A Twist of the Knife (30 page)

‘I’m glad you’re finding that, Harry,’ he said.

‘She’s wild, mate! Know what I mean? Never known a lady like it in the sack! You don’t mind?’

‘Be my guest.’

Clive was feeling a terrible stab of panic. How much did Shirley remember? What the hell was she going to be telling this fat dickhead?

Then Harry Tucker put an avuncular arm around him. ‘She told me everything, Clive,’ Harry said. ‘How she was seasick, and you took her out on the rear deck and then threw her overboard. Don’t worry, matey, I know it all.’

‘You do?’

‘I don’t mind a bit! How else would we have got together? Seems like you did us both a big favour! Our little secret, eh?’

‘Our little secret.’

Harry gave him a pat on the back. Then he nodded back towards the dining room. ‘That bird you’re with, she’s a cracker.’

‘Thank you, Harry. She is.’

‘Oh, I know! I know she is. You can just tell, can’t you? Maybe we should go on another cruise sometime? In a year or two when you’re getting bored of her. Give me a call. Just give me a call. I’d always be up for it. Know what I mean?’ He winked.

Clive returned to his table. As he sat down, Imogen said, ‘That man you were in the loo with – how do you know him?’

‘I met him in another life.’

She smiled wistfully. ‘So did I.’

Fifteen years ago I wrote a short story about a man who gets buried alive in a stag-night prank that subsequently goes horribly wrong.

It was about a guy, Michael Harrison, who is extremely unreliable, but who persuades his beloved Ashley to marry him, on the promise that he’s going to change his ways. Then, on his stag night, his friends decide to pay him back, big time, for all the terrible pranks he has played on some of them on their stag nights . . . by burying him alive, in remote woodlands, for a couple of hours. They intend to return within two hours to dig him up again, but it all goes south.

I never put this story forward for publication because I always felt there was something more that I could make of it than simply ending it the way I did. That turned out to be a good decision. One of the best I’ve ever made in my life! Because many years later I realized that what I had, rather than being a short story with a short shocker of an ending, was actually the start of a novel.
Dead Simple
became my most successful novel, and it launched the Roy Grace series.

This is how it all began . . .

It was Wednesday night, their last date before their wedding on Saturday, and, true to form, Michael was late. Very late. Actually, Ashley thought, that was being charitable. He was incredibly sodding bloody f***ing late. Ridiculously late. Over an hour late.

As usual.

On two occasions he had failed to turn up at all, and eight months ago, totally exasperated by his unreliability, she had dumped him. They had spent five months apart, during which time Michael was miserable as hell. He bombarded her, sometimes daily, with extravagant flowers, loving emails and tearful phone calls. She’d begun dating another guy, but he just wasn’t the same – neither as a companion nor as a lover. Michael was just such fun to be with, so full of energy and
joie de vivre
. It was a miserable time for her, too.

Finally she realized she could not live without Michael. They’d begun seeing each other again, and four weeks later he proposed and she accepted.

She looked at her watch and poured her third glass of wine, starting to feel a little smashed. It was now approaching 8.45 p.m. and he’d promised faithfully he would pick her up at 7.30 p.m. sharp. He was turning over a new leaf, he assured her. He would start their married life a changed man. Yeah, right.

In spite of herself, she grinned. God, she loved him, but why the hell wouldn’t he wear a damned watch? Well, maybe she could change that. She’d bought him an insanely expensive Tag Heuer Aquaracer, as a wedding present, and she was going to give it to him tonight. And make him promise to wear it!

Fifteen minutes later her doorbell rang. He stood outside her flat, his contrite expression barely visible behind the vast bouquet of flowers that almost dwarfed him.

After a long, passionate kiss, she broke away and teasingly asked, ‘So what happened this time? Were you kidnapped by aliens again? Had to take a phone call from Barack Obama? Rescue a runaway horse?’

He scratched the back of his head, looking contrite. ‘I’m so sorry, my darling. Mark rang. I had to go through some stuff urgently on the planning application. There’s just so much to do before we go away, and I want to have our honeymoon free and not be thinking about work. I’m trying to clear my desk and my email inbox, so I can devote the next two weeks to cherishing you, making love to you and then making love to you again.’

‘I like that plan!’ She grinned and kissed him again. ‘Want a drink, or shall we go?’

‘I rang the restaurant and changed the time, but we need to be there by nine. Or . . .’ he looked at her suggestively. ‘We could just go to bed and phone for a takeaway?’

‘I’m all dressed up, I think it would be nice to go out. We’ve got a ton of stuff to talk about. And I want to know all about your stag-night plans, coz I’m worried.’

‘Nothing to be worried about.’ He picked her wine glass up off the coffee table and took a long sip. ‘We’re just going on a pub crawl around Sussex – Mark’s hired a minibus. I’ll have the whole of Friday to recover from my hangover, Ash, and I’ll be fresh as a daisy for Saturday!’

She gave him a dubious look. ‘Why does that not reassure me?’

He gave her a hug and nuzzled her ear. ‘Come on, we’re just going to have a few drinks. No strippers, I’ve told the guys I don’t want it getting messy. We’re just going to have a few beers and then go home.’

‘Ha!’ she said.

*

An hour later, as their starters were being cleared away and the waiter poured more Champagne into their glasses, Ashley said, ‘How can I not worry, darling? You guys have a history of carrying out crazy pranks on stag nights.’

He shrugged and raised his glass. ‘Yep, well, they’ve promised nothing bad’s going to happen.’

‘I know them,’ she said. ‘And I don’t trust them.’

‘Trust me!’ he said.

She stared hard at him, tossing aside her long dark hair, and blew him a kiss. ‘I wish I could!’

‘You can, I promise!’

‘I’ll trust you when I turn up to the church, go inside on my father’s arm and see you standing, looking at me, with Mark by your side, on Saturday afternoon. Until then, I’m going to be worried witless.’

‘You have nothing to worry about.’

She curled her fingers around her glass, as the waiter set down her sea bass and Michael’s steak, followed by the vegetables. ‘I just don’t want to be stranded in the church, Michael, OK? I don’t want to find myself standing there for an hour until you rush in, all out of breath, saying you’re sorry, but you had some urgent emails to deal with!’

‘That is so not going to happen!’

‘It had better not,’ she said. ‘Because I won’t wait.’

He slid his arm across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘I love you, Ashley. More than anything in the world. Saturday is going to be the best day of my life. I promise you faithfully I will be there, on time and horny as hell for you. I’m a changed man.’

‘Like you just showed me tonight? You are so damned unreliable, my darling. I love you to bits. But – I don’t know – I just have this feeling that you aren’t going to turn up to our wedding.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘Then prove me wrong!’

‘I will, I absolutely will!’

So far, apart from a couple of hitches, Plan A was working out fine. Which was fortunate, since they didn’t really have a Plan B.

At 8.30 p.m. on a late May evening, they’d banked on having some daylight. There had been plenty of the stuff this time yesterday, when the five of them had made the same journey, taking with them an empty coffin and five shovels. But now, as the green Transit van sped along the Sussex country road, misty rain was falling from a sky the colour of a fogged negative.

‘Are we nearly there yet?’ said Josh in the back, mimicking a child.

‘The great Um Ga says, “Wherever I go, there I am,”’ responded Robbo, who was driving, and was slightly less drunk than the rest of them. With three pubs notched up already in the past hour and a half, and four more on the itinerary, he was sticking to shandy. At least, that had been his intention; but he’d managed to slip down a couple of pints of pure Harveys bitter first – to clear his head for the task of driving, he’d said.

‘So, we’re there!’ said Josh.

‘Always have been.’

A deer warning sign flitted from the darkness then was gone, as the headlights skimmed glossy black-top macadam stretching ahead into the forested distance. Then they passed a small white cottage.

‘How’re we doing, pal?’ said Mark in the back, with a big grin on his face, doing a passable impression of a caring best man.

Michael, lolling on a tartan rug on the floor in the back of the van, head wedged against a wheel-brace for a pillow, was feeling very pleasantly woozy. ‘I sh’ink I need another a drink,’ he slurred.

If he’d had his wits about him, he might have sensed, from the expressions of his friends, that something was not quite right. Never usually much of a heavy drinker, tonight he’d parked his brains in the dregs of more empty pint glasses and vodka chasers than he could remember downing, in more pubs than had been sensible to visit.

Of the group of friends, who had been muckers together since way back into their early teens, Michael Harrison had always been the natural leader. If, as they say, the secret of life is to choose your parents wisely, Michael had ticked plenty of the right boxes. He had inherited his mother’s fair good looks and his father’s charm and entrepreneurial spirit, but without any of the self-destruct genes that had eventually destroyed the man.

From the age of twelve, when Tom Harrison had gassed himself in his car, in the garage of the family home, leaving behind a trail of debtors, Michael had grown up fast, helping his mother make ends meet by doing a paper round then, when he was older, by taking labouring jobs in his holidays. He grew up with an appreciation of how hard it was to make money – and how easy it was to fritter it.

Now, at twenty-eight, he was smart, a decent human being and a natural leader of the pack. If he had flaws, it was that he was too trusting and, on occasions, too much of a prankster. And tonight the latter chicken was coming home to roost. Big time.

But at this moment, he had no idea about that.

He drifted back into a blissful stupor, thinking only happy thoughts, mostly about his fiancée, Ashley. Life was good. His mother was dating a nice guy; his kid brother had just got into university; his kid sister, Jodie, was back-packing in Australia on a gap year, and his business was going incredibly well. But best of all, in two days’ time he was going to be marrying the woman he loved and adored. His soul mate.

Ashley.

He hadn’t noticed the shovel that rattled on every bump in the road, as the wheels drummed below on the sodden tarmac and the rain pattered down above him on the roof. And he didn’t clock a thing in the expressions of his two friends riding with him in the back, who were swaying and singing tunelessly to an oldie, Rod Stewart’s ‘I Am Sailing’, on the crackly radio up front. A leaky fuel can filled the van with the stench of petrol.

‘I love her,’ Michael slurred. ‘I s’hlove Ashley.’

‘She’s a great lady,’ Robbo said, turning his head from the wheel, sucking up to him as he always did. That was in his nature. Awkward with women, a bit clumsy, a florid face, lank hair, beer belly straining the weave of his T-shirt, Robbo clung to the coat-tails of this bunch by always trying to make himself needed. And tonight, for a change, he actually
was
.

‘She is.’

‘Coming up,’ warned Luke.

Robbo braked as they approached the turn-off, and winked in the darkness of the cab at Luke seated next to him. The wipers clumped steadily, smearing the rain across the windscreen.

‘I mean, like I really love her. Sh’now what I mean?’

‘We know what you mean,’ Pete said.

Josh, leaning back against the driver’s seat, one arm around Pete, swigged some beer, then passed the bottle down to Michael. Froth rose from the neck as the van braked sharply. He belched. ‘’Scuse me.’

‘What the hell does Ashley see in you?’ Josh said.

‘My dick.’

‘So it’s not your money? Or your looks? Or your charm?’

‘That too, Josh, but mostly my dick.’

The van lurched as it made the sharp right turn, rattling over a cattle grid, almost immediately followed by a second one and onto the dirt track. Robbo, peering through the misted glass and picking out the deep ruts, swung the wheel. A rabbit sprinted ahead of them, then shot into some undergrowth. The headlights veered right then left, fleetingly colouring the dense conifers that lined the track, before they vanished into darkness in the rear-view mirror. As Robbo changed down a gear, Michael’s voice altered, his bravado suddenly tinged, very faintly, with anxiety.

‘Where we going?’

‘To another pub.’

‘OK. Great.’ Then a moment later, ‘Promished Ashley I shwouldnt – wouldn’t – drink too much.’

‘See,’ Pete said, ‘you’re not even married and she’s laying down rules. You’re still a free man. For just two more days.’

‘One and a half,’ Robbo added helpfully.

‘You haven’t arranged any girls?’ Michael said.

‘Feeling horny?’ Robbo asked.

‘I’m staying faithful.’

‘We’re making sure of that.’

‘Bastards!’

The van lurched to a halt, reversed a short distance, then made another right turn. Then it stopped again and Robbo killed the engine – and Rod Stewart with it. ‘
Arrivé
!’ he said. ‘Next watering hole! The Undertakers Arms!’

‘I’d prefer the Naked Thai Girl’s Legs,’ Michael said.

‘She’s here, too.’

Someone opened the rear door of the van – Michael wasn’t sure who – and invisible hands took hold of his ankles. Robbo took one of his arms, and Luke the other.