Deception aka Sanctum

chapter fourteen

THEY PHONED AT SIX-FORTY THIS MORNING TO ANNOUNCE THAT they were coming and arrived just after five p.m., dressed for an Arctic winter. We left their suitcases in the hall and sat around the kitchen table. The place looked nice because Mrs. Anthrobus had been and everything was clean and polished. Mum had brought a basket of pretty red and yellow jellied fruits from Marbella, and we had them with a high tea in the old manner, bread and jam and cakes and Marmite and several strong pots of Ceylon. The garden had never looked so inviting, and I wished I were out there, alone, working up a sweat pruning the apple tree and raking the leaves, kicking up the damp smell of the earth and settling the beds for winter.

Dad’s getting old. He never speaks when Mum’s there, and Mum is always there. He’s smaller than ever before, and his eyelids are coming away from his eyes. He looks awfully tired, not long-trip tired but life tired. I tried to hug him, but he sort of brushed his forehead against my chin and pushed me away.

As with Trisha, Mum and Dad were not invited to my home, nor did I in any way encourage them to come here. However, my wishes and well-being are of little concern to this elderly triumvirate. I’m little more than a sideshow, a useful prop for them to prove to each other how caring and family-oriented they are. Afraid Trisha was usurping her by coming here first, Mum’s been fussing around the house, spraying her scent in corners and doorways. She knows Trisha warned Susie about me before the wedding and is very suspicious of her.

They’ve begun a vicious exchange of tit-for-tat pleasantries that can only end in bloodshed. Trisha says how well I’ve done, and Mum trumps that by saying she knew I would do well, having known me since childhood. Trisha wants to give up the guest room in favor of Mum and Dad, but Mum and Dad want to sleep in the coal cellar so that Trisha won’t be disturbed by dad’s snoring, because you do snore, don’t you, Ian? Eventually I gave M amp;D my room and said I’d sleep downstairs, that it didn’t matter because I wasn’t really sleeping much anyway.

Mum stroked my hair and looked accusingly at Trisha. Trisha smiled and muttered, “So kind.” The irony of this sort of comfort is completely lost on both of them. They have nary a care that their support has resulted in my being put out of my bed.

Margie is loving it, though. They held her, one at a time, and fed her, cooing and gasping at her every move. It is lovely to see her through fresh eyes, because I forget how enchanting she is. The proportions of her facial features are perfect really, and she’s very clever. She plays little jokes, hiding things and so on, and her singing and talking is very advanced. She chats away all the time, to toys and walls and floors and shoes and the telly. She tries to boss everyone around, getting us to sit in chosen seats, hold a particular doll, eat things, and she claps her hands with pleasure whenever we do her bidding.

I was hoping with everyone here that Yeni might get a few days to herself, but Mum and Dad insisted that she join us for afternoon tea and quizzed her in pidgin Spanish. Having gone to the trouble of bastardizing her language, they were quite indignant to find the discourtesy unreciprocated. Yeni apologized in Spanish and reacted to their stonewalling by blushing and wobbling her head from side to side. Then she sloped off to hide in her room. She really must not leave.

I said I was going to the loo and went up to her room to see if she was okay. She was sitting on the end of her single bed, looking at the pictures in a book about the Romans. She had wound up the noisy little circus clock that Susie had as a child, the one with the seal balancing the ball on his nose. The anxious, tinny tick-tock bounced from wall to wall, making her seem like a child waiting out her time in detention. I gave her a quizzical thumbs-up. She raised a limp thumb back and stretched her lips across her teeth. I made a wait gesture and brought the portable television through from my room. I sat it on the chest of drawers at the end of her bed and plugged it in. I pointed at my watch. “Friends,” I said, and her big fat face lit up.

“Friends?”

“Yes,” I said and turned it on, fiddling with the aerial until I found good reception. Mum called me, and as I went to open the door and go back downstairs, Yeni darted from the bed and caught my arm, turning me around. She gave me the toothiest, cheesy grin and a big, affirmative thumbs-up. We both giggled behind our hands as Mum called again, and I dragged my heavy feet back downstairs to the unwelcome support and comfort of my family.

I got a locksmith to come this morning before Mum and Dad arrived and install a Yale on this door. It makes the room feel so much more private. When I came back up after tea and heard the firm lock slide shut, I found myself smiling and looking around, rubbing my hands, secure in the knowledge that I was up in my high attic room, alone.

Susie’ll be pleased when she does get out. I’ll give her both keys and let her get on with it.

Harvey Tucker had the cheek to phone and leave a message reminding me to look out for that file for him. I found it on the disk with the Gow files from Sunnyfields. It’s a table of the people who contacted Gow, dates of when they did, and notes of whether they came to visit or not. I can see from the top left-hand corner of the document that the table has been made up by both Tucker and Susie, so he’s not lying. He did do some of the work. I’m reluctant to hand it over, though. I can’t bring myself to admit Susie really did take the files, and I don’t want to contribute to anything else being published about Gow. Susie must have had a reason for erasing all the other copies: she obviously didn’t want Tucker to get ahold of it.

Donna McGovern’s name is in there. It says she contacted him (“2/2/98 letter, romantic content, photograph encl.”). Then the first visit (“Scottish Prison Department approval for visit. Gow approval for visit”) and a flood of letters, one a day, until the file entries stop abruptly around the time Susie got the bump. A rush of letters from strangers accompanied Gow’s wedding, presumably people wishing him well or ill or just freaks who had seen him in the paper. The most worrying correspondent is the one who wrote fifty-three times in two years (all “sexual content”) and was knocked back for a visit every time, often by Gow himself. But that was a man, a Mr. Thomas Wexler whose address is given as 221 Grape Street, Bristol. I like knowing that. I may go to Bristol one day, and I wouldn’t want to run into Mr. Wexler without knowing that about him.

I’ve started reading that “Lovers in Prison” book that I found up here. It’s a collection of case histories of women who fell in love with murderers in America. Initially I thought I was reading about Donna, but after meeting Harvey Tucker, the book takes on a whole new complexion. It’s interesting in a human-interest-story kind of way, but there aren’t a lot of surprises in it. Apparently, if you want to fall in love with a convicted murderer, it helps if you’re a fool and find it easy to lie to yourself.

The chapter I finished last night, before I fell asleep on the couch (at four-ten a.m.), said that generally the women are dissatisfied and disillusioned with their lives and see it as their last chance to attach themselves to “someone powerful.” Which means that Susie didn’t see herself as being attached to someone powerful and was trying to bridge the gap. Can every fucking thing in this unholy mess be down to my failings? I was interested to note that being Catholic, whether practicing or not, is also a predictive factor. I wonder why? Could it be the emphasis on redemption or just the ability to believe a lot of improbable shite? It’s interesting, because Donna was Catholic but Susie isn’t.

Box 2 Document 3 “Serial Beast Kills Prostitute,” 10/3/93

This is the newspaper article Gow’s tongue was found sitting on in the corner of the bothy. Susie downloaded a copy of it from Stevie Ray’s “Gow- Hard As Nails” website. The download is dated months before he was released, which just goes to prove that she didn’t have a copy to start with and so can’t possibly be the killer.

I’ve heard the website mentioned on TV, when Stevie Ray was doing his tour of the chat shows. Susie’s printed a lot of articles from it, but they’re all poor-quality. In some of them the printed text is illegibly tiny. Some have titles or paragraphs chopped in half. Nearly all of them favor the photographs over the text, even though they all use the same famous picture. Gow is standing with his shoulders hunched, fists together, elbows out to the side, pumping himself up like an end-of-pier muscle man. He has shaved the word “Growl” into his chest, although it seems to read “Groul” because his body hair is quite straight. He’s wearing a pair of children’s white plastic sunglasses. It disturbs me that they’re children’s glasses; the shaded eyepieces are much too small for his big face, and the little white legs splay out at the side of his head. But perhaps it’s only me who thinks that’s creepy: I saw a middle-aged man riding a child’s red bicycle down Dumbarton Road the other day and found it sickening, watching his old knees smash up against his chest as he tried to beat a red light.

The prosecution read this article out in court, so I’ve heard it before. I don’t think there’s anything special in it, but it was an original cutting and was five years old when the police found it, so it must have meant something to whoever left it there with Gow’s tongue on top. They’d hung on to it for long enough.

Two pictures: police tape strung around weak-looking trees on an industrial skyline and a photo of Robbie Coltrane looking moody.

Police are hunting for a serial killer after a fifth body was found yesterday, strangled and dumped on waste ground in Govan. Police say that the murder fits the profile of the Riverside Ripper. The murdered woman is believed to have been a prostitute working in the Anderston area of Glasgow. All the victims have been prostitutes so far; all have been strangled and mutilated with a knife.

Actually, they weren’t strangled. Everyone now knows that they were stabbed and had their tongues cut out, so that they bled to death. This strangling stuff must have been fed to the papers at the time to put off crank confessors.

A police spokesman called for calm and asked the public to come forward with any information they might have about a man behaving suspiciously in the Broomielaw area between the hours of twelve midnight and four on Friday morning. Women are being cautioned not to walk home after dark.

Top Criminal Psychologist Dr. Joe Fennie, who was the basis for TV’s Cracker, starring Robbie Coltrane, talked exclusively to our reporter. “This man will kill and kill until he is caught,” stated Fennie. “He will give in to his sick compulsion until we stop him.”

Previous victims include Alice Thomson, 33, Martine Pashtan, 24, Karen Dempsey, 21, and teenager Lizzie MacCorronah, 19. Lizzie, whose body was the first to be found, left behind three children now being raised by her mother.

Women’s groups are calling for greater action, claiming that police protection is inadequate.

Joe Fennie was in the news a lot at the time. He was being quoted by every paper on every case that came up in Scotland. He’d been at Sunnyfields for a few years in the eighties, so he knew all that crowd. I heard he went to work in a special facility for sex offenders down in Surrey before coming home in disgrace for some minor infraction. Susie doesn’t know him, but his appearance in the press always elicited a big eye-roll and muttering. We met him at a wedding in Carlisle four years ago. He has very bad skin and a squint. Susie says that’s why they always use a picture of Robbie Coltrane.

I can’t see what is special about this article or why the person who murdered Gow would choose it above all the rest of the coverage. It might not be special, it could just be a random article about his case, or it might be that the woman whose body was found in the article was important.

I’m sure the police have already done all this stuff and done it better than I can. I should concentrate on the stuff only I know. I keep going back to the morning of the phone call from Cape Wrath, pulling it apart, pressing my eye so close to the details that they distort and I can’t remember if I’m remembering them or filling spaces between the events. I’ve worked out the following so far.

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

Name: Andrew Gow DOB 6/23/65

Religion: N/K

Address: 3582 Cumbernauld Avenue, Cumbernauld

Occupation: Minicab driver

Marital status: Married

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.

It’s now teatime and I’ve spent the best part of today up here hiding from the crossfire. Firstly there’s Trisha and all the nasty questions I’ve been avoiding: How did Susie look when I visited? What did she say? Is she well, not being mistreated, I hope? Does she have her own room? Is she having to empty her own slop bucket? How the hell am I supposed to know all this stuff? Trisha wants to know if she can come to visit Susie, but I said no, probably not. I’ve promised to ask Susie about her living conditions the next time I go, but I won’t. I’m not driving the forty minutes there and back with Trisha in the car and having her watch me being searched. Susie only gets four visits a month, anyway, and it may be wrong, but I want them for myself. Then Mum pipes up, standing up for me, telling Trisha to write to Susie if she wants to know these things, leave the boy alone, let my people go.

It takes eight hours to drive up to Cape Wrath from Glasgow. Susie could surely have changed her mind and thought of me, or at least of Margie, once during the eight-hour drive. They showed security film from a service station during the trial, and we all watched as Susie stopped to gas the car up and bought a family-size bag of wine gums and a can of Diet Coke. On the film she is laughing and chatting with the girl behind the counter, pointing back to the car because she didn’t know the number of the pump. As the prosecution said, not exactly the behavior of a woman beside herself with worry about Donna. I’d like to think she was buying the wine gums to bribe herself onward, like I was with the toffees, but I don’t think she minded going up there. I don’t think Susie’d go anywhere reluctantly. I wonder if she’d come and visit me in prison if the situations were reversed, and I can honestly say, I don’t think she would.

My chest has been hurting from all the smoking, and I’ve got no one to blame that on but myself. I’ve been up here since lunch, transcribing and playing computer solitaire. It’s a dull but hypnotic game. I’ve cut a picture of a Greek seaside town out of the Sunday papers and stuck it up on the wall. There are whitewashed buildings in the foreground and a steep cliff over an electric-blue sea. It relaxes me. Just looking at it, I can almost feel the sun on my neck. I want to go back there.

This time two weeks ago I was still hopeful that the verdict would go our way. This will be the worst of it if she never gets out, these interminable Sundays stretching off into the future until Margie goes to university. By that time I won’t remember what it is to be happy, the loneliness will be all through me like a cancer.

I wish Susie was home. I wish she was up here working and I was downstairs shouting up at her to come down and talk to me. Even if she was up here fantasizing about Gow, I wouldn’t mind. I wouldn’t care even if she was up here thinking about touching him.

That prison-lovers book says that the women hear whatever story about the murder they want to hear; if they want him to have been protecting a helpless friend, then they’ll hear that in the story he tells; if they want to excuse him on the grounds that he was forced to kill an abusive wife, then they’ll hear that. And if they can’t mitigate the cruelty, then they’ll factor in drugs or drink to explain it. But Susie couldn’t have misheard Gow. She had his records. She was his psychiatrist.

I’m so tired of thinking about it all the time. I’m tired of second-guessing every moment we’ve spent together. I can’t sleep for thinking. Even when I manage to fall asleep, I wake up with my mind careering back and forth over a big map of what-ifs and did-shes. Some did-shes bring me close to despair. Last night on the sofa I played with a did-she that made me feel elated and warm and centered. Suppose she didn’t care for Gow at all and it’s all just a mix-up. She was talking to him in the office, nothing more. She’s my wife, still my wife, and she lies in her little prison bed, hands behind her darling head, and sees me on her ceiling, longs for my presence as I long for hers.

Maybe Susie wasn’t working all the time she was up here. Maybe she was hiding the way I am now, bristling with resentment at the people downstairs. Maybe she was sitting here in this tiny closet thinking fuck them, smoking angrily, avoiding coming down.

What is it she doesn’t want me to see in here?

Box 2 Document 5 Donna’s First Letter to Gow

48 Evington Road

Evington

Leicester

2/2/98

Dear Andrew Gow,

Forgive my writing to you out of the blue but I have been in love with you for three years now so its about time we spoke!! I saw a picture of you in the paper and knew by your eyes your a kind man. You say your not guilty of those crimes and I know it’s true. In my heart I know you will not be trapped in prison forever.

Well who is your mystery admirer!?! I am twenty three and have already been divorced. My first husband was not a kind man. He drank and did not understand that I need room to breath and grow. I am not a complete dummy. I have a GCSE in typing as you can see and an HND in catering. I have a job in a health center where I work behind the reception desk. I like dancing and going out and having a good time on the town.

Sadly my dad died two months ago and it has made me see that I should grab life while I can. That is why I am writing to you. My friends tell me I am mad but I can see an angel from heaven when I look at your picture. I LOVE YOU! I dream about you at night and think about you all day!!

Maybe you will write back. If not just remember there’s a girl out here who thinks your the greatest guy in the world!!

Take care of yourself in there.

Yours sincerely,

Donna McGovern

Fucking hell, Donna!! Learn to punctuate?! I shouldn’t take the piss out of the dead, she might come back from the grave and beat me to death with an exclamation mark. Hope not!?! I should feel an affinity with her, I suppose; she was betrayed by Susie and Gow too. Why would Gow get married if he was involved with Susie?

I found this psychology report about Gow and keep thinking that one exactly like it is being drawn up about Susie.

Box 1 Document 6 Clinical Psychological Report 1994

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGICAL REPORT ON ANDREW GOW (DOB 6/23/65): HMP BARLINNIE

1. In response to a request from the governor of the above-named prison and from Mr. Telford of the Scottish Office, I now submit this report on the above-named prisoner. The report is based on an interview of just over one hour, together with analysis of the data from a diagnostic personality test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), which the prisoner agreed to complete. The writer has not canvased the views of any of the prison officers, since she understands that their impressions will be recorded elsewhere.

2. The prisoner, charged with murder, was admitted to Barlinnie prison on December 23, 1993. He is a large man who nevertheless moves easily and talks comfortably in interview. He told the psychologist that he considers himself to be a survivor and the sort of person who adapts easily to new situations. He foresees no problems in coming to terms with a lengthy sentence. He claims he is “easy-going,” can “get on with anybody,” and is “very popular,” although he prefers his own company. Later in the interview he became very angry when asked about his ex-boss at the minicab firm who had sacked him after his arrest. He said he would like to “teach him a permanent lesson.”

3. His early family life seems to have been quite troubled. He was born and educated in Bridgeton, Glasgow, a less than salubrious area. Mr. Gow’s parents fought, principally over his father’s excessive drinking. He enjoyed school and did well up until fifth year, when he failed his GCSEs and left. His parents separated when Mr. Gow was eight. He states that his relationship with his mother was “shite.” When asked to elaborate on this statement, he declared that his mother was “a cow” who never cared for him. He became quite agitated in discussing his mother. He said she made him take responsibility for his siblings and “spoiled his chances in life.” Asked whether his relationship with his mother related to the crimes he was charged with he smiled and refused to speak on the matter. He is high on anxiety and may well have more trouble forming social bonds and restraining impulsive behavior than he declares.

4. His father is now deceased. Mr. Gow no longer has con- tact with either his mother or three sisters. He is married and states that his wife will remain with him whatever the outcome of his trial.

5. Mr. Gow’s early criminal career centered on shoplifting minor items such as cigarettes, a newspaper, and a pair of lady’s tights. As regards to car theft: Mr. Gow took a neighbor’s car and drove into the country until he ran out of gas. He was picked up walking along the M8, making his way back to Bridgeton from Lanark.

6. With regard to the theft charges, he states he was “angry with himself” but wavered when questioned as to whether he regretted getting caught or stealing in the first place. He claims that he did not get caught but confessed to the police of his own volition, showing them the items and the shops he stole them from. He had intended to give the stolen items to girls to “try to get them to like him,” a statement which belies his claim to universal popularity. The charges of drunk and disorderly and breach of the peace were brought in relation to a single series of events. Having gone for a drink after work Mr. Gow became drunk and tried to catch the bus home. He argued with the driver and resisted being ejected by holding on to a seat-back. He was not violent during this or any other incident prior to the present charges.

7. With regard to the present charges, he will not talk. When questioned, he smiles and will not be pressed further. He claims he does not “fancy” talking about the incidents.

8. Throughout the whole interview, Gow was systematic and clear in his report. The veracity of what he told has of course to be taken on trust by the writer, who has only known him very briefly. What Gow has told me has to be taken as the image of himself he wishes to portray to a relative stranger at the moment. He showed no disturbance of thought or emotion at interview, although he tends to be guarded and given to inconsistent posturing, as in his claims to be easygoing/uncrossable, very popular/a loner. No intelligence test was administered on this occasion but he is probably of at least good average intelligence.

9. Gow was slightly wary of subjecting himself to the MMPI. The latter is a well-researched inventory-type test used on both sides of the Atlantic in clinical and forensic populations. Its purpose is to scan for significant personality malfunctions or psychopathy and to measure certain factors which may have predictive value for the person concerned. It also has reliability indices which measure attitudes to test-taking, e.g., tendencies to lie, to alter responses to fit in with anticipated expectations, to exaggerate, or to deny adverse features, all of which are helpful in determining how much weight to give the overall test.

10. These indices were well above normal limits, suggesting that Mr. Gow has either a tendency to lie all the time or a desire to disguise his true profile in this test. However, the attempts to lie were done in a surprisingly intelligent and consistent manner, suggesting a degree of ability when it comes to duplicity. None of the scale scores were outside normal limits apart from the psychopathic personality scale which had a significant T score of 76. Clinically this is of note, being a relatively high score. The general pattern of his test scores and attitude to the psychologist suggest that attempts at rehabilitation may be problematic. Of particular concern is his attitude to the charged offenses. He is either refusing to talk about them because he cannot excuse them, or he simply has no memory of them. The former seems more likely. In light of his high score on the psychopathic personality scale, it is suggested that future treatment of this man should probably involve: (a) limiting his work and activities; (b) perhaps group work to attempt to prompt him to talk about his offenses; (c) always approaching his self-report with care and skepticism.

11. I will be pleased to clarify or expand on anything in this report if necessary.

I hope that it will serve some useful purpose.

Yours faithfully

Valerie Elliott