A Deadly Compulsion by Michael Kerr

a bit rural for a born and bred Londoner.”
    “It keeps me sane, Jim.  I love it out here.  It’s my sanctuary from all the brouhaha.”
    “Brouhaha?”
    “This week’s word: commotion, hullabaloo.  I pick a word out of the dictionary every Sunday and flog it to death for seven days.”
    “Why?”
    “To expand my vocabulary.  Some people do crosswords or play scrabble.  I find a word I like and bore everyone with it.”
    “Gorgeous, sexy and erudite.  What a combination,” Jim said, staring into her eyes.  “Do you really think that it’s a good idea...my staying here?”
    “Yes.  It’s one of the better ideas I’ve had in recent months.  We have a lot of lost time to make up for.  I ran away from everything, and not seeing you is the only regret I’ve had.  You’re the only person I’ve missed.  I just had to start afresh with a clean slate.  And now I realise that you can’t run away from yourself, and that it’s today that really counts.  Getting stuck in the past is just a waste of what little time we have.”
    Jim dropped his bag and briefcase in the narrow hallway, and they were in each other’s arms, not speaking, just holding on, both with their eyes closed, time standing still as they kissed tenderly.
    “Coffee?” Laura said, pulling away, gently, feeling weak, as though she were convalescing after a long, debilitating illness; in better health now, but still very fragile, and needing to take things slow and easy.
    They sat at the table in the kitchen, and Laura told him of the latest developments. Of the grisly contents of the package, and of the note and Polaroid that had accompanied it.  She also admitted that she couldn’t sleep for the guilt she felt for provoking the killer during the TV interview, and by so doing causing his latest victim such suffering.
    “He would still have taken her, Laura.  That’s what he does.  But what the hell were you thinking about badmouthing him?”
    “I wanted to draw the creep out, Jim.  I thought that I could unsettle him, maybe make him careless.”
    “Oh, you’ve in all likelihood drawn him out of the sewer he lives in.  You’ve made this personal, and probably added a new dimension to his game.  Believe me; you don’t want one of these monsters on your case.  He’s probably fixated on you now for calling him what he is.
    “He’ll see you as a player.  Don’t lose track of the fact that human life is almost an abstract to these freaks.  He has no empathy or normal emotions that you can relate to. He’s driven, needs to kill, and can’t be dissuaded from whatever turns his wheels.  You’re not ever going to be able to reach him on any worthwhile level.  He kills for the same reason that you smoke, because he’s addicted to it.”
    “What’s done is done, Jim.  What else have you got on this guy?”
    Jim opened his briefcase and pulled out two document wallets; one containing the sheaf of faxes that Laura had sent him, the other a wedge of his own printed A4 hard copy.  “Here,” he said, pushing both across the table.
    “No, I’ll read it all later, Jim.  Tell me what you think.  Give me a thumb-nail picture of him.”
    “Okay,” Jim said, face now rock, eyes narrowed in concentration.  “Firstly, the obvious.  You definitely have a repeat killer out there.  This is a guy with a serious personality disorder.  I believe that we can attribute his present state of mind and behaviour to childhood imprinting, which has created an emotio-physical identity that has been influenced and is now an uncontrollable mechanism, patterned subconsciously by events that have their roots in his formative years.
    “As a child he was almost certainly abused in some way, and became withdrawn and detached; a loner.  His choice of victims and his subsequent treatment of them lead me to believe that his mother was the main instigator, the person responsible – to his way of thinking – for his present actions.  He