“The greed thing,” I say to her. “Everybody’s greedy, Chloë. You’re greedy. You might not think so but I bet you are. We’re all out for number one. It’s just that some of us don’t kid ourselves about it, know what I mean? We all want everybody to think the same as we do and we think they’re stupid if they think any different. And when it comes to love and relationships, we’re all looking for the right person to worship us, because that’ll make us happy, aren’t we? Wanting to be happy – that’s selfish, isn’t it? Even wanting there to be no more poverty or violence – I mean, it’s all bollocks cos there always will be: both. But that’s us being selfish cos we want the world to be the way we personally think it ought to be, know what I mean? You can dress it up as wanting other people to be happy, but in the end it comes down to you and your own selfishness, your own greed.”

Chloë held a hand up, almost touching my mouth. “Greed and selfishness aren’t the same thing,” she said. “Close, but not the same. And they’re both different from self-preservation and general self-interest.”

“Still, close, like you say.”

She sighed, drank. “Yeah, close.” She looked like she was studying something behind the bar.

“There’s nothing wrong with a bit of greed, Chloë. It’s what makes the world go round. Wanting to get on, wanting to better yourself, being ambitious, know what I mean? Wanting the best for yourself – what’s wrong with that? Wanting the best for your family – what’s wrong with that, either? Eh? It’s great having the luxury of thinking about other people, the poor and the starving and all that, but you only have that luxury cos somebody’s been thinking for themselves and their family.”

She turned to me, big eyes wide and bright. “You know what? You remind me of somebody, Ade,” she said.

“Somebody nice?” I asked. Sarcastically, if I’m honest about it.

She shook her head. I liked the way her hair moved, though I was resigning myself to never running my fingers through it or breathing in its perfume or using it to pull her head back towards me while I fucked her from behind. “No,” she said. “He’s one of those men who was packed off to public school when he was just a little kid-”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t.”

“Ssh.” She looked stern. “I heard you out. The point is, because of that or not, he decided that everybody’s out for themselves and nobody really cares for anybody else, though some people pretend to. He’s looked after ‘Number One’” – she did that finger-waggly inverted-commas thing – “exclusively ever since and he can’t see there might be something wrong with that. In fact, he can’t even see that what he’s got there is just a single point of view, and a pretty perverse one at that; as far as he’s concerned it’s some great truth about people and life that only he and a few other realists have worked out. Thing is, he’s got a problem. Maybe he’s still infected with some tiny remnant of human decency or something, but he can only really be content with himself and his despicable egotism if he’s satisfied that his self-centred attitude doesn’t make him a freak. For his own peace of mind he needs to believe that it’s not just him, that anybody who claims to care for others is lying; maybe because they’re frightened to admit they only think of themselves too, or maybe because they actively want to make people like him feel bad about themselves.”

I was starting to think that Chloë had been on the marching powder too, though somehow it didn’t look like she had, know what I mean? She wasn’t speaking the way you do when you’re coked up. But, fuck me, she was still speaking:

“Socialists, charity workers, carers, people who volunteer to help others; they’re all – and he’s quite convinced about this – they’re all in reality mean-spirited bastards, either self-deceiving bastards or – for their own filthy left-wing reasons – deliberately trying to destroy the self-esteem of normal, healthily ambitious people like him. Because if only everybody looked after their own interests everything would be fine, see? Level playing field, with everybody nakedly ambitious and selfish; everybody knows where they are. If some people aren’t totally selfish, or, even worse, pretend not to be selfish, then it messes up the whole system. It makes it more unfair, not fairer, the way they’d claim. He calls people like that do-gooders, and they make him angry. I think he would actually prefer do-badders, which is a pretty fucked-up attitude when you think about it. He feels quite strongly that these charlatans needed to be unmasked. Always on about them. Never misses an opportunity to complain that they’re liars and frauds. Frankly, Ade, altogether, it makes him sound like – and I firmly believe he actually is – a complete cunt.”

Funny, isn’t it? The c-word has no discernible effect on me. Wood-wise, I mean. You’d think when a woman uses the term it’d be quite sexy, but it isn’t. Weird.

I nodded. “Ah-ha,” I said. “Old boyfriend?”

“No, Ade. My dad. You remind me of my dad.” Chloë drained her drink and patted me on the arm. “Sorry, dear.” She nodded. “Now, here are my friends, coming back from the loo, looking a bit more sorted, thankfully.” She slid daintily off her bar stool. “I think we’ll be moving on. Interesting to talk to you, Ade. You look after yourself, yeah?”

And off all three of them fucked.

Her fucking dad? I fucking wanted to slap the bint.

The Philosopher

I have always had nightmares. Long before I became a soldier or a policeman, long before I killed GF’s father or became a torturer, I would have unpleasant, threatening, frightening and distressing dreams. Perhaps they became worse for a while, on a few occasions maybe, especially just after Mr F. However, I believe that my decision not to pursue any further personal vendettas, and to act only when I felt I had the backing of some greater authority and that there existed a viable legal and moral framework supporting my professional actions, helped, as it were, to clear my conscience. At any rate, my nightmares decreased in severity afterwards.

They did not disappear. They would still haunt me. People did, faces did, sounds did, screams did especially. Some were very recent in origin: the latest subject, their roar of initial defiance, the following howls of agony and the eventual, inevitable pathetic whimperings and pleadings for mercy, sometimes accompanied by the information required in the first place, more often with nothing of use because the subject knew nothing useful to begin with.

I became a little disillusioned, I suppose, though that had nothing to do with the nightmares. It was just that our job never seemed to end, never seemed to achieve very much. There were always more subjects, and gradually a greater overall number of subjects at any given time, from a greater spread of ages and from more and more backgrounds and professions. Society seemed to be collapsing around us. The Christian Terrorist threat seemed only to increase despite the best efforts of the government, the security services and ourselves, and the real terrorists or terrorist suspects appeared to be joined by those who had fallen foul of the increased security measures and laws which the initial increases in terrorist activity had made necessary in the first place.

My colleagues and I comforted ourselves with the thought that however bad things might be or even might get, just think how much worse everything would be without our dedication and professionalism.

I finally received some long-deserved promotion and began to take on more administrative duties, taking me away from the front line, as it were, though not entirely. In busy periods I would help out and when colleagues were unexpectedly absent I would fill in for them. Both situations seemed to occur rather more often than the department expected or I’d have liked. I began to see a department-approved counsellor, and my doctor put me on some medication that worked relatively well, at first at any rate.