by Jane Lumley
lumley@purkiss.demon.co.uk
 

An Oxford story.

Summary: In Oxford, in 1983, two men are obsessed with a brilliant
psychology tutor.  One is a killer who likes the feel of warm blood.
The other is a vulnerable undergraduate called Fox Mulder.  Which of
them will finally possess her?

Genres: Prequel. Mulder/other. Mulderangst bigtime.  Muldertorture.

Rating: NC-17 for sexual situations, swearing, unpleasant psychoanalytic
theories, unconsensual sex, S and M fantasy, torture, violence, death
and other nasties.  Safe sex, did I hear someone say?  This is 1983,
baby.  We didn't worry about that in those days.  Silly of us, as it
turned out.

Spoilers:  Very minor ones for 'Fire', otherwise none.

Archives: yes to Gossamer, others please ask permission.

Disclaimer:  Fox Mulder and the X-Files are the property of Chris Carter
and 1013 productions.  You made this, honey.  I'm just playing with it.
I couldn't resist a cameo by another character, who belongs to Colin
Dexter.  I've given him a rather uncanonical role.

Additional disclaimer, or reality check: The West Yorkshire police did
not use a profiler in their hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, and I have
adapted the story of Sutcliffe's arrest to suit myself.  Don't sue me,
Sonia Sutcliffe.  I have no money, and I'm on your side.

Oxford University is in some respects as described - I was there at
exactly the same time as Mulder, and I've written from memory with an
idea of giving non-Oxonians a notion of what Mulder's life was like
there - but I have also altered many, many things to fit my story.
Think of this as 'Oxford', not Oxford.  And don't blame me if you go
there and it's all different.

Feedback:  Yes yes yes yes yes, at lumley@purkiss.demon.co.uk.  This is
my first X-Files fanfic, so be nice and write, whether you love it or
hate it.

Huge and eternal thanks to my kind, savvy, talented alpha readers - in
the context of an Oxford story, I have to raise their grades... David,
Dia, Pellinor, La - bless you all.

I wrote this for my husband Dmitri, who has a minor part here as the
bartender.
--
Jane Lumley
 

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of year,
For a journey and such a long journey,
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.  (T. S. Eliot, 'Journey of the Magi')
------------------------------------------------

Monday October 10 1983 02.48 hours.  Magdalen Road.  A street in East
Oxford.

The girl's high heels clicked sharply on the wet pavements.  The one who
had been waiting for her enjoyed the sound.  The little click click
click.  So girly.  He loved girls.  He loved this girl.  He was going to
love her like she'd never been loved before.  It made him feel like a
man.  He fingered the handle of the workman's bag.  The cutting.  That
was what he wanted.  The cutting.  Smooth smooth smooth skin.  Warm warm
warm blood.

Let her get to the door.  Then -

''Scuse me, miss.'

She turned.  What a pretty thing she was.  Sweet. 'Yes?'

'Have you got the price of a cuppa tea on you?'

'Sorry'.  She turned back towards the door.

East Oxford was full of tramps.  Not even wary.  Not even afraid.  Not
knowing him.  Even a little contemptuous.

That didn't matter.  She would know.

He liked to beg from them beforehand.  He liked to pretend to be weak,
helpless, when all the time he was the strong one.  He liked hoarding
his strength like a secret under weakness.  Knowing he could choose.

Sometimes, if they were kind and gave him money, he would let them go.
Without ever knowing what had been close to them.

But not always.

Sometimes he just couldn't resist it.

He was close enough, now.  As her key turned in the lock, he was on her,
holding her wrist in a vicelike grip.  As they fell into the hall, she
had just time to recognise the old, dark, terrible smell on his clothes
before night took her.

He always knocked them out first.  He wanted her to be still.  Very
still.  But alive.

Cuts don't bleed on the dead.  Or not enough.

He inscribed himself on her breasts and thighs and arms.  His knives
drew slow patterns.  Her blood was an intricate sentence on her skin, an
unreadable language.

Her blood bathed him in its velvet warmth.

His favourite cut was the last, though. The throat cut.  He held his
hands over the arterial spurt, feeling her pulse against him, raw wet
rich blood.  The pulse of love.  He couldn't stand it; it was too much,
and his arching pleasure overtook him.

When he stood up, there was thick clotted blood all over his hands.

He smiled.  Now he was a man.

He had been born again from her belly.  Born again as he should have
been.

He ripped her dead torso open.  From his mother's womb untimely ripped.

He left her there, in the hall, her clothes askew, covered in blood,
steam rising from her gashed belly.

She was a sign.  A sign of the man he was becoming.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday October 10.  12.00 am.  St John's College Oxford

Fox Mulder put on an extra sweater.  He paused, reflected, and then put
on an extra pair of socks.  Another pause.  Then his newly acquired
college scarf.

He also resumed his overcoat.

It was no use.  He was still cold, as cold as he'd ever been in his
life.  Even though the was from the Maritimes, seasoned by exposure to
bitter, salty air.  Even though he was sitting only yards away from the
pathetically small one-bar heater which was all St John's College had
seen fit to provide.  Even though it was only October.  Even though the
windows and doors of his room were closed tightly.

Tightly.  That was a laugh.  Those windows would never shut tightly,
even with all the pieces of paper he'd wedged into them to stop them
rattling.  The draught that came through them was so abysmally icy that
only a polar bear would have welcomed it.  Three days in Oxford, and
already his blood was turning blue.

Admittedly, the view through the icy casements was attractive, if not
quite the Dreaming Spires that Mulder had somehow imagined.  A flat
oblong of the smoothest green grass Mulder had ever seen.  A severe and
gracious Georgian facade.

When he arrived, he'd been explicitly told by the porter how lucky he
had been to get these rooms.  An Oxford graduate had won them in the
rooms ballot, but had elected to abandon his doctorate for a high-flying
job in a management consultancy.  Which is why they had been tossed
lightly to an overseas nobody like himself.  Shivering, Mulder wondered
what the rooms normally reserved for strangers from the Maritimes were
like.  He wondered whether any room in the whole of Oxford boasted
central heating.  He wondered whether he might just set fire to the
furniture to help him keep warm, piece by piece.

Still, there was one thing about the room that kept Mulder from packing
up and leaving.

It didn't have his family in it.  And they weren't down the hall either.

He thought fleetingly of his mother.  She had packed him onto the plane
just as she had packed him off for boarding school, and before that,
preparatory school.

'Fox, dear, you will need a rug.'

'They give you blankets on planes, Mom.'

'I know, dear, but this rug belonged to your grandmother.  And here is a
little picnic basket.'  It was wicker.  Tasteful.  Small.

'They give you food, too.'

'Yes, dear, but I'm sure it's not very nice.'

Nice was her favourite word.

Rugs.  Picnic baskets.  But she didn't come to the airport.

He had left the rug in the taxi and the picnic in the departure lounge
trashcan.   He wanted to leave everything behind, to set out with only
what he stood up in.

She had been right about the food on the plane.

He didn't care.  At thirty-one thousand feet, he felt the bliss of the
mystics, divested of the burdens of the mortal world.  For five hours he
could do nothing.  Need address nothing.  Need wrestle with nothing.
Even the snoring woman opposite, the bawling child behind, were
blessings.  They marked his essential solitude.

He watched the clouds until it was too dark to see.  Then he watched the
stars.

There were faint lines of ice on the window.  They were the only
markings left to him.

He was washed clean.  He had flown away from the past.

He had never been happier in his life.

The spell had not been broken by landing.  Not altogether.

Not even by the unexpected dirtiness of London.  Not by his chaotic
arrival in Oxford, wrestling with bags and taxis and money that made no
sense.

Now he was still alone, and just beginning to be lonely.

Solitude was all very well, but you could have too much.

So far, the porter was the only person who had spoken to him for more
than a sentence.

He had an appointment on Friday to see a functionary called a Moral
Tutor, and had been invited to tea by the college chaplain on Saturday.
Apart from the forthcoming fiesta of sherry with the Master, this
represented all the items on his social calendar so far.   They made him
feel both shy and contemptuous.

Of course, there was always his scout, a college servant who came round
to clean his room every morning.  Mulder's scout appeared to be one
hundred and five years old.  He moved about his duties as spryly as a
not too hurried snail, and the effort of conversation slowed him to a
complete standstill.  The only thing he liked to talk about was cricket.
Mulder had no idea what a Test match was.  The social possibilities were
limited.

As for his educational calendar, that was a complete blank.  He had
chosen John's, had chosen Oxford, precisely because he wanted to work
with the one man whose psychological theories had really impressed him,
the man who was singlehandedly responsible for fostering his interest in
psychology, the man who he felt had something to teach him that only he
could learn, the man for whom he was sitting frozen in this arctic room.
The man's name was Jerry Falconer.

In his mind, Mulder ran over all he knew about his tutor.  Name, Jerry
Falconer.  Age, 38.  Qualifications: BA Oxon Psych.  MSc Harvard.  PhD
Cantab, Title of doctorate: Snake Oil: Behavioural profiles and criminal
tendencies in seven convicted murderers.  Books: legion.  Roles:
consultant to Scotland Yard and MI5 and 6 on criminal profiling.
Principal thesis; criminal profiling is currently so crude that it
frustrates rather than assisting enquiry.

Mulder was dying to meet this man.  To argue with him.  To fight with
him.  He had read all of Falconer's books.  Absorbed the questions.  And
now he, Fox Mulder, had the answers.  He knew how profiling could be
improved.  And this sceptic, Jerry Falconer, was just the man to help
him hone his theories.  And, of course, just the man to give them
meaningful endorsement.

The only oddity was that he had no mental image of the man he was
seeking.  Falconer didn't put his photo on his jacket covers.  You
couldn't blame him.  A man who made a habit of helping to capture serial
killers didn't want his face known in every household.  And Mulder knew
he never gave interviews.

Oh well, he would find out soon enough.  The college porter, Mulder's
sole source of information, had told him with chill correctness that 'Dr
Falconer will be back this week'.

It was time for lunch.  Mulder had heard everyone say that college food
was wonderful, cheap and abundant.  It was, but it was also very, very
English.  Today it was kedgeree.  Whatever that was.  Mulder poked
suspiciously at the mass of grey matter and rice on his plate.  He
approached the salad bar, hoping to augment the main course with
something green.  Limp lettuce, and sad tomatoes, and several bottles of
something called Salad Cream.  Mulder shuddered.  He was beginning to
long for Real Food.  A pizza.  A hamburger.  Anything from Taco Bell.
Food that tasted of something, like fat and MSG.

At least the dining hall was warm.  Mulder approached a long wooden
table with his tray, removing a book from his pocket as he sat down.  If
he read diligently, he might notice the kedgeree less.  It tasted like
damp newspaper.

He barely noticed who he was sitting next to until she spoke to him.

'You're reading psych, yes?'

Mulder didn't lift his eyes from his book.  'That's right'.

'And you're from the States'.

'Brilliant deduction'.  He forced another forkful of kedgeree down, not
taking his eyes from the page.

'I see you've got Falconer's latest there.  Bit of a retread of the last
two, I thought, though the new material on how crude Freudian data
misled the police in the Ripper case is quite intriguing.  But the Great
Mind still hasn't come up with an answer the police can use.'

Now Mulder slewed round, his attention caught.  'Do you know Falconer?'

'That's quite a question'.  She smiled.  For the first time, Mulder
noticed that she was very pretty.  Lovely, in fact.  Dark hair, very
dark eyes.  Something about her that recalled a Spanish painting, maybe
because she was wearing black unrelieved by anything except a small
string of pearls.  A severe face with a warm, ripe, red mouth.   A firm,
clear voice.  Very English.

'Falconer might say that profiling a college tutor is no easier than
profiling a murderer.  Even when caught.  The nuance that is character
is lost in summation'.

'That depends on which behavioural profiling system we're talking about.
I don't think Falconer could be made to fit neatly into something as
crude as Meyers-Briggs, but a more flexible system of profiling, taking
into account not only biographical data but also learned responses might
be helpful.  Behavioural profiles can be inferred from behaviour.
That's the whole point.  That's exactly where Falconer is totally and
miserably wrong'.  He stopped, because she was plainly on the point of
bursting out laughing.

'Isn't all this likely to have limited applicability?  I mean, what's
the point in profiling someone as thoroughly as that if you haven't
caught them - met them - yet?  And you can't do that kind of profile
until you do.  What if you get something very basic wrong from the
beginning?  Then you'll never reach a point where you can get the rest
of your data.'

'That's where extreme care and subtlety are needed.'.

'I see'.  She looked duly chastened.

Mulder felt a pang of compunction.  She was really rather lovely, and he
hadn't meant to browbeat her.  He smiled encouragingly, and she smiled
back.

'Well, you do have a point in one way.  I haven't managed to catch
Falconer yet.  Will he get in touch when he gets back from wherever he's
gone?'

For some reason she was looking amused again.  No doubt he had just
violated some obscure English taboo.

'What makes you think you'll be working with Falconer?  Not all
undergraduates do straightaway, you know'.

'I will.'  He was definite.  'That's why I came here'.

'You came to Oxford to work with Falconer?  From America?'  She was
looking startled as well as amused now.

Mulder was impatient.  'That's what I just said'.  He  pushed the
greyish mush away from him decisively.  'I'm going to look for dessert.
You want some?  '

'No, thanks.  It's Pig's Bum today.'

'What?'  Hazily, Mulder pictured a suckling pig.

'It's got rhubarb in it and I can't face rhubarb.  Pink and slimy like a
decomposing corpse.  And I've got to go. We'll meet again, I think.'
And she was gone.

Somehow Mulder decided to skip dessert too.  Pig's Bum.  What a country.

After lunch Mulder sauntered over to the M pigeonhole, and found a
series of circulars from college societies mysterious in function and
appeal, an invitation to the Fresher's Fair, and an envelope with the
college arms on it.  Inside was a notice giving details of a lecture:

Professor Jerry Falconer

Fitting the Profile: Stereotypes that Kill'

Wednesday 12 October, 8pm, Geoffrey Parrinder Lecture Theatre, St Cross
College.

'The sender must be the woman I saw at lunch', Mulder reflected.  'That
was friendly of her'.

He had an uncomfortable feeling about that encounter, as if he'd somehow
made a fool of himself.  What had she been so amused about?  Maybe he'd
see her at the lecture and find out.

---------------------------------------------------
Wednesday 12 October.

After the battering nightmare of the Fresher's Fair, Mulder felt he'd be
glad to sit down in a nice quiet lecture for a few hours.  Oxford, he
learned, has thousands of clubs and societies, from the Christ Church
and Farley Hill Beagles to the Dungeons and Dragons Association, from
the chess clubs to the political clubs to every conceivable sporting
club and every religious movement, fringe and mainstream.  He put
himself down for cross-country running and athletics, and for the
psychology club.

Something called the Union wanted him to pay over one hundred and fifty
dollars for lifetime membership.  It turned out to be some kind of
debating club, rather than a trades union as he had rashly supposed.  It
could give the Teamsters pointers on extortion, anyway.

The Examinations Hall was packed with hucksters selling the allure of
ghost-spotting clubs, insane theatrical extravaganzas, cineastes, and
the Poohsticks Club, which met on the Cherwell bridges to throw sticks
into the river and see which stick drifted under the bridge fastest.
The Poohsticks promoter, a pretty blonde taken by Mulder's looks,
pursued him around the entire fair, offering him sticks and pretending
to burst into tears when he said no.

Used to the sober purposiveness of American higher education, Mulder
felt overwhelmed by all the sustained frivolity whirling about him.  He
was usually the odd one in any room he entered, but there were plenty of
people here whose eccentricities were far more cultivated than his own.

When did they find time to work?

Oxford was also breathtakingly social.  After a week of near-solitude,
Mulder felt both warmed and intimidated by the number of greetings,
exchanges and conversations going on by, with and around him.  His mind
hummed, unable to focus or feel, coping as best it could with all the
mad, fast, overloud stimulation.

Apparently everyone here wanted to join something.  Everyone wanted to
be friendly.  No, scratch that, Mulder.  Everyone here wanted to know
everyone else.  Friendly they weren't.  Not warm.  Articulate, clever,
but not friendly.

Somehow he ended up in a pub called The Bear with the Psychology Society
representatives, who claimed he was the first fresher to join in ten
years and wanted to buy him a drink on the strength of it.   Everyone
>from the Fresher's Fair seemed to be in the Bear, which was about nine
feet square.  There had probably been more standing room in the Black
Hole of Calcutta.  But at least Mulder had at last found out where
people in Oxford went when they wanted to be warm.

Sipping the strange amber fluid purchased for him by his new friends,
Mulder had expected to talk about psychology.  Instead, conversation at
once turned to the apparently much more fascinating question of the
beer.  Was it as good as ever?  As yeasty?  As hoppy?  And were there
any new ties on the wall?

Apprently the Bear collected ties.  If someone came in wearing a tie not
in the collection, the owner would demand a piece of it.  Old school
ties.  Regimental ties.  Disneycorp ties.

Mulder sighed.  Had he travelled thousands of miles to hear people talk
about ties and beer?

'Enjoying yourself?'  said a small fair woman on his right.

'I was just wondering what Freud might have said about this stuff in my
glass.  I think he'd have wanted to use the term coprophagia, myself'.

'Doesn't Kristeva say something interesting about coprophagia when
discussing Celine?'  said a tall dark man with steel-rimmed glasses.

'Yeah, it's a form of abjection.  A logic of voiding, but also a risky
reabsorption into the detritus of maternality.  Hence a function of the
death-drive'

'So beer-drinking is a carnivalesque refusal of normative psychic
boundaries?'

'Precisely, my dear Peter.  Especially when you get so pissed that other
kinds of voiding go on too.  Drink, sir, is a great promoter of three
things.  Sleep, and urine.  And of course vomit, which Shakespeare
unaccountably forgot to mention'

'Real ale makes you fart, as well', said Edmund languidly.

'That's Bahktinian, isn't it?  Farting, I mean?'

Edmund was unfazed.  'A parody of speech.  The lower body articulating
itself in imitation of the mouth, and imitation that forces us to
acknowledge its connection to the mouth'.

'Well, Edmund, your lower body is certainly very articulate this
evening.'

'So what's your take on coprophagy, mon copain?'  The small fair woman,
Lucy, turned to Mulder.  'After all, you come from a country which is
preternaturally anxious about cleanliness and the lower body.  In fact,
your beer is much more sanitised.'

Mulder felt himself turning pink.  For the second time that day - for
the second time in his life - he felt out of his depth intellectually.
He hadn't understood a single one of the learned references his new
acquaintances had made, except the one to Shakespeare.  He was beginning
to realise that a lot of leisure spent in the Psych section of the
public library might not leave him fully equipped to face Oxford
psychologists in conversation.  He also felt out of his depth socially.
He had brought up the topic of shit, and now it was making him blush.

'Over in the States, we say eighty billion flies can't be wrong', he
said defensively.  'I  can't stay to discuss this shit further, because
I've got to attend a class.'

'At this hour?'' asked the small fair girl in surprise.

'US speak' said her companion.  'He means a paper.  Probably Falconer's
gig.  We'll see you there.'

'Yes, yes.  I can look at Falconer anytime.  And listen, of course.'

'Bye'.

It was just like that effete jerk Edmund to want to look at Falconer.
Weird, though.  Was Falconer gay himself?  Mulder had seen Brideshead
Revisited on HBO, and had come to Oxford expecting to find it full of
gay men.  He hadn't met any, so far.  Another surprise.  Another
indication that he, Fox Mulder, knew nothing.  The first step to wisdom,
he told himself consolingly.
------------------------------------------------

He arrived at St Cross College early to get a good seat at the front.
He wanted to see this man, this guru whose thought had influenced his
own.  For whom he had crossed oceans.  The man who might have the
answers he himself was looking for.  The only man who would understand
his theories.

Behind him the lecture room filled.  Edmund and Peter waved.  Mulder
kept his eyes front, and was rewarded by the sight of a tall  bearded
man, distinguished in a tweed jacket.  He was accompanied by the woman
Mulder had met at lunch.

Mulder's head jerked up.  She was now wearing a soft grey dress and a
black jacket over it.  Both gleamed with the dull edge of silk.  Her
black hair was silk too.  He couldn't help noticing the smooth swell of
her full breasts under the sheen of the dress.  If she was Falconer's
woman, he had good taste.  Really good taste.

And he, Fox Mulder, had made an idiot of himself.  Already.  He could
only hope that she wouldn't tell Falconer the stupid, arrogant things he
had said.

As she sat down, he caught her eye.  She smiled again at him.  He put
his finger to his lips, glanced pleadingly at Falconer, then used the
same finger to make the gesture of slitting his throat.  She laughed
aloud, and Falconer turned and smiled too.  Then he got to his feet and
moved towards the podium.

'I'm delighted to be here tonight from Aberdeen to introduce our
speaker, Dr Jerry Falconer.  I think most of you must know Dr Falconer's
pathbreaking work on psychological and behavioural profiling and its
fallacies...'

Mulder shook his head.  Huh?  As he looked again at the woman, a
terrible suspicion crept into his mind.  Suspicion became certainty as
the man reached the end of his oration, and she rose to her feet to the
sound of polite applause.

A gigantic embarrassment made Mulder deaf to the first paragraph of her
talk.  The blood pounded in his ears.  He wanted to sink through the
floor.  To curl up and disappear.

If only an alien spaceship would come down in the next moment and take
him away from it all.

Preoccupied by his own crimson shame, he couldn't look up.  But suddenly
he began to attend to what she was saying.

'Serial killers' behaviours in serial killing do not provide a reliable
guide to their behaviours in life.  A recent case, for which I refuse to
use the popular sobriquet for reasons which will become obvious later in
my presentation: Several women are murdered.  They are mutilated around
the genitals, with an implement like a claw hammer, but there has been
no attempt at penile penetration.  All the women are white, and all are
under 40.  Some are prostitutes, and some are housewives and mothers.'

Mulder recognised the story.  This was the Yorkshire Ripper case.  He'd
been following the press reports.  Emboldened, he gave her a deprecating
smile, and made the motion of slitting his throat again.  She gave him a
straight look that said 'You asked for it, baby', and proceeded,
unruffled.

'What does that tell us about the killer?  Well, the police psychologist
thought it told us something.  He told the police to look for a single
man who was on bad terms with his mother.  And they did.'

'Unfortunately, as I'm sure you all know, the killer was a married man -
a happily married man - with an affectionate relationship with his
mother.  However, the killer did fear his violent and moody father.'

Mulder hoped he hadn't jumped.  The true profile, and not the false one,
might describe him.  A flash of his father and his face contorted with
fury.

He forced the idea out of his mind, and shifted in his seat.  She was
looking straight at him, as if she sensed his discomfort.  He looked
down quickly.

'The killer was also a man whose car had been seen by no less than three
separate witnesses near no less than three crime scenes, a man who had
been interviewed no less than nine times by police.  He was eliminated
from the enquiry because he did not fit the profile.  That profile,
ladies and gentleman, was in part responsible for the deaths of two
women, women murdered after the killer had first come to the attention
of police.'

'I'm talking, of course, about Peter Sutcliffe, the man known as the
Yorkshire Ripper, and that name itself is part of the profile and part
of the problem.  The killer was also known to the police as 'Chummy',
which also helped to create an erroneous mental image of him, as did the
police's acceptance of a cassette tape recorded by a hoaxer with a
different regional accent than the killer.  The police accepted this
tape because they thought that this was how serial killers behave;
taunting, full of sexual prowess, brave, macho.'

She was sharp, all right.  She was also the most purely beautiful woman
Mulder had ever seen.  He wasn't going to commit the double idiocy of
hitting on someone to whom he had lain down the law in ignorance of the
fact that.... Oh, God.  God, God, God.  Eternal father, strong to save.

'Actually, Sutcliffe had little interest in the police.  He had little
interest in women either.  He was gratified by the process of making
slash marks on the victims' bodies after death, and he at least once
masturbated over the victim's body, yet there was no disfigurement of
primary or secondary sexual characteristics.   In retrospect, the
profiler should have been more willing to consider analogies with the
female perversion of delicate cutting, where it is the sight of the cut
and the spectacle of blood flow which is soothing, not aggression as
such.  Yet this was not considered because of the stereotype of the
serial murderer of women as having an excess of machismo.  The lack of
obvious aggression is buttressed by the fact that the killing itself
seemed merely instrumental, a way of creating a warm female corpse that
might bleed and that might allow itself to be cut.  Unlike most killers,
Sutcliffe did not keep trophies.  He did not even take obvious
precautions.  He inhabited quite a happy world of tension and release, a
world in which his competitors were not the police but his violent
father.  he certainly wasn't interested in reforming the morals of the
women he killed.'

'It is my contention that the police and the police psychologist were
guilty of overreliance on the profile to eliminate suspects.  In serial
killing cases, the police are under enormous pressure to make an arrest
quickly once the killer's activities are known, and yet precisely
because there's often no obvious link between victims and killer,
there's often no obvious suspect.  That's where the profiler comes in;
we can, if we're unlucky, find ourselves filling that blank space with
imagination.'

Her voice had the swell of peroration.

'Does that mean we should abandon profiling?  No, but it does mean that
we need to take precautions if we are to remain psychologists and not
witchfinders.  We have to keep pointing out to the police that profiles
are not primary tools to enable suspects to be included or eliminated,
but secondary tools which can only be brought into play after forensic
and other straight detective work has formed a list of suspects.  We
have to break from stereotypes to attempt to the difficult task of using
all that we know about the killer to make, not a profile, but a
multifarious series of possibilities that can be investigated one by
one.  We must resist the temptation to write a thriller of our own,
complete with a rounded villain.  Instead, we must be scrupulous in
showing the police how little we have to go on, how little can be known
of the killer's personality, of any personality.  Only then will we be a
help and not a hindrance.'

Polite applause.

Mulder's impulse was to go.  Fast, in the general direction of away.
And never come back.  But he had been so fascinated by what she said
that he made excuses not to.  He hung around for sherry, careful not to
catch her eye, but minutely observing where she went.  As she left, he
made for the door.  He fell into step beside her.

'You set me up.'  He couldn't keep hostility out of his voice.

'You asked for it.  You were a cocky brat.'

'I still am a brat, but now I'm not as cocky.'

'We may just about get on, then.'

'Why were you having lunch in Hall?  Don't the dons have their own
private little enclave?  Do you just hang out there to trap the unwary?'

'I was late for SCR lunch, so I sampled the juniors'  kedgeree'.

'Jerry?'

'Geraldina.  No-one would stick with that if they didn't have to.
What's your name?'

'Mulder.  Fox Mulder.'

'Well, Fox, you know what?  I'm going to call you Mulder.  It goes with
your eyes.'

Was he mishearing?  Misreading?

'Okay.  Call me what you want.  Have you forgiven me, though?'

He tried a puppy look.

'For not knowing who I was?  Of course. I haven't had such a good time
in years.  For assuming I'm a man?  I guess that's the Maritimes
talking.  Or maybe you're just knowledgeable about Oxford.  Women
constitute less than 10 per cent of college fellows hereabouts.'

'That's a better excuse than anything I could have come up with.'

'That's right, Mr Mulder.  Always begin your Oxford career by flattering
your tutor.  Now you need to say how blown away you were by my lecture.
Was it truly excellent?'

'Of course.  Dazzling.  Damn, now whatever I say will sound all wrong.'

'Not whatever you say.  You could say you were dying for a plain ol'
American hamburger, and ask me where we could go.  You haven't dined, I
presume?'

'No, and I'm dying for a plain ol' American Hamburger'.  Robotically.

A big smile, though.  Straight into her eyes.

Was he being presumptuous?  The smile had worked before.  Was he an
idiot to think it was working now?   She was so very beautiful.  And he
had already made an idiot of himself.  Twice.

But she was smiling back.  A smile that managed to hint at many
possibilities.

'Okay, we'll go to Maxwells.  Come on, Mulder.  And I'm looking forward'
- her smile became wicked - 'to refining your profiling skills and
warning you against assumption.'

The garishly lit street was full of people, and they wove a fast,
erratic path through the crowds.  An old man on the corner of George
Street was selling papers, and intoning, in a cracked old voice 'Second
East Oxford murder!  Student dead!'

She stopped, and bought a paper.  'Dammit.  Dammit, Mulder, I warned
them.  I tried.  Oh, goddamit why don't the Thames Valley police ever
listen to the people whose expert opinions they ask?'

She kept walking, bumping into people, oblivious, talking at top speed.
Mulder had to run to keep up.  Mentally and physically.

'This guy's got a genuine taste for it.  Three weeks ago, he did a
vagrant girl, we don't get many of them here, gutted her straight along
the abdomen and also made cuts on her thighs.  No sign of sexual
activity.  Police thought it might be a one-off, maybe a quarrel among
the homeless.  But there's also been a series of attacks that the girls
have survived.  Guy grabs them from behind, cuts their faces, and lets
them go.  They stopped about a month ago.  The papers are calling him
the East Oxford Slasher.  I think there's a connection, but the police
don't agree.  Of course you know what Kaplan says about cutting.  Self-
cutting is a kind of search for the mother within.  Cutting another is
an attempt to find the mother in them.  I just think the way he cuts
them open at the belly, it's almost like a Caesarean, almost like birth.
He's being reborn.  Reborn right.'

She was glancing at the paper now, still moving at top speed.  'Yes,
look.  Not many details but he mutilated her.  Why didn't they call me?
Smug gits.'

Suddenly she stopped dead.  'I'm sorry', she said.  'This isn't much of
a welcome to Oxford for you, is it?  Let's drop the subject.  Come and
have the hamburger.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The restaurant was up a dingy flight of stairs.  It was a British idea
of an American hamburger joint, with everything a little askew to
Mulder's eye.  But the burgers smelled authentic.  At least they smelled
of something.

She was absurdly overdressed for this place; she looked like a princess
who had taken a wrong turning and suddenly found herself among the
people.  Her silks glistened in the neon lights; her hair was black
silk.  As she crossed the room to their booth, Mulder could feel the
heat of the eyes on her.   She slid in and sat down opposite him.

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright.

'Well, Mr Mulder.  Still wondering how you got here?'

'Ummm... yes.  Of course, I've been wanting to come to Oxford for a
while - '

'No, not that - how you got here here.'

'Oh, here here.'

'Yes, here here.  Any ideas?'

'Not a one.'

'That's strange.  It's my impression that you're usually bursting with
ideas on every subject.'

'Not every subject.  Just psychology.'

'Well, this is a psychological problem.  Why did your tutor, to whom you
had been very rude earlier in the day, ask you to dinner?'

Mulder took a deep breath.  'Well - okay.  Possibilities.  One, to tick
me off again.  Two, to show me that you're a nice person and not a
megabitch.  Three, to make me feel small by zapping me with superlove,
as they used to say in the sixties.  Four, no special reason; you were
hungry and we happened to leave together and you don't like to eat
alone.'

For the second time that day, she seemed on the point of bursting out
laughing.  Before he could ask her why, the waitress arrived to take
their order.

She ordered a double burger with guacamole and extra fries, and this
time he began to laugh.

'Do you come here often, Dr Falconer?'

'Jerry.'

'Do you?'

'No, not really.'

'Because if you did, you'd weigh six hundred pounds.'

'Yes, I would.'  You could drown in that smile.  Go out to sea in it and
never come back.

'Why were you laughing at me again, before?'

'You don't think very well of yourself, do you, Mulder?  According to
your analysis, I must have asked you here with some ulterior motive.  It
can't possibly have been that I like you.  That I want to see you.'

'No, it could have been.'

'Then why didn't it figure in your list?'

Whispered, so low she could hardly hear it over the music.  'I couldn't
ask it.  I was so afraid it might not be true.'

'Don't be afraid.'

His eyes met her black ones.  The longer he looked, the more his head
sang.

He wanted to touch the rich creamy skin of her cheek, just where it was
fainly flushed.  He wanted to taste that sweet red mouth.  He wanted to
take her beautiful full breasts in his hands.

He had no idea how to begin to say all this.  Much less to do it.

The food arrived.

'I tell you what, Mulder', she said, swiftly dispensing relishes and
salt.  'Why don't we find out more about each other?'

'Favourite colour?'

'Grey.  And you?'

'Blue.'

'Favourite song?'

He couldn't think.  He watched her small white teeth biting into the
hamburger, and thought of her twisting under him, biting.  The juice ran
over her fingers.  'Um - Sunday Morning.'

'I like that too.  The Velvets.  But I'd go for something less cheerful.
Riders on the Storm.'

'Great for someone who works on killers.'

'Yes, I know.  A clichÈ, really.  Now your turn for a question.'

He looked straight at her, his heart in his mouth.

'Where do you like to be kissed?'

To his surprise, she looked briefly away, as though considering.

'Ummm - mouth.  Tongue-kissing.  Really deep and slow and soft.
Sometimes hard, too.  You?'

'That's great, but I also like being kissed on the neck, just where it
joins the shoulders.  Your turn for a question.'

'Let me think.  Which part of a woman do you like to kiss best?'

'Breasts.  Especially if they're full and soft and firm and creamy.'  He
couldn't help staring at her as she spoke.  To his surprise, she was a
little flushed.  Had he gone too far?   'Now you.  Which part of a man?'

'Oh, chest.  Especially if it's slender and firm and muscular, Mr
Mulder.  You've got hamburger juice running all over your hand.'

He had.  She took his wrist very gently.  He felt the contact like
electricity.  Her eyes never left his as she drew his hand slowly
towards her mouth.  Then she began licking off the juice.  Softly at
first, then her tongue began to work in firmer, more sweeping strokes.
Then she took his index finger into her mouth, sucking it softly.
Mulder's eyes closed; the intense pleasure was almost too much.  All his
feeling seemed to be in his hand, where she was.  He opened them again
to see her avid sucking mouth, her face bent over his hand.  At last she
drew his palm gently over her lips.  Her warm mouth planted a soft wet
kiss in its centre.  Then she gently replaced his hand on the table.

He was breathing like a runner.  So was she.

Her voice was a little blurred, too.  But her eyes were dark and serious
and very bright.  'Now do you see, Mulder?  Now do you see?'

'Let's go.  Now.'

In silence they rose, paid, walked down the steps.  His hand brushed her
back as they went through the inner door, and the contact felt to Mulder
as if made with a hot iron.

In the dark, disregarded doorway he took her in his arms, suddenly,
violently, without preamble.  His mouth came down hard on hers.  Her
mouth opened as his body pressed against hers.  She must be able to feel
how much he wanted her already.  One arm held her to him, the other hand
cupped her breast, fingers feeling for the nipple as the passionate
mouths explored, clung, released, clung again, released.  He looked into
her eyes, and the look was a journey into a night that had no end.

'Come home with me,' she said.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday 13 October.

When Mulder awoke, he was warm.  He was very, very warm and very
satisfied and very contented and very, very pleased with himself.   She
slept in the crook of his arm, and the soft sweet pressure of her heavy
breasts against his chest stirred his body to sudden pulsing life.
Piercing memories of the night returned.

He bent and kissed her, softly at first, then more insistently.  He felt
her mouth wake, then begin to respond more and more fiercely.  His hand
came up to cup her marvellous breast, soft, firm, creamy.  Even after
the night, he could hardly believe he was allowed to touch it.  To do
just as he wanted.  He teased the raspberry nipple, gently, hesitantly
at first, then when she gave a soft moan of encouragement he became
bolder, did what he'd been longing to do, took her nipple in his mouth
and sucked.   The feeling of the nipple hardening against his tongue
sent a wave of desire through him so strong that he could barely keep
himself from pounding into her then and there.  She gasped, arching her
back.  'More.. more' she breathed.   Her whisper excited him. Already he
was rock-hard, and her hand, direct, unapologetic, like her, was already
caressing him softly, tickling the fur of his balls, running lightly
along the shaft.  He couldn't stand that for long, so he moved down to
the soft dark fur of her, parting her lips with his tongue, licking and
kissing.  'There.. yes, there, lover.  Oh yess.'

The soft hiss took his breath away.  He kept licking, feeling her small
hidden nub swell and grow under his touch.  She was mewing like a
newborn kitten.  'Please', he whispered, desperately,  'please'

'Oh yess,'  that hiss again.  He was young, he was clumsy.  He plunged
awkwardly into her, but he was long and hard and she seemed to like him
and her back was arching and how was he going to stop himself from
coming right now in that hot wet pink drenched velvet slit place?  Oh
Christ.  Think, Mulder.  Behavioural profile types.  IQ tests.  Her lips
were soft and parted with pleasure.  Suddenly she raised her head and
kissed him hard and her tongue in his mouth was almost his undoing.   He
felt her tongue stiffen as she clasped him in the fiery riches of her
own orgasm, and his overtook him, hot and fast and sweet, blinding white
light and aching pleasure.

She slid briskly out from under him.  'Wow'.

He rolled onto his stomach.  Trying to be nonchalant.  Trying not to
show that her abrupt retreat hurt.  Trying not to show how puzzled he
felt.

What to say?

'Do you always give your students this kind of welcome to Oxford?'

'Don't get cute, Mr Mulder.  It isn't becoming in a young person like
yourself.'  She was getting dressed at top speed, tidying away the
abandon of last night's discarded clothing, even booting up her
computer.  She turned and looked at him seriously.

'No, I've never done it with a student before.  I hope I don't need to
say that if you tell anyone about this, you could be rusticated  -
kicked out for a year - and I could lose my job.  I must have been out
of my mind.'  She grinned.  'I can't think what can have made me lose my
head like that.'  She bent and gave him a long, hot, lingering kiss.

'But somehow I can't quite find it in my heart to regret it.  Now, my
scout will be coming round in - shit - ten minutes to clean the room, so
I'm going to throw you out very, very fast.  But I would like to see you
again, Fox Mulder.  Are you up for it?  So to speak.  I will in any case
see you at the tutorial meeting at 2.'

'I'll be there'.  He got out of bed and began putting his clothes on as
fast as possible.  He could feel her watching him, which didn't make
putting on his jeans easier or quicker.  At last she almost pushed him
out the door.  He turned and put his arms possessively around her for a
last embrace as the scout's footsteps were heard in the corridor.

Mulder ran.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next month was a haze of lust and late-night meetings and essay
crises and tutorials with the stern tutor who would mercilessly tear his
arguments to pieces and then, equally mercilessly, lock the door, unzip
his jeans and take his half-hard penis into her hot mouth and suck and
suck until he came with a groan of pleasure.

Who would give lectures looking like the incarnation of reason and then
draw him afterwards into the tiny staff cloakroom and slide his hands
under her dress and rub his finger against her hot wet slit until she
came hard and gasping against his hand.

Who would invite him to high table dinner with the other dons and
introduce him casually and talk happily about productions of Shakespeare
plays and the psychology of Macbeth while her hand ran softly and
secretly over his thigh, along the seam of his trousers, so that by the
end of dinner he was so hard and so hot that he had to stand facing the
wall in the coffee room.

Who would take his hands and put them on her perfect, ripe breasts, over
her nipples, under her shirt, and then send him away breathless with
longing while she gave a tutorial.

Who would whisper to him before a serious academic paper exactly what
she would do to him afterwards, so that he spent the whole session in
aching anticipation.

Who would talk endlessly about her views on psychoanalysis, and then
suddenly in the middle of a crowded restaurant say abruptly, 'I want
you.  Now.  Is there a loo?' and let him take her standing up, where
anyone might come in, her slight weight in his arms, her skirt hitched
up around her waist, his face against her soft amazing breasts as he
thrust and thrust and thrust inside her.

And afterwards, she would remember exactly what point the conversation
had reached, and sometimes resume it while she was pulling up her
knickers.  Mulder was afraid he was not impressing her much
intellectually because all the time he was with her he was hard, unable
to think much beyond his longing to sheath himself in her sweetness now,
again, again.  None of this seemed to affect her mind, though Mulder
knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

He never asked himself if this was love.  This was blinding, shivering
pleasure.  This was luck.  This was enough.  Had to be.  He lived from
moment to moment, conversation to conversation, act to act.

It was no good thinking that greater intimacy was somehow forthcoming.
What greater intimacy could there be?  He could have drawn a picture of
each one of her nipples, its own peculiarities.  One was a little
darker, a little shyer, than the other.  The left one.  He knew exactly
how she liked to be entered.  He knew what she liked for breakfast,
lunch and dinner.   He knew what her eyes looked like when closed in
ecstacy and when closed in sleep.  He knew what she thought of James
Strachey's attempt to translate Freud.

The fact that he had absolutely no idea why she had chosen him must not
be allowed to matter.

He knew he must never ask, anyway.  He knew that much about her.

There had been a fairy story; he wasn't sure who had read it to him.
About a little boy who was taken to fairyland by a beautiful woman, but
who found himself on a cold hillside when he asked her her name.

The story had a moral: the moment is enough.

Nothing needed to add up.

The future could wait.
-----------------------------------------------

If she was preoccupied with anything, it was the East Oxford Slasher,
rather than him.  Mulder came for a tutorial one day to find her saying
goodbye to what was only too clearly a plainclothes policeman.
Something about the man instantly raised Mulder's hackles.  It was the
way he was looking at her.  As if he were about to ask her price.  Like
a connoisseur looking at a work of art.

'Thank you, doctor,' he was saying, in what Mulder took to be the local
accent.  'I've already read the prÈcis of your report.  Now, if you can
just tell me how all this information is going to help us get him, I'd
be really grateful'.

'I can't, yet.  Maybe if I saw more of the files... I can't think of a
way, but the more we know about him, the more chances there are going to
be.  The letters... I know they're significant beyond the obvious...'

'Just taunting the police, I think.  A common hobby among the criminal
classes.'

'There's more to it than that.  I know there is.  I just can't get my
head around it.'

'Why don't we discuss it over dinner?'

Come on, thought Mulder in a sudden spurt of fury.  You're really old.
You've even got white hair.  She's not going to say yes to you.  She's
already getting everything she needs from me.

He stepped into the light.  'Dr Falconer'.  His voice correctly formal.
His eyes definitely warning, and looking straight into the eyes of the
policeman.

'Ah, Mr Mulder'.  Her smile held barely a trace of amusement.  'I'm
sorry, Inspector Morse, but as you can see Mr Mulder is expecting
instruction too.  I know he looks young, dumb and full of - himself, but
he's one of the best I've ever had'.  With this outrageous remark, which
effectively silenced Mulder and a suddenly enlightened Morse, she
ushered him into her room.  'Wait there for me, Mr Mulder.'.

She shut the door firmly.

Mulder was alone.

Alone with the aching shiver of loneliness.  Is that how she thinks of
me?

For the first time he realised he had sometimes felt lonely even in her
arms.

The soft murmur of voices came to him, but he couldn't hear what was
being said.  In an effort to distract himself from what even he
recognised as very primal jealousy, he began to read the casenotes in
front of him.

Five minutes later, and he was lost to the world.

She came into the room, and he didn't even look up.

'Well, if there's one thing I like, it's obsession,'  she said,
genuinely amused.  'You were all set to knock my brains out because old
Morse was giving me the eye, and now I could be fucking his brains out
on the stairs and you wouldn't even notice'.  She was not annoyed, only
amused by him.  He often seemed to amuse her, as if he were a gambolling
puppy.  'Okay, then, Mr Mulder, what's your profile?'

'I can't do anything until I've read the whole thing.'

She gave a small crack of delighted laughter.  'We're learning here!'
she carolled, twirling on her toes.  'Yes, yes, yes, we're learning
here'.

'Shut up, will you?  I'm trying to read.'

'Okay, Mr Mulder.  I'm going off to attend a lab and whip the second
years into line, and then I'm going to London to give a paper and attend
a very boring dinner.  I'll leave you here with those files, which must
not leave the room or be shown to another living soul, understand?  As
usual, it would be both our asses if anyone knew I'd shown this stuff to
anyone else.'    He grinned.  She often used American slang which sat
oddly with her very proper English accent.  'Use my computer, and
produce a profile of the killer.  You have till tomorrow morning.  If I
think it's good, I'll show it to Morse, and if anything comes of it I'll
tell him it's yours, which will put you one up in your pissing contest.'

'Thanks.'  He smiled at her with real warmth.  Respect.  R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
She kissed him lightly, then left with her usual quick step.

Mulder was up late, of course.  Reading, reading, checking reference
books on her shelves, then writing frantically.  At three o'clock, it
was done.  He knew it was right.  It felt right.  Somehow he didn't like
to sleep in her bed without her, but he wasn't going all the way back to
his rooms at this hour.  Besides, he wanted to see her again.  as soon
as possible.  He lay down on her sofa, pulling a rug over his knees.
Sleep caught him unawares.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

She crept in half an hour later.  The room was lit only by the glowing
green of the computer screen.  She looked at the man on the sofa.  The
boy on the sofa, she thought suddenly, with a pang of guilt.  In sleep,
the face was younger,  peaceful, the wary eyes hooded, the long lashes
dark crescents.  Her eyes lingered on the full lips, the sensitive hands
relaxed on the rug, the tumbled gloss of hair.

For the first time, she began to wonder if she was getting too involved
with this child.  She had had many lovers, but never an affair with a
student before, and never one that took up so much - space.

Here he was at her place, for instance.  In her room. She, who was as
territorial as a mother cat.  And she didn't mind.

Far from it, in fact.  Looking at him turned her knees to water.

She wanted to wake him so that she could have him again, could taste
that splendid young body, cram him into her mouth like freshly baked
bread.  And she also wanted to cherish his sleep and defend him from
anyone who would wake him.

I'm in too deep, she thought, I'm in too deep.  She stretched out a hand
and touched his hair, too lightly to wake him.

To distract herself, she turned to the computer and read.

In ten seconds she was bent frozen over the screen.  She might have been
alone in the room.

He's got it, dammit, something I missed.  Not from the literature,
either.  But it makes perfect sense. There's something theatrical here -
no, I didn't see that.  But he's right.  The killer is acting the part
of a ripper.  Acting like he thinks a killer should act.  Those letters
to the police.  It's all too typical.  Hokey, even.  The kid is
absolutely right.

But this guy does get real pleasure from the cutting.  The cutting is
the point.

What does he hope to become?  What is he becoming by acting that part?
Defective masculinity, of course.  Not gay, yes, that's right.  But
possibly unemployed, even disabled somehow; an amputee?  Going too far,
but it's the right idea.  The kid's got the right ideas.

The cutting is his mother.  He kills, and what he is becoming is the
child his mother wanted.  The blood is his mother.  Warm, comforting,
soothing.  Like an embrace.  Accepting him in the way his mother didn't.
Christ, this might be countertransference, but it makes sense.  To catch
a killer, you have to think like them.  Your thoughts have to be weird.
Of course, the killer is also getting back at his mother.  Punishing
her.  As he was punished by his father?

Yes, he says that too.  He knows.  He couldn't know any more if he'd
done the murders himself.

Damn, this kid is too good.  How does he know all this?  And that
obsession with the notes - I have to make myself read them.  He ate it
up.

Look at him, just look at him.  There's something driving him.  And the
nightmares.  A violent father.  He jumped when he heard me say Sutcliffe
had a violent father.  He never talks about his parents, and he chose to
come to university a long way from home.  But there's probably more.
Any siblings?  It's funny how little I know about him.  How little he
talks about himself.  I don't talk about myself either.  About my
father.

Don't psychoanalyse your lovers, Jerry.  Rule one.

She told the computer to print the uncanny, clever document.  The scream
of the dot matrix printer didn't wake him.

Then she lay down beside him on the floor, where she could watch him as
he slept.
---------------------------------------------------------

He woke to her mouth.  The taste of her.  Warm, like a warm flower.
Then she looked at him.

'My clever Mulder'.  She smiled, and suddenly hugged him, without a
trace of languor, the hug of a friend, a teacher.  'You've got it.'

'You liked it?' He was incredulous.

'I think it's brilliant.  I think you have an incredible gift for the
job.'

He leapt up, grinning.  'I wasn't sure about the amputee part-'

'Well, I think undoubtedly not.  But I know what you're trying to say.
Something, amounting in his mind to castration -'

'Which he's now inflicting on the women who he thinks have castrated him
-'

'Perhaps to avoid thinking about his father -'

'Displacement of affect -'

'But the theatricality -'

'I was sure about that -'

'You're often acting yourself, aren't you?'

He fell silent.

Finally, he said 'How did you know?'

'That it was partly autobiography?  Darling Mulder, it always is.  Want
to know how I got into this business?'

'Only if you want to tell me.'

'My father.  Stepfather, actually.  Standard sordid story.  Used to beat
me because he fancied me and couldn't cope with it.  Made me feel
hopelessly inadequate for years.  I wouldn't let him win, which is why I
worked so hard at school to get the grades necessary for Oxford.  To get
away from him.  Now I seem to be back with him all the time.  Violent
men are my job.'

'And look at you, Fox Mulder.  It's not as though you are Mr Innocent.
Though you are innocent in many ways.  But I don't think I could love
you like this unless I could sense that same violence in you.'

She stopped.

She had said she loved him.  She was on the verge of tears.

He had no idea what to do.  What to say.

He tried to make his stubborn tongue move.

'Jerry -'

'You don't have to say it.  I don't know why I did.'

He held her very lightly.  He felt her tears against his face.  I can't
say it, he thought.  I can't say it.  It isn't true.

'Do you want to tell me about your father?'

'I can't.'

'I know.'

There was a knock at the door.  They both jumped.  'Oh, it's Janis,' she
said, and for once she did not insist that Mulder leave at once.
Instead, she opened the door and invited the scout to come in.

'We're just leaving, Janis.' she said.  Mulder looked at the scout, and
felt vague surprise.  He had always imagined a scout was old, and this
scout was probably younger than Jerry.  Jerry was turning off the
computer.  Carefully.  Obviously not a good plan to give Janis the full
benefit of his  - insights - into murder and death.

He suddenly felt bruised and vulnerable, as if it was himself he'd laid
open.  His shoulders sagged.   Jerry didn't notice.  Immersed in
activity, as always.

'Janis, just do the cups and saucers for me, will you?  Don't worry
about the bedroom.  I didn't sleep here last night.  Mr Mulder was here,
using my computer.'

Mulder was watching Janis.  For his money, she wasn't buying it.  She
didn't say anything, but her face was an eloquently careful blank.  He
was equally careful not to smile.

'Come on, Mulder,' said Jerry, impatiently.  'We've got to pay a call on
Inspector Morse.'

'Neat excuse,' he said as they clattered down the stairs and out into St
Giles.

The air was like iron.  Frost furred the stone walls of the Fender, the
little enclave that was so called because it surrounded the hearth of
John's gate.  Mulder breathed deeply, and his lungs burned with cold.
They both walked faster, down towards the river.

'Scouts are terrible gossips.  If she knew, she'd tell all the other
scouts, and they in turn would tell all my students.  Who in turn... and
so within half a day everyone in Oxford would know.  You only have to
say things once in this town.  To one person.  She probably does know,
but she won't be sure enough to say anything yet'.

'Okay.  I just think she looked.... knowing.'

'Mulder?'

'Yep?'

'Am I making a fool of myself?'

'No.'

'I don't know if Morse will act on what you've done.  I'll have to tell
him it's my work at first, or he won't look at it.  I'll say you helped
me with the research.'

'Jerry, he doesn't take you seriously because he fancies the pants off
you.'  Spoken grimly.

'You're probably right.  So do you take me seriously?'

'Wrong-footed again.'

'Answer the question.'

'You know the answer.'

'You're right about Morse.'

'Think he'd take me more seriously?'

'Not if he knows about you and me and the bedpost.'

'Does he?'

'He's fairly bright.  I was obvious.'

'A little.  It's hard not to be.  I am very obvious when I have a raging
hard-on, which I do whenever I think about you.'

'Tease.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mulder was, as ever, right.  Morse wasn't exactly on fire with
excitement.  He looked glumly at the fresh profile.

'How will this help us to catch him?' he asked patiently.  Tiredly.

'Look for someone who is buying or has recently bought or borrowed books
about the Yorkshire Ripper or Jack the Ripper.  Try the Public Library,
and all the bookshops.  Probably not Blackwells, but stake that out too.
He's getting it from books, Morse.  By the book.  Book-learning.'

'How will we know him from all the innocent citizens whose curiosity
about serial killers may have been aroused by reading the papers?'

'Just keep tabs on them all.  It'll give you a list of suspects, which
is more than you have now.  And by then we'll have some fresh ideas, or
forensics will come up with a DNA sample.  Or we'll get a halfway decent
secretion sample from an envelope.'

'By the way, this arrived this morning.'

'You coppers make me laugh' it began.  It was like the others.  It
offered to enclose a piece of the next victim.

'A mass of clichÈ,' said Mulder.  Morse looked attentively at him.

'I see what you mean.  So why is he sending us a mass of clichÈ?'

'He's doing what he thinks Real Men do.'

'So he's trying to tell us he doesn't eat quiche?'

'Yup.'

'Paranoid?  Homophobic?'

'Let's not make more assumptions.'  A smile at Jerry.  She smiled back,
but he could tell her thoughts were elsewhere.

How could he suddenly want her so badly?  After what he had said?  Or
hadn't said?

Morse stood up.  'Well, anything is worth a try.  It's a possibility,
anyway.  I'll organise that bookshop stakeout and get the library to do
a search through their records.  Maybe I should check with the Bodleian
as well.  Though God knows if they keep any kind of records.'

'One of the service librarians might remember.  But they probably keep
that kind of item at the Radcliffe Science Library, and it's hopelesss -
'

'Open shelf stacks -'

'So no-one will remember.'

Morse stood up.  'Thank you, Mr Mulder.  And Dr Falconer.'

They stood beneath the great tower of Christ Church gate.

'Listen, I've got to go.  I've got a lab.'

'Tonight.  My room.'

'Come to my room for once.'

'Too cold.'

'It won't be.'

'I could have you right now, Fox Mulder.  On the grass here, in the War
Memorial garden.  I could have you inside me to the hilt.  All the way.'

'I'd freeze to death.  You love to talk dirty to me, don't you?'

'Don't you want me to?'

'You know I do.'

'Tonight?'

'Tonight.'
------------------------------------------------------------------

Mulder went home for Thanksgiving.

The different sea-cold of the Vineyard.  A saltier cold than Oxford's,
but it didn't go so deep.

One day with his mother, one day with his father.  As always.

His mother, plump, pretty, preparing turkey and cranberry sauce and all
the trimmings for the two of them.  The extent of the snowy linen
tablecloth, stretching away into vacancy down the table.  The spaces in
the talk, around which he had to dodge.  Anything that happened before
he was twelve, any reference to his father, to the divorce, any
reference to Jerry or any other woman, any reference to anything deemed
intellectual which would make his mother feel inadequate.  Derogatory
references to things she liked.  Rude words.  More than two sentences on
any topic whatever.  Any sign of enthusiasm for anything.

However hard he tried, the rules couldn't be obeyed.  They shifted, and
he was always left trapped by their ebbs and flows.  The first rule was
that he was in trouble.

'Fox, have you made friends at Oxford? '

'Yes, Mom.  Plenty of friends.'

'Anyone in particular?'  He caught the hint of fear in her tone.

He was sweating.  He hated to lie above all things.

'No, Mom.  Just a bunch of guys.'

The trace of relief was plain.  No girlfriend yet, then.  'I don't feel
I know about your life there.  You never write.'

'I'm pretty busy, you know, Mom.  I'm really enjoying my work.  I'm
doing abnormal psychology this term, and - '

'What do you think of the turkey?  It's a good one, isn't it?'

'Fine, Mom.'

'You know, I don't think you're eating enough in school, Fox.  You look
thin.'

'The food at Oxford is world-famous, Mom.'

'I think Muffie Williamson would really like you to call, Fox.'
Subtext: it's not that I don't want you to have a girlfriend;  it's just
that I want you to have one you don't like or desire or love, one who
has buck teeth and no brains and no tits.

'I don't think I'll have time to see her.  I'm only here for three
days.'

Silence.

The silences, deeper and colder than the Atlantic.  The taste of failure
and inadequacy in his mouth.

His room, now suddenly the room of a stranger.  So much smaller.  Full
of things he'd outgrown in every sense.  The small Airfix models of the
Millenium Falcon and a TIE-fighter.  The crime books.  The bedspread
with the sailboats on it.  The track pennants.

He lay on the bed and missed Jerry, achingly.  Her comforting arms, her
voice, her smile.  The way she listened to anything he said.  The fact
that there were no rules with her.

His mother came in.  'I'm going to bed, now, Fox.  Good night.'  Her dry
lips grazed his cheek.  She did not put her arms around him.

That's right, Mom.  Don't overwhelm me with maternal love.

A sudden flare of anger.  Why am I never good enough?

At midnight he sneaked down and rang Jerry from the phone in the den.

Midnight in the eastern states is five o' clock in the morning in
Britain.  Jerry took a while to answer, and he began to wonder if he
should hang up.  When he heard her voice, though, a warm tide of relief
flooded through him.  She was there, alive, in the world.  He was not
alone.

'Fox?'  She hardly ever called him that, except sometimes during sex.
When she did, he felt obscurely comforted.  Her voice caressed the word.
It was as if she was restoring his name to health after it had been
frozen in his mother's mouth.

'Yes.  I'm sorry, I know it's a stupid time to call.'

'No... well, it's not a time when you might expect intellectual
repartee.  But it's good to hear from you.  How is home?  Horrible?'

'How did you know?'

'It always is, especially after Oxford.  It's the need to lie that
always gets to me.  Or choosing between lying and hurting.'

He was delighted.  'Me too.'

'I know.  Mom and Dad, or just Mom?'

'Just Mom.  Dad is tomorrow.'

'Two turkey dinners, then?'

'That's right.'  he laughed.  'Competitive eating.'

'Fox, where are you?'

'In the den.'

'Anyone else awake?'

'Not even a mouse.'

'Door closed?'

'Yep.'

'Okay.  You want dirty talk, you got it.'

He was frozen.  Incredulous.  But he was also suddenly almost unbearably
aroused.

'What are you wearing?'

'Jeans.  Sweatshirt.  No shoes and socks.'

'Mmmm.  I love you in jeans.  I love seeing that huge warm bulge and
knowing it's all for me.  I like to run my hand over it and feel how
hard and ready you are.  I love to open the zip and take you out and
then put you in mouth and suck and suck and suck on you.  I love the way
I can hardly fit you all in my mouth.  I love the way you taste.  If you
were here, I could do that, Fox.  I could slowly run my tongue round the
rim of your beautiful stiff prick, and then just slowly take you all in,
swallow you in little gulps.  Are you hard now?'

'Yes.  Oddly enough.'

She laughed.  'Don't touch yourself until I say you can.'

'Don't you touch yourself until I say you can either.  Are you wet?  Are
you creaming into your panties?'  He went pink, hearing himself say the
words.

'I would be, if I were wearing any.'

He gulped.

'What are you wearing?'

'Just a robe.  The black one.'

'Open it at the front and touch your left breast.  Lightly at first.
Then take your nipple between your fingers and squeeze, gently.  Pinch
yourself until it gets hard.  Is it hard?'

'The nipple is getting hard, yes.  It's turning darker.  Crimson.'

'Now the other one.  Tease yourself.'

'You're getting the hang of this.'

'So to speak.'

Her voice was soft.  Throaty.  Slightly blurred with desire.  'Now, Fox.
Take off your sweatshirt.  Run your hand over your chest.  Softly.  Wet
the finger and tease your own nipple.'

She heard his soft gasp of pleasure.  'Do you want to touch yourself,
Fox?'

'Yes.  Oh yes, please.  Please, Jerry.'

'Don't.  Don't you dare.  Tell me what you would do to me if I were
there.'

'I can't.'

'Yes, you can.  Would you thrust yourself inside me?  Slowly?  So that I
can feel every inch of you filling me up?  So you can feel every inch of
me hot and waiting for you?'

He took a deep breath.  Exhaled.

'Jerry, can you get on all fours?'

'Like a dog.'

'Like a dog bitch in heat.'

Faint edges of roughness in his voice made her loins cramp with sudden
longing.

'That's how I'd take you if you were here.  Like a bitch in heat.'

Her breath was coming in gasps.  'Fox, I really want you to.'

'Get up.  Put your finger inside yourself.  Now another.  Are you wet?
Tell me.'  Words coming faster.  Urgently.

'Yes.  Sopping wet.  Oh, God.'

'Don't let yourself come.  Stop moving.  Now.  But keep your fingers
inside you.'

'Your turn.'  Her voice was hoarse now.

A jolt in the centre of his body.  Possibly the most welcome words in
the world.

'Open your jeans.  Now pull them down.  Take them off.'

He stood in boxer shorts, his erect penis making a tent in them front of
them.

'Take off your shorts.'

He was naked.  The sudden cold air on his hot body was exhilarating,
surprising.  But not enough to quench the fire inside.

'Is there a mirror in the room?'

'Over the fireplace.'

'Go and look at yourself.  Stand on a chair if you have to.  I want you
to see how incredibly beautiful you are.'

He was gone for a minute.  Staring at his own livid rock-hard cock.  He
felt a glow of foolish pride.  Then he was back.  'I don't think I've
ever been so hard in my entire life,' he said, with a chuckle tense with
the lineaments of desire.

'I wish to God I was there.'

'So do I.'

'Okay.  Wet your hand.  Run it very lightly over just the tip of your
cock.  Very lightly.  Don't let yourself come.'

He gave a hard moan as exquisite sensation flooded him.  She was
breathing hard, her voice fierce, urgent.  'Now take your cock in your
wet hand.  Don't move the hand.  Just hold yourself.'

'Jerry, I can't stand it.  I have to move.'

'No, you don't.  Just hold yourself.  Don't move.  Tell me what to do
now.'

His eyes widened.  'God, you're a cruel woman.'  She laughed.

He drew in his breath.  'Are you wet still?  Are you all soft and
swollen and aching?'

'Yes.'

'Are you going to beg me?'

'Please.  Please.  I'll do anything.  I'll suck you dry.'

'All right.  Fingers still inside you?'

'Yes.'

'You want to move them, don't you?'

'Yes.  Please, Fox.  Please.  Let me.  Please.'

'Are you aching down there?  Do you want me inside you so badly it
almost hurts?'

'Yes.  Please, Fox. Please.'

'All right.  Move your fingers.  Slowly.  Fill yourself up.  Now out.
Slowly.  In.  Out.  In.  Out.'  Faster and faster.

'Fox.  Oh God.  I want you.  Please give it to me please please..'

Her gasps came more and more quickly, until she gave an animal groan, a
series of long low moans, a soft mew like a cat.  A happy sigh.

'Okay.  Your turn.'

'I almost came just listening to you.'

'That's good.  But I'm glad you didn't, because I want to hear you cry
out like you do.'

'Christ, Jerry, what about my mother?'

'Is her bedroom next door?'

'No, of course not.'

'Then she won't hear a thing.  Now, forget her.  Think about me.
Waiting for you.  Think about how you would feel if I climbed onto your
lap right now and rubbed my wetness up against that beautiful hard prick
of yours.  Now wet your hand again, and rub yourself.  Very slowly.
Imagine it's me.'

He closed his eyes.  As the delicious friction for which he ached began,
he could see her.  Eidetic memory is not always a curse.  Full breasts,
creased belly, head thrown back, her voice urging him on.  'Yes, my
darling, it feels so good, so good.  Yes.  I love you, I love you.'

His orgasm was a great shuddering peak of ecstasy, marked by a long low
cry of delight.

'Whew.'

'Whew indeed.'

'That was amazing.'

'Feeling better about the old homestead now?'

'Feeling better, anyway.'

'Don't forget to ring me from your father's'.  With a rich chuckle, she
hung up.  Dreamily, sleepily, contentedly, he put himself back together
and went to his lonely bed.  He hoped his mother wouldn't notice the
surge in the phonebill, but if she did she would never mention it.

The rules had advantages as well as drawbacks.

Next day, his father.  The lined heavy face, cold as stone, the deep
bloodshot eyes.

But he felt better.  Above it all, somehow.  Away from it all.  He had
somewhere else to go.

Another turkey dinner, this time at a hotel.  For the life of him he
couldn't repress a long curling grin.

'What are you looking so happy about?'

'Nothing, Dad.  How's the fishing?'

His father told long, boring stories about fishing and golf.  Mulder
tried to applaud in the right places.

He asked about Fox's career plans and recommended accountancy and the
government civil service and the diplomatic corps.

Mulder replied suitably, mentally resolving to do none of them.  None of
the above.

He could feel his father's dislike like a stone in a shoe.  He had never
known why, or what to call the pain.

It wasn't as if his father had ever even hit him, except the beatings
any boy gets. Especially if that boy is a clumsy little nuisance, as he
had been.

But he knew that what he felt when he looked at his father was fear.
Fear and guilt.  He knew it had something to do with his sister.

After lunch, they went back to the summerhouse, and then walked by the
ocean, grey in the winter light.

Suddenly bold, still warmed by the thought of Jerry, he wondered about
asking his father what had really happened to Sam.  All he had ever
known was that she had been kidnapped.  Abducted.  He assumed the
kidnappers had killed her, but he didn't really know.

Perhaps he had a right to know.

'Dad.  Can I ask you something?'

'Sure, Fox.  Shoot.'

'I've been wondering lately - I never really knew what happened to Sam.
Or even if she died.  What did happen, Dad?  You always said I wasn't
old enough to know, but I'm nearly twenty, and -'

His father's face closed tight and hard like the door of a bank safe.

'We don't talk about that, Fox.  You won't see her again.  That's all'.

'Dad, I think I need to know more than that now.'

'Dammit, Fox.'  His father' face was ashen.  The lines deepened.  'You
don't need to know anything.  Just drop it.  I'm protecting you.  You
have to trust me'

'Dad - '

Shouting now, his face close to Mulder's own.  'I said to drop it, okay?
Drop it.'

As if I were a dog.  Why do I back down?

His father walked away into the house.

Mulder stood on the sand.  Slowly he walked towards the icy Atlantic.
Spray from the breakers blew against his face.

Somewhere over there was another place.  A place where he was welcome.
A place of his own.

He slept all the way back on the plane.  He hadn't closed his eyes in
his father's house.

But he had rung Jerry.  A small victory.  A pleasure to set against the
pain.
------------------------------------------------

Oxford life closed over Mulder, and within twelve hours he felt he had
never been away.  His chilly room extended a warm welcome.  It was
private.

Edmund and Mulder had become friends, in an undemanding way.  It was a
relationship based almost entirely on a mutual enthusiasm for running in
the leafy splendour of the University parks, but occasionally the
conversation did turn to psychology.  Settled in the Queen's Lane Coffee
House, with a cup of pale and watery liquid before him, Edmund began to
lament his imminent essay tutorial on anaclitic relationships.

'And the question is whether anaclisis is pathological or normative and
healthy.  And the literature is pretty divided.  Also anaclisis is
itself a split term.  It can mean a motherlike object choice, cuddling
up to something or someone warm and cosy and gentle, or it can mean an
object choice which replicates your relationship with your mother.
Which is all very well, and perfectly compatible, as long as your mother
was warm and cuddly.  Which mine certainly wasn't.  I mean, if I were
one of Harry Harlow's monkeys in the grip of anaclitic object choice,
I'd probably embrace the wire mother and reject the soft furry cloth
mother.'

'So the answer would seem to be that it depends on what your mother was
like.  If she was a cloth mother, your relationship with her was
healthy, therefore anaclitic object choices are healthy.  If she wasn't,
it isn't.'

'Well, you should know.  From practical experience.'

'Huh?'

'Oh, come.  I can't be the only person to have mentioned it.'

'Mentioned what?'

'Don't get all bristly and defensive.  Jerry Falconer, that's what.  I'm
finding it hard to displace my perfectly ordinary, conscious, rational
jealousy, that's all.  I've wanted her for months, and she never even
notices me.  You arrive and attend one lecture, and wham! the affair of
the century, judging by the none-too-subtle sounds I heard coming from
the Faculty cloakroom last week.  And she is an anaclitic object choice.
She's much older than you, and she has the most magnificent breasts in
Oxford.  Is your mother a brunette?'

Mulder looked around.  There was no-one in earshot.  He liked Edmund.
And he could also see that Edmund was talking about this because he did,
perfectly genuinely, feel hurt and jealous.  The British.  He was
learning to read them.  Say as irony what you really mean as truth.

'She is not an anaclitic object choice.  My mother is very, very unlike
her, though she is a brunette, all right.  Or was.  But we are having a
relationship.  Only for God's sake shut up about it.  It's her job and
my career.'

'Forbidden... and you say she's not an anaclitic object choice?'

'Smartass.'  He aimed a blow at Edmund's head.  They smiled congenially,
even conspiratorially.

'Well I'll be tactful and dismiss any thought of asking if she can
possibly be as good as I've always imagined...'

'Maybe we'd better stick to Harry Harlow's monkeys.'

'Americans.  Always so chivalrous.  Okay.  Anaclisis.  What about
siblings, is what I keep wondering.  I had a theory that people often
replicate desires for siblings as well as parents.... Mulder, wait!
Don't go off mad like that!  Let's talk about something else, you silly
old bastard.  Don't get in a lather.... What did I say?'

Mulder had gone out into the lashing rain.  Edmund finally glimpsed him
on the opposite side of the High, running as if for a wager.  With no
hope of catching him, he turned calmly back to finish his coffee.  Hit a
nerve there, he thought.  Casts a new light on anaclisis, anyway.
------------------------------------------------

He was alone again.  He was alone.  Alone.  Alone like a howling dog
against the wind.

It was not to be borne.

He had already found the next one.

She was the one he wanted.

She was so pretty.  Even prettier than the last one.  Looking at her, he
felt like a kid looking into a sweetshop window.  Pink spun sugar.

So innocent.  Yet somehow... lush.

Surely she would be enough for him.  Being with her, in his own special
way, would surely make him a man forever.

The others hadn't, after all, been good enough.

He had thought, each time, that this was the one.

Each time, it had been enough.  But not for long.

She would be different.  Once he was really a man, he would never have
to feel this aching loneliness again.  This terrible pain of aloneness,
apartness.

His secret love made him powerful.  But it also cut him off from the
whole world.

He stood dreaming of the soft red spurt of her blood.  He could hardly
wait to feel it thicken on his hands.  On his clothes.

Just thinking about it made him hot.  This time, he would cut her more.
In more places.  Near the fine bird-bones of the wrist, where the blood
spurted fiercely.

She would be the next sign.  Of what he was becoming.

The tight clasp of his button-front Levi 501s was obscurely comforting.
And everything was ready.  His knife sharp sharp and cold shining.

He knew just where to find her.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

They were lying on Mulder's bed.  It was a single bed, very rickety, and
there had been several points when Mulder had wondered if it would
withstand the strain to which it was being subjected.  But thereafter,
he had reflected that if it collapsed he didn't much care.  There was
not a great deal of elbow room.    The room smelt of sex and so did she.
Sex would probably smell like her forever, as far as he was concerned.

'What's that perfume you wear?'

'Diorissimo.  Why?'

'I like it.  When's your birthday?'

'What happened to the serious case profiling?'

'I'm not sure.'  He felt relaxed and puppyish.  He felt he wanted to
tickle her and roll and play.  'When is your birthday?'

'May.'

'What day in May?'

'Fifteenth.  Mulder, stop tickling me.'  Amid gales of giggles, he
pinned her down, and suddenly his eyes grew intent, serious.  She drew
his mouth quickly down to hers.

'I missed you.'

'I missed you too.'

'You don't think there's any danger in doing it so often, do you?'

'Physiologically?  No, I'm sure there isn't.'

'Just as well.'  He kissed her hard.

Much later, he asked 'So how is Morse doing with the libraries and
bookshops?'

She propped herself on one elbow.  Black silk hair falling over white
fingers.  'He's got a list of five people.  The librarian at Central
Library said those items are always popular with a certain clientele, so
Morse limited the search to the last six months on the grounds that your
profile said that something had started the guy off.   One name, a
man's.  There was also someone who actually went so far as to steal a
book on the Ripper from Summertown library, but of course they don't
know who that was.  It was last borrowed by a woman reader, and Morse is
checking out her male associates. There was a guy who bought a book on
the Ripper at Smith's, and another guy who sold one to Robin
Waterfield's last week.  Finally, there was the Radcliffe Science
Library, and that's probably the most significant finding of all.  The
librarian in Psychology said there'd been a pile of books on the floor
on Monday at lunchtime, not replaced on the shelves, and they were all
about abnormal psychology, paranoia and so forth.  He said the guy who
left them there was a regular, and that he'd know him again, but he
didn't seem to be able to come up with an accurate description.'

'So this guy might be a member of the university?'

'Well, some people who aren't have Bodleian reader's tickets.  But it's
probable.  And one of the others on the list is a member of the
university.  The one who bought the book from Smith's'

'What's his name?'

'Peter Cartwright.'

'I know him.  He's a psych student.  At Merton.  I don't think it's
him.'

'Why not?'

'Because he's six feet tall and has a ragingly beautiful girlfriend and
a lot of money.  He's not suffering from any inadequacies that I've ever
noticed.'

'Who's the girlfriend?'

'Phoebe Green.'

'You're right.  She is lovely.  A fairy princess with long legs, who's
already met all the bad fairies.  You shock me, Mulder.  You have a
social life outside this room.'

'I'd still like to know why he's buying books about serial killers.'

'Work?'

'Work?  Peter?'

'You think you could find out?  Subtly?  It's unusual for a member of
the university to shop for books at Smith's.  Why not Blackwell's?'

'To avoid being noticed?  Even if he has a reason, it won't tell us
anything.'

Mulder got up, and walked towards the window.  Jerry knew he wasn't
doing it to show off his body, but he might as well have.   The graceful
width of shoulders, the young, lean hips.  Distance creates desire, she
thought.  Even the little distance across the room.

'Something weird happened today,' he said, facing the cold glass.

'What?  Come back to bed, you'll freeze.'

'Me?  No, I'm half polar bear.  I'm getting wonderfully acclimatised to
these low indoor temperatures.  What?  Well, it's Edmund.  He knows
about us.  Heard us in the Faculty cloakroom.  He was quite cut up about
it, really.  Said the had fancied you himself for a long time.'

'He has made one or two....approaches.  Is he planning to tell the
world?'

'No, I don't think he is.  I hope not, anyway.  But it probably shows
that we can't hope to keep it much of a secret at this rate.'

'I agree.  But let's keep it a secret while we can, because public
knowledge will raise hellish complications.'

'That wasn't the weird thing, though.'

'What was the weird thing?'

'The weird thing was - '  he took a deep breath - 'he said something
about my sister.  I don't even remember what.  And I remember looking at
him, and then it's a blank.  We were in a cafe, and when I came to I was
on the other side of the river, in Cowley somewhere.  I don't even know
how I got there.  It was a fugal state, even I know that.  I had a fugue
experience.'

She could see how hard it had been for him to say all that.  There was
sweat on his face, despite the cold.

'Do you want to tell me about your sister?'

'I can't.  I don't remember her at all.'

She sighed.

'Mulder, did you ever hear of a study of Vietnam veterans with clear
signs of shell-shock, what's now being called traumatic stress syndrome?
Well, they showed these guys thirty minutes of a Vietnam film, just some
Coppola or Cimino.  Afterwards they were far more relaxed than before.
As relaxed as a big dose of morphine would have made them.  Repetition
relieves tension.  All of us have traumas engraved on our skins,
patterns we can't erase.  The only way we get relief from them is to
express them, in a sense relive them.  If we don't repeat them in
innocuous ways, in words, we're going to repeat them in harmful ways,
like your fugue today.  Mulder, you know all this in theory, or you
couldn't have written that profile.  Just tell me what you can
remember.'

'I can't remember anything.  Not before my sister disappeared. Or about
her disappearance.'

'How old were you?'

'Twelve.'

'Complete amnesia prior to ten is unusual, Mulder, you know that.  It
sounds as if you might have buried the memory.  Or a memory.'

'All I can remember is that it was my fault, okay?  My fault she went.
I lost her somehow.  That's all I know.  Maybe I killed her.  Maybe I
cut her into little pieces.' He spat the words.  To hurt her.  He knew
how scared she was of violence.   'Maybe that's how I know about cutting
and how it feels.'

She was pale, but still gentle.  And remorseless.  'And maybe not.  What
we do know is that you feel guilty about her, and that you're happy with
me because you somehow feel I am her.  Or that I'm your mother and her.
The part of your mother that loved you.  The mother you wanted.'

'It's pretty presumptuous of you to tell me all about myself like this.'
He was trembling.  His hands clasping and unclasping.  Eyes much too
bright.  But he hadn't walked out.  Yet.

'Not as presumptuous as it is of you to assume you're guilty and
therefore worthless even though you have no idea why.'

He smiled crookedly, and she thought that one of the things she was
beginning to love about him was his respect for argument.  'TouchÈ.  But
I do have some idea why.  I know I somehow killed my sister.'

Her voice was very gentle.  'How long have you known this, Mulder?'

'I remember my father saying it to me.  That's the one thing I do
remember.  He held my head against the wall and asked me where she was.
I said I didn't know.  Then - then he smacked it into the wall.  The
only time he ever hit me hard.  And he said, it's your fault she's
gone.'  Great sobs burst from him.  Hands over his face.  She got out of
bed, went to him, held him in her arms, rocked him.  Gently, gently,
gentleness.

'Even if that were true, and we don't know yet if it is, do you think
that was the right thing to say to a little boy?'

'Of course not.  But he'd lost his daughter.  He wasn't himself.'

She rocked him still, and as she did so, she had to fight a sudden
longing to push him away, out of her life, her controlled, managed life.
She thought, I can't do this for him.  He needs a shrink of his own.  I
can't go there with him.  I have too many demons of my own.

'Shh now, my darling.  I want you to see a colleague of mine, Dr William
Jameson.  He specialises in memory recovery.'

'Jerry, I don't want to know.  It might destroy me.  Oh Christ, what a
coward I sound.  Do you despise me?'

'Of course not.  But you need to know.'

'I'll think about it.  Really.'

He walked her back to her room, despite the indiscretion of doing so.
Somehow he wanted her again, even though he also felt furious with her,
and ashamed of being furious.  As she inserted her key into the lock,
they both realised the phone was ringing.  She answered it while Mulder
stood beside her desk.  Something in her face told him he should stay.

'Okay.  I'll come right down.  Yes, now. Yes, okay.  See you then.'

She hung up, and turned to face him.  She couldn't say it, but he found
the words for her.

'There's been another,' he said.

'Yes.  And this time it's one of our students.  Lucy Patrington.'

'I know her.  Or at least I've met her.  Once or twice.'

'Tell me about her as we go.'  She shot out the door and raced for the
stairs.  As usual, Mulder's long legs were only just adequate to the job
of keeping up.

'Small.  Pretty.  Not very memorable, but nice and quite clever.'

'Just like the last two.'

'He isn't picking them off a bush.'

'He's probably stalking them before he does it.'

'Or he has some kind of access - '

'College photos?  Matriculation?  I had to get dressed as a penguin and
then go pose for a photo -'

'A penguin - You mean subfusc.  White bow tie, white shirt, black
trousers, gown - '

'What's it for?'

'Well, some say it looks sexy.'  His incredulity made her smile.  'I
know.  What could be sadder?  Really, it's part of the Oxford tourist
industry, of course.  If the only person to take your photo was the
college photographer, you must be good at dodging.  I got stopped by
three separate groups of tourists on my way to Encaena.'

'Well, I think we can assume that the killer is not stopping students in
academicals and asking them for photos while disguised as an American
tourist.'

'College photos won't do, though.  They're not all from the same
college.'

'Where else has photographic records of every student?'

He saw the idea take her.  'The Bodleian Library'.  They've just
introduced photo-ids.  With a duplicate of every photo.  He could be
sifting though them, looking for the kind of girl he wants.'

'Long shot.'

'Worth a try.'

'How many men work in that office?'

'Well, there's the man in charge, whose name is Paul Newsome.
Otherwise, it's all women.'

'What about janitors?  Cleaners?'

'Oxford is full of disappointed people. People who couldn't quite leave
it behind, but couldn't quite get on here either.  Most of the Bodleian
staff are like that.  Did you ever notice Pavka, the Duke Humfrey
librarian?   He's a brilliant pianist, dropped out of a music school
because of a drinking problem.  There he is, watching people come and go
who've made it, or who are going to because of their family connections.
If Paul Newsome is one of those, he'd fit your profile to a T'
----------------------------------------
Mulder invited Peter to the White Horse for a pint, hoping to find out
something.  He led up to it as gently as he could, but eventually he
said point-blank that Falconer had told him to find out why Peter was
buying books about the Ripper before Peter got himself into trouble with
the police.

Peter smiled disarmingly.  He looked embarrassed, but also amused.

'If I tell you, my dear colonial friend, you may be rather shocked.'

'I'm not that easy to shock.'

'All right.  On your own handsome little petit-bourgeois head be it.  As
you probably know, I'm currently seeing Phoebe Green.  Beautiful,
dangerous, and wild.  Phoebe's sexual tastes tend to, shall we say, the
exotic.  I was running out of inspiration.  Broadly, she likes to do it
in famous places associated with battle, murder and sudden death.  We've
done it in the Tower of London, for example, and under the Martyrs'
Memorial, and on Hound Tor in Dartmoor, and in various other shady
spots.  I got that book on the Ripper to find some other likely London
venues.'

'You don't think the Ripper might be going a bit far, even for a girl as
- broadminded - as Phoebe?'

'No, she's fascinated by serial killers.  Gets turned on by a bit of S
and M.  Likes the Boston Strangler too.  I think she thinks men like
that are real men.'

'I bet she does.  And do you like all this?'

'Well, I like her, anyway.  Quite.  She's very lovely.  Very patrician.
And remarkably - shall we say, willing.  But I'm not contemplating
matrimony.  She's not exactly the kind of girl that you take home to
Mother.'

Not to my mother, anyway, thought Mulder.  He wondered fleetingly what
his mother would make of Jerry.  Don't even go there, Mulder.

'Not exactly, no.'

'What do you make of her, then?'

Mulder was silent.  He didn't like to say that he thought Phoebe was
seriously hot. As well as the purely social embarrassment of saying so
to Phoebe's current lover, he also felt obscurely guilty about Jerry.
He also didn't want to look, even for a moment, at the possibility that
Phoebe's fantasy life was a turn-on.

'She looks like trouble,' he said finally.

'She is.  But I'm not tired of her yet.'

The set of his jaw told a tale that his light words strove in vain to
bely.  Mulder began to revise his assessment of Peter's confidence.
------------------------------------------------

'So it sounded as if Phoebe could be a little castration device in
herself.  And he might even be doing these murders to win her approval.'
He reported all this grimly to Jerry, hating himself for betraying a
friend's confidence, yet eager to share his ideas with her.  To see if
she could blast them, or if she would embrace them.

'A new form of gift for the beloved.  Well, not so new, actually.  Think
there's any chance they might be doing them together?'

'It never occurred to me.  She's a woman, and -'

'Mulder, as your tutor I'm sometimes driven to wonder whether you ever
do any reading.  Does the name Myra Hindley ring any kind of a bell with
you?  She, you may remember, was Ian Brady's partner in the sadistic
murder of several children and adolescents on the Yorkshire Moors.  The
crimes were called the Moors Murders.  Hindley was rather pretty, too,'
she added dryly.

Mulder blushed.  'Call me old-fashioned.  I don't tend to suspect women
of being anything, not even of being experts in criminal psychology.'

'Time you learnt.'

'Okay.  Didn't Hindley and Brady also share literature about violence?'

'The works of the Marquis de Sade.  Brady was obsessed with Sade, and
wanted to be him.  Another bookish killer for you.'

'So Phoebe and Peter could be likewise reading the ripper cases in cosy
sexual togetherness, and then getting off on the suffering of their
real-life victims in copycat crimes?'

'Except that it doesn't fit your profile.  And I agree that this killer
is not getting off on sadism in any straightforward way, or we'd have
found a semen sample somewhere.  Forensics and path are fairly sure he
knocks them out before he begins work.'  She got up and began to pace.
She was the most physically restless being Mulder had ever known.

'But, as I'm always saying, a profile should never be used to rule
suspects out.  We'll have to tell Morse all this.  They'll need to be
investigated.  Maybe one of them was in a library or some other public
space at the time one of the murders was committed.'

'Have you also considered the possibility that Peter may be making all
this up to account for buying the book?'

'If he was, he'd make up something less incriminating, surely.'

'He may not realise how nasty your mind is.'  A lopsided smile.  She
knew it for a battle smile.

She was silent.  She had expected a degree of hostility after her recent
attempt to probe him about the past.  The problem with transference is
that you get aggression as well as affection.  But she hadn't expected
it to hurt quite this much.  His obvious penchant for Phoebe was
surprisingly painful too.  The kind of woman only a very young man would
think mysterious and alluring.

'I'm going to tell Morse and get him to keep an eye on them both.'
Ignore his dismay, Jerry.  He's new at this.  'I know how you feel, but
just take another look at one of those bodies.  Then ask yourself
whether a simple invasion of privacy is permissible.'

'I never said it wasn't, Jerry.  It's just that I'm fairly sure it isn't
them.'

'We can't afford to go by your feelings, though, Mulder.'

'I see that.  How did things go at the Bodleian admissions office?'

'They're making a list of everyone with access to the photo files.'

'What about Paul Newsome?'

'He's a possible.  One of those guys stranded by time on the rocky
shoals of Oxford.  He was doing a doctoral dissertation on something
almost unbelievably dry - ancient Anatolian religion, I think - but
couldn't seem to finish it.  So he washed up in Bodleian admissions,
which he rules with a rod of iron.  He's small, too.  Maybe small enough
to fancy himself - inadequate.  The funny thing is, he asked me out a
while back.  Quite persistent too.  Sent flowers, chocolates, even a
diamond ring.'

'A diamond ring?  That's not an invitation, Jerry, that's a proposal.'

'I know.  I sent it back, of course.'

'I take it you didn't go on any of these dates.'

'Mulder, I've told you before, you are the first man I have had a
relationship with in five years.'

'What do we know of ancient Anatolian religion?'

'That it's too boring to be of interest?'

'What if it involves sacrifice, for instance?'

'Mulder, this isn't The Curse of the Arab Scarab.  I don't buy the idea
that Newsome is the reincarnation of an Anatolian priest called Full-O-
Crap, searching for his lost love and mutilating girls to replace the
lost mummies in his tomb.'

'How did you know that was my hypothesis?'

'I know you pretty well by now, Mulder.'

'I've been so restrained, though.  I haven't mentioned vampires once.'

'Largely because vampires drink blood, Mulder dearest.  This guy doesn't
drink it.  He just leaves it lying around.'

'A vampire on a diet?'

'An anorexic vampire!'

'Bulimic.  Has anyone tested the blood at the crime scenes for bile?'

They were gasping with laughter.  'We are probably the only people in
Oxford who would find this funny.'

'What sick minds we have.'

'Let's go and get a burger.'

'At this hour?'

'Brets will be open.'  Brets was small, steamy, sleazy, open all night,
and located beside the station.  It also made the best burgers in
Oxford, and handed them to the customer wrapped in many thicknesses of
butcher's paper.  No styrofoam boxes.

'Does the word campylobactor convey anything to you at all?'

'Sounds like some kind of arthritic dinosaur.'

'It's food poisoning.'

'Brets is much cleaner than the Deathburger Van'.

'That's not saying a lot.'

They walked quickly down Hythe Bridge Street, over the deep slow green
of the Oxford Canal.  The burgers steamed in the frosty air.  The faint
yellow streetlights glistened with frost.  Back in her room, they ate
hungrily.

'Anything new from the most recent killing?'  He avoided saying the name
Lucy.

'Not much.  Read the report for yourself.'

He read steadily for twenty minutes.  Then he looked up.

'Slashes are in new places.  On the wrists, as if he needed more blood.'

'His period's getting shorter.  Which fits with that.  I think he may
start - evolving.  Changing somehow.  Giving himself a fresh challenge.'

'Still no sign of sexual activity.'

'No.  But one oddity I can't quite get out of my head.  Look about
halfway down page 13.'

'Items found at scene: mostly from the victim's handbag, by the looks of
it.  It was open, presumably knocked over when she fell.  Wait a minute.
This is what you mean, isn't it?'

'One small piece of black rubber hosepipe.  Length: seven inches.
Width: two inches.'

'Certainly incongruous.  Some kind of weapon?  Is that what he knocks
them out with?  No, too light.  If it were weighted - say, had a metal
piece of rod inside it - '

'So what are we supposing?  He takes the rubber cover off the metal and
inexplicably leaves the rubber behind?'

'Not really very likely.'

'He cuts up garden hoses as practice for cutting up his victims - '

She threw a cushion at him.  'Even less likely.  Not even the Yorkshire
Ripper Squad's profiler would have thought of that one.'

'So what's it for?'

'I have no idea.  That's why I can't stop thinking about it.'

'Come here and stop thinking.  About anything.'

But while he lay in the deep peace only violent sex seemed to bring to
him, she was still awake.  Watching.  Feeling fear.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

It was the next day that the letters began.

She was in the lodge, checking her mail.  Mulder was there too, not
because he was with her, but because he was trying to persuade the
porter to change a five pound note so that he could ring his mother.

He was watching her, though.  Noticing the quick clean economy of her
movements.  The immaculate shirt collar, and the way the soft creamy
skin of her neck met it.  He wondered if he was the only person in the
world who had ever seen her hair tousled.  He wondered if everyone in
the world who saw her wanted her, wanted her as he did, now, right here
and now.   Poor old Edmund.  Poor old Morse.  Poor old Newsome.  He felt
the familiar grinding ache beginning.

She was looking at a plain white envelope.  As she opened it, Mulder saw
her face change.  It went perfectly white, even her lips.

He moved quickly to her side, ignoring the stares.  Damn them all, what
do I care what they know about us?

'He's stopped writing to the police.  He's now writing to me.'  She
swayed and would have fallen if he had not put his arm around her waist.
He and the college porter helped her to a chair.

The letter was simple.

'I'm going to have you, bitch.  To gut you like the pigslut you are.  I
saw you last week.  You have beautiful skin for my knife.'

He put his arms about her.  Knowing how inadequate it was.  Knowing how
little he could really protect her.

She tried to smile.  'I'm afraid I'm not as brave as a thriller
heroine.'  She was trembling, a fine hard tremor.

'This has frightened you all along, hasn't it?'

'Yes.  Because all along I've felt I know this man.  I've even felt fond
of him.  As if he's a little boy who needs my help.  And now I just
can't bear to think about him anymore.'  She began to sob.  'And just
when I can't bear it, he comes and - and pushes his way into my life.'
Her sobs grew thicker.  She gasped and tried to control them.  People
were staring.  Mulder was staring himself.   He had never seen her even
ruffled, and now, all of a sudden -

He put his arm around her, but to his surprise she shook him off like a
spider and ran across the quad, her hands stretched out in front of her
like a blind woman.   He did not see her that day.  Or that night.

The second letter was equally simple.  It arrived next day.

'I know about you and your little student.  He's not man enough for you.
I am.  I might have to do him too.'

Now he oculd see the panicky thoughts scurrying in her mind, like
laboratory rats.  Christ, he knows me.  Oh, Christ christ christ.  Oh
Jesus, sweet Jesus.  I'm going to have to show this to the police.
Maybe even to the college authorities.  Deep breath.  Deep breath.

'Mulder, who have you told about us?'

'No-one.  Edmund knows, but that's it.'

'So it may be him.'  Her eyes wide.  She didn't really think so, but she
hoped so.

'We'll tell Morse.'

'He may even have seen us.  Oh God, Mulder, he may have been watching us
together.'  The voluptuous arabesques were suddenly tainted.

'You room isn't easy to overlook.  Unless you think he has some kind of
bat-rope and shinned up the tower.'

'What about yours?'

'He'd have to crouch on the roof like Spring-Heeled Jack.'

'Spy-cameras, then.'

'I know this has thrown you, Jerry, but you're not thinking.  He'd have
mentioned it if he'd seen us.'

This rebuke, as he had hoped, stung her back to something like
normality.

'Okay.  It was just such a horrible idea.  And anyway,'  she gave him a
watery smile, 'If he'd seen anything, he'd know that the last thing you
are is little.'  For the first time since the letters began, she kissed
him.

By the third day, they were both disoriented from lack of sleep the
night before.  Mulder had offered to stay with her.  She had pushed him
away curtly, and he had nevertheless mounted a silent vigil outside her
door.  All night he had heard her at her computer.  Or pacing.  At three
o'clock she had relented and let him in.  He held her, tightly, without
desire, till morning.

The next day, there was a note in the middle of her bed when she got
back from lecturing.

'Just thinking about you.  Thinking about what I'll do to you.'

She felt a swirl of terrible sickness, and had to run to the bathroom,
where she almost vomited up her heart.

'Janis, has anyone been here?'

'No, Dr Falconer.  Only your student.  The time he used your computer.'
Suspicion in the voice.

She would not take refuge in Mulder's room.  She moved out to the old
Parsonage Hotel, just down the road.  Mulder stayed with her that night.
She did not say no, but she could not bear to be touched, or talked to.
They watched television in silence.   Some incomprehensible British
programme about politics, that seemed to cheer her up very slightly
through the sheer rage that the sight of Margaret Thatcher seemed to
provoke in her.

'Just look at that woman.  Not a man to match her, Margaret Hilda
Thatcher.  Hers has got to be bigger than anyone else's'.

He laughed.  That sounded much more like Jerry.  But she still wouldn't
touch him.

Morse sent the letters up to forensics, to handwriting experts.  They
were almost sure the letters were by the same person as those received
by the police.

'We'd better get you out of Oxford, Jerry.  He's somehow chosen you for
his next victim.'

She nodded, and kept nodding. Like a doll.  She was heavy-eyed from lack
of sleep.  Her hair was still an immaculate black satin waterfall, and
her clothes pressed crisp, but her face was white, the whiteness of
death.

Now was the moment.

Mulder turned.  'I don't think so, Inspector,' he said.  'With all due
respect, it seems all wrong to me.  We know he usually goes for blondes,
small-boned, sweet blondes.  Now we're suddenly supposed to believe that
he has chosen a brunette, much older, of whom sweetness may not be the
most salient characteristic.'  His smile was lopsided.

'Second point: he didn't write to any of the previous victims.  An
extensive search was made of their rooms, and all their friends were
interviewed, as were the Nightline counsellors.  No-one reported seeing
anonymous letters.  I don't see that he'd suddenly take to doing that
now, even though I know serial killers do sometimes change their
methods.'

'Third point.  The language of these notes is all wrong.  It's highly
sexual, albeit in a clichÈd fashion.  Whoever wrote these notes is
fantasising about Dr Falconer in a very obviously lustful way.  The
killer isn't straightforwardly lustful.  There's nothing about blood in
these notes either.'

'I think this is someone who knows Dr Falconer and is trying to scare
her away from Oxford or scare her off the case.  Or just plain scare
her, for the sheer hell of it.  Or else it's someone who genuinely does
fancy her in a sadistic fashion and is looking for an outlet, and has
found it in frightening and intimidating her.  She's a beautiful and
successful and intelligent woman, which makes her pretty nearly unique
in this town.  Moreover, she's a woman who's just started a relationship
with a student.  Me.  We know the writer knows this, and it might have
been the spur to make him act.'

She had woken from her stupor.  'But Mulder, haven't you heard what
Morse has been saying?  These are written by the same person who wrote
to the police.'

'In that case, the person who's been writing to the police is not the
killer, and these notes prove it.'

He was firm.  Completely unshaken.  She looked at him, and felt a
strange eerie confidence.  He was only a kid, but he dominated the room
effortlessly.  No trace of shyness or gawkiness.  Complete emotional
sang-froid.

'My guess is that of the two alternatives I gave, the first is correct.
These notes are written by someone who doesn't fancy Dr Falconer, or
only fancies her mildly, without obsession.  They're too unspecific.  My
bet is that these notes, and the notes to the police, are written by a
student, a student hoping to impress both her and a fellow student, a
student who has been reading books about the Ripper -'

'Peter Cartwright.'

'With or without the services of the inestimable Phoebe.'

'Does he know about you and me?'

'Edmund might have told him.'

Morse rose slowly, ponderously.  'I'll investigate this intriguing
hypothesis, but I feel obliged to point out that there is no proof of it
whatsoever.  For all we know, Mr Mulder could be completely wrong, and
the killer could be after Dr Falconer.  Therefore I recommend that while
we investigate Dr Falconer go to a secure place where we can keep her
safe until we can be sure.'

'I don't think that's necessary.  I can look after her here.'

'Don't be pigheaded, Mr Mulder.  We're talking about her safety.  I
should think that you of all people would be willing to put that above
other considerations.'

'Are you suggesting I'd keep her here in danger to suit myself?'

'Not really, Mr Mulder, but I'm pointing out to you that whatever your
motives, the effect might not be good for Dr Falconer.'

'Dammit, will you both stop discussing me as if I were a corpse already?
Morse, I can't just up and leave in the middle of term.  I've got a
schedule - lectures - experiments - tutorials -'

'No-one is irreplaceable, Dr Falconer.  I suggest you farm out your work
to a competent graduate student.  Mr Mulder, for instance.'

'Mulder isn't a grad student.  I misled you.  I knew you'd never look at
his stuff if I told you he was an undergraduate.'

'I had him checked out.'  To Mulder's surprise, they smiled at each
other.  He felt a red burst of anger with them both.

'And where are you suggesting she go?'

Morse's expression changed.  It was closed, even hostile.  'It's better
if no-one knows where she is,'  he said with an air of finality.

'So you suspect me.'

'Let's say I'm not willing to eliminate anyone, and certainly not on
your say-so.'

'Jerry?'  Mulder turned to her.  His eyes were pleading.  Nakedly
pleading for trust.

Her eyes fell before his.

His face crumpled - first a sick bewilderment, then horror.

'I see.  You agree with him.'

Now she met his eyes.  Her own dark ones blazing defiance.  And
something else.  Fear.

'No, I don't.  But I'm not completely sure.  The crimes started just
after you arrived.  Not counting the slashings.'

'Oh, not counting those.  I see.'

'Mulder, you know I've always said that you should never use a hunch to
eliminate suspects.  I think the slashings are related to the murders,
but they may not be.  You knew an awful lot about the killer's
motivation, and on your own showing your childhood difficulties
perfectly fit the standard behavioural profiles for serial killers.
Also, someone got to know about our relationship, someone you said you
never told.  And -' her voice shook - 'you've let me dominate you
sexually for a month now without any questions asked, which suggests
that I was an anaclitic object-choice.  We know the killer also makes
that kind of choice.'

'So what was this thing between us?'  Still that dangerously level
voice.  'Just a walk on the wild side for you?'

'You know it wasn't that.'

He looked at her.  Something inside her said, this is a broken man.
Neither you nor anyone else can mend him now.

Something inside her said, you will never hold him in your arms again.

His voice was flat and quiet.  As always.

'I won't even try to explain all that away, Jerry.  If you want to
believe it, you can.  But I'll find out about Peter and Phoebe.  I want
you to feel safe.'

He left the room.

Jerry put her hand to her head.  Her mind said to her, in Joni
Mitchell's voice, 'I'm so hard to handle, I'm selfish, and I'm sad/ And
I've gone and lost the best baby that I ever had / Oh, I wish I had a
river /I could skate away on.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Morse found evidence of practice letters in Peter's room.

Peter Cartwright was under arrest.  Somehow, Mulder found himself
holding a sobbing Phoebe Green.

'Here, take my handkerchief.'

She blew her nose.  They sat down on the sofa in her room.  It was a
cat's nest of unwashed clothes, unwashed plates, and a rumpled bed that
proclaimed recent use.

'It's all my fault.  I never dreamt he'd take it that far, though.  We
wrote the letters to the police together.  We - oh, Mulder, I don't know
what you'll think of this, but we found it - exciting.

He thought it was sick.  But he understood it only too well.  The power.
The power of being happy murderers.

'I mean, we both disliked Falconer, she was a bitch to me, gave me a
gamma minus for one essay - I mean, God, a gamma minus! - that's a kind
of C double minus, you Yankee - and she wrote on one of Peter's essays,
'Stolidity is one thing, stupidity is quite another.'  What a cow!  Of
course, I hear she thought you were the bees' knees.  Didn't she give
you an alpha?  She's never given anyone an alpha before.'

Even now, a glow of pleasure stole through him.  'She also said all my
ideas were wrong and that I should use my arse to think with because it
might be more efficient than retraining my brain.'  Arse.  Jerry usually
said arse when she was criticising his work.  Sounded much more obscene
than ass.

'Okay.  So she was like that.  Marks are marks, and remarks are remarks.
So Peter found out that she was scared of violence.  He read her an
essay once on the Marquis de Sade's biography, and she tore it up in his
face.  He saw her hands were trembling.  He remembered it.  Then he
thought - I think he did like her, really, and it must have turned him
on to write to her like that.  He used to talk about what he wanted to
do to her quite a lot.  During sex with me, of course.  Mostly it was -
let's say, not the sort of thing she would have liked.  He had a
particular feeling for a whip in apposition with her breasts.  Glorious
tits, he used to say.  Just need a few marks on them.'

Mulder thought he might be violently sick.  If only her words weren't
having an effect on him that he could not quite ignore.  Somehow the
thought of mastering Jerry, making her tremble, was suddenly and
horrifically intoxicating.

She looked at him.  'You were her lover, Peter said.  He got it out of
Edmund when he was drunk one night.  Edmund really likes her too.  You
must have been bloody good, to get the alpha.  Was she good?  Edmund
said you wouldn't tell him.'

'And I won't, Phoebe.  Not you, anyway.'

Phoebe pouted.

'I bet she was dominant.  Wasn't she?'

'Why do you say that?'

'Looking at her.  Looking at you.'

'I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me.'  A ghost
of a light touch.

'I bet I can imagine what you did together.'

'Just shut the fuck up.'  With sudden violence.

She fed on it.

'Do you get turned on just thinking about her?'

'Not at the moment.'

'She thinks you're the murderer, doesn't she?   That's why you've gone
all cold on her.  I wonder if it turns her on to think so.'

He smiled incredulously.

'Or maybe it turns you on.'

He slapped her face.  Hard.  She was almost unmoved, though her lip had
begun to bleed.  Her eyes never left his.

'That struck home, I think.  Or maybe you're tired of being bossed
around.  You can boss me around if you like.  If it would make you feel
any better.'

The full lips saying those words.  Goading him.  He lunged towards her,
drugged with sleeplessness and grief and horror at himself, at her, at
Jerry.

His hands tore open her shirt, bared her small sharp breasts, twisted
her arm behind her, pulled up her skirt, opened her legs.  She wasn't
wearing underpants.  The revelation inspired a surge of mingled loathing
and lust.  As he thrust himself into her without ceremony, he was frozen
by her Delilah-smile of triumph.  He had thought he was on top.  But it
had been her trip all along.  Or rather her trap.

She came with a cormorant's cry, and he spent his molten fury inside
her.

He did up his trousers and left her lying on the floor, a smiling voodoo
doll speared through by him.

'You'll want me again,'  she said.

'When hell freezes over.'
------------------------------------------------

The next thing he remembered was sitting in a bar.  All right, a pub
then.  This was England.  He thought.  No, it was a bar.  A college bar.
Painted like a glass of Guinness.  He was inside a glass of Guinness.

That wasn't possible.  How many drinks had he had?

The juke box began to grind out 'Riders on the Storm' for the fifth
time.

'There's a killer on the road/ His brain is squirming like a toad.'

A toad.  That was funny.  Mulder began to laugh.

It was late.

It was probably far too late.  Far too late for him, far too late for
Jerry, far too late for the killer.  Far too late for whoever was next.
Far, far too late.

Across the bar, a girl began to laugh.  The sound made Mulder want to
kill her.  His hand closed on his glass.  He could break it and -

'I'll have another one of these.'

'And what were those these?'  The bartender was tall, thin, friendly.

'I have no idea.'

'Try this.'

It was orange juice, but Mulder was too drunk to notice.

'What's the problem?'

'The expense of spirit in a waste of shame, I think.'

'Ah-ha.  Lust in action.'

'And in action, lust is not much bloody good for anyone.'

'It's not much bloody good to anyone out of action, either.'

'You've got something there.'

'What's your problem again?  Too much lust, or too much action?'

'Action with the wrong person.'

'So now you feel polluted, soiled, sullied.'

'Pretty much.'

'What about the right person?'

'She doesn't know.'

'Take my advice and don't tell her.  Unless you think Miss Wrong will do
the job for you.'

'She probably will.'

'Well, then, I'd get in first. Tell her all, and buy a whole flowerstall
of flowers for her.  Make a really big gesture.'

It was good advice, thought Mulder, as he wearily climbed the stairs to
his room.  If only he'd known where she was.   And if only she didn't
think he was a murderer.

God, he longed for her arms.  For her softness.  Jerry, I can't do this
life thing without you.

'Western wind, when will you blow?  The small rain down can rain.
Christ that my love were in my arms, and I in my bed again.'  Some poor
bastard had written that hundreds of years ago.

Had he been faithful?  Had he been able to love with a whole heart?

In his room there was a familiar scent.   A presence.  His heart leapt.

He switched on the lamp.  'Jerry?'

A fantasy.  A revenant from a diseased imagination.  Then -

His room was full of flowers.  Huge golden daffodils.  He began to
giggle weakly.  She had been talking to a bartender too.

There was a kind of altar of flowers by the window.  Red roses.  No,
white roses.  But with something red and sticky over them.

Mulder's heart froze.

She was amongst the flowers.  He saw the black hair, the slashes on her
breasts, the huge gaping wound in her belly, the extreme whiteness of
the face where all blood had been diffused, diffused into the flowers,
the flowers that scented the night, their rich heavy odour mingling with
the heavier scent of blood.  Her blood.

>From her face, she had been conscious when some of the cuts were made.
Yes.  Ligature marks on her wrists.

Those slender, quick-moving wrists.  Her small strong fingers.

Her eyes were open.  Aye, but their sense is shut.  She would never look
at him through half-closed lids again.

Never never never never never.

The bright day is done.  And we are for the dark.

He fell to his knees beside her.  Great tearing sobs shook him.

He took her hand hopelessly, expecting no help.  It was cold as ice.
Cold as death.

Dead of winter.

Suddenly, without thought, without consciousness, he was engulfed in
memory.

A burning bright light, a girl's body floating in the air.  He was
paralysed.  She drifted away.

He was dirty, guilty, broken.   Everything that made him himself was
gone with her.

With a strange gull's cry of pure fear, he gathered himself to run.  In
a second, he was gone, into the night.
------------------------------------------------

It took the police several hours to find him.  When he ran, he had run
>from himself, run out of himself.

One of Morse's sergeants finally tracked him down after a call had come
in about a young man who sat on an old lady's front doorstep, and
refused to move or speak.

'And in this rain, too!'  said the old lady, agitated for and by him.

The sergeant saw a man in a grey turtleneck and jeans black and filthy,
soaking.  His hair was plastered flat to his skull by the rain.  Water
poured unheeded down his face like tears.  He made no movement to wipe
it away.

The sergeant never forgot his face.  It was a look of blank apocalypse.
The face of someone whose world had ended as abruptly as a candle is
blown out, and who now sat alone in heavy darkness.  The eyes were
blind.

Mulder couldn't remember why he was sitting there.  He couldn't remember
where he was.  Or where he had come from.

He knew it was important not to remember.

'Come on, now.'  The sergeant had had enough.  Poor chap.  Wonder what
made him do it?  From the look of it, it'd be Broadmoor for him, not
ordinary prison.

He took the man by the elbow.  Mulder shook him gently off.  He went on
staring into the rain.

Finally, with the help of the neighbours and his partner, the sergeant
got him cuffed and handed him into the police car that sat, blue light
flashing, in the greyness of the rainy street.
-----------------------------------

Headline in the Oxford Mail: Oxford Blood: Slasher Claims Don

Headline in the Oxford Times: Lady Doctor Found Killed

Subheading, inner page: Students Arrested in Poison-Pen Probe

Headline in the Sun national newspaper:  Don Slain in Sex Rage

Inside page: Jerry: Who Was She?  The Beautiful and Brilliant Woman Who
Died a Horrible Death.  The men in her life.

Headline in the News of the World:  She Died in Fear

Headline in the Washington Post: Top Profiler killed by Serial Assailant

Headline in the National Enquirer: The British Slasher: Son of an Alien
------------------------------------------------

He read the papers with amazement, and grief, and misery, and aching
envy.

There was another.

He had already become.  That other had ascended to glory.

Or had he come to show the way?

This other.  This other who had killed her.  So very very very famous.

The pictures of Jerry Falconer.  So very very very beautiful.

She was darkness visible.

He was sure she was pure and sweet.  Sweet, oh sweet.  A sweet flower.

He'd seen her himself.  Knew her.  Knew her scent, her smell.  The very
texture of her skin.

He had watched her.  Oh, had he not?

The papers said the killer had had sex with her.

Horrible.

He knew she didn't do things like that.

That was why he had tried to be worthy.  Worthy of her.  He had thought
that when he was a man - but now he saw.  Another possessed her.  As she
was born to be possessed.

In one picture, she wore a low-cut black dress.  He stared at the
revelation of the soft white half-moons of her breasts for a long time.

He wondered how fast the blood had oozed out of the cuts on her breasts.
Had spurted out of her wrists and neck.  The blood the blood the blood
the blood.

He had never thought of her blood before.  Had not wanted it.  Only for
her to notice him, to see him as a man.

Now, he felt the aching stirrings of loneliness and arousal.  Thinking
of her, bleeding, dying.

He needed the embrace of blood again.  Soon.

His fists tightened in resolution.

He had despaired at first.  But now he knew that in death she could be
his, more his than ever in life.

Her body was a sign to him.

Find another.

Another like her.....

Then she would return.  And be his at last.
------------------------------------------

Interim Report on Crime Scene, Room 8.5, St John's College Oxford, 10
December  1983.

The room in question is occupied by a Mr Fox Mulder, a US national
currently in the UK on a student visa.  For Mr Mulder's detention and
the possibility of interrogation, see the appendix.

The body of a woman was found in the window embrasure at 0900 hours by
Edmund Morgan, a student from another college who had arrived to seek
out the occupant of the rooms for a morning run.  Unable to get any
response, he pushed the door open.

The victim has been identified as Dr Jerry Falconer, a fellow and tutor
at St John's College.  Pathology reveals the probable cause of death to
be blood loss and shock.  The breasts, thighs, wrists, and vulva had
been cut to arterial depth, and the belly opened along the midline.  The
likely weapon is a strong sharp knife with no jags or serrations.  The
other significant pathology finding is that there was no blow to the
head, suggesting that the victim was conscious during the mutilations, a
finding borne out by the ligature markings on both wrists and on the
ankles.  The presence of semen in the vagina, suggestive of recent
intercourse, may point to a sadistic motivation.  Analysis of the semen
sample is proceeding.  Pathology estimated time of death at least five
hours before the discovery of the body, and possibly as many as twelve
hours.

Although the victim was killed in a similar manner as the victims of the
so-called East Oxford Slasher, the significant differences (the
ligatures, the semen) suggest that this may either be a copycat crime,
or that the serial killer is altering his approach, an unlikely
eventuality.  The position is complicated still further by the arrest of
Peter Cartwright for his anonymous letters to Dr Falconer, letters in
which he purports to be the serial killer.  Yet Mr Cartwright cannot be
responsible for this crime, because he was in police custody at the time
it was committed.  The most likely suspect is therefore Mr Mulder, who
is known to have had a sexual relationship with the dead woman, and who
quarrelled with her in the presence of Inspector Morse the same morning.
Although the Inspector properly refused to give Mr Mulder the address of
Dr Falconer, she may have contacted him later in the day and arranged a
meeting.   If this is the case, however, Mr Mulder cannot also be the
East Oxford Slasher, a hypothesis presented by Dr Falconer to Inspector
Morse shortly before her death.  At present Mr Mulder is unable to give
an account of his own of the evening in question, owing to the onset of
traumatic shock.

Report on Fox Mulder by police psychiatrist.  10 December 1983.

I was called in to see Mr Mulder at the request of his solicitor Colin
Saunders, appointed for him by St John's College, Oxford.  Mr Saunders
felt that Mr Mulder's mental condition made it impossible to interrogate
him, and that such an interrogation was possibly prejudicial to his
trial if charges are eventually brought against him.  He has asked me to
assess Mr Mulder's mental state.

I have also been asked by the police to comment on Mr Mulder's state in
the light of certain significant facts, namely, the discovery of the
body of Dr Jerry Falconer in Mr Mulder's college rooms, the clear
evidence that Mr Mulder had also been in the rooms, and his subsequent
flight.  A semen sample taken from the dead woman's vagina suggests
recent intercourse; we have yet to determine whether Mr Mulder was
responsible for its presence.  Since Mr Mulder enjoyed a relationship
with the deceased, this may or may not be significant.

I found Mr Mulder to be in a state of severe shock, or traumatic stress.
He had responded to this state by fugue, and by partial amnesia and
marked catatonia.  Since being brought to the station, he has not spoken
a word, nor has he moved.  Reflexes are normal, so he is not in a state
of hysterical paralysis.  Rather, we appear to have here the
Weissenhalter reaction, a response to shock consisting of extreme
stillness, a kind of primitive survival mechanism.

Clearly, questioning him would be completely useless at this point,
despite the evident urgency of doing so.

Mr Mulder is currently in the condition which used to be called 'shell
shock' in the trenches, and for a similar reason.  He has been exposed
to an act or acts of violence beyond his capacity to bear.  Whether he
was the actor in this scene of violence cannot be judged; his state
could as probably have been induced by the discovery of the body of the
murdered woman, or by surprising the murder in progress.  In short, his
mental state is not a reliable indicator of his guilt or innocence.

I recommend drug treatment and psychotherapy in a controlled
environment, and have asked that he be admitted to the violent wing of
the Warneford Psychiatric Hospital.  I should add that even when he
becomes capable of speech and movement, his account of recent events may
be partially or fully blurred by amnesia, or falsified by remorse or by
other psychic mechanisms.

Patients suffering from this form of trauma are at acute risk of
suicide.  In Mr Mulder's case, this risk is exacerbated still further by
the possibility that he is suffering crippling guilt either for killing
a woman with whom he had a relationship, or for deserting her when she
was under attack by a maniac, circumstances likely to depress anyone in
a normal state of health.  Although anti-depressants have been
administered to Mr Mulder, it may take some time for them to take
effect.  He should be watched carefully for self-destructive tendencies.

Andrew Mann

Police psychiatrist and fellow of  Green College, Oxford.
------------------------------------------

Remembrance was pain.

At first, memory came only in dreams.

He would be standing, blissful and shivering, in front of her, and he
would see her bend down and take his cock in her mouth, her warm sucking
mouth.  And just as he was about to explode into her, her mouth would
slacken, and she would crumple into death at his feet.

He would be lying in her arms, feeling the soft rise and fall of her
breasts with her breathing.  He would turn to look at her, and her
throat would be cut from ear to ear.

Her scent would drift by him, mingled with the scent of blood.

The dreams that tormented him most were the ones where he hurt her.

Jerry's full breasts and a knife point slowly incising scarlet letters
on them.  The letters said, Fox Mulder.

Jerry, blood sliding in pumping torrents down her outstretched arms.

Jerry, belly gaping, torn open, bleeding, smiling as he put his hand
inside the wound and held her leaping heart in his hand.

And squeezed.

Even in the dreams, he didn't want to do these things to her.  He felt
sickened by his own imagination.  But he couldn't stop the dreams from
coming to him.  He tried to stay awake, but his medication made him very
drowsy.

Once, to his horror, he woke to find himself coming in his sleep at the
thought of staining the alabaster whiteness of her breasts with the
purple stripes of a small whip, while she pleaded with him to stop.
Peter's fantasy.  But now it was his fantasy.

He woke from these dreams drenched in sweat, crying, helpless.

A minute later, he could no longer remember what they were about.

In daylight, he had begun to speak again, but only reluctantly.

He knew there was something he longed for, longed for absolutely, but he
didn't know what it was.

Sometimes it seemed to him to be his mother's arms.

Sometimes he thought it was to return to childhood, to be again a little
boy in a warm bathrobe, eating toast in front of a fire, while the ocean
and the wind roared outside.

Sometimes he thought it was just to get out of this place, filled with
the cries of the damned.

Sometimes he thought it was for something to do.

These healthy stirrings of desire, volition, were not lost on Dr Penny
Fraser, the psychiatrist assigned to him.

Slowly, he began to talk.  Slowly, with talk, he began to remember.

Each night, he remembered his dreams for a little longer.

Penny Fraser was a nice woman, without any of Jerry Falconer's sharp
edges, and without her intellectual reach and imagination.

She still didn't know why it hurt him so much when she insisted on
calling him Fox.

When she tried to get him to talk, he found ways to baffle her.  In one
session he simply told her in pornographic detail exactly how he and
Jerry Falconer had spent an evening in late October.  Penny had gone
home and drunk three straight G and Ts after that.  In another, he sang
all the Bruce Springsteen lyrics that he could remember, appositely, in
response to her questions, as if he were some kind of New Jersey version
of King Lear's Fool.

Or Ophelia.  Mad or drowned.

'How do you feel about the death of Jerry Falconer?'

'Everything dies, baby, that's a fact.  And maybe everything that dies,
someday comes back.'

'Are you feeling very alone?'

'Hey there mister, can you tell me what happened to the seeds I've sown?
Can you give me a reason, as to why they never have grown?'

Scratching his head, like a hayseed.  A wide mad grin.

Penny Fraser was not brilliant, but not herself a fool.  She knew this
was hostility.

The only solution, she decided, was to let him make a statement to the
police, and then to veto all talk of the killings in exchange for
releasing him, if the police allowed it.  She did not think he was a
danger to others.  She thought the medication had stopped him from
hurting himself.

Mulder agreed to make a statement.  Penny breathed a sigh of relief.

Prematurely, as it turned out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

'So what exactly do you expect me to do?  Release you into the community
when you won't answer the one question that might clear you?

Morse was angry.  Mulder was silent.

'Now, just stop and think, Mr Mulder.  One, unless you tell me your
movements on the night in question, I'm unable to release you.  Two,
since you're still the prime suspect in this case, I'll be obliged to
spend a lot of manpower finding out just what you were up to, manpower I
could otherwise spend tracking down the real killer.  According to you,
you're innocent.  In that case, don't you care at all that a woman you
were very close to, a woman who cared about you, was murdered in a
manner that even I find absolutely sickening and brutal?  Don't you want
to find the beast who did it and bring him to justice?'

A long pause.

'What if he isn't a beast?  Or what if we're all beasts?  What right
have I to judge?'

'I really don't have time for metaphysics, Mr Mulder.  I have a murderer
to catch.  At the moment, I'm wondering if I'm looking at him now.'

'I wonder that sometimes, when I look in the mirror.'

The long hand was shaking very slightly, Morse noticed.  He had never
seen a man go to pieces so completely.  He must have lost a stone at
least.  Unshaven.  Dark circles under bloodshot eyes.  White as death.
The nose prominent in a thinned face.

He was as much a victim of the killer as Jerry.

Finally, Morse said 'Don't you know?'

'No, I don't.  The last thing I remember is finding Jerry's body.  Then
it's a gigantic blank until I arrived here.  For all I know, I've just
conveniently forgotten killing her.'

Spoken sulkily, like an angry little boy who knows he'll be punished and
wants to get it over with.

Then with raw feeling, ' In my dreams, sometimes I see her dead, and
know it's what I wanted.'

Morse made no attempt to deal with this.  'There is one way to know, Mr
Mulder.  If you agree, we can take a blood sample, and see if it matches
the semen sample we got from Dr Falconer.'

Before he had finished his sentence, Mulder had begun rolling up his
sleeve.

Detached, he watched his own blood swirl into the syringe.  Always a
surprise that blood was such a clear red.

He looked up, and saw Morse watching him.

'It will take a little while to get results.  In the meantime, let's go
back to the first thing you remember.  How did you spend the afternoon
after you left us here?'

'I went along to Merton to see Peter.  The police arrived, found the
letters, and he went off in the back of a - what do you call it here? a
panda van.  Then Phoebe came out and she was crying, so I -'

'Yes?'.  Mulder was silent.  'Come on, now, Mr Mulder.  I can understand
that there are gaps, but you must at least tell me what you do know.'

'I - spent some time with her.'

'Doing what?'

Mulder stood up suddenly, and picked up his chair.  He lifted it easily
and threw it as hard as he could against the far wall.  'Screwing like
ferrets, okay?'

Two nurses materialised, one holding a syringe.  Morse waved them away.
He was completely unmoved.  'Ah. I thought it might be something like
that.  And was this the first time you had sexual relations with Miss
Green?'

'Yes, of course it was.'

'And what made you suddenly decide to do so that afternoon?'

'It was her idea.  Mostly.  I was mad at Jerry, and I -'

'You just did it.'

'Yes.'  Defiantly.

'Miss Green, of course, has also made a statement in relation to the
case of Peter Cartwright and his relations with Dr Falconer.  In it she
says -'  Morse riffled through a file - 'that you became excited when
she began talking about sadomasochism, that you hit her across the face
and that you - well, she says it wasn't rape.  The phrase she used was
'unceremonious and very rough sex'.'

'That's pretty accurate, but none of it was my idea.  It was all her
idea.  She kept saying things to me, things I didn't want to hear but
somehow couldn't stop hearing.'

'Well, that's something for you and your psychiatrist to discuss.  The
point is, when did you leave her?'

'I'm not sure.  I can't really remember.  I think it was around five.'

'That tallies with her account.  So what happened next?'

'I went to a bar.  The college bar.'

'Merton bar?'

'If it's like a glass of Guinness inside.'

Morse smiled.  'And what did you do there?'

'What everyone does in a bar.  Drank.'

'How much?'

'Several double Scotches, and several vodka and oranges.  I was pretty
well plastered.'

'Did you speak to anyone?'

'Only the bartender.  A tall, thin guy.  We talked about sex and he told
me to buy the girl I loved some flowers.'

'What time did you leave?'

'I have no idea.  Late.'

'Did you go through the Lodge or the late gate?'

'The Lodge.  The porter was there, having a beer.  The bartender sent it
out to him earlier.'

'In that case it must have been before midnight, because that's when the
main gate is closed.'

Mulder fell silent again.  He would not meet Morse's eyes.

Morse's voice was oddly gentle.  'What happened after that, Mr Mulder?'

Mulder looked up.  He sat very still, very straight, like a little boy
being grilled by a stern principal.  And the tears fell slowly.

'So I went back to my room.  And at first I thought she'd bought me
flowers. Jerry.  But then I found her - I can't stop thinking about it!
I can't stop thinking about it, do you understand?  I couldn't save her.
She's gone and I couldn't save her.'

A hurricane of tears.

To his surprise, he felt the pressure of Morse's hand on his shoulder.

'I know how you feel.  I couldn't save her either.'

Their eyes met in perfect, bleak comprehension.

'I'm sorry to have to ask you more questions.  Did you touch the body?'

'I - took her hand.  I don't know why I did.'

'How did it feel?'

'It was cold.  Ice-cold.'

'Stiff?'

'No.'

'Interesting.'

A nurse came through the door.  She handed Morse a piece of paper.

Morse read it.  Then he smiled.

'Well, Mr Mulder, I'd say you're off the hook as far as Dr Falconer is
concerned.  The semen found in her body is a different blood type to
yours.  I'll also interview the Merton bartender.  If he corroborates
your story, you're in the clear, given the time of death.'

Mulder just sat still, staring ahead of him.  Slowly, he lifted his
head.  Morse could see the relief fill the hazel eyes.  See him becoming
himself again.  It was like watching water come back to a dry land.

But he was not unchanged.

'What about the serial killings?'

Morse hesitated.  Then he spoke.

'You're off the hook there too.  There's been another death while you
were in here.'

A smile.  Watery, shaky, but a smile.

He left Mulder sitting staring into space again.

The bartender confirmed Mulder's story.

'The guy was dropping to pieces before my startled gaze,' he said.
'Some kind of quarrel with the woman in his life. '

'What time did he leave?'

'Just before midnight.'

'Thank you.'
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Mulder felt like a helium balloon.  Light, detached, uncertain in
trajectory.  His head felt like a globe of paper, a Chinese lantern.

That night he could not sleep.

Next day he saw Penny, as usual.  How cruel he had been to this
harmless, ordinary, not very clever woman.

How he had hated her for not being Jerry. For being plain and plump and
mousy, instead of glittering with the glory of the hummingbird.  For
being younger than Jerry, but with her whole life in front of her.

With his whole life in front of her.

Stupid.

But knowing the feeling didn't make it go away.

'So can I go back to college now?'

'Wouldn't you prefer to go home?  The college authorities have given you
leave for a term.  Hilary Term is just about to start, you've missed the
Christmas holidays, but -'

'I'd rather go back to college.'

'Is that because your parents never come to see you?' she hazarded.

'No.  I'd rather be alone.'

'It's not good to be alone, Mr Mulder.'

'I won't be alone at John's.  There are three hundred or so people
there.'

'You will still have to see me, you know.  I'd like to help you.'

'All right.'  An apologetic smile.  'But I think I'm beyond your help.'

He was not going to talk to her about  things.  Someone like her would
never understand.

Back in college.

A first time for everything.  A first time to eat lunch without her, to
collect his mail without her, to lie on his bed without her, to walk by
the canal without her.  To go to her room and see the police tape still
over the door.

He sometimes climbed the stairs to her room.  As he got to the top, he
would close his eyes and hope, imagine that she was still there, that it
had all been a nightmare that had gone away, that he could open the door
and see her, smell her, hold her just once more in his arms.

He remembered doing that in his sister's room after she had gone.
Closing his eyes, then opening them quickly, as if he could catch her
still in the room if he were quick enough.

If she could only hear him say he loved her, finally and completely and
irrevocably.

He could not bear to sleep in his bed, even though John's had changed
his rooms because the police would not let him continue to occupy them.

Jerry still came to him at night, when he could no longer resist the
soft seduction of sleep, and she did not come gently.

He would wake every night dripping with sweat from dreams of her, dreams
when he enjoyed her pain.

On other nights, he would simply dream of her body, and wake aching with
loneliness and need.

He began to wonder if she was haunting him, tormenting him for failing
her.  For failing to protect her.  Come back, Jerry.  Go away.

He knew now that he was irredeemably evil.  The knowledge was obscurely
comforting.  All his life, he had tried to convince himself that he was
good.  Now he at least knew the truth.

He didn't have to lie to himself anymore.  What he had to do was find a
way to live with himself.

He discovered that he saw less of his own evil if he fell asleep with
the television on.  Sometimes then the dreams were simple memories of
whatever he had been watching.  After doing this once or twice on the
JCR sofa, he rented a television and video recorder for his room.

Five times a week, he saw Penny and talked at random of safe and
harmless things in his childhood, trying to answer her tentative
questions without allowing her to get too close to the central issues of
his life.

Once a week, he saw his new, dull, tweedy, male tutor.  Twice a week he
went to labs.  Three times a week he went to lectures.  Every night he
ate dinner in college.  Every night after dinner, he walked to the
Radcliffe Science Library, sat under the stark fluorescence, read all
evening, then walked back to John's down the Lamb and Flag passage,
under the huge, bright and frosty stars.

He got excellent marks.  There is a lot to be said for eidetic memory.

Every morning, early, he ran in the University parks among the bare
ruined choirs of the trees.  Mist hung light on the river.  Spurts of
small hedge birds jetted up from under his flying feet.  And as he ran,
Mulder thought.  Slowly.  Carefully.  About his new knowledge, and what
he could do with it.

One day he stopped on the bridge to Mesopotamia, the land between two
rivers.

The thin brown stream of the Cherwell swirled slowly below him.

As he looked into its depths, he knew, as if someone had spoken aloud,
that the only peace he could ever have was through using his own evil to
smell it in others.

That the only reparation he could make to Jerry was to find the East
Oxford Slasher, finish her work.

And then find the man who killed her, find the man who had acted out
what for Mulder were only nightmares.

And to blow the sick fuck away.  After making him suffer a little of the
agony he had given her.

If the police caught him afterwards and charged him with the murder, it
wouldn't matter.

His life for hers.

He went to see Morse.

Somewhat to his surprise, Morse seemed to understand.

He refused to give him the files on Jerry, though Mulder did not, of
course, tell him what he intended to do with Jerry's killer when he was
found.

He took away with him copies of the case files on the East Oxford
Slasher.

That night, Mulder opened and read.  As if for the first time.

After a lapse of months, two things immediately caught his attention.

One was the two lists of suspects drawn up from the bookstore and
library search, and from those who had access to the records of
photographs in the Bodleian Library.

None of the names were the same.  But there were two women with very
similar first names.  Janet, Janice.

And the piece of hosepipe that had been found at the last crime scene.
As well as the one before.  The one Jerry had noticed.

Janet, Janice.  Even though it was eleven at night, he rang Morse and
told him.  Morse said that they had checked out Janet, the woman who had
borrowed a book on the Ripper from the public library.  She was a nurse,
living alone in Cowley.

East Oxford.

Nothing against her.  She seemed to have no close male associates who
might be the killer.

As for Janice, the Bodleian Library night cleaner, she had also been
seen by the police, but also had no close male associates.

Cleaner.  Cleaner.

Next to the phone was a poster, advertising St John's upcoming
production of As You Like It.

Something about it tugged at Mulder's mind.

'Could they be the same woman?'

Morse paused.  'I suppose it's possible.  Janet was seen by PC Huntley,
and Janice by PC O' Brian.  There's no physical description, but both
are described as young women. The addresses are different too.'

'What are the addresses?'  Mulder held the phone to his ear while he
flicked through the file.  '16 James Street and - '

'Mulder?  Mulder?'

The line went dead.

Mulder ran.  To the porter's lodge.

As he ran a kaleidoscope of images and sounds filled his mind.

Mostly her voice.

'Don't eliminate suspects on the basis of a profile.... not a man to
match her, Margaret Hilda Thatcher.... a piece of black hosepipe.'

Yes.

'Bill, I need to get in touch with Dr Falconer's scout.  I left
something in her room after a tutorial, before she - anyway, I wonder if
it was found.'

'Sure, Mr Mulder.  Do you need it right now?'

Bill got out a list. 'Her home address is 16 James Street, Oxford.  But
she'll be in college tomorrow.  She does the staircases over on New Quad
nowadays.'

'Where is James Street?'

'East Oxford way.  Straight down Cowley Road, and it's a right turn -'

'Thanks.'

Mulder ran.  Down Broad Street, under the Bridge of Sighs, along the
shadows of New College Lane.  Out into the dim yellow light of the High.

He did not ask himself why he was running.  He could not bear to waste a
second.

He was running towards an answer.

Over Magdalen Bridge, under the tall imperious tower.  Across the little
municipal rotunda called the Plain.  Up Cowley Road, between tandooris
and the Jamaican eatery, past the video hire shop.

James Street.

For the first time, Mulder asked himself what the was going to do when
he found her.  He had no credentials, no jurisdiction, no nothing.

Nothing but knowledge.

He was going to be the first to know.

He walked up the narrow little street. It was typical of the streets
between Cowley and Iffley Roads.  Grimy Victorian terraces, interspersed
with those which had received the attention of young, impecunious
academics.

Number 16 was one of a row of Victorian worker's cottages.  Red brick.
It looked calm and peaceful.  A bare Virginia creeper hung in ghostly
stems from the wall.

He rang the doorbell.

No reply.

He pushed at the door.

It wouldn't move.

He went back to the garden, and picked up a flower pot.  Using it, he
broke open the glass panel on the door.  He slid his hand through the
aperture, and undid the lock.

A pale tracery of cut lines on his hand from the glass blossomed red.

He moved swiftly though the small house.  The front room was bare,
except for a huge sofa.  The kitchen too.  It looked uninhabited.

Nothing upstairs.  Light, clean, empty bedrooms, floors covered with
grey carpet remnants.  Some chalk marks at the edge of one of the
carpets, as if she were having the bedroom renovated.  Looked like
numbers.

Back down to the hall.

It was then that he saw the small door to the cellar stairs.

They were dark and narrow.  He couldn't find the light switch, and
groped his way down.

As he reached the bottom, the door closed softly above him.  The Yale
latch clicked.  Mulder turned his head sharply, but it was too late.

He was trapped.

He was so eager to find out what was down here that he almost didn't
care whether the wind or a human hand had closed the door.

At the bottom of the stairs, his fingers finally felt a light cord.  He
pulled.

He was standing in the only inhabited part of the house.  It was a large
room.  Grimy glass doors opened onto a tangled back garden, from which
faint light came.

Furniture crowded in.  A dirty orange sofa, its stuffing limp, three
chairs, a cupboard.  Even a fridge, wheezing.

It was a nest.  A love-nest, with a single object.

On the wall were clippings from the papers about the killer.  An immense
collage, several feet high.

And pictures of Jerry.  Big pictures, small pictures.  Hundreds of
pictures.

Most from the papers, but a few obviously not.  A few obviously older.
One taken from the College yearbook and blown up hugely.  Another cut
>from a college photo and enlarged.  One of Jerry on skis, filched from
somewhere, perhaps her desk.  One of Jerry in shorts and a white tee-
shirt, on her way to the tennis courts, racquet in hand, plainly a
snapshot taken without her knowledge.

And in every one of the snapshots she was wearing trousers.

Jerry hated having her photo taken.  Even though she was beautiful.
Mulder had once teased her -

He lost himself in memory.

Her room.  Rain beat down outside.   It was Sunday morning, and the
college was utterly quiet and still.

'Jerry, can I take your photo?'

Sweet lost paradise of her lush body naked and warm and unabashed.
Velvet skin.  Her full breasts.  The furled black fur of her mound.

'Thinking of starting a little private collection, Mulder?'

'Absolutely.  I do have to go home for a few of the holidays.  You know
I missed you at Thanksgiving.'

'Absolutely not.  You'll have to rely on your memory.'

She smiled at him through half-closed eyes.  'I'll give you something to
remember me by...'  Kissing and nipping his shoulder.  Her tongue warm,
intimate, making him shiver and tingle.

Nevertheless, he persisted.  'Tell me something.  Why do you never put
your photo on your book jackets?'

Her mouth stood still.  'Because it's cheesy.  And because I hate having
my photo taken.'

'Why?'

'I don't want to tell you.  But I do.'

The wetness of her mouth closed on his shaft, and in the exquisite
pleasure all thought was lost.

Mulder could hardly bear to leave the past behind.  The memories were so
vivid.  And for the first time, the pain of loss was washed clean of
guilt.

He hadn't wanted to hurt her that time, at least.

It was then that he opened the cupboard and saw what was inside.

Another picture of Jerry.  Huge, this time.  Larger than life.

No, not Jerry.  Jerry's head, superimposed on some hyperinflated barbie
doll body culled from a bridal magazine.

The thing was obscene beyond imagining.  The intelligent beauty of
Jerry's face sat grotesquely above the froufrou lace and satin of the
bridal gown, refusing to acknowledge the degradation.

Of course.

That was it.

He had not been the first to take Jerry Falconer for a man.

Jerry had been a role-model for the killer.

The killer had hoped to make Jerry a woman, by making himself a man.

Or had hoped to make himself a man in her eyes.

He was not the only one to have found an anaclitic object in her.

The killings were an attempt to impress her.  To make her love the poor
wretch who did them.  The poor silly wretch who thought she had been
born into the wrong body.

Also in the cupboard were five pairs of button-fly Levi 501's, the inner
seam of each stained with vaginal juices.  A truss, homemade by the
looks, supporting a piece of black rubber hose, cut to a seven-inch
size.

She's modest, anyway, Mulder thought wryly, with a faint glow of foolish
pride.

The print in the dust.  About the size of a toolbox.

He had to get to a phone.  He hadn't seen one upstairs.

It was then that he looked back at the wall.  On the bottom row were a
series of passport photos.

The victims.

The last was a photo of Jerry.  No.  A bad photo of a woman who looked a
little like her.

The next victim.

Beside it, a pentagram.  On the table, a book of Satanic magic by
Aleister Crowley.  there was a marker in it.  Mulder fumbled and opened
it, careless of fingerprints.

A spell for calling up the dead.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mulder grabbed the last passport photo, turned and ran for the French
windows.  It was no good trying the stairs.  Either she was up there, or
the wind had shut him in.

He wrapped his fist in the sleeve of his coat and the glass on the
French windows shattered.  He reached for the handle, and turned it in a
panic, three times, before he saw that the window was bolted, above and
below.  The cuts on his hands began bleeding as he tugged desperately at
the rusty lower bolt.  Then with a squeal, it gave, and he was out into
the dusty, abandoned garden, facing a six-foot-high brick wall.  He
sprang onto the coal bunker, grabbed the parapet, and pulled himself up
to the top of it, ignoring the pain in his hands.  Another garden.  He
leapt down, and knocked on the back door.

An elderly woman opened it.

'May I use your phone?'

''No.'  She slammed the door in his face.

No time to argue.

He ran along the entire series of gardens, over grass crisped with
frost, hurdling fences, scrambling over walls, pushing through hedges as
he went.  At last, over a higher brick wall than the others, he glimpsed
the oily glare of the street lights of Iffley Road.

He burst into the road, and turned abruptly left, gasping for breath,
the frosty air piercing his lungs.

The white neon light of a sign caught his eye.

'Samaritans.  Can we help you?'

The suicide squad.  The ones who never hung up on anyone.

He tore up the steps and rang the doorbell again and again.

A kindly student type in a pullover descended, and Mulder made himself
known, panting, hands bloody to the wrists.

'I've got to use your phone to ring the police.'

'Well, that's something we don't usually allow...'

'Please.'  Please please please.  Please.  Not more deaths.  No more
blood on my hands.

Something about his wild desperation reached the man.

'I'll probably get dropped from the roster for this, but okay.'

'Quickly'.

He was back, with the phone.

Mulder called Morse.

Morse wasted no time in reproach.

'I'll meet you there, and we'll have to try to identify the girl.  He's
probably stalking her right now.'

'He's taken his tools.'

'All right, I'm on my way.'

In three minutes, Morse swept up to the front steps, .

'I couldn't use the siren,' he explained.  'He might still be in the
area.'

Mulder got into the car.

'He is not a he, you know.'

'What?'

'He is not a he.  He is a she, a she who gets off on cross-dressing and
crotch-stuffing.  The rubber hosepipes - that's what she uses to make
her feel more like a man.  She's doing the murders in an effort at self-
transformation.  And there's a link to Jerry's death too.  But we don't
have all night to discuss this stuff.  She's out there right now,
searching for that next lucky lady, whose photo I have right here.'

'Jesus.  A dead ringer for Jerry.'

'Now, where can we get a quick match on the photo?'

'It's no good going to the Bodleian.  Presumably this is the photo from
there.  Damn, Oxford is so decentred.... Let's try sending a man to each
college to check out the matriculation photos.  It's the only hope of
finding her quickly enough.'

The team assembled at the Thames Valley Police Headquarters in St
Aldate's.  Each  was shown the photo, and cloudy photocopies made.  The
net spread out, awkwardly, unevenly, through the dense network of towers
and alleys that made up Central Oxford.

All that Morse and Mulder could do was wait.

Mulder paced nervously.  From time to time he sat down, arms resting on
his thighs, bandaged hands held in front of him, as if he were praying.
Morse remembered that uncanny stillness in the hospital.  The pacing
reminded him painfully of Jerry.

Within half an hour the call came.  Morse put it on speaker.

'I think we've got her, sir.  She's an Elizabeth Jansen, at New College.
We're proceeding to her residence now.  She's a second-year, outhoused.
New College give the address as 15 Plantation Road.'

'Are you sure, Fletcher?'

'Well, sir, I identified her from the college photo, and the porter
identified her from the photocopy.'

'All right.  I won't call the others back yet.  Better be safe.'

Morse turned to Mulder.  'You stay here, Mr Mulder.  I've indulged you
thus far, but I can't take you with me any further.'

'But I can help - I know the killer - '

'Sorry, son.  It stops here.  Now, go back to John's and I promise I'll
keep you informed.'

With that he was gone.

Mulder stood up.  Useless to argue.  Useless to follow.  Morse would
only send him away again.

He began to walk slowly back along St Aldate's.  Tom Tower loomed out of
the mist, huge and oddly, obscurely menacing.  Jerry had once called it
'the phallus of Oxford - and look, Mulder, two tiny little testicles!'
pointing at the small towers.  As he thought of this, he realised that
the memory of her was too distant, now, to warm him.

She had never seemed so dead.

With that thought came another.

The killer wanted to resurrect her.

He - Mulder had decided it was courteous to speak of the killer as he -
would have to change his method for that, if he was going to use this
victim somehow.

Mulder's steps slowed.

He had always done them in their own houses. But - Mulder suddenly
recalled, in photographic vividness, the page of the Crowley book on
necromancy.  Draw the circle, prepare the brazier.

He's never going to do all that at the victim's house.  He's either
going to kill her there, or take her somewhere else, alive -

Like home.

The chalk marks on the bedroom floor.  The numbers.

He was drawing a circle.  The sick fuck was drawing a circle.  To call
Jerry up.  He was going to use the victim somehow.

Mulder began to run.  A twisting course.  The cobbles of Merton Street
hurt his feet.

Had Morse sent a squad to the house in James Street?  Or had they all
gone to Plantation Road?

He stopped at a phone box in the High.  It was out of order.

The porter at Magdalen wouldn't let him use the phone.  'But there's a
public phone in the JCR.'

It was out of order too.

Mulder couldn't wait any longer.  He ran, his heart pounding, over the
bridge again, feeling his legs begin to ache with tiredness, turning
into James Street.

It was silent. Peaceful.

At number 16 the curtains were drawn.  Mulder could see a light in the
upstairs window.  A light that had not been on earlier.

The police?  Or the killer?

The front door was closed, but only on the latch.  As quietly as he
could, Mulder pushed it open.

No sound.  But he felt sure someone was in the house.

He climbed the creaking stairs.  Burst into the upstairs bedroom.

It was brilliantly lit.  A single wooden chair held a girl with dark
smooth hair, naked. The limp body flopped forward against the bonds that
held her.

She was nude and there was something deeply unerotic about her extreme
vulnerability.

Mulder ran to her side.  She was alive.  Merely unconscious.

The door closed.  A bolt slid into place.

>From the door, the killer turned to Mulder with a wide chilling smile.

'Mr Mulder.  I've been expecting you.'

Mulder saw the black snout of the gun levelled at his heart.

He or she or whoever she was disconcerted because of the exactness of
androgyny.  Seeing this creature in the street, Mulder would have felt
uncertain of what to call him - or her.  The uncertainty did not
evaporate, even with what he now knew.  How old was this creature?
Twenty-five, perhaps.  She was about five foot eight, short for a man,
tall for a woman.  Long, denim-clad legs, just slightly the wrong shape.
A conspicuous bulge in the groin.  Dresses to the left.  It was the
torso which looked wrong.  There was still a waist, and the shoulders
were narrow.  The hair was very short.  There were gold studs in both
ears.

And the face was purely insane.

She came across the room, gun still pointing at him.  'Go and stand by
the wall.  Hands against the wall.  Arms spread.  Now spread your legs.
That's right.'

She frisked him briskly, with extreme lack of interest.

'Now, put your hands behind you.'  She handcuffed him.

He turned, and she hit him hard across one cheek.  'Did I say you could
turn?'

He was silent.  His eyes watered from the blow.

'Do you know why you're here?  Do you?'

'No.'

'I knew you'd come.'

'You're very clever.'  Soothing.  Calm. Don't lose your head, Mulder.

'I want to bring her back.  He should never have taken her away from me.
You want her back too, don't you?'  A cunning look.

'Do you know who killed her?'

'I guessed. He has already become.  Transformed himself.'

'Tell me.  I don't know.'  Winningly.  'I'm not clever like you.'

The killer smiled.  'It won't do you any good if I do tell you.'

Ominous.

'I still want to know.  Let me die happy.'

'You do know.'

Hopeless.

'Who is she?'  He glanced at the unconscious girl.

'The piece?  Bait, of course.  And something else.  We need blood to
call Jerry up.'

The killer bent down, and began rolling up the carpet.  'Here, you
help'.  A laugh, unmistakably female.  She felt rebuked by it herself,
and turned it into a cough.  'Push it with your chin.  Go on.'

He tried, but couldn't exert enough pressure, crouched and vulnerable,
his hands behind him.  She struck him again, this time full across the
mouth.  A heavy ring on her little finger cut his lip wide.  He saw her
eyeing the blood that welled up.

It was strange, but he felt no fear at all, though he knew now that she
meant to kill him.

'Why do you want Jerry to come back?'

'You ask too many goddam questions.'

The tip of one black boot kicked him, expertly, in the groin. He
crumpled to the floor in a red haze of pain.

He straightened up, and managed to say,  'You loved her too, didn't
you?'

'For much longer than you, Mr Mulder.  I thought at first just the
surgery - then I might have her.  I knew she was lonely.  Never any men
around.  She was too good for them.  Too clever.  But then you came, and
she turned to you, and I knew I'd have to do more.  Much more.  To make
her notice.  I hated you then, and I hate you now.'

She laughed again.  'She thought I didn't know.  I knew all right.
Stains on the sheets, oh, it was ugly.  How did you dare to touch her?
How did you dare?   You're not even a man.  A boy.'

'But you started slashing people before I came.'

'Just to get some relief.  I couldn't have her yet, because I hadn't -
become.'

'What about the girls you killed?'

'I had to do that, to become.  To become a man.  But this one'll be the
last.  Then I can have Jerry.'

She paused.  Suddenly a vulnerable boy, a beaten boy, looked out.  It
was an uncanny reflection of himself.

'I need her, you see.  I'm very lonely without her.'

'What are you going to do?'

She was down on hands and knees making more chalk marks.  Now she
straightened.  The unconscious girl's stertorian breathing grew heavier.
The killer raised her eyes slowly, and looked at Mulder.

'I think she'll come back for you.  I think she can't stand seeing you
in pain.  I think she'll come to save you.  If I give her the power with
the girl's blood.  Then she can have the girl's body and we can be
together.'

She came towards him, and using a jack-knife began systematically
cutting away his clothing.  He made no attempt to struggle.  The air was
cold against his naked body.  Eyeing him, she walked sideways towards
the door.

'I'm going to get a chair for you.  Don't even think of jumping out the
window.  If you do, when I get back I'll shoot this girl.'

He had no choice but to stay, watching over the girl, the girl who
looked like a younger, dumber Jerry.

The killer came back with a small wooden chair and a coil of rope.  She
ordered him to sit, his hands behind the chair back.  Systematically,
expertly, she tied him into position.

'The police may arrive here, you know.  They know about this house.'

'They're all staking out her house in North Oxford.'  Contemptuously.

'Tip your head back, so you can look at me'.  She forced his head back,
pulling his hair.  'Why aren't you scared?'

He looked straight into her eyes.

'I don't care if I die.  I just want to be with her again.'

Strange to tell the truth so simply to someone about to kill him.

'But I want you to be scared.  She'll only come if you're scared.  And I
know what makes you scared.  I heard you tell her once.  I used to
listen to you both, you know.  Outside the door.  Ever read 1984, Mr
Mulder?  It's just next year, isn't it?  Room 101. Everyone has
something that makes them sweat.'

She turned dramatically.  He saw the cigarette lighter in her hand.

'For you, it happens to be fire.'  She smiled.

She lit a cigarette and held it against the skin of his chest.  Then
over the nipple. Then on his right thigh.  Holding them in place until
the flesh charred.

The fourth time, he couldn't stop himself from screaming.

She held his hand over the flame of the lighter.  He screamed and
screamed and gasped and screamed.  He could smell his own skin burning.
Sweet sick smell.

'I could just go on like this till I killed you.  Shock might do it.'
She walked around him.

'Or I could put out your eyes.'

'Or I could set fire to the house and leave you to fry.'

In the vivid light, his skin shone with the sweat of terror.

He wasn't thinking.  He was only feeling.  Trying to endure.  To live.
Somewhere there was someone that could make the pain stop.  Jerry.  If
only Jerry were here to kiss his tears away.  To soothe him.

He sensed that his fear, his pain were exciting the killer.  They had
been wrong, wrong all along, about the killings not being sexual.
Misled by the absence of semen.

Actually she loved her work.

Trapped by his own stupid certainties, he hadn't seen the extremes of
danger.  The depth of what she might do.

Now, she held the lighter flame to the soles of his feet.  And he
screamed into the cold unhearing night 'Jerry!  Jerry!  Jerry!'
---------------------------------------------------------------------

In Plantation Road, Morse was growing restless.  'Something's wrong.
Her housemates said she went out several hours ago, and she's normally
back by midnight.  He may have lifted her somewhere else.  You're sure
there was no sign of them at James Street?'

'Not when I left there, sir.'

At that moment, the police radio buzzed.

'Inspector Morse, we've had a call to the station.  Anonymous.  A woman.
The called said there's a man in trouble in James Street.  Said she
could hear screams.'

'Jesus God Almighty.'

Morse turned the car and it leapt for the bridge to East Oxford.

'Fletcher, you fool, did you try every room?'

'Of course, sir.'

'What about the garden shed?'

'Never occurred to me.  Don't even know if there was one.'

'You bloody idiot.  Parked cars?'

'There were hundreds, sir.'

Did you check the boots?'

'Er, no, sir.'

'Christ.'

'Is the man Mr Mulder, sir?'

'Probably.  St John's called half an hour ago to say he hadn't come in.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The killer had stopped hurting him.

At first, relief from the terrible pain was all he could feel.

Then he opened bleared eyes.

She was standing still, poised.  Listening.

'She's coming, Mr Mulder.'  She ran her hands over his burns.  Pain
lanced through him again. 'Can you feel it?  Can you feel her coming?
You feel it, don't you?'

The odd thing was that he did.  He did feel her quite close.

'Time for the blood, and the invocations.'

She moved around to the girl.  She picked up the knife that lay on the
floor, and held it to the girl's naked breast, testing its edge.

Then Mulder acted.

The only leverage he had was with his feet.  Ignoring the crippling
agony of his burned soles, he pushed himself off and ran straight at
her, knocking her off-balance.  Then, using the chair to which he was
fastened as a battering ram, he drove it hard into her ribs.

She dropped the knife; he heard the sharp clatter.  Lying on the floor,
still tied, he couldn't stop her bending to pick up the knife again.
Reaching out desperately, he managed to kick it out of her hand with his
bare foot.

She flung herself on him, punching and pummelling.  Hitting and spitting
and kicking.

Then straightened, mouth wide with horror.

The street was full of blue and red flashing lights.

Swift as a cat, she picked up the knife.  Then she cut the girl's bonds.
Holding the unconscious, slumped body, she advanced to the window.

'Inspector?  I've got a girl here, and also a boy.  And a knife.  I want
a car, and a driver.  No questions, no roadblocks.  Otherwise I'll send
them both down to you a  piece at a time.'

'Okay.  Calm down.  We don't want anyone to get hurt.'

Mulder lay on the floor where he had fallen.  His ribs burned, and there
were dazzling, blinding pains from the burns all over him.  His face was
bruised.  But he was alive.

So far.

The killer came to him.  With quick sharp jabs, she slit the ropes
binding him.   He fell onto his bruised side, and lay gasping.

'Come on.  I need you too.  She's near.  Can you feel her?  Get up.  Put
your jeans on.'

'I can't'.

'All right, you'll have to take a coat.  Here, take hers.'

The little black coat was ludicrously small on Mulder's tall body,  She
did up two buttons for him, holding the knife all the while.  It
shackled his shoulders.  He saw her slide the gun into her own coat
pocket.

'Now, you go first, and I'll follow with the gun and the girl.
Remember, I'll blow her apart if you try anything.  Keep your hands on
top of your head.'

Slowly, they descended the stairs.  Mulder could hear the unconscious
girl bouncing sluggishly off the walls in the killer's awkward grip.

'What did you give her?'

'Barbs.  Triple dose.  And I slugged her too.'

'Guess she's not going to come to, then.'

'Shut up.'

A dazzle of brilliant searchlights.

She came out behind him, half-carrying and half-dragging the girl. 'Turn
those lights off!'   The police turned down the lights, but did not
extinguish them.

Suddenly through the dazzle Mulder saw Morse.  Morse caught his eye.

Mulder stealthily took the hand of the unconscious girl with his own
cuffed hand.  In the dazzle, the killer didn't see.  He got a good grip
on the slight, bird-boned wrist.  Then -

Morse shouted.  'Down!'

Mulder dropped full length on his belly.  The girl fell on top of him in
a sprawl of legs and hair.

A police marksman shot the killer in the shoulder, then in the leg.

She crumpled to the ground, screaming thinly, while six policemen closed
in around her.

Fox Mulder fell into a velvet black darkness.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

When he woke, he was in Jerry's room.  This should have surprised him,
but somehow it did not.

Jerry was standing by the window as he came through the door.  She
turned and ran to his arms.  She looked just the same.

He held her with extreme care.  How do you hold, kiss, love the dead?

She laughed at him and his fears, showed him her unmarred body and he
ran his hands over the whole of her.  He buried his mouth in her hair.
Kissed her eyelids and her ears and her throat and the inside of her
wrists.

'I love you', he finally made his stubborn tongue say.

'I know,' she said.  'I've always known.  I've come to say I'm sorry.
That's why I came back.  And to say goodbye.'

'You don't have to be sorry.'

'I am.  I wanted to save you and I couldn't.'

'You did, somehow.  Last night.  When I called you, you came.'

'Yes.  Just enough.  I don't know how I did it, to this day.  But I
called the station.  They came for you.  But that's not what I wanted.
I wanted to make you whole.  To make you see the beauty you are.'

He didn't argue, just held the sweet miracle of her face in his long
hands.  'I didn't save you either.  I wanted to.'

'Maybe we were both wrong to try.  Maybe what we both need is not to be
saved, but to be free.'

Eyes, look your last.  Arms, take your last embrace.

When he awoke his pillow was wet with tears.  But in his heart was a
long, deep silence.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day, he found that he was in hospital, with a lot of bandages
on .

Someone was sitting beside his bed.

'Jerry?'

'Fox, it's your mother.  It's Mom.'  She tried to smile reassuringly.

'Mom.'  He held out a bandaged hand.

'They tell me you're a hero.  That you saved a girl.  I'm very proud.'
She gave the bandaged hand a small squeeze.

'I seem to have knocked myself about.'  I sound very English these days,
he thought.

'You've got some - burns.  And three cracked ribs.  But you'll be fine,
Fox.'

'Will I?'

'Of course you will.'

His mouth settled into patience.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

As soon as Mulder was discharged, he went to her grave.

Her knew the real goodbyes had been said, in dreams, in darkness, but he
needed to make a formal gesture.  He needed to offer amends.

She was buried deep in St Cross' Cemetery. The small graveyard was thick
with overgrown yews, but he knew she had liked it.  'It's untidy and
gothic, like Oxford',  she had once said.

The earth on her grave was still bare.

The headstone was in place, though.

'Geraldina Mary Falconer.  1946-1983.  I know that my Redeemer liveth.'

She would have found that hokey.  She would have wrinkled up her nose
and laughed.  If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that Jerry
did not know that her redeemer livethed.

Presumably it had been put up by her father.  Whom she hated.

Mulder was glad he had not been to the funeral.  When he thought of
Jerry's father, and still more of her mother, wild thoughts circled and
swooped.

Mulder had finally taken the bartender's advice.  He had brought her
flowers.

Even though it was too late.

Dark purple freesias, because she loved their scent and because they
were dark like her.  Lilies, for their whiteness, the whiteness of her
skin.  Crimson roses, for love.  And for blood.

Someone had been before him, though.

A bright spray of daffodils lay on the cold bare earth.  He bent to
them.  No card.

For the first time, Mulder thought about the flowers in her room.

He had assumed that she had bought them.  She had left secure hiding
when Morse had told her that Peter was the author of the letters, and
she had gone to his room.  There would have been time to buy the
daffodils, though daffodils were a rare flower in November, not to be
obtained at garages or supermarkets.  It had been a Thursday; lateish
closing.

Jerry had been killed by someone she knew.  They had always known that.
Her hands were unmarked.  Her face.  No signs of struggle.

Killers who know the victim often make reparation afterwards.

This looked like a classic reparation gesture, and it had to be the
killer.  Unless a third person had brought daffodils to the room and to
the grave.  Unlikely.

Mulder knew better than anyone that flowers were a hopeless attempt to
fix something irretrievably broken.  He had brought them himself.

Had Morse - had anyone - checked to see who had bought the flowers?

Suddenly he knew it was the killer.  The other killer.  Her killer.

Mulder looked at the daffodils again.  He unbound them, slowly.  He held
the fresh green stalks in his damaged hands.

He took the petals in his fingers and tore them into shreds.  Then he
crushed the stalks underfoot.

He put his own flowers on the grave in their place.

There was just one thing left to do.

He went to see Morse.  It was some hours before Morse could see him, and
when he did he was more exasperated than interested.

'No, we never checked on the daffodils.  It didn't seem relevant.  And
to be honest, son, it still doesn't.  Anyone could bring daffodils.  I
like them myself.  Wordsworth and all that.'

'I see all that, sir.'  Morse wryly noted the 'sir'.  The puppy look
that went with it.  'But I'd really like to know.'

'Why don't you go back to your degree course, Mr Mulder?  Leave criminal
psych for finals?  Haven't you had enough excitement for one term?'

'Excitement isn't quite how I'd describe it, with respect.  And if you
don't want to find the man who killed Jerry, I do.'

'Don't be ridiculous, Mr Mulder.  It's precisely because I do want to
find the killer that I'm not willing to spare a man to trudge around the
Oxford florists asking about daffodils, when probably two hundred
bunches were sold that day.'

'What if I were to do it, sir, but to say that you had authorised it?'

'I can see you're going to do it, whether I authorise it or not.  Oh
yes, I've got to know you rather well.  I suppose I might as well
authorise you.  But this time, no heroics.  If you find a man who bought
daffodils and who was carrying a big knife at the time, don't tackle him
alone.'

Mulder smiled.  The crooked, battle smile.  'I won't do heroics if you
give me backup.'

'Get on with it, Mr Mulder.'  Morse waved him out.  But not before they
had exchanged smiles.

There were over fifty outlets that sell flowers in the Oxford area.
Mulder made a list, and worked systematically, from upmarket Daisies,
where the assistants were not florists but - my dear - artistes, to
downmarket Jemini, which specialised in funeral wreaths made in the
shape of harps and puppies.  He acquired a list of eleven people who had
bought daffodils on the Thursday in question, but it was an
unsatisfactory list because so many florists had not kept any kind of
record.

Then Mulder got a break.

A tiny, scrupulously clean florist in the outer suburb of Marston, run
by an elderly lady, a plump refined elderly lady who beamed at him.

'Excuse me, but I'm making enquires on behalf of Chief Inspector Morse
of the Oxfordshire Police.  I'm looking for a man who bought daffodils
on Thursday 10 December, and again sometime last week.'

'How fascinating.  I'll have a look at my ledger, but I'm certain I can
help you.  One of my most regular customers.  I can't believe he's in
trouble with the police.  Such a nice man.  So quiet and polite always.
He buys daffodils once a week, for his mother's grave, even when they
weren't in season.  The odd thing is that about two months ago, he
suddenly came in on a Thursday - Saturday is his usual day - and bought
a much larger bunch than usual - all the daffodils in the shop, in fact.
I was on the verge of asking him about it, but somehow he wasn't the
sort of man to gossip, so I held my tongue.  I did wonder if it was
perhaps the anniversary of her death.  Poor man.  Such devotion!  But I
remember it perfectly.  And I expect the credit card company would have
a  record of it.'

'He paid by credit card?'

'Oh, yes.  He usually paid cash, but he bought a dozen bunches that day,
and it came to well over fifty pounds.  Out of season, you know.  They
were actually the first forced daffs of winter.  I can confirm it by
looking in the ledger - I always keep an extra record of authorisation
numbers - '

Mulder held his breath while she fumbled through a small ledger.  'Here
it is.  10 December, Authorisation Number 543.'

'What was the credit card?'

'Visa.  I'm afraid that's the only one I take.'

And he was here again recently?'

'Oh yes.  And that was odd, too, because he bought two bunches instead
of the usual one.'

'When was this?'

'Last week.  No, Monday this week.  I remember because it was the day
they announced that the dear Princess of Wales is expecting another
baby, and I said to him, isn't that marvellous?  Such a lovely girl -
woman, I should say.'

'Do you have a record of his name?'

'Oh, no.  But I can tell it you.  His name is Mr Paul Newsome, and I
know he works at the Bodleian Library because he said so once when we
were talking about books.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------

25 Ferry Road, Marston.

A neat house. Net curtains in the windows.  Red geraniums in pots on the
steps.

Mulder knocked.  The brass door knocker gleamed at him.  But there was
no reply.

He thought for a moment.  Then he wrote a short note and pushed it
through the letter box slit in the door.

'Dear Mr Newsome,

I would very much like to see you regarding the death of Jerry Falconer.
Please come to my rooms this evening, in St John's.  The porter will
direct you.  Sincerely, Fox Mulder.'

Then he settled down to wait.

The porter was insurance.  If Newsome had to ask the porter where his
rooms were, he might be less apt to remove Mulder from the earth at
once, since the porter would recall him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

At ten past nine, there was a light tap on the door.

Mulder opened it.

A man stood outside, his face tired and lined.  He must have been
fifteen years older than Mulder, but it seemed more.

'I've come to tell you everything, Mr Mulder,'  he said.  His voice
echoed with a weariness that went beyond the physical.  'I know how you
found me.  The woman in the flower shop warned me.  I know you know.
May I sit down?'

Mulder gestured towards a chair.  He was speechless.  He wanted Newsome
to fight.  Anything.  So he could get his hands around his neck and
choke the life out of him.  But Newsome's sad, calm politeness defeated
him.  Newsome began to speak, evenly, wearily, as if the words simply
flowed from him without volition.

'I lived with my mother until I was thirty-two.  I loved her very much.
It sounds odd, but we were a perfectly happy couple.  She did the
cooking and cleaning for me, and she had plenty of quiet friends at the
local Methodist church.  And I got a job at the Bodleian Library when I
couldn't complete my doctorate.  It was always a grief to her that I
didn't finish.  I regret that.  The only thing I do regret, really.  I
think I chose the wrong subject.  Too adventurous, perhaps, for me.'

'Then one day my mother said she was going for a walk, and hours went
by, and she didn't come back.  It was a very cold, wet night.  I didn't
know what to do.  I rang the police and the John Radcliffe Hospital and
everything.  It turned out that she'd gone into the river off the
towpath.  To this day they don't know whether she slipped, or was
pushed.  Or whether she went in by herself.  She drowned, anyway.  And I
was quite alone.'

'The day after the funeral I went into work as usual.  I didn't want
anyone at work to know.  And I was processing admissions, also as usual,
and suddenly she was there.  Dr Falconer.  Jerry.  She'd come to renew
her reader's pass because she'd just got her Fellowship at St John's.
She noticed the photo of Mother on my desk, and she said, what lovely
daffodils.  I'd put Mother's favourite flowers in front of it, you see.
And before I could stop myself my eyes filled with tears.  And she asked
me very gently what was the matter.  And I told her my mother had died.
I managed to stop myself crying, it's not at all private there.  She
just sat and held my hand for a few minutes.  And at the end I said.
'Well, I'm most dreadfully sorry, I've made such an idiot of myself.'
And she looked at me, and I've never seen dark eyes so light a face.
And she said, 'Oh no, Mr Newsome, it's I who am dreadfully sorry'.

'She was the only person who'd understood.  I suppose I fell in love
with her at once.'

Fell in love.  A phrase Mulder could never have used.  Redolent of
Victorian Valentines.  But Newsome seemed quite unselfconscious.

'You have to understand that she was all I thought about.  I wrote
letters to her.  Hundreds of them.  Of course I never sent them.  I kept
a diary about her.  I know everything she does in public.  I go to all
her lectures when they're not in working hours. Of course, that's where
I found out so much about serial killings and abnormal psychology.  It's
odd; she talks so frankly in them, yet she was really such a modest
woman.  At least, when I first knew her. '

Modest!  Mulder almost laughed.  Almost choked.

'It's strange; almost as if I was a young girl with a pop star.  But
she's real.  I've even met her twice at parties.'

'People only saw her cleverness, Mulder.  They just saw her shine.  I
saw that, but I also saw what a sweet womanly spirit she was.  She would
have made a wonderful mother.  She would have been happy just looking
after the right man.'

Mulder felt sick.  He had a sudden, miserable vision of the bridal-doll
Jerry in the serial killer's cellar.

At least he had never wanted to reduce her like that.

'Lately I thought about her so much that I got a bit unhappy, so I
started going to a shrink, well, not a real shrink, the university
counsellor.  It was my GPs idea, I hadn't been sleeping, and he felt it
would be the best plan.  And I said, there's this woman I've liked for a
long time, and I really really think I'm the right person for her, the
one who could make her happy.  So the counsellor said, why don't you ask
her out?  And I did.  But she said she was busy.  I tried again, and she
still said she was busy.  I began to see that she might not know what
was best for her.  That she might be badly advised.  Or perhaps just
shy.  Or hesitant.  I think she'd been brainwashed a bit - no, I don't
mean brainwashed, but affected, you know, affected - by the women's
liberation movement.  I think she thought she could do without a man.
And in a way she could.  But I thought I could make her happy.'

'I tried to find other ways to tell her.  I sent her long-stemmed red
roses.  And once I sent a diamond ring.  I knew that was silly, but it
was such fun choosing it for her.  She sent it back, of course, with
such a nice note.  It said, 'I can't possibly accept such an
extravagant present, though it was most kind of you to think of me.  I
think you're still bouleversÈ by your mother's death.  I'm so very sorry
that you're still missing her so much.'  That was so kind.  Because I
was, of course.'

'After that, I left her alone. I still went to all her lectures and I
used to say hello to her in the street.  I often watched her windows at
night in the vacations, when no-one was about.  Just to see her moving
around.'

'I don't know what made me decide to approach her again, but I think it
was this article.'  He handed Mulder a small cutting from the Oxford
Times.  The paper was rubbed, beginning to yellow. It said, ' Students
Arrested in Poison-Pen Probe'.

'And it said the victim was a woman don at John's.  She was the only
woman don at John's, and the paper made it clear that there was a tie-up
with the Oxford Slasher.  So I knew it was her.  I thought this might be
my chance.  To show her I could be some use to her.  To protect her.  So
I went out and bought some daffodils as a surprise for her, and I waited
outside her rooms.'

Mulder almost groaned aloud.  The arrest of Peter Cartwright had brought
murderer and victim both to the same place at the same time.

'I waited for ages.  Her scout saw me there and asked me what I was
doing.  I told her I was waiting for Jerry, and she just smiled and went
away.  Suddenly I heard Jerry's feet on the stairs.  I could never
mistake her footstep for anyone else's.  She always walked so fast.
Took the stairs so quickly.'

'She had a huge bunch of roses in her arms.  White ones.  With a very
strong smell.  Almost - overpowering.  I could smell her scent too.
That soft lily-of-the-valley smell.  Old-fashioned.  I used to think it
was like the essence of her real self.  Under all that modernity.  She
was wearing black, as she always did.  Black trousers, and a black
jumper.  Skin-tight.  I don't think she really knew the kind of effect
those clothes have on men.  All men.  She had such a beautiful body,
didn't she?  You know that better than anyone, don't you, Mr Mulder?
But you didn't know her mind, her spirit.  Not like I did.'

'I gave her the daffodils, and she thanked me.  I think she thought it
was because she'd been away, ill or something.  I started telling her
something of what I'd always felt about her.  And she just brushed me
aside.  As if she was too preoccupied even to look at me.  Even to think
about me.  I said - this is the part I can't forget, and I can hardly
bring myself to say it, still - I said, you're the most beautiful and
brilliant woman I've ever met, and it would be a privilege beyond my
dreams just to be allowed to be an ordinary friend, just to talk with
you sometimes, meet for lunch perhaps.  And she looked at me, and she
didn't really see me, she sort of looked to the side of me, as people do
when they're embarrassed, and she said, 'That's so sweet of you, but I'm
afraid I hardly ever have a lunchhour free these days.'  So I said, what
about dinner?  and she said, still looking down, 'I feel terrible
brushing you off like this, but this term's very difficult.  Perhaps
next term?'  And then I knew she meant, get lost.  Go away.  I couldn't
believe it.  I'd finally got up the courage to ask her, ask her
properly, and she was saying no.  She wasn't just saying no, she was
saying never.'

'You know, it's a relief to say all this.  You're the only one I could
say it to.'

'She'd ignored me.  Erased me.  I should have gone away then.  Killed
myself.  Gone into the river like mother.  I wish to God I had.  You
must believe me.'

'I went as far as the next landing.  On the landing was a toolbox; I
think the college workman must have left it there.  It was open.  Inside
there was a length of rope, and a jack knife, and a few rags.  All on
the top tray.  When I saw them, a picture came into my mind, of her
lying spreadeagle on the bed, tied up, gagged, with the knife at her
throat.'

'Then I heard the door of her room opening.  She came out, so I dodged
behind some cleaning things in the next corridor.'

'I followed her.  I took the daffodils.  She'd just left them outside
the door.  I took the tools too.  I don't know what I meant to do.  Then
she let herself into your room with a key.  She shut the door, and I
read your name on it.  And that's when I knew.  Knew that she and you
were lovers.  I don't know even now why that made me so angry.  It
wasn't as though she and I had ever had a relationship.  But you see, I
thought she was like Diana, the goddess Diana.  Or Athene.  Remote and
unapproachable.  And not sexual.  And so I didn't mind so much that she
never noticed me.'

'I slid the door open, very quietly.  Just a crack.  She never noticed.
She put the wireless on.  Radio 3.  It was one of the Mozart Piano
Concertos. No 20, I think.  I didn't mean to do more than watch her.'

'But when I saw what she did then -'

'What did she do?'

She sniffed the sheets.  Your sheets.  And gave a little sigh, like
someone coming home.  Then she lay down on the bed.  And smiled, and
stretched her arms.  Then she put her hand down there.  On herself.
Over her trousers.'

'I couldn't bear it.  The humiliation!  I'd been with her and she hadn't
even been able to see me, whereas just lying about on your bed was
enough for her.  And it also made me terribly - well, it had its
effect.'

'So then you jumped her didn't you, you sick, stupid fuck?  You jumped
her, and you hurt her -'

Newsome was shaking now, his face greenish white and shining with sweat.

'I don't know why but I thought, she's obsessed with the killer.  I knew
she'd been scared about the notes.  How did I know? Oh, everyone knew.
Oxford is like that.  And I wanted to hurt her as much as I could.  Hurt
her like she'd hurt me.  And I also wanted her to think about me.  I
wanted to get inside her head.  At first I don't think I even meant to
kill her.'

'How did you overpower her?'

'When I came in, she stood up.  And then I just hit her on the head.
And tied her.  And gagged her.  But I waited until she'd come round
before I - did things.'

'I still can't believe that was what I wanted.  It wasn't the blood, or
the pain.  It was the look of terror in her eyes.'

'By the end, she was terrified of me.  She was seeing me.  I mattered to
her.  And yet she wasn't seeing me at all.  She was seeing a thing I had
become.  All I'd ever wanted was for her to see me.  Now I was the one
who had made it impossible.  So I tried one last thing.  I tried sex.
She was still so beautiful.  Even with the blood.  It was easy.  I hated
it, but I couldn't stop myself.'

'When I finished, I realised she was dead.  It must have been the blood
loss.'

'Then I put my flowers in a vase.  I put her flowers on the floor by the
window.  Moonlight was pouring in there.  I arranged the roses.  A bed
or roses and thorns for her.  Oh, my sleeping princess.  My lovely Snow
White.  Then I arranged her on them.  'Death lies on her like an
untimely frost/ Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.'  And I held
her hand for a long time.  Her blood looked black in the moonlight, on
the roses.'

'I wanted to stay forever.   But I had to go.  So I left her there for
you.  I thought if she were found in your rooms, they would think you
had killed her.  And that was just, because in a way, you did.  If it
hadn't been for you, I wouldn't have hated her.  I could never have
harmed a hair of her head.  It was you who killed her, not me.  You
corrupted her, so that she had to die.  We could have been happy, she
and I.'

'You didn't even love her as I did.  Oh, you think I don't know.  You
think I don't know.  Why was she alone that night, Mr Mulder?  When
she'd been so frightened?  Why was she waiting for you?  Why weren't you
there, waiting for her?'

Mulder swallowed.

'Did you love her?  You didn't, did you?'

Mulder raised his head.

'I did love her.  I just didn't know it.  Until she was dead.'

'At least I loved her when she was alive.  At least I could know I loved
her before she was dead.  You - you can only love the dead.  The dead
don't answer back.  The dead don't make demands.'

'Which of us is the sick fuck, Mr Mulder?  Which of us?'

Mulder fought back tears.  He managed to answer quietly.  'Both of us,
Mr Newsome.  Neither of us was what she needed.'  His voice hardened.
'But only one of us killed her for it.'

'What are you planning to do?'

'I'm planning to turn you in to Morse.'

'I thought you'd want to kill me yourself.'  Undeniable disappointment.
You didn't need to be Sigmund Freud to see the motive, either.

'I did.  But now I've met you, I don't have the stomach for it.  We're
too alike.  It would be self-hatred on a grand scale.  And Jerry would
have laughed her ass off.'

His eyes flashed.  He was on the point of telling him not to make free
with Jerry's name.  'So you think gaol?'

'That will do.'

'I'm afraid not.'

With incredible speed for a man of his years, Newsome made a dart for
the door.  Mulder was just behind him.  As they raced across the quad,
lights went on, and voices cried out, 'What's up?'  Mulder was gaining,
when his foot hit something in the grass.  At his speed, it was fatal.
He went down heavily, his foot turned under him.  A sickening pain shot
through his ankle.

'Get after that man!'  he yelled.  'He killed Dr Falconer!'

Bystander intervention.  A classical concept of social psychology.
Where many people are present,. they will not intervene in a crime, each
assuming it to be the responsibility of one of the others.

Mulder saw theory enacted in practice.  The students milled about, but
no-one actually chased Newsome.  Instead, they all began to talk about
Falconer's murder.

It was so obviously hopeless that even Fox Mulder didn't have a word to
say.

He rolled over to see what his foot had hit.

It was a small metal sign.  'Please keep off the grass', it said,
genteelly.

Cursing, Mulder got to his feet.  A red-hot pain shot through his ankle.
Someone propped him.  'Better let the college nurse take a look at that,
mate.'

Newsome had gone.

Suddenly limp, passive, quiescent, Mulder allowed himself to be led
away.

The nurse fussed about with bandages and hot milk, and Mulder asked
tiredly for a phone.

He rang Morse and told him briefly what had happened.  He hung up.

He didn't care if they never found Newsome.  He didn't care if Newsome
was next door.  He didn't care if his ankle was broken.  He just wanted
to sleep and sleep and sleep.

The nurse observed the effect of two valium in the milk, and smiled.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

A rowing crew practising for Torpids found a body in the Isis two
mornings later.  It was Paul Newsome's.  In his hand he held the
battered, crushed stump of a daffodil stalk.

Later that day, Fox Mulder had a visitor.

He was watching TV, his injured foot propped on some books.  A timid
knock.  'It's open,' he called.

In came Phoebe Green.

She carried a bunch of flowers too.  Harmless, common, burgundy
chrysanthemums, with no power to hurt or remind.

'Hello.  I heard you were laid up, so I thought I'd come and cheer you.'

'Going to tell me some Jack the Ripper stories?'

She blushed.  'I hear you've probably had enough rippers for now.
Congratulations, by the way.  You've got the behavioural scientists in
an envious stew.'

'I don't know whether it's quite the thing to congratulate people on
being tortured, maimed and listed as indirect causes of suicide, but
thank you.'

She sat down, too close to him.  She took his hand.  She ran her
fingers, as if absently, along his thigh.

'I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry.  Not only about Jerry, but
about - the way I behaved.'

He looked at her.

She wasn't sorry.  She just wanted to get on his good side because now
he was famous and his credit value had soared.

Mulder smiled.  The great thing about Phoebe was that she was hopelessly
corrupt.  He could not corrupt her any further.  Or hurt her.  He felt
completely and comfortingly safe with her.  So safe that he almost
laughed aloud.

'Well, there's something you can do for me.  To make some amends.'

'What?  Anything.'

'Could you get me a burger?  A plain ol' American burger?  Oh, and
Phoebe - '

'Yes?'

'Could you buy me a fan heater?  This room is too bloody cold.'

Finis
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is my first attempt at fanfiction in this universe, so I may have
got just about everything wrong.  In case, here's what I was trying to
do -

First, I wanted to write about Oxford.  Despite the fame of Mulder's
sojourn there, I've seen relatively few fics about his Oxford days.  I
was there at the same time as Mulder.  For people who've never been
there, it's hard to describe the atmosphere of nervous brilliance, but I
don't think it's one in which someone as needy as Mulder would be likely
to flourish for long.

To me, Mulder's misery and inability to form a serious relationship
aren't entirely accounted for by his sister's abduction.  Even given
that the man would probably be weird and moody if he had been raised by
Mr and Mrs Kent, I just don't see that the degree of damage we see is
fully explained by what we know.  So the impetus for this story was to
try to find out more, and that's one of the reasons I set it before The
X-files opens.

For one thing, Mulder seems so sexually guilty and at odds with himself.
I mean, here we have someone who plainly gets a fresh offer every week,
and he never gives them a glance.  Instead he sits at home with
pornography, and worships Scully, who is a Catholic girl who has IMHO to
some extent lost touch with her sexuality; I'm writing one about her
past right now.  My fictional take is that something (not abuse, but
something) occurred to make him think himself particularly sinful in
this area, so that he behaves as if he's trying to protect Scully and
everyone around him from his sexuality.  [Addtionallly, he's keen on teh
protective role, but at the moment I'm talking aobut sex and sex only.]
Now, we know he bonked Phoebe Green, itself a slightly uncharacteristic
act needing explanation, so I took it from there.  What would make
someone as smart as Mulder bonk Phoebe?

Comments welcomed with slavish and flattering attention.

--
Jane Lumley