The Wrong Mother

by Sophie Hannah

  Simon prepared himself to receive unwanted information about Whewell College ’s intruder alarm system or choral scholars’ cars being vandalised. A lot of civilians seemed to think that all police officers ought to make themselves available to deal with all crimes, irrespective of geography. Simon tried not to look bored in advance.

  ‘I’m worried about this book Keith’s writing,’ said Hey, lowering himself into an armchair. Simon instantly changed his mind about the man. ‘Keith Harbard. I know he’s been working with you. He was here just before you, actually. I tried, yet again, to talk him out of it…’

  ‘He’s writing a book?’ This was the first Simon had heard of it. ‘About family annihilation killings?’

  ‘He’s planning to use the Brethericks as his main case study.’

  ‘Mark Bretherick will do everything in his power to stop that from happening,’ said Simon, hoping it was true.

  Hey nodded. ‘That’s the trouble, for people like Keith and me. We’re researching familicide, and we publish our research. But the women whose husbands have killed their children before committing suicide don’t want some academics coming along and writing about it. They see us as careerists, profiting from their misery.’

  ‘I don’t blame them,’ said Simon.

  Hey sat forward. ‘I don’t either,’ he said, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop working on the topic. Familicide’s a terrible crime, one of the worst human beings have managed to come up with. It’s important that people think about it.’

  ‘Especially if those people get promoted as a result?’

  ‘I was a professor long before I first took an interest in family killings. There’s no more promotion for me. I work on familicide because I want to understand it, because I would like it never to happen again. All my writing on the subject is in pursuit of that sole aim.’

  Simon couldn’t help but be impressed by Hey’s seriousness. ‘All right. So you’re not in it for careerist reasons. Same true of Harbard?’

  Hey’s face changed. He looked as if a part of his body had started to hurt. ‘Keith’s been a mentor to me my whole career. He was the external examiner for my PhD, my referee for this job. He took me under his wing from the start. I know he can be a bit full of himself-’

  ‘You’re defending him,’ Simon pointed out. ‘I didn’t attack him.’

  Hey sighed. ‘No, but I’m about to. Much as I hate doing it.’ He hesitated. Simon tried not to look too attentive, a tactic that either worked well or not at all. ‘I’m worried he’s out of control. ’

  ‘Out of control?’ It wasn’t what Simon had been expecting. He saw Harbard as a man who managed his own career with a cool, clear head, more effectively than any PR could.

  ‘Can I get you a drink, before I launch in?’ said Hey. ‘Sorry, should have offered ages ago.’

  Simon shook his head.

  ‘I’d really hate for Keith to find out I’d… voiced any reservations. Can you make sure it doesn’t get back to him?’

  ‘I can try.’

  ‘He’s a lovely guy. I wouldn’t say he’s a close friend, but-’

  ‘Why not?’ Simon interrupted.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You say you’ve known him your whole career, he’s been your mentor-I assumed you were good friends.’

  ‘It’s always been more of a professional relationship. We don’t socialise. Although… well, sometimes Keith talks to me about his personal life.’ Hey looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Quite often, I suppose.’

  ‘But he never asks you about yours?’

  Hey’s guilty smile told Simon he’d guessed correctly. ‘He knows the title of every book and article I’ve ever written, but he occasionally forgets my name-calls me Joshua. I doubt he has a clue that I’m married and soon to be a father of two.’

  ‘Twins?’ Simon felt obliged to ask, aware once again of the deadened space inside him where his feelings ought to be. Would he ever have a child? It was looking increasingly unlikely.

  ‘No, no.’ Hey laughed. ‘Thank goodness. No, one already hatched, the second a work in progress.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Don’t.’ Hey raised his hand to stop Simon. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit superstitious. Accepting congratulations before I know everything’s going to be okay, you know? There’s still a long way to go. Do you believe in the idea of tempting fate?’

  Simon did. He believed someone had tempted fate-on his behalf and beyond all endurance-before he was born. That would explain his life so far.

  ‘I feel as if I’m to blame,’ said Hey. ‘I was the one who got Keith interested in familicide in the first place. Did he tell you that?’

  ‘No.’ Simon resisted the ignoble urge to tell Hey that Harbard had not once mentioned his name.

  ‘I used to work more on the relationship between the criminal and society, on the social rehabilitation of criminals, attitudes to reoffending, that sort of thing. There was this one guy, Billy Cass, who I used to visit in prison a lot. You get quite close to these people, through the work. Well, you must find the same thing in your job.’

  Simon said nothing. He’d never been close to a scrote in his life apart from physically, geographically. That was bad enough.

  ‘Prisons, I should say. Billy was in and out, in and out. He’s out at the moment but he’ll be in again soon. That’s life as far as he’s concerned. He doesn’t even mind it.’

  Simon nodded. He was familiar with the type. Billy, he thought. William. But the surname was Cass, not Markes.

  ‘One of the prisons he was in, there was a man they all victimised-beat him, tortured him. The guards as well. The man was in for killing his three daughters. His wife had left him, left all of them, and he wanted revenge. He killed his own children, then tried to kill himself and failed. Imagine that.’ Hey paused, watching Simon to check he hadn’t underestimated the seriousness of the father’s actions. ‘You can’t imagine it,’ he said. ‘This man wasn’t like Billy, he didn’t like being in prison, didn’t like being anywhere. He’d wanted to die, really wanted to, but he’d botched it. Over and over he tried to kill himself in prison-knives, ligatures, the works. He even tried bashing his head repeatedly against the wall of his cell. The guards would happily have let him get on with it, except there was a new initiative. They’d been told their suicide figures were too high. It became a way of torturing him: saving his life.’ Hey frowned, stared down at his feet. ‘I’d never heard anything so horrific. That was when I knew I had to do something about it.’

  Simon frowned. ‘You don’t honestly think you and Harbard writing your books and articles is going to stop things like this from happening? Or make it easier for those who are left behind? ’

  ‘I can’t bring people back from the dead, obviously,’ said Hey. ‘But I can try to understand, and understanding always helps, doesn’t it?’

  Simon was doubtful. Would he feel better if he understood why Charlie, in response to his suggestion that they get married, had burst into tears, screamed obscenities at him and thrown him out of her house? Eternal confusion might be preferable; some things were too hard to face up to.

  ‘Anyway, whether you approve or not,’ said Hey, with a small, apologetic shrug. ‘Keith and I decided to devote ourselves, research-wise, to familicide. That was four years ago. At this moment in time, we’re two of a handful of experts on the subject in the UK. From what I know about Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick’s deaths, they don’t fit in with any family annihilation model that we’ve come across in our research. Not at all.’

  ‘What?’ Simon’s hand was in his jacket pocket, fumbling for his notebook and pen. ‘You’re saying you don’t think Geraldine Bretherick was responsible for the two deaths?’

  ‘No,’ said Hey unequivocally.

  ‘Harbard disagrees,’ Simon pointed out.

  ‘I know.’ For a second, Hey looked stricken. ‘I can’t talk sense into him, however hard I try. He’s going to write a misleading, entirely wron
g-headed book, and it’s all my fault.’

  ‘How?’

  Hey rubbed his face with his hands, as if he was washing. ‘Familicide’s not like murder, that’s the first thing you need to understand. People commit murder for a variety of reasons-it’s a crime with an extensive motive pool. Whereas you’d be surprised to discover how few prototypes there are for family-annihilation killings. Few enough for me to run through them all before dinner.’ Hey glanced at his watch. ‘First off, there are the men who kill their entire families-wives, children, themselves-because they’re facing financial ruin. They can’t cope with the shame, the sense of failure, the disappointment and disgrace they imagine their families will feel. So they choose death as the better option. These are men who have always been perceived as-and indeed, have been-loving, caring fathers and husbands. They can’t go on-the inevitable alterations to their self-image would be too painful-and they can’t envisage a life for the family with them gone. They view the murders as their final act of care and protection, if you like.’

  ‘They’re usually middle-class?’

  ‘Right. Middle, upper-middle. Good guess.’

  ‘It wasn’t. I read it in your article, yours and Harbard’s.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Hey looked surprised but pleased. ‘Okay, second model: the men like Billy’s prison colleague, who kill their children to take revenge on former partners who’ve left them, wives who are planning to leave them or have been unfaithful. These instances of familicide usually come from the opposite end of the social spectrum-men with low incomes, manual jobs if they’ve got jobs at all.’

  ‘You make it sound as if there are plenty of cases to choose from. It must be an incredibly rare crime.’

  ‘One familicide in the UK every six weeks. Not as rare as you might think.’ Hey paced the floor, from one end of his Space Invader rug to the other. ‘The second prototype-the vindictive, vengeful family annihilator-sometimes he kills the woman too. The kids and the wife or partner. It varies. Depends on whether he thinks killing her would be a better revenge than leaving her alive once her children are dead. If there’s another man involved, he might not want his rival to get his hands on the woman that he regards as his property, just as he doesn’t want his children to end up calling another man “Dad”. Sometimes he wants to end his wife or girlfriend’s bloodline: he doesn’t want anything of her to live on, which is why he has to kill the children too, his own children.’

  ‘You keep saying “he”. Are family… annihilators always men?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Almost always.’ Hey perched on the arm of his sofa. ‘When women do it-traditionally-it’s for different reasons. Women don’t kill their children to avoid facing bankruptcy; as far as we know, that’s never happened, not once. And the revenge-motivated familicide is male, not female. Simple reason: even in our supposedly equal modern society, children are still seen as belonging more to the woman than the man. He kills them as a way of destroying something that’s hers. Very few women would see their children as belonging more to their husbands than to themselves, so they wouldn’t be destroying his treasured possessions-only their own. See what I mean?’

  ‘So when women do it, what’s their motive?’ asked Simon. ‘Depression?’

  Hey nodded. ‘Keith’s told me about the diary Geraldine Bretherick left, and, granted, it sounds as if she was seriously dissatisfied. I’m not sure if she was depressed. But she wasn’t delusional, and most mothers who kill their children are. They tend to have a history of depression dating back to childhood, linked, often, to disastrous family backgrounds and a total lack of support networks.’

  ‘What kind of delusions?’ asked Simon. He was wondering about William Markes, a man no one had been able to find.

  ‘All kinds. Some believe that they and their children are suffering from terminal illnesses,’ said Hey. ‘Murder and suicide are their escape routes, to avoid prolonged suffering. They’re not ill at all, of course, but they’re absolutely convinced they are. Or else the women are suicidal, and feel so protective of their children, so attached to them, that they can’t kill themselves and leave the children alive: that feels too much like abandonment.’

  Simon wrote all this down.

  ‘I haven’t seen Geraldine Bretherick’s diary, but Keith’s described it to me and shown me passages from it. It’s full of complaints about her daughter, right?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Simon.

  ‘The women who kill their children and then commit suicide, they don’t express negative feelings about their children beforehand. Love is their motivation, albeit a twisted love. Not resentment. At least, that’s true of every case I’ve ever heard of.’

  ‘So…’ Simon tapped his pen against his leg, thinking. ‘Harbard should know all this. Yet he’s convinced Geraldine Bretherick-’

  ‘He’s convinced because he wants to be.’ Hey’s pained expression had returned. ‘It’s my fault.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘There was a case a while ago, in Kenilworth, Warwickshire-a man whose business empire was falling apart. He owed millions. Meanwhile his wife and four teenage kids had no idea there was a problem, and were busy splashing out on credit cards, booking holidays, buying cars, taking their wealth and privilege for granted. The wife didn’t work, she didn’t think she had to. She thought she had a rich husband.’

  ‘He killed them all?’ Simon guessed.

  ‘Stabbed them in their beds while they were sleeping, then hanged himself. His sense of identity collapsed when he was forced to confront his inability to provide for his family. Keith and I were talking about it one night, I’d had a bit to drink… I said it was more and more common for the woman to be the main breadwinner. Not only the breadwinner, but the one who administrates the family finances. I wondered aloud-and, believe me, I wish I hadn’t-if one day we would start to hear about cases of women who killed their husbands and children for the same reason.’

  ‘Do you think that’s likely?’ asked Simon.

  ‘No!’ Hey looked cornered, bewildered. ‘I don’t. If it was going to happen, it would be happening already. That’s my hunch. I was just… idly speculating. But Keith’s eyes lit up. He said he was sure I was right-it would start to happen. He seemed… I almost had the impression he wanted it to happen. No, that’s a terrible thing to say, of course he didn’t. But I could tell he’d latched on to the idea. Women have always borne the burden of domestic responsibility pretty much single-handedly, he said. Which is true, even in our so-called enlightened society. Women take responsibility for the home and the kids, and often view their husband as an extra child, someone else to be looked after. Men used to be the ones who brought in the money, but even that’s changing. Women are keen to work outside the home now, which means men get to have it even easier. More and more of us marry women who earn more than we do-’ Hey stopped suddenly. ‘Are you married?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ The word rang in Simon’s ears.

  ‘Girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes.’ Another ‘no’ would have been too difficult.

  ‘Does she earn more or less than you?’

  ‘More,’ said Simon. ‘She’s a sergeant.’

  ‘My wife used to earn more than I did. Embarrassingly more-my salary was pocket money.’ Hey smiled. ‘I didn’t care, from a macho point of view. Do you?’

  ‘No.’ Simon did. Only a little, but he did.

  ‘It often changes once you’ve had children. Now I’m the sole breadwinner.’ Hey sounded as if he felt guilty. ‘Anyway, naturally women are more nurturing and more protective than men. They shoulder burdens rather than delegate them to their husbands or partners. Often they assume a man wouldn’t be able to cope in the way that they can. Plus, they want to make everyone happy, even if it’s at their own expense-you know, the martyr mentality. The “have-the-men-had-enough?” mentality.’

  Simon had no idea what Hey was talking about.

  ‘Whereas men-again, huge generalisation-men tend only to care about ma
king themselves happy. We’re undeniably more selfish.’

  ‘Apart from the men who are so distressed about not being able to provide for their families that they kill them,’ Simon reminded him.

  ‘Ah, but it’s their own egos they really care about. Not their wives and children. Obviously, because they murder them. And that’s why, ultimately, I don’t think women will start to commit familicide in the same numbers as men. Women care more about their families than about preserving their own vanity.’

  ‘You have a low opinion of men,’ said Simon, both admiring and resenting Hey’s honesty.

  ‘Some of us are all right. You see, this is my point.’ Hey smiled sheepishly. ‘I think aloud, and it causes trouble. All I said to Keith was that I wondered if, eventually, we’d start to come across cases of women whose business empires collapsed and who, rather than admit that they’d failed to look after their families properly…’ He chewed the inside of his lip. ‘Two weeks later, Keith had dashed off an article predicting more familicides committed by women for financial reasons.’

  ‘And then Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick were found dead.’ Simon stood up, couldn’t keep his body still when his mind was all over the place. ‘You’re saying Harbard’s using our case. He wants Geraldine Bretherick to have proved him right.’

  Hey nodded. Patches of red had appeared on his cheeks. ‘I don’t think she has,’ he said. ‘Geraldine Bretherick was a full-time mother and home-maker. She had no financial responsibilities, and she had the security of knowing that her husband was rich and likely to become richer. So that’s prototype one down the pan. And the vengeful, vindictive model: Keith says there’s no evidence Mark Bretherick was planning to leave her, or had another woman?’

  ‘None,’ said Simon.

  Hey held up his hands. ‘I just don’t see it. I keep telling Keith that none of the predictions he made in his article are borne out by this case, not a single one, but he keeps insisting he was right: he predicted more women would kill their children and now Geraldine Bretherick has. That’s what he says; he seems determined to ignore the specifics. It’s as if all the detail we’ve gone into, all those years of both our lives, have just been wiped out!’