Grand Cayman
‘The average human spends thirty-three years of their life asleep.’
She leans closer, enough for me to catch a gust of expensive perfume. This is usually the moment when I know. ‘And that’s what you do?’
‘Yes.’
‘A sleep doctor?’
‘I study people who commit crimes when they sleep.’ I still have ‘Dr’ before my name on business cards. Dr Benedict Prince, The Abbey, Harley Street. I am an expert in sleep. Nowhere do I claim to be a medical doctor.
She sees that I’m serious. ‘How’s that even possible?’
‘Don’t you ever wonder what you might have done when you were asleep?’
Most people get uncomfortable right around here. The majority of crimes have a distancing factor. We revel in stories about people just like us; but who are also not like us. But sleep doesn’t allow that qualification.
Sleep is the one universal, the night as constant as the day.
‘What kind of crimes?’
She hasn’t changed the topic. I still have her attention. ‘All the worst ones.’
‘Surely people would wake up?’
‘Not if they’re sleepwalking. I’ve known patients who lock their doors and drive their cars while still asleep. Some people even kill.’
‘Surely you’d remember?’
‘From the lines around your eyes, I’m guessing you slept five and a half hours last night.’
She frowns. ‘It’s that obvious?’
‘Do you have any memory of what happened during those five and a half hours?’
She pauses, cupping her chin in her right hand. ‘I dreamt something.’
‘Like what?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘My point is proved.’
Her eyes suddenly change now. She looks at me differently. Her voice is louder, the body language animated. ‘Wait, there was that case. What was it called—’
This is the final point. Few dates ever reach this far. I bore them with my job description. I scare them away with stories about crimes committed during sleep. If that doesn’t work, then this last thing always gets me.
No one stays once they realise.
No one.
‘Anna O,’ I say. I take a final sip of my wine – an expensive Merlot, more’s the pity – and then reach for my jacket.
‘You’re the guy. In the photo. The psychologist.’
I smile dimly. I check my watch. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I was.’
It was the photo on the front of every major daily newspaper after it happened – my arrest, my disgrace. Tragedy seems to cling to that day.
I am a different person. I am the same person.
I wait for the question because it is the question I am always asked. It is the one mystery that, despite everything – Harriet’s death, the awakening, the evidence in the flat – still lingers. It divides families, spouses, even friends. It is the one question no one seems able to let go of. The lust for a puppet-master, a deity silently pulling the strings.
Patient X. Anna Ogilvy.
‘Was she guilty?’ my date asks, or the woman who was formerly my date. ‘When she stabbed those two people. Did she really get away with murder?’