And I would agree. Keith Smith is dead and today, in Parliament, the debate on hanging will continue, I am told; if he were alive and working, Keith Smith would be in a foul mood, a mood of near despair, carrying the weight of another child-murder, another suspicious drowning in his heart; but he would have reached into that dark place into which we now seem to want to descend, and have pulled out some small light to shed on this, on us, something that might have prevented us from picking up the first stone. And anybody who stood up to talk about killing killers today would have had to sit back down again; because Keith knew, and would show, you do not stop pain by inflicting more. It may only be when baby and bathwater alike go down the drain that we realise Keith Smith was the last plug between us and complete empti-ness.
BC Pires is missing. Read more of his writing at www.BCraw.com