DI Sean Corrigan Crime Series: 6-Book Collection: Cold Killing, Redemption of the Dead, The Keeper, The Network, The Toy Taker and The Jackdaw. Luke Delaney
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girls. My father was something big in agriculture, while my mother was left to raise us. We were quite wealthy, although not rich. I was privately educated at a very good local school, where I did well enough to gain a place at the London School of Economics.
‘Armed with a degree in Business Finance I made my way into the big bad world and became a valued employee of Butler and Mason International Finance. I rose through the ranks to become one of the senior partners. I am married with two adorable children, one of each. Quite an unremarkable life, I’m afraid.’
‘Until recently,’ Sean said, studying Gibran intensely. ‘Until something that is indeed remarkable happened to you. You changed. Something inside of you couldn’t be restrained any longer.’
‘I’m not mentally ill, Inspector. I don’t hear voices in my head telling me to kill. There is nothing in me that cannot be restrained. Nothing I do not control. I am no human monster created by my background. My childhood was a happy one. My parents loving, my siblings supportive and my friends numerous. I didn’t pull the legs off spiders when I was a boy. I didn’t bite my classmates at nursery or torture and kill the family pets.’
‘Then why?’
‘Why what?’
Sean swallowed his growing frustration. ‘Why did you kill those people? Daniel Graydon. Heather Freeman. Linda Kotler. Why was it so important to you that they died?’
‘And you want me to tell you so you can understand me?’ Gibran asked. ‘You want me to take away your fear.’
‘Yes,’ Sean responded.
‘There’s really no point,’ Gibran said dismissively. ‘I have no answer that could satisfy your need to know why. There is nothing I could tell you that could possibly help you understand. In some ways I wish there were, but there really isn’t.’
‘Try me,’ Sean insisted.
More silence, then Gibran spoke. ‘Tell me, Inspector, are you familiar with the fable of the frog and the scorpion?’
‘No,’ Sean answered.
‘One day,’ Gibran began, ‘a frog was basking on the banks of a river when suddenly his slumber was disturbed by an anxious voice. When the frog opened his eyes he saw a scorpion standing only inches away. Understandably nervous, the frog hopped away, then a pleading voice stopped him. “Please, Mr Frog,” the scorpion said. “I simply must get to the other side of this river, but I can’t swim. Could I please crawl on to your back while you carry me to the other side?”
‘“I can’t do that,” answered the frog, “because you are a scorpion and you will sting me.”
‘“No,” said the scorpion. “I won’t sting you. I promise.”
‘“How can I take the word of a scorpion?” the frog asked.
‘“Because if I sting you while we are crossing the river,” the scorpion explained, “we will both drown.”
‘The frog thinks about what the scorpion has said. Won over by his logic, he agrees to take the scorpion to the other side. But as they are crossing the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog.
‘With his dying breath the frog asks, “Why did you do that, for surely now we both will die?”
‘“I couldn’t help myself,” the scorpion tells him. “It’s my nature.”
‘I always feel sorry for the scorpion,’ Gibran continued, ‘but never for the frog.’
Sean let a few minutes elapse before he spoke. ‘Are you telling me you killed four people for no reason other than you believe it’s in your nature to?’
‘It’s just a story,’ Gibran answered. ‘One that I thought might appeal to you in particular.’
‘Let me tell you why I think you killed these people,’ Sean said. ‘You killed them because it made you feel special. Made you feel important. Without it, your life felt pointless. Making money for other people: pointless. You felt pointless. And you couldn’t stand that empty feeling, every day having to admit to yourself that you were just another nobody, living a nobody’s life. Every single day, the same feeling of emptiness, of nothingness. It drove you insane.
‘You could have been anything you wanted to be. Life gave you all the privileges and opportunities, but you didn’t have the courage to do anything truly special, to do anything that would set you apart from other men. You believe we should all bow down to you merely because of who you are. But nobody did and it made you angry, angry at the world.
‘So you decided to teach us a lesson, didn’t you? You decided to show us how special you are by doing the only thing your feeble mind could conceive. Your twisted sense of self-importance convinced you it was your right, your destiny to kill. It excused your crimes – and crimes are all they are, no matter what you may think.
‘But committing murder doesn’t make you special. It doesn’t make you anything other than one more sick loser, no better than all the other sick losers locked up in Broadmoor. You can talk about scorpions and your nature and any other bullshit you like, but we both know that, deep down, underneath this polished act, this mock menace, you are nothing. Nothing at all.’
‘If believing that makes you comfortable,’ Gibran responded, ‘if it takes away your fear, then you should cling to that belief.’
Sean knew then that Gibran wasn’t going to talk, wasn’t going to confess and explain all. He had to come to terms with the fact they might never know why. He felt Gibran studying him, expressionless.
‘What about Hellier?’ he asked, making one last-ditch effort to bring him back. ‘What was his part in all of this? Were you working together?’
‘James could never be anything other than my employee,’ Gibran answered. ‘I would never dirty my hands working with him as an equal. That could never happen. He was a tool to be used by me to achieve what I needed to achieve. He was nothing more than an illusion. James was made by circumstance, a cheap man-made replica. Pathetic, really. I was born to achieve all that I have achieved. The path I was ordained to follow formed while I was still in my mother’s womb.’
‘You used him as a decoy,’ Sean accused. ‘You crafted the murders so it looked like Hellier had committed them.’
‘Murders?’ Gibran feigned surprise. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you were talking about corporate finance.’
‘Of course.’ Suddenly it was starting to make sense. Eager to explore the unexplained revelation before it could slip back in to the dark recesses of his mind, Sean continued: ‘I understand now. You gave Hellier his job at Butler and Mason in the first place, didn’t you? As soon as you met him, when and wherever that was, you knew, didn’t you? You knew he was the one you’d been waiting for; the one you could hide behind. And you made sure you had sole responsibility for checking his background, because you couldn’t risk anyone else discovering Hellier was a fraud. Did you even bother to check his references, his employment history, or was it so irrelevant that you didn’t even bother? It wasn’t his financial skills you wanted – you wanted him. You needed to have him where you could watch him, learn everything about him, manipulate him, didn’t you?’
‘Hellier was a subordinate, in every way a subordinate, put on this planet by powers you could never understand to be manipulated by people like me,’ Gibran answered. ‘It’s the law of Nature.’
‘Really?’ Sean replied. ‘So Hellier is inferior to you? Not as smart as you?’
Gibran answered with a shrug of his shoulders and a smile.
‘But if that’s so, how come he out-smarted you in the end? He’s probably already setting himself up with a new life of privilege and luxury, while you’re sitting here with us, preparing to spend the rest of your life rotting in some prison hell-hole. So tell me, Sebastian, who’s the smart one now?’
Sean