The First Cut (16 page)

She sipped her tea dully as the first shafts of dawn broke across the house. As the summer light began to flood their world the night-time horror became almost impossible to recreate in her mind; it took on the hue of melodrama. She could see the corner of the dead man’s shoulder from where she sat at the kitchen table. The kernel of an idea began to form. ‘He might have ID on him.’

Adam looked up from tracing random lines across the Formica with his finger. She felt a little bolder and got up and limped over to the body, sensing Adam following behind, watching.

‘I’ve checked him for a phone,’ Adam said.

Her heart sank, but she knelt down and opened the man’s jacket, avoiding looking at the caved-in side of his head. She dug around in his pockets for a wallet, but found only a packet of chewing gum. His trouser pockets were empty, he wore nothing round his neck and he indeed carried no phone. There was an inside pocket on the windcheater and as she dug around in it her hand caught on a plastic oblong object. It was a car key, so he was parked nearby. It was a tiny lifeline but she clung to it as Adam tracked her every move. ‘He’s got nothing on him at all. Don’t you think that’s strange?’ She looked up at Adam, feigning surprise as she folded the key into her fingers and started babbling. ‘Should I take off his shoes?’ She pulled her hand from his inside pocket, the key caught in her palm. ‘Maybe his watch will tell us something?’ His watch was a Seiko and running underneath it were the fangs of a large snake tattoo. She made a great play of taking the watch off to see what was engraved on the back. There was nothing. She looked again at the latex gloves, aware that Adam was staring at her as she did this. ‘He came with that torch?’

Adam nodded.

She felt protective of the body, even while knowing he had broken in. She wondered whether she’d rather have taken her chances with him. Nothing made sense. This guy was a burglar, but he had no bag. How was he going to get his takings away? He would have seen the car, the open shutters . . . Why burgle the house on one of the few occasions that anyone was in it? And Adam had talked to him. What can you possibly say to a burglar you meet in your hallway in the middle of the night? She kept these thoughts to herself.

A little while later they began to walk round the ground floor, trying to work out how the man had got in. He didn’t leave her side, and the tension between them began to ratchet up. In the downstairs toilet they found a jimmied window.

‘Do you know why he was here?’

‘He’s a burglar.’

Nicky stayed silent. Adam had calmed down now; he could present an image, stick to a story. But just after he’d killed that guy his tone had been very different. Nicky wasn’t sure that the man was a burglar, but, if he wasn’t, what was he doing here, she wondered. She tried again. ‘Why is it so important that no one knows he was here?’ He didn’t answer, looking engrossed instead in thoughts best left alone. ‘Is this something to do with what you’re looking for?’

‘I can’t tell you yet.’

It was a small lifeline but one she grabbed at. ‘I don’t understand. Help me to understand, Adam.’

‘I need you to help me find it.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know yet. But when we find it we’ll put him under the lawn.’

Nicky felt bile rise in her throat and she fought to keep it down. He needed her to complete whatever plan he had concocted, that much was clear. But once that was over . . . She looked out at the bone-dry grass, at the wetter, colder earth that had been turned over yesterday and was still a black scar against the green. Today it would bleach and fade to grey, mingle with the earth around it. She was aware of the warmth of her own body, her heart beating its eternal rhythm. But she knew at that moment that unless she was lucky she was going to end up under that lawn, her body rotting away until it too was indistinguishable from its surroundings. The pain in her injured foot radiated up her leg. They would spend today digging that earth, tilling soil and discarding rocks, his eyes constantly on her, the odds on her ability to escape stacked against her.

She would be digging her own grave.

T
he walking stick made a whistling noise at it smacked into the back of Adam’s head. Nicky hit him so hard it bounced out of her hand and he pitched forwards into the ploughed earth with a yowl. By the time he hit the ground she was already running as if a hot wind from hell was on her back and about to smother her. As a schoolgirl she had been a county-standard sprinter: over one hundred, two hundred metres, there had been few who could have beaten her; those long legs gave her the physical advantage to get her down the track to the finish line first. She hadn’t sprinted in at least twenty years but she took off in an explosion of speed, her breath coming out as ragged gasps, and she pumped her arms higher, straining over the uneven ground. Her foot was numb now with the pain but she’d taken this course and she had to see it through. For nearly three hours she had been digging up the lawn in the late morning heat, waiting for the perfect moment to make her escape. Now she was running for her life.

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.