Steven Dunne - The Reaper

‘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 murdered. 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.