by James Nally
‘It has a name?’
‘Yes, it has a name and there are ways to manage the condition. But look, we can’t talk here.’
‘My God, this is amazing news,’ I said, ‘all I’ve ever wanted was to be able to call it something. What is it?’
‘I know you’ve got to run, Doner. Maybe now you’ll come back next week?’
I shook my head in disbelief but laughed to hide my anger.
‘I’m here, now,’ I said, trying to sound calm, ‘why don’t you tell me now?’
I spotted a café, pointed to it: ‘Come on.’
We sat at a cold metal table, face to face.
‘Well?’ I demanded.
She reached into her shiny black leather bag, grabbing a chunky bale of academia.
‘According to these studies, you suffer from something as old as humanity itself, yet it’s only starting to get proper scientific recognition now.
‘In Newfoundland, they call it the Old Hag. In China it’s called Gui Ya, which means Ghost Pressure.’
She even did that thing of pronouncing it in a Chinese accent.
‘In the West Indies, he’s called Kokma, the ghost baby that bounces on your chest and attacks your throat. The Norwegians call it Mer which is where we get the term “nightmare”. There’s a famous painting called The Nightmare, hanging in the Royal Academy, showing exactly this phenomenon.
‘In the last couple of years, this condition has been scientifically defined as sleep paralysis.’
‘Sleep paralysis,’ I repeated, ‘right.’
I’d read about apnoea and narcolepsy. At least they sounded sexy. Sleep paralysis? I’d been expecting something less specific, more complex, in Latin. Or named after some fearsome Germanic boffin, a Münchausen or a Heimlich. Sleep paralysis sounded too matter-of-fact, like glue ear or athlete’s foot or irritable bowel syndrome.
‘What makes you think it’s sleep paralysis?’
‘You exhibit all the classic signs,’ she argued, seemingly bemused by my lack of enthusiasm.
‘And they are?’
‘Well it’s a complex area.’
‘Try me. But feel free to skip over the complex stuff.’
‘Okay, well, you probably know what REM is? It’s that dreaming period of sleep when your eyes twitch violently under your eyelids?’
She was now torturing me by going up at the end of her sentences.
‘Rapid Eye Movement is when we have our most vivid dreams. You’re supposed to have non-dreaming sleep first. Then you go into REM sleep six or seven times during a night’s sleep.
‘During REM, the brain sends your body into paralysis, so that you don’t act out your dreams. It’s most likely that when you doze off, REM comes to you too quickly, before you’re properly asleep. Or, sometimes when you wake in the middle of the night, REM doesn’t snap off.
‘In either case, your body’s awake, but your mind is dreaming. What you’re seeing are dream images superimposed on waking images. As you can imagine, this is really common in narcoleptics.’
‘No, Lilian,’ I laughed, a little too desperately, ‘I don’t think you understand. Meehan was real. Marion is real. I can see her, I can feel her touch. I can smell her.’
‘Yes, they are real to you, same as the Old Hag is real. A dream is always real while you’re in it. It’s only when you wake up you realise it isn’t.’
I felt a surge of resentment. How dare she trivialise my real, terrifying, other-worldly episodes with such trite explanations.
‘So if these are just dream images, why do I feel so terrified?’
She leafed through her papers until she came across a colour-coded picture of the human brain.
‘There are two things about dreams, they tend to make no sense and they tend to be negative.’
You don’t say, I thought.
‘Look,’ she said, pointing to a part of the brain.
‘When we dream, our pre-frontal cortex, this bit we use for logic and language, to make sense of things, is switched off. But the middle brain lights up. That’s the part of the brain that controls emotions. See this bit?’
Her sharp, scarlet fingernail tapped what looked like a crinkled testicle.
‘This is the amygdala. The philosopher, René Descartes believed that the amygdala was the seat of our soul. It’s actually the seat of our fear. This is on full alert when we sleep. This is why our dreams are almost always scary.’
I got up and walked around to her side of the table for a better look, if only to slow her down.
But she was on a roll: ‘The amygdala is the “fight-or-flight” part of our brain. The bit that weighs up an immediate threat. Now, remember, this in a high state of alert when you dream.’
I had remembered.
‘Now, think of your condition: you are lying there, you think you’re awake because you can see your room and your belongings, but your brain is in REM, so your body is in paralysis, you’re finding it hard to breathe. Your amygdala is in a state of high alert, which means you’re terrified. Fear is an inherent part of the experience. The feeling of terror comes, then the bogeyman. Your visual cortex has to justify the terror you feel, so it creates an image of the thing you fear most. Two thousand years ago, people saw demons. Two hundred years ago they saw witches. These days, they see aliens.’
‘I don’t see aliens,’ I protested, ‘and I can feel Marion! I can feel her skin. I could feel Meehan strangling me.’
‘The strangling sensation is because the paralysis makes it hard for you to breathe. Your throat and chest muscles are frozen, so it feels like there’s something pressing down on your chest and your throat. It’s your brain that decides what that something is.’
My mind raced. I had to accept that, when Tony Meehan attacked me in hospital, he was definitely my bogeyman. After all, I’d just witnessed him attacking my girlfriend. Maybe Marion became my bogeywoman as soon as I stood between her body and the open window, making her attacks on me some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Her terrifying antics had come from the darkest recesses of my own twisted imagination. This was all feasible, credible. I just didn’t believe it.
I returned to my side of the table, slumping in the seat. Lilian cocked her head and studied me, as if sitting at an easel.
‘You seem, I don’t know … annoyed?’
‘I’m fine,’ I lied, ‘I’m just coming to terms with the fact that I’m seemingly incapable of distinguishing dreams from reality.’
‘I sense that what I’ve said has upset you?’
‘I mean, with respect, Lilian, sleep paralysis doesn’t explain how I floated into Eve’s room and saw her getting attacked that time, does it? Or why Marion only came to me after I’d attended the scene of her murder?’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ she said softly. ‘I think I’ve found some of the answers. There are so many things that don’t make sense. You say you saw the time on the clock radio when Meehan attacked Eve. It is beyond dispute in the science of sleep that you can’t read numbers or letters in your dreams. I’d like to drill down into all these elements in your case.’
‘How can they even know that?’ I laughed, shuffling awkwardly, ignoring her determined eyes.
‘The first time we met, Doner, you said you wanted to know what was happening to you, and find a way to manage it.’
I nodded.
‘I think I can help you manage it. But only if you let me help you. Look Doner, I’m making progress here. But I need you fully on board. This is it, we either go all out or we call it a day.’
I recognised the cons right away:
1: Time.
2: Opening up and all that.
I considered the pros.
Lilian was the only person who knew my entire story, albeit in a condensed format. If there was a clinical explanation for my lurid ‘slasher movie’ episodes – the cop in me felt convinced that there had to be a clinical explanation – then she was the only person equipped to find it. I didn’t believe she could
cure me, but I liked the idea of getting a decent night’s sleep every once in a while, if only so I could live a normal life.
But there was a sweeter incentive for me to keep going with this; vindication. She’d scoffed at my theory that Marion Ryan’s spirit wanted to help me nail her killer. Now I’d been brought onto the squad investigating her murder, one thing felt certain: I’d go back to 21 Sangora Road.
I’d attended the crime scene on two previous occasions. Both times Marion’s ghost/spirit had launched deranged assaults upon me. What if it happened again? How would Lilian explain away a third encounter? ‘Highly improbable’, indeed.
I don’t believe in ghosts, spirits, the afterlife or any of that stuff. But what Lilian had singularly refused to appreciate was how real these encounters had been.
‘You’re on,’ I said.
Chapter 16
Clapham Police Station, South London
Thursday, August 8, 1991; 11:45
Although deserted, the incident room hummed with subdued intent. Barely larger than an average sitting room, it was crammed with phones and fat computer terminals. Stained coffee cups jockeyed for space with full ashtrays and used sandwich wrappers.
And to think they call us pigs.
Whiteboards lined the walls, listing the names of investigating officers and the computer codes of what leads they were chasing up. Nearby, a large picture map of London was dotted with yellow Post-its.
There was no sign of anyone to set me up, so I headed to the canteen. The overwhelming stench of fried pig had the curious effect of making me both hungry and queasy. I settled for a mug of Nescafé Rough Blend coffee and a can of cola, hoping the combined hit would crank me into first.
I returned to the incident room and took a good look at that note-spattered map of London.
I heard a noise and turned to see a chubby man in his forties feeding disks into one of the fat computers.
‘Hi,’ I said walking over, ‘I’m Donal Lynch, Acting DC.’
He nodded glumly without looking up.
After about ten minutes, he said: ‘I trust you’ve done this before?’
‘What, use a computer?’
‘No, fly a 747,’ he spat, now glaring up at me.
Was this some sort of test?
‘I haven’t used a computer since school,’ I said flatly.
‘Well it’s not my job to teach you,’ he said, getting to his feet and flouncing off.
I typed tentatively. Soon I found myself chewing through megabytes of Space Invader green text. Every investigative ‘action’ had been logged, numbered and described. Separate folders contained statements and reports. I knew exactly where I wanted to start.
During her nocturnal burglaries of my mind, Marion had repeatedly slammed doors. Her message, if I believed in her, had been clear: a door somewhere holds vital evidence to the identity of her killer. Could be a house door, could be a car door – but a door was where I’d find the smoking gun clue.
I clicked open the forensics folder, then the fingerprints file and sought out anything connected to doors at 21 Sangora Road.
I knew from my training that fingerprints are a lottery. A good print on the right surface can last for years. In one celebrated case, forensics dated a single print back forty years. Somewhat perversely, dating fresh prints is more difficult. There are so many factors to take into consideration: the surface the print is left on, whether it has been made with sweat or other substances, the air temperature.
The report said they found fresh fingerprints belonging to Marion’s husband Peter Ryan and his colleague Karen Foster on the front door and on the connecting door into the flat. All they could say with certainty was that these prints were less than twelve hours old. In other words, the impressions had been made sometime between ten a.m. and ten p.m. on the day of Marion’s murder.
They’d found lots of other prints left within the same time frame: sixteen sets on the front door and seven on the internal door to the flat. This seemed a surprisingly large number to me. I thought about the front door to our flat: there’d be no more than three or four different fingerprints planted there on any given day. The front door to the entire block would be plastered with them: ours was one of forty-eight flats. Marion and Peter’s flat was one of just two behind that front door. Yet they’d found sixteen sets of day-old prints on the communal front door. I made a note to investigate the frantic comings-and-goings at number 21 on the day of Marion’s murder.
I then read that they’d cross-referenced all of these prints with police records: none of them matched a known offender.
That was that. The killer’s prints could be on both doors, we just didn’t know who they belonged to. Or Marion’s husband Peter was the killer. Maybe that’s what Marion had been telling me during her ghostly visitations: look no further than him. But unless a witness saw Peter at 21 Sangora Road at around six p.m. on the day of the murder, his prints on the doors were evidentially useless.
I felt flat and a little foolish. Naïvely, I thought Marion had been leading me directly to her killer. But I refused to give up on the idea that a door somehow held the key. I just needed to work out which door, and how.
An overview report in the forensic folder directed me to a filing cabinet containing the scene of crime photos.
These included a close-up of Marion’s torn, dangling fingernail. I couldn’t understand why this single image flooded my body with such leaden sadness. I thought of Marion as a baby; how her mum and dad would have marvelled at this hand and treasured it. And as she grew up, they would have grasped it tightly to cross the road. Her dad held this hand when he gave her away to Peter, probably thinking he’d done his job, that she was safe now.
I got back to the computer to track down the pathology report. I felt under real pressure to find something – anything – that pointed to Peter Ryan. Shep had given me this golden opportunity: I didn’t want to let him down.
Bruising showed that Marion had received a karate-style chop between her upper lip and nose which may have momentarily stunned her. The forty-nine stab wounds were delivered in rapid succession; seven to her chest, nine to her throat, the rest to her lower stomach, back and bottom. One wound pierced her right hand as she tried to ward off the blows. Some were delivered with great force – suggesting a male attacker – but others were mere pinpricks. Could it have been a two-hander? Peter and his secret lover? What about Karen, the colleague who’d been with Peter when he found the body?
The two ‘significant wounds’ were one to her throat which slashed her windpipe and one to the left side of her back which pierced her lung. According to the pathologist, the force of these blows suggested they had been delivered by a man. She died through a combination of loss of blood and asphyxiation as it flowed into her lungs.
The pathologist estimated that the attack would have lasted between two and three minutes. The murder weapon appeared to be a five-inch blade. There had been no sexual assault or wounds to her genitalia. I felt these last facts warranted attention. Presumably, the Lone Wolf Killer had to be some sort of sexual deviant. Didn’t the lack of sexual assault or genital injury point more towards a domestic? The pathologist didn’t say so.
He put her time of death at six p.m., with an hour window each side. A handwritten note said: ‘CCTV provides more precise timing.’ The pathologist noted that he’d never come across a domestic murder victim with more than nine stab wounds. One nil to the Lone Wolf Killer theory.
I took the pathologist’s cue and tracked down the CCTV tapes. I hunted and found a VHS player in a tiny room, closed the blinds and watched with horrible fascination as Marion Ryan strode purposefully to her death.
She left her place of work – Reuters news agency on Fleet Street, where she’d been employed as a copy taker – at 17.06 p.m.
‘God, what are you wearing, love?’ I couldn’t help myself saying. In her big flowery dress, thick tights and heavy shoes, she could have been heading to the Ballroom of Roma
nce.
She turned left onto Waterloo Bridge. The next camera captured her on the bridge, from above, the murky old Thames flowing lazily beneath. The song ‘Waterloo Sunset’ drifted into my mind. I banished it out of respect.
She walked efficiently, without fear – never once checking behind her. This wasn’t a woman worried about her wellbeing. No one appeared to be tracking her. Time-lapsed stills recorded her ghost-like progress across the ants’ nest concourse of Waterloo station. Again, she didn’t check behind her and had no obvious pursuer.
She must have caught an overground train because the next tape came from Clapham Junction train station. The time read 17.32 as she turned right at the main exit, setting off up St John’s Hill. The fuzzy frames revealed no potential stalker/killer. She looked oblivious to what lay ahead. She crossed at the traffic lights, just yards from the entry to Strathblaine Road, turned left – and that was the last frame we had of her.
The empty screen flickered and shuddered, as if aware somehow of the grave magnitude of what happened next. I thwarted all emotions by fixing upon cold, hard facts and ordering them in my mind: Whoever murdered Marion had waited for her on Sangora Road. The question is, was it someone she knew or an opportunist maniac? At that time of day – rush hour – someone must have seen something.
Back at the computer, I clicked open the door-to-door enquiries file. The team had asked neighbours on Sangora Road if they’d seen anything suspicious on the afternoon/evening of Marion’s murder. What a stupid question, I thought. I mean, what’s suspicious? You might as well ask if they’d seen any maniacs running about brandishing blood-soaked, five-inch knives. Surely they should just ask people what they saw that day. It’s up to us to decide if any of it points to a suspect. I made a note of this. It was something to toss Shep’s way if I failed to come up with anything better.
Unsurprisingly, the officers’ limited questionnaire yielded nothing. I was running out of time, and decided that the most likely place to find anything incriminating against Peter would be in his supposedly rock-solid alibi.
He and Karen had made brief statements on the night of Marion’s murder, then detailed statements two days later. The devil is always in the detail, so I focused on the latter.