There are times, like in Terry Simons’ house, when it gets too sore to continue and I vow to leave the wound alone, let it heal. But as soon as the immediate pain dies down, the compulsion creeps back and I can’t keep my fingers away. I know that when I lift the crust of the scab, chances are I am going to remove more than dead skin. I’m going to pull new, fragile skin with it and draw blood. But even then, I just can’t seem to stop. I can’t stop pick, pick, picking.Terry Simons is bothering me. The ring. On the square. On the square. The phrase goes round and round inside my head and I don’t know why. It leads me back to the library, a half hunch, but what am I looking for? Masons. Masons. An Inside Story: The Secret World of Freemasonry, it says in the library catalogue. The book is there on the shelves when I look, a dark red cover with bold black writing on the spine. Inside, there’s a whole section on the police, a separate one on the judiciary. I flip over the pages, my eyes lighting on an extract from a newspaper cutting about the controversial memoirs of a senior policeman.
