I MADE THESE NOTES ON THE PLANE ON THE WAY HOME.
1. Donna McGovern lived in Leicester and grew up there. She lived with her father, who died, and she broke her collarbone when she was small.
2. A body was discovered recently that matched the dental records and medical history of the real Donna McGovern, whose blood was found in the Golf Polo.
Conclusion: Donna McGovern is dead.
The woman Susan has been dealing with was not Donna McGovern. I will now refer to her as Donna II.
1. She knew Donna McGovern, well enough to know that she had broken her collarbone when she was little.
2. Someone set off from Leicester with Donna I in the white Golf Polo, but only Donna II ever made it to that house in Kirkintilloch.
3. Donna I’s body was apparently only recently dead, but she can’t have been kept as a prisoner in Kirki. Journalists were hanging around the house. Anyone could have found her. Could she have been killed in the Golf on the way up and stored in the humming deep freezer in the garage? As long as she was eventually deposited somewhere obscure enough and allowed to defrost properly, there would be no evidence of freezing at the cellular level unless she was defrosted and refrozen several times. It would explain Donna’s renting such an isolated cottage: she’d need somewhere private with a big deep freeze.
Conclusion: Donna II is probably not dead.
Having considered this list for most of the journey, I can now draw up the following list of important questions:
1. This woman passed herself off as Donna to meet Gow. Why would it be necessary to complicate it and pass herself off as someone living to get in? Why not go as a nonexistent person?
2. Who the fuck is she?
Did Susie know Donna II wasn’t Donna? I think she had an idea that something didn’t add up, judging from the video interview of Donna, the Evington title for her account of Cape Wrath, and the fact that she suspected Donna of the murders. But she didn’t tell anyone or hand over the hotel letter.
And why did Donna II need to pass herself off as someone else? She must have known that she, as herself, wouldn’t get through the security checks to see Gow. She needed a plausible, real identity that would stand up to scrutiny: when she met Donna I in Leicester, she must have known she would fit the profile. I imagine Donna I with downcast eyes and work-sore hands. For an Asian woman with a house that clean to say she was a good, modest girl, she must have been madly passive. And along comes Donna II and takes her firmly by the hand, introducing her to a whole new world of sensuality and control, until she pulls over in the car on the way to Scotland and kills her, the downcast eyes wild with fright and confusion, the work-sore hands scrabbling at a handle, at a seat, fighting back for once, and losing. During their time together, did Susie give Donna her wedding ring as a sign of loyalty and cover up by claiming it had been stolen? Susie said it was over in evington.doc. Perhaps Donna and Gow got it together and went up north. Donna called and Susie went for her, and maybe one more rejection drove Susie to kill.
It’s the audacity of Donna II that astonishes me. She gave interview after interview to the papers and charged a fortune, had her photo taken a hundred times. Donna II always covered her teeth. She covered her teeth when she smiled in the video, and she didn’t let Stevie Ray use photos where her teeth showed. She did that because she knew there must be no photographic record to compare with the body when it was eventually found. How much foresight and presence of mind must it take to always remember to cover your teeth? She had planned this months ahead, at least from the first videotaped interview, perhaps from the first untraceable letter to the discovery of Donna’s body.
She must have had a lot of nerve. She stood in front of the press, asking them to look at her, demanding their attention, charging money. There couldn’t be a better way to avoid examination.
There is a lesson there for me, and it’s a startling one. If I gave one interview to a paper and said nothing interesting, no one would bother me again. More important, they’d stop watching me.
I could go abroad. I could do what I like.