NOWHERE MAN chapter one

NOWHERE MAN

                                                             THE INVESTIGATION

"Jesus, Mavis, I'm so fuckin' nervous I feel sick," John said miserably, as he emerged from the bathroom.

She knew it was true; the sound of him vomiting his breakfast had been very clear.

 Mavis finished dressing the baby, and laid him in his cradle, then turned her attention to John.

"Don't worry, baby," she said softly, adjusting the collar on his coat. "It will be fine. You didn't kill him on purpose; it was an accident, and you were only trying to protect me and Adam. The police will understand that. They just have to!"

"Yeah, well, we'll know soon enough, won't we?" he replied, lighting a cigarette with shaking hands. His face was pale and drawn after his sleepless night, and the flare from the match accentuated the dark circles under his eyes. "They'll be here any time now. I hafta go out and get a bit o' wood for the fire. I'll meet ye downstairs as soon as yer done up here."

He went slowly down the stairs to the main room of the pub, automatically stopping to poke the fire into full life before going out to fetch more wood from the neat pile in the alley. As he selected an armful, he wondered what would happen to him once the detective from Scotland Yard arrived. He had sent a telegram there the day before and had received a reply later in the afternoon informing him that a detective would be sent to speak with him the following day, but no particular time had been specified. He just wished the man would hurry and arrive, so that the whole matter could be over at last. To be honest, he hadn't had a decent night's sleep since the night of the accident which had taken the life of young Danny MacTavish.

John knew that the people of Harmony Island would all stand behind him and affirm that what had happened had most assuredly been no more than a terrible accident, but if he had to be completely honest, he had to wonder if perhaps there had been more to it than that.

 He'd been incensed when he found out that the boy had tied Mavis up and imprisoned her in the root cellar, and it had been a vicious blow he'd given him, fueled not only by fear, but also by a mixture of murderous rage and mad jealousy...if  he had to be completely honest. 

He told himself that he hadn't meant for the young man to die, that it was just a mistake, but when he searched his heart and really looked deeply into his own soul, he was tormented by the idea that he had experienced a kind of primitive exultation when he'd been told that the person who'd threatened the lives of his child and the woman that he loved had died at his hands. He'd felt...somehow elated for just a moment, before his sense of remorse had kicked in.

Of course, John knew that he would never tell the police or anyone else that he'd ever felt anything but grief and dismay concerning what happened. It would remain one of the many things that he'd already filed away in the back of his mind; things that lay still and quiet during the day when there were people about and only came to life to disturb his sleep and taunt him during the small hours of the morning when it seemed to him that there existed no one else in the world, save himself.

At times like these, he would sometimes awaken Mavis and she would listen to him as he spoke of all the regrets he had over all his faults and sins, real or imagined. 

She would assure him that he wasn't a wicked man, as he sometimes imagined, and that he should really let go of all those demons that infested the corners of his mind. 

He would hold her close, make frantic and purging love to her, then allow sleep to overtake him once again, safe in the arms of someone who believed in his goodness and worthiness, who saw him even now as the man he truly longed to be.