‘Hello,’ you say.
‘Hello,’ Myshkin smiles, blinking.
His guard pushes him forwards into the grey plastic chair opposite you, then closes the door and takes the last chair to sit behind Myshkin.
Michael Myshkin looks up at you.
You stop staring.
Myshkin looks back down at the grey plastic table.
‘My name is John Piggott,’ you say. ‘I used to live in Fitzwilliam, near you. I’m a solicitor now and your mother asked me to come and talk to you about an appeal.’
You pause.
Michael Myshkin is patting down his dirty yellow hair with his fat right hand, the hair thin and black with oil.
‘An appeal is a very lengthy and costly procedure, involving a lot of time and different people,’ you continue. ‘So before any firm embarks upon such a course on behalf of a client, we have to be very sure that there are sufficient grounds for an appeal and that there is a great likelihood of success. And even this costs a lot of money.’
You pause again.
Myshkin looks up at you.
You ask him: ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’
He wipes his right hand on his overalls and smiles at you, his pale blue eyes blinking in the warm grey room.
‘You do understand what I’m saying?’
Michael Myshkin nods once, still smiling, still blinking.
You turn to the guard sat behind you: ‘Is it OK if I take some notes?’
He shrugs and you take a spiral notebook and biro from out of your carrier bag.
You flick open the pad and ask Myshkin: ‘How old are you, Michael?’
He glances round at the guard sat behind him then back at you and whispers: ‘Twenty-two.’
‘Really?’
He blinks, smiles, and nods again.
‘Your mother told me you were thirty.’
‘Outside,’ he whispers, the index finger of his left hand to his wet lips.
‘How about inside?’ you ask him. ‘How long have you been in here?’
Michael Myshkin looks at you, not smiling, not blinking, and very slowly says: ‘Seven years, four months, and twenty-six days.’
You sit back in your plastic chair, tapping your plastic pen on the plastic table.
You look across at him.
Myshkin is patting down his hair again.
‘Michael,’ you say.
He looks up at you.
‘You know why you’re in here?’ you ask. ‘In this place?’
He nods.
‘Tell me,’ you say. ‘Tell me why you’re in here?’
‘Because of Clare,’ he says.
‘Clare who?’
‘Clare Kemplay.’
‘What about her?’
‘They say I killed her.’
‘And is that right?’ you say, quietly. ‘Did you kill her?’
Michael John Myshkin shakes his head: ‘No.’
‘No what?’ you say, writing down his words verbatim.
‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘But you said you did.’
‘They said I did.’
‘Who did?’
‘The police, the papers, the judge, the jury,’ he says. ‘Everyone.’
‘And you,’ you tell him. ‘You said so too.’
‘But I didn’t,’ says Michael Myshkin.
‘You didn’t say it or you didn’t do it?’
‘I didn’t do it.’
‘So why did you say you did if you didn’t?’
Myshkin is patting down his hair again.
‘Michael,’ you say. ‘This is very, very important.’
He looks up.
You say again: ‘Why did you say you killed her?’
‘They said I had to.’
‘Who?’
‘Everyone.’
‘Who’s everyone?’
‘My father, my mother, the neighbours, work, the lawyers, the police,’ he says. ‘Everyone.’
‘Which police?’ you say. ‘Can you remember their names?’
Michael Myshkin stops patting down his hair and shakes his head.
‘Can you remember what they looked like?’
Head still down, he nods once -
But you stop writing, looking into the uniformed eyes of the man behind Michael Myshkin, another set of uniformed eyes behind you -
You say: ‘Why did they tell you to do that? To say you killed her?’
Michael John Myshkin looks up at you. He is not smiling. He is not blinking. He is not patting down his hair -
He says: ‘Because I know who did.’
‘You know who killed her?’
He looks at the table, patting down his hair again.
You start writing: ‘Who?’
He is patting down his hair, blinking at the plastic table.
‘Michael, if it wasn’t you, who was it?’
He is patting down his hair. He is blinking. Smiling.
‘Who?’
Smiling and blinking and patting down his hair and -
‘Who?’
Michael Myshkin looks up at you.
He says: ‘The Wolf.’
You put down your pen: ‘The Wolf?’
Myshkin, in his grey overalls and his grey shirt with his enormous body and oversized head, is nodding -
Nodding and laughing -
Really, really laughing -
The guards too.
Laughing and nodding and blinking and patting down his hair, the spittle on his chin -
Michael John Myshkin, murderer of children, is laughing -
Spittle on his chin, tears on his cheeks.
Outside in your car, you switch on the engine and the radio news and light a cigarette:
‘Thatcher names defence as nation’s priority; ten Greenham women arrested as council bailiffs move in; boy aged fifteen to appear before Northampton magistrates charged with murdering three-year-old boy; Hazel day three, the search continues; Nilsen charged with four more murders: Kenneth Ockendon in December 1979, Martyn Duffey in May 1980, William Sutherland in September 1980, Malcolm Barlow in…’
You switch the radio off and light another cigarette and listen to the rain fall on the roof of the car, eyes closed:
Fitzwilliam, three days ago. You waited in the same piss for your Pete to show. He didn’t so you went inside and cremated your mother. Stood alone at the front and bit the inside of your cheek until the blood wouldn’t stop and the tears finally came.
Mrs Myshkin was there, Mrs Ashworth and a couple of the others -
But not your Pete.
Ma Myshkin had caught you back at the house, cheap yellow margarine from a stale ham sandwich on your cheap black suit. She sponged it off with a thin flowered handkerchief and said: ‘You’ll see him then?’
You open your eyes.
You feel sick and your fingers are burning.
You put out the cigarette and press the buttons in and out on the radio until you find some music:
The Police.
‘Mrs Myshkin?’
You are in a working telephone box on Merseyside, listening to Mrs Myshkin and the relentless sound of a hard rain on the roof -
‘Yes, he’s fine,’ you say.
The rain pouring down, car lights in the middle of a wet Saturday afternoon in May -
‘I will need to see you again.’
The kind of wet Saturday afternoon you used to spend round your Uncle Ronnie and Aunty Winnie’s over Thornhill way, eating lemon curd tarts and custard pies in their kitchen with his old British motorcycle in pieces on the cracked linoleum, afraid -
‘Can I pop round sometime early in the week?’
Sitting in the sidecar in the garage with Pete, listening to the rain fall on the corrugated roof, the shells in the wall outside so sharp and full of pain, listening to the relentless sound of the hard rain on the roof and not wanting to go home, not wanting to go to school on Monday, dreading it -
‘Tuesday, if that’s OK with you?’
That vague fear even then -
‘Goodbye, Mrs Myshkin.’
That fear again now, less and less vague -
She hangs up and you stand there, in a working telephone box on Merseyside, listening to the dial tone -
The dial tone and the relentless sound of the hard rain on the roof, not wanting to go home, not wanting to go to work, dreading it -