Denise Mina - Deception aka Sanctum

It took me about ten minutes to put the two names together, and when I did, I felt sure I knew more about all of this than anyone else, more than Susie, more than Gow, more than Stevie Ray.

Mary-Ann Roberts. Mary-Ann Roberts, died aged forty-one. No surviving relatives; no one cared. The victim’s photograph is a blur, taken in a photo booth, overexposed. Heavy eyes looking upward, staring at the top of the frame. Thin lips drawn on with pencil, slightly parted, the pointed tip of her tongue just visible, glistening. Mary-Ann Roberts, twenty-two years scraping a living on the game, a face hardened by cigarettes and cheap gin. I cut the picture out of the yellowed newspaper clipping and put it next to Stevie Ray’s photograph. Two dimpled chins. Two sets of brown eyes. Two long noses, flared at the bottom. Brenda was fatter than her mother. She would have been eighteen when her mother was murdered. Two years later she went looking for her and found an overexposed booth photo, features washed out. Her mother’s eyes, bitter eyes, gone after she met Andrew Gow. Gone after Gow.

YENI WASN’T PLEASED AT ALL, EVEN THOUGH IT WASN’T OVER-nightthis time, just a day. Down at nine, back at six, home by eight with no delays. I gave her two hundred quid this time and promised to make her dinner. I have money. It’s the one thing I do have.

I came through the gates at Heathrow and was met by a driver dressed in a perfect, crisp gray suit and hat. Carrying my briefcase, he escorted me across the road to an enclosed parking garage and showed me into the comfy backseat of a large silver Benz. I sat there, anxious about the interview to come, watching the outskirts of London pass by the window. People must live like this all the time, I thought, be driven everywhere, be provided for, have teams of people to attend them. If I had all of Susie’s money, I could have someone to drive me all the time. I could pay for a nanny to do stimulating play with Margie all day. I could feel as good about all of my clothes as I do about my Armani coat.

I asked the driver how long it would take to get into town, and after telling me about twenty minutes, he said it depended on the traffic, you know. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, you know, more often bad nowadays. He said he’d been in Glasgow for a wedding once and we sure knew how to drink up there, eh? I said yeah and looked out of the window.

It wasn’t long before we were passing the Ritz hotel, crawling along toward Piccadilly Circus. The driver pulled the graceful car across the traffic, down a side street, and into a bay in front of the hotel. A doorman in a top hat and gray tailcoat opened my door, and I stepped out onto the marble concourse. My driver stood up and told me he’d park and wait to take me back to the airport, just ask the doorman, he’ll find me. The doorman tipped his hat.

The hotel lobby was clean and smart but nothing special. A gaggle of fat tourists gathered at reception, either checking in or checking out. They were surrounded by suitcases and suit bags. They seemed to be having a dispute among themselves. A young woman behind the desk called me aside and asked if she could help. Alistair Garvie had taken a room on the eighth floor and was expecting me. Go right on up.

The mirrored elevator had posters for Cats and Starlight Express and Les Miserables on the walls. I smoked a cigarette on the way up, trying to get my heart rate up a bit, get ready for a fight, but I needn’t have. Margie could have beaten Alistair Garvie in an arm wrestle.

He is tall and skinny, with a shock of gray hair and a smoker’s pasty pallor. I was expecting a young man, and it was only as I sat and smoked and drank the beer and vodka provided that I realized: Alistair Garvie is a young man. He’s a young man who has taken extremely bad care of himself and smokes more often than he breathes. He asked me to sit down. They were going to do the pictures first because the photographer had to be somewhere else at one o’clock.

The photographer asked me to take my coat off. I didn’t want to, but it would have sounded vain and stupid to insist, so I left it on the bed and sat on a low chair in my shirtsleeves and tie, looking out of the window over the London rooftops, resting my chin in my hand. Big silver umbrellas reflected the lights onto me, and I became very hot. Garvie sat on the end of the bed all the while, watching a chat show on telly as he sipped vodka and chain-smoked.

I stared out of the window for half an hour while the photographer took my picture. It was amazingly boring. I asked if I could have a cigarette and, while I lit up, suggested to the photographer that we could take some of me wearing my coat, standing in front of the smart dresser over in the corner. He looked at the dresser for a moment and then said, “Yeah, okay, why not? Let’s just get these ones first.”

Garvie picked up the phone and ordered another bottle of vodka from room service and two packs of cigarettes. We hadn’t drunk half of the first bottle yet. I think he wanted them to take home.

The photographer took a long time to finish. He took four rolls of me looking out of the window, sitting in front of the white background, drinking vodka out of a mug that was supposed to be tea. By the time he had packed up and left, my face hurt from maintaining a sad frown for him. It was only when I was sitting on the plane coming home later that I realized he never did take the pictures of me with my coat on.

As the photographer packed up, Garvie turned the telly off and talked, topping up my vodka and orange. His marriage had split up, too, so he understood what I was going through. His missus had an affair, with a window cleaner of all people. The guy was old, that was what really got to him, and he was a window cleaner. How much could he have been making a year? Fifteen thou tops. He couldn’t believe she’d done that to him. They’d been childhood sweethearts and had three kids. I asked what ages they were, and he said three, six, and nine. As a joke I said that was pretty precise spacing, wasn’t it? He hesitated and laughed. Yeah, he said, it was. I was starting to doubt the story about his wife. I think he was trying to get me to have an outburst and give a whole load of stuff away. I trusted myself to say nothing interesting (never a problem for me) but didn’t know if that was what they’d print. I fumbled in my briefcase and took out Susie’s Dictaphone.

“I hope you don’t mind my using this?” I said sheepishly. “But my lawyer insisted. He won’t speak to me if I go home without it.” I whinnied a stupid laugh, and Garvie stared at the machine. He seemed hurt.

“Don’t you trust me, Lachlan?”

“Of course I do,” I said. “It’s for my lawyer. He wants to know what I say in case it has a negative impact on the appeal. I’ll do anything I can to help the appeal.”

Garvie nodded and lit another cigarette. “There’s going to be an appeal, then?”

“Oh, yes, definitely. We’ve got to keep hoping.”

“Right? See, I’ve heard that there won’t be an appeal.”

“No, there definitely will be. We’re just looking for the grounds at the minute. Susie’ll be coming home soon.”

“And how will your mistress of several years take that?” He laughed unkindly, and I wanted to say fuck you, you’ll be dead at forty-five, but I knew I couldn’t be rude. He’d gut me if I was a smartarse.

“That was a misunderstanding. Stevie Ray asked me about the allegations in court about Susie and Gow having a love affair, and I didn’t want to talk about it. He took it the wrong way.”

“So the other papers are lying?”

“Well, no, I-”

“Do you think your missus was having an affair with Gow?”