(2002) Deception aka Sanctum (32 page)

Driving through the town at midnight, through the parallel universe that is pub closing time. All the newsagents had cloyingly alliterative posters, tattered and smudged from a day of windy rain: SEXY DR. SUSIE’S SWINGING SECRETS. I fret about smoking ten cigarettes a day and being slightly overweight at twenty-nine; the town was full of drunk, fat, laughing people smoking casually as they walked down the streets, stopping at late-night shops to buy fatsnax and yet more cigarettes. Half of them didn’t even have enough clothes on for the weather. The young women especially, walking along with their tits hanging out and skirts up their arses. Susie said they are dressing to impress one another, but I don’t think any heterosexual man would ever believe that. I’m not going to let Margie out until she’s twenty-five. She can wear what she likes, but she’s staying home with me.

The colors at night are yellow and blue and gray. Uplit faces are slow, drunk. People move gracelessly, laugh loudly, fall languorously. Hot chips spill onto litter-strewn streets, crying women hail cabs, and angry men go after them (Angela, you stupid bitch, Angela, fucking come back here). The red eyes of the car in front leave crusty, bloody trails in the yellow dark.

I cruised through the town, not going anywhere really, not consciously, until I found myself far out on the south side, on the council estate. It’s built on the edge of a deep wood, with ugly concrete cottages from the fifties lining broad streets and a badly broken-up road surface. I had to snake along, veering back and forth across the road to miss axle-shattering chasms. I only saw two or three other cars there.

Beyond low brick walls were bare little gardens, overlooked by bright windows with curtains. They had ornaments arranged on the sill: a china cat, a nasty vase with dusty plastic flowers jagging out of it, a ceramic flower basket. None of the front gardens had anything growing in them. Stevie Ray’s house had two small windows knocked into a much bigger one, but the surround wasn’t finished on it and the white PVC frame sat inside chipped and crumbling brick. A pile of bricks and loose rubble sat in the middle of the front garden. The lights were off.

I drove past Stevie’s house three, maybe four times before I pulled over just beyond it and stopped. I was so angry by this point I could have kicked his door in. I wanted to ask him how he could live with himself, did he think I was a wanker? Well, did he? I sat in the car, taking deep breaths so I wouldn’t be too angry, smoking a cigarette, which made me angry again.

I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Stevie Ray coming along the road toward me, back from a night in the pub. Next to him was a small blond woman, and I thought he’d got lucky. They were walking so close, smiling but chatting very little, it was a touching scene. I’d calmed down by this point and knew I’d have to work myself up into having a fight again, so I slid down in the seat, and as I watched, I realized that the woman looked familiar.

They turned into the garden. For a moment I worried that they’d notice my car. They could have, but at that moment the woman said something, flicking her finger toward the crap piled up in the front garden. The gesture was disapproving, but she dropped her shoulders in despair at the same time, as though she’d pointed it out a hundred times. Stevie didn’t say anything, but his back tensed guiltily. From that one gesture and response, I knew immediately that they were living together and had been for a long, long time.

Then Lara Orr took out her keys and opened Stevie Ray’s front door.

I was stubbing out my fifth cigarette, about to get out and knock on his door, when a rap at the window made me jump, the seatbelt yanking me back and hurting my shoulder. Stevie Ray was at my window, looking wary but curious. He was breathing frost, wearing stripy pajamas under a heavy woolen dressing gown and outdoor shoes on bare feet. I pressed the electronic button and Stevie reeled back as the window started and lowered. He’d been expecting me to punch him.

“Listen,” he said, talking fast and hanging on to the wall behind him with both hands, “I’m sorry, but a guy’s got to make a living. You’ve got everything— you wouldn’t understand. You’re clever and good-looking and you’re a doctor. You’ve got a healthy daughter—”

“You prick,” I said, brave inside my car. “My reputation’s ruined because of you. What a cheap thing to do, even for you. It was cheap.”

Stevie looked at the ground. “I needed the money,” he said. “I’m sorry. I am a prick.” He came closer, put a hand on the roof of the car, and drummed his fingers once, leaning down into the cab to speak. “Are you, um . . . d’you, um, want a cuppa?”

I looked up at him. He actually felt sorry for me. “Come away in and have a cup of tea with us,” he said, sotto voce, eyes serene. “There’s someone inside who wants to meet you.”

“Lara Orr?”

Stevie nodded, glowing at the mention of her name. “She’s been following you in the papers. She feels bad for you.”

I was genuinely touched. How deeply kind, I thought. How good women can be sometimes.

All promise of a spiritual connection was shattered when I saw inside their house. All the paper had been ripped off the walls in the hall, and someone had painted over the scrappy mess in the cloying peachy color of artificial limbs. The real shock was the undulating dirt floor. It was actual dirt, muddy, sandy dirt for growing things in, but, being December, the frost was through it. Someone had laid bits of cardboard box down, but the freezing damp hung in the narrow hallway. There had been floorboards once, that much was clear from the struts sticking out of the side of the wall about an inch above the ground level.

Stevie saw me looking around at the mess. “I’m doing, ahem, some renovations.”

The living-room floor was still intact. It was a steep step up from the hall and had a once-green carpet on the floor, now encrusted with dirt to the point where it was black and shiny at the doorway. Newspapers were spread over the floor to act as a protective cover. A midnight blue velvet settee with full ashtrays and plates and cups balanced on the arm stood just inside the doorway. A large television was precariously balanced on a red plastic child’s chair next to a big gas fire. Standing there in the cold muddy hall, looking up into the floating platform of the warm living room, I felt like a soldier on the Somme dreaming of his modest home.

Lara Orr hove into view wearing a nightie, a dressing gown to match Stevie’s, and a pair of low navy blue court shoes with fluffy yellow socks inside them. She’s petite, nervously thin, and unattractive. Her eyes are so small they make her seem almost inbred.

“Wit’s he doing here?” she snapped unpleasantly.

“I brought him in for a cup of tea.”

“Look at the mess you’ve made of the place,” she said, making it sound as if he’d done it all that evening. “I’m ashamed to have people in and you’re bringing folk in here. . . .” She glanced at me, sphincter-mouthed. “It’s twelve at night. And we don’t even know him. Ye shouldnae invite folk in.”

“Lara, shut it. Away and make some tea,” said Stevie, affectionately.

“Naw,” said Lara, looking me up and down and relaxing slightly. “You make some tea.”

“It was me invited him in. You make the tea.”

Lara was looking at my coat, and I could tell she liked it. I was expecting her to leave the room to make tea, but she clopped across to the sideboard and turned on a kettle that was sitting there. Stevie saw me staring open-mouthed at the arrangement.

“I’m doing up the kitchen as well,” he explained, inviting me to sit on the sofa.

How extraordinary. I didn’t want to sit on anything in my nice new coat, so I used the excuse of there being only two places on the settee and, lifting my coat at the back, balanced myself on the arm.

“I don’t like living like this,” snapped Lara at me.

“Neither of us likes it,” retorted Stevie.

“Wasn’t me that done it,” said Lara.

Stevie shrugged. “It’s just temporary,” he said.

“It’s been temporary for nearly two years.”

He swiveled around. “Lara,” he implored. “You’re nipping my fucking head. Give us peace.”

She raised her voice. “You give me peace,” she shouted.

Stevie laughed softly and turned back to me, spreading his hands in an appeal for reason. “She could start a fight in an empty house,” he said. If anyone had done that to my house, I’d have slapped them from sunup to sundown.

Lara busied herself at the sideboard, making us each a mug of tea. She asked me if I wanted sugar, and when I said yes, she shook some into the cup from a paper packet, stirring it with a suspiciously dun teaspoon. I think it was filthy but couldn’t see it across the room. Lara saw me looking concerned and used her body to block my view. She gave us both disgusting, cloudy-looking tea in stained cups, and Stevie fell on his, sipping it with great relish as though it were a delicate soup. I wasn’t about to drink mine. For an amuse-gueule, Lara opened a green bag of crisps and took out a handful for herself before handing them to me. She was still eating when she lit up a Rothmans from a packet in her dressing-gown pocket. I took out my Marlboros and offered them around. Stevie took one and put it behind his ear (for later, he explained). I sat the tea on the floor and pretended to be concerned with picking bits out of my handful of crisps and smoking. I found Lara a bit frightening. I didn’t want her having a go at me.

“I hear they found Donna’s body,” she said, smoking through a mouthful of cheese and onion. She opened her mouth to masticate, and smoke clung to the crisps, a wet landscape of smoldering rubble.

I nodded. “Yeah. Sad. Sorry, do you hate her?”

“No,” said Lara genuinely. “We weren’t friends. I never met her, but I was pleased that she took him off my hands.”

“I knew her,” smiled Stevie, sitting to attention. “I’ve got nice pictures of her.”

I looked at Lara. “But I thought you were divorced from Gow long before she came on the scene?”

“Oh, aye. I divorced him, so he was going to kill me. He used to phone me and write letters. He was always talking to Stevie about what he’d do if he caught me.” Stevie nodded helpfully. “I didn’t get any peace until she came along.”

“That’s why we’ve never told anyone we were together,” said Stevie. “He’d have killed her if he got out.”

“Do you really believe he was capable of killing anyone?”

“Listen,” said Lara with conviction. “Never you mind what the courts say. He killed those women.”

“So you’re not sad that he’s dead?”

“No. I’m pleased,” said Lara Orr. “When he was out, I had to go and stay in my sister’s trailer in Prestwick to get a sleep. I didn’t feel safe.”

Stevie patted her knee. “That’s why I saw him before he left for up north,” he said. “I wanted to make sure he went away.”

“I knew he’d kill Donna.” She sat back smugly, shaking her head. “Didn’t I, Stevie? I said, didn’t I?”

Stevie nodded, first at her and then at me.

“But he didn’t kill Donna,” I said tentatively. “The court says that my wife killed her.”

“Naw.” Lara was certain. “Not Dr. Susie.” She was talking about it as if it were a soap opera. “If you ask me, he killed Donna and someone else killed him. He was a killer through and through.”

We sat on the settee and finished the bag of crisps, passing it among us. A freezing mist hung in the room, leeching the heat from the gas fire. I glanced at my watch. It was twelve-thirty-three. If I had been at home, I’d have been up here getting miserable.

“Do you want to see my pictures of her?”

Stevie got out a pile of photos from the sideboard and came and stood next to me, handing them to me one at a time, making sure I looked at them before he gave me the next one. They were big publicity shots he’d taken of Donna to sell to magazines. They weren’t good photos, she didn’t look relaxed or pretty, but there were a lot of them, and I realized that Stevie was looking to sell them to me. The way he went about it was clever too: he took out the pile of photos and started flicking through them saying I might like this one better, what about this one, isn’t that nice? Of course this one’s only two quid because it’s a bit blurry. He stood too close to me, his soft womanly thigh tightly against mine so that I’d have agreed to almost anything to get away from the itchy heat gathering between our skins. There were a lot of photos.

“Where did you get these?” I said, showing I wasn’t being shaken down.

“I took them,” he said quite proudly. “Donna didn’t agree to using these. She didn’t like herself in these ones.”

Stevie carried on flipping through: Donna smiling with red eyes; Dragon Donna (little trails of smoke trickling out of her nostrils); Donna outside, her back to a strong wind (the skirt of her coat blown up); Donna at a bus stop with one eye shut and the other rolled back. You could see her teeth in that one, which was unusual.

“Stevie, why do you think I would want to buy publicity shots of the woman my wife is accused of killing?”

“For your book,” said Stevie simply.

I looked at Lara. She shook her head. Stevie nodded and carried on going through the photos.

“I’m not going to write a book, Stevie. And I’m not going to buy any photos from you, either. If I did you’d only go to the papers with the story.”

He thought about it for a moment, then came around the other side, sat down on the settee, and looked up at me. “But,” he said, “that’s not much of a story, is it? Man buys photograph?”