Running Wild by J. G. Ballard Read Free Book Online Page A

act of tyrannicide leads to another, especially with this emotional charge behind it. The Pangbourne children are a Baader-Meinhof gang for the day after tomorrow. That’s why we’ve got to make our case against them as strong as we can before we go to the Deputy Commissioner.”
    â€œI won’t comment on that, Doctor.” Payne drew the shower curtain, as if concealing a still-visible corpse. “But one last question. I agree the children killed their parents, and that they carefully planned it together. But why? There was no evidence of sexual abuse, no corporal punishment getting out of control. The parents never raised a hand against the children. If there was some kind of tyranny here it must have been one of real hate and cruelty. We haven’t found anything remotely like that.”
    â€œAnd we never will. The Pangbourne children weren’t rebelling against hate and cruelty. The absolute opposite, Sergeant. What they were rebelling against was a despotism of kindness. They killed to free themselves from a tyranny of love and care.”
    The Pangbourne Massacre: The Evidence
    The next three days I spent almost entirely in Sergeant Payne’s company, assembling our detailed case against the Pangbourne children, a case that challenged everything held most dear by conventional good sense, but which needed to carry total conviction if it was to overcome the reflex objections of the Yard and the Home Office.
    Each morning I drove from London to the Reading police headquarters, and Payne would take me down to the archivist’s office in the basement where the classified evidence was stored. Although I was certain of our case, once away from Pangbourne Village I found it difficult to accept the strange logic at work—that the more the children were loved and cherished, the more they were driven into a desperate search for escape.
    â€œTake Marion Miller,” I pointed out, playing devil’s advocate against myself. “I’m convinced that she dropped the live hair dryer into her father’s bath. All the same, the inference that she set out to kill him deliberately is so bizarre that one has to look at the possibility of other bizarre theories.”
    â€œSuch as, sir?” Payne waited patiently by the projector screen with the collection of slides and videos he had assembled.
    â€œWell, perhaps she wanted to dry his hair for him, and dropped the hair dryer into the water by accident. She panicked, and the brother tried to make it look like a suicide attempt. Perhaps it was a suicide attempt which the children blundered into…”
    â€œSo Miller first electrocuted himself, to shut out the pain, and then stabbed his own chest?”
    â€œOr perhaps the mother stabbed him, and then in remorse killed herself—?” I gave up. “It’s implausible, but our theory is even more unbelievable.”
    â€œAt least it explains the other murders. Let me show you this tape, Doctor.” Payne switched on the projector. “This comes from the TV monitor in the gatehouse. It contains the final sequences before the system was sabotaged at 8:23 a.m.—the main cable and all the telephone lines were severed with a set of cutters stolen two weeks earlier from a British Telecom van in Reading.”
    The video revealed a general view of The Avenue on the fateful morning, the lawns and pathways deserted, the residents in bed, at breakfast, or taking their fateful baths. “It’s now about 8:22, according to the time coding on the tape. David Turner, the security guard in the gatehouse, was probably strangled within thirty seconds of the tape ending. The audiocassette in his breast-pocket radio records the unanswered query of Burnett, the other guard on duty, who was calling from the perimeter security post about the camera failure. Something like thirty seconds later he was killed by a crossbow bolt.”
    â€œAnd these two deaths started off the