Page 55 of Now Comes the Dark

He hung back and tracked him from the other side of the road, but the precaution was not necessary. The French man was tooabsorbed in himself to notice the danger, to suspect he was being followed.

After everything that he’d done, everything he’d achieved, the fear he had generated throughout the city, the man was astonished at how little care these queer men took. They thought they were invincible. Assault and murder were crimes that befell others, never them. He was convinced that not one of his victims had ever imagined it would happen to them until the seconds before he wrung the life out of them.

He recognised the route Mallon was taking. He was cutting through the city centre and down towards the riverfront. The idiot was going to walk home on a dark and cold night.

With a merciless grin, the man shoved his hands in his pockets and followed.

Chapter Twenty

Mallon

Mallon pulled his jacket tight around his neck. He would never get used to the cold in this country. It leached upwards from the ground, penetrating his boots and seeping into his body, first through his toes before spreading its insidious chill through every part of him. He dragged on his cigarette, clutching at the scant warmth it afforded.

What have I done?

Tonight, he might have made the biggest mistake of his life. The wounded look on Roman’s handsome face had torn at his heart. Mallon had thought the truth would enable them to move on to the next stage of their relationship, but the pain he had witnessed in Roman’s eyes could trigger the exact opposite. He might have lost him.

The notion was unbearable.

Mallon hadn’t been ready to play his hand so soon. When he’d returned from France at the weekend, he’d thought the best thing to do was to maintain the status quo. They could continue as they were, seeing each other a couple of times a week. On hismost recent trip home, he had missed Roman more than he’d ever thought possible. Betrice had taken the children on a skiing trip two days after he’d arrived, and he’d spent most of the time alone in the house. Previously, he would have enjoyed the peace and privacy. He would have hooked up with one of his fuck-buddies and thought no more of it. Only he had no interest in the local men now. His heart had remained in England, in Blyham, infatuated with the young man who had come into this life just weeks before.

Mallon had realised the strength of his feelings for Roman as he moped around the family home alone. On his return to Blyham, he’d vowed to cool things down between them, to leave a few days before making contact with Roman. It had taken every reserve of strength he had to keep from texting him at the weekend. Mallon had exerted himself with work and at the gym, running. He’d even taken a boxing class at the local leisure centre. None of it worked. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get Roman out of his mind. He had eventually submitted on Monday evening and had picked up his phone.

Roman hadn’t been as excited to hear from him as he’d expected. He’d been cold and indifferent. When Mallon discovered what Roman had been through the day before, how he’d come into the orbit of the Blyham Strangler, Mallon had panicked. He’d realised then that he might have returned to find there was no Roman at all, and the thought of anything happening to him had filled him with dread.

Despite being married for thirteen years, Mallon had a lot of experience with men, but he had never known emotions as strong as what he had for Roman. He’d never felt like this about anyone before.

He was in love with him…desperate, all-consuming love.

Had he blown it apart by confessing his secret?

Uncertainty chilled him as thoroughly as the cold evening.

Shit!What made him think Roman would understand? Why should he? He was free and single. What cares should he have for the emotional complications of an older, married man?

He’ll run. And he’ll be right to. He doesn’t need your bullshit, you stupid old man.

Mallon stubbed out the cigarette in a waste bin. His hands were too cold to light another. He shoved them deep in his pockets and kept walking. He should have called for a taxi, but some masochistic instinct made him continue. He deserved this discomfort. He quickened his pace. He was already on the downward road to the river.Not too far now.

Roman didn’t understand what made him stay with Betrice despite the loveless years of their marriage. They did it for the children. Betrice respected that as much as he did. Carole and Mathis would not grow up in the chaos he had suffered as a child. They knew nothing of their parent’s troubles and never would. He and Betrice put on a convincing show. They had not had a single wrong word or argument in front of the kids, ever. He intended to keep it that way. He’d made a pact with his wife that they would stay together until the kids were both in college, and Mallon intended to honour it.

His children deserved the very best, and they would have it.

Mallon was born in the resort town of Villefranche-Sur-Mer, the second of four brothers. His parents had run a restaurant on the harbour, working long hours, and the boys were left to care for themselves. When he told people of his childhood, they assumed it had been idyllic. How could it not be? Growing up on the Riviera in a beautiful town, close to Monaco and Monte Carlo.

No one knew the reality, because neither Mallon nor his brothers talked about it. Despite being married and business partners, his parents had an abusive relationship. They were both drinkers and often fought well into the night after they’dfinished their shift at the restaurant. His father was a mean-spirited man with a combustible temper. Mallon and his siblings had felt the hard lash of his belt when he was in one of his moods. His temper had a hair-trigger, and it took nothing to set it off.

His mother was only slightly better. She did little to protect her sons from her husband’s wrath and wasn’t above taking her hand to them herself. Both were guilty of using the boys as weapons against the other during one of their heated fights. One of his worst memories was of being stuck in the middle while they tore at him from either side. He’d thought his arms were going to be ripped from the sockets. He had been eight years old.

He would never allow anything like that to happen to his children. Any parent who would was no parent at all.

When Mallon was fourteen, he had witnessed the death of his best friend Emanuel. The boys had been playing in a cove close to home, swimming offshore and fooling around. The beach had always been his escape. Neither of his parents showed any interest in entertaining their children, and they often left them in the care of neighbours or their friends’ parents. Those were the childhood days and memories he truly cherished, until the day he and Emanuel challenged each other to a race. There was a marker a mile from shore, and they bet twenty francs that they could make it there and back before the other. The boys were strong swimmers with no fear of the ocean.

Mallon had reached the marker ahead of his friend and was on the return mile to the beach. His muscles screamed from the exertion, each breath seemed harder than the last to catch, but he would not give in. He had been so immersed in the challenge that he failed to hear the roar of an engine until it was almost upon him. A tourist who had hired a jet-ski had lost control of the vehicle. It had whizzed past Mallon, sending him tumbling in its wake. Despite the screams of the tourist and of horrifiedobservers on a nearby boat, Emanuel was not so lucky. He raised his head and seemed only to notice the ski at the last second. The moment of impact had haunted Mallon for the rest of his life.

That evening, his father had refused to close the restaurant. He had hollered at Mallon about being a reckless shit whose actions had resulted in the death of his best friend. The next morning, oblivious to his tears and the distress he was in, his mother had driven him to school and forced him through the gates. At the height of the summer season, neither parent was prepared to take a day off to comfort their son. It was a kind teacher who took pity and arranged for him to spend the day in the care of his own parents rather than endure the morbid curiosity of his classmates.

Besides the love he felt for his brothers, there were few signs of affection in the family home.

---