Colin Wilson - Ritual in the Dark

I don't know.

Stein smiled suddenly.

Will you let me show you something?

Sorme glanced up at him.

What?

It would not take long.

Sorme looked at the priest. His eyes were closed; he seemed to be asleep. His white face had withdrawn from the situation. Sorme said:

All right. Where is it?

Stein stood up.

Wait here for me a moment, if you don't mind. I have a phone call to make. Then we can go.

He went out of the room. Sorme stood looking at the door, wondering if he was standing outside, listening. After a moment, he went to the door and opened it softly. There was no one in the passageway.

When he turned round again, the priest was looking at him. He smiled embarrassedly saying:

I don't entirely trust him, father.

He is honest.

Is he? What do you think he wants to show me?

The body, perhaps. I don't know.

Sorme said, with disgust:

I hope not!

A strange excitement stirred his stomach and loins. He sat in the chair Stein had vacated. He said:

I'm sorry to put you in this position, father.

It is your problem, Gerard.

But — you see how I feel? I can't betray Austin, no matter what he's done. Even if what Stein says is true — that Austin would be better off in Broadmoor…

You feel you owe him too much loyalty?

No, it's not that. I talked to him this morning. He's not insane. He's like me — he has problems that need all his efforts to solve them. He's a free man, father. And it's only in this past week that I've come to realise the meaning of freedom. You see, father, I'm certain of one thing: Austin did whatever he did out of a need for freedom. He told me this morning that he thinks he's been subconsciously driving his life towards a state of crisis. You heard what Stein said? He inherited sadism from his father's side of the family. God knows what else he inherited. He's had a life that's made him neurotic. He feels he's in a prison and he has the courage to do something desperate to smash his way out of it. I know it's wrong to kill — but it's done now. It's in the past. If he gets out of this, he'll know more about the meaning of freedom. Don't you see? He's fighting a battle against himself as well as against society. Why should I help society? I sympathise too much.

The priest said:

There may be some truth in that, Gerard. But don't identify yourself too closely with Austin.

But that's just it, father. I can identify myself with him. The judges who condemn him wouldn't understand. They've got to condemn him because society has to go on somehow. But I can't cooperate. This man Stein is persuasive. He's plausible. But so was Pontius Pilate. He belongs to the world. He doesn't understand…

The priest said softly:

Be careful, Gerard.

Why, father?

You think Austin is made of the stuff that saints and martyrs are made of — the holy obsession. You may be wrong. He may only be…

The door opened, and Stein came back into the room. He said:

I am sorry. I should have knocked. Am I interrupting?

The priest said:

No; come in, Franz.

Stein said:

If Mr Sorme is ready, we need not disturb you.

Sorme stood up.

I'm ready.

Stein said:

I may see you later, Larry. Try to get some sleep.

Thank you, Franz. And Gerard… if you want to come back, I shall be glad to see you.

Thanks, father.

Goodbye, Larry. I may be back.

In the taxi, Stein looked out of the window without speaking. Sorme asked him finally:

What makes you so certain that Austin's your man?

Stein turned to him, smiling.

His case report.

From the psychiatrist, you mean?

Yes.

What did it say?

A great many things. But one of them was this. When Austin was thirteen, he was expelled from his private school for being the ringleader in an affair of bullying that led to the death of a boy. He was not directly responsible — the boy died of brain fever — but Austin was guilty, nevertheless. Immediately afterwards, he experienced a religious conversion. He begged his family to send him to a monastery as a novice. They refused, but they engaged some kind of clergyman as his tutor.

Stein sat back, staring at Sorme from under the bushy eyebrows. The shadows in the taxi made his face look as if it had been cut out of rock. Sorme said doubtfully:

I don't quite understand.

No? Then perhaps you will understand this. After the murder of a male prostitute named Grans in a Hamburg rooming-house Austin entered an Alsace monastery, where he stayed for about three months. At the end of the period, a neighbouring haystack caught fire. Austin was among the monks who attempted to stop the fire from spreading. The next day he left the monastery and returned to England.

I… I don't see what the haystack has to do with it.

No? Peter Kurten was a pyromaniac. He liked setting fire to things — especially haystacks. The sight of fire acts as a stimulant to many sadists.

You're trying to tell me… that Austin's a kind of split personality who bounces from murder to religion?

I think it possible.

What else did the report say?

Nothing that would interest you.

Mother-fixation stuff?

Stein smiled.

Yes. Mother-fixation stuff.

The taxi stopped at the traffic lights outside Aldgate East station. Sorme said:

Are we going to the police station?

No. To the London Hospital.

Why?

Stein said:

I want you to see the woman who was killed last night.

Why?

You should understand what you are condoning.

Sorme started to speak then changed his mind. As the taxi passed the market stalls at the end of Vallance Road, he recognised Glasp buying something in a brown-paper bag. He turned and stared through the blue glass of the rear window, but another car blocked the view. He had thought he saw a young girl standing with Glasp. A moment later the taxi stopped outside the Whitechapel tube. Stein climbed out, and paid the driver. Sorme stood on the pavement, craning to catch another sight of Glasp. Stein said:

Are you ready?

Sorme said apologetically:

I thought I saw a friend…

They crossed the road with a crowd of pedestrians. A sense of coldness invaded Sorme's chest and diffused to his stomach. Noting the confidence in Stein's manner, he prepared himself for a shock that would unbalance him. A bloated face formed in his memory, the lips blackened, a scarf knotted tightly around the throat; it was a photograph he had seen in Nunne's volume of medical jurisprudence. Walking beside Stein across the grounds of the hospital, he found it difficult to suppress a feeling of sickness; his heart was pounding unpleasantly, driving the fever from his throat and the lobes of his ears.

A uniformed policeman stood at the bottom of the concrete steps; he smiled at Stein and nodded. His greeting seemed somehow out of place there, like an executioner's formal: 'I hope everything has been satisfactory, sir?' Stein went ahead through the green door, holding it open for Sorme. The familiar iodoform smell came out to him, bringing an immediate comfort. Sorme heard his voice asking:

Why did they bring her here?

The pathologist wants to make a careful examination. The police mortuary is too far.

The room was empty; white gowns hung from the pegs on the wall. There were only two stone slabs in it. Both were covered with white cloths that concealed human outlines. Stein wasted no time on theatrical effects. He pulled back the sheet from the nearest slab, saying:

I want you to look at this.

Sorme moved closer to look. The first impression of horror disappeared immediately; it was produced by the sight of the hair clotted with blood. It was not a human being on the slab; he could feel only the slight, stomach-gripping disgust of the smell of a butcher's shop. Feeling the need to speak, he said: