The Dark Web Murders

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Tuesday, 21st August. Morning 

Despite Allen's misgivings, Stewart continued to surf the Dark Web looking for further posts from Nemein. Since the entries usually followed a killing, she was not expecting to find any further posts on this morning. However, a new blog had, in fact, been posted sometime during the night, and she read it now with increasing tension. The killer had struck again and yet they had no reports of any new killing. She finished reading the blog quickly, almost turning away in disgust as she neared the end. The chief had been talking on the phone with someone while she had been searching, but she became aware that there was now silence in his office. She quickly printed out a copy of the blog and brought it to him. 

"Oh, dear," he said, reaching out to take the copy from her. "A blog about McStravick, right?"

 Stewart was surprised. "How did you know, Chief?" 

"I've just had Bob Williams on the phone. They found McStravick's body on his turf, but Dick has put him wise about whose case it is. Dick wants us over to the mortuary right away." He looked at his watch. "Go and get the car, and I'll meet you at the gate in about ten minutes." He held up the printed sheets. "I'll just have a quick run through this now." 

ΝΕΜΕΙΝ'Σ ΒΛΟΓ 

Ηατε 

Hello again, and welcome to my increasing legion of new fans. Several thousand hits! That is gratifying and confirms that my loyal followers understand and approve my theories about the separation between act and intention. I do hope my post-mortem scribblings afford you food for thought,as well as some arresting images to flash upon your inward eye which, as Wordsworth tells us, 'is the bliss of solitude'. Thank you also for your many encouraging comments. Sadly, with the limited time available to me, I cannot acknowledge all of them individually, but I do appreciate the interest you are taking in my quest, and the support that you offer. 

Latterly, I have been pondering the idea of HATE. Isolated from context, it seems to be a concept that veers towards the ignoble when compared with the more lofty abstractions analysed in my earlier blogs. But what if we examine it in terms of its origin, in terms of its purpose, in terms of its emotional content or, perhaps more importantly, in terms of its lack of emotional content. Might we possibly discover in its depths, something dignified, something honourable, something noble?Seeking justice, seeking revenge, seeking satisfaction, these can be noble. BUT, improperly focussed, buried too deeply in emotion, they can draw on the energy of HATE. That in itself is not necessarily an evil. But a HATE that drives a person to act with blind, unthinking passion, to act without purpose or control, to act without cool logic underpinning the process, is a HATE that has already conquered both the will and the spirit of the doer, a hate that has reduced him or her to irrational savagery. 

The Christian Church offers an interesting aphorism: Hate the sin, love the sinner. Now there is a noble aspiration. And how has it worked out for the Church? Christians from time immemorial have been fed the belief that they were the true believers, the people with the answers, the chosen.Inevitably, they looked on other churches, other people of no church,initially with concern, and ultimately with suspicion. They are so wrong, goes the thinking. They don't understand. They cannot possibly know the truth of how life should be lived. And so, Christians became imbued with the philosophy that they were superior to all others, God's chosen, with a mission to redeem the world, a mission that led to those great acts of godly love through the ages as Christians sought to convert the pagan ... the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the murderous witch trials, the 'just' wars, the holy wars, the slaughtering of heretics. 

Great acts of Christian love? These global tragedies, my friends, were prompted by a philosophy of contempt for others who were deemed ignorant, and in their ignorance,inevitably sinful, worthy of hate. 'Hate only the sin' was never within the normal curve of human psychology. Christians have been, and continue to be, because of their supreme sense of their own righteousness, slowly indoctrinated with an insidious creed of HATE.Hate is all around us. In Northern Ireland, fixers of the past attempt to glorify the violence of the 'troubles' as a fight for freedom, as an era of courage and self-sacrifice by the 'volunteers'. Tell that to the innocent victims, the thousands of innocent victims, casually blown to pieces by cowards who sought easy targets to make their murderous points. Here were evil men ostensibly at war with the forces of an occupying government,but who were, in fact, motivated by hatred and bigotry, and who killed and maimed indiscriminately in the pursuit of their spurious ideology.