Into the Darklands Read Online Free Page A

just a little too loudly as I walked down the drive of the complex in the middle of suburban North Shore. ‘I’m the researcher from the university. Where can I find the group leaders?’
    The last bit was especially loud. I’m not one of you, is what I wanted them to know.
    ‘In there,’ one of the men said.
    I walked into the kitchen and found a group of five or six men standing around. Some with coffee, some without. Only one of them actually looked like a sex offender.
    ‘I’m the researcher from the university,’ I said again in my slightly too-loud voice. ‘Anyone know where the group leaders are?’
    ‘That’ll be us,’ a man said, stepping forward. There were two of them, Tom and Andy, both complete strangers to me. Little did I know that in the years to come they would both become valued colleagues and friends. Back then they were only slightly less scary than everyone else. In fact, in some ways they were scarier because they were both experienced clinicians. What if they could tell what a fruitcake I really was?
    ‘What do you need from us?’ Tom asked.
    ‘Nothing really,’ I replied, trying to sound like a seasoned researcher. ‘I’m just here to observe.’
    ‘There are no observers on this weekend,’ said Andy. ‘If you’re here then you’re part of it. Everybody works.’
    ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘No problem.’
    Holy shit, I thought.
    It took another hour or so for all the men to arrive. There were 12 in all. Some of them looked the part, but most of them didn’t. One of them looked as if he’d be more at home in a boardroom.
    The men gathered in a large room, sitting in a small circle of comfortable chairs. The conversation was tense, subdued. Just before Tom and Andy came in, one of them leaned over and offered me a bag of pineapple lumps. ‘Would you like one?’ he asked.
    I thought I should be polite. ‘Sure,’ I said, reaching out. At that precise moment I realised what had just happened: I was taking lollies from a sex offender.
    Then Tom and Andy came in, and we were off.
    My naivety was immediately apparent. During the opening round, one of the men, Stuart, said he didn’t want to come because thinking about his offending made him feel like killing himself.
    ‘Really?’ said Tom.
    ‘Yeah,’ replied Stuart, his voice sounding flat. ‘I thought about killing myself just to get out of coming here.’
    Now, at that time I was an impressionable young clinical-psychology student, full of earnest good intent. At that stage I still believed what people told me. As a result I was expecting Tom to do a suicide screen and all this warm and fuzzy empathic stuff.
    ‘Well,’ said Tom, as if he were discussing what was on telly that night, ‘are you going to top yourself here? Because if you are I’d prefer you do it now so we don’t waste any time on you.’
    I was stunned. This was not how we’d practised it in psychology school.
    Stuart clearly felt the same way. ‘Uhh…’
    ‘Good,’ said Tom. ‘Let’s continue.’
    What I didn’t understand back then was that Stuart was a master game player. He was a career paedophile who had offended against dozens of boys over the course of his life. His intent was solely to disrupt the process. He’d seen enough shrinks to know that all you needed to do was mention suicide and everyone would back off. What he didn’t know was that Tom was a very clever man, and a very good therapist, one of the best I’ve ever met. Stuart was out of his league from the moment the bell rang. In any case, he didn’t kill himself that weekend, or any other to the best of my knowledge.
    It was when they started talking about what they’d done that it finally started to dawn on me where I was.
    ‘What did you do to her?’ asked Andy.
    He was speaking to Roy, the bloke who looked as if he’d got lost on the way to the boardroom. Roy wore casually expensive clothes and casually expensive aftershave.
    ‘Not much, nothing like these guys,’ he