When Ben went missing I didn’t have any intuition. None whatsoever. I had something else on my mind. It was a preoccupation with my ex-husband’s new wife.
JIM
Here’s the list of everything I used to have under controclass="underline" work, relationship, family.
Here’s the problem I have now: the thoughts in my head.
They remind me hourly, sometimes minute by minute, of loss, and of actions that can’t be undone, however much you wish it.
During the week I throw myself into work to try to erase these thoughts.
Weekends are more of a challenge but I’ve found ways to fill them too: I exercise, I work some more, and then I repeat.
It’s the nights that torment me, because then the thoughts revolve ceaselessly in my head and deny me sleep.
When I was a student I gained a little knowledge of insomnia. I studied Surrealist poetry and I read that sleep deprivation could have a psychedelic, hallucinogenic effect on the mind; that it had the potential to unleash reserves of creativity that were profound and could enhance your life and your soul.
My insomnia isn’t like that.
My insomnia makes a desperate, restless soul of me. There is no creativity, only hopelessness and frustration.
Each night when I go to bed I dread the inevitability of this because when my head hits the pillow, however tired I am, however much I crave respite from my own mind, every single part of me seems to conspire to keep me awake.
I become hyperaware of all the potential stimuli around me, and each one feels like an affliction.
My shifting movements make the smooth sheet beneath me buckle and form ridges and channels like baked earth that’s been torn into by the claws of an animal. If I try to lie still, my hands linked together on my chest, then the pounding of my heart shortens my breath. If I lie without covers, the air in the room makes my skin prickle and crawl, whatever the temperature. Bundled up, I feel only an intense and overheated claustrophobia, which robs the air from my lungs and makes me sweat so that the bed feels like a stagnant pool that I’m condemned to bathe in.
As I stew in my bed, I listen to the city outside: the shouting of strangers, cars, a moped, a siren, the rustle of treetops agitated by the wind, sometimes nothing at all. A sound void.
There are nights when this quiet torments me and I rise, usually well beyond midnight, and I dress again, and then I walk the streets under the sodium-orange glow of the streetlights where the only life is a shadowy turbulence at the periphery of my vision, a fox perhaps, or a broken man in a doorway.
But even walking can’t clear my mind completely because as I put one foot in front of the next I dread even more the return to the flat, to the bed, to its emptiness, to my wakefulness.
And, worst of all, I dread the thoughts that will circle once again in my mind.
They take me straight to those dark, vivid places that I’ve worked so hard to lock away during the day. They find those hidden places and they pick the locks, force the doors, pull away the planks of wood that have been nailed across the windows and they let light into the dark corners inside. I think of it as harshly lit, like a crime scene. Centre-stage: Benedict Finch. His pellucid blue eyes meeting mine, and in them an expression so innocent that it feels like an accusation.
Late into the small hours I sometimes get the sleep I crave, but the problem is that it’s not a refreshing blackness, a chance for my mind to shut down. Even my sleep allows me no respite, because it’s populated by nightmares.
But whether I’ve been awake or asleep, when I rise in the morning, I’m often fetid and dehydrated, wrung out before the day has even begun. Tears might have dampened my pillow, and more often than not sweat has soaked my sheets, and I face the morning with a sense of dread that my insomnia hasn’t just blurred the boundaries between day and night, but has unbalanced me too.
I think, before it happened to me, that I might have underestimated both the restorative power of sleep and the destructive power of a shattered psyche. I didn’t realise that exhaustion could bleed you dry so completely. I didn’t realise that your mind could fall sick without you even noticing: incrementally, darkly, irrevocably.
I’m too embarrassed to tell anybody else about these things, and the fact that the effects of my insomnia stay with me as day breaks, woven into the fabric of it. The exhaustion it breeds makes my coffee taste metallic and the thought of food intolerable. It makes me crave a cigarette when I wake. It fuels my cycle ride to work with adrenalin, so that I’m nervy, riding dangerously close to the kerb, misjudging a junction so that the thud of a car forced into an emergency stop just behind me makes my legs pump painfully fast on the pedals.
In the office, an early meeting: ‘Are you OK?’ my DCI asks. I nod, but I can feel sweat breaking out along my hairline. ‘I’m fine,’ I say. I last for ten minutes more, until somebody asks, ‘What do you think, Jim?’
I should relish the question. It’s an opportunity to put myself forward, to prove myself. A year ago, I would have. Now, I focus on the chipped plastic shard on the end of my biro. Through the pall of my exhaustion I have to force myself to raise my head and look at the three expectant faces around me. All I can think about is how the insomnia has smeared the clarity of my mind. I feel panic spreading through my body as if it’s being infused like a drug, pushing through arteries, veins and capillaries until it incapacitates me. I leave the room silently and once I’m outside I pound my fist into the wall until my knuckles bleed.
It’s not the first time it’s happened, but it’s the first time they make good on their threat to refer me to a psychologist.
Her name is Dr Francesca Manelli. They make it clear that if I don’t attend all sessions, and contribute positively to the discussions with Dr Manelli, then I’m out of CID.
We have a preliminary meeting. She wants me to write a report on the Benedict Finch case. I start it by writing down my objections.
Report for Dr Francesca Manelli on the Events Surrounding the Benedict Finch Case by DI JAMES CLEMO, Avon and Somerset Constabulary
CONFIDENTIAL
I’d like to start this report by formally noting down the objection that I have both to writing it, and to attending therapy sessions with Dr Manelli. While I believe that the Force Occupational Health Service is a valuable asset, I also believe that use of it should be discretionary for officers and other staff. I shall be raising this objection formally through the proper channels.
I recognise that the purpose of the report is to describe the events that occurred during the investigation of the Benedict Finch case from my own point of view. This will provide the basis for discussion between myself and Dr Manelli, with the aim of ascertaining whether it will be useful for me to have long-term support from her in dealing with some of the issues that arose from my involvement in that case, and some personal issues that affected me at around that time also.
I understand that I should include details of my personal life where relevant, including where it relates to DC Emma Zhang, as this will allow Dr Manelli to form a whole view of my decision-making processes and motivations during the period that the case was live. The progress of my report will be reviewed by Dr Manelli as it’s written, and what I produce each week will form the basis for my talking sessions with Dr Manelli.
Dr Manelli has advised that the bulk of this report should be a description of my personal recollections of what took place, though it may also include transcripts of our conversations or other material where she feels that is appropriate.