An Innocent Man Read online

Is Mark a Serial Killer?

  I’m not kidding. This is a serious question. You may be wondering how I could ask if arguably my best friend of almost thirty years (thirty years, that’s right, do the maths, I know I don’t look it) could actually be a serial killer, I mean, what a question to ask. You’re then probably straight on to the oh hell, is he still out there, did you report him to the police, does he know and you’re thinking could Mark know that I (as in you) have heard this and know and so am I (you again) going to be his next victim, how could you (as in me, this time) put me into such a position, etcetera, etcetera. To which I say, don’t judge. I am merely posing the question that I started to ask myself because of the things that started to unfold at, or more precisely just after, his party. Of course, you could be Mark (although that I hope is extremely unlikely) in which case you would either be thinking why the hell does he not leave me alone, even now, even after all this. I don’t take this lightly, Mark, if this is indeed you. I don’t jump to conclusions for the sake of it, I am not an extrovert attention seeker, prone to making large, baseless statements in order to make myself seem more interesting, rather I am a man of science and I form my conclusions on evidence and judgement based on the balance of probability and my own experience. Even if that evidence starts to seem more and more unlikely.

  Sylvain?

  Yes?

  Can I have a word?

  Erm…

  Oh, don’t worry, I’m not trying to hit on you

  No?

  Why would you think that? I don’t even find you attractive. Besides, your wife is here.

  Ahem. My ex-wife.

  So you say, but you don’t act like it. You were all over each other just now.

  (I raised my eyebrows)

  You are spying on us now?

  It’s not like you were trying to hide. You were in the middle of the room. I even saw you slip your hand under her dress.

  So you were spying on us? Why would you look at something like that?

  I wasn’t! I mean, I should be asking you, why would you do that in front of everyone?

  (I coughed)

  Is this what you wanted to ask me?

  No. No. Listen. (She dropped her voice to a whisper, as if the previous exchange could have been shouted from the rooftops). I think Mark may be having an affair.

  Mark? Why?

  Keep your voice down!

  (I started whispering)

  Why would you think that?

  (Glances from some of the other guests as she guided me out of the room, holding my arm)

  What’s going on, Louise?

  Look. There’s something going on with Mark. I don’t know what it is but …

  Stop.

  What?

  You’re about to start sounding like a soap opera and I won’t have that. Tell me what you’ve seen and I’ll listen, I may even give you an opinion.

  Sylvain…

  Just tell me.

  He keeps a secret diary.

  How do you know?

  I’ve seen him. Scribble in it, then hide it.

  Have you looked at it?

  No

  Why not?

  Because…it wouldn’t be right. He’s entitled to his private thoughts.

  And yet it is right to accuse him of having an affair?

  It’s not just the diary.

  What, then?

  I’ve seen him. He thinks I’m asleep, because I’ve been on those bloody pills for so long, I’ve been dead to the world. But I’ve been trying to get myself off them, it was meant to be a surprise to him, I thought I’d …

  You can see where this is going. Louise had been on these pills for years, ever since I’d known her. Something about some childhood trauma that had sent her into a spiralling depression that she almost didn’t recover from, and then she met Mark, and then and then. She had to stay on heavy duty tranks, though even she wanted to be able to act like a normal human being and of course to sleep, and if you, like I, have experience of sleepless nights (and I don’t mean the lack of sleep that everyone complains about, I mean true sleeplessness, getting maybe an hour or two a night for weeks, months at a time, without a break, when even the simplest of human interactions become a herculean challenge and the lines at the edge of reality start to become blurred) and you multiply that tenfold then you still won’t really have any idea of what she was going through. She used to describe the world as if seeing it through a tainted rainbow, where everything was somehow disfigured and discoloured. Dark Alice, she used to call herself, and because I was too slow to get the reference she explained it to me – through a looking glass darkly, she said.

  Ah. Now I understood. Her tranks didn’t make life quite normal again, but they made the darkness fade slightly and of course they helped her to sleep, although that was probably the wrong word for it now. It was a deep, dreamless, coma-like state whose blackness would have terrified anyone able to experience it, the black hole at the centre of the soul. And that was the battle she had been taking on, secretly, trying to, ever so slowly, wean herself off those destructive pieces of mind candy, and bring herself back, crutch free, to the world that the rest of us more or less inhabit (although perhaps she should have asked herself why). We do things in secret to relieve ourselves of the perceived pressure of success without necessarily considering the consequences, which were, in this case, the realisation that husband Mark, every second or third night, left the bed at about eleven thirty, dressed, left the house by foot wearing a long black trench-coat (that Louise hadn’t realised he owned), and returned at about four in the morning, to slip back into his pyjamas and back into bed, after having taken a long shower in the downstairs bathroom. Having, of course, taken advantage of her drugged state and still believing her mind was confined to that blackness; he probably didn’t even check, now, didn’t look for the fluttering of eyelids or the subtle shift in breathing patterns that would have suggested to him that she was present. The first time it happened, she hadn’t actually realised he had left the house, she’d assumed he had gone downstairs to read or watch television or drink whisky, and she had felt pity for his own drift towards insomnia; she had actually drifted off to sleep herself, without any help, that night, the first time in God knows how many years, the last thought as her mind drifting off that somehow it had transferred, floating across the night air and landing in his mind, her final emotion being guilt before the night took her.

  She would have carried on thinking this, as she lay awake the second time, less able to find the doorway to sleep, when she heard a noise outside, and was afraid that the wild dogs had returned, those that she thought had been plaguing the neighbourhood. She flicked open the curtain slightly to see the shadowy figure stepping on the path towards the street. She was about to panic and rush downstairs to Mark, convinced that a stranger had been trying to break into their house, when a single beam of moonlight fell across the street, just as the intruder stepped into its path, and it became unmistakeably Mark. Head down, walking rapidly away, but him, without a doubt. Her reaction, at least the way she described it to me, was predictable. A gasp, a step backwards, a flop onto the bed, then a night of wakefulness fuelled by her imagination. Sleep was history, and now of course she was trapped in the nightmare of not being able return to her pills, afraid that the incident would repeat itself (which of course it did) and she would be unaware (she wasn’t).

  And as she embraced her insomnia once again, with a different sense of dread, her days started the long slide back to the chaos of before, and she became terrified that Mark would notice, and question her, and then what was she to say, to this husband that kept secrets from her. He didn’t, of course, being caught in his own bubble of self-absorption. On the nights that he didn’t disappear he would sleep easily, snoring lightly, blissfully unaware of his wife’s slow slide back towards oblivion. Which led us to the party, to her approaching me, which I guess just showed how desperate she had become, her wariness of me almost matched by mi
ne of her, after an unfortunate drunken tryst a long time ago, that neither of us can quite remember, of which we both fear the worst. Still, it has led to a certain confrontational closeness between us, and we have both shared our thoughts, hopes and fears, to an extent that neither Sylvia nor, I suspect Mark, have any understanding of. Now she asks my help, my confidante, and I am powerless. I asked her how long it had been going on for (for a few weeks, she wasn’t sure, time had lost its way a little), why she looked so awful (obvious answer) and whether she had talked to him about it (absolutely not). I asked her had she noticed any change in his behaviour (yes, hadn’t I been listening), and whether she had ever followed him. This last question caused her to take a deep breath and colour slightly, and then she embarked on this strange tale of the single time that she had attempted to do that.

  She had been determined, that evening, she said; Mark had been out with some friends when she returned from work, and she had set about getting everything ready – clothes, head torch, a knife – putting it all into a small bag that she hid under her side of the bed. He hadn’t gone that night, and her nervous energy had been such that she had had to drink several whiskies to find an element of peace in the ever-descending spiral of her mind. The following night, though, it had happened. She had lain perfectly still as he slid from the bed (although given his lack of attention this was hardly necessary), she jumped into action as soon as she