Guilty (10 page)

11.

Caroline felt weird. Trauma was now her daily bread but suddenly she had two positives in her life. She felt guilty – that a surge of happiness should dare to tiptoe into her life. The oxymorons of Bri’s lifeless body balanced against the liberating news that he did still care for Sadie and that this hard exterior was exactly that. Inside this motionless body was her Bri from days of old!

Then there was the blossoming relationship with Steve, still in bud, but full of promise for them both. Oliver and Steve had worked tirelessly discussing all they could fit together from Bri’s notes. She carefully listened to their discussions. It appeared that Bri had decided to base his appeal on something called hard determinism.

Steve actually held a sociology degree. He explained in simple terms to Oliver that some criminologists believe certain people are born with a criminal gene. It would seem that Bri was preparing an argument based on the idea that as Sadie was born a psychopath she was preprogramed with a strong likelihood to commit murder. Caroline shuddered at the word murder. She saw yet again, as she seemed to see so many waking seconds, the pale grimacing face of Danny, Sadie’s birth dad, as he lay dying. His eyes had locked on to her as he took their secret to the grave.

“I’ve researched more about Clarence Darrow’s twelve-hour-long plea,” Steve was explaining to Oliver. Bri’s notes were full of the famous defence he made in 1924. He was an American lawyer who defended two intelligent university students called Leopold and Loeb.

“What had they done?” Oliver enquired trying to make his own notes.

“Well, they were charged with the murder of a fourteen-year-old boy. Apparently they had both had a strong desire to commit the perfect crime.”

“What weirdoes!” Oliver innocently stated. He hadn’t a clue how anybody could possess such an ambition.

“Exactly,” Steve continued, “Darrow argued the boys had diminished responsibility because they were merely products of their upbringing. It seems Bri is convinced that Sadie is a product of her genetic pool.

Darrow tried to save the boys from capital punishment by stressing that they could not possibly be blamed for who they were, for what they were going to be, for what they were always going to do.”

Caroline broke in.

“Dear old Bri, please wake up, darling. I had no idea how much you still cared. Please wake up and help us fight to lessen Sadie’s sentence. Come on darling, surely you can hear us.”

Steve squeezed Caroline’s hand and Oliver stood up and put a protective arm around her shoulder.

“Yes Bri, you better help us out, old chap. It’s bloody hard work making head and tail of all your notes”

Nothing, just the steady rhythm of the machine keeping the young man on this planet.

Steve took control to calm the atmosphere again.

“The good news is that Darrow was successful and the boys were sentenced to life imprisonment as opposed to facing the death penalty, so Bri was, sorry, is obviously planning to get Sadie’s life sentence commuted to less. Basically Bri believes ‘punishment as punishment is not admissible unless the offender has the free will to select this cause’.”

“I don’t understand,” Caroline chirped in, wiping her tears on the back of her hand.

“Well, he believed that in Sadie’s case she was preprogramed as a psychopath and had no free will concerning the outcome of her life.”

“That would explain her childhood,” Caroline took a deep sigh, relieved that she might finally be set free from some of the guilt she had harboured over the years. Thoughts that she must have got it all wrong not to being able to master the unruly child. Sadie had never been able to overcome temptations.

“Bri’s also been researching the evidence of the warrior gene.”

“The what?” Caroline asked, startled.

“It’s a gene which controls the amount of the hormone serotonin in the brain.”

“What does that do for us?” She found all of this encouraging as it provided some explanation for all the years they had felt they were banging their heads against a brick wall.

“Serotonin calms one down but if a person has the warrior gene the hormone can’t do this.”

“Bri has certainly done his homework thoroughly,” Steve plodded on. “It’s just a matter of getting society to wake up to the nature versus nurture debate. Apparently hardened murderers have alarmingly low activity in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain.”

“What is that part of the brain responsible for?” Caroline was trying her best to digest all of this.

“They’re the areas that are associated with empathy and self-control. It means people have poor self-restraint. Bri has catalogued so much evidence that murderers have less activity in the orbital cortex and around the amygdala.”

“The what?” Oliver chipped in.

“The areas that prevent impulsive action and control social behaviour, inhibition, morality and ethics. Bri was convinced that Sadie had displayed the conditions of a typical person suffering from an antisocial personality disorder throughout her life. He’d composed lists of incidents when she had displayed irresponsibility, deceit, recklessness, indifference to the welfare of others, a failure to plan ahead, aggression and irritability. Apparently psychopaths cannot control their innate aggressiveness and show little regret or sympathy for their violent actions. She didn’t shed a tear for Dan or Molly.”

Her own cheeks, now tear-stained, Caroline couldn’t help the sarcasm in her voice, “Any happy memories of his poor sister? Are we supposed to agree all those condemnations fit her personality like a glove?”

“Don’t we all have times in our lives when we exhibit such traits?” Oliver also felt like sneering. It felt like a witch hunt. They all had loving memories too. He felt so protective of Sadie and he wasn’t quite certain where to direct his anger, a very unusual emotion for calm old Oliver! Serotonin or whatever it was called was certainly rampant in Oliver’s brain in most instances!

“So where are we going with all of this?” Caroline, frustrated, drew her fingers through her hair, leaving her fringe standing on end. Steve smiled gently and stretched out to pat it down for her.

“Well, Bri was trying to prove Sadie had an overwhelming neurological and genetic tendency towards psychopathy. He was clearly pinning his hopes on showing the world that her character and therefore her evil deeds were down to nature not nurture.”

Caroline cupped her face in her hands, rubbing her forehead with her fingertips. “Yes, evil deeds,” she whimpered. “We’re trying to excuse evil deeds because we all love her so much, but how can this be right? Surely we are participating in evil even contemplating that we can explain them away. We’re talking about my granddaughter’s life here, Steve.”

He wrapped his arms around her whimpering, shaking frame.

“I’m so confused by all of this,” she continued. “It’s fantastic to discover about Bri’s loyalty and love, it’s fantastic to be able to grasp at straws to explain away the years of strife we have all lived through with Sadie, it’s fantastic to think there could be hope that one day she might see freedom but it’s downright sad and freakish to try to say she had some sort of right to murder two people she should have loved with all her heart, or for that matter to murder anybody, regardless of their relationship to her. Surely we’re becoming monsters ourselves?” She kicked out, sending the wicker wastebasket rolling.

“I don’t think Bri was trying to condone it, Caroline,” he spoke gently. “I just think he was trying, in his own way to save the family.”

“I know, I know and I can’t tell you how much Bri’s loyalty means to me but you must admit it’s all rather desperate.”

“Caroline, wake up. The whole scenario is nothing but desperate. We’re all in a pit and any way out must be better than none at all.”

“Agreed but, one, is it morally right to play this card and, two, are we raising our hopes falsely?”

“It’s your daughter, in prison for life. It’s your son lying in a coma, speaking to you from a pile of desperate researched notes. It’s your decision.” He raised his hands and left the room. Oliver stared after him, not sure if the man was angry, in a mood or simply exasperated.

One of Caroline’s madcap ideas had involved placing Sadie with a family on a lavender estate in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The family had been paid to train her, a sort of apprenticeship. There were actually many roles which would have looked impressive on her CV – management, marketing roles. The idea had been to provide her with some experience, some references so that she could restart at a new college, having been expelled from her previous concerning her addictions.

Even in the middle of nowhere, Sadie had used the entrepreneur skills which she could never apply in a work situation to find sources to renew her addictions. Sadie had always been looking for stimulation – not the conventional type of stimulation which might come from the challenges of work or a career but the low-life buzz of experimenting with different drugs. What had she not smoked? What had she not experimented with? In all the roles they had patiently offered her at the very successful lavender centre (Caroline paid them extremely generously), Sadie showed no evidence of planning, no focusing, and no commitment. However, all these traits, so lacking in her life, jumped to full capacity when she needed to seek out a source for her latest craving. There was certainly some mileage in Bri’s theories. She did seem pre-programmed.

“Bri’s research must have taken him ages,” Steve broke into her thoughts, entering with a hot chocolate for her and Oliver from the vending machine. “Drink it quick before you’re spotted by one of the nurses.”

“Bri was following the philosophy that everything is determined. He was going to include the arguments of a man called Ted Honderich who denied that we are free to make choices. In other words, Sadie had no moral responsibility. Whatever she did she could not be held responsible for her actions and shouldn’t be punished just for the sake of it.”

Steve seemed to be repeating himself, she thought. The same message, just different supporting quotes, but what could she expect from the regurgitated notes. Steve had a full-time job. This wasn’t his research, his baby! She understood she needed to appreciate his efforts; he had no obligation to get so involved.

“I can buy into that,” Caroline sniffed. “All through her childhood she seemed to be made to self-destruct. Even when she’d achieved something good in her life she always seemed to destroy its effect in some way.”

“Of course,” Steve spoke realistically. “The prosecution would obviously refer to the other side of the coin, to the libertarians who believe, for example, that a kleptomaniac may be inclined to steal but still has the choice not to. In other words, Sadie might have been inclined to be violent and aggressive but she still had the ability to exert self-control. Libertarians are known as incompatabilists because they argue that free will is incompatible with determinism. Humans can think rationally and are free. We are not driven only by instinct or natural urges as we believe animals are.”

“Well, don’t most normal members of society think that?” Oliver asked in all honesty.

“True, but as Darrow won his case we have to believe in the optimism Bri has ignited. As Voltaire argued, we can only be who we are! Pear trees cannot bear bananas.” Without intention Steve was mimicking Oliver’s colourful habit of using clichés.

“Bri has certainly done so much research to support his proposed case,” Oliver sighed. “ If only he could wake up to put it into action. It needs his passion.”

“We’ve got his message loud and clear, though,” Steve showed his excitement as the volume increased in his voice.

“Sadie did not make herself and yet she is compelled to pay.”

12.

For Sadie, the past was usually exactly that, the past. Swept under a carpet of fine dust never to be shaken out. These torturous cell days, however, had dared to lift and drop that carpet and little millipedes of memories had crept up to torment her, but a drop of remorse fell from her icy heart. Her defence had encouraged her to speak with love and empathy about Dan and Molly to try to suggest they were crimes of passion but her lawyer had found talking to Sadie about love and empathy was like talking to a blind person about the colour red.

The condemning title psychopath might be true but Sadie knew Caroline had eventually managed to contradict the theory that psychopaths are incapable of love.

Caroline’s martyrdom throughout Sadie’s life had paid a very important dividend. A clink had been chiselled out of Sadie’s armour. The clinical textbooks containing all the theoretical evidence on psychopaths had been proven wrong, evidenced now by Sadie’s inner turmoil. Even some of the religious freaks, Sadie recalled, believed “eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others”. These disciples of John Calvin believed in predestination. They robbed Sadie of free will. In other words she was born to stab her own flesh and blood to death, plunging the knife into Dan’s chest over thirty times. After years of nagging, she had persuaded Caroline to help her trace the sperm donor. Caroline had maintained the deceit and felt she had no option but to continue the tangled web.

Dan was happy to play along, readily accepting Sadie’s title of “birth dad”, much to Simon’s torment. Simon still had no reason to doubt the sperm-bank story.

Sadie and Dan had shared the same flat for a while, living off Dan’s inheritance until it was frittered away on gambling, alcohol but mainly drugs.

The pair of them made lousy neighbours; the police were always being called around by residents complaining about their antisocial behaviour, their loud music, their litter. They dumped the old suite and cooker on the front lawn of the block of flats, they couldn’t be bothered to take their waste to the wheelie bins. To put it simply, they alienated people wherever they went.

It was true she was the textbook psychopath – she didn’t do guilt, society would never understand her motivation to murder Dan. She had wanted to see life ebb from a body, to have the power to make somebody leave the world. She didn’t do conscience; she believed rules didn’t apply to her.

Sadie had accepted she was and always had been different to everybody else. She acknowledged that she would trap people in her stories. She knew she could disguise it all by talking logical, speaking on an emotional plane. She knew she could manipulate others by making them believe that all she did was justified. Yes, she would exploit others in her cold-hearted ways, only nice to people if they were feeding her desires. Yes, she indulged in parasitic living, she’d never held a job down but one thing none of the theorists allowed, she did love – her soul had been awakened and this was not supposed to happen to psychopaths. It was supposed to be an impossibility, but impossibility or not, a little corner of her heart had been taken over by her beautiful mother, Caroline.

Oliver, Bri and Pippa had sneaked in too and Simon had a tiny streak in there too. All the sociologists, all the professors and doctors and consultants at the trial had denied Caroline’s unconditional love throughout the years would have changed things. However throughout the impossible times, all wrought by Sadie’s behaviour, there had been the miracle. God’s words from Bruce almighty had rung true: “if you want the miracle, be the miracle”.

Caroline had miraculously broken all the barriers and a smile crept across Sadie’s face and for the first time in her life her smile reached her eyes.

There was no way on earth that she would have laid a finger on these treasures, these family members she kept hidden in her heart.

“Stuff that, you buggers,” she flicked her two fingers up in the air as she mentally contemplated that the fuckers would have their theories shattered if they ever dissected her heart. That ray of love had given birth to the things she was apparently incapable of – conscience, shame and guilt.

The smile in her eyes was now washed away by another downpour of tears as Sadie longed for Caroline’s arms. She shouted out in extreme agony.

“I love you Mum. I love you I am so sorry, so very sorry for all the pain I have brought you. Mum, please forgive me.”

But there was nobody to hear, nobody would ever know about this miracle. The grey walls absorbed them and fossilised them, but who would ever know?

Molly’s death had been the headline around the nation. What trace of humanity was to be found in a mother who could have first used that knife on her own child? Which human being would ever understand that you could be so blinded by the incapacity to parent that your demented mind would inform you that the only way out of the pit of sleepless nights, poverty, persistent crying was to kill the flesh you gave birth to?

It was Dan’s hypocrisy which had pushed her buttons too deeply. The evil beast, from whom she had apparently inherited her psychopath tendencies, had dared to condemn her when he had forced the door of the crime scene open to find her covered in blood with a look of serenity, peace and final calm etched all over her face.

“You bitch, you cold-hearted bitch,” he had bellowed. All the deep resentment, wild anger she had harboured against her so-called birth father had erupted into one of her outbursts. The forensic teams had wondered just how the blade had survived such forceful thrusts.

Exasperated that nobody seemed to understand Sadie, Caroline had decided maybe like would understand like. Maybe Dan would be able to offer her the guidance and wisdom that would hit home. Maybe her own flesh and blood would know how to counsel her.

When she chose to, she could be charming and witty, showing no outward appearance of her inner turmoil. Of course Dan moved on, moved area frequently – yet another sign that she’d inherited his genes – so many different addresses over the years – a man incapable of holding down a job, a man who had been in and out of prison, and a man who couldn’t or wasn’t interested in maintaining relationships. However, finally Caroline had tracked him down.

He’d inherited a windfall and flippantly threw the money around.

Sadie wearing her manipulative hat had played up to him, acting out the victim of a troubled upbringing, seeking sympathy and pity. She knew he wouldn’t do guilty either but she tried to push his buttons in the hope he might feel the need to compensate having abandoned her during those formative years. She had been over charming.

She was correct. Just like herself, Dan didn’t do shame. Shame is the feeling associated with being on the bottom rung of the ladder. Since psychopaths are grandiose and never see themselves as the bottom they do not experience shame.

Somehow it was right that somebody else should have parented his child. He’d done the major task, bringing the child into the world.

Their relationship had started on a positive footing. Both had presented themselves, on their first meeting, decked up in their best clothes, new hairstyles, to disguise their own low self-esteem. As they got to know each other, one of Oliver’s clichés rang true: “She really was a chip off the old block.”

She and Dan approached each other with new-found confidence, able to speak with a lot of openness.

They relished being lawbreakers and found it highly amusing, in each other’s company, to flout rules and responsibilities. They walked Butch, Dan’s Staffordshire bull terrier without a leash, laughed when he shitted on a neighbour’s lawn as the grey-haired Mrs Hill glared out angrily behind her nets; they cheekily waved at her knowing she would not dare say anything. Adding to their mockery of her, Dan hurled his beer can onto the grass too. Killing herself laughing, Sadie dug into her pockets and proudly produced a Kit Kat wrapper which she waved at the old lady before flicking it towards the pile.

They shared the same flat for a while, living off Dan’s inheritance, until it was frittered away on gambling, alcohol but mainly drugs.

The pair of them made neighbours lives’ hell; the police were always being called around by residents complaining about their antisocial behaviour, their loud music, their litter. “They are partners in crime,” Bri had fondly spoken of Dan and Sadie’s relationship.

“They egg each other on. A pair of risk takers,” Caroline had responded.

Simon had expressed his views: “They’re certainly one of a kind, aren’t they, telling their exaggerated stories, to make people laugh, telling stories which make them feel powerful.”

“You mean they’re narcotic,” Bri had angrily summarised. He didn’t approve of their egocentric streaks.

“Those tears Sadie sheds whenever you get on her case are crocodile tears,” Bri had continued.

“I mean Oliver, get real, she just needs to turn the waterworks on and she thinks all will be forgiven but they are tears for herself. She hasn’t got an ounce of sympathy for anybody else.”