by Ruth Dugdall
‘I think,’ I say carefully, ‘you did exactly the right thing.’ My only answer, and a lie. But I want to keep him on my side. He’ll be useful to me now he’s going to be assessing Dad.
In the corner of my eye, I see someone arrive. It’s Holly, and I assume she’s here for me, but then she catches Clive’s eye and waves. She gestures to the stack of books, indicating that she isn’t going to disturb the group, she’ll wait. Interesting – the two of them are working together then.
‘Can I tell you about my week?’ I say, knowing Holly must be listening.
They all lean forward. I gather from this that I was wrong about them not reading the paper.
‘You all know that my daughter, Victoria, is at boarding school in Norfolk. She was sent there when she was just twelve, because I’d had a breakdown and I was sectioned to the Bartlet. My family felt it was best if she was away from my madness, and once she’d gone, nothing I could say would persuade them she should come home. These past few days I’ve realised something: it wasn’t my fault that I was ill two years ago. I’ve always thought my illness was because I’m weak, but I’m not going to feel guilty any more. I’m not letting anyone take my girl away from me again. I’m not simply going to accept that other people know better.’
The group are silent, then spontaneously they begin to clap. They cheer me on, because I’m like them, because they know what’s happened to me and I’m talking like a survivor. I was alone in saying you didn’t shoot yourself, and I’ve been vindicated in that at least. I have to be certain of who shot you, and I’m not going to be silenced any more.
Whatever comes next, I will survive.
30
Holly
Holly arrived at the library to find Team Talk still in session. She hadn’t expected to see Cassandra among the group, given her mum only died two days ago, but then she revised this thought: That’s even more reason for her to come. She’s getting support.
Not wanting to intrude, she lost herself among the shelves of books. She could sense the discussion had been disturbed by her arrival – the conversation became quieter, but then Cassandra was speaking, fairly loudly, and the group erupted into applause. Holly saw that Cassandra was smiling bravely, looking a different person from the woman who had sat beside a hospital bed, anxiously waiting for her mother to wake up. Maybe Maya’s death had come as a relief, after a week of uncertainty.
Clive drew the meeting to an early close and people began to make their way out. Holly took the opportunity to speak with Cassandra, who was collecting up used mugs.
‘Cass, I was so sorry to hear the sad news. How are you?’
‘Bearing up. Considering my mum’s dead, and my dad’s in prison.’
Holly didn’t know quite how to respond to the baldness of that. ‘If there’s anything I can do . . . ?’
She smiled sadly. ‘Just keeping on being my friend, Holly. Can you do that?’
‘I’m sure I can.’ As she said it, Holly felt herself being boxed into a corner: she knew she shouldn’t promise friendship when she was secretly speaking with Alfie Avon, and when her own obsession with what had happened at Innocence Lane was nothing to do with friendship, and everything to do with her unresolved past.
‘Actually, Cass, I’m going with Clive to interview your dad.’
‘Oh?’ Though her smile didn’t falter, Cass crossed her arms.
‘Just as an observer – Clive suggested it,’ Holly said, disgusted with herself for sounding so passive.
‘Well,’ said Cassandra, turning to collect more mugs, ‘please tell me how it goes. As for me, I have a funeral to organise. Do you know if the hospital would have an issue releasing the body, anything that might delay me?’
‘There’ll be an autopsy. I can find out how long that’ll take, if you like?’
‘Thanks. I want to arrange things as soon as possible.’
‘Cass, when I see your dad, I could pass on a message?’
Cassandra straightened her spine, and Holly saw a chrome colour radiate off her like armour. She was keeping herself protected with this show of strength.
‘I have nothing to tell him. But . . . can you tell me . . .’
‘Yes?’ Holly reached out to touch Cassandra’s arm, seemingly as a comforting gesture, but really so she could tune in to her feelings. Her emotions ran through Holly’s veins like molten tar, heavy and dark. Mistrust and doubt were clearly there. Holly just couldn’t tell if she was experiencing Cassandra’s mirrored feeling or simply her own.
‘Tell me afterwards if you believe him.’
Holly waited as Clive clicked himself into the passenger seat of her Fiat 500, then they set off on the winding drive to Norwich. They chatted about Leif ’s obsession with Ingrid Bergman, about Ellen’s obsession with going on a Christmas cruise. As they trundled up the A140, they fell into comfortable silence and Holly’s thoughts drifted to Hector, this blunt instrument of a man, who would have just learned that his wife was dead.
Her inclination was that he wasn’t cold-hearted, yet for him to shoot his wife while sleepwalking seemed bizarre and – frankly – unbelievable. ‘What’s your gut feeling, Clive? Do you believe Hector was asleep when he shot Maya?’
He breathed out, slowly, and ran a hand through his dishevelled hair, probably the nearest it had come to being brushed today. He was like a scruffy hound, one that was so loyal its ragged looks only made you love it more.
‘It’s not about gut feelings, Holly. It’s about evidence and scientific analysis.’
Clive was saying the right things, but she knew that he was holding back on her. His battered leather case was half-open on his lap and he began to sift through his notes as if they might hold the answers.
‘But the opinion of a consultant psychiatrist like yourself counts hugely, doesn’t it? Especially when the main suspect says he was asleep when he shot his wife. The jury will struggle with it.’
Clive abandoned his case notes and sat back in the passenger seat. The road before them wound around villages, with flat fields in-between. The A140 was notorious for being slow, and heaven help any driver stuck behind a tractor.
‘I think you’re confusing my expertise with that of a psychic. I can’t say if Hector was asleep or awake.’
Holly stared ahead at the crooked road, the fenland’s marshy scent in her sinuses, its dusty taste in her mouth. Norfolk’s wide-open spaces dizzied her senses.
‘What if Hector was fully awake and he’s trying to get away with this?’ Holly said. ‘Do we know for certain that Hector even has a history of sleepwalking, apart from what he and Janet have told us?’
‘It will only be documented if he’s seen his doctor about it. And Hector doesn’t strike me as the sort who’d make much use of his local surgery,’ Clive agreed. ‘Luckily, we have the facilities to run sleep tests on him, so long as he gets bail.’
‘And would they be conclusive?’ Holly asked.
‘The EEG will analyse his brain waves. We’ll be looking for unusual activity during the non-REM phase, and trying to establish if the part in his brain that should disable movement while he dreams is faulty.’
‘You make him sound like a car, the brain like an engine.’
Clive liked that and chuckled. They had reached the outskirts of Norwich quickly, the roads being fairly empty, and were just minutes away from the prison. ‘I suppose, to me, that’s how it is. What about you, Holly? What does your synaesthesia tell you about Hector?’
‘That’s not an exact science either.’
‘Still,’ he said, smiling, ‘I’d like to know.’
Holly thought about Hector when she saw him last. His stubble, his grey eyes, his battered skin. And she pictured an ancient tree with twisted branches, standing alone on a desolate plain. She could sense its proud roots under the earth, and she could hear the movement, the life, hidden between the branches, the wild creatures who sought sanctuary there, to whom the tree, ugly and gnarled though it was, offered protectio
n.
‘Okay, I’ll tell you: I sense that he loves his wife and that he didn’t shoot her. But that he knows who did.’
When the prison officer brought Hector Hawke to the windowless interview booth, he looked a haunted man, with hunched posture and bloodshot eyes. He tried not to falter as he took the empty seat, but Holly felt him weakening, like a tree swaying in a storm, vulnerable to any harsh gust. Grief had taken him over.
‘The police have got my confession. What more do you people want from me?’
Clive slid a jotter and pen from the briefcase. ‘I’m here at the request of your own solicitor, Hector. Holly is a trainee paramedic, and is simply here to observe me. Unless you’d prefer she didn’t?’
Hector shrugged, looked at her. ‘Can’t see what difference it makes. She was there at the beginning of all this – she might as well stay.’
‘Thank you,’ Holly said. ‘I’m so sorry about Maya.’ She took the seat furthest back from the desk in the small room, and waited as Clive placed his briefcase on the floor and sat down directly opposite Hector, the small table between them.
‘Okay, Hector, so I’m going to be preparing the psychiatric evaluation. Shall we begin?’
Despite Hector’s weather-beaten face, his rolled-up sleeves revealed thick arms and he had a neck like a bulldog. ‘Psychiatrists are for mental folk. Is Jackson makin’ out I’m mad?’ He looked towards Holly and she could see he was agitated, and his bloodshot eyes looked damp. He was an old man and beaten by all that had happened, he’d lost his wife, but he was still fighting.
Clive clicked the end of his pen, scribbled on the jotter to make the ink flow. ‘That’s a good question, Mr Hawke. Sleep disorders are indicators of mental illnesses in some cases, although not in every case. The last time I met you, you claimed to know nothing of how or why Maya was shot. I understand that you’re now saying you shot her in your sleep?’
The old man pushed his damaged right hand so that it was held fast in the other. He looked at Clive closely, as if measuring his weight. ‘Yup.’
‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to say more than that, if I’m to write this report.’
‘What’s in it for me? I’ve lost everythin’ now she’s gone.’ He lowered his head.
‘Your freedom, Hector,’ Clive said. ‘If you were sleepwalking when you shot your wife, you can’t be held responsible. It’s non-insane automatism: you acted without conscious awareness.’
Holly watched this sink into the man’s understanding, saw his strong brow crease further under its weight. If no sleep disorder were found, any jury would be likely to convict him on the strength of his confession, in which case he’d be looking at a mandatory life sentence. Hector had a lot to lose, if he didn’t co-operate.
‘I can’t tell you anythin’. Only that Maya’s dead and it’s my fault.’ He hung his head, and the tears he didn’t shed seemed to be dammed up inside his hunched and shaking body.
A shiver of premonition went through Holly: he really did feel guilty.
Her question came unbidden. ‘How do you know you’re responsible?’
He looked at her with wild, angry eyes. ‘Because I woke to find Maya shot, with my gun at her side.’
‘And yet you let everyone believe Maya attempted suicide,’ Holly replied, thinking: everyone but me and Cassandra.
Hector slumped, as if all his weight were in his shoulders. ‘I should have confessed from the off, I see that now. We thought if it looked like attempted suicide, then no one would ask no more questions. Daniel said with his radio show, people knowin’ who he is and that, it was for the best. I suppose none of us was thinkin’ properly that mornin’.’
‘Wait,’ said Holly urgently, leaning forward. ‘You’re saying Daniel knew all along too? That he was at the farm that morning?’
Hector’s face paled. ‘You’re just here to observe, aren’t you? So why not keep your mouth shut. In fact,’ he said, turning to Clive, ‘I’ve changed my mind. I want her out of the room.’
Holly arrived home to find her flat cold and empty. She made herself a very large cup of coffee, cradling it for warmth while she studied the photos of her family on the fridge. So, Daniel was colluding with Hector all along. He’d known Maya hadn’t shot herself. But why lie, why go to such lengths to pretend it was attempted suicide if Hector had really been asleep? And Holly, along with the paramedics, had been at the farm just after the shooting. They’d entered as soon as the police had declared it safe, and there was no sign of Daniel. Why had he stayed away all that morning, only coming to the hospital hours later?
She sent Cass a text: I’m back from the prison, if you want to talk? Then she waited.
Sipping her coffee, Holly felt desperately sad. Maya’s death had brought it back to her, the fragility of life, and she wanted more than ever to be with people who loved her. She booted up her laptop, thinking she’d Skype her parents if they were awake. Then she saw that Jamie was online at last. When was the last time she’d spoken to him, without her parents being there? She couldn’t even think of a time: Christmas, summer vacation, it all revolved around mealtimes and her parents’ chatter. In truth, her brother was largely a two-dimensional presence in her life, and had been since that Halloween. She needed to talk to him about it, a conversation that was years overdue. She pressed ‘video call’ and listened to the sound of a non-connection, reaching across time zones and miles. Come on, Jamie, pick up.
He didn’t. So she typed a message in the vacant box below: We really need to talk about Innocence Farm. Google it, you’ll see why.
She was about to close down her laptop when she saw an email had just arrived from Clive. It read:
Holly,
In the car you shared with me your thoughts on the case, so now I’m sharing mine. Like I said, I’m no mind reader, but these are the facts as I understand them. You may also be interested in the case comparisons: they could be useful references for your assignment. I don’t think Hector is lying. And that’s what you really wanted to know, isn’t it?
Clive
There was a file attached, marked confidential. Holly clicked it open.
Preliminary notes on Hector Hawke.
Age: 62
Status: Currently remanded to HMP Norwich, hospital wing.
Background:
Hector Hawke was born in Kenley, Suffolk, and married into the family who owned the farmland there, taking it over when he was still in his early twenties. Innocence Farm predominantly rears chickens and pigs, sold exclusively to a high-end supermarket. There is also an area of woodland used for game shoots. He has had help managing the farm for a number of years from a local man, Ashley Cley.
Hector Hawke shows some reluctance to talk, although it must be noted that when I first met him, shortly after Maya Hawke was shot, he was in a state of shock. His recent arrest was as a direct result of Hector Hawke’s confession, and since his remand, Maya Hawke has sadly died.
He now states that on the morning of November 1st, he shot Maya Hawke, his wife. Although he has repeated this claim to me, he’s unwilling or unable to provide further details, saying he has no recollection of what happened. A point to note is that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) provokes memory loss, and this is a not uncommon result of witnessing violence, even for the perpetrator.
This is my first case of somnambular violence, but I have come across other sleep disorders during my 30 years of practice. Of all sleep disorders, sleepwalking is the least well researched as it does not have the same clear pattern that accompanies better understood sleep disorders such as sleep apnoea or narcolepsy, which can be more clearly identified during standard clinical sleep studies. I intend to conduct a sleep study (with EEG and overnight monitoring) on Hector Hawke at the Bartlet Hospital.
Maya Hawke was fatally injured. A jury will struggle to accept that someone can load, aim and fire a gun while asleep. In cases where sleepwalkers have committed murder, the verdicts have been unpredictable, resulting i
n either full acquittal or prison sentences.
Current estimates place the rate of sleepwalking at around 4 per cent of the population – and the percentage is higher in children. It is documented that sleepwalkers can drive, cook, operate machinery, have intercourse; and yet the brain receptors for – say – recognising a loved one, are dormant.
It would seem that Hector Hawke’s first experience of sleep disturbance took place when he was a child. This is not unusual. In fact, sleepwalking in children is relatively common, though the onset of sleepwalking can happen at any age. Hector Hawke recounts several specific incidents worth relaying here:
He tells me that his parents were disturbed by his sleepwalking, and discouraged him from discussing it.
Once he left his teenage years, these incidents did become less pronounced, and Hector Hawke believed he had ‘grown through it’. However, he still had what he called ‘night terrors’, when he would sit bolt upright, believing himself to be in danger. This was such a common occurrence that, after her daughter left home, Maya Hawke sometimes slept in her daughter’s bedroom, although on the night of the attack this was not possible as Cassandra Hawke was staying at the farm overnight.
Hector Hawke knew Maya Hawke when they were young, living as they both did in a small rural village. They were married shortly after Maya Hawke inherited the farm, following her parents’ tragic death. Hector Hawke was in his early twenties at the time, Maya Hawke a few years older. Their only child, Cassandra, was born just seven months later. When asked about the nature of the marriage, Hector Hawke was reticent, and seems a man uncomfortable with, and unused to, discussing his emotions. This is not uncommon for a man of his age, and he was visibly agitated when I tried to probe further.
What we know about sleepwalking crimes, or more specifically, non-insane automatism, derives largely from a few sensational cases that have challenged and redefined the way we see the sleeping brain. In 1997, in America, Scott Falater, a quiet family man, dedicated to the Mormon faith, was seen by a neighbour stabbing his wife over 40 times and pushing her into the family swimming pool. Seemingly asleep, he changed out of his bloodstained clothes, and put them – along with the knife – in the boot of his car. When police arrived, he said he had no idea what was going on. This lack of memory is a key feature of automatism.
