Looking around the small reception room, with its vinyl-topped wooden benches, laden with a great assortment of forms and pamphlets; looking around at the row upon row of religious manuals stacked against the walls, Father Joseph felt troubled.   He had failed in his duty.   He should have stopped the man somehow, should have guessed what would happen.   Now, thanks to his failing, there was a lunatic on the loose in Melbourne: A man dangerous to himself, dangerous to everyone he came in contact with.

Father Joseph looked down at the aptitude test that he held in his left hand and shuddered.   It was an innocent looking booklet, green covered, with white, plastic binding.   Inside were two hundred questions designed to test a person’s outlook on life.   From the answers given, it was possible to glean the extent of help he might need to sort himself out and make a success of his life.

Father Joseph read over a few of the answers the man, who called himself William Hannah, had given to the questions.   The first few questions were relatively straightforward, asking about the applicant’s current status in life: name, address, age, marital status, un/employment, social standing, and so on.   They were intended mainly to help to relax the more hesitant people, help to set them at their ease.   Gradually the questions become more difficult, asking about the person’s hopes and desires in life: “Are you content in your current occupation?”, “Do you hope to go on to a better, more satisfying career?”, “Do you feel that your present occupation presents you with reasonable opportunities for future advancement?   Or do you feel that you are stagnating?”, “What other type(s) of employment would you prefer instead of your current position?”   The man — William Hannah? — had rambled his way through these intermediate questions, writing about being plotted against by all and sundry: “I know I was meant for much higher things in life, but what chance do I have with them all plotting against me?” he had written at one stage.   It was the last forty questions where the man’s persecution complex had really shone through — the questions designed to probe right down into the deepest, least fathomable reaches of the mind.   To the question, “Do you ever feel that the whole world is plotting against you?” he had answered, “Yes, all the time.   I know they are, they have been ever since I was a small child.   I’ve even killed one or two of them in the hope of scaring off the rest, but it hasn’t worked.   There are just too many people in the world, for them to be concerned by a few deaths.   Sometimes I think my only chance might be to kill them all!”