Read Little Fingers! for Free Online Page B

funeral? There is, apparently, according to political
science, a significant difference in the way that conservatives and
socialists think. Socialists think that any change is for the
better. Conservatives know that change can go both ways. Your
investment can go both up and down.
    And say I were
to kill Putin in the way I have just described. He almost certainly
deserves it. What he has done in Chechnya, the way that the people
have suffered for their desire to be independent, is utterly
reprehensible. He has tortured, maimed and murdered on the cynical
calculation that he is fabricating an enemy that will unite the
Russians and keep him in office. In its way it's as disgusting as
Bush's calculation that if he invaded Iraq the price of oil would
shoot up, and he would make himself fabulously richer.
    The question
is, what happens when I have killed Putin? Is the world a better
place? If I were to kill Bush, it would be simple. The Americans
would get rather upset for a few days, the network TV companies
would drown in cash, there would be an election, and in a few weeks
nobody would remember who he was.
    For Russia it
is different. Russia is always in the process of falling down
because it has never been given sturdy legs to stand on. It has
always been led by dictators who lend it their own legs and do not
see any benefit to allowing the country to survive independently of
them. If they die, the country may well collapse. It is not worth
the risk of subjecting over 200 million people to misery and maybe
civil war in order to rid the world of one would-be tin-pot
dictator.
    And most of
the ugliest dictators run countries like that, ones that will
descend into chaos if they fall. That is why I dare not strike at
that level (plus I am terrified of pain, and I know exactly what
would happen to me if I were to bump off everyone's favourite
dictator who keeps the privileged in power, even if they could not
prove it was I who killed him).
    So my decision
was to focus on the micro-dictators - the Mary Knightlys. In their
way they do an enormous amount of damage, and yet the fall-out of
their demise is minimal. Everyone shrugs their shoulders and says
“Good riddance. I am glad to see the back of that one.”
    To deal with a
Mary Knightly is to commit a good deed acclaimed by all, except of
course by Mary Knightly, at minimal risk to myself.
    So, I admit
it, Inspector. I came to Hanburgh as an act of revenge, with the
intention of killing or otherwise destroying those people whose
acts had driven my mother to suicide. I knew whom I was after.
First of all Mary Knightly, the woman my mother regarded as being
the most evil person in the world. Then Dr. Berringer, for a reason
I shall explain later. Then the man who raped my mother, leaving
her pregnant. Those were my targets as I drove up to Marshalls the
estate agents in Church Street looking for somewhere to rent in
this village.
    And then I
found myself in the middle of someone else's war of revenge, I
assume. Someone decided to kill off quite a different set of people
for their own reasons, or perhaps out of their own unreason. It is
a shame that our lists have never coincided. We could have
co-operated. Instead, the killer blocked my sights. Mary Knightly
is still alive. Dr. Berringer is still alive. And I still do not
know who my father is.
    So what does
it feel like to know that the person you sat opposite during all
those lunchtimes had murder on her mind, was a criminal in thought
if never in deed? Would that shock you, or surprise you, or leave
you unimpressed? Do you assume, as I have now come to understand,
that everyone is a murderer-in-waiting; everyone wishes to kill;
that we would all be murderers if we were certain that we would get
away with it? And, let's face it, someone is getting away with it.
Even though two of the people they killed were very special to me,
and I am extremely angry about that, I must admit that one part of
me says “Good on you for your