Thought Crimes Read Online Free Page B

of the world. Most big cities have so many phone numbers that they split their directories in two, and she says that any decent authority would divide the volumes into People Worth Calling and People Not Worth Calling . According to Grace, she and I would figure in the large volume of People Whose Names Bob Dylan Doesn’t Know , and depending where you stand on the Jeff/Geoff controversy, our whole city probably squeezes into that category.
    I guess other people never see themselves that way, as going through their lives as a name Bob Dylan doesn’t know, and they’d prefer to see their names listed in the big volume, People Whose Names Bob Dylan Ought to Know .
    For Grace, it might be different, but for me, it’s glass half-full, glass half-empty. We know who we are and who we know, but we’ll probably never know if the people we know want to know us, or if they give a shit about the spelling of our names. So what if Dylan doesn’t know my name? Should a friend choose to take that as an insult, or treat it as a sign that he and I communicate in a very particular way? I’m not like Grace. I’m not frightened to find my name listed among the names of the people in the fat directory. Those people wouldn’t know my name either, but I’m happy to be one of them. I’m with them in spirit.

We have a thin man who runs, and you can set your clock by him. He passes at 6.52 in the morning, and 9.17 at night. Most people would call that crazy, but Dane and I understand. We are the same in that respect. We hate carelessness with time. Though the solicitor had promised to meet us at one-thirty, it was now two, and Dane was edgy about whether to ask his assistant to collect Jess from school. Neither of us wanted to tell Jess that her uncle had smashed his neighbour’s skull with a hammer.
    Imagining she’d missed her flight from Brisbane, Dane was dialling the solicitor’s mobile number when she appeared in the drive. From her name, and the three conversations we’d had on the phone, we had expected a mature Scandinavian woman, but Selma Roy was a slight Indian who couldn’t have been more than twenty-six. She didn’t look us in the eye when she introduced herself, or at any time afterwards, and whenever she spoke more than thirty words in a row, she paused to blink twice before continuing.
    She said it would help Michael if I saw him.
    Dane was dead against that. Michael had confessed. He’d told detectives that he’d killed the woman because she was evil, and now he would have to live with that. We’d done as much as we could. We’d helped set him up that house when his marriage fell through. Michael was a lost cause.
    â€˜I’d rather help the woman’s family,’ I told her.
    While shifting her glance between her papers and the Franz Marc print on the wall, Selma asked if I loved my brother.
    â€˜That’s not the issue,’ Dane answered. ‘Michael has to take responsibility for what he’s done.’
    There was no question that he’d killed Miss Mitchell. He’d admitted that. His neighbour had approached him about mail that had gone missing from her box. There was an argument. He hit her. She was lying on the door-jamb, barely conscious, when he struck her with the hammer. Four blows. ‘That much is conceded,’ Selma told us. ‘What we need to determine is whether your brother was in possession of his senses at the time he killed her.’
    Dane wanted to know what difference our help would make. The woman was dead. Having disgraced the family, Michael was no longer entitled to our sympathy. One way or another, he had to be put away.
    â€˜You might be right. But the court will have to pass judgement on his state of mind. In the meantime, we need to know all we can about your brother’s history.’
    Irrespective of her nerves and lack of experience, Selma Roy was tenacious. She wasn’t going to