The First Cut Page 17

  Who really was Nicky Ayers? When he’d met the two of them the previous week their attraction to each other was obvious, his son and the older woman. She brazenly walked around with her wedding ring on. When they had left Bridget had done that thing with her eyebrow that he liked – raised it to her forehead like the curl of a question mark. They had both thought they had known where that was going, but they had both been wrong. Something dramatic and unpleasant had happened out at the house, but he didn’t know what it was.

  He looked out at the trucks roaring past in the opposite direction. Bridget’s words struck a chord. Why had Adam phoned him? Was it a cry for help, or to rub his nose in the shame and discomfort? Lawrence didn’t know, and that, he realized, was his answer. I’ve raised a stranger, he thought. Another tear for his lost son dropped into the lake of disappointment.

  31

  Nicky’s life began to return to something approaching normal when Sondra appeared about seven in the evening with her handbag, car key and shoes, which had been retrieved from the house. She greeted them like old friends. Sondra stood by the door swinging a car key in her hand. ‘There’s nothing more we need from you today. You’re probably keen to get home.’ Nicky nodded. ‘I can give you a lift to the station, if you want. Your leg still looks sore.’

  Sondra watched Nicky out of the corner of her eye as they drove down the high street. She was preoccupied, or maybe just shattered.

  ‘Have you been out to the house?’ she asked. Sondra nodded. ‘Did you find anything unusual?’

  Sondra turned to her as they stopped at a red light. ‘Nothing I haven’t seen before.’

  ‘Does Adam have a criminal record?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to disclose that.’ Sondra waited while Nicky picked dried mud from under her nails. She was searching for clues, doing her own investigation.

  ‘What was he looking for under the lawn?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Nicky said.

  ‘You really don’t know him at all, do you?’ Nicky didn’t reply and there the conversation ended. Sondra drove away, watching Nicky limp into the ticket office from her rear view mirror.

  Two hours later Nicky was back home. She locked the door behind her, turned on the alarm, drew the curtains and then dragged herself up the stairs, shedding her filthy clothes and shoes as she went. She spent half an hour under a scalding shower, scrubbing viciously at her skin. Lurid images of what she had been through over the past few days were impossible to block out. She sat on her bed in a bathrobe and tried to think rationally about what had happened, but her hands were shaking and she was crying. She was having some kind of low-level panic attack, her thoughts a crazy jumble that jumped with no direction or reason between the present and the past.

  She tried to concentrate on the strictly practical and dared to take a look at herself naked in the bedroom mirror. She looked pulverized. Bruises and scratches covered her torso, arms and legs from her barefoot run through the forest; she had a nasty graze down her shin from falling on the cellar step; the gash in her hand still throbbed; her biceps were ringed with yellow and purple bruises and weeping rope burns, and she was sunburned. She got out the first-aid kit and dabbed antiseptic on her wounds, redressing them as best she could, then rubbed moisturizer into her leathery skin and drank lots of water. She cooked a hot meal and forced herself to eat it.

  The phone rang but she hardly noticed. At past midnight she finally crawled into bed, but not before she’d taken her largest kitchen knife and put it under the bed. She was asleep before her head sank fully into the pillow and she didn’t wake till a car skidding in the street dragged her from sleep at ten the next morning.

  She sat in her kitchen listening to the kettle reach boiling point. The fridge hummed, a laptop light blinked. She revelled for a moment in the pleasure of pulling energy from the National Grid. A shaft of hatred for Adam bolted through her but she pushed it away. She’d made a choice yesterday and she was going to have to stick to it. Because of what she’d said Adam wasn’t facing serious charges of kidnap and assault; he was probably being portrayed this morning as an upstanding, have-a-go hero valiantly defending his property from a vicious intruder, someone so shocked at what he had been forced to do that he didn’t report the death for two days. He would be out of custody soon, and who knew where.

  She picked up the photo from Struan’s car and turned it over slowly in her battered hands. Why was her picture in a burglar’s glove box? Was Adam right, and protecting her, rather than trying to do her harm? The rings round her biceps throbbed at the thought. He had said he was going to tell her something, but she had not believed him. She had seized her chance for escape instead and that had been the right choice. She felt a headache coming on and reached for the Nurofen. The kettle clicked off with a sharpness that made her jump. But Adam had said other things. That maybe Grace’s killer was after her: the assassin that had never been unmasked. Was it really a case of first Grace and now her? And if so, why?

  She moved the photo, its shiny surface reflecting the light, obscuring her face and then the building beyond. Why had she not shown this picture to the police? Why hadn’t she told them what Adam had said about Grace?

  Greg distrusted the police. In fact, that wasn’t strong enough to describe his feelings. He hated them. They were corrupt, stupid, lazy, racist and incompetent, and he had thought that before Grace had died. Their treatment of him after her murder, the circle of suspicion tightening ever closer round him, as they could find no other suspects, had deepened that enmity still further. Nicky had thought Greg’s manias endearing when she first knew him, but, inevitably, close proximity to them meant that some of his feelings had rubbed off on her. And what evidence could she actually show them of someone trying to do her harm? A picture in a glove box? She made a cup of tea as her headache began its rhythmic bashing against the inside of her skull. No, as things stood, she had nothing, even though what had happened to her was far from nothing.

  She picked up her filthy dress in a fit of useless energy and threw it and her shoes in the outside bin. She’d never wear them again without being reminded of things she would rather forget. She slammed the bin lid down. She had better be right – her gamble had better pay off – because if she was wrong she’d let a dangerous psycho roam free.

  Nicky checked her watch. She should be at work, but there was somewhere she needed to go first.

  32

  When Liz opened the door the smell of burning toast wafted out behind her in a cloud. ‘This is unexpected,’ she said, folding her arms across her ample chest and leaning on the doorframe.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’ She paused. ‘Are you all right? You look like all hell.’

  Liz had such a way with words, thought Nicky. The searing heat was showing no sign of breaking and she was uncomfortable in a long-sleeved top with a high neck and jeans. She wanted to hide her injuries from the world, but the scratches on her hands she could do nothing about. ‘I fell and hurt my leg, but it’s getting better,’ Nicky said, making light of her wounds.

  ‘Come through. Dan’s being “creative” in the kitchen.’ Liz waved her hand in a sarcastic flourish down the narrow corridor. ‘The way he’s going we’ll need the fire brigade.’

  Nicky followed her sister-in-law down to the back of the house and said hello to Dan, who grunted and wandered off with his plate of toast, a pile of burned toast shavings, like coal dust, scattered on the surfaces.

  When he left there was nothing to distract the two women and Nicky stared awkwardly at the floor. ‘Come, come, sit down,’ Liz said, pulling out a chair. ‘So. You been busy?’ Liz was looking at her accusingly.

  Nicky gave a small laugh. ‘No, but I’ve got some time off,’ she lied.

  ‘And on a roasting hot day you came all the way to south London to see me.’

  Nicky smiled and acknowledged the dig. ‘There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.’

  Liz leaned back agains
t the kitchen cupboards and kicked distractedly at a door with a stubborn hinge that wouldn’t close. ‘Well, start at the beginning. That’s usually best.’

  ‘What was Greg like when he was younger?’

  ‘Greg?’ Liz looked surprised and uncomfortable. ‘That’s a funny question. Why do you want to know?’ There was a hint of steel there, a suspicion.

  Lies always work best when they’re based on truth, Nicky decided. ‘Well, to be totally honest, Greg and I are having difficulties in our marriage and I thought that maybe if I knew more about his past I could . . . use it to help us.’

  Nicky saw Liz looking keenly at her. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Really I am. Believe me, I know how difficult it is to keep a marriage on track. You’re lucky you don’t have children – that makes it ten times worse.’ Nicky shifted awkwardly in her chair. ‘Sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean that!’ Yes, you did, thought Nicky; that’s exactly what you meant. There was an awkward silence. ‘What problems are you having, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  Embarrassed, Nicky traced her finger through the burned crumbs on the table. ‘Oh I don’t know, Liz, he just seems so different now we’re married. He’s so distant . . . cut off from me, somehow.’

  Liz let out a theatrical sigh. ‘I think he’s scared. After what he’s been through, it’s no surprise.’

  ‘Maybe he needs to have more counselling, but he won’t go. It’s an argument I’ve lost.’

  ‘He can be very stubborn.’

  ‘So . . . prior to Grace?’

  ‘Grace . . .’ Liz paused and took out a ham studded with cloves from the fridge. She picked up a boning knife and began to cut slices from it. ‘Well, there were lots of women – you know Greg!’

  Nicky nodded. Grace had said as much.

  ‘Grace was young and fun and attractive, but she had more to her than that too. She wasn’t just a pretty PR dolly or someone who dabbled in the art market, yet with all her doting dad’s money behind her she could well have been.’ Liz was talking as if Nicky had never known Grace, but she stayed silent and listened. Nicky could well see how that kind of girl made Liz spit. ‘She had a bit of grit to her.’ She paused and picked a clove from the back of the ham.

  ‘She was very driven,’ Nicky added.

  ‘I guess she was. He was very happy with her, I really believe that. He’s a different man now. She changed him, she brought out his ambition, gave him the funds and the drive to succeed. She carried him along, so to speak, and after she’d gone, he never stopped.’

  ‘What about before Grace?’

  ‘Oh. God, I can’t remember their names. There was never a break in the women. There was a homeopath and then a dancer. I think he left her for the mad one.’

  Nicky sighed. ‘He’s a man who makes sure he has hold of the next vine before he lets go of the first, so to speak.’

  Liz smiled, picking up a slice of ham from the plate. ‘Like Tarzan, swinging through the jungle, vine to vine,’ she said playfully, shaking the slice of ham to and fro in front of her face.

  ‘At least I’m not a jumper,’ Nicky added. She was thinking about her own love history, how she had always prided herself on not lining up a boyfriend to replace one she had tired of. She was strong enough to live life alone if needs be.

  ‘So he told you about that?’ Liz was staring at her intently, the piece of ham dangling in front of her mouth.

  Nicky waved her hand to play for time. Told her what exactly? ‘Yeah, he told me all about that.’

  Liz let out a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God. I told him he had to tell you. Relationships can’t survive secrets like that. It would have sent him mad.’ Nicky’s mouth was dry. She’d only wanted to score some small petty victory over Liz and suddenly she was staring at a chasm of secrets. ‘When did he tell you?’

  Nicky hesitated and made a split-second decision. ‘Quite recently.’

  ‘I’d take that as a very good sign. He always swore to me that no one else was ever going to find out. If he’s opening up to you, it’s a sign of great progress. Even Mum and Dad don’t know and he never told Grace.’

  ‘Why didn’t he tell them?’

  ‘I think he felt a failure, in Dad’s eyes in particular. He thought that maybe they’d think it was somehow his fault. He would have been such a great dad.’

  Nicky felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. She fought to stay nonchalant. ‘Yes, a lot of what ifs. How old would the child be now?’

  ‘Oh, about ten, I guess.’

  Nicky shook her head, reeling. ‘Was she very different from Grace?’

  ‘Francesca?’ Nicky nodded, though she had no idea who Francesca was. ‘Well, she was another blonde, of course. God, my brother’s such a cliché, love him as I do. They’ve all been blondes. You’ve all been blondes! I didn’t meet her very often.’ Liz popped the ham into her mouth. She gave Nicky a sly grin. ‘I don’t think any of them liked me. I was Greg’s big, loud, older sister. I don’t do the kowtowing to the young blondes very well.’

  ‘You’ve certainly never kowtowed to me, and for that I’m eternally grateful.’

  Liz finally revealed a smile Nicky took to be genuine. It softened her face and made her look almost maternal. ‘To be honest, I thought he got together with Grace too soon. She looked like Francesca and I wondered if that was the overriding reason they were together. But I do think they were in love, desperately in love.’

  Nicky was leaning forward, hanging on Liz’s every word. She realized that even though she was married to Greg, she knew very little about his romantic history. A baby. Greg nearly became a father. She didn’t know who Greg had dated or when. The past was filled with Grace, the agony of her; she was impossible to move beyond, and there had been precious little room for anyone else. Now Liz, unwittingly, was revealing another life before Grace, with a drama and heartache all its own. It was like she was reading chapters of Greg’s life, the pages finally opening and divulging how he became the man she married; the man who could keep secrets so totally from her.

  ‘To suffer like that, it’s bound to affect him. He’s become so safety-conscious, so superstitious! He tells me that he never stays anywhere but the ground floor now! I mean, honestly!’

  Nicky played along. ‘He makes me turn off every fuse in the fuse box when I change a light bulb.’

  ‘There! Told you!’ They both laughed.

  ‘You love your brother very much, don’t you?’

  Liz gave up pulling delicate strips off the ham; she cut a thick chunk and began chewing vigorously. ‘More than ham itself.’

  They both giggled, a sound Nicky had never heard from Liz before. There was a softer side under the harried and efficient social worker and single mother. Maybe Liz could be an ally in the work that needed to be done to understand Greg. ‘Where’s Francesca now?’

  Liz slapped her piece of ham back on the worktop and folded her arms. She stared at Nicky, her eyes narrowed. Nicky swallowed. Something had just gone wrong. Silence filled the kitchen. When Liz spoke again her voice was flinty. ‘You little bitch. He didn’t tell you any of it, did he?’ Nicky opened her mouth but could think of nothing to say. She found she was shrinking back against the chair as Liz took a step across the kitchen. ‘You’re out of your depth, little girl. You’ll drown if you go any further.’

  Nicky got out of her chair fast and grabbed her bag. Their chat was obviously at an end. As Nicky fled down the corridor Liz called out again. ‘Ignorance is bliss, Nicky. Keep it that way.’

  Liz felt the walls of the house shudder as the front door banged shut into its warped-wood frame. She walked down the corridor and checked up the stairs. Dan’s bedroom door was closed. There had been no witness, but she was still angry at herself for getting caught out in such a basic way, and after she’d kept her counsel so efficiently over the years. But then that was her all over, Liz felt: covering up others’ mistakes, repairing those who were broken, doing the difficult, unseen work that was never recognized. There
would be no televised, black-tie gala for her work, she knew. Her back was never going to be slapped, her ears would never ring with fatuous applause. She walked stiffly back into the kitchen, picked up another piece of ham and stared at it, the fat running through the meat like veins in marble. They were like mistakes winding through a life; you could try to cut them out but traces of them always remained. She dropped it back on the plate, her appetite gone, and picked up the phone. She jabbed at the speed dial and left a terse message. ‘You need to look out. She’s on to you.’

  33

  Troy had given a false name and pulled out some fake ID when the policeman got round to interviewing him after the ambulance had taken Nicky to hospital. Various scenarios had churned through his mind. He’d watched the officer taking down all his details. Seen in black and white he didn’t want his name associated with this in any way, however tangentially. A squad car had driven off down the lane to the big house, the two uniforms, having got the garbled story off Nicky, looking as apprehensive as if they were hunting down Jaws.

  He would have asked questions, tried to get extra information, but he could tell this lot knew even less than he did. Struan seen off by a poshie! If he wasn’t brown bread he’d have been embarrassed. Struan had made the fundamental error Troy himself had never made: he’d underestimated his opponent. He guessed Struan hadn’t anticipated the aggressive butchery of a man on the ropes in his own property. But Struan’s casual approach now presented Troy with a problem. Things had suddenly become a lot harder, the stakes a lot higher. There was a trail to find if you dug far enough; there was always a trail. Troy had started to mentally tick off separations that would have to be made, safeguards he would have to employ to distance himself as much as possible from Struan.