Blue Blooded by Emma Jameson

Author:Emma Jameson [Jameson, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyonnesse Books

“Duncan is my half-brother. He’s twelve years my senior. Imagine it. He was a big, strapping boy, on the cusp of all those teenage hormones, when I was a newborn. Utterly helpless in my cot. It’s astonishing I grew up at all. I think that’s down to our father, Sir Raleigh. He was frightened to death of Duncan, and in the course of protecting himself, he accidentally protected me. But I can’t begin with my birth, because it skips ahead. You need to understand the true history of our family. And to understand that, you need to know about psychopaths.

“I suppose as a policeman you must receive some training. Not just statistics and individual case studies, but broader scientific data. Or maybe you don’t. I find most people throw the word around too easily. On chat shows, in newspapers, everywhere you look, people are accusing one another of being a sociopath or a psychopath without any idea of what they’re saying. My amateur career, if you will, has been devoted to abnormal psychology. So allow me to dictate the rules of the road.

“First. The word ‘sociopath.’ Put it aside. It’s an idea based upon the tabula rasa model. The notion that every human being is born a soft, blank slate. You, me, Albert Einstein, Adolf Hitler. We all start with malleable personalities that are completely shaped by nurture. The society we keep, our parents, our neighbors, the church, the government — they all combine to produce a normal person or a dangerous person. It’s a squishy concept, impossible to strictly measure or test for. So forget it.

“Psychopathy is different. It can be quantified. Psychiatrists can test for it. MRIs and EEGs can corroborate those tests. So the term psychopath has no intrinsic baggage, at least when properly used. To be scientifically labeled a psychopath doesn’t point to society, your upbringing, or even your own personal choices. It’s simply a series of ticked boxes, mostly deficits. Lack of conscience, of course. And lack of empathy.

“I wonder if a policeman can accept that. Your sort—and I mean that respectfully, even if I, as you said, make you sick—tends to reject any theory of crime that doesn’t revolve around selfishness as a matter of free will. Sometimes I wonder how much free will any of us really have. Did you know children who will become adult psychopaths begin showing signs at age two or three?

“If you don’t believe me, ask the administrators of large schools or institutions. They know, because they’ve seen it. Parents have seen it, too, even if it’s taboo to say so. There’s a belief, a lovely belief, as far as I’m concerned, that all children are innocent until corrupted by bad people, or bad choices. To say otherwise is to risk a public shaming. So there’s a tension, I think, between the truth that can be observed and the truth that can be spoken.

“Perhaps that’s why so many horror movies seem to be about possessed children. Evil kiddies with dead eyes, plotting to kill anyone who crosses them.

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