ROUGH CUT
By Owen Carey Jones
Published by New Generation Publishing
First Published in 2011
Copyright © Owen Carey Jones 2011
ISBN: 978-1-9082485-1-0
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by information storage
and retrieval systems, without written permission
of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is dedicated to Jill, the love of my
life, without whose support and encouragement
over many years, it would never have been written.
CHAPTER 1
From the air, Ambergris Caye, off the coast of Belize, looks like most people’s idea of paradise with the blue sea of the Caribbean turning green as it washes over the reef towards the beaches and the rich green foliage of the island.
Carter Jefferson’s house on this idyllic island was not large but it sat on the edge of the beach, surrounded by palm trees, with a French window which opened directly onto the beach, something he had never failed to appreciate.
Carter was a tall good-looking black man in his late forties. He was a Belizean by birth and enjoyed few things more than relaxing on a lounger on the beach outside his house. On this occasion, while he was sitting there, he was reading a sheaf of papers which he had printed out from his computer. As he read each page, he put it on the pile of pages he had already read which were lying face down on the sand next to him.
Suddenly, Carter’s eyes narrowed and a frown appeared on his face. He focused hard on what he was reading and then sat up and stared at the page in front of him. After a few moments he got up from the lounger and went into the house, taking the file with him. He went into his study and picked up his phone before tapping a number into it.
In New York, at the diamond testing station of the Gemological Institute of America where he spent most of his days, John Sprague heard his phone ring and plucked it from his pocket.
John was a diamond specialist based in New York and employed by The Federation of International Diamond Traders, an organisation which protects the interests of those whose business involves the buying and selling of one of the most valuable commodities on the planet. Carter had worked for the FIDT for many years before ceasing full time employment in order to give more time to his writing but he continued to work for them on an ad hoc basis, and a couple of days earlier, John had called him about an assignment. Although Carter was keen to focus on his new book, the FIDT was his main source of income and he knew he couldn’t afford to lose their goodwill.
Carter stared out at the sea as he waited for his call to be answered. When it was, John’s voice was cheerful and upbeat.
“Hi Carter, how’s it going? Have you read the file yet?”
“Yeah, I’ve just been going through it.” Carter paused for a moment before continuing. “John, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, go for it.”
“How certain are you that the parcel of stones came from that particular mine in Guinea?”
“Well, that’s what the trace showed. But you know the system as well as I do. The synthetics could have got into the distribution chain undetected at a few points along the way. As long as everyone further up the chain was in on it, so that all the numbers added up.”
“Well, I’m just about done with the file,” said Carter, “And I’m due to be in New York day after tomorrow to give a lecture at the Institute in the morning so maybe we can meet up after that?”
“Hey, yeah, that would be great. Say around two o’clock?”
“Two will be fine. I should be done by then. See you in a couple of days.”
Carter put the phone down and a smile crossed his face. He looked at a framed photograph of a young woman which was on his desk and spoke to it. “It’s been a long time, Nikki,” he said, ”Maybe it’s time you and I had a get together. What do you think?”
Carter reached down and opened one of his desk drawers. He took out a small, rather battered address book and flicked through the pages before finding the one he wanted. Then he picked up his phone again and entered a number from the address book into it. A broad smile covered his face as he put the phone to his ear and waited. He was nervous, but he was excited too.
“Nicole!” Carter almost shouted her name when she answered and then relaxed a little before continuing. “Hi! Guess who?”
At the other end of the line, Nicole, all dressed up and ready to leave for a party, paused for a moment before responding. “No idea. Give me a clue.” She absent-mindedly opened the diary that was on the table next to the telephone and leafed through its pages as she waited.
Carter wasn’t too sure what to make of Nicole’s response. Given what they had once been to each other, could she really not have recognised his voice? He decided to play along. “Oxford, 1985, a warm summer’s night down by the river?”
Although he was at the other end of the line, thousands of miles away from her, Carter felt Nicole freeze.
“Carter?” she queried, not sure what to believe. “No way! It can’t be you, not after all this time. Is it really you?”
“Oui, c’est moi,” responded Carter, pleased that she had picked up on the hint. And now he could sense a smile on her face as she listened to his broken French.
“Well, your French hasn’t improved any with the years,” she said and Carter chuckled before gathering himself to speak again, an affectionate tone to his voice now.
“How are you, Nicole?” he asked.
“Not too bad. How about you?”
“Good. I’m good thanks. How’s Andrew?”
After he had said this, Carter could hear the silence that reached out to him from Nicole and the smile disappeared from his face. He braced himself and spoke again.
“Nicole? You still there?
“Yes, sorry,” she said, clearly conveying that there was something that Carter did not know, but about which he was soon to be enlightened. “Andrew died about three years ago. An accident on the motorway.”
Carter’s heart sank on hearing the news. Andrew had won Nicole’s hand after his own attempts to secure her for himself had failed and he knew that Andrew’s death would have been crushing for her. His heart went out to her but he also felt a sense of elation that Andrew was no longer on the scene. He controlled the less praise-worthy of the emotions he was feeling before responding to the news.
“Oh, Nikki, I am so sorry. I didn’t know.” Carter meant it too. He might be glad that Andrew was no longer around but his love for Nicole had always been sincere, it had never left him, and now he shared her pain. When she spoke, it was clear to Carter that she was putting on a brave face.
“Yeah, well, that’s life, isn’t it. Kicks you in the stomach every now and then. But enough of that!” Carter winced as he listened, he could feel her distress despite her attempt to be upbeat. He heard her sniff before she continued. “So! Tell me Carter, why the phone call, after all these years?”
“Oh, no reason really,” he lied, and then thought better of it. “Actually, that’s not true. I’m going to be in England soon, and… I was wondering if you would like to meet up? Maybe for a coffee… or… something?”
Carter had no idea what reaction he was going to get to his sugg
estion, especially given what he had just been told, and there was an extended pause as Nicole thought about it. Carter waited patiently and eventually she made up her mind.
“Yeah, OK, why not? Yeah, that would be nice. I’d like that.”
Carter smiled but it was a smile tinged with the sadness he felt when he considered how devastated Nicole must have been when Andrew had died. Why had she never contacted him? He would have been there in a moment if she had.
“That’s great,” he said, “I’ll give you a call when I get to London and let’s try and arrange something, OK?”
“I look forward to it,” replied Nicole.
“Me too.” Carter rang off and put his phone back on his desk. He was delighted that he would soon be seeing Nicole again but in the circumstances, he was also a little apprehensive about how it would go.
In the lounge of her home at Darrington Hall, on the outskirts of the quiet village of Welburn in North Yorkshire, Nicole replaced the telephone receiver and closed the diary before heading for the door to the hall.
The hall was dominated by a large curving staircase with thick oak balustrades leading to the bedrooms above and the highly polished parquet floor was sparsely covered with a couple of rugs, allowing it to shine as the light hit it.
Nicole came into the hall and stood at the foot of the stairs looking up towards the landing at the top.
“Rob! Eloise! Come on, it’s time to go,” she shouted and almost immediately, Eloise, a slim attractive girl of twenty-one with long blonde hair, came down the stairs. She too was dressed for a party with her short tight skirt revealing her shapely legs.
“Rob!” Nicole shouted again, louder this time, and Rob, Eloise’s nineteen year old brother, appeared at the top of the stairs. He was wearing jeans and a tee-shirt and his hair was ruffled. He leaned over the banister to speak.
“I’m not going. I’ve got a headache,” he said as he turned away and headed back to his room. Nicole sighed and looked at Eloise.
“Come on, we’d better get going,” she said, clearly not impressed by Rob’s last minute decision to stay at home and not accompany them to the party.
_________________________
A couple of hours later, the sun had set and it was dark outside. Now alone in the house, Rob had ordered himself a pepperoni pizza and was in the kitchen finishing off the job of cutting it into manageable pieces. As he opened the kitchen door on his way back to his bedroom, a shaft of light from the kitchen pierced the gloom of the hall, forcing its way through ahead of him. Once in the hall, he turned to climb the gently curving staircase to the floor above. Slowly, the hall returned to its sombre state of semi-darkness as the kitchen door closed, pressed shut by a creaky spring, and blocked out the light from the fluorescent lamps in the kitchen which Rob had typically left on.
Half an hour later, Rob was upstairs in his bedroom when the door from the study to the hall opened and two dark-clad figures, one wearing black combat trousers and the other a pair of black tailored trousers, crept silently into the hall. One of them scoured the hall carefully while the other looked into each of the rooms leading from it. Having convinced themselves that they were alone in the house, they stood to one side of the hall, beside a small table.
“It’s probably upstairs in his bedroom,” whispered one of them and they started to walk noiselessly towards the stairs.
Suddenly, they heard a door close upstairs. The two figures glanced at each other and froze.
“I thought you said no one would be in,” said the shorter, stockier of the two, the one wearing the combats.
The two intruders looked towards the sound of Rob on the landing and tracked him with their eyes as he sauntered down the stairs, an empty plate in his hand. Rob first saw them as he reached the turn in the staircase, they were standing motionless, gawping at him, like a couple of barn owls unexpectedly caught in the blinding beam of a torch. The plate fell from Rob’s hand, bouncing down the stairs and rattling as it settled on the parquet floor, the harsh sound echoing off the walls. Rob turned away quickly and was about to run back up the stairs and call the police when he stopped himself. Slowly, he turned back to face the intruders, one of whom he thought he recognised.
“Hello,” he said, taking a couple of steps towards the one he had recognised. “What on earth are you doing here?” There was more enquiry than fear in his tone. “Shouldn’t you be at the party? Mum said everyone was going to be there.”
The taller figure, the one Rob had recognised, did not respond and Rob’s suspicions grew. His expression changed as he challenged them.
“What’s going on?” he said, “Why are you here? I don’t understand.” As Rob spoke, the shorter, stockier of the two intruders moved quickly to place himself between his accomplice and Rob. He stared up at Rob intimidatingly but Rob, who was six inches taller, swept him aside with a single movement of his arm and looked at the taller one again. Not to be outdone, the shorter one angrily squeezed himself between them again and started to push Rob backwards, hitting him repeatedly in the chest with the palms of his hands. Rob brushed his arms away dismissively as he spoke.
“Bog off, will you!” he sneered, “I’m not talking to you.”
The two of them stared at each other, each defying the other, as the one Rob had recognised whispered urgently between clenched teeth, “Carl! Just back off will you!”
For all that he was shorter than his accomplice, Carl was powerfully built and his eyes were cold and brutal; he was not the sort of person to back away from a confrontation and Rob gasped as suddenly he felt a sharp pain sear through his chest. He looked down and saw Carl’s hand gripping the handle of a hunting knife. The blade was plunged deep inside him and when he opened his mouth to scream, the only sound that escaped was a dull, deep groan. Carl’s eyes stared up at him; they held no sign of any emotion, no guilt, no remorse, not even any pleasure. Carl pushed again with the knife, this time twisting it hard as he did. Rob gasped with the renewed sharpness and intensity of the pain and bent forward as the blade reached up behind his ribs. The seconds ticked by as Rob stared at Carl and Carl stared back at him, daring him to live. After a few moments, Carl wrenched the blade of the knife free and blood began to pump from the wound in Rob’s chest. Rob watched, almost detached, as it splattered onto the patterned rug beneath him, some of it hitting Carl’s trousers.
“What the hell have you done!” shouted the one Rob had recognised as Rob collapsed onto to the floor.
“Well what did you expect me to do? He saw us! And he recognised you.” The amazement in Carl’s voice emphasised the enormous gulf than existed between their differing moralities. “I had no choice. I had to do it.”
Rob lay slumped on the floor, his hands clasped over his chest where the knife had pierced his solar plexus.
“What are we going to do now?” There was panic in the taller figure’s voice but Carl remained calm.
“We’re going to do what we came here to do.”
“But what about him? What about Rob?”
“In a few minutes, he’ll be dead.”
“But we can’t just leave him here to die! He needs a doctor.”
Carl’s patience snapped. “Are you thick or what? We’re not going to call a doctor. Or an ambulance. In fact, we’re not going to do anything that might get us caught. OK? There is no way I’m going back inside again.”
As Carl stared defiantly at his accomplice, Rob’s eyes slowly closed for the last time.
_________________________
Nicole and Eloise were chatting happily as they drove home from the party along the dark, unlit lanes. It was a warm and humid summer’s evening and Nicole had opened her window to let some air into the car. In the distance, she could hear the rumble of thunder and the trees beside the road rustled with the first stirrings of a wind.
As Nicole drove up to Darrington Hall, Eloise suddenly stopped in mid-sentence and stared at the front of the house. Her tone changed and became tense.
> “Mum,” she said, touching her mother’s arm, “The front door’s wide open.”
Nicole stopped the car and looked at the pool of light spilling out of the doorway onto the gravel drive. She didn’t say a word but got out of the car hurriedly and walked quickly towards the house, with Eloise following a few paces behind her. As soon as she entered the hall, Nicole saw Rob lying on the rug. She stopped and looked at him; he wasn’t moving. Her hand went to her mouth as she stood motionless, unable to comprehend what she was seeing but fearing the worst.
Then, as the inescapable reality of what she saw forced itself upon her, she screamed Rob’s name and her whole body started shaking uncontrollably.
Eloise heard Nicole’s scream as she came into the hall behind her. When she saw what had so shocked her mother, she gasped. She looked at Rob, then at her mother, and then back at Rob. With Nicole still unable to move, Eloise approached her brother slowly. She saw the pool of blood that had seeped from the wound in his chest and knelt down beside him. Despite finding it difficult to breathe, Eloise forced herself to take Rob’s wrist in her hand. She felt for a pulse but there was nothing, just the cold clamminess of death. Slowly, she got back to her feet and returned to her mother before gently guiding her across the hall and sitting her down in the seat next to the telephone table.
Heavy driving rain was spattering against the hall windows as Eloise picked up the telephone and dialled 999.
_________________________
The day after Rob Darrington’s murder was officially announced, Eloise decided to go back to work to try to take her mind off what had happened. She had been reluctant to leave her mother on her own but Nicole had insisted that she would be fine.
That day, the Yorkshire Post carried the story of Rob’s death on the front page. A colour photograph had been provided at the request of the reporter, whose insistence on having it had brought him close to having the door slammed in his face.
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