The First Cut Read online

  She arched her back, waiting for the hand to grab her or her legs to be rugby-tackled from beneath her. Five steps, ten, twenty, sixty. She risked glancing behind her. He was sprinting back to the house. She hadn’t expected that and fear of the unknown leaped up her spine. She tried to slow to a fast jog, to conserve the energy she’d need. She wanted as much space between him and her as she could get. The dead man’s car key jiggled in the pocket of her dress.

  She ran on round the lake, heaving her bad foot, falling and stumbling as a plane came low and fast overhead. Her lungs screamed with the effort suddenly required of them as she came up the rise to the drive; her thighs burned beneath her. The grey wall of the estate came into view two hundred metres away. She could see Adam still moving up the lawn to the house. He was in boots that would slow him, and he was going uphill. She was panting now, every stride getting harder. When she hit the gravel drive she’d already run a quarter of a mile and her heart was doing something horrible in her chest. A vicious pain started in her side. The drive curved away and soon Adam was out of sight. She got nearer the wall, saw more clearly how high and smooth it was. There was no easy way to climb over. She tried to focus on the only thing that mattered: getting to the gate. Her feet slapped against the gravel; she was going downhill now and she saw the curve in the drive leading to the entrance. Four hundred metres . . . three hundred and fifty . . . She would hide in the woods. She knew that on a good day and with a head start she could give even a man a run for his money. But with her injured foot she was severely hampered; and he was in his prime, with vigorous muscles and youth and the fear of the consequences of her escape on his side. A game of cat and mouse in the trees was the only way she’d get away. She looked behind her. She was alone. She allowed herself the first tiny flutter of something dangerous: hope.

  She heard the engine with two hundred metres to go. If she could have screamed in anger and frustration she would have. He was driving the tractor, cranking up the gears as he bore down on her.

  She bent her head and pushed on to the gate. Every cell in her body hurt now. He was gaining, but slowly. He was a hundred metres away. The gate looked monstrous as she slammed her hands into it and yanked, howled and yanked again. It was locked. He must have come out in the night and locked the gate. She swore as she started to climb, slotting her sandals into the rococo metal curves, hauling herself skywards, the gate rocking and swinging as she climbed. The tractor was fifty metres away. Adam was leaning out of the cab, holding something in his hand and shouting. Through her exhaustion she sensed exhilaration. One leg was over, avoiding the row of spikes at the top. She was nearly there. She gave a yelp of surprise when she felt something close around her biceps and tighten. She felt a sharp yank across her shoulders that almost toppled her right off the top of the gate. It was a rope. He had lassoed her. She flailed madly, the ground a dizzyingly long way away, then her hands clawed to hold on.

  ‘Get down, Nicky,’ Adam shouted, pulling on the rope. He was walking towards her, the rope spooling by his feet. She tried to hook a finger under the binding round her arms but he was yanking so hard that she slithered down the gate, scrabbling for a handhold or a foothold. He walked closer and with one hard pull prised her from the exit. She fell leadenly back to earth, the breath knocked out of her, her arms pinioned to her sides.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ He was angry, the first time she’d seen him like that. ‘You could have been killed!’

  That wasn’t the end of it. Oh dear God, no. He made her run back to the house.

  She watched him tie the lasso to the plough, in a daze; her brain was unable to function, too starved of oxygen by her heart and lungs. He climbed back into the cab, turned the tractor round and started back to the house. The rope began to slither through the grass. She watched it passively for a moment or two, unable to process what it meant, and then her eyes followed the end and she staggered to her feet, although she could hardly move. It was then she realized that fear had as many levels as love or pain. With her arms tied to her sides she couldn’t balance well, but if she fell, she died, because he didn’t bother to look behind him.

  She tasted blood as she jogged along, probably from her fall from the gate. She felt the rough gravel beneath her soles. Her physical sufferings fell away as she concentrated only on the task of staying on her feet. If there was a worse way to die than being dragged along a gravel road, she couldn’t think of one, couldn’t think of anything beyond keeping pace with the tractor and saving her life.

  The drive rose slightly as it approached the house but he didn’t slow.

  He drove the tractor to one of the outbuildings beyond Greg’s car. The first premature leaves of autumn had floated on the summer breeze and come to rest on the bonnet. He stopped the engine and she slumped to the ground. Her vision swam with exhaustion and through the pounding in her head she could hear him jump down from the tractor cab and start swearing and pummelling the huge grooved tyres with his boots.

  ‘This isn’t a game, Nicky! You think I’m playing a game! What the fuck do you think you’re doing! You’re staying here! Don’t go out there!’

  She tried to regain her breath, looking dully round the yard. She was too tired to be scared. She didn’t reply, mainly because she couldn’t and she had nothing to say.

  He untied her and she let him carry her into the house as she couldn’t walk. Livid, smarting marks covered both biceps; her foot, now that she’d stopped her absurd abuse of it, was throbbing. He stepped over the dead man on the floor and laid her out on the drawing-room sofa, then left. She could hear him moving around in the kitchen. As the physical thumping of her heart receded fear began to take its place; she had space now to feel the fear. The shades of grey in their relationship had exploded into harsh black and white, into complete clarity. She could no longer cling to a hope that her series of mishaps were accidental, that the puncture wasn’t deliberately inflicted, that the wooden step in the wine cellar wasn’t prepared, just in case she might, as she duly did, hurt herself on it. Hope was a delusion. She was not in the country house of a beautiful, thoughtful, carefree youth who offered her a tantalizing and affirming glimpse into life’s possibilities. She was locked in a brute struggle for survival with a man she barely knew; a man who had no limits.

  Adam came back into the room and when Nicky saw what he had in his hands her body found the strength to scream. It was an animal sound from the pit of her stomach.

  He was holding a pair of handcuffs.

  The room was large and he took a long time to cross it. She got off the sofa but there was no fight left in her; she was consumed by terror. Snot and tears mixed as he pushed her up against a radiator on the back wall while she keened and moaned in protest. She kicked out at him with her good leg but she couldn’t stop him locking her arm to the radiator pipe.

  ‘I’ve got to dig and, after what you’ve done, I have to tie you up.’ He grabbed her feet and pulled off her sandals, throwing them into the corner of the room. ‘There’ll be no more running.’ He was acting as if nothing had happened, as if this was all normal. As if a dead man in the hallway was no more unusual than a parcel left by the postman, that tying up a woman was as ordinary as pouring her a drink.

  She sank down the wall to the floor, sobbing and crying. ‘Let me go, Adam. I beg you, don’t do this to me. Please!’

  He stood unmoving above her. ‘Don’t beg, Nic. It’s not in your character to beg. You’re not being honest if you beg. It’s what I love about you. You’re strong, you can cope. It’s unconventional, I admit—’

  ‘You’re mad!’

  ‘You don’t understand, but I’m doing you a favour.’

  Incapable of words she screamed in pure anger at him; it was a brute rage at her helplessness that left her spent a few moments later.

  He sat back on the faded Persian carpet a few metres from her and stared at her, and she thought that just for a second she saw indecision there. An expression of something she couldn’t
catch passed across his features. He rubbed his head where she’d whacked him with the walking stick. ‘That really hurt.’

  ‘Good!’

  ‘You’re a fighter. You’ve got such self-possession.’ He shook his head as if in wonder. ‘You’re amazing.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  He got up and left the room, returning with a glass of water and a packet of pills, which he put in front of her. ‘I’ve only got paracetamol, but it’ll help your foot. It must be very painful.’

  She spat at him. It was the only thing she had left.

  He paused and she felt he was about to say something. But he opted for silence and slowly wiped his face, regarding her the entire time. He walked off and a few minutes later she heard the tractor start up and saw it pass the windows on its course across the lawn, every turn bringing him closer to the house.

  Nicky willed herself to calm down. She wiped away her tears, blew her nose on her dress and tried to summon the energy to think rationally. She pushed the pills out of their blisters and downed several, emptying the water glass. She breathed deeply. I am connected to people, she said to herself. She breathed deeply again. I am someone who will be missed. I have family, friends and a job. They will notice and they are the kind of people who, if they kick up a fuss, will be believed. She felt herself growing bolder. Greg would notice first, but he was several time zones and thousands of miles away. By the time his worried messages began to filter back to London, days would have passed – an eternity. She saw the tractor backing up as it turned at the edge of the lawn. She didn’t know if she had several days.

  She looked beyond the torn earth at the lake and the fields beyond. The countryside was full of people, particularly in this weather. Someone would come. Perhaps he would make a mistake.

  She shifted and the handcuffs clanked against metal. She needed better odds than ‘perhaps’. She thought back to when she was hanging off the estate gate, and her stomach churned again at the giddy feeling she’d sensed as the gate had swung on its rotten hinges. She’d nearly made it. He hadn’t foreseen that; she had surprised him. She didn’t know him, but he didn’t know her either. She was going to turn that to her advantage.

  He might be laying out the rules, but, as Greg would say, rules are meant to be broken. An image of her husband flooded her heart and she felt his absence like a physical blow to the stomach. He had overcome the hardest challenge life throws: Greg had lived through the murder of his wife. Now she had to believe she could live through this. Defiance flamed inside her as she rubbed a chafing arm. She could see the dead man’s feet from behind the sofa and through the drawing-room door. He was evidence of what happened in a head-to-head fight with Adam. She studied the ruffles in the carpet again.

  A blackness swamped her. Maybe she had been lucky. And luck eventually runs out. Greg’s deep and mature voice came to her then: ‘Think, babes, what would Bruce Willis do?’ He’d wear a cut-off T-shirt and blast the bad guy with an Uzi, Nicky thought. She turned to the hallway and imagined the gun cabinet. She dismissed it a moment later. Greg wasn’t always right. She’d never even held a gun until two days ago, didn’t know if they were loaded or where the bullets were kept. Even assuming she could get unchained she needed a different tactic to get out of here. She’d have to talk her way out.

  Or something else. He might have put her in his mum’s nightie but he’d fancied her at one time and that itch had never been scratched. He was young, he was male, he was stressed and she was desperate.

  The sound of the tractor faded. Her heart started thumping again and she saw him walking slowly along a new furrow, his face cast in shadow, searching. What was he searching for? Someone who wanted something this badly was someone who could be used, was someone with a weak spot. She would have to turn that to her advantage. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Adam!’ she called out, but her voice was a dry croak. She swallowed and tried again. ‘Adam!’ Louder this time, more insistent and sure. He looked up from the ground. ‘Adam! I’m hungry.’

  22

  ‘If you try to escape I’ll get much angrier than I did before.’ Adam was crouching on his haunches near her, watching for her reaction, rubbing his palms together thoughtfully. The dried mud on his fingers made a scratchy, scraping sound and fell in a fine dust on the rug. There was no trace of his earlier anger; he looked like a man enjoying working in his garden. She nodded and he unlocked the cuffs round her wrist and helped her to stand. She gave a yowl when she tried to put her foot down. It was much more swollen after her sprint on it.

  She limped along as they made for the kitchen, wincing with every step. As they got to the door of the drawing room he tired of her gasping, awkward passage and picked her up in his arms, then carried her the rest of the way to the kitchen. Nicky consciously stared at the skirting boards and held her breath. Their physical closeness seemed absurd after the traumas of the day. He set her down by a kitchen chair and she sank onto it.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Bread and cheese is OK.’

  ‘Put your hands on the table where I can see them.’

  She did as he told her and watched him as he washed the mud off his hands in the sink and moved round the room, gathering plates and provisions. The sun cast long lines of light into the room and Nicky was struck again by the absurdity of her position. One moment things seemed almost normal between them, the next they tipped over into a dark horror. She ran her hands through her hair, tucking it back behind her ears. Her lips were chapped from the sun and too many days of drinking too much. She might be a prisoner but Adam was sociable; he’d want companionship if it was available, conversation to keep him entertained. She would give it to him.

  He handed her a glass of water and she realized how thirsty she was. She downed it in one and asked for another. He smiled at her as he refilled the glass and put the food down. She ate a lot, and as the food hit her stomach it made her feel a bit stronger and almost began to drag her back to the ranges of normal. He got up, crossed to the counter and picked up an apple. ‘Here.’

  She looked up and he tossed the apple to her, giving a low cheer when she caught it. He came back and sat down with a bar of chocolate and snapped a piece off for her. She noticed the dark matted stain of old blood in his hair from when she whacked him with the walking stick earlier. Despite everything he had done to her, a feeling of shame came over her.

  ‘Does your head hurt?’ He stared at her as he touched the cut with a finger. ‘Do you want me to clean it? There’s blood in your hair.’ She saw the battle in him over whether or not to trust her. ‘I’ll just wash it.’ He stood up and got a bowl and some warm water and the cotton wool. He pulled his chair closer to hers and bent his head sideways so he could look at her as she cleaned away the blood. As she stared at his gleaming, dark hair she forced herself to concentrate on the positives. She was no longer tied up. If she could stay unchained she had a chance.

  ‘It’s a lot to dig up the lawn on the strength of something in a diary from over twenty years ago.’ He shrugged, non-committal. ‘Can I read your mum’s diaries?’

  ‘No.’

  He pulled away from her dabbing, looking morose and grey, as if a mood was coming upon him. He seemed to be sinking further away from her and she tried to bring him back.

  ‘You only look for something if it’s lost. What’s lost, Adam?’

  ‘It’s not what’s lost; it’s what’s found.’ In the fading sunshine of late afternoon his dark features looked sallow. ‘What’s so special about you, Nicky, eh? Why’s it all about you?’ He was sullen, his eyes mean and staring.

  She stayed silent at first, wondering if this was the safest thing to do. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Keep control, don’t lose control, she urged herself. ‘There’s nothing special about me—’

  He stood suddenly and she reeled back against her chair. ‘I fought that guy for you! I ended up killing that guy for you! I’ve got a heap of shit this big on my head beca
use of you!’

  Oh God, thought Nicky. Oh God . . . ‘You know him, don’t you, Adam?’

  ‘No, I don’t, but someone does!’

  ‘You were talking to him.’

  ‘Yes, I was! You think it’s a coincidence he’s here? Bullshit! What was he looking for? He was trying to take it.’

  ‘Take what?’

  His anger was overwhelming him now, coursing through his strong arms and making the veins on his neck stand out. ‘Are you for real? I mean, are you for fucking real?’ He started pacing the kitchen in a trance. ‘Connie’s not that mad – maybe she’s the sanest of all of us. Maybe fucking Greg deserves to go to hell for all I know!’ He picked up the chair he had been sitting on and threw it in a rage across the room, where its back legs became detached and landed broken in the corner.

  Nicky sat very still on her seat. Change the subject, change the subject, her mind jabbered . . . It would be a victory if she got out of this room in one piece. ‘Shall we light the candles? It’s getting dark and I’m scared of the dark.’

  This simple request pulled him back towards her. He leaned against the kitchen units and dropped his head. ‘We need some more.’ He rooted through a cupboard and found some in a bag and a moment later carried her into the drawing room, lit them and then stuck them to the plates. He didn’t give her the matches. They sat on separate couches and watched the long sunset and listened to the roar of the planes in silence.