The Mak Collection (41 page)

Makedde ran over to her seat, quickly sat down and fumbled for her pen and notepaper.

Dr Hare had stepped up to the lectern. He always wore his thick grey hair in a Caesar cut and beard, and his large glasses magnified the downward sloping pale-blue eyes of a world-weary intellect. He had given countless presentations in his career, but there was still a hint of shyness about him when he took to the podium. He had a humble demeanour, and always looked slightly ruffled.

“Thanks to all of you for taking the time to come along today to learn more about psychopathy, and thank you also to the many people who worked so hard to make this conference come together. No matter what your role is today—as a student, a member of the police, someone involved in criminal law or in any of the forensic fields, or simply as a
member of the public—the subject of psychopathy is important to you. Statistically, psychopaths will affect each one of us in some way at some point in our lives. Newspapers are rife with headlines about the impact psychopaths make on our society, but even closer to home, many of us will have a relative who is unfortunate enough to have to deal with one, and many of us will have dealt with or will have to deal with psychopaths in the future ourselves. It is important for all of us to better understand the disorder and what it means in our lives.

“We estimate that one percent of the population are psychopaths. For those of you present today who are involved in the criminal justice system and its institutions, our research tells us that fifteen to twenty-five percent of the people who are incarcerated in this country are psychopaths. For our research we use the thirty-point cut-off on the PCL-R, so our criteria are quite strict. As some of you would be aware, some researchers argue that the cut-off point of twenty-five may be sufficient evidence of the disorder.

“This population of inmates does not respond in the same way to our existing treatment methods. We have not been able to effectively change their behaviour. We need to find new solutions to this problem, and indeed a colleague of mine and I have developed a program specifically targeted at these individuals.

“Before I move on, I should begin with a basic
definition of psychopathy. What is the first name that comes to mind when you think of the word ‘psychopath’?”

He looked around the room. Eventually a hand went up. The hand belonged to a well-dressed, middle-aged woman. Perhaps a health care professional.

“Ted Bundy,” she said.

“Yes. Who else?”

“Hannibal Lecter,” someone else said, and laughed. Mak didn’t catch where the voice came from.

Dr Hare smiled. “Yes, these are the types of people most strongly associated with psychopathy, and yet ‘psychopathy’ is not synonymous with ‘serial killer’ or ‘axe-wielding maniac’. The truth is, you are more likely to get fleeced by a psychopath than killed by one.”

The crowd greeted this comment with a few chuckles, and Dr Hare smiled again.

“Psychopathy is a personality disorder which is defined by a cluster of affective, behavioural and interpersonal characteristics including lack of guilt or conscience, shallow effect, shallow emotions, cold and manipulative behaviour…”

By lunchtime, Makedde was hungry and her bottom was sore from the hard seat. She had made pages and pages of notes and her pen was starting to fade, along with the feeling in her hand. She tended to doodle on her notepad when lectures or phone
conversations failed to grab her absolute attention—usually scribbling squares and chessboards—but there were no such doodles this morning. Dr Hare’s presentation was riveting, and each time she witnessed the Single Photon Emission Computerised Tomography (SPECT) scans comparing the brains of psychopaths and non-psychopaths, it sent a chill up her spine. She had heard some of Dr Hare’s initial material before, but it still gripped her every time she heard it, and the new research he revealed in the slide presentation was compelling. The functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) findings about psychopathic subjects not showing the appropriate activation of limbic regions during their processing of emotional words was an interesting bit of new information. Again, she wondered if the study of psychopathy was perhaps her calling. Certainly her lack of enthusiasm for her chosen thesis subject could be partially attributed to her obsession with this new area.

She couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened if the Stiletto Killer had been identified as a psychopath in the years before he began his tirade of violence against the young women of Sydney—against her friend Catherine, and against herself. Would someone have stopped him before it was too late? She wondered how much Harold Gosper knew about all that.

Mak looked back to where Gosper was seated.
She noticed that the handsome security guard was not with him but there was another young man in his spot, talking with the professor. He looked more like a body builder than a student.
I hope he’s not trying to enlist him to persuade me,
she thought dryly. Gosper must have sensed that he was being watched, because he started to turn his head and Makedde quickly looked away before he caught her eye. The last thing she wanted was to encourage him.

After lunch, various international speakers were set to present their findings on the topic, and the conference schedule for the second day looked fascinating. According to the printed handout, an FBI Profiler, Dr Bob Harris, was set to do a presentation on psychopathy and crime scene analysis. That was a topic Andy would surely be studying for his future with the New South Wales Profiling Unit.

Andy.

She hadn’t called him back. She didn’t know if she would, or should. She busied herself with some further notes, and tried to keep her mind on the subject at hand.

When she next looked up, the room was almost empty, the other attendees seeking midday sustenance outside. Of the people still milling about, Makedde recognised the student volunteers tidying things up and some of the speakers hanging around. Roy Blake,
the handsome security guard she had met earlier, was talking with one of the professors in the far corner. Gosper and his beefed-up pal were nowhere to be found.

Mak got up from her chair and was pleased to find her passage unhindered by rogue bubblegum. But to her annoyance, when she reached the top of the stairs by the exit doors, she found Harold Gosper waiting for her. The instant she spotted him she did an about-face and headed straight back down the stairs towards the conference room.

Why won’t that man take a hint and just leave me alone?

Oh!

She was mid-step when she ran straight into the security guard, Roy Blake, who was walking up the staircase alone.

Their collision knocked the heavy bag off Makedde’s shoulder and it swung forward, narrowly missing Roy’s privates. If not for his quick reflexes, she might have been responsible for crushing his family jewels.

Horrified, Mak put a hand to her mouth. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” Her heart was pounding fast, and all that effort seemed to result in pumping far too much blood to her face.

“Don’t be silly,” her gum-saviour assured her. “I’m fine. Oh, you’re blushing.” He was standing a step down from her now, and was fractionally shorter than her, if
only by a touch.
Wow, he really is tall.
She found that sort of height intoxicating. They were still standing fairly close to one another, and Mak realised that his cologne was having a dizzying effect on her hormones. What was it? Obsession? Envy? Not Azzaro…not Old Spice…

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She refrained from asking him about his scent.

“I’m fine. Well, sort of,” Mak replied. She thought of Professor Gosper outside, and before she could edit herself she said, “Could you do me a favour and just walk with me out those doors?”

He looked a little surprised at her request. “Sure. Is there anything wrong? Is someone bothering you?”

“Oh no, nothing to be alarmed about. There’s just someone I don’t want to talk to.”

“Well, I’m happy to help,” he said. His expression was quite serious and sincere, and she realised that he probably put people at ease all the time, protecting them in the course of his duties at the university. This situation did not exactly require that kind of seriousness, however. It was only Professor Gosper, after all. Irritating, but harmless.

She thought she had better explain herself. “Actually, I saw you sitting with him earlier. Professor Gosper? Do you know him? He’s not a friend of yours, is he?”

“Oh no. Just met him briefly this morning. He talks a lot of crap though, doesn’t he?”

They both laughed. Oh, thank God…The tightness in her chest gave a little. She took a deep breath.

“Well, let’s go,” he said and pointed the way for Makedde with one hand, like a friendly and rather attractive tour guide.

They walked up the stairs and out the front doors. Gosper turned, opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again when he saw that Makedde was not alone. Perfect.

Roy and Makedde walked together for the five minutes it took to reach the cafeteria.

“Thanks,” Makedde said. “I wouldn’t normally enlist a stranger to walk me to lunch, but my God does he ever annoy me.”

“I could see that.”

He smiled again, and she felt a tiny part of the invisible icy fortress around her melt.

“Look, are you having lunch with someone? We only have forty-five minutes left before the next speaker. You better eat something. I don’t know how familiar you are with the campus, but this is about the best you can do on short notice.”

“I’d love to join you,” he said.

“Great. It’d be silly to sit alone on opposite sides of the cafeteria and everything,” she babbled.

Makedde ordered a tray of sushi and Roy ordered the same. They chose a bench and sat opposite one another.

“Is the sushi any good here?” he asked.

“I guess you’re about to find out. It’s not Tojo’s by any stretch, but it’s still my favourite option in this cafeteria.” She smiled. “I haven’t got sick from it, yet.”

“And you’ve got sick from everything else?” he fired back, not missing a beat.

“No, not quite, but I have it from a good source that Professor Gosper caught Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy from one of the burgers.”

He blinked a couple of times and looked blank.

“Mad cow. Sorry, my twisted idea of humour. Not funny.”

Who does he remind me of? A young Marlon Brando? No, not quite. Ah, I know who…

“Does anyone ever tell you that you look a bit like Vince Vaughn?” she asked.

“Who?”

“You know…the actor.”

He clearly didn’t know.

“He’s been in lots of movies,” she said. “
Swingers, Return to Paradise
. He played Norman Bates in the
Psycho
remake.”

“I remind you of Norman Bates?” He seemed alarmed.

“No, no…” she assured him.

“Maybe it’s just the conference that’s making you think of him.”

“Norman Bates wasn’t a psychopath,” Mak said.

Roy crinkled his face up. “He wasn’t? Forgive my ignorance, but wasn’t he running around killing people and dressing up like his mother?”

“Quite right, but he was more of a psychotic than a psychopath. That’s a different thing altogether.”

“Oh,” he said and ripped into a packet of wasabi and generously coated his Inari with it.

“Why do you find psychopaths so interesting?” he asked.

His question sent a chill down her spine.

“Well, what can I say? It’s an interesting area of research. Dr Hare is widely recognised as the world expert, and he is a Professor Emeritus at the university, which makes for a unique opportunity to look into the subject. People come from all around the world to hear him speak.”

“Have you learned much?”

“Yes, I think so.”
I hope so.

“So you think you could pick a psychopath, then? If one came up to you?” The blood must have drained from her face, because he was suddenly apologising for his line of questioning. “Oh, I’ve made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” she said. “It’s a perfectly valid question.”

“I just wonder how much these experts and academics really know…I mean when it comes to the practical stuff. Sure, it’s fascinating to see those brain scans and everything, but when you are out in
the field dealing with those types…Does it really help?”

Makedde’s father sometimes asked her precisely the same thing. Dealing with psychopaths on the street was a very different experience to examining their brain in a laboratory. “I think it does help,” she said. “Knowledge is the best defence.”

He nodded.

“We need to learn more about human predators. I have a great deal of respect for the researchers and what they can teach us.” She was quick to change the subject. She had no intention of getting into her own experience with a psychopath. “So, what is it like in security? You kept pretty busy here?”

“Well, I haven’t been at this campus too long. They’ve had a bit of a push to employ more security,” he said. “There’s been an increase in complaints lately…assaults and so on.”

“And disappearances. I saw the poster for Susan Walker the other day. I think I remember actually meeting her once.”

“It’s awful, isn’t it? I hope she turns up okay.”

Mak nodded.

“I hope you take plenty of precautions yourself, Makedde.”

She felt her big toe start to tingle. Soon it would itch like mad and she would want to take her shoe off and scratch it to pieces. “I do. I take self-defence classes and I carry pepper spray…for the bears, of course.”
And I keep a little Saturday Night Special in my glove box, but that isn’t quite legal…

“Yeah, for the bears. Perfectly legal. You are a smart woman, Makedde. I try telling women to watch themselves, but some just won’t listen.”

Mak had a lot of reasons to listen.

“Why was that professor hanging around waiting for you to come out, anyway?” Roy asked. “I assume that’s what he was doing?” He bit into his Inari. He choked for a moment and his face started to go red.