Page 50 of Anatomy of a Killer
Jakob looks at me as if I’m not all there; he must have been a very unimaginative child.
‘I mean, she’s hardly likely to have been with a real princess either,’ I add. ‘And so far as I know, dragons don’t exist.’ My gaze catches Kerstin Seiler, who right now is coming out of her daughter’s room with Schmitti and Nathalie. I stride purposefully towards them. ‘Excuse me, Frau Seiler, just a quick question. Can you think of where Sarah was talking about when she spoke of a castle? Or who the princess and dragon might be?’
‘Piss off!’ she snarls, scurrying away, followed by Schmitti. I turn to Nathalie, helplessly.
‘You do know the doctors found bruises on Sarah?’ she says sotto voce.
I try to square this with Kerstin’s angry reaction.A deranged paedophile, comes to mind. These were the words Eva used when we were wondering what motive might be driving the ribbon murderer.
‘But her abductor didn’t. . .’ I slap my hand over my mouth.
Nathalie shakes her head. ‘No, no, it’s not that. It’s the fact that the bruises are older,’ she says, giving me an emphatic look. ‘Sarah didn’t get them from the kidnapper.’
RECORDING 05
Berlin, 7 May 2021
Are you saying that criminal damage is a pointless act, whereas murder isn’t?
If you put it that way, yes. Why else did you slash your teacher’s tyres?
Like I said, I was in with the wrong crowd. I think I just wanted to be cool. There were no higher motives.
You see?
(sighs)Okay, I took the bait. Well?
Well, what?
Yourhigher motives.
Oh God, that tone.
What were you expecting?
Expecting? Nothing. More like wishing. I wish for impartiality, more for your sake than mine. Because you say you want to understand, and I actually believe you do. But how can you understand when your preformed opinion is in the way? You regard me as a psychopath, don’t you?
I, er. . . I don’t know. . .
Go ahead and say it, don’t be shy. You wouldn’t be the only one. In your eyes, what makes someone a psychopath?
Well, to the best of my knowledge, psychopaths are people who have no feelings about their crimes, neither empathy, nor regret, nor guilt.
There is an official checklist for diagnosing psychopathy, did you know that? It’s called PCL-R, and it contains twenty points, a lack of empathy or guilt being just two of these. Others include a low threshold of boredom, a tendency to infidelity, criminal activity when young, impulsiveness, or a parasitic lifestyle where they exploit other people for money or favours. It’s hard to believe that such a weighty diagnosis should be based on these commonplace attributes, isn’t it?
To be honest, I’m not really sure what you’re getting at.
I’m trying to point out that I’m probably just as much or as little a psychopath as you are, and that understanding psychopathy becomes difficult once you start specifying such rigid patterns of thought.
With respect, the fact that you committed the worst crime a person is capable of– and did it over and over again, ten times– isn’t a pattern of thought, but a fact. And this is something you know yourself, everybody does, there’s no need for discussion. According to the Bible, murder is a sin and according to the law, it’s a serious crime. But precisely because of this, I’m even keener to understand what made you cross that line. What did Larissa trigger in you to turn you into a killer?
Oh yes, that’s right. You wanted to know why she was the first, and my response was that you were mistaken.
Really?
Think back. It’ll come to you.
Once again, that’s not how this works. I’m not here to play games with you, but to talk about the murders. About Larissa and all the other girls.
