Guilty Innocence (3 page)

It’s hard, though. Can he ever permit himself to get closer to Natalie? No. She’ll want more, eventually, than he’s able to give. Marriage, babies, a future. Things, if he’s honest with himself, he also yearns for but can’t allow himself. Like Natalie, he’s not exactly overloaded with self-belief. Something practically guaranteed with a mother like Joanna Barker. His lack of self-confidence translates into an absence of ambition for his life beyond wanting it to be safe, normal. Mark goes to work each day and whereas the dullness of his job would piss many guys off, he revels in the sheer normality of it, the regularity, the monthly pay cheque confirming he’s a bona fide member of society. He’d happily work at S.T. Building Supplies until retirement, and if he could throw in a wife, a couple of kids and a mortgage, he would.

But he can’t, of course.
Unclean, unclean
; Mark is as disfigured by his past as any leper. He’s been rejected by his mother for what he and Adam Campbell did and he’s sure if any woman ever discovers the truth about his past she’ll reject him as decisively as Joanna Barker has done. He’s hardly great husband material, after all. Even if by some miracle Natalie or anyone else agrees to marry him, how can he ever allow himself to become a parent? Let alone father a daughter. Because then he’ll have a living, breathing Abby Morgan forever before him, a permanent reminder of that day fourteen years ago.

Natalie’s becoming a fixture in his life now, though, and he can’t deny he’d like to explore what they have together, see if it holds the potential for more. Her lack of self-esteem, however, is obviously warning her he’s not bothered about commitment, maybe even that he sees other women. Hell, he knows for sure she thinks that, even though it’s not true. Take the endless questions about A.J. after she snoops through his phone. Not the other woman she so clearly fears, but Anthony Jackson, Tony or A.J. to those who know him well. His supervising officer from the police, with whom he meets every month to prove he’s being a good boy and complying with the terms of his release.

Which he is, of course. Mostly. A.J. doesn’t know about the visit Mark made, four years ago, to Dartmoor, back to where it all happened. Staying away from Moretonhampstead and the scene of the crime is just one of the many conditions laid down in order for him to be released, and Mark isn’t going to admit to breaking it anytime soon. It’s easy enough to deceive Tony Jackson anyway, should he wish to. After four years of Mark giving every appearance of abiding by the rules, their monthly meeting is down to a mere half-hour now, confined to routine questions about whether Mark is still employed, how he’s spending his time and whether he’s dating.

Impossible, of course, to tell Natalie who A.J. really is. Or why the appointment is in his phone calendar. She’ll simply have to stay jealous. He’s well aware she doesn’t believe his story about A.J. being an old school friend, but what else can he say?

Mark sits back on the toilet pan, letting out a long breath. He’s had fourteen years of living a lie and nothing’s going to change; he’ll simply have to deal with it as he’s always done.

The situation isn’t fair, though, however much the thought sounds like a childish whine. Because he may have been tried and convicted on an equal basis with Adam Campbell, but only Adam and he know how far their sentencing was from reflecting what really happened, fourteen years ago in an abandoned farm building close to Dartmoor.

Mark Slater, formerly Joshua Barker, is no child killer, but Adam Campbell won’t be telling the truth anytime soon concerning Abby Morgan’s brutal murder.

‘You gone to sleep in there? I need to lock up.’ Steve’s voice punctures the balloon of Mark’s thoughts.

‘Coming.’ His brain veers away from Adam Campbell, anticipating the sweaty exhilaration of his blood pounding through his veins as he does his daily seven-mile run around the track in his local park. He’ll force his mother, A.J. and prison life out of his mind, working up an appetite for the Chinese meal with Natalie. Sweet and sour pork balls, he thinks, or maybe beef in black bean sauce. Egg fried rice. Spring rolls as well.

He says goodbye to Steve, who’s busy checking everything is locked up, and heads out of the industrial estate in Bristol where he works, towards home. His cramped yet orderly flat, a mere twenty minutes away by foot; deliberately chosen by Mark because it’s not near any primary schools or children’s playgrounds. Family houses line the nearby streets, but any children who live in them tend to play in the back gardens, not the front, so Mark feels safe. He forces his mind away from the vision of Abby Morgan that arises in his head. So blonde, so pretty. Only two years old. Playing with her dolls’ house in the side garden of her home fourteen years ago.

Not tonight, he tells himself. Don’t think of her tonight. Focus on Natalie, Chinese food, what DVD you’ll watch later, but not her. Not Abby Morgan.

Zero chance of that. As Mark looks up, he sees Abby, not fifty feet from him, clutching her mother’s hand. He draws his breath in sharply, stopping, staring.

It’s not her, of course. Abby Morgan died of multiple stab wounds. She’ll never hold anyone’s hand ever again, but plenty of pretty blonde toddlers live in Bristol; Mark has been haunted by them ever since his release from prison. Every time he sees one, he yearns to be back inside, where small female children can’t torment him. Remind him how Abby Morgan will never grow up, never get old, and all because of him. Every time a blonde toddler crosses his path, the awfulness of it all floods back to him. Especially if she’s wearing pink, as so many little girls do. The colour of Abby’s entire ensemble the day Adam Campbell lured her from the garden of her parents’ house.

The child ahead of him has a cerise-coloured jacket on. A blonde female toddler in pink. A sure-fire trigger for Mark’s counting rituals.

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe.

He wrenches his gaze away from Abby’s doppelganger, forcing his mind onto the old children’s nursery rhyme. Verses seared onto his memory by the events of fourteen years ago. Anxiety grips him tightly, its fingers clutching hard until he begins counting. It’s an important part of his ritual to start at the beginning, even though he doesn’t want to, eager as he is to get to the higher numbers, seven and beyond.
One, two, buckle my shoe
, he chants in his head
.
He glances up, sees the child being led away by her mother towards one of the side roads. He wonders if she’s wearing pink trainers; he can’t tell from where he is. His throat seems to be closing over, the width of a straw, no more, and he fights for breath.

He walks on, exactly seven paces, and then stops.

Three, four, knock at the door. The police have come for you, Mark. Or Joshua, as you were back then.
The child is almost out of view now. Soon she’ll have vanished from his sight but his anxiety will remain until he finishes the ritual, so familiar now.

Another seven paces forward, another halt. Deep breaths in.

Five, six, pick up sticks.
Sticks. Adam Campbell’s expression, his exultation at the thought of the injuries he’ll inflict with the rake in his hand, flashes across Mark’s brain, and he hurries forward another seven paces.

Seven, eight, lay them straight.
That’s better. Higher numbers always are. Seven, lucky number seven. Once he reaches it, he’s past the blood, the screaming, evoked by shoes, knocks on doors, sticks.

The child has disappeared now, but Mark is compelled, as always, to complete the counting and the pacing. He doesn’t care if anyone notices he’s behaving oddly. He paces and counts, paces and counts, until he reaches the end.
Nineteen, twenty, my plate’s empty.
A relieved exhalation releases the pressure in his chest; he can breathe more easily now. Ten more minutes and he’ll reach the sanctuary of his flat, where everything is as neat and orderly as his office at work and blonde two-year-old girls never venture.

The neatness. The counting. Mark knows his behaviour has a name. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, not that he’s ever been formally diagnosed. He’s right up there with the hoarders, hand washers and lock checkers, but for Mark his vice is counting. For him, safety does indeed lie in numbers, as well as in his compulsion for neatness. At Vinney Green, his tidy streak is often commented on but not thought worthy of investigation. Natalie often tells him he’s getting as bad as Patrick Bergin’s character in
Sleeping With The Enemy
.

‘Martin Burney’s got nothing on you,’ she says, laughing. He smiles back at her, not wanting to make an issue of it, and anyway she’s familiar only with Mark’s neatness obsession. Nobody has any idea about the counting or the pacing. Those rituals start once he’s released from prison and he sees, for the first time in ten years, a pretty blonde toddler, and yes, she’s wearing pink, of course. He stares at the child, frantically and for too long, until her mother notices and pulls her daughter quickly away, clearly rattled by Mark’s fixed gaze. Afterwards, he can’t breathe. He thinks his throat is going to close completely over; he’s back there, in Moretonhampstead, with Abby Morgan, hearing the childish nursery rhyme tinkle from her Fisher-Price CD player.

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe.

He doesn’t quite understand the psychology behind his obsession, but after seeing the first Abby lookalike, he begins to count, slowly, along with the nursery rhyme and it helps, especially when he gets into the higher numbers. By
eleven, twelve, dig and delve
, he’s starting to breathe more easily. By
nineteen, twenty, my plate’s empty
and a bit more of the walk seven paces, stop for a count of seven, he’s more or less back to normal.

Until the next time. Too many blonde female toddlers exist for his compulsion ever to go away, and Mark never knows when he’ll see Abby Morgan again. Small wonder his neatness obsession has grown steadily worse. Food cupboards worthy of Martin Burney, DVDs in alphabetical order, books arranged by size and colour. It’s his way of imposing order on an essentially chaotic world. He doesn’t seek help for it, because it’s his safety valve, his magic pill. A sure-fire method of obtaining relief from the guilt swamping him every time he sees another incarnation of Abby Morgan.

It’s not just guilt plaguing him. Mark suffers a constant, overwhelming need to atone for her death, not that he has any idea how to achieve the impossible. Not when the whole world believes him every bit as culpable as Adam Campbell for her murder.

3

UNMASKED

Natalie’s stomach is less queasy now, but she’s certain she won’t be having Chinese food later on. And definitely not with Mark. He’s supposed to come round to her flat at eight, and she’s very sure she’ll be there alone by then, berating herself for her poor taste in men. Then she’ll remember her father, and the psychology will be all too obvious.

Where the hell is Mark? He should be here by now. Chances are her suspicions are right; besides being a child killer, he’s probably stopping off for a quickie with a woman with the initials A.J. Rage pounds through Natalie and if Mark were to walk through the door within the next minute, she might well slap him one.

She fights hard to regain control, push the anger down inside, shove it out of range, so she can confront him calmly. Such a contradiction in terms. The word confrontation itself is loaded; laced with connotations of aggression. Besides, she knows anger won’t do any good if she wants to get the truth out of Mark. Although on one level she doesn’t know him at all, on another she recognises any sign of fury from her will drive him away, and all she’ll get will be evasiveness.

Words from long ago drift back to her. An eleven-year-old Natalie, her pubescent self convinced she has the answer to her mother Callie’s puffy eyes, reddened after discovering her husband has been playing away from home yet again.

‘Why do you put up with it? Why not tell him what a jerk he’s being?’

She’s enraged by the passivity of Callie’s response.

‘I can’t, love. I don’t want to antagonise him, drive him away for good.’ At the time, Natalie can’t grasp how her mother can be, as she thinks to herself later on, such a fucking wimp. Sure, her parents argue about her father’s infidelities, but Callie always responds with tears rather than anger. More wrath might have grown her a pair of much-needed lady balls. Especially given how her husband moves out amid talk of divorce a few weeks later.

The irony is, Natalie reckons, she’s turned out every bit as bad when it comes to screwing up relationships. Even now, with what seems like incontrovertible evidence, part of her still believes Mark incapable of committing such an atrocity. Some other explanation has to exist as to why he possesses such a letter. What, she wonders. Nothing credible comes to mind, other than the obvious: Mark Slater and Joshua Barker inhabit the same body. He’s a child killer. And even if Mark provides some convincing explanation, can their fragile relationship withstand Natalie striking it such a blow? An accusation of being a notorious murderer isn’t one that can be shrugged off, cast aside like a lesser charge, such as infidelity with A.J.

As she looks at her watch, concerned now about his lateness, she hears the main door to the building being opened. Footsteps echo in the hallway. A pause; the rustle of letters being rifled through. Mark will be checking the post on the communal table, seeing if anyone’s sent him mail. He won’t find anything; Natalie’s got there before him. The only important letter is the one she holds clenched in her hand.

He crosses the hallway, puts his key in the latch; Natalie imagines his concern when he finds it unlocked. The door inches open slowly and then Mark is framed in the doorway, surprise registering on his face as he takes in the sight of Natalie, standing there pale and unwelcoming. One hand clutches Mark’s sofa, the other is held behind her back.

He doesn’t speak at first, but she watches his eyes glance from her to the empty plate and biscuit packet on the table. He’s well aware of her comfort eating and the evidence is there before him, along with her silent, accusatory stare.