‘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.’
‘Is that likely to happen here?’
‘I think that’s one reason why Victor got himself a partner; someone to keep him hyped, giving him hits of adrenaline to keep going.’
‘Did none of the kids suspect he’d do something like this?’ an officer asks.
‘I very much doubt it.’
Psychopaths are not the sinister outsiders keeping to the shadows, but often charming, likeable and outgoing. And they enjoy, revel even, in their deceptions. A few are homicidal.
‘With a psychopath, it’s a totally different negotiation than with any other kind of person,’ Dannisha says. ‘We cannot establish a connection based on any kind of rapport. I cannot appeal to his conscience or to any sympathy for what he is putting the children through, even young children. Instead, we have to play to his belief in his own superiority, he needs to feel in a position of dominance. Detective Inspector Polstein has already helped with that, which is why he responded to our earlier texts.’
‘We’re still waiting for him to tell us about Jamie Alton?’ Bronze Commander asks.
‘Yes. He’ll be enjoying making us sweat, having that power,’ Rose says.
‘Do you think it was Deakin who shot the head teacher?’ Bronze Commander asks Rose.
‘No. If Neil Forbright is right, and I think he is,’ Rose says, ‘Victor Deakin wasn’t in Old School till just afterwards, when he swapped places with his accomplice. But I’m certain that it’s Victor Deakin who’s the orchestrator of the attack.’
‘Why swap places?’
‘I think Deakin came to check up on his accomplice, to make sure he went through with it, and that was part of the plan; possibly it was a form of remote coercion because his accomplice knew Victor would be coming to check up on him. Then once he was inside Old School, he chose to terrorize people in a centrally heated building where he could stride up and down, enjoying the power, not stand out in the cold.’
‘And he told his accomplice that there were children in the pottery room,’ Bronze Commander says. ‘Because he’d followed the head teacher there earlier.’
‘That’s the logical conclusion, yes.’
‘Any more leads on Deakin’s accomplice?’ Bronze Commander asks.
‘Malin Cohen was arrested nine months ago in the States for serious assault,’ an officer says. ‘His father got him a good lawyer and he was still under eighteen then so they just kicked him out of the country.’
‘Victor and Malin Cohen met each other,’ another officer says. ‘I’ve spoken to an evacuated teacher who saw them together in a pub five months ago.’