The First Cut (26 page)

‘How did Francesca die?’

Greg took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair. He was standing by the sliding glass doors that led to their large garden. It was the kind of London garden that millions must covet: wide and long, with mature trees at the back that shielded them from the neighbours, who were never there anyway. A secret, hidden place that children should play in, a garden that his unborn child should have enjoyed. ‘She fell off a sixth-storey balcony. We were on holiday in Morocco.’ His voice was flat, expressionless. ‘I had gone to the chemist’s because her mosquito bites were itching. She was scratching them too much and I was worried about them getting infected. She was found naked in the grass by the edge of the pool. Twenty-third of August 1999.’

Nicky paused. ‘I’m so sorry. Did you have any idea she was suicidal?’

‘She wasn’t.’ He spat the words out.

‘What?’

‘She didn’t kill herself.’ He made a funny movement with his shoulders, halfway between a shrug and a gesture full of defiance. ‘She had been treated for depression in the past and could be very up and down, but I don’t think she would ever have done that . . . I mean, it must have been some kind of accident.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do I. She had no reason to . . . Maybe she was disorientated . . . The bloody hotel . . . They were just so keen to cover it all over because it was bad for business.’

‘No rooms above the ground floor . . . It makes sense now. But how—’

‘I don’t know. I don’t understand, OK? I can’t explain it to you, any more than I could explain it to her parents!’ He was shouting now, his voice harsh in the afternoon heat. ‘There was a queue at the chemist’s, an Australian was dithering about buying waterproof plasters or something . . .’ He tailed off, his eyes glazing over. ‘When I got back she wasn’t there.’ He turned to Nicky. ‘It was at least ten minutes before I heard shouts outside the window and leaned over that bloody balcony.’ He paused. ‘You’ll never get the details you want because I can’t even begin to explain it to you. I don’t have the words!’

‘I know how it can be difficult to explain things, to reveal things that are not straightforward . . .’ She looked crushed.

‘Nicky?’ She was silent for a beat too long. ‘Nicky?’

‘I’m so, so sorry.’ She looked about to cry.

‘I don’t want pity. I can’t stand pity. So I didn’t tell you or anyone. I was away in California a lot then – that’s where she lived – and we’d only occasionally stay in London, but we were on holiday in Morocco. The police never asked about it because it never came up in their searches, and I never told them.’

‘She was going to have your child.’

‘But she didn’t, Nicky! She never did have that child! I might want to pretend otherwise, but that child never existed! She was five months pregnant when she died and I used to feel that baby’s elbow under the skin, feel those tiny feet pushing against her stomach . . . But there is no name for that child, that child has no sex, it has no birth certificate and it has no grave!’ Greg was angry now, so angry that blotches were appearing on his face. Nicky had never seen him like this before. ‘I’ve just got back from a twelve-hour flight during which I sat sweating in fear the whole time. I’m jet-lagged. And I don’t need this inquisition about things in the past I’m trying to forget from my
wife
!’ He picked up his jacket and jabbed his arms roughly into the armholes. He nearly ripped the fabric in his haste. ‘Don’t you think I spend enough time in hotels? You think I want to come home and spend my first day back in a fucking Novotel? Cos that’s what you’re making me do, Nicky!’

‘Please stay here so we can talk about this.’ Nicky was pleading with him now. ‘You’re cutting me out and I’m trying to help.’

‘Oh really!’ He wheeled round to her. ‘You’re telling me you’re not like all the rest? When you found out about Francesca you thought about Grace, didn’t you? And you thought:
two
dead women? No one can be that unlucky! That’s what this is really all about. You suspect me, just like everyone else!’

He marched to the front door, feeling for his wallet, but it wasn’t there so he whirled back to the kitchen and swiped it from the island while she stood in the hallway. He put his hand on the front door and turned towards her. Now his voice was low and menacing. ‘You thought I’d killed both of them, didn’t you? But you didn’t answer my question, did you? Have you ever lied to me?’ He leaned forward. ‘Where were you phoning from when you woke me up the other day, eh? And then you rang off without saying anything at all.’

‘I . . .’

‘Have you ever lied to me about something that happened recently?’

‘Yes. Yes, I have.’ She said it loudly, without any shame or embarrassment.

‘God help you,’ he said in a whisper as he slammed the door behind him.

Troy used a reverse directory to find the address that connected to the phone number that had taken him to Greg Peterson’s voicemail. His heart beat a little quicker when he saw the postcode: Maida Vale was a pricey part of town. Troy didn’t like to give in to intuition, he didn’t trust it, but every so often he had to admit a feeling would come over him and excitement and hope would soar in him. This just
felt
different from that loser RJ, who hadn’t been able to stump up a sou in payment for his past sins. A secret taken to the grave was about to reach out of the cold earth and grab at Greg Peterson in his very own
Carrie
finale. Troy couldn’t wait. But first he had to get prepared – for success and for failure. However excited he might be, the potential for fuck-ups was ever present. Struan’s snake tattoo flashed in his mind, but only for a moment.

G
reg’s elbow slipped off the edge of the bar at the Crown in Cricklewood and he had to make a bit too much of a bum-shuffling adjustment to stay on the stool. How the mighty fall, he thought. The fiasco of a reunion with Nicky was not what he had planned. His temper had got the better of him, but then it wouldn’t be the first time. Anger and managing it had been a problem all his life. He just hid it better now that he was older and slower, presumably with lower testosterone. What was testosterone? Where did it live? In the balls? In the glands? He should have paid more attention in biology, but he knew why he hadn’t: he would have been trying to chat up some girl or other, back in the days when he was cocky and sure of himself and so, so young. There was an irony there, if he cared to search for it. And he didn’t care, not tonight; he didn’t care at all. Desire was brought on by what hung between his thighs: his need for love; his failure to keep it.

He slugged back a shot of Jim Beam given to him by the barman, who looked about fifteen and had a silver name tag on his uniform. The lettering was too small for Greg to read and he was too drunk; things were beginning to slide in and out of focus.

‘What’s yer name?’ He managed to get that out in what sounded like English to him.

‘Vladek,’ the fifteen-year-old replied and turned away in pity from the old soak drowning his sorrows.

The bar was so empty it wasn’t like there was a dishwasher to stack or lemon to chop. Greg realized with a shot of drunken clarity that the guy wanted nothing to do with him. ‘You and my wife,’ he said. Vladek didn’t turn. Music he didn’t recognize played from the walls. What a homecoming – just what he’d spent twelve hours on the red eye for: a bunk-up in fucking Cricklewood. He could have gone central, marched into the Hilton or the Dorchester, binned cash and had them fawning, but he wanted to indulge his moroseness, caress it, and that would have been harder in a place where he might have bumped into someone he knew. He leaned his head forward and wiped the sheen of sweat from the back of his neck. Christ, it was hotter here than in California. At least there the breeze off the Pacific cooled him at night, or the air conditioning shouted its efficiency. This heatwave had given London a stench reminiscent of Tangier; the council needed to sort out their bin policy.

He swilled his ice cubes and burped. He should be thinking about Nicky, about how they had drifted apart, about how love can flourish so strongly and then wither – but he was worrying about Camden’s environmental waste issues. It was a sign, as if he needed it, that he’d hit middle age. He’d slammed right into it like a rubbish truck into the bollards on the Kilburn High Road. But he knew what Tangier smelled like because he’d been there with Francesca.

He saw some peanuts in a silver bowl further along the bar and pulled them towards him. What the heck. He tried to throw one skywards and catch it in his mouth but he never even saw it come back to earth. Peanuts probably grew in Tangiers. Film catering trucks didn’t offer peanuts: too many allergy lawsuits waiting to happen, too calorific for the talent. Were there six types of wee on LA peanuts and, if so, was it a better class of wee than Cricklewood’s? He shouted at Vladek for another shot. He wasn’t in California any more. He’d bailed from a film shoot! Liz’s terse message and Maria’s worried one had sent him walking right out! After that stunt he’d probably never work again.
You’ll never eat lunch in this town, buddy
 . . . After what had happened to him, was it any wonder he was paranoid and superstitious and difficult and – he hardly dared say the word but it reverberated round his drunken skull anyway – cursed. Cursed, contemptible Greg, trying to keep the demons at bay with underhand tactics like having his wife followed by his own sister and hiding his hurt and anguish behind a wall of silence. He crunched down on an ice cube. Maybe Liz took a little too much pleasure in playing the guard dog.

So, here he was, alone, in Cricklewood. The old anger flared brightly within him. Good fucking riddance to all of them, Nicky included. He drank another slug of whiskey and found his hand was shaking. He was teetering on the abyss, but he had stood on that abyss many times, too many times; it was as if he could feel the hands of those dead women trying to pull him over!

We live our lies, Greg thought. They are our defence mechanism. Tell a lie for twenty years and it turns into the truth. He had created his own truth, however twisted. He had only done what any man would have done. What
had
to be done. He refused to feel guilty for that.

Why did he have a thing for blondes? Maybe if they had been redheads his life would have turned out differently. He would be married with a couple of kids and living in Essex, and his neighbours’ wives would be the hotties. But real or bottled, there was something about a blonde. All his girlfriends had been that honey colour. It was the colour of desire, a symbol of his drive and ambition and he wasn’t going to apologize for that.

The whiskey burned his throat. He did have things to apologize for, but he blocked those thoughts from his mind. The whiskey would tear down the barrier later that evening, and the fear and guilt and recrimination and pain would flow unhindered and unwitnessed through him, but with considerable mental effort he got the barrier to stay upright for now.

‘Vladek, leave the bottle.’

Vladek gave a nod. ‘I’ll charge it to your bill and you can take it to your room, if you wish, sir.’

There it was, the polite ‘Get lost’, issued by a fifteen-year-old. Oh my, he was a lush to be hidden away in shame. His elbow slipped off the bar again and he stood up and managed to weave his way through some rather complicated seating arrangements to the stairs. They were curved and he felt ridiculously pleased that he got to the top without a stumble.

Occasionally there were nights when the memories took over, when the guilt visited him, worse than the worst acid trips he’d had as a student. He gave into the feelings that crashed over him, let them soak through him. He was not a religious man but these were the nights that the terrors stalked him: the what ifs, the what might have beens, the how close he came to walking a different path. In the past he’d used Liz as a crutch to get him through, but their relationship had been tested and had worn away over the years until only a bitter shorthand of it remained. He sometimes had dark thoughts about his sister, wondered if her increasing bitterness and distance towards him was because she thought he didn’t suffer enough. Her support had helped make him more successful, had stretched the gap between their respective lives to a greater degree than she’d ever expected, and maybe this had made her bitter. She had Dan to worry about and an ex-husband to hate. For Liz hate had been a cleansing passion. He was under no illusions that his dear sister would have killed her ex-husband if she’d only known how. If only she’d had the guts. No, there was no Liz tonight. He was middle-aged now; he was on his own.

He didn’t have children, the ties that hold a person to a place or a routine; he had dead bodies, memories he tried to blank out, regrets that never lessened, hopes that had been crushed, over and over again. And now Nicky had gone and done it all on her own . . . she had found his way of being wanting.

He swayed along the corridor to his room and fumbled with the card key to open the door. The room was as stuffy as the bar. ‘Welcome to London,’ he said to the walls and sank back onto the bedspread, Jim Beam slopping over his hands. ‘Come on, then! Come and get me! All of you!’

A
fter Greg had stomped off Nicky had assumed he was coming back. The first hour had dragged by and when he hadn’t appeared she was angry – she’d jumped on his travel bag and kicked it across the corridor, she’d paced up and down, swearing at her husband in his absence; ninety minutes later she’d phoned and pleaded on his voicemail with him to come home. Two hours later she’d collapsed on the sofa and let the love she felt for Greg course through her veins. It was painful. She loved him so much, but he seemed ever more separated from her. The revelation of an entire story before Grace had sent dark shards of suspicion deep within her.

When the doorbell had rung and she had run to the front door, she had told herself that she wouldn’t accuse, she would fold herself into his arms and they would work it out. Her fear and panic at the hospital had been a psychosis brought on by her experiences at Adam’s hands. How could Greg possibly have seemed suspicious on the phone? She’d disturbed him in the middle of the night. She would sit Greg down and she would tell him everything. And he would forgive her. They could start anew.