Michael Robotham - Lost

Ali gazes up at the Victorian façade and shivers.

“You ever been inside?”

“Once or twice,” she replies. “They should tear the place down.”

“It's called a deterrent.”

“Works on me.”

Leaving her for a moment, I open the trunk and retrieve the diamonds. I can fit two packages in the inside pockets of my overcoat and two more in the outer pockets. I put the coat on the seat beside her.

“I want you to stay with the car and look after the diamonds.”

She nods. “You want to wear the vest?”

“I think I'm safe enough in prison.”

Crossing the road, I show my badge at the visitors center. Ten minutes later I climb two flights of stairs and emerge into a large room with a long continuous table divided down the middle by a partition. Visitors stay on one side and prisoners on the other. Knees can't touch or lips meet. Physical contact is restricted to holding hands or lifting young children over the divide.

Heavy boots echo in the corridors as the cons are brought in. Each visitor hands over a docket and has to wait until the prisoner is in place before being admitted.

I watch a young prisoner greet his wife or girlfriend. He kisses her hand and doesn't want to let it go. They both lean forward as though trying to breathe the same air. His hand reaches under the table.

Suddenly, the screws seize her chair and wrench it backward. Falling to the floor, she shields her swollen belly. She's pregnant, for Christ's sake. He only wants to feel his baby, but there's no sign of empathy from the screws.

“DI Ruiz, you can't stay away.”

The Governor appears beside me. Barrel-chested and balding, he's in his late forties. Finishing a sandwich, he dabs at his lips with a paper napkin, missing egg yoke on his chin.

“So what brings you back?”

“It must be the ambience.”

He laughs roughly and glances through the Perspex screen at the reunions.

“How long since I was here last?”

“Don't you remember?”

“Old age, I'm getting forgetful.”

“About four weeks ago; you were interested in that woman who comes to see Howard Wavell.”

“Mrs. Carlyle.”

“Yeah. She's not here today. She comes every month and tries to bring the same gifts: kiddie catalogs. That sick fuck better not get an appeal!”

I try to picture Howard sitting opposite Rachel. Did she reach across the partition and take his hand? I even feel a pang of jealousy and imagine his eyes traveling down the V-neck of her blouse. We live in a sick sick world.

“I need to talk to him.”

“He's in segregation.”

“Why?”

The Governor picks at his fingernails. “Like I told you before, nobody expected him to live this long. He killed Aleksei Kuznet's little girl! That's a death sentence whichever way you look at it.”

“But you've managed to protect him.”

He laughs wryly. “You could say that. He was only here four days before someone ran a razor blade across his throat. He spent the next month in the hospital wing. Nobody's touched him since then so I figure Aleksei must want him alive. Howard doesn't care.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I told you before, he keeps refusing to take his insulin. Twice in the last six months he's lapsed into a diabetic coma. If he can't be bothered why should Her Majesty, eh? I'd let the bastard die.”

The Governor senses I don't agree with him. He sneers. “Contrary to popular opinion, Inspector, I'm not here to play nursemaid to prisoners. I don't hold their hands and say, ‘You poor things, you had a lousy childhood or a crap lawyer or a hanging judge.' A dog on a leash could do what I do.”

(With a lot more compassion no doubt.)

“I still need to see him.”

“He wasn't listed for visitors today.”

“But you can bring him up.”

The Governor grunts softly to a senior guard, who picks up a phone, setting the chain of command into motion. Somewhere deep in the intestines of this place someone will fetch Howard. I can picture him lying on a narrow cot, smelling the sourness of the air. The future is a scary business when you're a pedophile in prison. It's not next summer's holiday or a long weekend in the Lake District. The future stretches from when you wake up until you go to sleep again. Sixteen hours can seem like a lifetime.

Visiting time has almost ended. Howard pushes against the tide, walking as though his legs are shackled. He gazes around the room, looking for his visitor, perhaps expecting Rachel.

More than forty years on I can still recognize him as the fat kid from school, who changed behind a towel and chain-smoked on an asthma puffer. He was almost a semi-tragic figure but not quite so tragic as Rory McIntyre, a sleepwalker who did a high dive off the third-floor balcony in the early hours of Foundation Day. They say that sleepwalkers wake up in midair but Rory didn't make a sound. Nor did he make a splash. He always was a good diver.

Howard takes a seat and doesn't seem surprised by the sound of my voice. Instead he stops, arches his neck and swivels his head like an old tortoise. I step in front of him. He blinks at me slowly.

“Hello, Howard, I want to talk to you about Rachel Carlyle.”

He smiles little by little but doesn't answer. A scar runs from one side of his throat to the other, just beneath his chins.

“She comes to see you. Why?”

“You should ask her.”

“What do you talk about?”

He glances at the screws. “I don't have to tell you anything. My appeal application is next Thursday.”

“You're not getting out of here, Howard. Nobody wants to set you free.”

Again he smiles. Certain people don't seem to match their voices. Howard is like that. It is pitched too high, as though laced with helium, and his pale face seems disconnected from his body like a white balloon moving gently in a breeze.

“We can't all be perfect, Mr. Ruiz. We make mistakes and we deal with the consequences. The difference between you and me is that I have my God. He will judge me and get me out of here. Do you ever wonder who is judging you?”

He seems confident. Why? Maybe he knows about the ransom demand. Any suggestion Mickey might still be alive would automatically grant him a retrial.

“Why does Mrs. Carlyle come here?”

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.