by Steven Dunne
Sorenson had to take a pause now. His head slumped.
‘There’s something I don’t understand.’
‘What don’t you understand, Damen? The urge to kill those who don’t deserve to live. To destroy those who can’t appreciate the beauty there is in the world-a painting, a piece of music, a glass of wine. To end the lives of those who, in deadening their own pain, spray their vile scent over others. To show them how precious life is by removing it. What don’t you understand? Tell me.’
‘I understand the picture-Fleur de Lis-I understand the music, the wine. I even understand the arrogance which demands that only people who can’t appreciate the things you take for granted should be slaughtered, people without your advantages, people that the wealthy, the well educated like you should be trying to help.’
Sorenson turned to Brook with a look of such scorn and disgust that Brook worried that he may have gone too far and be disqualified from the endgame. But then Sorenson laughed as if realising he was being teased. ‘You don’t believe that liberal nonsense for a second, any more than Charlie did. It’s tried and failed. We live in a jungle, Damen. In the jungle, if you hold out a hand to help a suffering animal, it will be ripped to pieces. You understand that much.’
‘I understand the power, the mania. I understand the insanity of other people’s lives and the desire to be God. But God is God, Professor. Only the Devil ever wants to be God.’
Sorenson laughed again. ‘You think I’m the devil? I’m flattered.’
‘No, any fool can have a God complex. You’re no fool.’ Sorenson accepted the compliment with a nod of the head. ‘So tell me.’
‘Tell you what, Damen?’
‘Make me understand. If you murdered your brother why kill Sammy Elphick and his family? What had they done to deserve that?’
‘Everything. Their entire lives were a monument to ugliness, to causing pain with their petty theft and casual violence. There was nothing to be achieved by extending their existence. Not when I could show them something better. Not when I could teach them how to appreciate life in those final minutes. I could show them beauty. They lived more in half an hour with me than they could in two lifetimes of drudgery and struggle.’
‘But how did you choose Sammy Elphick and his family?’
‘A detail, Damen. Suffice to say they were chosen…’
‘How?’
Sorenson’s expression was blank. Finally he nodded. ‘Very well. I was in Shepherd’s Bush one afternoon, trying to flag down a cab. A group of boys ran towards me. They were only young but they were very loud, very aggressive. I had no fear of what they might do to me but I was interested so I stopped to look. Fifty yards behind them I could see an old woman being helped to her feet and people shouting at these boys. One of them had the old woman’s purse.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I examined their faces as they ran past me. I watched them trying to look tough to discourage interference but I could see each of them was affected by what they’d done. They had that big-shot excitement on their faces but I could detect worry, some brief flicker that they knew what they’d done was wrong. Except one.’
‘The Elphick boy.’
Sorenson nodded. ‘He charged towards me with such hate on his face and in his eyes. He had dead eyes. His parents were to blame. They’d trained him properly, to deaden every emotion, to care about no-one but himself and his own gratification.’
‘What happened?’
‘He slowed in front of me thinking he had another opportunity to inflict himself into the nightmares of some meek soul. He screamed at me and clenched his fists. ‘Do you want some?’ he shouted in my face.
‘What did you do?’
Sorenson chuckled. ‘What his kind fear above all things. I laughed at him.’
‘And then he assaulted you?’
‘No. I’d assaulted him. He was in shock at the idea that this lightly built, middle-aged man considered him so inconsequential, so hilarious. For a second he didn’t know what to do.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘He knew.’
‘Knew?’
‘That one day I was going to kill him.’
‘And did you know you were going to kill him?’
‘Yes. But not before he did. He realised that if someone like me could turn him into a figure of such ridicule, could strip him of all the power he’d invested in himself, he might as well not exist. In a sense, he died at that moment.’
‘What happened next?’
‘He ran away. I watched him go. Then he stopped and turned to face me to try and get his power back. He gave me a V-sign.’
Brook darted a look at Sorenson. ‘You cut off his fingers. You killed an entire family because of a V-sign?’
‘Damen, when will you look at the big picture? The boy was a killer. How do you think that poor old woman coped with his act of thoughtless violence?’
‘She died?’
‘I’ve no idea. Does it matter? You must have met the teacher Jason Wallis assaulted?’
‘So?’
‘Is she dead?’
‘You know she isn’t.’
‘Think harder. Is she dead?’
Brook cast his mind back to the panic in Denise Ottoman’s face when she couldn’t find her cigarettes, remembered the hands wringing the damp handkerchief into a knot, her husband by her side, ashen-faced, staring into the distance. He didn’t want to answer Sorenson but knew he must.
‘Is she dead, Damen?’
‘Yes. She’s dead. Her husband too.’
Sorenson exhaled deeply and stood to gather their glasses. When he returned, he fixed Brook as he handed him his drink. ‘And you say you don’t understand. You’ve always known, Damen. Always. It’s time. Someone’s got to choose. Someone’s got to decide…’
‘Who lives and who dies?’
‘Yes. Things can’t go on the way they are. On every estate, law-abiding residents are thinking it. In every school, teachers are thinking it. On every street corner, policemen are thinking it. If we could just remove this family, this pupil, this yob from the face of the earth, the world would truly be a better place. Nobody would miss them. Nobody would mourn for them. If they could just cease to exist and the misery they cause die with them. No fuss, no mess. What a thing.
‘But too many hands are tied, Damen. So while the meek cower behind their bolted front doors, the dregs of humanity are taking over. The weak can’t choose. The politicians, the judges sitting on their hands-they won’t choose. It’s up to us.’
‘To play God. You’re insane.’
‘Perhaps I am. But that makes God insane. And the billions who bend their knee in worship. A start had to be made. Do you question that after what you’ve seen? Did you question God’s right to act when you found Laura Maples?’
Brook didn’t answer. He could see where this was leading.
‘I remember you telling me about her death. You described the power Floyd Wrigley had over her perfectly. “Suddenly he’s a God. He is God.” you said. “He can choose.” Maybe I am insane, Damen. But I know I’m not God. Yet thousands of apparently sane people, every year, become God. They assume the power. Power over life and death. The power of God.
‘Take a Christian country like America.’ The sarcasm in Sorenson’s voice was a little overdone. ‘I lived in Los Angeles from 1995 for three years. You didn’t know that.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Continuing my work in my small way. Not that anyone would notice in such a place. Los Angeles-the City of the Angels. America-the Home of the Brave. For such a humourless people, their sense of the absurd is delicious. Do you know how many people are murdered in America every year, Damen?’
No reply. Brook could see how long Sorenson had been preparing this and decided to offer no interruptions. He shook his head.
‘Twenty-four-thousand people. Every year. On average, every week in the Land of the Free, nearly five hundred people are murde
red. They don’t die in road accidents or of heart disease or cancer. They have their lives deliberately ended by another human being. So how many killers is that, assuming more than one person is murdered by the same killer?
‘Let’s be generous and say there are eighteen thousand killers in America. In any one year.’ Sorenson looked hard at his pupil, raising a bony digit for emphasis. ‘What do you suppose gave all those people-eighteen thousand of them-the right to assume the power of God and end the lives of their victims?’
‘They don’t see it that way.’
‘Exactly!’ shouted Sorenson, slamming a fist down on his chair. ‘There’s no guiding hand behind them. They see no power other than their own. If there is such a power, where is it? Why isn’t it being used for good? Why won’t this power stop them killing? And if this power is not to be used for good then ‘Why shouldn’t I use it?’ they ask. Each of these eighteen thousand murderers has realised that anybody can wield this power. What need have we of metaphysical God, when, with a squeeze of the trigger or a stroke of the blade, we can be God? We are God. What a power, Damen. What an awesome power.
And who wants that power? Not those who have power, other power, power to affect things. No. It’s those without the power to change anything that thirst after the ultimate expression of existence-the God-given power to take life. Our society has become infected by that power, Damen. The millions with no power and no influence have realised they can turn themselves into a celestial being with a single act.
‘And then there are people like you and I. We look on in horror. We wonder what’s happening to the world. Did God really die at Auschwitz? Where is the order, the rightness of things? We see God devolving His powers to decide who lives and who dies, without reference to any logical system.
‘I’m not religious…’
‘Neither am I, Damen. Neither are the eighteen thousand people who committed murder in America last year. ‘God doesn’t exist!’ they say. ‘If He did exist He’d do something. If God does exist He doesn’t give a damn so why should we?’
‘And so we ask ourselves. A million questions. You know them as well as I do. It’s the interrogation at the Theatre of the Absurd. Why can Hitler live to kill six million Jews, when an innocent baby can be snuffed out at birth? How can Josef Stalin die in his sleep when a bus full of schoolchildren can career into a swollen river and be washed away? Why do arms dealers get to sip martinis in the sun while the weapons they sell are used to slaughter women and children in the name of ethnic purity?
‘Why? What is the point of it all, Damen? It’s complete chaos. Does this God want us to hate him? Does he want us to despair of His creation?’ Sorenson took a strained sigh and dabbed his brow with a hand towel produced from behind a cushion. ‘Excuse me. As you can see I feel strongly about this.’
‘And where do you fit into all this?’
‘Me?’ Sorenson laughed. As you said, Damen, I am now God. I have assumed that power. I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. If God refuses to bind a guiding philosophy to His power then I must do that for Him. I must show the world that power over life and death can be justly managed, so others can take up the mantle. The Reaper leads the way. He makes us see that the guilty can be judged and the innocent saved. The Reaper can decide. The Reaper does decide. It’s the only way.
‘The Elphick boy was young. I felt sorry but it was right. But his parents? They created him. They made him what he was. I was satisfied with their tears, their suffering. They learned a hard lesson and, by the end, they knew it was right. They saw I’d brought them beauty. They saw I’d brought them together as a family, for one last exquisite moment, and were grateful.’
‘And Wrigley?’
‘Floyd Wrigley was chosen for you, Damen, to prove to you the justness of The Reaper’s work. But still you refused to see and I had to look elsewhere.’
‘Charlie.’
Sorenson nodded. ‘His pain was so deep. The Reaper was happy to help him.’
‘By making him kill Roddy Telfer?’
‘By showing him that he had the power to make the world a better place.’
‘And Tamara Wrigley? Kylie Wallis? Roddy Telfer’s unborn child? Did their deaths make the world a better place?’
‘Nature versus nurture, Damen.’
‘What?’
‘Genetics or environment? You look but you don’t see. Is the way we’re raised responsible for what we are and what we do or is it laid down in our genetic make-up, as unchangeable as the sunrise? I suspect you’re an environment man, Damen. It’s the liberal choice.’
‘But you believe in science, in genetics.’
‘Believe? No. Like you I believe in nothing but my own ability to act. That’s how the choice is made. Nature versus nurture. When you’re the child of a habitual criminal your future is written. If the genes don’t get you, the environment will. It’s what the Americans call a slam-dunk.
‘You saw the poor Wallis girl, her virginity torn from her at such an age.’ Brook looked sharply up at Sorenson. ‘Of course I knew, Damen, every sickening detail-more even than you. And how long before this poor child delivered the seed of some habitual criminal like her father? Three years? Two years? Six months? And the cycle of abuse begins again.
‘She didn’t suffer if that’s what you want to know. She’d suffered enough before The Reaper took her. The parents cried. Finally they’d seen real pain and were forced to confront it, fear it. And they understood. I wish I could be certain they cried for their daughter and not for themselves. It was the same with the Wrigley girl…’
‘She was called Tamara. She’d have been twenty-six now.’
‘Yes.’ Sorenson was unfazed by Brook’s attempt to humanise his victims. ‘And how many young Floyds do you think she’d have squeezed out by now, strutting their stuff around the ‘hood’?
‘So the Wallis baby was saved because there was still time to change its future by changing its environment?’
Sorenson smiled warmly at Brook. ‘Exactly. Another drink.’
‘Is that why you write it on the wall?’
‘Don’t feign ignorance, Damen. Nobody in the Wallis family was saved. You know who benefits from The Reaper’s work.’
‘Benefits?’ From the depths, Brook hatched a bitter laugh. ‘From cutting the throats of little boys and girls.’
Sorenson’s grin forced Brook to look away. ‘Don’t bore me with the response you think society requires of you. Who benefits?’
Brook remembered Kylie, skin like white porcelain, her top sliced open, her back scored like a joint of pork. He remembered her mother, he remembered Bobby Wallis. He remembered the aggression of Jason in the hospital. He remembered Floyd Wrigley and Sammy Elphick and his boy hanging from the light fitting, shorn of his V-sign.
‘Tell me, Damen.’ Sorenson’s eyes bored into Brook and he couldn’t hold the look. He’d tapped into the mother lode of his deepest, darkest instincts and he knew. He saw it all. Everybody said it. Charlie Rowlands, Noble, Hendrickson, Greatorix, even Wendy. Good riddance to bad rubbish. He said it himself in unguarded moments. Nobody cared. Nobody was affected by The Reaper’s slaughter.
‘Is it a bad one, guv?’
‘I don’t know. I need you to tell me!’
‘Who benefits, Damen?’ Sorenson was insistent, sensing breakthrough.
Brook’s voice was barely more than a croak as he wrenched the words out. ‘We all do. The rest of us. We’re saved from them.’
Sorenson sat back with an appreciative sigh and continued to gaze at Brook, a thin cruel smirk hovering around his mouth. ‘Welcome aboard, my boy.’
Welcome aboard. Charlie’s phrase. Brook’s head spun. He was defeated. Not that Sorenson was the winner. But that made it worse. He saw how like Sorenson he was. Sorenson saw it too. They were of a kind. That’s why he’d come back for Brook.
And in the midst of all the madness, The Reaper came to help. He brought salvation with him, not for the souls of h
is victims but for society, if there was still such a thing. Saving the world from the pain these families inflicted and from the certainty of future pain.
Brook’s breathing was laboured now. He tried to return to the case to calm his mind. ‘There’s something else. Annie Sewell.’
‘Ah. Charlie finally rid himself of the burden.’
‘No. Charlie said nothing. I worked it out but what I couldn’t figure was why you’d take the trouble to arrange some anonymous old woman’s death just to get Bob Greatorix out of the way. Why not kill the Wallis family on a night, when I was sure to be first on the scene?’
‘That was the idea before I met her.’
‘When?’
‘More than a year ago. In Derby. I was in a hotel the Christmas before last…’
‘The International.’
‘That’s right. On a scouting mission,’ Sorenson added with a wink. ‘They were having a dinner, a Christmas treat. For the old folks,’ he added in a cockney accent. ‘Funny how, when you become old and senile, people automatically assume you’re harmless…’
‘And she wasn’t?’
‘Oh she’d become harmless, I dare say. But in her youth she carried a terrible anger. She couldn’t have children, you see. An ironic circumstance for someone who’s a midwife, don’t you think? All those happy couples, all those babies. And sometimes, poor Annie’s rage at the injustice of it all got the better of her. Sometimes the babies were weak and the slightest setback could take them away from their parents. It wasn’t hard to cover her tracks.
‘Eventually the anger subsides. Too late though for a dozen newborns and their broken parents. Of all the people who’ve come to my notice, she had the most blood on her hands. But worse, it was innocent blood. Killing a baby is unforgivable.’
‘But The Reaper kills children. What’s the difference?’