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 wrong-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 modeclass="underline" 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.’