(2002) Deception aka Sanctum (37 page)

chapter forty

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?”

“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.

chapter forty-one

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.