Disordered Minds

a, doctor...'

The room was too warm. He took out a handkerchief and wiped a bead of sweat from his upper lip. 'I gather you knew Howard Stamp,' he said to Roy as the man laid the table.

'Depends what you mean by 'know,' mate. He used to pop into my dad's shop once in a while to pick up stuff for his gran but, as he never said much, we weren't exactly close.'

'Where was the shop?'

'You'll have passed it on your way here. It's the newsagent in Highdown Road.'

Jonathan remembered. 'Was he older than you? He'd be in his midfifties if he was still alive.'

'Yup,' Roy agreed unhelpfully, retrieving salt and pepper pots from a cupboard. 'You wouldn't have thought it at the time, though. He managed to grow a bit of a mustache and a scrappy little beard, but he never looked his age. He was a right little wimp ... even his voice failed to develop. My dad called him 'sparrow chest' and told him to get a Bullworker ... but he never did.' He paused, dunking back. 'He should've done. He'd have had more confidence with a muscle or two.'

'You called him 'poor old Howard' earlier. I assumed you had some sympathy for him.'

'In retrospect I do-he was bullied rotten-but at the time...' He broke off with a shake of his head. 'A bloke couldn't afford to feel sympathy then. The kids today think tihey invented street cred but it's been around for decades. Only a loser would have admitted friendship with Howard.'

'Classic torture tactics,' murmured Jonathan mildly. 'The Scylla of isolation and the Charybdis of fear.'

Roy paused in what he was doing. 'Scylla'-Cill?-at least, had struck a chord. 'If you spoke English,' he said carefully, 'I'd know what you were talking about.'

'Scylla and Charybdis were six-headed monsters who inhabited rocks in the Mediterranean,' said George. 'Ulysses had to steer his ship between them without being snared by either in Homer's Odyssey.'

Roy relaxed noticeably. 'I expect you're right,' he drawled, 'but it still isn't English.'

'Howard was between a rock and a hard place,' Jonathan explained, 'bullied because he was friendless, and friendless because he was bullied. He had nowhere to go except inside himself. The outward sign of his distress was cutting his arms.'

Roy shrugged. 'Not my fault, mate. You can't hold the rest of us responsible because Howard didn't have the bottle to stand up for himself. We all got teased, but most of us learned to deal with it.' He removed the casserole dish from a hotplate on the sideboard and placed it on a mat in the middle of the table. 'Good eating,' he said, before vanishing again.

'Was he one of the bullies?' Jonathan asked, clenching his fist involuntarily on the arm of his chair.

George noticed it and heard the edge to his voice. 'Probably,' she answered honestly, 'but then all the children were. I don't think it would be right to single Roy out as an aggressor. He was five or six years younger than Howard, so he wasn't at school with him, and the school bullies were the worst.' She heaved her bottom out of the chair and moved to the table. 'Perhaps scapegoat was the wrong description. Whipping boy might have been better. The first had the sins of the Jews laid on his back before he was chased into the wilderness, the second was flogged for the failings of others. In either case, the guilty escaped punishment. It's a very twisted concept.'

'But an old one.' Jonathan pulled out the other chair. 'Jesus died on the cross to take the sins of the world on himself. Or have I got that wrong?'

She smiled slightly. 'You know you haven't,' she said, unfolding her napkin, 'but there's a difference between the son of God absolving the world and some poor goat being expected to do it.' She took his plate and spooned lamb hotpot onto it. 'Here's another animal sacrifice,' she joked, handing it to him. 'Help yourself to vegetables. As far as I know, they've never had to atone for anyone's sins. Or am I wrong, Dr. Hughes?'

There was more of the same during the meal. Serious remarks interspersed with teasing darts. She seemed intent on proving her general knowledge to him, and he let her do most of the talking while he struggled to eat the lamb hotpot. His appetite, as usual, was negligible and after five minutes he pushed his half-finished plate away and lit a cigarette without asking permission in case she refused. He wanted to remove his jacket, but he was worried she'd notice his fraying shirt cuffs.

Every so often he tried to break her garrulous flow. His questions were factual. Was Howard's primary school still in existence? Would they have records? Which secondary school did he attend? Was that still in existence? Would they have records? She answered readily enough, only to go off on a tangent immediately, and his frustration grew. He wanted to remind her that this was a fact-sharing meeting, instigated at her invitation, but he didn't know how to do it because he wasn't used to voluble middle-aged women who pulled faces and giggled under the influence of drink.

After half an hour she pushed her plate aside and propped her chubby elbows on the table. 'Do you mind if I asked some questions now?'

'What about?'

'You.' She shook her head as his expression closed immediately. 'Not personal questions, Dr. Hughes, questions about why you became interested in Howard's case. For example, how did you come across it and where did you research it? Downing and Kiszko's cases were fairly well known even before their convictions were quashed, but interest in Howard died with him. He's not mentioned in books or on the Internet and, as I said in my first letter, the story was dead long before I moved to Mullin Street. So what brought you to him?'

'A book,' said Jonathan with unnecessary emphasis, 'although, admittedly, it's only available in academic libraries-Clinical Studies by Dr. Andrew Lawson. It was published in 1975 and has been out of print for years. It's a collection of psychiatric assessments, one of which was Stamp's. I quote it in Disordered Minds ... the attribution is in a footnote.' He smiled the mechanical smile again. 'I always assume readers share my interest in bibliographic references, but obviously I'm wrong.'

George's cheeks turned a brighter crimson. 'I hadn't realized that's what sparked your interest. May I ask why it did?'

He shrugged. 'I thought I made it clear in what I wrote. There were parallels between Stamp's case and the other cases I detailed. It seemed obvious to me that, had he lived, his conviction would have been quashed.'