Mindgame Read Online Free PDF

kills her. But that’s not the point. The book isn’t about violence. It isn’t even about blame. It’s about understanding. I’ll send you a copy, Dr Farquhar. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
    FARQUHAR: It seems to me you’ve pursued an unusual career, Mr Styler. From cookery and gardening to fiction and then…
    STYLER: Chikatilo.
    FARQUHAR: So what happened?
    STYLER: He did. I just got interested.
    FARQUHAR: In what? In murder? In torture? Or in cannibalism? All three featured fairly prominently in his career.
    STYLER: I was thinking about writing a story, a novel set in Russia. This was the end of the eighties…the start of 1990. And then I saw this story in the newspapers…
    FARQUHAR: Andrei Chikatilo had kidnapped young boys and girls in the woods outside Rostov. He tied themup, sexually abused them, tortured them — sometimes removing their eyes — stabbed them many times and then ate them. He had a liking for liver, I understand. The human liver. Something he had in common with Easterman, incidentally. They were both happy eaters.
    STYLER: Yes. ( Pause .) I was interested in the idea of a serial killer in Russia. The police investigation. The killings adding up. In fact, the more I read about it, the more I thought it had all the makings of a real airport blockbuster.
    FARQUHAR: I suppose it depends which airport you go to.
    STYLER: Anyway, in the end I realised there was no need to add fiction to what had happened. So I wrote it as True Crime and sold more copies than anything I’d ever written before.
    FARQUHAR: But I still find myself wondering what sort of readers would interest themselves in a sexually deranged schoolteacher from the Ukraine. Hormonally challenged teenagers perhaps. Or the sort of ghouls who like to watch multiple pile-ups on the M25.
    STYLER: The book sold half a million copies. You think they were all ghouls and teenagers?
    FARQUHAR: And their friends.
    STYLER: I think you’re being a little…high-minded, if you don’t mind my saying so, Dr Farquhar. Every writer from Chaucer to Milton and Shakespeare has been attracted to evil. Think of Iago. Lucifer. Moriarty. Darth Vadar. We’re attracted by these figures because they’re part of us. That’s the truth of it. They’re the dark, unspoken part of our own psyche and we need them because they help us live something out, if only vicariously and we thank them for it. Look at Jack the Ripper. Every child in the world grows up knowing about Jack the Ripper. Tourists come to London just to go on Jack the Ripper walks. And do you knowhow many books there are about him, how many films? There have even been Jack the Ripper musicals! And this was a man who stabbed women in the womb. Who cut their throats so savagely that he nearly decapitated them. Who dragged out their entrails and probably took pieces home as souvenirs. But you tell me this. Is Jack a villain or a hero? Is he your sinner or your saint? Maybe the answer…maybe the answer is that he’s neither. Maybe he’s something else, something we don’t quite understand. But it isn’t revulsion we feel when we hear his name even though it should be. It isn’t loathing. It’s a sort of excitement.
    FARQUHAR: Was it excitement you felt when you were writing about Chikatilo?
    STYLER: ( A pause .) I suppose I would have liked to have met him. I wrote to the Russian authorities but by the time anyone even replied to my letter they’d already shot him.
    FARQUHAR: And now you want to meet Easterman?
    STYLER: ( With a sense of foreboding .) Is he really here, in this building?
    FARQUHAR: Yes.
    STYLER: It’s strange to think that he could be just a few metres away from where we are now.
    FARQUHAR: He could be closer.
    STYLER: Has he changed very much?
    FARQUHAR: In what way?
    STYLER: Well. ( Pause .) His appearance…
    FARQUHAR: ( Interested that this should be the first question .) His