Shooting in the Dark

Believer in the guise of a psychotherapist, it can be twisted into a million different shapes.
    Propaganda is not a new concept; the brokers of power have practised it for hundreds of years. Historically, every time a new ruling elite comes to the fore, they bring with them hordes of propagandists, ‘educators’ and media types practised in the dissemination of selective information.
    The other thing that we professionals know is a very simple fact. When something horrible happens in childhood, the child does not suppress it. He or she usually remembers every detail. The lives of these people are marked by a desire and a wish to forget those details, but, try as they might, they will have to live with them for ever.
    Whenever I meet someone who claims that a therapist has helped ‘awaken’ them to a memory of childhood sexual abuse, I find myself looking around for a therapist who is passionately, no, hysterically, concerned with an agenda that has nothing at all to do with the client.
    If I had been given another minute, if the woman with the pram had not come to the door, the blind woman’s life would be over. My mission would be completed and I would now be settling down to a normal life divided between my work and Miriam. A pleasant dream.
    I had to ask myself if the arrival of the woman with the pram at that particular moment was a sign. This is a fair question. There are legends as old as time itself which recognize the intervention of fate at the moment of execution. The neck of a hanged man is not broken. The soldiers drag him back to the scaffold, but at the second attempt the trapdoor does not open. The crowd become restless, their eyes cast towards heaven. They have been transported to the realm of magic. A moment before they thirsted for blood, but now they feel that the creator is focused upon the same scene, and that He wants this condemned man to live. If there is a third hitch in the hanging, the man will be pardoned.
    It does not necessarily mean that the man is innocent of the crime for which he has been condemned, only that God has another purpose in mind for him. The man may be released and go on to provide comfort and succour for the poor and disadvantaged. Or he may be released only to face degradation and suffering, a fate worse than death.
    In the case at hand the blind woman’s life was saved, I believe, not by fate, but by an accident. The woman with the pram was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know what brought her to the door at that particular moment, when I already had the victim by the throat. This is something we can never know. We can speculate, say, that the child woke earlier than usual, that the mother, stressed by her responsibilities, left the confines of her home and walked, by chance, to the blind woman’s house.
    Why didn’t she walk in the opposite direction, find herself knocking at someone else’s door? Are we to believe that some divine finger pointed her towards the house of the blind woman? That the same heavenly presence dictated the speed at which she travelled, timing her arrival at the precise moment when I was squeezing the last breath of life from Angeles Falco?
    This would not be a scientific conclusion. All the evidence points to an act of chance. Should the same thing happen again, however, the data would have to be reexamined. And, certainly, if my third attempt at retribution were frustrated, I would have to take a long look at the arguments that have brought me to this pass.
    In the meantime I shall remain steadfast. I am not in doubt. I know what I have to do.
     
    Crucifixion was not designed for Jesus Christ. People tend to forget this. Crucifixion was designed for rogues and robbers and murderers. It was one of the methods used to rid the world of those who no longer deserved to live.
    I walked through her ward in the hospital today. Visiting hour. The other patients had their loved ones around them, but she was alone. As I drew level with her bed I slowed to get a good look at her and she stirred in expectation, raised herself up on an elbow. I touched the rail at the end of her bed, just tapped it as I went past. Her face, which a moment before had been full of expectation, turned into a study in fear. In the time it takes to snap my fingers her features became a parody of the mother in Picasso’s Guernica.
    Looking back at her as I left the ward, I realized that I could torture her for ever. In many ways that would be a better