(A morality on social graces)

On print I am an animal. A psycho, a sicko and all the rest of it. How the world loves a pariah to play hide and seek with. You can hide all you want to as far as I'm concerned. I am through with seeking.

And have been for sometime now.

Its been four years since I was relieved of liberty. In a way, it's cosy here. No taxes, free accommodation, meals, laundry, education, heating. I've never felt more free. The normal people in Parliament who make laws, shudder at the thought of spending time inside, the assumption being that the straight and the twisted sing from the same songsheet of fear. When punishment serves as a treat, ah that's when the bough breaks and the babies will fall.

. I am logically minded but in a round the houses way. I could circumnavigate the globe to end up in a village that was only a few miles away from the point of departure. My mind takes odd diversions. You may have gathered this by now. I jump from idea to idea, a flea in a world of dead dogs.

Never to take the easy way. I was an office worker in the Civil Service pensions department. Monotonous work but it paid the bills as they say. One of the army of triangle packed sandwiches guzzlers. The padded cell of the coffee break, quarterly personal performance review, targets, goals, core competences, meetings, minutes, time in lieu, thinking about sexual encounters in the photocopying room, watching women in business suits bend down, watching the clock. All those vomit-inducing phrases, spoonfed to my predecessors from American psychobabble peddlers. Regurgitated and endlessly excreted.

Through the anal mouths and email messages and 'Post-It' notes stuck on the side of PC screens.

The working class may smell, have bad teeth and course manner but at least they get paid overtime. We, the middle class, find overtime pay to be a vulgarity. How blue collar. Yuk. We get time off in lieu because it is polite. Give me a collar and tie and I'll let you stamp 'sucker' on my soul. At least I look smart. But that's life. The office is the latter day coal mine for those whose backs are at constant threat of fracture. We sweated and loosened collars and met deadlines.

I knew a girl at work. Well, I didn't really know her. I saw her everyday from a distance, buying her scones and doughnuts from the sandwich man every morning at quarter past nine on the fifth floor. She was striking, not in a conventional sense but unusually featured, dark complexion, dreamy eyes and braided auburn hair with a wide parting in the middle.

She must have worked in an obscure part of the building because no-one seemed to know her. I never saw her in the canteen or at any of the social functions that punctuated Her Majesty's Stationary calendar. The coward within didn't have the bottle to strike up a conversation. It's hard to raise the spirits of conversation with someone who has just walked past and momentarily brushed your shoulder without one helluva subterfuge. I am pristinely logical but not quick of the tongue.

Several months later, the murder of a middle-aged man was the hullabaloo of the local press. We all breathed a sigh of relief when the police did not suspect a racist motive. That's ok then. The paper named him as Angus Moon of 45 Redbrick Road.

The day after this, I went upstairs to the fifth floor at ten past nine and waited for the striking-looking girl with braided auburn hair. I needed to know her. And like the coming of a well regulated season, she arrived at quarter past nine and made her way to the sandwich man, counting the loose change held in her left hand. I took out my gun, aimed it at her head and fired once into her head.

I seemed to stop time. All froze. Her scones fell out her hand and onto the bloodied floor. Some low-cholestoral margerine should cover that up.

Later on, the police charged me with the murder of Alice Dawes of 18 Wicker Lane.

At last, I found out who she was.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and see a man of a peaceful face stare back.

I wonder who he is?

^