Jones: ‘One question I’ve been wanting to ask you. Can you think of any historical figure that you feel you identify with?’
Jidney: ‘It’s interesting you should ask me that; that’s a good question. I always wanted to find out how evil I was by getting to know about other really evil people, people in history. Once I got into my teens I started reading everything I could find about murder in the press and in paperback books. But I couldn’t really find what I wanted; all these murderers had only got themselves written about because they’d been caught. The exception was Jack the Ripper, but he hadn’t really killed that many women, only five, and then he’d bottled out. My revelation came at the end of the war in ’45, when I was fifteen and still at the orphanage. One of the masters at school said I behaved like Heydrich, so the others called me Jackboot Jidney, and it stuck, so I thought I’d try and find out a bit about this individual.
‘I didn’t know much about Reinhard Heydrich at first, except that he was a sadist who played the violin – like I get pleasure from art – was number two under Himmler in Hitler’s secret police, was promoted to governor of Bohemia at thirty-eight, and that murder was meat and poultry to him. Straight away I identified with Heydrich; straight away the kick I got from him was his urge to power.
‘I started going down to the clothes markets looking for the kind of gear he wore in his photographs. I had his picture stuck up all over the place; once I had a few bob I even had gear made so that I could dress up like him, and when I was doing my first stretch in the nick I had books about him sent in. He wasn’t a lifetime thing with me – one day a couple of years later I threw everything about him away; I was out on my own by then and didn’t need him any more.
‘But while he was with me it was powerful. As a murderer he never went wrong – how could he? He had a licence for it. And it never bothered me that he was assassinated – you can’t assassinate a god. I had him with me, inside me, beside me, all the time; I think that accounted for the intellectual look women say I have – Reinhard was very intellectual-looking. First-rate mind, secretive, a plotter, relentless, a cruel bastard, great fencer – Olympic standard, but mind you didn’t beat him, he hated that – dancer, musician, womaniser, liked a drink, long, slender, feminine hands. Evil? Court-martialled and cashiered from the navy for rape, history of sexual abuse of women, got his rocks off with flagellation, hiring prostitutes for heavy punishment after an evening playing Beethoven sonatas in somebody’s drawing-room.
‘And forgiveness. Forgiveness was something special that I brought in; I don’t think Reinhard ever considered pardoning his victims. Posthumous rehabilitation was my own contribution to mass killing – after all, magnanimity is the quality that marks a god off from a mortal, and a god who can’t forgive the insults paid him by his victim – well he isn’t a god at all.
‘People mistake my laughter. It’s disguised laughter. It’s the laughter you expect to hear at a happy party, in an atmosphere of jokes. It’s nothing of the kind. I can’t use the real tone of my laughter because it would reveal me. The real tone of my laughter is the sign that I have designated the woman I am laughing with as a woman I’m going to kill.
‘Just before I’m going to kill it turns brown inside my head and there’s a charred smell in my nose like burnt paper.’ He turned to Jones and said: ‘By the way, it’s something I’ve been meaning to ask – what’s the point of our talking like this exactly? What’s the purpose behind it?’
Jones: ‘Part of my work is to establish whether you’re aware that an action has an effect and, if so, whether you are aware of the nature of the effect.’
Jidney: ‘What you’re implying is that you’re sane, on the grounds you’ve never killed anyone, and I’m not.’
Jones: ‘That’s definitely relevant, yes.’
Jidney: ‘Then that should be the end of the matter.’
Jones: ‘It isn’t.’
Jidney: ‘I’m not going to insult myself by saying I’m mad; I’m more like an obscure branch of mathematics. Even just talking to you now I’m thinking as a double negative. It’s a paradox. I talk to people the same way that it seems to me they talk to each other, only I overdo it each time I want to prove I exist. It’s an upward spiral. The more I have to prove that I’m like them, the more I demonstrate that I’m not, until it turns out I’ve no option but to kill someone so as to prove what everyone should have realised in the first place. The world won’t accept me as a part of itself, so I do conjuring tricks.’
Crowdie: ‘That’s a new word for murder. Conjuring tricks. I like it.’
Jones: ‘It’s a question of whether you can analyse your motives for the conjuring tricks, of whether you’ve any insight into them.’
Jidney: ‘I’m feeling very lucid today, so I’ll try to explain. If I had the insight, there wouldn’t be the tricks. The tricks are instead of the insight. Don’t forget about the old person and the new person, the writing I sent this detective here. Don’t forget about what I call the visitor. The man you’re talking to now, he’s not the visitor, he’s the householder; he’s the man the visitor comes to see. The visitor’s got no insight, only desires.’
Jones: ‘Negative desires.’
Jidney: ‘If half of a man’d been punished from birth for the sole reason that he was born, you might say punished out of existence, that half had to go somewhere, it didn’t just disappear. Supposing that instead of sitting there with a pen it was you that had drawn a life sentence at birth and were sitting in a cell for doing something you couldn’t even remember – being born – something you hadn’t even done? Wouldn’t something happen to you? Supposing you didn’t top yourself, wouldn’t you sit up thinking it was you and say: “I’ve got to do something?” Yes probably you would, only you’d find that whatever you did, you’d be doing it out of compulsion; you’d find that whatever you did would turn out to be wrong. Because the only fantasy you would have would be a negative fantasy and you’d behave just like me, completely upside down – you’d go out and kill so as to belong.’
Jones: ‘Knowing that’s wrong?’
Jidney: ‘What killer ever knew anything right? Remember also that the man who brings death is never surprised by it. He’s familiar with death the way you’re familiar with the woman you married, and what I’ve just been trying to explain to you is why, to me, love and death are the same.’
Jones: ‘But your victims were human beings.’
Jidney: ‘Human beings haven’t earned my thanks. If you’re me you know nothing about human beings; you can only guess at them. I wish you understood what it was like not to be a human being, to be beyond human beings, to be a thousand feet above the world on a tightrope, watching human beings stare up at me, all their faces the same because of the height. Come on, doctor, try some vertigo; don’t spare yourself the nightmare. But you don’t understand – I think only clowns and acrobats understand, because there’s a link between circuses and murder. The world enjoys gawping as long as the risk’s only the price of a ticket; the audience wouldn’t think it was much like entertainment if it were up there itself.’
Jones: ‘You feel no guilt.’
Jidney: ‘How could I? The visitor doesn’t fancy having sex with women. What he fancies about women is killing them; it’s like wanting a beer and getting the cap off the bottle – thirst makes you an expert all over.’ He shook his head, laughing. ‘Does it mean a man’s in a fugue when he’s going down to the pub, does it mean he’s sick in his mind when the only image he’s got in his head is a bloody pint?’
Jones: ‘It does if he’s an alcoholic. What we have to understand about obsessions is that they’re only superficially like pleasure. No one who suffers from an obsession enjoys it, and the point of existence is to enjoy it as much as you can.’
Jidney: ‘Listen, I just act, I keep telling you. I act fast. Swiftanic. I don’t feel guilty. If I feel guilty the visitor com
es by, otherwise, if I had the insight, I’d feel guilty the whole time. But no one can do that; he’d fall apart. Take bedwetting.’
Jones: ‘Yes, you often talk about that.’
Jidney: ‘I wet my bed right up to when I was thirteen, right up to when I started doing the other things. Sure I felt guilty. I felt guilty because I got punished. On the other hand, what was the use of feeling guilty about something you did the whole time? I wasn’t going to suffer non-stop just because I was guilty; there were other things in life, such as paying back. So I got in the habit of doing whatever it was, and then not thinking or worrying about it – that left room for the visitor. That way I adjusted to what I did the same as everyone adjusts.’
Jones: ‘Last time we were talking about your fantasies. How do you feel about those now?’
Jidney: ‘The difference between my fantasies and yours is that you fantasise about what you like to do or better still about what you are going to do; whereas I have fantasies about what I have done; I relive in my mind what I have done. I learned from being punished at the orphanage that what I found natural other people regarded as abnormal. But I’d decided it wasn’t; I decided that I made the rules for me.’
Jones: ‘Tell me about setting fires. How old were you when you set the first one?’
Jidney: ‘I was ten when I set the first one; it was an old hut in some allotments.’
Jones: ‘Why did you do it?’
Jidney: ‘Because I needed to; you don’t do things you don’t need to do. First, it was like the animals – setting fires was destruction, it was getting my own back. Also, the fires fuelled my fantasies. I hated women because of the way my mother hit me when I wet the bed and for smashing things in the house. She nearly killed me twice; the worst time, I had to go to hospital.’
Jones: ‘What was the matter with you?’
Jidney: ‘She always hit me on the head, and not with her hand, mind. I had to go because she hit me with a broom-handle, the second time she threw a hot iron at me; I got it in the face.’
Jones: ‘What happened when you got interested in women sexually?’
Jidney: ‘I wanted to fuck them, of course, only the wrong way – I mean really screw them – nails, hammers, whips, throttle them, torture them with ropes.’
Jones: ‘You must have realised that wasn’t normal.’
Jidney: ‘I don’t think I realised much at all. Talking of wrong, everything in my life was wrong, so I daydreamed it was my version of all right.’
Jones: ‘Daydreams? How do you feel about those now?’
Jidney: ‘They’ve dried up. There’s no more splendour, no sun on the mountain.’
Jones: ‘Does that depress you?’
Jidney: ‘It’s worse than that.’
Jones: Could you explain that further?’
Jidney: ‘It’s a feeling of failure. I’ve let myself down. I thought I was special, a one-off, an original. But now I don’t think I was so original after all. Listen. One of the people I killed was called Mandy Cronin. I used to be back at my place masturbating, and I’d have fantasies about her the whole time. You remember, we talked about her before, she was one of the early ones I took down to the vault. When I got her down there I remember I said to her: “I’ve got to kill you now, right away, I can’t wait. Now this breast here, now the thighs, now the buttocks, that’s it, let’s get you spread right apart.” I did it to her a thousand, ten thousand times before I did it. But what I don’t like remembering was the last thing she said. She said: “Wherever I’m going, I pity you, Ronald. I pity you because you’ve got no margin. You think you’re demonic but you’re not, you’re nothing, you’re pathetic, your killing me isn’t going to prove anything.” Now that hurt. That offended me in my pride, what she said there and I killed her straight away, but she’d already spoiled the whole thing; it was all spoiled because of what she’d said.’
Jones: ‘What do you think she meant when she said you had no margin?’
Jidney: ‘I think she was telling me I was the opposite of what I knew I had to be; she was telling me that I’d just got a little mind.’
28
While he was relaxing in an armchair before the first hypnosis session began Jidney said: ‘It’s different now, when you’re questioning me about it, of course, but when I actually went out to kill it was just a terrific feeling of anticipation I had – you know, like going to meet some alluring female stranger you’d only spoken to on the phone; you knew it was leading up to that moment when you were going to be face to face with the person you knew you would kill. There was a sweetness in the atmosphere between you when you would first meet the person and you’d want to prolong that, spin it out over weeks and months – probably it was the nearest I could ever get to falling in love. I don’t know what it was that made the hatred in me feel like love; all I know is that right up to the period when I couldn’t wait any longer and took their lives they brought me the end of loneliness.’
When he had hypnotised him Jones said to us: ‘I think a good deal’s going to come out. Ronald, can you hear me now?’
Jidney: ‘I’m sleepy but I know I’m talking. I can’t stop talking, it’s terrible. I’m dizzy, I’m falling down. I mustn’t do that. When I fall, I get confused.’
Jones: ‘I’m leading you out of the confusion, Ronald, I’m taking you by the hand. It’s quiet here, there’s only the two of us, no one else can hear. It’s like vomiting, you’ll feel better when you’ve got it up. I’ll help you. Go on, Ronald, do it, vomit, take all the time you need.’
At this point Jidney was violently sick.
Jones: ‘There’s plenty of time. Take your time, recover, we can wait.’
Jidney: ‘What are you waiting for?’
Jones: ‘For you to remember about behaviour.’
Jidney: ‘You mean this behaviour now?’
Jones: ‘No, not now, your behaviour at the time.’
Jidney: ‘What time? Do you mean with Judith?’
Jones: ‘If you like. Or with Judith, Ann, Daphne, or with Flora or Mandy if you like.’
Jidney: ‘Well I remember them all! What’s so special about Judith that makes you single her out?’
Jones: ‘It was you who singled her out.’
Jidney: ‘It was behaviour like any other behaviour. I don’t know what you’re driving at.’
Jones: ‘You’re lying, Ronald.’
Jidney: ‘I have to, otherwise it would mean I’d have to start noticing.’
Jones: ‘That’s what I want you to do. I want you to trust me, Ronald, I’m your friend. I want you to suspend judgment, let your guard down.’
Jidney: ‘You’re asking me to start caring? A machine? I can’t do that. It’s breaking rules.’
Jones: ‘You and I both know we have to break rules. It’s the rules that are stopping you getting better.’
Jidney: ‘You’re flouting power.’
Jones: ‘Don’t feel flouted, Ronald. I’ve taken you into this quiet place, you and me together, we’re in this garden. No one can hear us. We’re friends. We’re here to learn from each other.’
Jidney: ‘I’ll try to get to it slowly. Say I was the onlooker at my own despair. I’m sitting high up in a box – it’s a theatre. I’m nothing to do with what’s going on, but I lean forward and suddenly I’m down there under the lights. I don’t know what to do or what to say, but I’ve got to speak and move if I want the power.’
Jones: ‘More power than most people?’
Jidney: ‘Most people don’t know themselves; that’s why they haven’t any power. Or else they don’t need it. But I’ve got to have it.’
Jones: ‘Supposing you didn’t have it? Then what would happen?’
Jidney: ‘I’d be nothing.’
Jones: ‘Nothing at all?’
Jidney: ‘Nothing.’
Jones: ‘All right, but you have got the power.’
Jidney: ‘Yes, now I’ve got the power, each truth is a portion of flesh to be enjoyed; each rule is a bone to be broken. Gnawed. I’m like a starving man. But you mustn’t cough over what you enjoy. You mustn’t choke on it.’
Jones: ‘It’s hunger.’
Jidney: ‘It’s the hunger to be.’
Jones: ‘Food.’
Jidney: ‘What’s the matter with you? I don’t feed any the less heartily because I talk to my food while I eat it. The more you need food the more intelligently you should treat it, except that you can’t have intelligent food. No. That’s not right, I haven’t put that right. What I mean is, you can’t have your food running about screaming on the plate – it’s logic that you have to kill it first. Then you can talk to it. But it’s obvious you have to be cut off from your food so that you can cut it up. You want something – but you can’t have it screaming, that’d be like your power refusing you.’
Jones: ‘That sounds mad to me, Ronald.’
Jidney: ‘I don’t notice that.’
Jones: ‘And when you’re not hungry what do you do? What do you do between fits of hunger?’
Dead Man Upright Page 19