As we lay next to each other, our heads dovetailed on the pillow, I think I fell a little bit in love with her. I felt I had descended to somewhere warm, like a presleep drop in blood pressure that shocks you awake. I might be wrong, but I felt that I could write if I stayed with her. I would not spill my seed in conversation and existence; I’d save it all for the page.
Through the open door at the end of the bed, we heard the ching-ching of Margie’s crib clown, and we grinned in unison up at the ceiling. Any second now she’d start screaming.
“Yeni, if I went to France, would you come with me?”
She looked wary. “No south?”
“No, not anywhere near Spain. Perhaps not even France, perhaps Greece?”
“Sí,” she said simply, “I like. We can hchave satellite?”
“Satellite TV?”
“Sí.”
“In Greece?”
“Sí. For Friends.”
“Yeah.” I took her small, cool hand, touching the sensitive tip of each of her tapered fingers. “We could just about afford that.”
Yeni was in her dressing gown, chasing Margie back and forth in front of the telly, when I left them and came up here. I’ve been taking shots of Margie with the instant camera so that I can enclose them with the daily letters to Susie. When I think about Donna and the money and how sneaky and rude it is for her to move it, I wonder why the fuck I’m bothering.
This evening Yeni said to me, “Jyou very serious.”
I shrugged, and she waited for me to explain. Eventually she walked out of the room and came back with her coat on. She said she was going to see her friends from the English class. I nodded and gave her a hundred quid and said have a nice time. She tried to give me the money back, but I insisted.
“For baby-sitting.” I pressed the money into her hand. “For baby-sitting for a whole night. Take it. You have a good time, honey.”
She brushed my cheek with the back of her hand and made a precious little “o” with her mouth when I called her that. She didn’t cringe or grimace or get pissed off. I heard the front door slam behind her. I hope she genuinely doesn’t want to talk and didn’t just say that so that I would like her more. I hope she never wants to talk.
Susie is a cunt. She’s a duplicitous, faithless, disloyal cunt, and she’ll leave me broken if I don’t do something soon. If this ever gets out, I will be the world’s biggest, most widely recognized, dickless idiot. She’s been laughing at me from the very beginning, from before Otago Street.
The gloves are off, as far as I’m concerned.
chapter thirty-eight
IT’S THREE-TEN A.M. I WAS LYING IN BED JUST NOW, LISTENING TO the cold wind shake the dry leaves from the trees, and a thought occurred to me out of the blue. I carefully worked my arm out from under Yeni, slid out of the bed, and pulled on some pajama bottoms and a sweater. I left her in the warm dark, snoring softly in Spanish through the ripe segments of her lips, and went into the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror, at my red eyes, round shoulders, and sagging belly.
Donna II knew that there would be background checks. That is why she knew she couldn’t just assume a made-up name but would need a plausible identity in order to get in to see Gow. But how could she possibly know that? Tucker and Susie’s security checks weren’t a matter of public knowledge. No one else knew they were doing the research. I think she had tried to get in to see Gow before and been knocked back. I think this occurred to Susie, and that was why she took the file and destroyed all the other copies of it. She was protecting Donna II, still protecting her, even after being charged with a murder she thought Donna had committed. When I think of how much she loved me in Otago Street, I don’t doubt that she would have done the same for me.
I opened the Gow correspondents research file. Three-quarters of them are men and can be discounted immediately. Then there are fifty-six women, thirty-one of whom first contacted Gow around the time of his wedding, when he was in the papers a lot. From the twenty-five women who contacted him before, only twelve of them were before the Donna McGovern letters started in February 1998.
1. The first is a psychic who wrote only once and said she had seen what he did to those women through a spirit guide. She was going to kill him through sending out bad thoughts (no request to visit). Her brain must have fried when he died a gruesome death.
2. There were a series of sexy letters from a Linda Slaintan. The file notes “photo encl., sexually explicit.” She wrote nine times and asked him to call her back. She then wrote several angry letters after Gow’s engagement to Donna was announced in the press, accusing him of misleading her.
3. Patricia Gallon was a member of the Plymouth Brethren in Lewisham. She wrote only once, saying that she would pray for his salvation.
4. A woman from the Isle of Harris believed her husband was Gow’s accomplice on the first murder. The couple were separated, and she promised not to tell the police but wanted to know. Her husband was called Hugh Kean and he drank in the Park Bar.
5. A web designer with a vowel-free surname (Anna Trsykt) asked permission to use Gow’s picture for a competition.
6. Mrs. Tate, a teacher from Bridgeton, knew him when he was a boy. She wrote once to ask him where he went wrong.
7. Brenda Rumney from Newcastle thinks he met her mum once.
8. Nine plaintive letters from his little sister, Alison, asked him to contact her and told him family news. She’s had a miscarriage and was quite ill but recovered before the file ended.
9. Three letters from a woman in London who offered to be his manager. She said she’d give him a ninety-ten cut of all profits and get him more coverage than Stevie Ray.
10. Doreen Armitage wrote sexy letters with “photo encl., featuring bondage.” Some cheeky scamp has noted in the file “correspondent breathtakingly unattractive.” Doesn’t sound like Tucker, somehow. Doreen wrote four times.
11. Marti Gibbon, a priest from America, may or may not have been a woman. Marti wrote a few times, proposing to write a screenplay of Gow’s life. The return address is Santa Monica. I guess that deal fell apart when Gow was acquitted.
12. A woman from Lanarkshire asked whether her dad was involved in the first few murders. She gives a detailed account of her father’s movements around that time, where he was and what he did for a living. “Photos encl.” The file doesn’t say whether the photos were of her or her father.
I don’t know how to discriminate among these. It’s four-thirty in the morning and I’m on my third cup of coffee. I shouldn’t be drinking coffee, it’ll just keep me awake, but I need something to keep me warm, and decaf doesn’t seem determined enough for sorting through this file.
NOT EXCLUDED BY SECURITY CHECKS:
1. His wee sister.
2. The American priest.
3. Manager woman; I think he would have seen her.
4. Sexy lady 1.
5. The brethren woman didn’t ask for a visit.
6. Neither did the web designer.
7. Nor the psychic.
EXCLUDED BY SECURITY CHECKS:
1, 2. Both women who thought they knew his accomplice. Gow refused to see them because he was maintaining his innocence.
3. Sexy lady 2: Doreen would have thought that the promise of sex would get her an invite to visit. She would have been rejected by Susie and Tucker because of their antihubristophiliac stance.
4. Mrs. Tate rejected by Gow. No one would want to see an accusing old teacher.
5. Brenda was rejected, presumably by Gow, for having a boring connection.