Denise Mina - Deception aka Sanctum

“I know they weren’t. Susie is innocent of this terrible crime and I don’t doubt that she has been faithful to me. We love each other very much, and we’re looking forward to our future together.”

Listening to the tape again this evening, I sound as if I’m writing the headlines for him, I realize, but what I was doing was saying things I wouldn’t mind Margie hearing from my mouth when she is a little older, in say ten or fifteen years’ time. These are the things I’d like her to hear me say about her mother. These are the things I’d like to be true.

The tape goes on for quite a long time afterward. Garvie tries different ploys to get me to say something nasty about Susie, but my guard is up. He never mentions his faithless wife or equidistant children again. I’m sure it was a lie. We smoked and drank, and I said nothing. Eventually I saw the fight go out of Garvie’s eyes, and he dismissed me. He gave me a check for four thousand pounds, which doesn’t seem like much to me.

As he handed it over, he smiled. “You should have given us an interview a month ago,” he said. “You could have got three times that.”

I told him the check was going to charity, and he suddenly looked very angry. It will be in the paper in a couple of days, apparently; they’re going to serialize it over three days. He’ll let me know. I don’t think he will.

Dizzy with smoking and midday alcohol, I stood in the elevator and gathered myself together. I should have eaten, but there wasn’t any time. I noted a spark of alarm in the doorman’s eyes as he looked at me. I straightened myself as best I could. The afternoon light seemed impertinently bright, and I felt stale and soiled, as if I had spent the last two hours having sex with a reluctant partner. Or maybe I was the reluctant partner. It didn’t feel very nice, anyway. The driver pulled the Benz under the carport and jumped out to open the door. I opened the door myself before he had a chance to get around the hood, and he had to jump back in.

“Thanks, anyway.” I smiled into the rearview mirror, pleased to be with anyone who wasn’t Garvie.

“Straight to the airport, is it, sir?”

“No, I want to…” It was an exaggeration. I didn’t want to. I specifically didn’t want to with a belly full of cold vodka and no lunch, but I would never forgive myself if I didn’t take the chance. I would always wonder about it. “I want to stop at Selfridges. Could you wait outside for ten minutes while I pop in?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Thank you.” I nodded. I saw him cast a concerned look at me in the rearview and I hoped I wasn’t much, much drunker than I thought I was.

Selfridges’ candy department is tucked away behind the cosmetics. The ceiling is lower than the rest of the shop, and it’s a dizzying array of bright colors and deliciously enticing smells. It is a subfranchise arrangement: different chocolatiers have stalls there, and they’re all very expensive. The servers are handsome young women, well groomed and nicely presented in clean white shirts and black skirts, using plastic gloves and mock silver tongs to pick up the merchandise. Freestanding tables on the shop floor hold displays of different brands of sweets: there is a pile of organic licorice, a wall of jelly beans in clear plastic dispensers, a papier-mâché mountain forested by pink and green lollipops with a small tin train running endlessly around the base.

I stood behind the jelly-bean wall, trying to sober up through force of will, and watched the faces behind the counters. Above a multicolored dune, the beautiful young women’s faces distorted and spread through the thick plastic. I moved left a little to see the woman on a distant register and found myself weak with the need for Yeni and home and the sight of little Margie. I leaned against a pillar. I could smell marzipan. I turned and found that I was leaning against shelf after shelf of marzipan. I picked up a big round box and sniffed. It smelled of my dear, soft Yeni. I raised my eyes to the back of the shop and my heart stopped.

I blinked, looked again, and then I was floating slowly in the direction of a gourmet chocolate stall, tucked into a little cul-de-sac under the stairs leading up to the food hall.

An intoxicating stench of real vanilla made my saliva glands ache and flood in an oral orgasm. Resting on the glass shelves were chocolates the size of small cakes. The light was too harsh, the glass counter a sheet of brilliant white so clinically bright it sent a pain through my eyes that ricocheted to the back of my brain.

“May I help you, sir? Sir? Which box would you like?”

Behind the counter, next to the register, sat different-sized scarlet boxes. I raised a finger.

“This one?” She sounded Spanish. Like Yeni. And she had black hair and sallow skin and a dimple on her chin. She was very thin. “Sir, is it this one?”

I nodded.

From below the counter she took out a large red box the size of a box of tissues. She took off the lid, laid it on the counter, unfolded the tissue flats, and lifted her silver tongs. She looked at me blankly, hardly a sign on her face that she recognized me. Why would there be? She had never met me before. I had never met her before. But even through a gossamer haze of drink, her gaze locked on mine too hard and firm to be accidental. We were strangers, but each knew the other’s darkest secrets, my hollow marriage, her many lives, my wife’s loathing and disgust, her mother’s lonely death.

We said nothing. Together these two strangers chose a box of chocolates. White chocolate strawberry crème. Nougat enrobed in white and dark chocolate. The famous coca truffle. Maple caramel with almond. Crisp-shelled praline. Ganache- that one has marzipan in it, sir. Do you wish marzipan? I see you have already chosen a box. I looked down and found I was clutching a gold treasure chest of marzipan. Yes, I said, running my hand fondly over the yellow lid, yes, I have already chosen. A superior brand of marzipan, sir. Have you tried their coffee chocolate? Quite exceptional. Still the Spanish accent. Still the blankness in the eyes. Yes, that’s all, thanks. Forty-three pounds, then, sir, for the chocolates and the marzipan together. I gave her a fifty-quid note.

She turned away to the register, bent her little head forward, and there, between the elegant long ligaments on her neck, was a tiny black mole, nestling among the fine hairs.

My stomach lurched, and I shut my eyes. What could I do? Tell her employers? Tell the police? Confront her? She has killed four times; she let a woman who adored her be convicted in her place; she killed four times to avenge a mother she had never even met.

“Your change, sir. Sir? Your change. Thank you.”

Picking up my chocolates, I turned and walked away.

THE DRIVE TO THE VALE OF LEVEN SEEMED TO TAKE HOURS AND hours. They are doing roadwork on the narrowest stretch of road outside Coatbridge, and half a mile of the motorway is reduced to a single-lane obstacle course. Margie started whimpering softly in the back. For three miles I didn’t get above twenty, and each time we came to a break in the divider, I imagined myself pulling a U-ey, turning us around, and heading home. I saw myself at home in the bedroom, throwing clothes into bags, packing Yeni and Margie into the car, and driving us all to Dover. We were having lunch in France, sitting outside on a pavement café somewhere charming and tranquil, when Margie’s shouting from the backseat turned into a full-blast screaming panic attack. I found it hard to care. I turned the radio up for a while, but she was losing her breath. I pulled over and found her diaper was full; she was sitting in cold shit. She had been crying for ten minutes. I almost drove all the way there with her in that state.