Some stories enter the public eye like splinters. The Moors Murders. The Yorkshire Ripper. Malbry’s Emily White affair. And to see Harry Clarke in such company—yes, it hurt. It still does. Sixteen years later, it’s still surprisingly hard for me to look at those old headlines, those photographs. So many people have had their say over the Harry Clarke affair. So many bits of graffiti scrubbed off lavatory walls; so many casual references in newspapers and magazines. There was even a book, you know, by a man called Jeffrey Stuarts—a hack journalist, specializing in character assassination—in which it was suggested that Harry’s victims were more numerous than anyone suspected, and which attempted to link him—and, by association, St. Oswald’s—with a number of disappearances. No one protested openly, even though Harry was on a School trip to France at the time of at least one of these. None of Harry’s ex-colleagues—including Eric, including myself—were brave enough to stand up for him. And why? Because an unstable young man had made a vague accusation, abetted by his therapist; his Church; his parents; a prominent MP—and supported by Johnny Harrington, the boy who kept on coming back.

Everything begins with him. From that first visit to the Headmaster’s office; from that first complaint; from the Church; from that first mention of the word possession, back in ’81. You might still wonder why I blame Harrington over Spikely. Perhaps because Spikely was disturbed; everything about his testimony pointed to his delusional state. But Harrington was presentable; boyish; confident; even charming. He gave his testimony in much the same way as he had spoken to me that day when talking about his troubled friend; with an air of polite sincerity. And when that Sports Day photo emerged, with Harrington looking so neatly pressed, and Harry, sweaty and grinning, the papers had a field day, and Harrington (forever fourteen in the eyes of the public) became a perpetual poster child; the final nail in poor Harry’s coffin.

Without his confirmation of David Spikely’s story, there would have been no reason to give Spikely any credence. It would have been Harry’s word against—at best—the fractured and inconclusive account of a pupil who hadn’t named him directly, who clearly had mental issues, and who had spent less than a year at the School. Without Johnny Harrington’s corroboration, there would have been no inquiry; no search; no link to the death of Lee Bagshot—a tenuous link at best, and based on nothing but circumstance. In short, the case would have been thrown out of court. Harry would never have been condemned.