13.
“Ready, Harry?” Ralph had said to him through the bars and then watched as he picked his box up and waited for the door to be unlocked. He noted that the grin was still there and nearly asked him whether there was something else that was making him smile, then decided not to. Ralph escorted Harry to the reception building and had him fill out the final documents then walked him to the big iron gate. It swung open slowly on rusty and tired hinges, creaking and sounding like a movie soundtrack from one of those horror flicks they play down at the Mayfair on a Saturday afternoon.
Harry turned to the guard, thanked him for his respect, then shook his hand. Ralph later told me he hesitated for a moment, as it was an unwritten rule not to shake an inmate’s hand, but Harry had stuck his hand out to him so fast that it caught the young guard off balance, grasping it tightly. He looked him in the eyes and felt his blood turn cold, a dark shadow hiding behind the man’s gaze. Then he let his hand go, turned and strolled out, whistling, as if heading out for a morning stroll. Ralph said he felt a chill as he watched him, gooseflesh popping across his arms. His lawyer was waiting out the front, saw his client emerge from the gate and went to embrace him. Then the gate closed and he was gone.
14.
I could see the first glimpses of the prison through the trees as we neared it, Crab Apple sitting high on its hill. As June turned the car into the driveway that led into the carpark, we could already see the line of cars that had come to see the release of Harry Lightman. As June drove into the carpark, we heard the crowd. And they didn’t sound happy. When she found a space near the back, Steph and I climbed out, thanking June for her help. I tried to listen to what they were shouting. At first, I thought they were angry that he was being released. It made sense, considering this was the community that he had terrorized. But then my stomach sank and terrified realization set in as I saw who the crowd was. They weren’t the people from the community, townsfolk who came to watch. They were reporters, photographers, people that Lovett had contacted to come and witness “the righting of a monumental injustice”, as he put it.
“What’s happened?” I asked the first man I came to, a young guy, carrying a notepad in one hand and a pen in the other. His cheeks were flushed, his expression far from happy.
“They let him go early,” he said and my worst fears surfaced.
15.
Of course, they had. To avoid an already embarrassing situation from becoming an outright spectacle, the prison had sent a messenger to Lovett’s hotel room before dawn that morning, which also happened to be at the Railway Hotel. The guard advised him he had five minutes to get ready and accompany him back to the prison.
Lovett had jumped in his car and followed the officer back to Crab Apple, the guards on top of the wall watching him to ensure he didn’t attempt to contact anybody. That son-of-a-bitch had no choice but to stand there and wait for his client.
As Steph and I were discovering her car battery dead, courtesy of a couple of power-sucking headlights, Ralph was escorting Harry to the prison’s gate. They released him at 7am, just as the sun broke across the eastern horizon. A single photographer had managed to capture the embrace between lawyer and client, a young man by the name of Harry Bowden. He worked for the Daylesford Times, a small newspaper that was about to show the whole world Richard Lovett embracing his client as he emerged from the prison gates after being unjustly imprisoned for almost 20 years. The young reporter had awoken early, having had a suspicion that Harry Lightman may be released early, a suspicion that paid off in spades.
Young Harry nearly missed the entire thing. He had set off for Crab Apple at just after 3 that morning, as Steph and I were still enjoying our lightning-infused nap. He had pedalled for two and half hours, arriving at the prison a little after 6. He decided to park his bike next to a gum tree that sat on the edge of the carpark, then sat next to it, staring at the stars. He double checked his camera a couple of times, then rested it on his lap as he stared at Jupiter, burning brightly over the tree tops beside the prison walls. He had nodded off, tired from his early morning ride and almost slept through the whole thing. He slept through the car driving past him as the officer left to fetch Lovett. He slept through two cars returning a short time later.
What finally woke the young man from his slumber, was the eerie screeching of the massive iron gate as it opened up for Lightman to exit. He opened his eyes just in time, recognising Lovett instantly. He picked himself up, grasped his camera tightly and ran as close as he could. He stopped just in time to capture Lovett take a couple of steps forward and embrace Lightman tightly. The angle of the photo showed a beaming Lightman and the back of Lovett’s head. Then he sat back and watched as both men climbed into Lovett’s car. Harry wound his window down almost immediately. Young Harry watched old Harry as they drove past him,
