Clarence.
'It got easier,' Clarence continued. 'First, the fantasies were about the victim, then about the killing, then perfecting the killing.'
The Fireman scowled, then in a derisive singsong voice said, 'The fantasy becomes reality, and then the fantasy develops structure. Blah, blah, blah. It's all so boring, Dr. Maxson.'
'And Clarence's fantasies are so drab,' complained Stephanie, fiddling with her nails. 'Poisoning is so impersonal. So tacky.'
Clarence the Chemist stuck out his tongue at Stephanie. It was a small pointed tongue and it flicked out and back again, snakelike, as he bobbed his head.
'Oh, you'd like to, wouldn't you?' Stephanie taunted, hiking up her pink hot pants and flashing a smooth expanse of thigh.
Clarence holstered his tongue. 'If you were a woman, I'd…'
Stephanie bristled. 'You'd what, you insignificant worm?'
Clarence the Chemist shrank back into the metal chair and jammed his hands into his pockets. On the far side of forty, he was short and stout, a bland face topped by wispy, blond-gray hair, a brother-in-law look you'd never remember. He wore a brown wool cardigan buttoned up. Next to him was Ken the Doll. Ken was in his twenties, handsome in a nondescript way, brown hair short and neatly parted, his pale face without lines, his thin lips without expression. He wore a blue blazer jacket worn at the elbows.
Next to Ken the Doll was Stephen aka Stephanie. All giggles and flirtatious movements, she smoothed her short, bleached-blond hair with exaggerated motions. Her halter top was tight and bright, and she kept squeezing her small breasts together with her arms. She spoke breathlessly in a poor imitation of Marilyn Monroe.
'There isn't a real man in the room,' she complained, batting her eyes, 'unless it's him.' She dangled a handful of black lacquered fingernails in my direction.
'Bitchy, bitchy, bitchy,' responded the Fireman. He was tall and lanky with prominent cheekbones, and his jaw muscles worked as he chewed a thick wad of gum. He could have been thirty or forty, and as he talked, his eyes danced to a tune all their own. 'Stephanie, darling, if you hate your penis so much, why not let me dip it in kerosene and set it alight?'
That started a buzz. Clarence the Chemist smacked his lips in a boorish smooching sound and nodded his head vigorously, welcoming an ally. Ken the Doll cracked his knuckles, and the Fireman grinned maniacally at his inestimable wit. Stephanie hissed at all of them.
I just sat there and tried to act nonchalant in the presence of three men and a whoozit who collectively had killed fourteen women. The room was drafty and dark, the floor dirty linoleum. The windows were crosshatched with metal screens secured by heavy padlocks. The door was steel and opened electronically when an attendant turned a key and pushed the right button. Two floors above, Charlie Riggs was preparing to speak to an assembly of British coroners, homicide detectives, medical students, forensic psychiatrists and, I supposed, assorted other ghouls.
I surveyed The Group. Clarence the Chemist was a pharmacist who had poisoned his victims. As a child, the Fireman had dissected live cats, then torched them. More recently, he raped women and killed them, though not in that order. He always burned their bodies. Ken the Doll wasn't named Ken at all. But, as a child, he would rip the head off his sister's Barbie doll, then masturbate into the open neck. He once knifed a woman in the abdomen, then attempted sex through the wound. Stephanie was a transsexual in her late twenties, a woman trapped in a man's body. Hormone treatments had given her breasts and removed her facial hair, and in a dim bar, she would be considered attractive in a slatternly way. Judged unstable even before she killed anyone, she had been turned down for the surgery that would remove the male equipment and construct an artificial vagina.
Clad in a white lab coat, different-colored pens sticking out of a pocket, Dr. Pamela Maxson sat on the edge of the group, her legs demurely crossed, a clipboard on her lap. 'Stephanie, what was your earliest fantasy?' she asked.
'Being just like Mother.'
'Mother, mother, mother,' Clarence the Chemist chanted.
'Fucker, fucker, fucker,' the Fireman chimed in.
'Did you fantasize about wearing women's clothes?' Pam asked.
Stephanie bristled. 'If you mean, did I have a fetish about cross-dressing, don't be ridiculous. I was never a transvestite, those wretched faggots jerking off into their wives' underwear. I was born a woman. I will die a woman.'
'Any day now,' muttered the Fireman.
'Oh, Stephanie,' cooed Clarence the Chemist. 'Is it still two pounds sterling for you to suck off the guards in the WC, or has the price gone up?'
'It has,' the Fireman said, furiously working his chewing gum. 'Now Stephanie will pay five pounds.'
Even Ken the Doll laughed at that one.
'Ignore them,' Pamela told Stephanie.
But boys will be boys, even homicidal-maniac boys, and they were getting pretty worked up.
'Stephanie,' the Fireman said, 'do you know how to make a hormone?'
Stephanie looked straight ahead and said nothing.
'Don't pay her!' Clarence answered triumphantly.
These two were going to make everybody forget Abbott and Costello. When the clapping and foot-stomping stopped, Pamela looked Clarence in the eye. 'Perhaps I should call Clive and order up a double dose of Thorazine. We could end group now, and everyone could return to the ward for a nice long nap.'
That got their attention. The noise stopped, and Pamela continued. 'Stephanie, your mother dressed you in girls' clothes, didn't she?'
'Ever since I could remember. Bows and frills. Just like Mother.' Stephanie's voice had taken on an eerie little-girl quality.
'And Father, what did he say?'
'He was too potted to say anything, and after a while he wasn't there at all.'
'And why did you kill the shop assistant?'
The question was jarring, as it was meant to be. Stephanie didn't bat a false eyelash. 'The tart was throwing herself at a man.'
'A man?'
'My man…the man I wanted.'
'So you killed her?'
Stephanie shrugged. It was rational, I thought, remembering my earlier conversation with Pam. She killed the woman out of jealousy. The woman was after the man Stephanie wanted. And probably more important, the woman possessed the body parts Stephanie coveted, was lucky enough to be born with them.
'Kill, kill, kill,' chanted Clarence the Chemist, quieter this time.
'Burn, burn, burn,' answered the Fireman.
'Let's talk about the new boy,' Stephanie said.
Suddenly they were looking at me.
'He's big,' said the fireman.
'Handsome in a loutish way,' said Stephanie.
'Do you kill them first or fuck them first?' Clarence asked.
Talk about leading questions. 'Usually I make a joke and they just go away,' I said.
Pam Maxson began passing out photocopies like a teacher to her class.
'Ooh, show-and-tell,' Stephanie breathed.
Clarence drew a pair of spectacles from his shirt pocket and studied the papers. The Fireman industriously folded his copies, making three paper airplanes, licking the seams along the wings. Ken the Doll simply stared toward the screened windows.
'Clarence, you liked to leave little missives, didn't you?' Pam Maxson asked.
'Poetry. I wrote poetry. 'Ode to White Arsenic.' 'On Turning Blue.' 'Sighing with Cyanide.' You've read them all, Dr. Maxson.' He examined the papers. 'But this…this ranting about horses' eyes. This is sick.'
'What about the others?'
