Chapter 4
Arnold began walking away from Coffee Stop and round the corner at brisk pace, such that Kathy had difficulty keeping up.
In all the rush to gain a lead in finding Thomas, Kathy had quite forgotten about the Winklemans and the small matter of their bill. Walking past Coffee Stop once more, she was given a sudden reminder in the form of Mr. Winkleman, still standing vigil outside his shop. He was about to demand payment when Kathy- of her own will- went forward and volunteered the money to him, accompanied with a sheepish apology and a brief summary of the situation, after which Mr. Winkleman said he completely understood and would hold nothing against her.
Once this was done, Kathy continued to follow Arnold. He had stopped and waited while Kathy sorted out her debt. A look of annoyance was etched across his face at the delay, yet he forced a smile when she returned into step.
“I do have other places to go and other things to do, you know,” he said, irritated.
Now that she had procured a lift from him to the offices of the chief suspects in Thomas’ disappearance, Kathy began to notice things about her strange courier. For instance, his long strides were reminiscent of science fiction films or television shows where the main character has some terribly important mission to get on with and is in a constant rush to get somewhere. His lab coat billowed behind him oddly. In general, he gave the impression of having a messianic complex, an idea of self-importance; as if every little thing he had to do was vitally important and had to be done with great speed.
She noticed also how, complementing this trait, he would often look back over his shoulder with curious glances. They puzzled Kathy. It felt like his eyes were peering into her soul and finding what they were looking for, but what that was Kathy could only guess: his gaze was unreadable. Yet though she could not fathom his exact intentions, it made her feel as if she were his specimen, his experiment; that he were supremely more powerful and important than her and could do whatever he wished to her, if he so willed it. What exactly he willed remained a mystery. His desire could have been lust or loathing, mere curiosity or something more sinister. Any of these options were possible and Kathy began to have second thoughts about travelling with this man.
Could she trust this man? Her mind turned to his connections. If he was a friend of Reg, the dubious employee of TGN, could he not be leading her into a trap? Reg had been more than explicit in his warning about the consequences of pursuing her investigation. Yet for some reason Kathy trusted that Arnold was not another TGN stooge. For one thing, if he was, she would have expected him to respond in the same reactionary way as Reg did to her questions. His casual and ill-informed response assured her he did not know much about the company. She had also witnessed the resentment held by Arnold towards Reg at the conclusion of their discussion; she had a feeling, therefore, that he would be more than happy to undermine the reputation of his friend’s company. After all, here was a journalist doing an investigative piece on TGN about a missing person! Such a story could spell sweet revenge for the humiliation he had suffered in the café.
Presently Arnold was approaching a green Vauxhall Corsa parked by the side of the road. Before entering, he turned to Kathy and announced: “TGN headquarters is just in the centre of London. As it happens, it’s where I’m heading anyway, so it’s no trouble taking you there”
Kathy felt a twang of fear. If he was going to TGN… then was he another employee? Was he to be the executioner to Reg’s judgment?
“Do you work for TGN?” asked Kathy nervously.
“Oh, no, no, no,” answered Arnold quickly. “I merely work in the area. I work for a research company called Cybertech Industries. We specialise in all kinds of research… well, I suppose we specialise in nothing because we do almost everything!” said Arnold, giving a nervous laugh as if he had said something funny. He was clearly trying to break the ice and impress Kathy with a joke. She was not impressed.
Rather, her mind was on other things. She found herself once more doubting herself, asking: can I trust this man? Her main concern was that he worked for TGN and might be a danger to her. She had confronted him and was satisfied with his response. He had not grown hard and unfriendly, like the otherwise affable Reg had done; rather, his manner had been that of someone trying to impress a guest. Her overall impression of him was that he had no knowledge or interest in TGN or what happened there. She believed him when he said he worked for Cybertech Industries and so quickly decided to trust him. After all, it was only a half hour car ride. Although she still felt slightly uncomfortable in a corner of her mind, it would be over soon- and she was doing this for Thomas, she reminded herself.
It was a surreal experience climbing into this car. It felt, once she had seated herself inside, completely normal: her background anxiety vanished and the whole scene took on an absurd feeling of normality. The car’s interior somehow reminded her of her childhood, of Sunday afternoon drives with her father, of the warm and happy feeling associated with that one day when papa would put down his tools and spend time with his family. Not that this situation was in any way comparable, of course: but it was just similar enough to remove the abnormality from the situation so that somehow, Kathy was able to relax into the passenger seat.
“I’ve been working at Cybertech for twenty years now,” continued Arnold, as if there had been no gap in the conversation, “and I’ve worked my way up the ladder. I began merely as a research assistant working on human genetics. Over the years, I’ve worked on many different things: I moved around departments before settling as a full time research scientist in the physics labs.”
Kathy maintained her gaze on him. She had no interest in science but knew that it was only polite to listen. It is always good to keep in the good books of your driver, especially when you don’t know them too well. To keep the conversation going, therefore, she prompted: “Physics?”
“Oh, yes,” said Arnold, leaning closer. He was visibly more animated now that Kathy had shown some interest. “Particularly particle physics. Do you know, the world down there under the microscope is fascinating. It’s all random: electrons and protons and neutrons and quarks flying everywhere, and nobody knows whether they’re particles or waves. In fact,” he leaned closer, “there’s a thing called wave-particle duality, where we believe they are waves and particles at the same time. Imagine that!”
Kathy feigned an expression of astonishment, and Arnold leaned ever more closely to her.
“Everything is governed by particles,” he continued. “Even us. Even us! The body is the most amazing machine ever built and the brain is the control unit. Do you know, some people say we have no free will? And I concur. Our brains are simply machines made of these particles built up into nerve cells called neurons, and our apparently free choices are simply random choices between different neurons made by electrical signals in our brains- and that is it! Randomness: the law of the universe!”
Arnold opened his mouth into a wide grin as if expecting Kathy to fall at his feet in worship of his superior intellect; in reality, Kathy appeared only faintly interested. She was trying to please her new friend by keeping a look of interest plastered across her face but his words bored her and her acting abilities were limited. In truth, she had been expecting something more impressive from a man who carried himself so proudly.
Sensing Kathy’s lack of enthusiasm, Arnold fell into a sort of sulk and fell silent. Kathy noticed a shadow pass briefly across his face as if an inner dark side was flashing before her: he had, for a second, taken on the appearance of someone much creepier and moodier than she had seen him before. Yet it lasted but a second and he soon returned to his normal self: pompous and self-important, with an undeserved sense of superiority, but unthreatening. Kathy hoped it would not happen again.
He turned the ignition and set off, finally. It must be said that he was in no hurry to reach their destination. The car was cruising steadily down the road, at least ten miles an hour below the speed limit.
/> The journey passed in silence for some time. It was, however, a pleasant silence and Kathy soon relaxed into her seat again. She even began to enjoy the ride. Her driver was no longer talking to her, so she used the time to gaze out of the window at the neighbourhood they were passing through. It just so happened that they were presently driving through the old neighbourhood where she grew up.
Through the window she could see her old secondary school, St. Michael’s Grammar School. It had been a fairly exclusive and reclusive school which, like all grammar schools, acted in some manner as a shield to the outside world. This had its advantages: she had heard frightful stories from the local comprehensive school of bullying, staff-pupil relationships, knives and drugs. It shamed her to this day to admit that she had been a bit of a snob in her youth. Upon leaving compulsory education, she had begun to socialise more with former comprehensive pupils and finally learnt that most important of lessons: your origin and schooling do not determine your personality or worth in society. In hindsight, in fact, she realised that many of her current friends from common backgrounds were far nicer people than those she had known while at the grammar school.
She had been a bit of an over-achiever in her schooldays…
‘But, no, why do they call it ‘over’ achiever?’ she suddenly thought to herself. ‘Is there some acceptable limit to achievement, beyond which you should not pass?’ The thought occurred to her to be quite odd- ‘for what is an over-achiever?’, she continued.
She surveyed her school day successes: for one, her talent for journalism and investigation had manifested itself at a young age when she began to work for the school newspaper, “News4U”. Well, that’s what it had been called when she began: she had always found such titles, using numbers instead of words in an attempt to ‘appeal’ to the younger generation, quite patronising. As soon as she became editor of the paper, she changed the name to the more respectable ‘The Tribune’. It didn’t help increase readership (in fact, some pupils complained that the change of name was simply pretentious) but her following actions, such as creating special music and sport sections within the paper, as well as adding a joke and comedy section, did make the paper somewhat more popular.
Her talent for investigation had shown itself during this period of her life. There had been a scandal in her last year involving the headmaster having an affair with one of the students, which would have remained hidden, had it not been for her powers of investigation. Much was made of it at the time: it hadn’t even entered the rumour mill when it was published and the whole school had been in shock. Nobody knew quite how she found out, and she liked to keep it that way- she enjoyed the idea of her ‘enemies’ being in fear of her hidden prowess and quite fancied herself as a sort of ‘ninja of words’.
Kathy was enjoying reminiscing about her childhood when Arnold tapped her on the shoulder. He was apparently eager to end the silence and start a conversation with her. As she turned, she could see him looking at her with one of his unreadable stares and felt naked before him, as if he were seeing her whole being simply by turning his eyes towards her. Of course, he was not, but such was the impression he made. It felt as if he was looking down on her, too, and she began to feel uncomfortable once more.
Yet his conversation was simple. “Where are you from?” he began.
“Around here,” she smiled nervously. “We’ve just passed my old school, actually.”
“Ah, the grammar school?” asked Arnold.
“Yes,” confirmed Kathy. At this he turned his eyes away from Kathy and back to his driving. It was a relief to be freed from his captivating glare.
“I went to a catholic school,” he began. He almost spat out the word ‘catholic’ as he said it, and Kathy was taken aback.
“What’s wrong with Catholics?” she asked innocently.
“Oh, not just them. I’m against any religious school,” he stated passionately. “I was raised a good little catholic boy. I was taught right and wrong, morals, God, all that nonsense. Then I began to question. And you’re not meant to question.”
He turned back to Kathy and fixed her with his gaze once more. She flinched. He seemed to notice and turned back to the road.
“I became an atheist when I was fifteen years old,” he went on. “And then I began thinking: if there is no God, then what is the basis of morality? All these things I’ve been taught about right and wrong, good and evil- aren’t they just made up by people? Of course by then I was obviously no longer catholic, but I was still stuck at catholic school. It was hell.”
Kathy nodded in sympathy. She could not think of anything to say in response, so the conversation died and she went back to looking out of her window.
Arnold’s sudden rant did not faze her; rather, she was used to such things. She had, in her youth, often been hitch-hiking. When you’re a penniless student, it’s the only way to travel and she had met many fascinating, and some scary, people on her travels: an Indian woman trying to flog her a holiday; a multilingual Italian woman driving an army jeep; a man who explained to her the finer points of theatre management. It had been a thrill for her, and she was sufficiently old enough to have done it just before the hitch-hiker obtained the popular image of being a dangerous murderer or rapist. She remembered the stories well: at one time, for some reason, the tabloids had begun to pick up on stories of hitch-hikers being kidnapped by their benefactors; of innocent drivers being threatened at knife-point by people to whom they had been kind enough to offer a lift. Slowly, this attitude had entered into popular culture: every time she went for a drive in her own car, she had seen fewer and fewer people on the side of the road seeking a ride; every time she tried to hitch-hike herself, lifts became rarer and rarer. It seemed a great shame to her that this great symbol of love for one’s neighbour, of helping those in need whether friend or stranger, had died out to fear- nevertheless, by the time hitch-hiking had become less common, she had already bought her first car and no longer needed to rely on the kindness of passing motorists.
She suddenly realised she had become lost in her thoughts. Her eyes had been capturing the world around her, but her head had not been registering the signals: rather, it had been creating a world of its own from memory. She was suddenly snapped out of her thoughts by the sight of Pond’s Bridge Swimming Pool, where she had learned to swim. Her father said that she had taken to the water like a fish. She almost had no need of lessons, such was her natural talent. This was at the age of six, and this was to become her signature sport: she would come to represent her school, and once even her county, in swimming events. Over-achiever? ‘Yes’, she concluded to herself: ‘yes, I most certainly was an over-achiever’.
A strange sight suddenly greeted her from outside the window. The car had stopped at a set of traffic lights and she could see an old man and his dog. The old man sported a Father Christmas beard and wore grey jogging bottoms and a red vest. His dog was a golden retriever. They both looked ancient and on their way out: the old man appeared to be the oldest man Kathy had ever seen. Certainly, she had never seen skin so wrinkled, a body so thin, a countenance so weak-looking. Equally, the dog appeared to be the oldest dog Kathy had ever seen: at a guess, she would have put his age at twenty. She was surprised it was still alive.
And how alive they both were! For two beings that looked as if they should not even be breathing, they were displaying the energy of a puppy and a teenager. What was striking for Kathy was the way the dog was acting. It was walking on its hind legs, like a human being. Of course, this is a trick common to many dogs- yet most dogs can only maintain this stance for but a few seconds. This dog, on the other hand, did not want to come down; it did not want to act like a dog. Kathy had been watching it for a while now (she had spied it before the car had reached the traffic lights; only now did the remarkable nature of its actions catch her attention, however) and throughout this time, it had been walking on two legs. Everything about the scene was perfectly normal- a man was out walking his dog
- except the dog seemed to be in denial about its nature. It was, obviously, a dog- but in a world of humans, it was trying to be a human.
Presently the old man leaned down to listen to the dog, as if listening to a child whispering in his ear. The old man suddenly stood up and roared with laughter as if the dog had just told him a hilarious joke. The dog seemed very pleased by this and tried to laugh itself, although this only came out in the form of barks, yelps and squeals that very vaguely resembled the sound of human laughter.
The whole scenario puzzled Kathy greatly. Her brow furrowed as she tried to comprehend the situation: how two creatures could appear so old yet act so young; how they could apparently converse, despite being different species; how the dog was acting so… human.
She stopped herself. She was losing herself in thought again. She pulled herself back into reality and looked to her right to see Arnold looking back at her. He was blankly staring at her with his signature look: unreadable, superior. Before this had not bothered Kathy, but now something extra gleamed in his eyes. He wanted something. His air of superiority had previously said to her that he felt he could take anything he wanted from her, do anything he wanted to her; yet then, it had remained in the potential. Now there was something in the way he looked at her which told her that he now wanted to use that potential. His face was still unreadable, however; she could not fathom precisely what he wanted, what his desire was.
She turned her neck round ninety degrees so that she was now facing the windscreen and away from him. His look frightened her now. She did not want to look at him, nor see him looking at her.
Still, she was in his car. He occupied the position of power. She turned her neck once more and faced the window. Yet this was not enough to calm her. She was presently aware that her ears were pricked to detect the slightest sound; her eyes were involuntarily darting backwards and forwards; she knew not what she feared in this man, but she knew she feared it. She kept her mind deliberately occupied by other, less troublesome, topics.
She forced her eyes to remain fixed on the window. As they continued driving, she saw the house of her ex-boyfriend Cameron Jenkins. She shuddered. The sight of that house brought back hidden and unpleasant memories. Though she urged herself to repress them, they came flooding back of their own accord, an unpleasant hiding place from her dark reality but a hiding place nonetheless.
She remembered when they had first met. She had been flattered by his interest in her. No other boy had ever looked twice at her, and some had even openly mocked her at the suggestion that they may fancy her. In short, she had felt thoroughly alone and unlovable- until Cameron came along.
At first, she had mistaken his nature for innocent interest in her. After all, she had been new to the game and had never had a boyfriend or a relationship before- so how was she to know how a boyfriend was expected to act? She remembered how he had first told her to come to his house and how she had felt flattered, wanted, important, almost… loved.
Naturally, she had accepted his invitation, although later she would come to see it as an order. For a few months, she had spent almost every night at his house and they had enjoyed hot, passionate nights together.
Then things had become nasty. She began to recognise him for what he was: a controller. As the infatuation died, she saw that his invitations were not invitations but orders: and, like all orders, disobedience meant punishment. She had felt trapped. From her advantageous position of hindsight, she could see that he had always been that way. Mere flattery had made her blind to this. Yet though her eyes had been opened to it, she had remained unable to do anything about it.
For on the outside, everything had seemed fine. It was only in private that he had revealed his true nature. Friends and family had often remarked on how they seemed the perfect couple. Kathy had feared offending their opinion and, in her weakened and powerless position, had wondered if they were right and she was wrong. So the relationship had continued for several months, growing steadily worse as Kathy had grown steadily more depressed and had felt steadily more trapped and controlled, less and less like herself and more and more like a stranger to herself, a mere puppet of Cameron.
So why could she not break it off? What force in her life had been able to hold her in such misery? In short, guilt: she had been barely able to admit the situation to herself, let alone to others. So whenever someone had asked her how things were, and whenever she had lied to them and said that she was fine, that Cameron was fine, that yes, they were happy- whenever she had said these things and heard her voice uttering these words, words that were not her own, she had felt ever more detached from her own identity; ever more powerless to change her situation; ever more duty-bound to render those words true: for whatever else she was, she was no liar.
Eventually she had built up the courage to end it and reclaim her individuality and identity. She had spoken to him face to face, calmly explained her position and told him it was over. Surprisingly, he had acted quite gracefully; just after the break up, they had remained friendly to each other. She had begun to wonder whether she had had him wrong. She had even considered getting back together with him.
That was until he began to exert his influence over her life again. I’ve left him, she had often thought, so how can he continue to wield such control over me? Yet control he did: to him, it mattered not that they were no longer together. He would not leave her alone. He would be waiting outside her house when she left for college. He would be visibly following her when she was out with friends. He would often call her at home, despite her expressly telling him not to.
This would not have been so bad if he had been pleasant towards her; yet the friendliness of the early days just after the break-up soon wore off. He became aggressive once more. His telephone conversations would consist of him berating her for things he had seen her doing that day. When he met her in the morning outside her house, he would greet her loudly with abuse and criticism. When he openly stalked her in her day to day life, she could see him looking at her with a disapproving expression. In short, she could not escape him. She had a stalker.
In the end, only a court order could put an end to the abuse. Yet even with that she had never felt safe in her neighbourhood again. Shortly after the incidents had ended, she and her family had moved house to another part of London. Only seventeen years old, and she had suffered so much.
She shuddered. Her mind was no longer a safe haven from her worries. It had taken her from a dark, terrifying world of reality and thrust her into an equally dark, terrifying world of imagination. She decided to avoid both worlds and stare straight ahead through the windshield and watch as the car moved steadily towards their goal as her time with the mysterious stranger drew inevitably closer to its close.
Her initial fear of him was beginning to subside and curiosity was taking its place: his gaze told her that he wanted something, but what? Had she been mistaken to discount him as a TGN employee? Was he going to take her in and do to her whatever they had done to Thomas? Or was it something else, unnamed or unnameable? Or something innocent? Maybe he wanted a pen. Or an ice cream.
She turned to face him once more, and he looked back. Yes, he wanted something: a hunger was present in his eyes, but hunger for what? As always, he was unreadable.
“What did your parents do?” he asked suddenly. He was clearly trying, awkwardly, to make conversation with his passenger.
“My father was an architect and my mother was a greengrocer,” she answered obligingly. “What about yours?”
He paused for a second. “My mother used to beat me,” he said finally.
Kathy was gobsmacked. The atmosphere in the car descended into silence, though not the pleasant kind like before: this one was awkward, uncomfortable.
Their journey was, at last, thankfully, taking them out of areas familiar to Kathy’s childhood and into areas of central London. The suburban backdrop of semi-detached houses and the odd corner shop gradually fell away to terraced houses a
nd old industrial sectors, and then finally to the modern sky-scrapers of central London.
‘Sky-scrapers’ is an unusual term to apply to an English city. In truth, these buildings were sky-scrapers only compared to the rest of London’s architecture. Britain is not known for its tall buildings. Foreigners will tell you that when they picture England, they imagine a land of mansions and butlers, of class and privilege; equally of fish and chips, and beer. The truth lies somewhere in-between. London contains the nearest thing England has to ‘sky-scrapers’, yet in truth they are not as tall as what one would find in New York, Tokyo or San Francisco, and nor are they so numerous. Nevertheless, one can always tell when one is entering the ‘City of London’ by the sudden appearance of tall, multi-storey buildings on the skyline, the most famous of which is Canary Wharf. It was when the car was close enough to the city centre to see this view that Arnold began a strange topic of conversation.
“Have you ever read the writings of the existentialist philosophers?” he suddenly asked.
Kathy was taken aback. It must have been ten minutes since a word had been spoken in the car, and she had become used to the silence and to her own thoughts.
“No,” she answered curiously.
“They argue that there is no objective moral authority in this world; in essence, that there is no right or wrong. What do you think to that?” he continued.
Kathy furrowed her brow. She had no idea where he was going with this, but given his look of hunger before and her complete ignorance of what he actually wanted, she now found herself on the defensive.
“I think that’s nonsense,” she replied. “Of course there is right and wrong. For example, murder is wrong. Nobody would disagree with that.”
Arnold released a strange, unsettling chuckle and continued his interrogation. This was a new side to him. It was as if he had taken off the mask beneath which he had been hiding this whole journey and revealed the person beneath; no longer was his hunger disguised, although its object was still a mystery.
“Ah, but it depends who is murdered, doesn’t it?”
Kathy was puzzled. “No, murder is always wrong. You cannot justify it by the identity of the victim. What kind of world would we live in if you could go around killing whoever you liked based on your own moral judgment of whether they deserved it or not?”
Arnold chuckled again in his creepy way. “So the soldier who murders in the name of his country is wrong, then?”
Kathy simply gazed at her interrogator with suspicious eyes. She did not know where his questioning was going, or why he was asking. Were this someone she knew or trusted, it could have been but a simple moral or philosophical discussion- yet the tone of this man, his new manner of speaking and acting, made Kathy feel inexplicably and indescribably uneasy.
“Why are you asking me these questions?” asked Kathy.
Arnold declined to reply. Instead he continued as if he had not heard Kathy:
“But if there is right or wrong, then who is to decide it? Who do we appoint the moral authority over us?”
“The values of a society determine what that society deems right or wrong,” answered Kathy curtly, after some thought.
“Ah, so we live in a tyranny by majority!” exclaimed Arnold.
He said no more for about five minutes as they approached the city. Kathy could not fathom her chauffeur- he was interested in debating philosophy, but there seemed a darker edge or sinister motive to his questioning. He had changed, in private, from his demeanour in the coffee shop: he who had seemed merely arrogant was now thoroughly worrying.
The buildings in the horizon grew larger, and Kathy hopefully anticipated the time when she could disembark from the car.
“If there is no objective moral authority in this world, then surely I can make my own rules for my own life; surely, then, I could decide that for me, things like rape, murder and paedophilia are right, not wrong,” continued Arnold unexpectedly.
“Yes, but whatever your own rules were, you would still be subject to the rules of society. Whether or not you believed your actions to be right or wrong, you’d still be hauled in front of a court and punished for your crimes,” replied Kathy quickly.
Again, Arnold chuckled his strange chuckle. “Ah, but what is punishment?” he queried. “As long as I am free in here”- at this he pointed to his head- “then I am free truly. I may be behind bars, but I may still be freer than any ‘free’ man out in the world.”
“I once spent a year doing a meditation course at a Buddhist monastery,” he changed tack suddenly. “Of course, Buddhism is as bad as all other religions. But their meditation techniques allow a man to keep his freedom even when his body is in chains. After a year there, even in prison I would still be free.”
Again, another pause as Arnold considered his next line of questioning and Kathy tried to work out what this man was after.
“Are you familiar with the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche?” he queried.
“Yes,” answered Kathy. It had been a long time, but she had read Beyond Good and Evil and Human, All Too Human by Nietzsche when studying philosophy in school. It had been compulsory for her subject. In all honesty, however, she had never been too keen on philosophy and so barely remembered it.
“He advocates the idea of the ‘superman’”, continued Arnold. “That being the man who can break free of all morality that society straps onto him; the man who can do what would for others be wrong, but for him is perfectly acceptable, for he is the superman.”
“I believe it was Dostoevsky who described a prisoner in whom he found the most innate and intense sense of peace and spirituality. This man had committed the most heinous of crimes, and yet he felt no remorse. It struck Dostoevsky that this man, who should under conventional morality feel like the scum of the earth, gave the impression almost of a holy man. Do you know why this man gave such an impression?”
“No,” said Kathy. She had the distinct impression it did not matter what she said, that Arnold simply wished for an audience to whom he could broadcast his monologue.
“Because he was a ‘superman’!” exclaimed Arnold. “He had broken through the moral conventions of his society. His society had told him murder was wrong; he had been brave enough to say ‘why?’ And he had taken another human’s life, just for the hell of it, and society had punished him physically- but mentally, in his head, he was free! For he had constructed his own morality, and he had followed it, and therefore to himself, he was a good, moral human being- and to him, it is the rest of us who are immoral!”
As he had been speaking, Arnold had grown more and more excited. At the crescendo of his last sentence, he had momentarily looked away from the road at Kathy, a look of frenzied excitement on his sweaty face. Kathy, for her part, had shrunk back from him as far as she could: his passionate speech on the subject of the morality of murder had freaked her out, and she was more uncomfortable than ever in his presence.
Arnold returned to driving and fell silent once more. His face, however, remained almost frozen in that expression of frenzied excitement. He was now glancing towards Kathy ever more often, with no attempt to conceal the hunger in his eyes. Kathy began to really fear for her life now: either from his dangerous driving, (which had now accelerated to a speed far beyond that which was legal) or from whatever cruel intentions he had in mind.
“Let me out of this car now.” She demanded. She tried to keep her voice calm and resolute but couldn’t help letting a tremor of fear into her speech.
“And kings have done it all through history!” continued Arnold in his monologue, ignoring Kathy’s request. He accelerated the car to at least double the speed limit and emitted a shrill chuckle every time he nearly crashed into another vehicle. “Why is it that when someone tries to take over a country and fails, they are a traitor; but when one tries and succeeds, he is a national hero, a king, a brilliant man? Why does the successful terrorist become a freedom fighter and a hero to his people? Because these people
are supermen! They expose the fallacy of morality: that, for no logical reason at all, morality dictates that one man who takes a life is a villain while another is to be worshipped; and, if the very foundation of morality be flawed, then man has no obligation to do that which is moral! In short, everything is permitted; nothing is wrong; and I can do anything!”
Now they were hurtling through the narrow streets of inner city London at breakneck speed, Arnold looking more frenzied and disturbed than ever. For one brief period he simply stared longingly at Kathy; she had to put aside her fear of him in order to yell at him to “look back at the road, for Christ’s sake, or you’ll kill us both!”
“Stop this car now and let me out,” she yelled again, this time even less successful than before at hiding her fear.
“Okay,” said Arnold suddenly. The car braked harshly, Kathy was nearly thrown through the windshield and everything presently seemed normal: the maniacal speed had ceased, Arnold was no longer acting like a lunatic and, as luck would have it, she found that the car was parked just outside an office block with the letters ‘TGN’ erected outside it in huge, red characters that took up two of its stories.
In an instant the panic of the preceding events dissipated and Kathy felt a sense of near security knowing that her journey was over as soon as she left the car. She made a curt smile towards Arnold and reached for the handle…
…the door was locked.
Kathy panicked once more. Safety was mere inches away and yet it may as well have been miles. She turned towards Arnold in a flurry and beckoned at him to unlock the door. A part of her hoped it was a simple mistake; another part, which she feared was nearer the truth, believed that the car doors were locked purposely and that Arnold had intended this.
“Open the door!” she screamed at him. “Now!”
Arnold had become quite quiet. Gone were the bravado and grand speeches of the car journey. In its place Arnold had become weak, timid and pale. His face was suddenly gaunt in comparison with the previous fiery, passionate expression it had displayed when he had been driving so dangerously and speaking so eloquently. He glanced nervously at Kathy and then pulled his eyes quickly from her. He was muttering something to himself, almost too quietly for Kathy to hear…
“I can do anything…”
That one phrase, muttered over and over again, almost a whisper as if it were some precious secret for him. Gradually he began to say it louder and louder as if the phrase itself were a source of power for him. Kathy watched in speechless bewilderment as his expression steadily returned to the excitable countenance it had worn several moments previously until he was staring straight at her, eyes full of confidence now, and suddenly uttered the phrase at her quite boldly and clearly:
“I can do anything!”
Almost as he was saying it he lunged forward. Finally, too late, she could read the hunger in his eyes: he was not a secret agent from TGN seeking to capture her. He did not want ice cream or a pen. Rather, he was merely a sexual predator, now scrambling towards her with undisguised lust etched into his every movement. She cursed herself for not recognising it sooner and tried with all her might to get out of the car, now.
Yet he was too fast for Kathy to respond quickly enough: one second he was sitting in front of her repeating a phrase; the next, his vile, repugnant face was millimetres away from hers and he was clutching a syringe in his right hand. His spare left hand was hovering near her breasts and, horrified, she knew instinctively what he was going to do to her. She could recognise the primal lust in his eyes. Yet she could do nothing: for as she went to scream, the needle plunged itself into her neck and unconsciousness beckoned her in.
“Ma’am, are you alright?”
Consciousness returned to Kathy in an instant and she sat bolt upright. The scream which had been stifled by the needle was now free, and broke out of her mouth involuntarily. It was deafening. The poor man in front of her had to cover his ears to protect them from injury. Yet the man before her was not Arnold: rather, he was a kindly policeman with a concerned smile.
“What happened?” she asked him when she realised she was now safe. Even as she was asking it, however, she was surveying the scene around her. She was lying on the pavement next to the car which had only recently been her prison. The car was empty now: the window by the driver’s seat lay smashed to pieces, and Arnold was handcuffed in front of his car. Two other officers were dealing with him roughly.
“I was passing by and saw this green Corsa parked by the side of the road,” explained the policeman. “When I peered in the window, I saw you and your attacker in the front two seats. It was obvious that you had been knocked unconscious and he was taking advantage of you. When I asked him to step out of the vehicle, he ignored me. I could see that you were in danger so I smashed the window in, opened the door and rescued you.”
Kathy was full of gratitude to her uniformed hero. It was clear that Arnold had been a grave threat to her, and that accepting a ride from him had, in hindsight, been a mistake. She felt stupid.
But all was not resolved. A sick sensation formed in her stomach as she began to wonder precisely what Arnold had done to her while she was unconscious.
“Luckily, I caught him before he could get too far,” continued the policeman.
“What do you mean by ‘too far’?” asked Kathy. She almost didn’t want to hear the answer.
The policeman then explained what he had seen when he looked into the car. The full description of what he had witnessed shook Kathy to the core, and would do the same to you, dear reader, so I will spare you the detail. It is enough to know that Arnold had clearly intended to rape her, but did not get that far, and that she was still clothed when the policeman found her.
Kathy felt sick. The knowledge of what had happened to her made her physically ill and she threw up on the pavement before collapsing into sobs. The policeman sat down beside her.
“Hush, hush now,” reassured her rescuer. “It’s alright. You’re safe now, and the man who did this to you will be behind bars soon enough.”
Kathy looked over to where Arnold had been handcuffed, but he was now missing. So too were the two other police officers. She guessed that he had been taken to the police station for questioning.
“My name is PC Geoff Hamilton,” her rescuer introduced himself. “What’s yours?”
“Kathy,” she answered weakly. “Kathy Turner.”
She smiled at PC Geoff Hamilton. Then her smile became a laugh: it was a giggle at first, but soon she was in hysterics. She couldn’t explain it: nothing funny had happened. Given what had happened, she should have been in tears. Yet she was laughing! It’s probably the relief, she reasoned to herself. Yes, it was: and as she laughed she began to cry tears of joy: joy, that something terrible had been averted by the kind intervention of this lovely, lovely man who had saved her from…
She dared not think it; she dared not name it. In time, she would, but now she could not. Yet she knew its name, though she chose not to give it voice, and she knew that she had avoided it. And that is what gave her cause for such joy as she stood up from the pavement with the help of her hero and stepped out into freedom.