Denise Mina - Deception aka Sanctum

I could have said to her: You know, Susie, I might have fucked up my career, but at least I’m going home tonight. I’m a good dad. No lesbiotic con artist got me to hand over my life. I could have told her that I do have things to say, I will write something one day, you’ll see. I could have said at least I stayed faithful to you, and you were off fucking a woman whose name you didn’t even know. She made you love her, and let you watch as she chose Gow over you. I could have said she tricked you, you stupid cow. You ridiculous, bourgeois faux-sophisticate. You daft faithless fucking whoring bitch. You’ve laughed at me for the last fucking time, you witless, cheap cunt.

Instead I cleared my throat. “I’ve saved all the documentation about the money, so don’t even try to lie about it. I want a divorce, Susie. Trisha can bring Margie to visit you in the future, because I’m not coming back here.”

I stood up and looked down at her, shrinking into her chair, shriveling smaller and smaller until she was a sobbing, wet-faced speck in her ripped yellow nylon chair. I picked Margie up by the waist and left her mother crying in the stinking visiting room.

I’m not going back there. I’m never going back there.

In the four years since the diaries were uncovered by Dr. Welsh, the veracity of the contents have generated a tremendous volume of materials: immeasurable column inches worldwide, several television documentaries (one British, one American, and two Japanese), five books, and a TV film. Despite valiant efforts, these investigations have turned up little or no hard evidence. Lachlan Harriot himself claims that the diaries were nothing more than a fiction-writing exercise and now refuses to discuss them.

A woman named Brenda Rumney had worked at Selfridges, but her temporary contract came to a natural conclusion three days after Lachlan Harriot claimed he was in the shop. Brenda was adopted and had been estranged from her adoptive family, a fact that may help explain why she disappeared after leaving work in Selfridges. She has not been found but has been sighted in Australia, New York, Bali, and Cardiff. Her adoption papers cannot be accessed by anyone other than Brenda herself, so there is no conclusive evidence to link her to Mary-Ann Roberts.

An unnamed and unidentified woman did move in with Donna McGovern after the death of her father but may have left the house before Donna moved to Glasgow. Brenda Rumney’s photograph was consistently overlooked by the Leicester witnesses who tried to pick her out. [1]

Donna McGovern’s husband disputes that their marriage was violent and has written a book about their relationship, which is as yet unpublished.

The freezer in Kirkintilloch was an upright, and in laboratory tests, it has been established that similar models could barely accommodate a small woman’s body without necessitating the breaking of bones. [2] The body of Donna McGovern had no broken bones.

Expert forensic odontologists have drawn comparisons and discrepancies between the skull of Donna McGovern and photographs of the woman who married Andrew Gow in Sunnyfields. [3] There are few photographs and, unfortunately, none from which scientifically meaningful conclusions can be drawn.

Upon the advice of his lawyer, Eamon Fitzgerald, Lachlan Harriot invited Strathclyde Police to conduct a search of his home. Neither the video, the hotel letter, the list of correspondents to Andrew Gow, nor his prison files was ever found. In contrast to this, Dr. Harvey Tucker has given an affidavit claiming that the videotaped interview with Donna McGovern was word for word as Lachlan Harriot claimed, as was the list of correspondents.

And so debate about the case continues. Meanwhile Dr. Susie Wilkens (now divorced) has become the subject of a campaign for an appeal, largely funded by the FFJ. She is due to be paroled in 2008. Lachlan Harriot and Yeni Tarrossannani married on New Year’s Eve 2000 in Acapulco. They have two children of their own and custody of Margie Harriot. They live year-round in their villa in Malta.

Denise Mina Glasgow, 2002

DENISE MINA is the author of Garnethill, which won the John Creasey Memorial Prize for best first crime novel, Exile and Resolution. She lives in Glasgow.

[1] Brenda’s Missing Years, ATV, first broadcast March 1999.

[2] “The Missing Link in the Donna McGovern Myth,” Bernard Livivin, St. Louis Times, 9/12/01.

[3] True to Death: The Donna McGovern Story, SNM, first broadcast January 2002.