(2002) Deception aka Sanctum (16 page)

It was a Friday morning in September. Susie was in the house and not having a lie-in. I was busy feeding Margie in the kitchen. The phone rang twice, she picked up, listened. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. She turned away from me, facing down the hall so I couldn’t hear what she was saying. When she picked up she must have heard someone speak, and they must have said “Hello” or “Listen” or “Help,” because if they had introduced themselves (said “Hi, it’s Donna McGovern” or “Hi, it’s Andrew Gow”), she wouldn’t then have said “Oh, it’s you.” It makes no sense to say “Oh, it’s you” to an introduction. So, given that there was no introduction, she must have recognized the voice. She’d have to know it quite well to recognize a voice from such a short greeting.

After the call she came into the kitchen and beamed at me. It was, I realized later, the first time I had seen her smile in months.

“Can I take the car, Lachie? I just want to nip out to the shops.”

I said, yeah, sure, honey, I don’t need it. She kissed my forehead and called me her darling. Good-bye, my darling. Something like that. See you soon. She knew that she was going all the way to Durness. She was setting off for an eight-hour drive, yet she took just her purse, threw her green leather coat casually across her arm, and told me she was nipping out to the shops.

* * *

I’ve been going through the boxes again.

Box 2 Document 4 News in Brief, a broadsheet, 12/19/93

A man was charged with the murders of five Glasgow prostitutes this morning. Police report that after being stopped for cruising, Andrew Gow, 28, spontaneously confessed to the murders of Elizabeth MacCorronah, 19, Karen Dempsey, 21, Martine Pashtan, 24, Alice Thomson, 33, and Mary-Ann Roberts, 41. Strathclyde Police Service issued a statement stating that the investigation was still on-going.

That means Mary-Ann Roberts was the one found in the tongue article.

Box 1 Document 4 Social Background Report 1994

Strathclyde Social Work Department

India House, G1

Is to appear on Monday, March 2, 1994, at Glasgow High Court in connection with the offense of murder.

* * *

This report was compiled from one interview with Gow.

HOME CIRCUMSTANCES

Before he was arrested Mr. Gow was living with his wife, Lara Orr, at 3582 Cumbernauld Avenue, Cumbernauld. They have no children. Ms. Orr is a shop assistant. Their house is in one of the nicer areas of Cumbernauld, and records show that it is furnished and maintained to a high degree.

PERSONAL HISTORY

Gow was born and educated in Bridgeton, Glasgow. His mother and father separated when he was eight, and his father is now deceased. Mr. Gow no longer has contact with his mother. The second of four children, he has three sisters and reports that he has no contact with them either, having split from his family over his marriage to Ms. Orr. His family does not like her.

Gow enjoyed school until the fifth year. He states that he had many friends there and was extremely popular. His arrests for theft followed his falling in with a bad crowd. He claims he was shoplifting to show off to them. The police stopped him and he confessed to the crimes. The car theft occurred near his home. Again he confessed and was given and served a one-month custodial sentence.

The breach of the peace offense was committed while drunk. Gow reports that he had too much to drink on the way home from his work on Christmas Eve and started shouting at a bus driver who tried to eject him. The drunk and disorderly offense related to the same incident. He had not been charged with any offense for three years before his arrest.

Gow informs me that he has always enjoyed good health, never having suffered from any serious mental or physical illness.

He was employed as a minicab driver at the time of the offenses charged.

CONCLUSION

During his period in custody, he has been visited regularly by Ms. Orr. Neither his mother nor his sisters have visited him, although his youngest sister, Alison, has written to him three times. Mr. Gow states that he does not wish contact with his sister and will not be replying to her.

At school he was thought clever enough to sit five GCSEs but failed them all. He claims his sisters would not leave him alone to study and his mother made him take care of his sisters at this time and that is why he failed.

Gow tells me that Ms. Orr intends to continue with their relationship no matter the outcome of the trial.

Thomas H. Granger

Social Worker

THG 3/21/94 (AndrewGow)

Box 1 Document 5 Letter re Donna

Scottish Prison Department

From S. Jackson

Supervisor

H-Hall

Sunnyfields State Mental Hospital

Lanarkshire

March 21, 1998

To: Dr. Susan Harriot

SPD Psychiatric Services

Sunnyfields

ANDREW GOW (30757): REQUEST TO MARRY

Mr. Gow has lodged a formal request to marry Miss Donna McGovern. I have spoken to Mr. Gow, who informs me that he does intend to marry Ms. McGovern. He informs me that the intended date would be sometime in April. Please conduct an interview with Ms. McGovern to determine her intentions.

Yours sincerely

S. Jackson

Supervisor

What is Susie so wound up about? There’s nothing in these papers that’s especially confidential. I’ve been checking through the files on the computer all morning, and they’re all like these, all straightforward notes about different cases, a couple of book reviews, and some sketched-out ideas for professional articles like the table of correspondents.

I still haven’t watched that video and can’t now that the house is full of people. I don’t mind getting upset in this study, where I can be alone. I wish they’d go. I don’t know if I can hold it together for much longer, and I don’t want to frighten my mum. I hope they aren’t planning to stay until after the sentencing, which could be weeks away.

I can’t understand why Susie wants me out of here. Why would she object to my finding material for her appeal? It’s as if she’d be happier stuck in there with her privacy intact than out here with me, facing up to whatever problems we have. I know we do have problems; I’m not brushing over them. I’m just saying they don’t need to be as big as she makes them.

Supposing, just for argument’s sake, that Susie was in love with Gow and was jealous of Donna, supposing all of that, I still don’t think she’d kill them. She’s sensible, a problem-solver, and killing both of them wouldn’t advance her cause in any way. Surely a guilty woman wouldn’t hang around in the bar at a nearby hotel after committing a double murder? And who phoned the police? The “helpful local” theory the prosecution came up with didn’t sound at all plausible to me.

But then what the hell do I know? Maybe Susie wasn’t acting rationally. Maybe she’d tried everything else she could possibly think of and was at the end of her tether. She made a lot of bad decisions around that time. She gave that interview, which was contrary to all of her interests. Still, it’s a leap from bad decisions to committing two murders.

If she was truly in love with Gow, I think it might break me.

chapter fifteen

I’VE BEEN OUT ON MY OWN FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS, AND THE break has done me good. I think having everyone here has been more of a strain than I’d like to admit. It’s hard falling asleep on the sofa. Almost as soon as I managed it, Trisha got up and clattered around the kitchen, banging plates together, trying to make herself useful. Mum heard it somehow and rushed downstairs, determined not to be last up, and before I knew what had happened, I was sitting at the breakfast table arbitrating their conversation.

After returning from mass this morning, Mum looked through the cupboards and found that the gravy powder was two years out of date. Evidently this was the start of the rot, the lack of Sunday gravy. I think she was more disgusted by this than my refusing to go to mass. She sent me out to get the makings of a Sunday roast. Yeni still wasn’t back from chapel, and for a terrifying moment I thought she might have run away.

The supermarket was quiet, and I nipped around in record time. As I was loading the bags into the car, I looked across the road to McFee’s and, through the condensation dripping down the window, thought I saw the back of Yeni’s yellow anorak at the table by the door. She could only have been hiding; the coffee’s terrible there.

She was sitting on her own, frowning hard and trying to read a Sunday tabloid, when I sat down opposite her. She glanced at my arm, politely sitting back to afford me a share of the tabletop before she realized it was me.

She pressed a hand to her chest. “Lachlan,” she said, as she always says, as if her tongue were negotiating its way around a mouthful of oily marbles. “Jyou give me, mm, big scare.”

I smiled and said I was sorry. I nodded at the menu and asked if I could buy her an ice cream. She doesn’t have a lot of money and seemed quite pleased. Still, she tried to pay for the egg rolls she’d already had. I think she’s trying to make it clear that she is not available for good times. I didn’t know how to say “dream on, fat bird” in Spanish, so I smiled and let her pay and then ordered two Knickerbocker Glories and a pot of tea for two.

“My wife and I can’t thank you enough for staying during all of this,” I said.

She shook her head, but I could see she liked my mentioning Susie.

“My wife asked me specifically to tell you that she says thanks. You have been so good to Margie just when she needs extra care. Any other au pair would have left us. You are very kind.”

Yeni shook her head again and nodded and waved her head about some more. When she realized I’d finished, she smiled a beamer. “I like Margie very fine. She is good for to me.”

Her English is shocking. I suppose it’s my fault; I should talk to her more. We nodded and smiled at each other some more, and shrugged and were reduced to giving each other thumbs-up by the time the ice creams came. They looked great. The sun shone in through the window and lit up the strawberry sauce neon-clear. They looked gloriously indulgent.

Afterward we sat, drowsy with carbohydrates, sipping tea and ripping up paper napkins by wiping our sticky fingers on them. I read the papers while Yeni flicked through the pictures in the supplements. It was nice being with someone and not having to interact, just having the comfort of a bit of company. I noticed that she’d stopped smelling of yogurt, so she’s either sorted out her thrush problem or given up eating it. We didn’t talk about Trisha or my parents, but it was obvious why we were both hiding there. Afterward, when we could delay it no longer, I gave her a lift back to the house. It would be nice to have a pal.

Box 1 Document 3 Note of Circumstances (cont.)

SITUATION AT TIME OF OFFENSE

5. Mr. Gow was aged twenty-eight at the time of the indictment. He was married and living with his wife, Lara Orr, at 3582 Cumbernauld Avenue, Cumbernauld. They had no children.

6. The victims were all working as prostitutes in the Glasgow area.

6.1 Victim Mrs. Elizabeth MacCorronah, resident of Flat 3/1, 6 Ochil Place, Milton, Glasgow, had three children, all of whom were in local authority care at the time of the offense. She was a registered heroin addict and had attempted methadone-assisted withdrawal four times. She was married at the age of sixteen. Her husband, Davie MacCorronah, was killed in a house fire in 1991. He was also a registered addict. Mrs. MacCorronah was nineteen at the time of her murder.

6.2 Victim Karen Dempsey, resident of 46 Glen Tanar Street, Lambhill, Glasgow, was single and had a dependent mother. Although not a registered addict, she had a high level of both alcohol and codeine in her blood at postmortem. She was twenty-one years of age.

6.3 Victim Martine Pashtan, resident of Flat 1/1, 236 Saltmarket, Glasgow, was married and had a child aged four months. She lived with her husband of three years, Mr. Alvin Pashtan. She was twenty-four at the time of her death.

6.4 Alice Thomson, of Flat 16/3, 5 Calder Street, Polmadie, Glasgow, was thirty-three at the time of her murder. She had two children, aged thirteen and twelve, both living with their father, John Livingston, in East Kilbride.

6.5 Mary-Ann Roberts, of Flat 1/2, 38 Langa Street, High Carntyne, Glasgow, was single and childless. She was forty-one at the time of her murder. Ms. Roberts had convictions for prostitution stretching back to 1971, when she was nineteen.

7. Although Mr. Gow confessed to the murders, he was unwilling to talk about the commission of the offenses. DNA matches were made between Mr. Gow and the semen samples on the bodies.

PRISONER’S ACCOUNT OF OFFENSES

8. Gow volunteered a confession to the murders upon being stopped by two police officers for cruising in the Anderston area. He admitted to murdering the women, told police where he had left the bodies, and revealed details about the arrangement of the corpses. Forensic examination found traces of the women’s blood in his car. A preliminary DNA match was established between Mr. Gow and the semen samples left at the scene of the crimes. He has entered a guilty plea.

Subsequently, he refuses to discuss the offenses despite his guilty plea. On all other matters he is happy to talk. He is a pleasant, articulate man and presents himself well.