The Wisdom of Psychopaths (25 page)

“This guy’s from Cambridge University,” announces Larry, “and he’s in the middle of writing a book on us.”

Jamie stands up and heads us off at the door. It’s a clear invitation for us to kindly retrace our steps. Which we do—rather quickly—back into the sanctuary of the ward. Jamie, it transpires, is a completely different proposition from Larry. A monster of a man at around six foot two, with brutal, char-grilled stubble and a piercing cobalt stare, he has the brooding, menacing, sub-satanic presence of the lone ultraviolent killer. The lumberjack shirt and shaved wrecking-ball head don’t exactly help matters.

“So what’s this book about, then?” he growls in a gangsterish Cockney whisper, wedged into the doorframe of his room, arms folded in front of him, left fist jammed like a ball hammer under his chin. “Same old bollocks, I suppose? Lock ’em up and throw away the key? You know, you’ve got no idea how vindictive that can sound at times. And, might I add, downright hurtful. Has he, Larry?”

Larry guffaws theatrically and clasps his hands to his heart in a Shakespearean display of angst. Jamie, meanwhile, dabs at imaginary tears.

This is great. Precisely what I came here for. Such stoic irreverence in the face of unremitting adversity is something, perhaps, we could all do with a little bit more of.

“You know what, Jamie?” I say, “I’m trying to do exactly the opposite. I happen to think that you guys have got something to teach us. A certain personality style that the rest of us can learn from. In moderation, of course. That’s important. Like the way, just now, you shrugged off what people might think of you. In everyday life, there’s a level on which that’s actually quite healthy.”

Jamie seems quite amused by the idea that I might be soliciting his advice. That the polarized vantage point of a psychopath might, in actual fact, offer some valuable perspective on the dilemmas of everyday life. But he’s still a little circumspect.

“Are you saying that me and Captain McAllister here have just got too much of a good thing?” he sneers. “That the car’s pretty cool but the driver’s too fast for the road?”

It’s an interesting analogy.

“Kind of,” I say, “You interested in taking your foot off the gas and pulling over for a minute?”

Jamie’s eyes narrow. “I ain’t pulling over for no one,” he shoots back. “But if you fancy a ride, hop in.”

Back where we started, down at the other end of the ward, Chelsea are now four ahead of United. And Danny—who else?—has just been named Man of the Match.

“I see he hasn’t killed you then,” he says casually, throwing a quick glance in Captain McAllister’s direction. “You going soft in your old age, Larry?”

I laugh. More than a little nervously, I realize. There’s a healthy tinge of mania in my chortling. But Larry is dead serious.

“Hey,” he says insistently. “You don’t get it, do you, boy? I said I wouldn’t kill you. And I didn’t, right?”

Suddenly it dawns on me that Larry may not have been bluffing. May well have been exerting a touch more self-control than appearances might have suggested. And that my nervous discomfiture and attempt to laugh it off have, far from achieving that noble and laudable aim, succeeded in getting his back up.

“No, I do, Larry …” I pipe up. “…  Get it. Really. Thanks, man. It’s very much appreciated.”

Jamie smiles. He obviously finds it funny. But from the precariously thin ice that I now appear to be skating on, it’s no laughing matter at all. It’s easy to forget that anything is possible with these guys. That there really are no limits. And that with no moral brake pads and a V12 amygdala, it doesn’t take much for the car to spin off the road.

The curtain comes down on the soccer. And Danny zaps it off. He leans back in his chair.

“So, a book, eh?” he says.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m interested in the way you guys solve problems.”

Danny eyes me quizzically. “What kind of problems?” he asks.

“Everyday problems,” I say. “You know, the kind most people have to deal with in their lives.”

I glance at Larry and Jamie. “Mind if I give you an example?”

Danny looks at the clock. “Why not?” he sighs. “As long as it doesn’t take longer than five years.”

“I’ll try to keep it brief,” I say—and tell him about some friends of mine who were trying to sell their house.

How to get rid of an unwanted tenant? That was the question for Don and his wife, Fran, who’d just had Fran’s elderly mother, Flo, move in with them. Flo had lived in her previous house for forty-seven years, and now that she no longer needed it, Don and Fran had put it on the market. Being in London, in an up-and-coming area, there was quite a bit of interest. But also a bit of a problem: the tenant, who wasn’t exactly ecstatic at the prospect of hitting the road.

Don and Fran were pretty much at the end of their tether. They’d already lost out on one potential sale because he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, pack his bags. Another might prove disastrous. But how to get him out?

“I’m presuming we’re not talking violence here,” inquires Danny.

“Right?”

“Right,” I say. “We wouldn’t want to end up inside, now would we?”

Danny gives me the finger. But the very fact that he asks such a question at all debunks the myth that violence, for psychopaths, is the only club in the bag.

“How about this, then?” rumbles Jamie. “With the old girl up at her in-laws’, chances are the geezer’s going to be alone in the house, yeah? So you pose as some bloke from the council, turn up at the door, and ask to speak to the owner. He answers and tells you the old dear ain’t in. Okay, you say. Not a problem. But have you got a forwarding contact number for her? ’Cuz you need to speak to her urgently.

“By this stage he’s getting kind of curious. What’s up? he asks, a bit wary, like. Actually, you say, quite a lot. You’ve just been out front and taken a routine asbestos reading. And guess what? The level’s so high it makes Chernobyl look like a health spa. The owner of the property needs to be contacted immediately. A structural survey has to be carried out. And anyone currently living at the address needs to vacate the premises until the council can give the all clear.

“That should do the trick. With a bit of luck, before you can say ‘slow, tortuous death from lung cancer,’ the wanker will be straight out the door. Course, you could just change the locks when he nips out down the local, I s’pose. That’d be kind of funny. But the problem then is, you’ve still got all his gear. Which I guess is okay if you’re planning on having a garage sale. I mean, you could even make a few quid out of the jerk and cover the cost of the locks …

“Me, though? I’d go the health-and-safety route, personally. Ha, stealth and safety, more like! You’d get shot of the bastard completely that way, I reckon. Plus, of course, he’d think you were doing him a favor.”

Jamie’s elegant, if rather unorthodox, solution to Don and Fran’s stay-at-home tenant conundrum certainly had me beat. But there was, in my defense, a perfectly good reason for that, of course. I’m not a ruthless psychopath! The idea of getting the guy out so fast as to render him homeless and on the streets just simply hadn’t occurred to me. It just hadn’t flashed up on my radar. Neither, for that matter, had selling all his possessions to pay for the pleasure of locking him out of the house. And yet, as Jamie quite rightly pointed out, there are times in life when it’s a case of the “least worst option.” When
sometimes, in order to achieve the desired, or most favorable, outcome, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

But there’s more. Interestingly, he argues it’s actually the
right
thing to do: from an objective point of view, the ethical course of action.

“Why not turf the bastard out?” he asks. “I mean, think about it. You talk about ‘doing the right thing.’ But what’s worse, from a moral perspective? Beating someone up who deserves it? Or beating yourself up, who doesn’t? If you’re a boxer, you do everything in your power to put the other guy away as soon as possible, right? So why are people prepared to tolerate ruthlessness in sport, but not in everyday life? What’s the difference …?

“The problem with a lot of people is that what they think is a virtue is actually a vice in disguise. It’s much easier to convince yourself that you’re reasonable and civilized than soft and weak, isn’t it?”

“Good men sleep peacefully in their beds at night,” George Orwell once pointed out, “because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

But perhaps, if one of the world’s most dangerous psychopaths is to be believed, we could all do with a bit of a wake-up call.

Jamie’s solution to Don and Fran’s tenant problem unquestionably carries undertones of ruthlessness. Yet, as Danny’s initial qualification of the dilemma quite clearly demonstrates—“I’m presuming we’re not talking violence here, right?”—such ruthlessness need not be conspicuous. The more ingenious its deployment, the more creative the ruthlessness narrative, the greater your chances of pulling it off with impunity. The dagger of hard-nosed self-interest may be concealed, rather deftly, under a benevolent cloak of opaque, obfuscatory charm.

The psychopath’s capacity for charm is, needless to say, well documented. As is their ability to focus and “get the job done.” It goes
without saying that it’s a powerful, and smart, combination—and one that all of us could benefit from using.

Leslie has joined us and has a rather nice take on charm: “the ability to roll out a red carpet for those you cannot stand in order to fast-track them, as smoothly and efficiently as possible, in the direction you want them to go.”

With his immaculately coiffured blond locks and his impeccable cut-glass accent, he looks and sounds like an authority. “People are as nice as you make them,” he enunciates. “Which, of course, gives you a heck of a lot of power over them.”

Leslie also has a good take on focus, especially when it comes to getting what you want. The master realized from a rather young age that what went on in his head obeyed a different set of operating principles compared with most—and he used that knowledge to his own inexorable advantage.

“When I was a kid at school, I tended to avoid fisticuffs,” he tells me. “Same as I do as an adult. Rather like Jamie, I suppose.”

Jamie smiles, with more than a hint of wry self-approbation.

“You see, I figured out pretty early on that, actually, the reason why people don’t get their own way is because they often don’t know themselves where that way leads. They get too caught up in the heat of the moment and temporarily go off track. At that point, the dynamic changes. That’s when things become not just about getting what you want. But about being seen to get what you want. About winning.

“Jamie was talking about boxing there a minute ago. Well, I once heard a great quote from one of the top trainers. He said that if you climb into the ring hell-bent on knocking the other chap into the middle of next week, chances are you’re going to come unstuck. But if, on the other hand, you concentrate on winning the fight, simply focus on doing your job, well, you might just knock him into the middle of next week anyway.”

Leslie’s words make perfect sense to me, and remind me of an encounter that took place several years ago—one in which vengeance and violence might easily have come into the equation, but where charm and focus won the day instead.

At six foot five and 250 pounds, Dai Griffiths was built more along the lines of a Greek restaurant than a Greek god. With twenty-three years’ unbroken service in a certain British police force and a score on the PPI that probably placed him further along the psychopathic spectrum than most of the guys he arrested, he’d pretty much seen it all.

“Twenty percent of the people who come through those doors,” he told me, gesturing to the entrance of the detention area, “take up 80 percent of our time.” By which, of course, minus the fancy numerics, he meant that recidivists were a pain in the ass.

Recidivists, for example, like Iain Cracknell.

Cracknell was what you might call a career drunk. Regular as clockwork, on a Friday or Saturday night he’d be brought into the station with a golden future behind him. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s, usually. And God knows how many beers.

What happened then was a routine so well choreographed it made
Swan Lake
look like a hoedown. First, Cracknell started to act “crazy.” Next, a psychiatrist would be called in (as is required by law) to provide an assessment of his mental state. But by the time the shrink arrived, Cracknell—surprise, surprise—was back to normal. Drunk, for sure. But certainly not crazy. The psychiatrist would leave, mumbling something about police incompetence and uncivilized hours, and Cracknell, roaring with laughter, would be bundled into a cell to sleep it off. And then the same thing would happen the next time.

The problem with Cracknell seemed irresolvable. How to put an end to his interminable mind games? The trouble (as is the case with most repeat offenders) was that he knew the system better than anyone. And, of course, how to play it. Which meant you were left with a choice. You either didn’t arrest him at all—or, if you did, you faced the consequences. Usually a blast from some seriously pissed-off psychiatrist.

And that, it appeared, was that.

Until one night, Griffiths has an idea. Having settled Cracknell into his customary weekend chambers and sent, as usual, for the duty psychiatrist, he makes his way along to the lost-property locker. A
short time later, shuffling down the corridor in full clown’s regalia—hair, rouge, nose, bells—he drops in on Cracknell again.

What, Griffiths inquires, would he like for his breakfast in the morning? Cracknell, to say the least, is incredulous. Sometimes, if he’s lucky, he gets a glass of water. Not even a glass: a polystyrene cup. Now here he is getting the red carpet treatment. He can’t believe his luck.

“And how would you like your eggs,” Griffiths continues, “scrambled, poached, fried, or boiled?”

With the attention to detail of a top maître d’, he makes a note of everything Cracknell asks for. Even the freshly squeezed orange juice. Then he leaves.