The Mermaids Singing

F ROM 3" DISK LABELLED: BACKUP. 007; FILE LOVE. 016

I had already started work on Dr Tony Hill even before I had dispatched Damien Connolly. It seemed poetic justice to me that, like Damien, his name was already on my list as a potential partner. If I had needed any kind of reinforcement that I was doing the right thing by punishing him, that was it.

So, I already knew where he lived, where he worked and what he looked like. I knew what time he left the house in the morning, what tram he caught to work, and how long he stayed in his little office in the university.

I only realized how smoothly everything had gone up till now when things started to move in directions I hadn’t predicted and didn’t like. I suppose I’d made the mistake of underestimating the stupidity of the forces opposed to me. I’d never thought there was much brain power shared out among the officers of Bradfield police, but the latest developments shook even me. They arrested the wrong man!

Their incredible lack of intelligence and perception was matched only by the media, following uncritically like sheep. I couldn’t believe it when I picked up the Sentinel Times to read that a man was in custody helping police enquiries into my killings. The arrest came after a street assault involving a police officer. How on earth could they imagine that someone who had taken as much care as I had would end up in some street brawl in Temple Fields? It was an insult to my intelligence. Did they really think I was some out-of-control street yob?

I read and reread the article, unable to credit the depths of their foolishness. Anger burned inside me. I could feel it in my guts like indigestion and wind cramps rolled into a spiky ball. I wanted to do something vicious and dramatic, something that would prove to them how wrong they were.

I worked out with my weights till my muscles were trembling from effort and my kit was saturated with sweat, but still the anger refused to abate. I stormed upstairs to my computer and worked on the videos of Damien that I’d imported into my system. By the time I’d finished, we’d performed sexual gymnastics that the Russian national team would have been proud of. But nothing satisfied me. Nothing took the anger away.

Luckily, unlike them I’m not stupid. I know how dangerous uncontrolled anger could be for me. I needed to harness my anger, to be creative with it and make it work for me. I forced myself to channel my rage into constructive pathways. I planned in meticulous detail how I would capture Dr Tony Hill, and what I would do with him when I got him. I’d be keeping him in suspense – literally.

Squassation and strappado. The Spanish Inquisition knew exactly how to make the most of what was available. They simply harnessed the most powerful force on the planet, the force of gravity. All you need is a winch, a pulley, a few ropes and a lump of stone. You fasten the victim’s hands behind his back and run a rope from them through the pulley. Then you tie the stone to his feet.

In his book The Horrid Cruelties of the Inquisition, published in 1770, John Marchant described this efficient torture most eloquently:

He is then drawn up on high, till his head reaches the pulley. He is kept hanging in this manner for some time, that by the greatness of the weight hanging at his feet, all his joints and limbs may be dreadfully stretched, and on a sudden he is let down with a jerk, by the slacking of the rope, but is kept from coming quite to the ground, by which terrible shake, his arms and legs are disjointed, whereby he is put to the most exquisite pain; the shock which he receives by the sudden stop of his fall, and the weight at his feet stretching his whole body more intensely and cruelly.

The Germans added a refinement that attracted me. Behind the victim, they placed a spiked roller, so that as he descended, the rollers cut into and excoriated his back, leaving his body a bloody, dislocated mass. I considered reproducing this effect, but even after a lot of juggling with the layout, I couldn’t come up with a design on the computer that I was satisfied would work smoothly, unless I cuffed his hands in front of him, which makes the squassation and strappado far less effective. Keep it simple, that’s my motto.

While I was planning and constructing, I took steps to draw my web even tighter around Dr Hill. He might think he could climb inside my head, but he’d got things the wrong way round.

I couldn’t wait to get started. I was counting the hours.