Three Hours(58)
He’s right. There were four letters found in Victor’s bedroom, all of them asking why Victor hadn’t shown up to his appointments; written to Victor not his parents because he was over sixteen.
‘How hard was it to get into his journal on the laptop?’
‘Extremely. He had a highly sophisticated firewall and complex encryption. He probably okayed the search to Matthew because he didn’t think an IT teacher would get through it, but I worked in IT for a defence contractor before becoming a teacher.’
So why no firewalls or encryption on his home computer? It adds weight to her belief that Victor wants certain things found by the police; that he’s trying to orchestrate this police investigation as much as he is the attack itself.
‘He’s exceptionally bright,’ Olav Christoffersen says. ‘I’m not sure if you’ve been told that already. Not only in IT and his other A-level subjects, but across the board. He taught himself ancient Greek and Latin for fun.’
‘Thank you, Mr Christoffersen. You’ve been very helpful. Let me know if you think of anything else.’
‘Yes.’ He starts weeping. ‘I’m so sorry. We knew he was wicked, but we never suspected, Matthew and me, that he’d get a gun, attack the school, never even imagined it.’
He hangs up.
Intellectually her focus now has to be on Victor Deakin, her mental energy directed at him but – and this is important to Rose, crucially important to her – only so she can help the children and staff held captive in the school. Deakin doesn’t matter, they matter. It is for them and for their families that she is doing this job, why they are all doing their jobs, and she finds herself wanting to tell Victor Deakin this: it is not you who counts, it is the people you’re terrorizing who count, everybody else around you, everyone apart from you, you little shit.
Rose runs through the PCL-R checklist to diagnose Victor. In an ideal world she would have a structured interview in scientifically controlled standardized conditions, but with his journal, the rape fantasies and with what the kids and teachers have told them about Victor Deakin she has enough and needs must when the devil drives; and this is surely when the devil drives. There is a score from 0, 1 or 2 for each category on the checklist. For the planned rape with Rohypnol and for the rape fantasies he scores 2 in the categories ‘callousness and lack of empathy’, ‘shallow affect’ (superficial emotional responsiveness) and ‘sexual promiscuity’, as defined by attempts to sexually coerce others into sexual activity. From his laptop journal, maximum marks for the categories ‘grandiose estimation of self’, ‘lack of remorse or guilt’ and ‘failure to accept responsibility for own actions’; while the letters to Sarah and her parents and lying to the teachers gain him top marks for ‘pathological lying’, ‘glib and superficial charm’ and ‘cunning and manipulativeness’; for vandalizing the shop in Exeter full marks for the categories ‘poor behavioural controls’, ‘high levels of irresponsibility’ and ‘juvenile delinquency’. His extreme sports show a ‘need for stimulation/proneness to boredom’ and ‘being overly impulsive’, while at this moment he is flaunting his ‘criminal versatility’ and she could carry on but he has reached 30, the number that makes the diagnosis.
‘What do you think?’ Dannisha asks, but Rose is sure that Dannisha, who heard the conversation with Olav Christoffersen, has reached the same conclusion.
‘Victor Deakin is a psychopath,’ she says.
As Thandie sets up an on-screen briefing, Rose remembers the response of a scientific journal to Dr Hare, an expert in criminal psychology, when he sent them brainwave patterns of psychopaths. The journal returned them to Dr Hare saying they couldn’t possibly belong to real people.
The children and teachers in Old School are up against someone who challenges our notion of what it is to be human.
13.
10.45 a.m.
The door of the command and control vehicle swings wide open, banging against the wall. Snow and icy wind blow through the vehicle, scattering notes on Rose’s desk, chilling her legs and cheeks as she begins the on-screen briefing to Bronze Command and team leaders.
‘Victor Deakin is a narcissistic psychopath,’ she says. ‘He is ruthless, has no empathy or conscience. Psychopaths can kill for perceived slights and for kicks. Victor isn’t attacking the school in retaliation for being expelled and being upset about that, at least not in the sense that his life suffered as a consequence, but because someone had the temerity to do that to him. Matthew Marr had the audacity to get rid of him. He is also adept at manipulation.’
The journal demonstrated that he was enraged at being crossed, a young man whose ego made him infinitely superior to the ‘fucking worms’; the letters showed he could play the penitent convincingly enough for teachers to believe him, including very experienced teachers.
‘Kids and teachers have also told us that he’s into extreme sports,’ Rose continues. ‘So thrill-seeking is a part of what drives him. But psychopaths get bored quickly, which is why he is pacing up and down the corridor, keeping himself going, as well as enjoying having power over the people he’s terrifying.’
‘Bored?’ Bronze Commander asks, sounding astonished.
‘Psychopaths have been known to stop halfway through a killing spree out of sheer boredom.’