Under Cover of Darkness (Paperback)

Chapter 1: A Fateful Reunion

The children next door had been running up and down the stairs for the past hour, the thump of each small footstep reverberating through the thin wall to the cramped room where Max Barreau sat with his head in his hands.

His fingers dug into his scalp, parting the dark greasy hair to make red semicircles in the skin. The pain made no difference. The desire he had been fighting for so long remained.

The mother’s voice rang out loud and shrill, calling the children down for their tea, and the thumping ceased. Max raised his head, red-rimmed eyes blinking. He’d come to a decision.

People died all the time. Only the previous week, a fellow lodger had cut her wrists, her body being discovered with a scream by the landlady and chatter from the other residents as to how unsurprised they were the woman had taken her own life. She was unhappy, one said, and another remarked that most people were and that it was only surprising there weren’t more suicides as depressed men and women sought a way out of their misery.

So, Max reasoned, if people were unhappy anyway, and were ready to kill themselves to escape their dreary lives, why should he worry so much, put himself through so much agony, over taking a few of those lives away?

He rose from his bed with its damp sheets and broken springs and stared out of the window. Looking down at the people on the street, heads down against the wind as they hurried to get home to their families, Max wondered if they had any notion they were being watched. How easy it was to see without being seen. How simple it would be to follow one of those people, one of those women, until they reached a place where he could take them with no one seeing. Down a dark alley, perhaps, or behind the bushes in a park.

Why not? Why shouldn’t he do this very night, the thing he had been denying himself for so long?

Max pulled on his jacket, dropped the few coins he possessed into his trouser pocket, and yanked open the door. Hurtling down the stairs, ignoring his landlady’s shout to keep the noise down, he burst out onto the street, turning his collar up against the cold night air. A decision needed to be made even before he left the path. Left or right? Max chose left and set off.

He’d been walking for about ten minutes when he noticed a group of people all heading in the same direction. He followed and saw them go into a church hall through whose open doors music blared out. The church had put on a dance.

Max paused at the end of the street. Should he go to the dance or try somewhere else? There should be plenty of women to choose from in the church hall, but would he be able to get one of them alone? His toe nudged something that made a metallic scraping sound against the paving stones, and he looked down to see a metal bar half hidden amid leaves. He picked it up, feeling the weight of it in his hand. Max smiled, taking the metal bar as a sign, a good omen. He slipped the bar up his sleeve, cupping his hand to hold it in place, and headed for the church hall.
The man on the door looked at him dubiously as he approached. It was true he was not dressed for a dance, but Max pressed the requisite entrance fee into the man’s hand before he could refuse to admit him and entered.

Women, clustered around the entrance, turned with expressions of interest which quickly changed to disgust as they took in his shabby appearance. Bitches, he thought. Killing them would be a pleasure, but he’d have to get one alone first. Maybe it had been a mistake to come to the dance. He should have waited at the end of the street for one of these women to leave.

Max turned to go, but people were coming in behind him, blocking the exit, and there was nothing for him to do but move further into the hall and try to look inconspicuous. Max dipped his head, side-stepping the couples who waltzed into his path, and settled into a chair by the side of the stage. He watched the couples dance, his dark eyes studying the expressions of the men. Did they think like him? he wondered. Were they smiling at the woman in their arms and thinking how they could hurt them?

‘Mon Dieu! Max?’

Max jerked his head up. A woman with an abundance of dark hair piled half on her head, half hanging down in a decidedly un-English fashion, had put fingers to his shoulder and was smiling down at him.

‘It is you,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember me? Marguerite?’

Max searched his memory. Images flooded his mind. Dirty plates stacked up in a sink, half-finished canvases propped against walls, rats scurrying behind the skirting boards. Paris, just as things were starting to go bad and the desire began to grow.

‘Yes, of course I remember,’ he said, rising and giving her his hand. She took it and he recoiled at the moistness of her palm. ‘It is good to see you, Marguerite.’

She leant in and kissed his cheek. There was a funereal odour about her, as of lilies. ‘Now, when did we last see each other?’ Her face fell as the answer came to her. ‘Oh, it was Norman’s funeral, wasn’t it?’

Max nodded, not wanting to think about his friend’s drowning in the Seine after the critics had savaged his painting.

‘But what are you doing here of all places?’ Marguerite gestured at the hall as if it was the most ridiculous place in the world to meet an old acquaintance.

A wicked impulse bubbled up in him to tell her the truth. But he had the feeling that if he did, she would only think he was joking, and he didn’t want his desire turned into a joke. So, Max smiled and shrugged, and the musicians struck up a new tune, a daring Ragtime number which got Marguerite’s attention.

‘Shall we dance, Max?’ she asked.

‘I can’t dance,’ Max said, taking a step away as if worried Marguerite would pull him into an embrace.

Instead, she frowned. ‘Why come to a dance, then?’

He shrugged again. ‘I needed the company.’

Marguerite’s expression softened into pity. ‘Oh, Max, you poor thing.’ She levered his right hand out of his pocket and squeezed. ‘Why don’t you come home with me? My flat’s not far. We’ll have a few drinks and talk, just like we used to. Yes?’

Max was about to say no, that the last thing he wanted was to talk to anyone, especially an old friend, but stopped himself. It was perfect. He wouldn’t have to waste time either trying to get a woman to leave the dance with him or watch and wait until one walked home alone. He would have Marguerite all to himself and the privacy to do what he wanted.

He curled his fingers around her hand and squeezed back. ‘I’d like that.’