Lost

He raises his hands in mock surrender and lowers them again. “She wants to know what I did with Mickey. She's worried I might die before telling anyone.”

“You're messing up your insulin injections.”

“Do you know what it's like to go into a diabetic coma? First my breathing becomes labored. My mouth and tongue are parched. My blood pressure falls and my pulse accelerates. I get blurred vision, then pain in my eyes. Finally, I slip into unconsciousness. If they don't reach me quickly enough, my kidneys will fail completely and my brain will be permanently damaged. Soon after that I will die.”

He seems to revel in these details, as if looking forward to it.

“Did you tell her what happened to Mickey?”

“I told her the truth.”

“Tell me.”

“I told her that I'm not an innocent man but I am innocent of this crime. I have sinned but not committed this sin. I believe in the sanctity of human life. I believe all children are gifts from God, born pure and innocent. They only act with hate and violence because we teach them hate and violence. They are the only ones who can truly judge me.”

“And how are the children going to judge you?”

He goes silent.

Sweat rings beneath his arms have spread out and merged, plastering his shirt to his skin so that I can see every freckle and mole. There's something else on his back, beneath the fabric. Something has discolored the material, turning it yellow.

Howard has to look over his right shoulder to see me. He grimaces slightly. At that same moment, I force him forward across the table. Deaf to his squeals that are muffled against my forearm, I lift his shirt. His flesh is like pulped melon. Angry wounds crisscross his back, weeping blood and yellow crystalline scum.

Prison guards are running toward us. One of them puts a handkerchief over his mouth.

“Get a doctor,” I yell. “Move!”

Commands are shouted and phone calls are made. Howard is screaming and thrashing like he's on fire. Suddenly, he lies still, with his arms stretched across the table.

“Who did this to you?”

He doesn't answer.

“Talk to me. Who did this?”

He mumbles something. I can't quite hear him. Leaning closer, I pick up the words, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not . . . never yield to temptation . . .”

There is something tucked inside the sleeve of his shirt. He doesn't stop me pulling it free. It's the wooden handle of a skipping rope, threaded with a twelve-inch strand of fencing wire. Self-flagellation, self-mutilation, fasting and flogging—can someone please explain them to me?

Howard shrugs my hand away and gets to his feet. He won't wait for a doctor and he doesn't want to talk any more. He shuffles toward the door, with his flapping shoes, yellow skin and shallow breathing. At the last possible moment he turns and I'm expecting one of those pleading, kicked-dog looks.

Instead I get something different. This man whom I helped lock away for murder; who flays himself with fencing wire, who every day is spat upon, jeered, threatened and abused . . . this man looks sorry for me.

Eighty-five steps and ninety-four hours—that's how long Mickey had been missing when I served a search warrant on number 9 Dolphin Mansions.

“Surprise. Surprise,” I said as Howard opened the door. His large eyes bulged slightly and his mouth opened but no sound came out. He was wearing a pajama top, long shorts with an elasticized waist and dark brown loafers that accentuated the whiteness of his shins.

I started like I always did—telling Howard how much I knew about him. He was single, never married. He grew up in Warrington, the youngest of seven children in a big loud Protestant family. Both his parents were dead. He had twenty-eight nieces and nephews and was godfather to eleven of them. In 1962 he was hospitalized after a traffic accident. A year later he suffered a nervous breakdown and became a voluntary outpatient at a clinic in north London. He had worked as a storeman, a laborer, a painter and decorator, a van driver and now a gardener. He went to church three times a week, sang in the choir, read biographies, was allergic to strawberries and took photographs in his spare time.

I wanted Howard to feel like he was fifteen and I had just caught him jerking off in the showers at Cottesloe Park. And no matter what excuses he offered, I'd know he was lying. Fear and uncertainty—the most powerful weapons in the known world.

“You left something out,” he mumbled.

“What's that?”

“I'm a diabetic. Insulin shots, the whole business.”

“My uncle had that.”

“Don't tell me—he gave up chocolate bars and started jogging and his diabetes went away. I hear that all the time. That and, ‘Christ, I would just die if I had to stick a needle in myself every day.' Or this is a good one, ‘You get that from being fat don't you?'”

People were trooping past us, wearing overalls and gloves. Some carried metal boxes with photographic equipment and lights. Duckboards had been laid like stepping-stones down the hall.

“What are you looking for?” he asked softly.