Two murders have taken place not far away from here.

In a nearby town a man was killed late at night in a friend’s house. They had known each other for years. He died of head injuries. What happened there? A family feud?

And the body of a 23-year-old woman was found in a burnt out car in a service bay off the bypass.

Her boyfriend and his former girlfriend have been arrested. They are from Eastern Europe.

Yesterday I watched them in court, using an interpreter, baffled, utterly confused. But so ordinary.

And today, as I lay half-awake at four or five in the morning, the dream I have had many times came back to me.

I killed someone long ago. I buried the body in the garden of a house I once lived in.

They haven’t found it.

They could find it any time.

I wake in a cold sweat.

No guilt, just fear.

It lingers into the day. There are moments when I’m back there, in the dream, half waiting for a knock on the door, a cool direct look, a leading question.

There is a soft machine inside us that none of us can fathom. It makes us angry, or sad, want to have sex, hit someone.

It is complex, beyond anything we can make or build. But its outputs are crude.

That thought makes me feel diaphanous, indistinct, blurry. It’s hard to describe.

And depressing.

I picture a crude plasticine figure made by a child with a name pinned on it.

That’s me. That’s you. That’s us.