Sleepwalk (34 page)

‘Look……. wait there and I’ll phone him…… tell him to expect you. At least then it won’t be a shock to him.’

‘Thanks.’

Felicity closed the door and picked up the phone. Her fingers trembling she dialled
his office number but it just rang and rang
. She phoned his Mother. She may catch him there picking up Ollie.

‘Oh hello Felicity dear. You’ve just missed him I’m afraid. He’ll be with you any time now. Is there a problem?’

‘No. No…… thank you Mrs Wilson. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’

She rejoined Abi at the front door just as David’s car pulled up outside the gates.

‘You’d better wait here and I’ll take Ollie somewhere; leave you to talk.’

‘Ok….. Felicity?’

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you’.

Felicity nodded to the girl and walked down the drive just as David emerged from the car to open the gates.

‘What’s she doing here?’ he yelled.

‘I don’t know. She wants to talk to you. She’s only just turned up. I tried phoning you; I even tried your parents but you’d already left. Look…… David, I’ll take Ollie for a little walk while you…….’

‘Yes. Yes that’d be best. Thanks babe.’ He lifted his son from the car and Felicity caught his attention before he could see their visitor.

‘Ollie, Quick! Come with me! I saw a baby fox in the woods. Shall we see if we can find him?’

It wasn’t a lie. She had seen one not ten minutes since. She took the child’s little hand and walked him away from the scene and along the little footpath that led into the woods.

‘Fox!’ cried Oliver excitedly, ‘Where to Vic?’

‘This way…….. he went this way…….’

Behind her she could hear David’s raised voice,

‘You know you shouldn’t be here. Now go, before I call the police.’

And Abi’s voice as she protested,

‘Please David……… just hear me out and then I’ll go. Just five minutes…… please?’

The discussion became quieter and less heated as Felicity led Oliver deeper into the woods until suddenly, she stopped and placed her hand on his shoulder. She put her fingers to her mouth; a signal to the boy, ‘Ssshhh…’ then she picked him up into her arms and pointed over the low shrubs to a sunny forest thicket where two baby fox cubs were leaping and playing over the still, exhausted body of a red brown vixen, stretched out in the sunshine. Felicity smiled at Ollie’s shocked expression; his eyes wide with wonder as he watched the little cubs clambering and falling around their Mother. He smiled back at her through his big blue eyes, shafts of sunlight bursting through the trees and dancing in rays across his soft blonde curls. David and Abi’s distant voices were no more now than a whisper on the wind………….

Slim checked himself in the bedroom mirror. If you’d have asked him three months ago if he expected to be living with Vanguard like this he’d have laughed in your face. Yet, here he was in his smart trousers with a crease down the front; a snowy white shirt and his very special tie and he didn’t look half bad, even if he thought so himself. He’d been working at the river authority office for three weeks now and was actually quite enjoying his role of office clerk. There were times when he’d thought he would feel imprisoned ............ and he’d had his moments. Whilst running errands to the council offices at the other side of town he’d once or twice bumped into someone on the street he used to know; Clarksy, sitting on the pavement with his guitar and upturned cap busking for his supper. A distant glimmer of recognition between the two of them and Slim would toss him a shiny new round pound and wish him well, then continue on his way without a backward glance. Once he’d run into the Prentices on the High Street who’d followed him through town teasing and taunting him, making insulting comments about him and Vanguard; that she must be a good lay for an old bird. But he kept a vision of Jonky in his mind and he remained calm and ignored them as long as he could, then told them to ‘Get a life’ and went on his way without giving them a second thought. Thursdays were the worst. He’d look out of his dusty office window onto the street and see them all congregating in the square’s walled garden; all the free people, debating after collecting their giro’s whether to splash out in the café or in the pub. Then he would feel the cash in his wallet, laugh to himself and get on with his daily workload.
But Slim wasn’t going to work today. Today was an important day. Today, both he and Vanguard had to appear as witnesses at Exeter Crown Court. Today he was seeing her in the flesh for the first time……. Jonky’s angel of death. But the girl they called ‘the defendant’, Eleanor Wilson who was sitting in the front of the court at a small table with her lawyer didn’t look like an angel of death at all. She looked like an angel, yes…..but she didn’t look like a murderer. She didn’t look like the girl in Jonky’s sketches either. Oh she had long blonde hair all right…….. but so did millions of other girls. By the time the court recessed for lunch Slim was convinced…….
They had the wrong girl
.

‘Well, come along Williams. Let’s go and get some lunch quickly. We have to be back here by ten minutes to two and it’s gone
one o’clock
now.’ Vanguard snapped at him and then like Jekyll and Hyde she began to smile sweetly as Robert Jackson approached them.

‘Ah Miss Gordon and Mr Williams. Now, you’ll need to be back here in thirty minutes so I can prep you before you take the stand. Ok?’

‘But it’s not her.’ said Slim.

‘What?’
Jackson
stammered, ‘What do you mean it’s not her?’

‘That girl, she’s….. she’s not the angel of death.’

‘Of course it’s her’ snapped
Jackson
. ‘She’s practically admitted it. All the evidence points to her. Don’t pull out on me now Williams. That woman cold bloodedly drove at your friend Jonquil and knocked the life out of her. Don’t you want to see justice done?’

‘Course I do. But that’s not her. She’s got the right colour hair….. but that’s all. It’s… It’s the eyes. Jonky’s angel of death had the maddest eyes I’ve ever seen.’

Jackson
pulled Vanessa Gordon to one side.

‘Miss Gordon. Can you talk to the boy? His testimony of what the girl, Jonquil told him is of paramount importance to the prosecution. I can’t put him on the stand if he’s going to say it’s not her.’

‘Yes……. Yes of course, but…… Mr Jackson? ……. He’s stubborn you know. I’ll….. I’ll do my best.’

‘Let’s hope your best is good enough then Miss Gordon; or the defence will have a field day with us. The boy needs to be educated as to the appearance of a person with a sleep disorder. If he saw her when she is sleepwalking he would know what ‘mad eyes’ are. Thirty minutes.’

The Lawyer marched off along the corridor and Vanessa hobbled after Slim. She could walk with just her stick now but she was still quite slow. She sent the boy ahead to the corner shop to buy them a sandwich and as she reached a vacant bench outside the Court’s tree lined avenue he was back with lunch before she had time to sit comfortably.

‘Chicken salad or cheese and pickle?’

‘I’ll take the salad’ snapped Vanessa Gordon.

They sat down and as they ate, Vanessa Gordon began to explain.

‘When my sister was little she used to walk in her sleep.’

‘Did she? That’s what they said this girl, Eleanor did isn’t it? Except she’s supposed to have been driving in her sleep. I reckon that’s crap. How can anyone drive when they’re asleep, that’s stupid.’

‘It’s not stupid Stephen. It’s a fact of life. If you saw that woman when she was wandering around in her sleep you wouldn’t recognise her and she wouldn’t know what she was doing. It’s all in the eyes you see. They don’t know they’re doing it. They have this fixed glazed expression in the eyes.’

‘Mad eyes?’

‘Yes…..Yes Stephen; mad eyes. When we close our eyelids and sleep, beneath those closed lids where do you think our eyes are?’

‘Dunno……. Asleep I guess.’

‘No Stephen. They are wide open……. staring……...bulging beneath those lids. When you close your eyes and the lights are still on you can still see the light through your eyelids. Shadows, movements…… you try it.’

Slim closed his eyes and discovered she was right. He could see shadows whipping by as the traffic went past them. He saw a dark shape passing from right to left and opened his eyes. A man had just walked past them on the pavement.

‘So you see? Now imagine your eyelids are open so wide that your eyes are bulging….. staring.’ She watched as he opened his eyelids so wide it actually made him look mad.

‘Wow.’ Slim commented as he shook his head and tried to focus.

‘That’s what it’s like when you walk in your sleep. That’s what Jonquil was trying to depict in this girl when she drew those sketches…… the mad eyes of a sleepwalker.’

Slim looked down at the pavement and she knew then that he had taken on board what she had said. Robert Jackson would be very pleased with her.
Very pleased indeed
.

Ellie was being held in a high security remand centre for women in
Exeter
. They had told Abi that under no circumstances could she acquire a visiting order until after the case had been heard and tried so as she sat in the waiting area with a perfectly legitimate VO in her trembling hands she knew that she was doing the right thing. How did her Father manage it? Hers wasn’t to question. Hers was to do. Do her Fathers bidding; keep her part of the deal. But her part of the deal was a prison sentence in itself. Her Father had taken on a top barrister from New York; had had him flown over on an all expenses paid trip staying at the Hilton near London’s Tower bridge with an extortionate fee to boot on the sole premise he may be able to get Ellie off on a technicality, allowing her to walk free from the court house able to begin a new life. Although the outcome wasn’t yet certain, If she was found guilty she still could be facing a prison sentence, although Kurt Leyton, the barrister was quite confident that even with a guilty verdict he could get her a conditional sentence. The terms of this contract would mean Ellie may have to move to the States and remain under the watchful eye of her Aunt Catherine under the supervision of Nicolas Debruski, a top US Nationalist Physician experienced in sleep disorders
who was willing to take her on as a patient. She would become a kind of human guinea pig, whilst still living a normal life; such was their interest in the case. As tough and unorthodox as it sounded, it would be better than a life of incarceration. Abi had made a pact. After the trial she must never see Ellie again. She must marry a man of her Fathers choosing; or at least one of whom he approved, which was one and the same thing. She had given the matter serious thought. In fact, for the past week Abi had thought of nothing else. Without her Fathers help Ellie could be facing a long prison sentence as an alternative; possibly life. And life for Ellie would be life for Abi also; because without Ellie, Life meant nothing to her. At least this way she could take some comfort in the fact that the woman she loved would be able to live an alternative life with an element of freedom. They may neither of them have each other, or the lives they would choose for each other but at least they would have lives, of some description …….. not confinement.

A series of locks sounded and the huge steel doors opened. Abi was ushered to a room containing five or six booths with a thick glass wall partition between visitors on the outside………… and prisoners on the inside. She was led to booth number four where she sat down and faced the glass wall. After a few minutes when the visitors were all seated in their booths a second series of locks clattered into life and two women simultaneously breezed past the screen on the inside, presumably to booths five and six, then Ellie appeared and sat opposite her behind the glass screen, her fine blonde hair tied back in a tight ponytail; just one small wisp of hair that had broken free from its bounds fluttering gently at the side of her high flushed cheek bones. Her face was pale and drawn in. She looked awful. Abi tried in vain to fight back the tears as she spoke.

‘Hi Ell.’

Abi looked sideways and wiped a stray tear from her eye.

‘You look good.’

‘No I don’t.’

‘Are they treating you well?’

‘As well as can be expected considering the charges they’ve brought against me…. how are you coping?’

‘I’m ok Ell. Don’t worry about me. It’s you I’m concerned about. You look thinner. Are you eating properly?’

‘Who is he Abs?’

‘Who; the Lawyer?’

‘The man you’re with.’

Abi felt a cold shiver running down the length of her spine.

‘Man? I’m………. I’m not with any man Ell. Honestly. I……… I just……..’

‘I’ve seen you with him Abs. He’s older than you and ……. his heart is cold.’

Abi’s face reddened.

‘And he loves you Abs. And you love him. I’m not totally stupid you know. I’ve seen him. I’ve seen his face. His face is familiar to me.’

‘
Ten minutes remain for this visit
…………’ said a voice over the intercom………… ‘
Please remember not to attempt to pass anything over the screens and do not leave anything in the booths when you leav
e……….
Thank you
.’