“But for a middle-aged, rationalist, atheist humanist who claims to believe that this life is all you get -finito - good night Vienna – this is the end, there is no more – then sitting in your flat trying to follow the instructions on your laptop that will turn the motley assembly of chemicals, wires, batteries and clock parts strewn across your kitchen table into a lethal weapon is fraught with terror, believe me.
“You will note I say claims to believe.
“It never really goes away, does it, all that religious stuff you get drummed into you when you’re a kid? Mature logic and experience may seem to wash it all out of your mind, but scrub as hard as you like, if you look carefully under a bright light you can still find the faint outline of an indelible what if?
“And a laptop screen showing a DIY bomb recipe casts a very bright light indeed.
“Now this may not be so bad if your what if? tunes in images of all that sweet music and doe-eyed virgins stuff. The trouble is no matter how I cut it, the what if? my upbringing has left me with produces pictures of fires that burn but do not consume, grinning devils, souls in paroxysms of pain, eternities of agony.
“Killing people is wrong, my dad used to say. Doesn’t matter who, how, why, when or where, take a life and your soul belongs to Satan.
“Of course being a preacher, he would say that, wouldn’t he?
“Not necessarily, you may think. There are plenty of preachers able to trot out any number of exceptions to the sixth commandment. Where would politicians be without them? But my dad was a fundamentalist, which was surprising, seeing that he was C of E from a good old traditional Middle England background. When he got up in the pulpit you’d have looked for skeins of soporific platitude followed by a pre-lunch sherry at the vicarage. Instead he made most Welsh chapel sermons sound like Christopher Robin saying his prayers.
“‘Ten commandments there are!’ he’d thunder. ‘Just ten. Not a lot to remember, not a number to over-tax even the mind of a poor stockbroker wending his weary way home on the five-fifty-five after a long hard day breaking stock. No! God reviewed his Creation and He thought, these humans look all right, most of them, even the stockbrokers, but I’ve got to face it, I did skimp on the brain power. So best keep it simple. Ten fingers they’ve got, so surely they’ll be able to count up to ten? And that’s how we got the Decalogue. Ten simple commandments. No riders, no sub-clauses. You do what they say, or else! There’s no Fifth Amendment saying, honour thy father and thy mother until you become a teenager, then any thing goes. There’s no Six-and-a-halfth Commandment that says, Thou shalt not kill except in the following circumstances. NO! These are God’s rules!! Break them, and, believe me, YOU WILL BURN!!!’
“I found that gem in a bundle of his old sermons which had turned up in the Bombay Mission. They’d been moving premises and Dad’s papers would have been burned with all the other rubbish if Sister Angela, the Mission’s chief administrator, hadn’t spotted them. She always had a soft spot for me and we’ve kept in touch, even though she knows I’ve strayed a long way from my father’s path since last we met. Possibly she thought that forwarding a small selection of the sermons might nudge me back. Sorry, Angela, no deal, though they certainly brought Dad back to me, and that early one at least gave me a laugh as I imagined how sentiments like these must have gone down in the rich Surrey parish where he started his ministry! No wonder it wasn’t long before his bishop suggested his talents might be better employed in a more challenging environment (i.e. one a long way away from Surrey). He probably meant anywhere north of Watford, but Dad never did things by half and that was how he came to be pastor of the Ecumenical Mission settlement in Mumbai, or Bombay as it still was back in the Seventies.
“So if we look for first causes, it was the dear old bishop who was responsible for putting my father into the predatory path of Uncle Harry. He’s dead too, the bishop, so in the unlikely event of their mythology proving true, Dad will have eternity to harangue the poor chap for not letting him continue his God-given task of bashing the brokers.
“I suppose by the same token we could say that ultimately it was the bishop’s pusillanimity that led to me setting out on my long bus journey from Battersea this morning, gingerly clutching an eight by four by two brown paper package on my knee.
“Dad had got it wrong, you see. In my view there definitely is a Six-and-a-halfth Commandment, and what it says is: killing’s OK when the target has enjoyed the rewards of his villainy for decades and looks like he’s heading for the winning post so far ahead of the Law, he no longer even bothers to glance back over his shoulder.
“Religion, if you’ve got it, might be a comfort here. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord, Dad liked to thunder, meaning don’t worry that there’s no justice in this world, there’ll be plenty in the next. Well, I’d like to believe that, Dad, but despite those residual what-ifs I mentioned earlier, I really don’t. Meaning, unless I take care of the bastard, no one else will.
“So there I was carrying a bomb through the streets of London to rid the world of the villain who’d destroyed my family.
“Does that make me a terrorist? In the eyes of the Law, I suppose it does. To me, what I was planning to do was an act of justice, but I suppose that’s what all the doe-eyed virgin boys say too. Though I must confess it did occur to me as I sat on the bus that if I’d got something wrong – an ingredient too volatile, a connection too loose – and we bounced over a pothole a bit deeper than the norm even on this stretch of the Earls Court Road, none of these innocent people around me would be interested in making fine distinctions.
“I had learned to clasp my package a bit tighter as a stop approached. This driver must have missed the bit on his training course about gradually applying the brakes. By this time I only had one more stop to go. I was glad to see most of the other passengers had got out. Only a perspiring bald man and his glossily veneered companion remained, and they didn’t look too innocent.
“I glanced down at my package. It looked good. I never throw anything away and when I decided it would be both convincing and appropriate if the instrument of Uncle Harry’s death seemed to have come from the site of his infamy, I had dug out the brown paper Sister Angela had wrapped the sermons in. Of course I couldn’t simply reuse it, not with my address all over it in the Sister’s fine copperplate. But with infinite care I had been able to remove the stamps and enough of the Mumbai post mark to be convincing, and transfer them to my own parcel.
“An Indian fan, he would think, an admirer on the subcontinent who has remembered my birthday. How terribly kind! And full of anticipation he would rip the package open…
“Surprise!
“I hoped he’d have time to take in the writing on the inside lid of the box before the bang. I’d cut it from the title page of one of my father’s sermons and pasted it there.
“It read: On Divine Retribution by DLP Lachrymate DD.
“Yes, he was a three initial man too. Perhaps that was why it was so easy for Uncle Harry to ensnare him. Three forenames means a man comes from a family with a pride in their past, Dad would say. You can always trust a man with three initials. Never buy a used car from a one initial man. Hesitate to lend money to someone with only two. But give your hand and your trust when you see that third initial!
“Four he felt a little ostentatious except in the case of royalty.