Jack spread a thick dollop of Brie on his nugget of bread and lay back on the flat grass, gazing up into the perfect blue sky. Somewhere near his head he could hear the clop clop clop of wine pouring from the bottle into Gaston’s glass.
Lying there, he wondered if Gaston would finally make him face the truth: that no amount of rationalising could escape the fact that he was a murderer. Then he thought about Molly’s warning and about Sam. That maybe she was right and he should move on immediately... except the same sense that had told him to let Sam live told him that perhaps he should wait for the man to come for him.
Gaston’s daughter, Christine, was sitting with her legs across Jack’s feet, trying to say the English alphabet. Each time she said a letter she would pause to look to her father and whenever she made a mistake in the pronunciation he would shake his head and then correct her. It made Jack smile to hear the wrong corrections but he didn’t put them straight. He was too content and warm and weary. It was a two-hour climb from the nearest road and now they were here in the little abandoned village that Gaston had brought him to see, nothing seemed important except to relax.
Two hours walk from a quiet mountain road... longer to reach an actual inhabited village. How far to Nice, the nearest city? Fifty miles as the crow flew but about a world of difficult winding roads.
The grass they were sitting on, with their picnic spread round, was set in front of a tiny locked-up church. According to Gaston, services were held there only once a year. The tiny abandoned village might have once been inhabited by farmers or… Jack didn’t know what. The little white buildings didn’t even have a single modern contrivance: no water, no electricity, no windows. It was amazing to think. It was incredible in modern terms. He’d never felt so cut off and he liked it. Even his current life events, the abomination that had occurred in Bristol and the things that came after, were detached from this current place. They couldn’t touch him. No one on Earth knew where they were. It was attractive to imagine living there, and with his money he could buy it all of course, or somewhere like it.
“This is, as you say, the life,” said Gaston.
Jack didn’t tilt his head to look over. “Alleluia.”
A single tiny cloud made its way past the horizon into his field of vision. He watched it trundle ever so slowly across the sky.
“What’s your killer’s story then Gaston?”
“My story?”
“Yeah. Why don’t you tell me about it in episodes; you know; like chapters in a book? You can relate it bit by bit.”
Just within Jack’s line of sight, the base of Gaston’s wineglass tipped into view and then dropped down again. “Don’t you think hearing about murder and pain might ruin this beautiful day?”
“Take the risk. I’m curious. It’s why I came. I want to hear what you believe goes on in the mind of a killer.”
“And you can’t wait for my book to be published?”
“Something happened recently that makes it… important for me to learn about it now.”
“Very well,” he said, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Silence again from Gaston and another clop clop clop as he refilled his wineglass, then he snapped something out fast in French and Christine ran off to play.
“When my killer was born,” said Gaston, “his mother looked into his eyes and knew he was going to be a murderer. I can picture her – an extraordinarily beautiful woman with dark, curly hair, in an attic hovel in Paris – holding him up in front of her face. I don’t imagine there was proper lighting or heat. I doubt she even had a professional medical person with her. The… cord? hasn’t even been cut yet. She looks into his eyes smiling, happy to meet him at last; but a change comes over her. Perhaps she starts screaming. She has seen into his soul in that moment and she knows what he is going to become.” Gaston gave a little slurp as he took another drink. “That is why she abandoned him... or so I like to think.”
“And you know for a fact that he was abandoned?”
“Not really. My entire book is fiction based on conjecture and criminal profiling.”
He didn’t say anything else. Jack waited respectfully but when enough time had passed that he was sure Gaston wouldn’t go on he said, “Tell me more. Please.”
“His childhood was constructed out of strange material,” said Gaston. “It was made of hate.” He paused, perhaps to think and then added, “Fear also. He was taken to an orphanage in the dark area the tourists don’t travel to in Paris. The other children he grew up with were not nice. They were…” He laughed. “Let me say they were more evil than he turned out to be. He already knew how to hate by then but was given fresh lessons every day. Did you ever have trouble with bullies as a child Jack?”
“Some.”
“Because of my own feelings on the matter, I would like to say that as a man the killer went back there and hunted every one of them down, but my research does not confirm it.” He laughed again.
“You talked about his mother seeing the evil in his face when he was born,” said Jack. “Does that mean you believe a man can be predestined to kill?”
“Sorry, I do not know that word.”
“I mean: Do you think the subject of your research was born a killer, as opposed to being made into one by the things that happened to him?”
“Ah! What came first? You want to know if being abandoned by his mother and taunted and beaten by his orphan brothers twisted him up inside. You’re jumping straight to the point Jack. If I tell you why he did it so simply there will be no more story to tell.”
Jack rolled over onto his stomach and raised himself up on his elbows. “Do you think he was angry with his mother when he was old enough to know what she had done?”
“Not at all. I expect he loves her still today as any dutiful son should. Whatever circumstances she lived in were impossible. She had no choice but to leave him behind. He would understand that.”
“Really?”
He smiled. “No. Not really. He hated her for it and he hates her now. He will always hate her.”
Jack tried to apply what he was hearing to his own life. He didn’t like to. It created uncomfortable pulses.
“I do believe that people are born to kill or not to kill as a matter of fact,” said Gaston.
“You do?”
“Yes. The story about my killer’s mother seeing the evil light in his eyes is a lie of course. It makes me laugh to tell it but it probably isn’t true. I do believe that whatever was in him that drove him to kill was there from the very first day he was born however.”
Jack thought about Lucy.
“There is science to tell the tale now of course,” said Gaston. “DNA and chromosomes. But I don’t like to think of it in those terms – it has no romance – although I have read about it quite extensively. I think about it in other ways: the principle that a man has a soul, and that soul is either white or black or grey. White souls are destined to do great works of kindness. They heal the sick and bring love where there was hate (although I privately do not believe such people exist and if they do they are sadly very rare). Many many people have grey souls: they are not good; they are not evil; one day to the next they may choose to be thoughtful or selfish. They are neither evil, good, nor exceptional but who would want to be one of those?”
Jack laughed.
“You aren’t one of those, are you Jack?”
Jack looked out over the mountains and spoke sadly. “No. I don’t think I am.”
“Then there are people like my killer,” continued Gaston. “Black souls: born to be bad. They like it. They kill and kill and then laugh when they are dragged away to prison because they know that that will not stop them. There is some good in them, yes; but they are irredeemable. That is the way they are born and that is how they die and in between... In between is life: a black life for a black soul, full of the effects of the evil that they do and the pain and sadness they inflict on those around them.”
Jack looked past him at the mountains and the trees and the sky. There was a small amount of snow visible among the trees on the peak opposite.
“What of you?” asked Gaston. “The evil you have done. Were you born to commit these acts?”
For a moment Jack thought that Gaston had somehow guessed about his crimes. He examined the older man’s expression for clues but there didn’t seem to be any insinuation beneath the simple conversational question.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve done bad things. Everyone has. Mine may be better… or worse than the things other people have done. Is it the circumstances of my life that led me to those points? Did I have a teacher or a friend at school that made me believe somehow, that it was right to do those things? Or is there something in my physical make-up, something passed on from my mother and father, that makes it impossible for me to stop myself committing acts of selfishness and anger?”
“Or was your soul black long before you entered this world, from the moment God created it in Heaven?”
“Either way,” said Jack, “wouldn’t it be logical that at some intrinsic level we are not guilty of our crimes? Whether we are made as we are or influenced by the events around us, doesn’t it make sense that either way, we are made, by external forces, to do wrong?”
Gaston refilled Jack’s glass. The deep scarlet liquid sloshed thick and coagulated around the crystal bowl. He chuckled. “I have to say I think you are clutching at straws there my friend. Every criminal seeks to find some loophole in the moral laws. They want to be able to say that they are not to blame for the things that they do. But there is always a choice. Always. However strong the emotions; however weak the person. If you have done wrong in your life, you only have yourself to blame.”
Jack looked sadly down at the grass at his feet. “Maybe you’re right.”
“The only way out of it is to be like my murderer friend,” said Gaston.
“How so?”
“You can overcome these demons by not caring. Don’t dwell on what is right and wrong. He doesn’t feel guilt. Perhaps that is what his mother saw in his eyes. But I will tell you something that I know to be true – however much the rest of my book is invention: a man who goes on killing does not feel the slightest remorse. Ever. That part of him does not function. That is why he has been able to do what he has done in his life and still enjoy a good glass of wine and some cheese. When a good person has done the things he has, when he has killed, it slowly becomes impossible for him to continue to live... unless the moralistic side of his nature, the side of him that believes in right and wrong, ceases to exist.”
Lying there, he wondered if Gaston would finally make him face the truth: that no amount of rationalising could escape the fact that he was a murderer. Then he thought about Molly’s warning and about Sam. That maybe she was right and he should move on immediately... except the same sense that had told him to let Sam live told him that perhaps he should wait for the man to come for him.
Gaston’s daughter, Christine, was sitting with her legs across Jack’s feet, trying to say the English alphabet. Each time she said a letter she would pause to look to her father and whenever she made a mistake in the pronunciation he would shake his head and then correct her. It made Jack smile to hear the wrong corrections but he didn’t put them straight. He was too content and warm and weary. It was a two-hour climb from the nearest road and now they were here in the little abandoned village that Gaston had brought him to see, nothing seemed important except to relax.
Two hours walk from a quiet mountain road... longer to reach an actual inhabited village. How far to Nice, the nearest city? Fifty miles as the crow flew but about a world of difficult winding roads.
The grass they were sitting on, with their picnic spread round, was set in front of a tiny locked-up church. According to Gaston, services were held there only once a year. The tiny abandoned village might have once been inhabited by farmers or… Jack didn’t know what. The little white buildings didn’t even have a single modern contrivance: no water, no electricity, no windows. It was amazing to think. It was incredible in modern terms. He’d never felt so cut off and he liked it. Even his current life events, the abomination that had occurred in Bristol and the things that came after, were detached from this current place. They couldn’t touch him. No one on Earth knew where they were. It was attractive to imagine living there, and with his money he could buy it all of course, or somewhere like it.
“This is, as you say, the life,” said Gaston.
Jack didn’t tilt his head to look over. “Alleluia.”
A single tiny cloud made its way past the horizon into his field of vision. He watched it trundle ever so slowly across the sky.
“What’s your killer’s story then Gaston?”
“My story?”
“Yeah. Why don’t you tell me about it in episodes; you know; like chapters in a book? You can relate it bit by bit.”
Just within Jack’s line of sight, the base of Gaston’s wineglass tipped into view and then dropped down again. “Don’t you think hearing about murder and pain might ruin this beautiful day?”
“Take the risk. I’m curious. It’s why I came. I want to hear what you believe goes on in the mind of a killer.”
“And you can’t wait for my book to be published?”
“Something happened recently that makes it… important for me to learn about it now.”
“Very well,” he said, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Silence again from Gaston and another clop clop clop as he refilled his wineglass, then he snapped something out fast in French and Christine ran off to play.
“When my killer was born,” said Gaston, “his mother looked into his eyes and knew he was going to be a murderer. I can picture her – an extraordinarily beautiful woman with dark, curly hair, in an attic hovel in Paris – holding him up in front of her face. I don’t imagine there was proper lighting or heat. I doubt she even had a professional medical person with her. The… cord? hasn’t even been cut yet. She looks into his eyes smiling, happy to meet him at last; but a change comes over her. Perhaps she starts screaming. She has seen into his soul in that moment and she knows what he is going to become.” Gaston gave a little slurp as he took another drink. “That is why she abandoned him... or so I like to think.”
“And you know for a fact that he was abandoned?”
“Not really. My entire book is fiction based on conjecture and criminal profiling.”
He didn’t say anything else. Jack waited respectfully but when enough time had passed that he was sure Gaston wouldn’t go on he said, “Tell me more. Please.”
“His childhood was constructed out of strange material,” said Gaston. “It was made of hate.” He paused, perhaps to think and then added, “Fear also. He was taken to an orphanage in the dark area the tourists don’t travel to in Paris. The other children he grew up with were not nice. They were…” He laughed. “Let me say they were more evil than he turned out to be. He already knew how to hate by then but was given fresh lessons every day. Did you ever have trouble with bullies as a child Jack?”
“Some.”
“Because of my own feelings on the matter, I would like to say that as a man the killer went back there and hunted every one of them down, but my research does not confirm it.” He laughed again.
“You talked about his mother seeing the evil in his face when he was born,” said Jack. “Does that mean you believe a man can be predestined to kill?”
“Sorry, I do not know that word.”
“I mean: Do you think the subject of your research was born a killer, as opposed to being made into one by the things that happened to him?”
“Ah! What came first? You want to know if being abandoned by his mother and taunted and beaten by his orphan brothers twisted him up inside. You’re jumping straight to the point Jack. If I tell you why he did it so simply there will be no more story to tell.”
Jack rolled over onto his stomach and raised himself up on his elbows. “Do you think he was angry with his mother when he was old enough to know what she had done?”
“Not at all. I expect he loves her still today as any dutiful son should. Whatever circumstances she lived in were impossible. She had no choice but to leave him behind. He would understand that.”
“Really?”
He smiled. “No. Not really. He hated her for it and he hates her now. He will always hate her.”
Jack tried to apply what he was hearing to his own life. He didn’t like to. It created uncomfortable pulses.
“I do believe that people are born to kill or not to kill as a matter of fact,” said Gaston.
“You do?”
“Yes. The story about my killer’s mother seeing the evil light in his eyes is a lie of course. It makes me laugh to tell it but it probably isn’t true. I do believe that whatever was in him that drove him to kill was there from the very first day he was born however.”
Jack thought about Lucy.
“There is science to tell the tale now of course,” said Gaston. “DNA and chromosomes. But I don’t like to think of it in those terms – it has no romance – although I have read about it quite extensively. I think about it in other ways: the principle that a man has a soul, and that soul is either white or black or grey. White souls are destined to do great works of kindness. They heal the sick and bring love where there was hate (although I privately do not believe such people exist and if they do they are sadly very rare). Many many people have grey souls: they are not good; they are not evil; one day to the next they may choose to be thoughtful or selfish. They are neither evil, good, nor exceptional but who would want to be one of those?”
Jack laughed.
“You aren’t one of those, are you Jack?”
Jack looked out over the mountains and spoke sadly. “No. I don’t think I am.”
“Then there are people like my killer,” continued Gaston. “Black souls: born to be bad. They like it. They kill and kill and then laugh when they are dragged away to prison because they know that that will not stop them. There is some good in them, yes; but they are irredeemable. That is the way they are born and that is how they die and in between... In between is life: a black life for a black soul, full of the effects of the evil that they do and the pain and sadness they inflict on those around them.”
Jack looked past him at the mountains and the trees and the sky. There was a small amount of snow visible among the trees on the peak opposite.
“What of you?” asked Gaston. “The evil you have done. Were you born to commit these acts?”
For a moment Jack thought that Gaston had somehow guessed about his crimes. He examined the older man’s expression for clues but there didn’t seem to be any insinuation beneath the simple conversational question.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve done bad things. Everyone has. Mine may be better… or worse than the things other people have done. Is it the circumstances of my life that led me to those points? Did I have a teacher or a friend at school that made me believe somehow, that it was right to do those things? Or is there something in my physical make-up, something passed on from my mother and father, that makes it impossible for me to stop myself committing acts of selfishness and anger?”
“Or was your soul black long before you entered this world, from the moment God created it in Heaven?”
“Either way,” said Jack, “wouldn’t it be logical that at some intrinsic level we are not guilty of our crimes? Whether we are made as we are or influenced by the events around us, doesn’t it make sense that either way, we are made, by external forces, to do wrong?”
Gaston refilled Jack’s glass. The deep scarlet liquid sloshed thick and coagulated around the crystal bowl. He chuckled. “I have to say I think you are clutching at straws there my friend. Every criminal seeks to find some loophole in the moral laws. They want to be able to say that they are not to blame for the things that they do. But there is always a choice. Always. However strong the emotions; however weak the person. If you have done wrong in your life, you only have yourself to blame.”
Jack looked sadly down at the grass at his feet. “Maybe you’re right.”
“The only way out of it is to be like my murderer friend,” said Gaston.
“How so?”
“You can overcome these demons by not caring. Don’t dwell on what is right and wrong. He doesn’t feel guilt. Perhaps that is what his mother saw in his eyes. But I will tell you something that I know to be true – however much the rest of my book is invention: a man who goes on killing does not feel the slightest remorse. Ever. That part of him does not function. That is why he has been able to do what he has done in his life and still enjoy a good glass of wine and some cheese. When a good person has done the things he has, when he has killed, it slowly becomes impossible for him to continue to live... unless the moralistic side of his nature, the side of him that believes in right and wrong, ceases to exist.”
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