A Willing Victim Read Online Free PDF

well listen.
    He and his brother-in-law Donald had been dragged along to the meeting by their other brother-in-law, Reg. His daughter Monica was there, too, but that was only because she’d made a date to see him that evening and expressed mild curiosity about tagging along when Reg had insisted on his attendance. Reg’s urging had surprised both him and Don; his attendance at church was limited to weddings, christenings and funerals, plus the odd duty visit at Christmas and, although he was capable of talking balls by the yard on just about every subject under the sun, religion had never, as far as either of them could remember, been one of them. It was odd, too, that it wasn’t his wife or his sisters-in-law to whom Reg had appealed, only himself and Don.
    Stratton wondered what, if anything,
he
was expecting. In so far as he’d ever given serious thought to God, he supposed he believed in a general, informal sort of way . . . or at least he had until his wife Jenny had been killed twelve years earlier. After that, his feelings were more like hatred – although in a confused way, because he felt guilty, too, about not having got there fast enough to prevent her death. The only time he’d discussed this was with Don, who’d opined that people believed in order toexplain, or at least dismiss in safety, those bits of the universe that they didn’t understand. Then, as Don had pointed out, science explained some of the bits and people believed less, or, alternatively, science failed them and they went back to religion. That, Stratton thought, was probably about the size of it, although God seemed to him to be somehow more factual than this allowed for; not uplifting, and certainly not consoling, but just sort of ‘there’. Not that he’d ever attempt to explain any of that to Don, of course, but he couldn’t imagine, aged fifty, that life – or indeed anything that he might hear this evening – was going to show him any different.
    Stratton glanced at Reg, who’d been uncharacteristically silent since they’d met up in the queue outside the arena, and wondered what he was thinking. He saw that his brother-in-law’s coarse-grained face had a closed, intense look and his usually high, varnished colour seemed dull. He turned his attention back to Billy Graham, who was in the middle of some personal anecdote about being in an aeroplane – there’d obviously been something about losing radio contact, because now he was talking about making contact with God. ‘You say,’ he intoned briskly, “Billy, how can I make contact with God?” Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Light.” There is only one way back to God – through Jesus Christ!’
    It seemed to Stratton that the man, though undoubtedly likeable, lacked the gift of oratory – hence, he thought, his own lapse of concentration. He wasn’t the only one, either – from somewhere behind him he could hear fidgeting and whispering and once, a muffled laugh. The delivery was rapid, almost staccato, and, because of the microphone, tinnily mechanical. Although he strode about a fair bit, there were no expansive gestures. Now there was some stuff about God’s eye being always upon us, but with a good deal less turgid doom-mongering than he remembered from the Sunday services of his youth, probably becauseit was garlanded with a lot of stuff about hope and forgiveness and opening your heart. He certainly seemed to know his Bible, too – he held it all the time as he quoted, slapping it for emphasis but never once looking at the pages, and interspersing the stories with a lot of rhetorical questions of the ‘Who is God? What is God? Does God matter?’ variety. As far as Stratton could tell, it seemed to be mostly New Testament stuff – parables and the like. He guessed that the reason for this was that the Old Testament – at least, in his recollection – was either incomprehensible or full of foul-tempered characters doing disagreeable things,