Into the Darklands (9 page)

‘How about the stuff you used to do as a kid?’

‘What stuff?’

‘The stuff you did to animals.’

Now he
does
look offended. ‘I never did any…’

‘I don’t mean the sexual stuff, I’m talking about the
mean
things you used to do, the cruel things. Stuff with insects, birds, pets. All that.’

‘I didn’t,’ he says, but he’s shaken. I can see the lie in his eyes.

‘Look, Tony, all kids do mean stuff to bugs and things. That’s normal. But for you it was more, wasn’t it? For you it was different. Cruelty was your special place.’

At this point I’ve got him well and truly hooked. Tony was a narcissist and a sadist. He was the centre of his world. Everything revolved around him, the moon and the sun. The fact that I’d been able to seemingly randomly reach inside him and pull out one of his nasty little secrets intrigued him. I was holding up a special kind of mirror, and he couldn’t help but look.

So how did I know about the cruelty to animals? Magic? ESP? Unfortunately it’s nothing that mysterious. In truth, I guessed as
soon as I’d read he’d taken pictures of his victim’s face. We’re all different, but there aren’t that many different kinds of different. There are patterns, lines you can follow if you know the signs. If you spend enough time down here, eventually your eyes get used to the dark, and then you start to see details that were hidden before. It isn’t magic, it’s just practice.

Tony looks cool, but I know he’s enjoying this. The intellectual challenge of the game we’re playing appeals to him. He’s just decided I’m not a complete fool, and he wants to know what else I can see. He is unable to resist the narcissistic urge to see himself reflected through me. If he could he would look until his eyes bled.

‘Maybe I did a few things,’ he says.

I shrug. ‘Like what?’

‘The usual, burning ants with magnifying glasses, throwing stones at birds, that kind of thing.’

I’m not blinking, giving him my I-know-what-you-really-did look. ‘And?’

He giggles, and it’s as if he’s suddenly 10 years old.

‘What?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘There was this one thing,’ he says, giggling. ‘I don’t know why I’m laughing because it was pretty horrible.’

‘Cat or dog?’ I ask.

‘A dog. A little spaniel.’

‘And?’

‘I was about ten or eleven and my family was on holiday up north. I was fishing on a dock and this little dog comes up to me, sniffing around, and wagging its little tail.’

‘And?’

He giggles again. ‘And I just sort of pushed it off the dock into the sea. It wasn’t very far down but it made a huge splash.’

I’m playing it cool, letting him talk. ‘Then what did you do?’

‘It could swim; it wasn’t like it was going to drown or anything. So I went down these steps to pull it out, but then it just looked so funny swimming around that every time it got a leg up on the step I pushed it off again.’

‘Was the dog upset?’

He giggles. ‘Yeah, I guess. It was huffing and puffing and its little legs were going like pistons.’

‘What were you feeling as this was happening?’

Tony sits up straighter in his chair, his face suddenly serious. ‘Nothing,’ he says.

I shake my head. ‘No. What were you feeling?’

It has to be like this with guys like Tony; quiet, polite. You can be as rude as hell, as long as it sounds polite. The challenge has to be steel wrapped in velvet. He has to ask for the explanation. I can’t push someone like him. If I do that I’ll lose him. Tony has to come to me.

There’s a long pause.

‘Well then, you tell me what I was feeling.’

I look back at him, letting the moment draw out. Silence is a wonderful way to bring a sharp focus to your words.

‘You felt free,’ I finally say.

‘Free?’

I nod. ‘Free.’

‘Free from what?’ he asks, a slight smile on his lips. Tony is loving this. I shrug, an I-know-but-I’m-not-telling shrug.

‘You think you’re very clever, don’t you, Nigel?’ he says with that same little smile, as if I’ve just presented him with a particularly amusing riddle.

I return his smile, matching him. ‘Do
you
think I’m clever?’

The truth is I already know he thinks I’m clever. If he didn’t he wouldn’t have bothered giving me the time of day. He certainly
would never have told me about the spaniel. In Tony’s world a stupid person wouldn’t warrant a second glance.

‘I think you’re probably fairly clever, Nigel.’

‘And I think you’re probably fairly perceptive, Tony.’

He laughs.

‘Tell me why you took the photographs,’ I say, punching it in over the dangling end of his laugh.

He goes very still. ‘What photographs?’

I just look at him. There’s no need to repeat the question.

He shrugs. ‘She’s very pretty.’

‘Why did you take the photographs?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says.

‘Why did you take the photographs?’

‘I don’t know,’ he repeats.

I lean over to the small table of bizarre toys I use when I’m working. Plucking a little doll from the top I throw it on the floor between us. This particular doll is an ugly little thing, its face screwed up into a permanent sad frown. Plastic tears glisten on its plastic cheeks. As luck would have it the doll lands on its back with its small legs spread in a vaguely pornographic pose.

I raise my hands to my face, miming holding a camera, pointing it down at the doll lying spread-eagled on the floor. ‘Click…click…click.’

In between each click I pause, letting the silence add weight to the next, like fists hitting soft flesh. Still holding my imaginary camera I turn to him again. ‘Why did you take the photographs?’

He stares at me for a long moment, then back to the doll on the floor. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally says. ‘Honestly.’

Liar, liar, pants on fire,
is what I think to myself.
Freedom,
I mouth at him, exaggerating the movements.

‘I don’t understand,’ he says.

That’s enough for now. The art in all this crazy shit is about knowing when to stop. With a narcissist you always need a cliffhanger. You always need a hook. ‘Time’s up,’ I say, standing.

‘What?’ He sounds almost hurt.

‘Time’s up.’

We make another time for the following week and he leaves, looking as reluctant as a little boy being pulled from a toy shop.

I could write the report now, but I see him a couple more times anyway, just to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Tony is a sadist. He enjoys other people’s suffering, animals too for that matter. He took the photographs of the girl because he liked seeing her upset. He drank her suffering like some people drink a fine wine. The sex was an adjunct to the sadism, a means to the real ends. In his case the way he made his victim feel bad was predominantly through his psychological torture. He didn’t so much inflict physical pain as he did emotional pain.

Tony had a very well-developed sense of empathy for his victim; in fact, that was what sustained him. It was only when he experienced the power that came from his sexual punishing of the victim that he was free from the crippling self-hatred that underlay his sexual pathology. He hurt her to feel powerful, because feeling powerful was what made him feel better.

All I had to see was the fact that he’d taken the pictures of her when she was upset and then I knew who he really was. It didn’t take much to see that my initial theory was backed up by his clinical presentation. You don’t need to be able to read minds in my game, but you do need to pay attention to detail, and in particular the detail of the offender’s behaviour. It’s not about being particularly clever or insightful, it’s just a matter of noticing the patterns that underlie all behaviour in the Darklands.

Look at what he
did.
That’s where you’ll really find him.

IT SEEMS INCONGRUOUS, particularly given the nature of the things I have to deal with a lot of the time, that there should be so many things to laugh about. I’m sure there are many other mental-health professionals who are terribly serious most of the time, but I’m not one of them. I struggle to take most things seriously.

I could give you a lecture about how humour is important because it demonstrates that the brain is an asymmetrical self-organising pattern-making system, but Edward de Bono has said all that stuff far better than I ever could. If you haven’t read his book
Lateral Thinking
I strongly suggest you do. In the meantime I’ll simply eschew all the academic hand-wringing and send you off in that direction if you want some meat in your porridge.

My own explanation is, surprise, surprise, more simple: I laugh with the devil because it feels right. There is a danger in taking serious things too seriously. In that direction lies burnout and endless sleepless nights. If you can’t laugh about this work, then you won’t last long, or far worse, you’ll become as soulless as some of the people you work with. Just because you laugh doesn’t mean
you’re not taking the
work
seriously.

I only work with other professionals who have a sense of humour. The earnest ones prompt two immediate responses in me: overwhelming flippancy and itchy feet. My first response when I encounter earnest types is to take the piss. The more seriously they take themselves, the more flippant I tend to become. Maybe that demonstrates a lack of maturity on my part, but I prefer to think of it as a survival mechanism.

I once ran a training workshop for an organisation that worked with adolescents. The workshop was about engaging resistant teenagers, the ones who don’t want to be there. I’d just demonstrated the versatility of playing Highland pipe band marching tunes with these kids and was being hammered by a very earnest man who was concerned that the young person wouldn’t feel ‘heard’ as I was marching round the room to the sound of the pipes.

‘You don’t have to take it all so seriously,’ I’d said.

‘But Nigel,’ he broke in, with obvious gravity, ‘it
is
serious.’

‘Yeah, but does that mean you have to
take
it seriously?’

I might as well have been talking Yiddish. He was never going to get it because he didn’t understand the difference between being earnest and being effective.

Being earnest is dull, lifeless and passionless. It sucks the colour from everything it touches, it turns the volume down on the music, and it squashes the good clean laughter from a really dirty joke.

I go out on a social occasion and a woman leans over the table and, with a pronounced squiffy slur, asks me what the difference is between a fridge and a woman’s vagina.

‘I don’t know,’ I answer.

‘A fridge doesn’t fart when you take the meat out,’ she says, then accidentally flicks an orange peel across the restaurant, hitting a startled woman sitting at another table in the forehead. At such
moments you just have to laugh till it
hurts.

Sadly, nothing like that has ever happened when I’ve been to ‘professional functions’. There are small pockets of irreverence, but as a profession we generally take ourselves far too seriously. No one flicks orange peels and no one asks me the difference between kitchen appliances and sexual organs. In fact—apart from one obvious exception who shall remain nameless—no psychologist has ever even told me a dirty joke. I know a fair percentage of us probably tell them to other people, we just don’t tell them to each other.

I’d prefer not to be one of that crowd, so I’ll take a laugh anywhere I can get it.

Johnny was 15 and robbed people for a living. The only problem with his career choice was that he wasn’t very good at it. He kept getting caught. The last robbery was hardly the crime of the century. He’d burst into a dairy with an associate who had a sawn-off .22 rifle. It wasn’t loaded. They yelled at the guy for a bit and then took his change from the till and some tobacco pouches. The cops got him two days later. About a month after that he ends up sitting with me.

One look is all it takes. As soon as I walk out into the waiting room I know who he is—not literally—but in broad terms. He’s wearing the uniform of the stereotypical urban delinquent. He has the look in his eyes, the slouch and the usual fuck-you attitude.

We sit down and I give him the talk about confidentiality and what I’m doing. After that’s out of the way I pause for a moment, trying to decide where to start. I generally don’t plan anything. Nothing. Every time is different and I like to get my feet on the floor first then decide which way to play things.

Given that I could probably write the report just from the background stuff and what I’d seen thus far I decided to try something
a bit more meaningful than just another blah-de-blah psychological report.

‘So you’re a robber,’ I say.

He does the little quick flick of his eyebrows which is kid-speak for yes.

‘So did you do a course on that or what?’

He sneers. ‘What?’

‘Did you do a course at tech on being a robber?’

‘Na,’ he says, still with his little sneer.

‘So where did you learn how to be a robber?’

‘You don’t learn it, man. You just fuckin’ do it.’

‘That’s your problem then,’ I say.

‘What?’

‘You never did a course, which explains how come you’re so shit at it.’

‘Who says that?’

I pick up his file. ‘How many times you been caught?’

He shrugs.

‘Says here you been caught three times, right?’

He shrugs again.

‘And how many times have you tried to rob people?’

He doesn’t say anything but instead he looks down and bristles a bit.

I was guessing he’d tried three times and been caught three times. Not the best CV for someone aiming for a long-term criminal career. ‘See,’ I continue as if he’d answered the question, ‘your problem is you’re using the wrong approach.’

He looks at me, sneering. ‘Is that right?’

‘Oh yeah,’ I say. ‘Your problem is that you’ve been using things like knives and guns. That shit is going to get you in some serious trouble. You should use a fish.’

He frowns. ‘What?’

‘A fish. If I was ever going to rob a bank I’d use a fish. No way you’d catch me robbing with anything other than a nice fresh fish.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘Well think about it, is it illegal to carry a fish?’

He pauses for a moment. ‘No.’

‘There you go, so if you walk into a bank then pull out this big fish and ask for money, what are they going to do? Think about it, all you’ve done is present a large fish and ask for some money. It’s up to them whether or not they front up with it. Right? Unless you’re holding a great white shark, it’s hardly an offensive weapon, is it?’

He laughs. ‘Yeah but why would they give you money if all you got is a fuckin’ fish, man?’

‘Just think about it, who tries to rob a bank with a fish? You’d have to be either one crazy motherfucker, or have some kind of seriously bad-ass fish.’

He laughs again. ‘You’re fucked up, man.’

I shrug. ‘I may be fucked up but I’m not stupid enough to rob people with guns and knives. You don’t seem like such a bad guy—how come you’d do such a shitty thing to someone just trying to make a living?’

I’m not saying this in an accusing way. I’m just curious because he really doesn’t seem like such a bad guy. I phrase the question that way because that’s how people speak in his world.

This time he shrugs and looks ashamed. ‘I dunno.’

And we’re off.

It turned out he wanted to rob people for all the usual reasons. No one ever gave a crap about him so he didn’t give one in return. Before he left we called the local polytech and checked out a builder’s course, something he’d always wanted to do. As far as I know he did the course. And as far as I know he never robbed any
banks with a fish. If he ever does, though, I better get a cut because it was my idea.

We could have had a very serious conversation about this very serious matter, but if we had he’d just think I was another dickhead counsellor who didn’t have a clue. And he’d be right. When you work with the kind of people I do, you’ve always got to have a generous helping of bullshit up your sleeve. This is especially true when you’re working with I-don’t-give-a-shit adolescents. Most of these kids have had truckloads of earnest, polite, well-meaning counsellors who tried very hard to make the young person feel ‘heard’. Me, I just try and get a laugh.

Ben was 13 and screwed up in just about every way imaginable. His family could have been the subject of a whole season on
The Jerry Springer Show.
He’d been in and out of care since he was seven years old, and was engaging in almost every antisocial behaviour you could imagine. He was currently facing over 20 burglary charges, he’d been standing over kids on the street for clothes and money, he fought almost constantly, and he ran away from foster homes so often he should have got frequent-flyer points.

Ben had been to lots of counsellors in his short life, and he never stayed for longer than about 10 minutes. He
hated
counsellors.

First time I met him he walked into the middle of another session and sat down in a spare chair. I was talking to a nice middle-class couple and he just walked in and sat down like he owned the place. For a few moments I thought he was their son. Then Ben’s caregiver came into the room. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s losing it a bit today.’

‘Oh,’ I said, turning to the couple. ‘He’s not with you?’

They smiled. ‘No.’

Ben stomped out again. Already I liked him. With an entrance like that, how could I not? This kid had some kind of gazumph.

After I finished with the couple I got the caregiver to bring Ben back in. He paced about the room like a caged animal, occasionally lightly punching the wall. This was going to be interesting.

‘He was throwing stones at cars,’ said the caregiver, ‘so don’t let him go outside.’

Ben kept pacing, looking like he was about to explode. Clearly there was a need to establish a little control. He was a scrawny little bugger, but if I didn’t establish a no-fly zone this was going to be over before it even started.

I stepped in front of him and raised my voice just enough to set a little bit of a don’t-fuck-with-me tone. ‘Are you going to be a dick or are you going to settle down? Because if you’re going to be a dick you may as well go home now.’

This threw him a little. I imagine most other people tiptoed around him, trying to convince him to stay in the session, but I wasn’t going to be held to ransom by a 13-year-old hooligan.

He flopped down in the chair, muttering.

‘We’ll be fine,’ I said to the caregiver. ‘So did you really throw stones down onto the cars?’ I asked him once she’d left.

He smiled, slyly.

‘Waste of time. If you’re going to throw something down on the cars you should throw old people.’

He smiles, then quickly wipes it away. ‘What?’

‘You should throw old people. Imagine if this old person splatters all over your windscreen. They’d be turning on the windscreen wipers trying to clean off all the old-people shit. You know, all the guts and false teeth.’

He laughs, and this time he doesn’t squash it away.

‘And the wigs,’ I say. ‘Those wigs are a bitch. You get one of those suckers caught in your windscreen wipers you’ll be picking out cat hair for weeks.’

‘Huh?’

‘All old people wear wigs. Everybody knows that. You wait, when you get to sixty all your hair falls out and you have to shave your cat so you got some shit to wear on your head. Why you think dogs bark at old people so much?’ I pause, but he clearly doesn’t know. ‘They can smell the cat wigs,’ I continue. ‘Hell, the dogs probably think old people are cats wearing people suits that haven’t been ironed.’

He’s looking at me now like he’s not sure who should be in therapy, which is good. I have many interesting theories about the world that you need a captive audience to share. Call it a perk.

‘While we’re on the subject of shit falling out of the sky,’ I continue, ‘let me ask you this: what’s the stupidest way to get rid of a dead whale?’

He’s still giving me the what-are-you-on-man look.

‘This is not a joke, it’s a serious question.’

‘I dunno.’

I sit back in my chair. ‘Blowing it up.’

‘What?’

‘It’s true. The stupidest way to get rid of a dead whale is to blow it up. Serious, this really happened in America in the sixties. This whale died on a beach and they had to get rid of it. They had some big meeting and talked about all the different things they could do. In the middle of it all some bright spark comes up with this great idea that they could
blow
the whale up. Brilliant, everybody thinks, we’ll blow it up and then the seagulls can clean up all the little pieces. So they pack all this dynamite underneath the whale and then the whole town turns up to see the big event.’ I shake my head. ‘The beach was full of people all wanting to watch this whale get nuked, which is kind of weird but it’s America. So they all stand back a couple of hundred metres and they push the plunger.
Boom!
Of course they filmed all this, and all you see at first is a big pink cloud, which you think is kind of gross, but it gets worse.’

He smirks. ‘How?’

‘Turns out the dynamite guy wanted to make sure he really disintegrated the whale, so he used a lot of explosive. Only problem is the whale didn’t disintegrate. It just broke up into lots of pretty big chunks. All this slowly dawns on the people standing on the beach as these big pieces start coming down out of the sky. Next thing you know all these people are running and screaming as these large chunks of rotting whale meat start raining down. One piece was so big it totalled a car.’ I smile. ‘Nobody got hurt, which was a miracle, but a lot of people got covered in rotting whale. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.’

‘That’s fucked up,’ says Ben, and at last we agree on something.

He stayed for the whole session, and (just for all you worry-warts) he never chucked any old people off motorway overpasses or blew up any dead whales. It’s all in the way you tell it.