?She reached the exterior fire escape and tried to climb down. She fell. Six floors down. It is my fault, I take full responsibility.?
She drew breath to ask questions, but Radebe forged ahead. ?I offer my resignation. I will not be an embarrassment to this department anymore.? He was finished, and the last vestige of dignity left his body with those words.
Eventually Janina said, ?She is dead.?
Quinn nodded. ?We carried her up to the interview room.?
?How did she get out??
Radebe stared at the carpet, unseeing. Quinn said, ?Vincent thinks he did not lock the door behind him.?
Rage welled up in her, and suspicion. ?You think? You think you didn?'t??
There was no reaction from him, which fueled her rage. She wanted to snarl at him, to punish him; it was too easy to stand lifelessly and say he thought he hadn'?t locked the door? she had to deal with the consequences. She bit back a flood of bitter words.
?You may go, Vincent. I accept your resignation.?
He turned around slowly, but she was not finished. ?There will be an inquiry. A disciplinary hearing.?
He nodded.
?See that we know where to find you.?
He looked back at her, and she saw that he had nothing left, nowhere to go.
Dr. Zatopek van Heerden walked her to her car.
She was reluctant to leave; the nearing deadlines called, but she did not want to be finished here.
?I don'?t entirely agree,? she said as they reached the car.
?About what??
?Good and evil. They are very often absolute concepts.?
She watched him in the moonlight. There was too much thought in him; perhaps he knew too much, as if the ideas and knowledge built up pressure behind his mouth and the outlet was too small for the volume behind. It caused strange expressions to cross his face but found some release in the movements of his body. As if he wrestled to keep it all under control.
Why did he turn her on?
Ten to one he was a bastard, so sure of himself.
Or was he?
She had always been sensual, deep inside. She saw herself that way. But a woman learned with the years that that was only a part of the truth. The other part lay outside, in the way men saw you. And women, who measured and compared and helped put you in your place in the long food chain of love play. You learned to live with that, adjusted your expectations and dreams and fantasies to protect a sensitive heart whose wounds of disappointment healed slowly. Until you were content with the now and then, the sometimes reasonable intensity of stolen moments with a bleached policeman, someone else?s husband. And here tonight, she wished she were tall and slim and blond and beautiful, with big breasts and full lips and a cute bottom, so that this man would propose something improper.
And what did she do?
She challenged him intellectually. She. Who was so average? in everything.
?Name me someone evil,? he said.
?Hitler.?
?Hitler is the stereotypical example,? he said. ?But let me ask you: Was he worse than Queen Victoria??
?I beg your pardon??
?Who fed Boer women and children porridge with glass in it? What about the scorched-earth policy? Maybe it was her generals. Maybe she had no idea. Just like P. W. Botha. Denying all knowledge, and therefore good? What of Joseph Stalin? Idi Amin? How do we measure? Are numbers the ultimate measure? Is a sliding scale of the numbers of victims the way we determine good or evil??
?The question is not who is the worst. The question is, Are there people who are absolutely evil??
?Let me tell you about Jeffrey Dahmer. The serial murderer. Do you know who he is??
?The Butcher of Milwaukee.?
?Was he evil??
?Yes.? But there was less assurance in her voice.
?The literature says that for seven or nine years, I can?t remember, let?s say seven years, Dahmer suppressed the urge to kill. This broken, fucked-up, pathetic wreck of a man kept the nearly inhuman drive bottled up for seven years. Does that make him bad? Or heroic? How many of us know that sort of drive, that intensity? We who can?t even control basic, simple urges like jealousy or envy.?
?No,? she said. ?I can?t agree. He murdered. Repeatedly. He did terrible things. It does not matter how long he held out.?
Zatopek smiled at her. ?I give in. It is an endless argument. It rests ultimately on so many personal things. I suspect it rests ultimately on the undebatable. Like religion. Norms, values. The way you see yourself, the way you see others and what we are. And what you have experienced.?
