Page 37 of Copper Script
“You really don’t have to call me that.How are you?”
“Very well.Tea?Kettle’s on.”
“I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t.”Fowler looked around.“Suppose I sit at the table, to make notes?”
“And so I can’t read your face?”
“You couldn’t read my face if you tried, because I don’t know anything for you to read.There are eight pieces of writing in this envelope.Some of them are from suspects in the case, and some are from uninvolved people.Each was marked with a number by the officer on the case; I don’t know which is which.I propose that you assess each hand, and I’ll take notes.When you’ve done, put the papers back in the envelope, and I’ll put in my notes.We seal it, and both sign and date it across the seal, and it won’t be opened unless or until the case is solved.”
“Seems fair.”Joel felt distinctly jangly now.
“We’ve done our best to make this watertight.Which means, if you get it right, it’s going to be very hard to argue with your claims.”
That was hardly terrifying at all.“I’ll do my best not to disappoint you.”
He brought over the tea.Fowler handed him the papers and prepared a notepad.Joel took out the sheaf, feeling his heart thump, and looked at the first, which had a circled 1 in the corner.
“Number one,” he said after a while.Fowler had sat in absolute silence, not distracting him in the least except by existing, a dark masculine presence in the corner of his eye.“I can’t see anything much here.I think this is a woman, and she feels a little nervous as she’s writing.It’s a hugely conscientious hand, rather joyless.Dutiful.I don’t know if she’s much fun to be around, but absolutely nothing in this gives me the sense of someone who’d commit a serious crime: I’m not sure she’d lower herself to shoplifting, even.This was written after the crime, yes?”
“All of them were written afterwards.”
“I think, if she had done a bad thing, the thought would be overwhelming, even if she felt justified in it.She’d fret.I don’t see anything like that.”
Fowler was scribbling.“Is that it?”
“Yes, I think so.I am rather assuming this crime is big enough to make an impact, by the way.”
“It’s an ongoing investigation of a serious matter.Not shoplifting.”
“Good.All right, number two.”He let himself sink into the hand.“Well, he’s none too bright, is he?Deeply unimaginative, no empathy.I can’t imagine he’s much fun to work for.I’d guess he shouts a lot, he feels like a bully.Would I expect criminal behaviour?Oof.I think if you put him into the army he’d be a perfectly good soldier, and if you put him into a gang of racecourse terrorists he’d be good at that too.I don’t get any sense of guilt or fear here, but I don’t know if that’s because he’s done nothing wrong, or if he has but he doesn’t particularly think about it.He probably just goes along whatever path he’s on, like a wind-up toy.If I had to sum him up in two words, it would beNo insight.Which, I have to tell you, makes him a blasted bad fit for this sort of test because if he doesn’t feel anything, I’m not going to feel it off him.”
Fowler took it all down without comment.Joel waited for him to finish.He was feeling a lot more nervous now.
“Three,” he said.“Oh.Oh, this...this is more interesting.This person—not sure of the sex, going to say he—is very tense when he’s writing this, but it’s a curious sort of tension.I can’t tell if he’s afraid or exhilarated, but that’s in the moment, because what he mostly is—it comes through every word—is resentful.Boiling with it.He’s, oh, clenched up and furious and....you know, if he did something about it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.This is, I don’t know, like a man turned down by a string of women, and if he’s married at all, he chose her as a poor second and despises her for saying yes to him.Or he’s been long overlooked for promotion—actually, that’s much more like it, there’s no sex drive here.Maybe even one of those church spinsters, if you know what I mean, someone who’s directed all their energy into an organisation or a protegee and isn’t getting the recognition they feel they deserve, and it’s acid on the soul.”He could really feel the personality now, the long-bridled, fermenting resentment.“This is a bitter, bitter person.I don’t know if you could tell it to talk to them, they’re all clenched up, but they’re absolutely seething inside.”
Fowler was watching him with those dark eyes.“Is this your pick?”
“It’s certainly someone who’s ripe for mischief, or rather spite, but I’d want to see the rest.”
Number four was a lacklustre read: perfectly pleasant and worried a lot.Joel couldn’t get anything more out of that.He made another round of tea before sitting back down to number five.
“Five.Hmph.This one’s got a problem.Gambling, maybe, or...drink, perhaps, but the writing doesn’t look shaky.Drugs?Might even be sex, I don’t know, but he’s not enjoying it much if it is.Again, I’m saying ‘he’ for convenience.He’s ashamed, but he would be, and there’s quite a lot of guilt and fear sloshing around, but I don’t think they’re new emotions to him at all.I’m honestly not getting much else outside the ruling compulsion.Mph.I wouldn’t look at this and say he’s definitely done something bad, but he’s a person in the grip of addiction, and that can lead people to do bad things and not really think about it that much because the habit comes first.Ugh.I wish I knew what sort of crime this was, because honestly, two, three, and five are all capable ofsomething.”
Fowler wrote it all down.“Go on.”
“Six...Oh, well, this is better.Oh, I like her.Her?Definitely her.This is someone...goodness, I bet she was Head Girl.”In the corner of his eye, he saw Fowler’s head twitch, as if he’d started to look up.“Full of enthusiasm and positivity and absolutely determined to do a jolly good job of things.Real salt of the earth stuff.A thoroughly nice person, probably so nice you barely notice the iron will.”Fowler choked slightly.“Oh, definitely.Would she commit a crime?Quite possibly, if it needed doing.Beat a man to death with a lacrosse stick or a rolling pin, and then go straight to the police station to explain why it was a necessary and reasonable thing to have done.This isn’t a mean soul.”
That felt a bit better.He swigged tea and took up the next paper.“Seven.Oh.”
“Wh—”
Joel flapped his arm for silence, glaring at the paper he held as the impressions coalesced.“Oh, no, I don’t like this.I don’t like this at all.I told you not to give me these people, for Christ’s sake!”
“What is it?”Fowler demanded.
“This is bad.This is someone—absolutely no moral compass.Ruthless.Entirely ruthless.I would not put a lot past him.I think he would do extraordinarily bad things with open eyes.I think...shit.I think he might have blood on his hands.”He stared at the uncaring loops of ink, awash with feelings he didn’t like.“I really think he might.There’s something so bad here, and he knows it, he’s embraced it, he’s relishing it, even, because it shows he’s superior to everyone else.”
“Superior?”
