An Application

by Debleena Roy

I hear you are looking for a Professor of Criminology. Not the easiest of disciplines, is it, this study of the criminal mind? And to find a well-qualified person who will spend hours teaching students instead of being part of the police and investigative action? Must be a difficult search for you, I am sure. Well, you ask why I am qualified.  For that, you must read my application. A bit strange maybe, but it is the only way I can explain my background and my qualification. You can say my education and interest in crime started fairly early. Yes, if I remember correctly, it were those innocuous nursery rhymes that my mother sang to me in her tuneless voice.

You must have heard the words? Did they strike you too, the way they struck me?

Hush-a-by baby
On the tree top,
When the wind blows
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall,
And down will fall baby

Cradle and all.

Did you wonder too who broke the bough that made the baby fall? Was it an accident or was it the mother, herself, who broke that bough? Nursery crimes,” Jasper Fforde had termed it all too aptly. Later, of course, I came across the masterpieces. Have to hand it to that dame, Agatha Christie, for how she used each nursery rhyme as a link to a crime in her stories. Beautiful, don’t you agree? Now, that could be a chapter in the Criminology course, right?

Who did I play with, you wonder. So engrossed I used to be in reading, that I found the outer world quite unnecessary to my existence, my occasional stammer reaching alarming heights when forced to speak to people my mother thought I should play with. Self-defence merely, the stammer. Utter bores, most of them. No chance I could play with such creatures. Guns and blood, that’s what they thought crime was all about. But yes, there was this series of pets in our house. Pets would be good for me, my mother thought. I would play with them, at times. Useful creatures, you see, for my scientific experiments, but they never lived very long. So in between pets, I went back to studying and observing. Crime. Surprising how much one noticed if one observed. The lady who quietly bought medicines at the store for 10 years till one day her old husband died. 10 years, it took her to kill him. Or the young boy who kept a secret diary on just how he would kill his teacher for ridiculing him. It could have been a joke, except that the teacher died, just as the diary said she would.

I saw and I read. And yes, I read about you when I grew up. You warned about the dangers of getting lost in the details of DNA evidence.  “Little Grey Cells” will never go out of fashion, you said. Hercule Poirot would have stroked his m oustache in pride. I could see you as I read your articles. Wading through the escalating pile of cases on your table from finding bank robbers to child molesters, from mass shooters to one-time hitters. Solving, resolving, but secretly, in your heart, looking for that mental challenge with the perfect criminal mind, never judging, only probing and challenging, biding time patiently till the final chess move.

Getting back to my candidature, you may want to know about my area of research interest. Well, I specialize in the study of a special breed of criminals. Too much has already been written and shown about killers. Take for example the famous serial killers like Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer, and their ilk. Aren’t you just bored to death about the study of their miserable childhoods, the gradually escalating signs of criminal behaviour, their absolute lack of empathy and their intelligent yet psychotic tendencies?

Or consider the last wishes of the man on the death row. Articles on what food he wants as his last wish, the social do-gooders protesting against the death penalty, the lawyer trying for the nth plea, the victims’ family waiting for the last chance at revenge through observing the killer die? Done to death, right? (pardon the pun!)

We have treated them like celebrities, haven’t we? Makes for a best-seller crime novel or a film script.

No, I study the most interesting ones, the ones who got away. The ones that were too clever to get caught and dissected in the courtroom and analysed in best-selling crime books by investigators and authors looking for their hour in the Sun. And yes, of late, I am specializing in the study of a special sub-group within that, the study of women serial killers who got away with their crimes. A relatively ignored and generalized community, don’t you think – painted as those who poison the ones they love when love turns to hate but never become serial, compulsive killers, even if you forget the few aberrations like Eileen Wuornos, the highway killer.

Always more to learn from the ones who got away. Like the murderer who rocked our sleepy town a few years back. You led that investigation. You gave the killer a name too. The Limerick killer.  Six women murdered, exactly in the same way, a clinical cut to the throat and a taunting nursery rhyme limerick left behind at each crime scene. Our sleepy town in the news! All the new-fangled evidence methods failed. No role for the freshly-recruited forensic scientists. The investigation team felt it was some strange random killer, some psycho. You were the only one who felt the answer lay in understanding the criminals’ mind and in cracking the limericks.

You did come very close to catching the killer, didn’t you? O yes, I followed the case. An unsolved murder, in our very own city! I was there, following every news byte, every discovery.

The limericks – you realized what they said, right? Six limericks, one for each of the deadly sins. These women didn’t deserve to live, flaunting their ugly, deadly sins: pride, envy, lust, anger, greed, sloth.  And you knew there would be a seventh murder, for the last sin. Gluttony.  You acted fast.

You remember your psychological profile of the killer? I remember it. Every word. A highly intelligent and well-read person, a loner who prefers to work alone, socially inconspicuous by his ability to blend in, possibly working in a field of science but with a keen appreciation of art with a nervous stammer which becomes more evident when the subject is in new surroundings. A dangerous, ruthless killer who kills not for hate or love or jealousy or the usual reasons for crime but just for the need to perfect his own craft in the art of crime. For him, this is a game, an art and he wants to show his mastery and his art. His next target will be a woman who is in some way suffering from what the killer feels to be a sin of gluttony.

What did you feel when the killer suddenly disappeared? Do you still remember the killer sometimes? Wonder what the killer would have looked like, how the killer would have spoken? Or have you forgotten, as the rest of the world has?

Your superiors, the press… they blamed you, didn’t they, for the failure of the case? Your faced humiliation and ridicule. Did you fear for your life thinking the killer would turn on you?

What made you take that final step to leave the Force and turn to teaching? Move into your one-room, crummy University apartment by the Charles River, far away from the old memories? You ask how I know all of this. You see, I was there, that day, in that room. I was part of the behavioural analysis unit of the Crime department that you called in to nab the killer. You disappointed me a lot that day. I thought you really understood the killer after you cracked the limerick. But you didn’t.

You must be reaching for a glass of water now; yes, drink it. Are you noticing the sailboats on the Charles River? Or are you checking if the windows and doors are all locked? Don’t you think we have a lot to discuss about my candidature over that cup of organic green tea you are so addicted to?

I still wonder how you got the stammer correct. You got most of your killer profile right, but you did get one big thing wrong. You realize that now? Who said the killer was a man?

So tell me then, don’t you think it is time again for the last limerick?

Pic : http://www.flickr.com/photos/28757002@N03/

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