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generalized victim, an everywoman, perhaps even a substitute for someone else.”
They sat for a moment, pondering this. “You said the weapon of choice was an indication of the
level of rage,” Emma eventually added, her comments addressed mostly toward Trevor. “And by that
logic, rape would indicate a very specific type of anger, would it not? The weapon of choice being
the most intimate of all?”
She was looking right at him, but Trevor found he could not sustain eye contact for long. He
dropped his gaze back to his glass of claret, aware of the cowardice in the action.
“You’re suggesting he obliterates her face to sustain a particular type of fantasy,” Rayley said
slowly, also looking into his own wine glass, but in his case the gesture was merely meditative.
“There’s a woman he wants to punish but he can’t – because she’s unreachable, gone away
somewhere, or is perhaps even dead. So his anger is directed toward some random woman who
stands in her stead.”
“That’s madness,” said Tom.
Rayley raised an eyebrow. “We’re talking about violent criminals. Of course it’s madness.”
“But what we must remember is that they do not see it as such,” Trevor said. The clock behind
Tom trembled in anticipation, and then began to strike twelve. Trevor waited for each gong to sound.
They had overstayed, as they so often did, had drunk more than they should, had eaten past the point of
satiety and into excess, had teetered once again on the edge of discord. The ponderous sequence of
the twelve bells of midnight gave Trevor time to compose his thoughts. He knew he might not see
these people again for weeks, perhaps the better part of a month, and he did not wish to leave them
like this, to conclude their last meeting in such an inconclusive way.
“Criminals most often do not see themselves as criminals,” he continued, when the final gong
had sounded, leaving a subtle reverberation in the air. “I doubt very many men, or women as the case
may be, awaken in the morning and think to themselves ‘Today I shall go out and perform a criminal
act.’ They instead feel justified in their actions, and this is what we must remember. That they
consider themselves to be righting some great wrong, as avenging either their own suffering or that of
someone they love, as merely setting the tipped scales of justice on balance once again. It is easy for
us to sit here with our brandy and declare them animals, but I suspect that in most cases there is an
interior logic to their motives, a logic we must understand if we hope to thwart the actions which
result from it. Otherwise, we will spend our lives solving crimes instead of preventing them. The
science of forensics will become nothing more than mopping up bloodstains.”