Steven Dunne - The Reaper

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 his 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…’