Dr Benjamin Gold, DPsych, HCPC, counselling psychologist, was getting ready to leave his clinic early (he had an important racketball match that evening and was intending to eat a light dinner at the Greek taverna round the corner) when his secretary Aisha buzzed through on the telecom. Rolling his right shoulder to alleviate some stiffness he was worried might affect his movement on the court, he answered her call.
  
'Yes, Aisha?'
 
'There's a man here, Doctor. Says he has an appointment. Well he was here, I think.'
 
'I thought we were through.' He could see that here had been an appointment booked, 4.50pm, but this had been cancelled, apparently. He was therefore rather surprised to discover, upon turning around, that there was a man sitting before his desk.
  
Dr Gold had an extraordinary memory for faces and facts, but if he had been asked later to describe this man, he would only have been able to do so with the greatest difficulty. He was neither young nor old, neither handsome nor ugly, neither broad nor narrow. His appearance so perfectly conformed to the average in all its aspects, that it was almost impossible to find words to describe him. He was white, and he had brownish hair. That was it. This chap was so non-descript, and his voice so flat and tedious, that Dr Gold had the uncomfortable feeling he was looking at an empty chair. 'Sorry, Mr...' he said, glancing at the monitor for confirmation of the patient's name.
  
'John.'
  
'Mr. John? I...'
  
'No, not Mr John. Just John. Or maybe Jack. Sometimes Jonah.'
  
'It seems you cancelled your appointment, and now I'm going home, so if you see my secretary...'
  
The man nodded and sighed. 'This sort of thing happens all the time. I didn't cancel. You did. You spoke to me on the phone, and then concluded that my situation was of no interest to you. But you've forgotten.'
 
'Be that as it may,' said Dr Gold firmly, irritated by the temerity of this inoffensive little man, 'you don't have an appointment.' He gestured towards the door. 'If you don't mind...'
  
Mr John might have been inoffensive but the revolver that was pointing steadily at Dr Gold's chest was considerably less so. 'Tell your secretary to go home, please,' he said flatly. 'I would rather we weren't interrupted, if that's OK with you.'
  
Dr Gold followed this instruction while staring fixedly at the black pistol.
  
'I don't mean to be threatening,' continued the visitor, 'but I must insist you pay attention to me. Please look at me, not the gun.'
  
Despite his alarm- he had only been physically threatened once in his life before, and that was by his first wife- Dr Gold noticed that the man's face seemed profoundly undistinguished, an amalgam of all the male faces he'd ever seen. Trying to characterise Mr John's face was like juggling a bar of soap in the shower.
  
'If you want money, I haven't got any here,' he said. 'We have a safe in our other offices-'
  
'I don't want any money,' came the subdued reply. 'I want you to listen. I want a record. Do you have a tape recorder?'
  
'I have a Dictaphone,' said Dr Gold. Despite the threat of the gun, there seemed something so contemptuous about this ridiculous, anaemic chap that he felt more aggrieved than frightened at his current circumstances. This response was interesting to him, as a psychologist. Surely unprofessional, but involuntary, irrational. He felt he was being forced to look at someone whom every ounce of his will insisted he ignore.
  
The Dictaphone was switched on and Dr Gold asked his usual opening questions. The gun still occupied his attention but it seemed to him like there was no one holding it, like it was hanging on an invisible wire.
  
'Please can I stop you?' interrupted Mr John, the voice snapping him back into Dr Gold's consciousness. 'Have you ever- been at a crowded bar, and tried to get the attention of the bartender, and they continually serve everyone else first? Or you've struggled to get the attention of a waiter? Or...' and he waved the gun wildly, as though in response to some particularly painful memory, causing Dr Gold to duck beneath the desk, 'you've been talking to someone at a party, and they seem distracted, as though they are waiting for someone more interesting to come in?'
  
'I suppose so,' Dr Gold replied, slowly emerging.
 
'Just imagine if your whole life was like that.'
 
'Why don't you put the gun down?'
 
'If I do, you'll instantly lose interest and I'll have to start all over again.'
 
Dr Gold put on his reading glasses and assumed a dispassionate air. 'Mr John, what you are describing sounds to me like what we call an inferiority complex.'
  
'No, it's not that. There is...something about me, an unknown quality, that compels people to disregard me, to ignore me. I've got used to it. But I need to tell you something else.'
  
There's clearly some psychosis here, mused Dr Gold. But it was strange how even the eyes of an experienced professional such as he were naturally averted from the person of Mr John, his attention sliding over him, like oil over water.
  
'When did you first notice this...phenomena?'
  
'Since always,' said the man. 'When I was born, my mother abandoned me. Well, she didn't abandon me as such...she kind of...forgot me. Forgot she had a baby. So I was sent off to various children's homes and foster homes. Invariably, they forgot about me too, and I always ended up living in the basement, or the kitchen, scrabbling for scraps of food, while new children were assigned my place.'
  
'That's sounds horrible,' said Dr Gold, although he didn't mean it.
 
'I had some limited education, but I could never get on a permanent school roll- I was always being bumped off lists, crossed out as absent when I was there, ignored. I was never bullied, never noticed by the rough children. In truth I longed for the attention of a bully's fist as much as I did for a hug or a kind word from some friendly adult. I could make no friends; I was too boring and insignificant to be anyone's friend. I lived my life rejected by others for no reason I could ever comprehend. I was alone in a world that couldn't see me. Can you understand how that might feel?'
  
Dr Gold said, 'Unremarkableness as pathology. This is what you are saying.'
  
'Yes,' exclaimed the man. 'That's exactly it! Well, in time I got used to it. I never got ill; diseases seemed to avoid me. I paid to sleep with women, received some comfort there. There was never any risk of pregnancy, my sperm,' (and here Dr Gold was unsure whether his patient were joking or not) 'rejected by even the most receptive ovum. I attained various lonely jobs; nightwatchman, caretaker, etc, but they would continually forget to pay me, or remove me from the payroll, assuming I had left, so I never had enough money. It was then I moved onto crime.'
  
Dr Gold looked at the gun again and for the first time felt genuinely discomfited. 'Go on.'
  
'It started as mere shoplifting. I was hungry, you see, and it was so easy. The store detectives looked right past me every time. Soon I graduated to higher ticket items, but still I was never stopped. I once walked into a car showroom, plucked the keys of a Ferrari off the rack behind the desk, and drove off without anyone noticing. I couldn't keep the car- they sent the police after me and I had to drive it into a lake- but I was released almost immediately after my arrest. After this I committed my first burglary. Again, it was easy. I always did them during the day. Big houses in West London. Crawling in through open windows on hot afternoons, when the alarms were switched off. Even if I was spotted, I'd just say I was the gasman, or some such cover, and they'd nod and forget I was there.
  
'Such was my life of crime. I filled my little flat with the sparkling spoils of my robberies. As I said, it was easy; too easy. I was bored. Murder seemed the logical next step.'
 
Dr Gold looked at the gun again and the run-of-the-mill hands that gripped it. He swallowed.
 
'I would go to bars and pubs, look for the man who was the most popular, the most noticed, the most charismatic. I'd follow him home on the tube or bus, until he was alone. The first victim's name was Ricky. Very handsome and the master of his little universe. You might have heard about this killing from the news. No suspect, no motive.'
  
'That was you? Richard Sanchez was you? My God.' But Dr Gold didn't believe him. How could such an unremarkable, insignificant chap be capable of such a heinous and infamous murder? 'But... didn't you worry about leaving evidence? Forensic clues?'
  
'I bashed his head in with a hammer. There was blood for sure. I never wore gloves. But even if I did leave evidence- there is no record of me anywhere to match it with. And people look past me, so no witnesses. Security cameras turn away from me. Images of me on tape are disregarded. I'm vacuum sealed, Dr Gold. I'm a ghost. A force of nature, like the wind, sweeping through the city, visible yet invisible.'
  
'There have been other...killings?'
  
'Several. I garrotted a man- an ambassador of some sort- outside his flat in Kensington. Despite my appearance, I have very strong arms and hands. I stabbed a well-known musician in the neck on the tube, in front of three of his friends, but they looked right through me.'
  
'And- your conscience?'
 
'Untroubled. Just as I make no impression on the world, their passing leaves no mark on me.'
  
Dr Gold looked at the Dictaphone. 'So what do you want from me? Therapy? I have to believe that you want to stop this slaughter, and that you have come to me for help.'
  
The man, whose name he had forgotten, nodded at the Dictaphone. 'Send your recording to the police. That's all I ask. Tell them- I have also been busy online. I have learned to build a bomb and to attain the components. There will be a large explosion- tell them- Euston station- in three hours. You need to tell them. If I do, the call will be disregarded.'
  
'But what do you want, really?' asked Dr Gold, at last fully engaged by this uniquely unengaging person. 'Notoriety? Money?'
  
'I want what everyone wants. To be noticed. To be part of this world. And if it takes these great crimes to make that happen, so be it.' He paused. 'They say my mother should have died in childbirth, that I never should have lived. That is what I often think. That I am some aberration of nature, a mistake in time; a person who has slipped down a crack into some other reality.'
  
He left shortly after without a further word. Dr Gold stared at the Dictaphone for a while, still recording. He was thinking about his racketball game, about his forehand. Presently the door opened and Aisha stepped in.
  
'You're still here, Dr Gold? I forgot my phone. So absent minded.' She nodded towards the door. 'Was there someone here? Did I forget to add an appointment?'
 
'There was a man...but...he was no one important.' He wondered why the Dictaphone was still running. That last patient had not been interesting, had said nothing noteworthy. He couldn't even remember what he had said, what he wanted.
  
He picked up the Dictaphone. Something was bothering him.
  
'Aisha,' he said, 'Do you live anywhere near Euston station?'
  
'No, Dr Gold. Why?'
 
'Oh, nothing,' he said, pressing delete.