her of her home, her family and her two-year-old daughter.
Harriot is convinced that his wife, a respected forensic psychiatrist, is innocent, and each night climbs the stairs to Susie's study where he goes through her papers, laboriously transcribing onto his computer her case notes, her interviews with Gow and his new wife Donna, and the press cuttings from the trial. But his search for the truth soon raises more questions than answers.
Why had Susie stolen a set of prison files and then lied about it? What was the precise nature of her relationship with Gow? And, most importantly, what is it in her study that she doesn't want her husband to find? As the documents on Harriot's computer begin to multiply, his perception of what really happened between Gow and Susie becomes ever more complex. But first he must decide what he's to do with a discovery that involves violence, sexual obsession, lust and ultimate betrayal.
In her first stand-alone novel following her acclaimed Garnethill trilogy, Denise Mina looks at the shifting sands that separate fact and fiction, perception and reality, responsibility and culpability. Sanctum is a powerful psychological portrait of people living on the edge, an account of the deals with the devil that lie beneath their apparent respectability, and the terrifying journeys they are prepared to make in order to survive.

Deception aka Sanctum — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Deception aka Sanctum», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать
* * *

We were lying in bed afterward, watching the circus clock on her sideboard creep toward five, knowing that Margie would wake up soon. Yeni was snuggled into the pit of my arm when I asked her what she wants from this. She shook her head and shrugged, but I made her sit up.

“Come on, Yeni,” I said, trying to be kind. “You’re a bright girl. This has happened twice now. Are you hoping for a relationship?”

She looked a bit insulted. I had expected her to say yes and then I’d have mollycoddled her a little, softened the blow, but let her know that it wasn’t really on, because I was married. She pulled the duvet around herself, suddenly ashamed of her fantastic tits. As she flattened the bedspread over her chest, the generous fat on her upper arms splayed unattractively. She lost her beauty in the act of hiding, like Eve discovering shame.

“I know you understand English better than you speak it,” I said.

She sighed and chewed her lip. “I like,” she said, after a few faltering starts at the statement, “that we cannot speak.”

“You like that?”

“Sí.”

When she saw how much I brightened, she grinned back at me and put up a hand, covering my face, and pushed me back on the pillow. She let go of the duvet and slid down the bed. She had never had any intention of learning English. She’s the eldest in the family of five. She came to Glasgow for a rest.

As we lay next to each other, our heads dovetailed on the pillow, I think I fell a little bit in love with her. I felt I had descended to somewhere warm, like a presleep drop in blood pressure that shocks you awake. I might be wrong, but I felt that I could write if I stayed with her. I would not spill my seed in conversation and existence; I’d save it all for the page.

Through the open door at the end of the bed, we heard the ching-ching of Margie’s crib clown, and we grinned in unison up at the ceiling. Any second now she’d start screaming.

“Yeni, if I went to France, would you come with me?”

She looked wary. “No south?”

“No, not anywhere near Spain. Perhaps not even France, perhaps Greece?”

“Sí,” she said simply, “I like. We can hchave satellite?”

“Satellite TV?”

“Sí.”

“In Greece?”

“Sí. For Friends.”

“Yeah.” I took her small, cool hand, touching the sensitive tip of each of her tapered fingers. “We could just about afford that.”

* * *

Yeni was in her dressing gown, chasing Margie back and forth in front of the telly, when I left them and came up here. I’ve been taking shots of Margie with the instant camera so that I can enclose them with the daily letters to Susie. When I think about Donna and the money and how sneaky and rude it is for her to move it, I wonder why the fuck I’m bothering.

* * *

This evening Yeni said to me, “Jyou very serious.”

I shrugged, and she waited for me to explain. Eventually she walked out of the room and came back with her coat on. She said she was going to see her friends from the English class. I nodded and gave her a hundred quid and said have a nice time. She tried to give me the money back, but I insisted.

“For baby-sitting.” I pressed the money into her hand. “For baby-sitting for a whole night. Take it. You have a good time, honey.”

She brushed my cheek with the back of her hand and made a precious little “o” with her mouth when I called her that. She didn’t cringe or grimace or get pissed off. I heard the front door slam behind her. I hope she genuinely doesn’t want to talk and didn’t just say that so that I would like her more. I hope she never wants to talk.

* * *

Susie is a cunt. She’s a duplicitous, faithless, disloyal cunt, and she’ll leave me broken if I don’t do something soon. If this ever gets out, I will be the world’s biggest, most widely recognized, dickless idiot. She’s been laughing at me from the very beginning, from before Otago Street.

The gloves are off, as far as I’m concerned.

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.

Donna II knew that there would be background checks. That is why she knew she couldn’t just assume a made-up name but would need a plausible identity in order to get in to see Gow. But how could she possibly know that? Tucker and Susie’s security checks weren’t a matter of public knowledge. No one else knew they were doing the research. I think she had tried to get in to see Gow before and been knocked back. I think this occurred to Susie, and that was why she took the file and destroyed all the other copies of it. She was protecting Donna II, still protecting her, even after being charged with a murder she thought Donna had committed. When I think of how much she loved me in Otago Street, I don’t doubt that she would have done the same for me.

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 Donna McGovern letters started in February 1998.

* * *

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 Donna was announced in the press, accusing him of misleading her.

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 (Anna Trsykt) asked permission to use Gow’s picture for a competition.

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.

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Deception aka Sanctum»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Deception aka Sanctum» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Denise Mina - Exile
Denise Mina
Denise Mina - Field of Blood
Denise Mina
Denise Mina - Still Midnight
Denise Mina
Denise Mina - Resolution
Denise Mina
Denise Mina - Garnethill
Denise Mina
Denise Mina - Muerte en Glasgow
Denise Mina
Denise Mina - Campo De Sangre
Denise Mina
Denise Mina - The Dead Hour
Denise Mina
Denise Mina - Slip of the Knife
Denise Mina
Отзывы о книге «Deception aka Sanctum»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Deception aka Sanctum» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x