The Reaper

seeing such beauty and listening to the breath of Heaven, instead of gaping at a hospital ceiling or the bonnet of a car or a back street puddle…

‘By the time I’d crashed the poker into his skull the first time, I’d changed him. I had changed him. He was different to the Steffi I’d always known. Better. At ease with himself, with his fate. I envied him for once. No more worry. No more having to hide the pain, the guilt. He was in the terminal ward. In rapture. If it were possible, I would have untied him so he could do the same for me. But I couldn’t let him down. He was depending on me.’

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