The First Cut

by Knight, Ali

‘Go on.’

  ‘These marks.’ Sondra pointed to four long streaks in the gravel that gave out after a few metres. ‘Strange, aren’t they? Something heavy’s been dragged out of the back door. They suddenly stop, like when you put something in—’

  ‘A car.’

  Sondra nodded. ‘Bodies are heavy . . .’ She shrugged. ‘It’s just a thought.’

  Jenny swore and pulled out her phone.

  52

  Liz was grappling with an unfamiliar sensation: indecision. She was a woman who worked in black and whites, who was comfortable with moral absolutes. She liked people or she didn’t, dismissed them or embraced them, believed them or didn’t, but now a weird feeling chewed at her guts. Was Nicky right? Was Greg not the man she had always thought he was? The idea that she could have been wrong was a shock to Liz; she revelled in her self-righteousness, the pleasure of her own point of view, knowing it was the right one.

  She had come back to Greg’s house after a couple of hours of fruitless searching for Nicky but he was no longer there. Neither he nor Nicky would answer their phones and so she’d made a decision that had been difficult but necessary. She had phoned the police and told them what Nicky had told her, and then she had followed the path set by Nicky and driven down to Hayersleigh. Now she was barred from entering by a policeman standing by the large gate. Something huge was obviously happening for there to be a guard on the gate. ‘You can’t come through, madam,’ he said.

  Liz looked witheringly at the man in his uniform that was too big for him. He was barely out of his teens. Liz’s life had been a long and righteous battle to do the right thing: student protests through her university years, anti-racism marches, ban the bomb sit-ins, never-ending arguments with her dad about patriarchy and sexism. She’d been fighting men like this all her life. Now they looked like children. She got out of the car. ‘Get me the head of the operation here or I’ll make sure you’re tapping on the Job Centre window next week.’

  Liz watched a middle-aged policewoman hurry towards her. ‘I’m Liz Peterson, Greg Peterson’s sister. I think Nicky’s life is in danger.’

  ‘That’s a very bold statement, Ms Peterson. You need to give me all the details you can.’ They paused as a police van came past at speed, racing down to the house.

  ‘What’s happening? Is Greg or Nicky at the house?’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘We are very keen to talk to both of them. Do you have any idea where they might be?’

  ‘Someone’s died in there, haven’t they? Who is it?’

  ‘We’re not sure yet, Ms Peterson, but the situation is very serious. I want you to tell me everything you can about why—’

  A plane began its droning roar above their heads and instinctively they both looked skywards, their conversation shrivelling with the interruption. Liz watched the hard grey underbelly of the plane above her and felt memory and family history press upon her. ‘I know where Nicky might be.’ She saw the policewoman waiting for her answer. ‘She’s at the airport. Take me with you in the car and I’ll tell you why on the way.’

  53

  The pins and needles in Nicky’s legs woke her up in the end, but it was the churning weightlessness, the sudden drops in altitude that she had experienced on a rollercoaster that jerked her head this way and that. She was lying on the back seat of a small aeroplane, Lawrence at the controls, a black rucksack strapped to his back. In the seat next to him Greg was slumped, head on chest, unmoving. They were flying through dense cloud, a wall of white and grey, buffeted by the storm. She struggled to get upright and realized her hands were bound tightly behind her. The plane plunged sickeningly again and she gasped involuntarily at the crazy movement and at finding she was tied up. Lawrence glanced back at her, his hand on the plane’s flight yoke.

  ‘Untie me!’

  ‘I can’t do that, Nicky.’ She started to struggle with her bindings, trying to clear the fog from her head and mind. Her mouth was dry, her head pounding.

  ‘Where are we . . . what . . .?’ She was thinking back to the last moment she could remember, trying to process where she’d been. Inside the laughing cavalier . . . she’d been looking out at crash man and suddenly . . .

  She stared at Greg. Nicky felt sick, as if she might hurl as the plane was tossed around by the weather. She tried to pull at the knots behind her back with her fingers. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He didn’t turn round.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She pulled blindly at a piece of nylon cord, trying to find an end.

  ‘I want to make you understand the man you married.’ Lawrence stared ahead at the cloud. He seemed calm and unconcerned. Fear began to chatter in her brain.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘France. Le Touquet.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Sometimes it’s important to go back to the beginning.’

  ‘The beginning of what?’

  Lawrence turned to her. With the headset and the mike in front of his mouth he looked every inch the respectable pilot. He seemed younger and more alive than when she’d seen him earlier in the day. Was it only today? It felt like years ago. ‘So he’s never told you about Le Touquet? I suppose it’s not a surprise. A liar hides things as a force of habit.’

  ‘Hides what?’

  Lawrence smiled slightly. ‘I want you to see, Nicky, what the actions of selfish people can do.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Greg killed my wife, Nicky. And when he did that he killed me in a way, too.’

  Nicky looked across at her husband, at his broad, still back. Could this be true? Was Catherine the first in a long line of women to suffer a violent end at the hands of the man she fell in love with? With her thumb and forefinger she managed to pull a piece a rope from the knot. She needed to keep him talking, if only to beat back her fear.

  Lawrence looked over at Greg. ‘It was the selfish act of a stupid young man, for which he never paid his proper dues. For killing Cathy he spent not a day behind bars—’

  The plane suddenly lurched viciously to the side as it hit turbulence and dropped away. Nicky’s stomach slammed into her chest and she was pitched sideways, while Greg lolled forward onto the instrument panel. Nicky saw that he too was strapped in with his hands tied behind his back. Lawrence fought to keep control of the plane as her fear became a roaring party in her head. We’re going to die up here, she thought. We’re going to die.

  ‘When he killed Cathy he imprisoned me – it was a double injustice.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  Lawrence laughed. ‘You really don’t know? I’ve presided over hundreds of criminal cases in my career. My life’s work has been about delivering justice, yet I myself have received none. I’m not alone. Many times those that should have ended up in jail have walked right out through the front door; other times the wrong person entirely has sat in my dock. The law is blunt and ineffective and sometimes plain wrong . . . After Cathy died I was left with no alternative but to implement my own justice. For myself, for Cathy and for Adam.’

  ‘Your own justice? That’s just revenge!’ Part of the rope she was fiddling with behind her back was snagged on her engagement ring. ‘You took the law into your own hands.’

  Now Lawrence was getting animated and he swung round to stare at her. ‘You think that point of view’s crazy? The world is crazy. I see it every day in my court. I really, really loved my wife. I would have died for Cathy. But he took her from me and I’ve had to live my life without her. Tit for tat, an eye for an eye – call it what you will.’

  ‘You’re going to kill me as revenge for Cathy?’

  ‘Like I did with the others.’

  She got it now, but could hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘You killed the women Greg loved because of what he did to Cathy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nicky could feel the rage bubbling up with the force of a geyser, unstoppable. ‘You killed Grace for that? You killed Francesca, a pregnant woman, becau
se of something her boyfriend did years before? I’ve never heard anything so sick in all my life!’ That Grace, entirely innocent, had had her life cut so brutally short, that she herself had flailed around in that black water in her futile attempts to save her because of events entirely unrelated to either of them, made her want to puke. ‘You murdered Grace! She was a woman with everything to live for—’

  ‘So was Cathy!’

  Nicky screamed with all the power she could muster. She screamed incoherently with frustration at his point of view. She screamed for the pointless loss suffered by Grace and by Francesca, and for that unnamed, unknown child of Greg’s.

  ‘That man who came to Hayersleigh with Greg, he was coming to kill me, wasn’t he? That’s how you did it, wasn’t it? Hiring others to kill for you. You didn’t even have the guts to do it yourself!’

  ‘Greg had an affair with my wife in the early years of our marriage, at the time Adam was born, at the time we were creating a family, building the foundations for all our years together that were to come. He broke up my family at my moment of greatest joy.’ Lawrence looked at the slumped-over Greg with contempt. ‘I’ve watched your husband over the years. I’ve studied him, even. I know so much about him. Always a girl on his arm, so many passing fancies, so many flirtations, but I waited, waited until I knew that one in particular was special, waited until he had committed, had exposed himself to the potential for lasting pain. He never married Francesca but she was going to have his child; they were as good as linked for ever. Grace he did marry. I made him pay for playing with Cathy by making him lose the women who meant the most to him.’

  You didn’t have to kill a person to destroy their life, Nicky thought. ‘It’s over, Lawrence, this is so over! You can’t get away with it!’

  ‘Oh I can, Nicky, and I will. Greg’s clothes have shotgun residue on them from when he killed the hit man. His fingerprints are on the steering wheel of the yellow car in the hangar at the airport. I’ll say he made me take off, then once we got up here there was a fight and I got the parachute but you two crashed into the sea, because there’s not enough fuel. I think it’s time you really felt what Cathy endured at the end.’

  A great groan came from Greg then as he woke and took in where he was. He turned to Lawrence and tried to head butt him from his seat.

  ‘Greg!’ Nicky screamed but he didn’t notice.

  He had let himself look for a moment out of the window and let out a low howl of panic. He started to hyperventilate, his fear of flying overtaking every other emotion.

  Lawrence looked incredulously at Greg, sweating and moaning in the seat, his face turned away from the window. ‘Are you scared of flying?’

  Greg bent and twisted in his seat, trying to get free. He stared back at Nicky and shouted, ‘He’s trying to kill you!’

  ‘What did you do, Greg? What did you do to Cathy?’ Nicky was desperate to hear an explanation from her husband about what had happened all those years ago, what had made Lawrence pursue his twisted course.

  Greg lunged at Lawrence again. ‘You sick fuck! You tried to destroy me but I’m still here. After everything you’ve done I’m still standing, Nicky is still here—’

  Nicky felt one knot fall away behind her. Her wrists were no longer clamped together so she could unwork her bindings faster. ‘Your revenge has gone wrong, hasn’t it?’ She felt a surge of triumph. ‘Adam rumbled you, didn’t he? Your own son saved my life at Hayersleigh . . . he was trying to put right all the shit you created, wasn’t he? He killed a man to protect me! Your own flesh and blood ruined your plan!’

  Her voice died in her throat as the plane suddenly dropped again through turbulence. Nicky felt herself lift off the seat and was then slammed back down on it, their flimsy metal cage shuddering as the engine screamed with the effort of flying. Nicky felt a sudden release in her shoulders – she’d got the rope untied. ‘He knew, and he rejected your scheme!’

  Lawrence groaned and reached round and grabbed Nicky by her clothes as Greg began screaming again. ‘Throw me out! Kill me, not her – she’s done nothing wrong.’

  Nicky used surprise as her weapon and smacked Lawrence hard in the face with her newly released hand. He reeled back into the yoke, the headset bouncing off his hair and dangling from the control panel. The plane pitched downwards.

  ‘Get off me!’

  Lawrence tried to hold Nicky back with one hand as he adjusted the yoke and fought to bring the plane back to horizontal. He was panting hard, panic and anger coursing through his body. ‘This will never be over, Greg! You will pay!’

  ‘You did all this for the most precious thing you and Cathy had left – Adam – but he hates you!’ shouted Nicky. Lawrence mumbled something Nicky couldn’t hear, took his hands off the yoke and undid the straps across his chest. ‘What are you doing?’ He pulled his arms free of the parachute and slammed it into Greg’s feet. Greg’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘No!’

  ‘I’m not sorry. I did it for her. It was a way of keeping her alive. Grief and anger eat up your life and destroy you from inside, but revenge is cleansing. The unfortunate thing for you, Greg, is that there’ll be no one for you to take revenge on.’

  Lawrence leaned over and pulled at the catch that opened the door. Nicky screamed and lunged forward to stop Lawrence throwing himself out. She wedged her feet under her seat and tried to pull Lawrence by the waist as he pushed at the door, the wind resistance making it hard to open. Nicky clung on. There was no way on earth she was letting the only person who could fly this plane throw himself out of it. ‘Don’t do this! You alone can end this, Lawrence. I beg you—’

  ‘But you didn’t do this alone, did you?’ screamed Greg. ‘Someone rang the hit man who killed Francesca, from my flat. Who was it?’

  ‘Me. It was an insurance policy. Pinning the hit on you wasn’t bad for me.’

  Greg lunged forward again, the veins in his neck bulging with rage as he fought to free his hands from their bindings. ‘But someone helped you. The hit man said a woman called him. Who was the woman? Who was it who made the calls to him? Tell me!’ Greg was hollering at his nemesis as the door flew outwards. Nicky held on for dear life to Lawrence, who had his hand on the side of the plane, one leg out of the door.

  Lawrence smiled at Greg, his hair whipping this way and that in the ferocious wind. Nicky’s feet were beginning to slide away from under her seat. Slowly, slowly, she was coming away from her anchor. ‘One parachute and a broken fuel line,’ Lawrence shouted. ‘A fitting end, don’t you think?’ He looked at Nicky. ‘We all die screaming, Nicky, remember?’ And with that he yanked Nicky’s hands away, leaned back and dropped out through the door.

  54

  Nicky cried out so loudly she thought she would go hoarse. The noise and the wind were terrible, the plane careening and bumping. Nicky knew with absolute clarity that she was going to die, but she went through the motions of struggling against her fate all the same; the survival instinct is strong, and she would fight on until the very, very end. She climbed over the seat backs into Lawrence’s place while the plane rocked crazily, her fear that she might be pitched out after Lawrence almost paralysing her. She grabbed Greg’s arm and tried to reach out to the door to shut it. She couldn’t get there.

  ‘Untie me, untie me!’ Greg was shouting. ‘Leave the door – you won’t get it shut – we can fly without it. Hurry!’

  Part of the knot was undone, and she sat back and clawed at the ropes holding Greg’s hands. But with the wind flinging stray items round the cockpit, blowing her hair into her eyes, her mouth, she knew that with no one to fly it they were going to die trying to land this plane. The knots finally came away and she reached out to snatch at the flight yoke.

  ‘Leave it! Don’t touch it!’ Greg yelled with new conviction. ‘Swap seats with me.’ Nicky hesitated. She could see the dark water below them as the plane cut through a gap in the cloud. They swapped places in an untidy sprawl over the seats, the sea coming ever cl
oser. Blind panic swamped her. ‘Yank it, yank!’

  ‘No. It’ll start a spin.’ There was no sky visible in the windscreen as the plane pitched for several seconds closer and closer to the sea. Nicky slammed herself back against her seat in a puny attempt to delay the end by a millisecond, then the nose inched upwards and she saw the coast of France, a smudge on the horizon.

  She stared at her husband as he inched the plane back to horizontal. His face was set, his jaw straining under his skin, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple as he tried to keep a lid on his terror. He grabbed the headset and connected to the nearest tower. She saw they were gaining height as the plane swayed and wobbled. ‘You know how to fly?’

  Greg nodded. ‘I never told you. Like so much else in my life, I never told you.’

  ‘You mean you can land this plane?’ A manic giggle erupted from deep inside Nicky’s belly as Greg hurriedly reported Lawrence’s actions to the tower. She had been staring down into the darkest abyss, and suddenly and inexplicably she had been released. ‘What happened in Le Touquet, Greg? What happened to Cathy?’

  Greg didn’t look at her. ‘I met Cathy learning to fly. I was twenty. I had dreams of becoming a pilot, going off to Africa and ferrying important people around – the stupid dreams you have when you’re young. But I fell in love with her and used to come down and see her when he was away working in London. Hayersleigh was our playground. We wanted to celebrate when I got my pilot’s licence. She left the baby with Connie and we took Lawrence’s plane. I flew us to Le Touquet.’ He sobbed. ‘It was cloudless.’ The plane swung violently as if in protest at the present conditions ‘We—’

  An alarm sounded and cut through the roar of the wind in the cabin. Greg swore. Nicky looked out of the windscreen and at that moment her heart learned the real definition of agony. The propeller wasn’t moving.

  Greg let out a strangled noise. He thumped the control panel and vainly began trying to restart the engine.