The Shadow Maker (18 page)

She’d also found that the alleged pornographer, Dirk Hendriks, was an urbane and intelligent Dutchman in his seventies. Instead of cautioning him she’d simply suggested he remove the books and pictures from the window. He’d done so immediately, albeit with a risque twinkle in his eye, before inviting her to share some herbal tea. Her acceptance had marked the beginning of a friendship.

Though his hair was white and his face was lined with the wrinkles of experience, Hendriks seemed younger than his years. Along with a refined maturity, there was a sprightliness about him, characteristic of a man who enjoyed life, even if he’d witnessed its worst aspects.

One of the reasons Rita enjoyed his company was their shared birthplace. Hendriks had grown up in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation, emigrating to Australia in the 1950s. Rita often dropped in on him to drink tea, listen to his observations on European culture, and hear his stories set around the canals of
de Walletjes
-

Amsterdam’s historic red light district. Hendriks was more than a good conversationalist; he was a link to Rita’s lost heritage.

The musty smell of the old books closed in on her as she shut the door. For once Hendriks didn’t emerge at the sound of the bell.

The place seemed deserted.

‘Mr Hendriks,’ she called out, but there was no answer.

Although just yards away from busy city streets, the shop had a hush to it. With its stock of ageing publications, manuscripts, scrolls and parchments it seemed to belong to history rather than the present. The layout was also disorientating, the interior a miniature labyrinth stretching through three levels with a cast-iron spiral staircase running from the upper floor down to the basement.

Everywhere were shelves stacked with thousands and thousands of old books. The most valuable and rare were locked away in glass cases. The rest, many of them leather-bound and the worse for wear, lined a maze of narrow aisles wide enough only for one person to pass at a time.

Rita poked her head into the oversized cupboard where Hendriks catalogued his stock and brewed his tea, but there was no one there.

While she waited for his reappearance, she climbed the spiral stairs to the next level. Up here was where the antique erotica resided, along with volumes of lithographs depicting legends and the super-natural, and a section containing the classics. She often browsed here, feeling the bindings, sniffing the vellum. Rita loved books and these had a strange, evocative appeal - the remnants of past mindsets, lost cultures. She ran her fingers along the spines of textbooks from the Victorian era until she saw the one she wanted - an illustrated copy of Plato’s
Republic
. Opening it, she leafed through the pages until she found what she was looking for, an engraved print of the cave. It was stark and sinister, a monochrome vision of hell, with a graphic scene of prisoners chained underground amid flames and grotesque shadows, their limbs and necks shackled.

The image jolted her. With a flash of recognition, Rita realised she was looking at a duplicate of the Emma Schultz crime scene.

Now it all fell into place - the offender’s remarks about role-playing and the rules of the cave, the way he called Emma a prisoner, even the bronze mask. The ancient symbol of Plato’s Cave was the template for Emma’s attack. It was a staggering insight into the crime, but what did it mean for the investigation? She needed time to think about it, although one subtle difference struck her immediately.

Emma had been manacled, whereas the cave figures wore leg-irons.

Too much of an encumbrance perhaps? Plato’s prisoners weren’t targeted for rape, after all.

The dinging of the doorbell told her Hendriks had returned.

She took the book with her as she climbed back down the stairs to greet him.

‘Ah, what a pleasant surprise,’ he said, kissing her on both cheeks.

‘I didn’t see you arrive. Too busy chatting with the lady who runs the witchcraft shop. Are you here for tea?’

‘Actually, I’m here to buy this book.’

He put on his glasses and peered at it. ‘Not in your usual range.’

‘It’s to do with a case I’m working on.’

‘You’re investigating Plato?’

She smiled at his dry humour. ‘In a way, yes. I’m here to pick your brain as well.’

‘Sounds serious. We’ll definitely need a herbal infusion. What’s your choice today, my dear? Camomile? Ginger and lemon?’

‘Jasmine, if you’ve got some.’

‘Of course.’

Hendriks brought her a canvas chair to sit on and Rita waited between bookcases pungent with the scent of archival dust. He emerged with china cups, handed her one, and sat opposite her.

‘So?’ he asked. ‘Why Plato?’

‘He may be relevant to a crime I’m working on,’ she said, stirring her tea. ‘And I need you to put him in context.’

‘Surely you studied some philosophy at university,’ said Hendriks.

‘Not really - apart from an idiot’s guide for psych students. We covered Plato in about ten minutes.’

‘That’s a crime in itself,’ Hendriks observed.

‘Remind me, how significant is he?’ Rita asked.

The bookseller sipped his drink as he collected his thoughts.

‘How significant? A true hero of humanity. A superstar in the golden age of the ancient world.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I knew I’d come to the right man.’

‘Anyone today who values knowledge over ignorance, or seeks excellence, or strives for political justice, owes something to Plato.

In cultural terms he was arguably the greatest of the classical Greeks.’

He paused and placed his cup carefully on a shelf beside a set of obsolete almanacs. ‘What’s interesting, from your perspective, was his starting point, which was one of the worst crimes in the history of civilisation. We’re talking about the year 399 bc. That’s when the authorities in Athens ordered the execution of Socrates, the wisest man of his time. Plato was appalled. Like a courtroom reporter, he wrote an account of the arrest, trial, imprisonment and death.’

‘And went on to write dozens of books.’

‘Yes, prose dialogues. He was a writer and thinker ahead of his time,’ said Hendriks. ‘He also founded the world’s first university

- the Academy. Not the least of his achievements. His most famous pupil was Aristotle. Among his other feats he conducted political experiments, laid down principles for Utopian governments, wrote the first account of the legend of Atlantis and handed down a body of work whose key questions still challenge us today. The British academic Alfred North Whitehead described the entire tradition of western philosophy as a series of footnotes to Plato.’

‘And you obviously agree.’

‘Of course - and he gave us so much more. Our language of ideas, our concepts of mind, body and soul, our pursuit of the good, the beautiful and the true; all these were inspired by Plato. He was an intellectual genius.’

Rita placed her cup on the floor, picked up the copy of
The
Republic
and patted the worn cover. ‘I know this is considered his masterpiece,’ she said, opening it to the picture she’d found and passing it to Hendriks. ‘But this is the particular bit I need to know about.’

He adjusted his glasses and stared at the page. ‘His most famous image,’ he nodded. ‘The myth of the cave.’

‘Tell me what it means.’

‘Plato is relating a dark allegory. It tells of people trapped in an underground chamber where nothing is real but echoes and shadows.’

‘Like a parable?’ asked Rita.

‘Yes. It illustrates our common plight. Prisoners from birth. Deep underground, chained in a rigid position, seeing only the wall in front of us but not the fire at our backs. Mistaking shadows -

appearances - for reality.’

‘But where is it?’ asked Rita.

‘You’re in it right now.’

She looked around uncomfortably. ‘This bookshop?’

Hendriks smiled at her confusion. ‘No, I think of it more as an occult chamber from the past. The cave is everywhere.’ He tapped the picture in the book. ‘What you’re looking at is the human condition.’

‘A pretty sad condition.’

‘Exactly. It’s our lack of enlightenment. And to find the truth we must break our chains, climb out of the cave and see the sunlight,’ he said, closing the book and handing it back to her. ‘I mentioned Atlantis before. That’s another of his stories that still has people guessing. It’s now part of New Age religion, but in a way it’s the opposite of the cave. Let me explain it this way. Plato describes Atlantis as an earthly paradise - a place of amazing wealth, technological wonders and perfect order. But it was a heaven on earth that couldn’t last. Human nature got the better of it and Atlantis was destroyed. Like the cave, it’s an arcane symbol. Plato was challenging us to build a better world.’

Picking up her shoulder bag, Rita extracted the Plato’s Cave card and held it out. ‘It’s this particular arcane symbol I’m worried about.

And I’d love to know what it means.’

Hendriks studied the card carefully, turning it over in his hand.

‘How fascinating,’ he said. ‘Where does it come from?’

‘A violent crime scene. It was left there by the perpetrator.’

Hendriks shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you what it means,’ he said gravely, returning the card to her. ‘But it’s something you know already. You’re hunting an intelligent man who is also mad.’

Rita nodded and the conversation gradually moved on to other things. Then she finished her tea and got up to pay for the book.

Hendriks patted her arm affectionately. ‘You’ve shared your time with me. That’s payment enough,’ he said, then added with a frown,

‘It worries me - the things you have to deal with.’

‘Human nature.’

‘But you see it at its worst,’ he said, walking her to the door. ‘I hope you’re looking forward to a relaxing evening in pleasant company.’

‘No. I’m on my own tonight. Soup, salad, and a bit of light classical reading.’

A steamy heat had settled on the night and Rita opened her windows wide in the hope of getting a hint of breeze into the old weatherboard house. But it was sticky and still, with no movement at all. Wearing only a T-shirt and shorts, she curled up in her armchair, the whirr of an electric fan straining against the humid air, the dramatic tones of
Carmina Burana
playing softly around her. From the open window beside her drifted the cloying scent of the honeysuckle that smothered the end of her wooden verandah. Within reach was the highball she’d mixed, and on her lap rested
The Republic.

After reading the introduction Rita dipped in and out of the text to familiarise herself with the themes. She found herself agreeing with much that Plato had to say, with his focus on justice and knowledge, and his belief in a supreme Form of the Good. She was less enthusiastic about his idea that governments should be run by philosopher-kings. This struck her as unlikely and impractical, though it must have been revolutionary stuff twenty-four centuries ago.

When she reached Book Seven of
The Republic
she slowed down, reading and rereading the strange and mysterious passage she needed to get her head around. The speaker was Plato’s old mentor, Socrates:

‘Imagine people living in a cave. They inhabit an underground chamber far away from the opening to the outside world. They have been confined there since childhood, with their legs and necks chained. Their heads are also shackled in place and all they can see is the wall in front of them. Imagine a bright fire burning further up the cave behind them. Between the fire and the prisoners there is a roadway with a low wall beside it, like the screen at a puppet show.’

Rita reached for her drink as she visualised the scene, swallowing a mouthful of chilled malt whisky.

‘Imagine there are passers-by on the other side of the wall, carrying objects in the shapes of men and animals. As you would expect, some of the travellers are talking, while others are silent.’

She skipped through an exchange between Socrates and his friend Glaucon, who agreed that the only realities for the prisoners were the shadows on the wall and the echoes of the voices, then read:

‘Let us suppose that one of the prisoners is released. He is suddenly forced to stand up, turn around and walk towards the firelight. All these actions cause him pain and the flames dazzle his eyes. It leaves him incapable of discerning the objects of which he used to see the shadows. And suppose someone tells him that he was watching a series of phantoms, but now he is closer to reality. Would he not be bewildered?’

Rita got the point about the difference between illusion and reality. In the following pages Plato hammered it home as the prisoner was dragged out of the cave and into the blazing sunlight. Blinded and confused at first, he was eventually able to see and understand the real world. But if he were to return to the cave, he would be blinded again, this time by the darkness, and what he told the other prisoners about his experiences would be incomprehensible to them.

They believed only in their illusory world of shadows and echoes.

Rita shuddered at the theme of blindness. Emma’s attacker seemed to have followed the cave’s imagery to the letter, and it was likely that his next victim would suffer the same fate.

As she read on, Socrates ended the story on a hopeful note:

‘In each human being is the capacity for knowledge. But just as it is impossible to turn the eye from darkness to light without turning the whole body, so must the whole mind turn away from the world of appearances. Only then can we see reality and the brightest light shining from it - which we call goodness.’

Rita closed the book and drank the rest of her highball, crunching the ice cubes between her teeth. It seemed obvious that the image of the cave had inspired the crime she was investigating, but what could possibly connect an ancient philosophical text with rape and mutilation? Somewhere there was a link, and she had to find it.

35

The compulsion had its own relentless logic. It was beyond reason, and yet was driven by an almost clinical rationality. It was a fantasy on the borderline of consciousness, a secret desire too dangerous to act upon under normal circumstances. But it never quite went away, merely subsided, or became hidden - like an encrypted program in his mind, or an attachment waiting to be reopened. Or worse still, a virus that could be contained but never deleted. And when his conscious mind was weak - from stress or stimulation, or when he was overtired but hyper - that’s when it emerged. The worst time was in the early hours of the morning, when thoughts were random, sleep was elusive, and the darkest moods were the most intense.