The Psychopath

   The tired man was called Ash Windsor. He was twenty-three years old; blonde hair, blue eyes, 6ft 2” and unmistakably handsome at his time of death. He was sitting on the steps in front of his house with his head between his hands when I first saw him after the brutal murder of his parents.

   “How are you doing?” He asked me, once the taxi that dropped me off drove away.

   “I am doing better than you seem to be.”

   He laughed at my blunt statement. The laugh was dry and it caused him to have a fit of coughing.

   “That’s true,” he smiled warily.

    I smiled back at him hoping my smile was charming.

  “How are you?” I inquired. He looked away from me like he couldn’t bear to talk about it. I knew it was all an act, Ash didn’t feel upset about what had happened. He felt strangely detached like this wasn’t happening to him. Like his parents hadn’t been murdered. 

  How do I know this?

  I read the file his psychiatrist kept on him.

   She wouldn’t give it to me and I was forced to steal it, I felt slightly guilty peering into Ash’s mind. Looking into somebody’s head could be dangerous because you might begin to understand them. Looking into the mind of a psychopath is the worst possible decision you can make because you will either be disgusted by them or start to see from their point of you. You yourself might become dangerous.

   I wasn’t disgusted by Ash Windsor. I was infatuated.

   I was first infatuated by Ash when I was a teenager. He was …beautiful. Sadly, I was not the only one who held that opinion; every girl thought so to. He didn’t think I was beautiful he thought I was trying desperately to fit in and become like everyone else. He thought it was pathetic. I told him it was survival.

   At the time he thought I meant surviving amongst my peers without being ridiculed and excluded, the normal teenage motives for hiding who you are. He now knew I did it because I didn’t want them to find out I was a sociopath. People found me charming but Ash saw through me and that’s why he was the object of my affections.

“All the worlds a stage,” I said

He looked up.

“And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts,”

“Are you going to do your job or psychoanalyse me?”

“Why so you assume I am psychoanalysing you?” I ask already knowing the answer.

“Because it’s you.” He stood up from where he was sitting and looked down at me. He was trying to be intimidating. “I should report you. Given that we know each other personally you shouldn’t be able to take this case.”

If he was going to report me he would have done so by now and he knew I knew this. Ash and I were very similar. Ash thought he knew me well and he was not wrong. He knew me better than most people should get to know their friends. Most people shouldn’t get to know their friends too well. They might find something they don’t like

“If you think that our friendship would hinder my ability to solve this case, I’ll go.”

He looked at me as if he was confused, “Follow me,” He simply said and walked into the house.

The forensic team was already inside examining the body and looking for fingerprints.

“Get my coffee?” asked John as soon as he saw me.

“Yes of course when I got up this morning the first thing I thought was ‘I better make sure John gets his coffee.’”

“Somebody’s antsy,” commented Sarah as she walked by, “You never forget coffee.”

“I am the head of this investigation not your coffee girl.”

“I think we should hire someone to do that,” John joked, “I can’t face this sort of thing without my daily dose of caffeine.”

“Show me the bodies.”

During this conversation Ash had been leaning against a wall looking straight ahead pretending he wasn’t even there. “I feel like an actor playing the part of the orphan,” Ash had said to his psychiatrist, according to the files.  He may have seemed to everyone like he was in his own little world, too traumatised to face reality. The files seemed to suggest so, and I also thought so too, but at that moment staring at him in that pose looking so distant an idea formed in my head.

   Ash was the best actor I knew. The best at covering up how crazy he was, the best at being charming but yet he wasn’t acting at that moment. I can tell when a psychopath was being sincere and wasn’t putting up an act. Ash wasn’t acting. Why did Ash have his guard down?

   I didn’t want to make any jumps so I looked away and walked after john.