Ah, but there's still a line between callous disinterest in human life and active interest in destroying human life. What we see here is not a guy killing because it's convenient or it accomplishes anything; he's killing for the sole sake of the sadistic entertainment value in breaking a woman's mind. I'm not saying that's remotely out of character for Asquith, it'd fit right in with his portrayal from... oh, roughly the open mob war out. He got more and more corrupt, more and more actively malignant and more and more careless about what he did and who knew it as WML's run wore on - in correlation with his growing more and more consumed by the magic, until he was eventually literally a demon as well as morally one.
So if this *is* Asquith, he's managed to shed the "literally" part while maintaining the "morally" part, which suggests a mastery of his magic that he didn't have last time around, making him a potentially more dangerous foe. In which case Diana better hope the Six prove more useful than Circe.