Lost

“PLEASE . . . NOT AGAIN . . . AAAARGH!”

I opened the door and called for two uniforms. They were already coming down the corridor.

“Pick him up. Make him sit in his chair.”

Howard went limp. It was like trying to pick up spilled jelly. Each time they tried to lift him onto a chair he slid to the floor, quivering and moaning. The uniforms looked at each other and back to me. I knew what they were thinking.

Finally we left him there, lying beneath the table. I turned back in the doorway. I wanted to say something. I wanted to tell him that it was just the beginning.

“You can't bully me,” he said softly. “I'm an expert. I've been bullied all my life.”

Sitting in the same interview room, three years on, it's still not over. My cell phone is ringing.

The Professor sounds relieved. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah, but I need you to come and get me. They want to send me back to the hospital.”

“Maybe it's a good idea.”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

Shifts are changing at the station. The evening crews are coming on watch. Campbell is somewhere upstairs, shuffling paper or whatever else justifies his salary. Slipping along the corridor past the charge room, I reach a door to the rear parking lot. A blast of cold wind ushers me outside.

Gears on the electric gate grind into motion. Hiding in the shadows, I watch an ambulance pull through the opening. It's coming to pick me up. The gates are shutting again. At the last possible moment I step through the closing gap. Turning right, I follow the pavement and turn right twice more until I'm back on the Harrow Road. Slow lines of traffic puncture the darkness.

There's a pub called the Greyhound on the Harrow Road—a smoky, nicotine-stained place with a jukebox and a resident drunk in the corner. I take a table and a morphine capsule. By the time the Professor arrives I'm floating on a chemical cloud. The Greeks had a god called Morpheus—the god of dreams. Who said studying the classics was a waste of time?

Joe pokes his head through the door and looks around nervously. Maybe he's forgotten how authentic pubs used to look before the Continental café culture turned them into white-tiled waiting rooms serving overpriced cooking lager.

“Have you taken something?”

“My leg was hurting.”

“How much are you taking?”

“Not enough.”

He waits for a better explanation.

“I started on about two hundred milligrams but lately I've been popping them like Tic Tacs. The pain won't go away. I function better if I don't have to think about the pain.”

“The pain?” He doesn't believe me. “You're a mess! You're jumpy and anxious. You're not eating or sleeping.”

“I'm fine.”

“You need help.”

“No! I need to find Rachel Carlyle.”

The statement is harsh and abrupt. Joe swallows some uneasy thoughts and drops the subject. Instead, I tell him about visiting Howard and arresting Aleksei Kuznet. He looks at me in disbelief.

“He wouldn't tell me about the ransom.”

“What ransom?”

Joe doesn't know about the diamonds and I'm not going to tell him. It won't add to his understanding and I've already put Ali in danger. Nothing has become any clearer in the past few hours but at least I have a goal—to find Rachel.

“How did Aleksei find you?”

“I don't know. He didn't follow me from the hospital and nobody knew I was going to Wormwood Scrubs. Maybe someone called him from the prison.”

I close my eyes and replay events. I'm totally flying but can still think straight. Snatches of conversation drift back to me.

“God is going to set me free.” That's what Howard said.

If Howard sent the ransom demand why did he wait so long? He could have set up a hoax during his trial or at any stage since then. He would have needed help from the outside. Who?

The Home Office keeps a record of all visitors to Her Majesty's prisons. Howard's eldest sister visits him every few months, traveling down from Warrington and staying overnight at a local B & B. Apart from her there's only been Rachel.

In the first few months after his conviction he received bundles of fan mail. Many of the letters were from women who fell in love with his lonely countenance and his crime. One of them, Bettina Gallagher, a legal secretary from Cardiff, is a notorious pinup among the lifers. She sends pornographic photographs of herself and has twice been engaged to death row inmates in Alabama and Oklahoma.

Howard is allowed one free postage-paid letter a week but can buy more stationery and stamps from the prison shop. Each prisoner is also given a unique PIN number he must use when using the telephone. Pedophiles and child molesters can dial only approved numbers. Letters and calls are monitored.

These details rattle in the emptiness. I can't see Howard arranging a ransom drop—not from inside a prison cell.

“Give your eyes a chance,” my stepfather used to say when we were looking for newborn lambs on frosty nights. White on white is difficult to see. Sometimes you have to look past things before you really see them.