Silêncio

Murder is a man thing.

The jury is still out on women police. On whether they can take it. Or for how long. On the other hand, maybe it's me: Maybe I'm just another fuckoff. New York PD, for instance, is now fifteen percent female. And all over the country women detectives continue to do outstanding work, celebrated work. But I'm thinking that these must be some very, very exceptional ladies. Many times, when I was in Homicide, I said to myself, Walk away girl. Ain't nobody stopping you. Just walk away. Murders are men's work. Men commit them, men clean up after them. Because men like violence. Women really don't figure that much, except as victims, and among the bereaved, of course, and as witnesses. Ten or twelve years back, during the arms buildup toward the end of Reagan's first term, when the nuclear thing was on everyone's mind, it seemed to me that the ultimate homicide was coming and one day I'd get the dispatcher's call alerting me to five billion dead: "All of them, except you and me." In full consciousness and broad daylight men sat at desks drawing up contingency plans to murder everybody. I kept saying out loud: " Where are the women?" Where were the women? I'll tell you: They were witnesses. Those straggly chicks on their tents on Greenham Common, England, making the military crazy with their presence and their stares — they were witnesses. Naturally, the nuclear arrangement, the nuclear machine, was strictly men only. Murder is a man thing.

Martin Amis, Night Train