Lost - Michael Robotham [37]
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.
“Evidence. That’s what detectives do. It’s what we use to support a case. It turns hypothesis into theories and theories into cases.”
“I’m a case.”
“A work in progress.”
That was the truth of it. I couldn’t say what I was looking for until I found it—clothing, fingerprints, binding material, videos, photographs, a seven-year-old girl with a lisp … any of the above.
“I want a lawyer.”
“Good. You can use my phone. Afterward we’ll go outside and hold a joint press conference on the front steps.”
“You can’t take me out there.” The television cameras were lined up along the pavement like metal Triffids, waiting to lash out at anyone who left the building.
Howard sat down on the staircase, holding on to the banister for support.
“I can smell bleach.”
“I was cleaning.”
“My eyes are watering, Howard. What were you cleaning?”
“I spilled some chemicals in my darkroom.”
There were scratches on his wrists. I pointed to them. “How did you get those?”
“Two of Mrs. Swingler’s cats got loose in the garden. One of your officers left the door open. I helped her get them back.”
He listened to the sound of drawers being opened and furniture moved.
“Do