We made what we hoped were appropriate noises and shuffled our feet; Stevenson lit a cigarette.
* * *
On the last day, after he had finished with Jidney, Jones asked the three of us out to lunch, because we weren’t due back on normal duty till the morning. Sitting at a quiet table in the upstairs restaurant of the French pub Jones said: ‘Well, all I have to do now is to compile my report – that, and Jidney’s whole case file, will go onto the Yard’s new computer, when it’s ready, and from now on every serial killer we catch will be analysed in the same way, and this information will be available to any police force which finds itself with a case of this type on its hands.’
He took a sheet of paper out of his pocket and spread it out on the table, pushing the plates and glasses aside. ‘During the whole of my examination, the criteria I have had to satisfy are the following twenty-one questions, which were elaborated by the Behavioural Science Unit of the FBI under the name of its initials, VICAP, and form the psychiatric profile of any serial killer. A positive answer to two thirds of these questions or over means that the public has an individual in its midst who is guaranteed to give you three gentlemen a headache. While I am reading them out, think back over Jidney’s statements to us during my examination of him, and decide his positive score on the following for yourselves. Has Jidney exhibited signs of:
1. Ritualistic behaviour.
2. Masks of sanity.
3. Compulsivity.
4. Searching for help.
5. Severe memory disorders and a chronic inability to tell the truth.
6. Suicidal tendencies.
7. A history of serious assault.
8. Deviate sexual behaviour and hypersexuality.
9. Head injuries or injuries incurred at birth.
10. A history of chronic drug or alcohol abuse.
11. Alcoholic or drug-abusing parents.
12. Having been a victim of physical or emotional abuse or of cruel parenting.
13. Being the result of an unwanted pregnancy.
14. Having been the product of a difficult gestation period for the mother.
15. Interrupted bliss or no childhood bliss.
16. Extraordinary cruelty to animals.
17. Tendencies to arson without obvious homicidal interest.
18. Symptoms of neurological impairment.
19. Evidence of genetic disorders.
20. Biochemical symptoms.
21. Feelings of powerlessness or inadequacy.
When he had finished reading he removed his glasses. He gestured at the questionnaire, looked at the three of us and said: ‘I hope you’ve all learned something. At last, thank God, we are all going to work together, not in spite of each other; it’s official policy, and we are all going much further into all of this.’
31
The morning Jidney killed himself I met Stevenson as he was coming out of the cell; he had to slam the door hard to shut it because that was the only way it would close. He said: ‘That’s the end of Jidney. Amen.’
‘Did he leave any word?’
‘A note to say it wasn’t what you’ve done that matters but what you’ve realised. He said he’d spent his life in the wake of people who cast shadows hoping to learn how to throw one. That he had visited death on people as his only means of knowing it. That it obliterates without being unkind. Those were the only things he said he had learned.’
I saw the departed man in Stevenson’s face. He looked like smoke, a grey substance.
‘What did you think of the note?’
Stevenson said: ‘Can you conceive of such a thing on paper as a grateful scream?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You do,’ said Stevenson, ‘only you don’t remember it. It sounds like the noise you made when you were born.’
We left. I had no answer for Stevenson. Like everybody else, all I could do was keep going, sometimes away from misery and greed, but more often, for reasons that you needed only to look around you to see, towards it.
It was vital to go on catching people like Jidney, vital to play out the game against evil right to the last card.
All at once I am speeding after Dahlia, who is wobbling down our front path on her bike. Next week, she’ll be nine. I am rushing after her with my arms open and calling out: ‘I love you! I love you!’
But she is always just out of reach.
Dead Man Upright Page 21