The last story I read about us going missing was when my dad doubled the reward. I knew he must love me then. Tash didn’t say anything for a long while. Her parents couldn’t afford that sort of money.
“Maybe you’ll be going home,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t leave without you.”
For weeks I had begged George to let us write letters. Eventually, he agreed. I wrote one to Mum and Dad and another to Emily. Tash wrote to her folks and to Aiden Foster, her old boyfriend, although I don’t know why she bothered.
George told us what we had to say, so we didn’t give away any clues. We had to tell them that we ran away and that we were living in London and that people should stop looking for us. I wanted to put in other stuff, but George wouldn’t let me.
On a good day he could be kind and generous. On a bad day he was cruel. He enjoyed telling us that our parents didn’t want us. My mum was pregnant and having a baby to replace me, he said, and Tash’s parents were getting a divorce.
I told Tash not to believe him, but he brought us the newspaper story and said it was proof that they didn’t want us back. They were glad we were gone. Good riddance to the bad seeds.
5
Standing alone at the dais, I clutch the lectern in both hands and blink into the brightness. Faces are visible in the light from the stage; pale, winterized, peering from tiered seats that rise into the deeper shadows.
The lecture theatre is half empty. The weather has kept them away, or perhaps I’m not a big enough draw: Professor Joseph O’Loughlin—the trembling psychologist—the man who can supposedly “walk through minds.”
This is not my usual audience. Normally, I’m lecturing university students with baggy clothes and oily skin. Today I’m facing my peers: psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists, who think I have some wisdom to impart, some remarkable insight into the human condition, which will give them a better understanding of their patients.
I begin.
“Imagine, if you can, feeling absolutely no concern for another human being. No guilt. No remorse. No shame. Never once regretting a single selfish, lazy, cruel, unethical or immoral word or action in your entire life.
“Nobody matters except you. Nobody deserves respect. Equality. Fairness. They are useless, ignorant, gullible fools, who are taking up space and the air you breathe.
“Now I want you to add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people exactly what you are, to be able to hide your true nature. Nobody knows what you’re really like… how little you care for other people… what you’re capable of…
“Imagine what you could achieve. Where others hesitate, you will act. Where others set boundaries, you will cross them, unhampered by any moral restraints or pangs of disquiet, any rules or ethics, with ice water in your veins and a heart of pure stone.
“What will you do with this power? That will depend upon what your desires are. Not all psychopaths are the same. And despite what the tabloid newspapers say, they’re not all serial killers or mass murderers.
“Based on the law of averages, at least four people in this theatre match the description I’ve just given. Maybe you’re sitting next to one of them. Maybe you’re one yourself.”
There are nervous smiles among the audience, but nobody looks sideways. They are listening.
“We are all different. Some of us are fuelled by ambition or a lust for money or power. Some are lazy. Some are stupid. Some are violent. Some are cowards. Some, as I’ve explained, are psychopaths. Not monsters. Not madmen. They marry, raise families and create business empires, learning to fake sincerity and hide their secret.
“This concept of the successful psychopath is often forgotten or ignored by the medical profession. We study those on the fringes of society—the dropouts and low achievers, the ones who get caught who have neither the intellect nor the inclination to rule the world. Only in the last few years have we begun to investigate the psychopaths who hide successfully among us.”
Glancing at my audience, I recognize one or two faces. I worked on a research project with Eric Knox, who is sitting next to Andrew Nelson, a friend from university, who once dated my sister Rebecca and broke her heart. Two rows back, I notice a woman who looks familiar. It takes me a few minutes to put a name to her face: Victoria Naparstek, Augie Shaw’s psychiatrist.
“I’m going to end with a story,” I tell them. “It’s about an affable, charismatic man who grew up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of New York. Reclusive, stand-offish, slightly aloof, he married his childhood sweetheart and had two sons.