The First Cut

by Peter Robinson

  Before she had time to decide whether to go on or turn back, however, she saw him walk down the path to the last cottage in the row. She paused, taking cover behind a parked van, and watched him put the key in the lock and enter. So that was where he lived. She wondered if he lived alone. If he really was the man who had attacked her, and she had been certain as soon as she heard his voice that he was, he probably did.

  Then she thought of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper who had lived with his wife, Sonia, throughout the period he had killed and butchered thirteen women. And hadn’t there been two or three others who had survived his attacks? Sue wondered what had become of them. Anything was possible, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to believe that the man she was after shared his life with a woman.

  When he had disappeared inside the cottage, Sue turned and walked back down the lane to the road. There was nothing more she could do at the moment. A little careful planning, at least, was called for now. She couldn’t just go barging in and kill him; she had to lure him to an isolated open place after dark. Because she had been attacked in just such a place, she felt that she would have more chance of succeeding somewhere similar when the tables were turned. He was stronger than her, so she would have to use cunning. She couldn’t see it happening in a house or on a street. But she knew where he lived now, and that was comforting knowledge. It gave her an advantage.

  As if to mark her entry into tourist Whitby, the drizzle stopped and the clouds began to break, allowing a few feeble rays of sun through here and there. She was on the narrow, cobbled part of Church Street again, north of Whitby Bridge. The world went on as normal there: families and courting couples wandered down the road as usual, pausing to look in the windows of the jet shops and the little gift shops that sold flavored fudge or sachets of Earl Grey tea and Colombian coffee.

  It was one thirty, and Sue hadn’t eaten yet. She was also eager to read the papers. She went into the Black Horse, bought a half of lager and ordered a steak and kidney pie. The place was moderately busy, mostly with young couples eating lunch, mackintoshes strewn on the seats beside them and umbrellas propped up against the wall. She managed to find a small corner table and sat down to read the papers while she ate.

  There was nothing about the Student Slasher in the Independent. It had, after all, been almost a week since he had last struck. Unless the police caught him or found an important clue, there would be nothing more about him until he had slashed and strangled his next victim. Sue meant to see that that never happened. She glanced quickly at the headlines—war, lies, corruption, misery—and then turned anxiously to the local paper.

  The news was on the front page, staring her right in the face:

  CRIMES LINKED?

  Police in Whitby are attempting to establish whether there is any link between the murder of a Whitby man, Jack Grimley, and the serious wounding of an Australian national, Keith McLaren, whose unconscious body was discovered by a wildlife worker in some woods near Dalehouse late last night. Mr. McLaren, suffering from serious head injuries, is presently in a coma in St. Mary’s Hospital, Scarborough. Doctors refuse to comment on his chances of recovery but one hospital spokesman admitted there is a strong risk of permanent brain damage. When asked if the attacks could have been carried out by the same person a police spokesman told our reporter, “It is too early to say. We are looking at two different cases, both with similar head wounds, but so far there is no evidence of a connection between these two men.” Police are still anxious to interview anyone who might have seen Grimley after he left the Lucky Fisherman last Thursday. They are also interested in discovering the identity of a woman seen with McLaren in Hinderwell last Monday afternoon. She is described as young, with short light brown hair, wearing jeans, a gray jacket and a checked shirt. Police are eager that anyone who can identify her come forward at once.

  Sue put the paper down on the table and tried to control her shaking hands. He wasn’t dead! Keith wasn’t dead. She should have known she hadn’t hit him hard enough. Instead of finishing the job, she had been frightened by that damn dog and hurried away without making sure. Perhaps she had felt sorry for him, too, and that had made her soft. But it had never entered her mind that she might not have killed him. What could she do now? What if he were to come round and tell the police who she was? They already had a description of Martha Browne.

  Sue pushed the rest of her pie aside and lit a cigarette. She had no appetite left. It was time to get a grip on herself. She went to the bar, bought a double brandy, then settled down to reread the article carefully. She must be careful not to panic, not now that she had the scent of her true prey. She had to think clearly. The description of the girl was vague, for a start, and it certainly didn’t resemble the way she looked now. But would the proprietor of the Abbey Terrace guesthouse remember her? And what about Grimley’s pals in the Lucky Fisherman? She had been dressed much the same that night, she recalled, as when she had walked in the woods with Keith. Would the men remember seeing her sitting with the Australian, glancing over at Grimley as if she knew him? And had anyone seen her with Keith in Staithes? She had been wearing her new outfit at first, before she had changed in the toilet, so what if someone could connect the one girl with the other?

  The police could be getting very close indeed, she realized. She would have to act quickly. There was no sense in staying around to get arrested for killing Jack Grimley when she had now caught up with the man she really wanted. Time was definitely working against her, its winged chariot snapping at her heels. And what about Keith? He might recover consciousness at any moment. Would he still be able to identify her, or would his memory of the incident be gone, as hers had been for so long? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she had her man in sight, and she had better find a way of luring him into the open soon, or the whole mission would be at risk.

  A tweedy woman who had just come to sit at the next table gave her a curious look. It was probably time to change her haunts. She had been to this pub and the nearby café far too often.

  She sipped some more brandy; it warmed her throat and settled her fluttering stomach. Should she go to the hospital in Scarborough, creep into Keith’s room and put the pillow over his face? Could she do it? Did she have the nerve? But she remembered that her attacker had tried to get to her in a similar situation and he hadn’t succeeded. There would be police guards; security would be far too tight for her to be able to get through to him. No, that was out of the question. All she could do was hope that he wouldn’t recover.

  There was still the holdall back in her room. She hadn’t got rid of it yet. That was something she could do while she worked out a plan to deal with “Greg.” Then she would have to leave town quickly, no foolish hanging around to wallow in the outcome of her actions. She would have to read about and savor her success at a distance, like everyone else.

  42

  Kirsten

  With Sarah gone, Kirsten had only her fears and a growing sense of mission to keep her going. In late January, the killer claimed his fourth victim, a second-year biology student called Jane Pitcombe. Carefully, Kirsten cut out her picture and all the details she could find and put them in the scrapbook she had started to keep track of the victims.

  Also that month, she told Laura Henderson that she wanted to stop the hypnotherapy sessions as they were becoming too painful for her. In reality, she was worried that she would give away to Laura whatever she discovered and that the police would find the killer first. She had come to realize shortly after Sarah left that she wanted him for herself. It was the only way to heal her wounds and put the spirits of Margaret, Kathleen and Jane to rest. It wasn’t difficult to convince Laura to stop the hypnotism; after all, the police had gotten as good a description of the killer as they were likely to.

  It was important to try to keep everyone happy, so to this end she finally read Galen’s letters and wrote him a long, cheery but noncommittal reply. She apologized for not writing sooner, but said s
he had just come through a lengthy period of depression. She also told him she was going to resume her studies, probably back up north. Canada just seemed too far away from home for her to consider yet. She was sure he would understand.

  February, bleak and cold, came and went. Kirsten spent much of the time in her room brooding on the dark places in her mind, trying to find ways to make the cloud yield up its secrets. This was her main problem. Without Laura’s hypnotherapy, she couldn’t get at her censored memories. She bought a book on self-hypnosis and practiced with some success. She could relax easily enough and induce a light trance, but she couldn’t get beyond the fishy odor. Nonetheless, she intended to keep at it until she dispersed the cloud.

  Toward the end of that month and until well into April, she found some solace in The Cloud of Unknowing, the fourteenth-century masterpiece of Christian mysticism, which she picked off her shelf to help her set her mind on university studies again. Yet Kirsten very much doubted that she read it the way its author intended. The words seemed to address her own problem in a startlingly direct way, and the irony wasn’t lost on her:

  When you first begin, you find only darkness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing. You don’t know what this means except that in your will you feel a simple steadfast intention reaching out towards God. Do what you will, this darkness and this cloud remain between you and God, and stop you both from seeing him in the clear light of rational understanding, and from experiencing his loving sweetness in your affection. Reconcile yourself to wait in this darkness as long as necessary but still go on longing after him whom you love.

  It was a kind of inversion of what Kirsten felt—certainly it wasn’t God she was seeking, nor did she love the object of her quest—but the words gave her sustenance, nonetheless, and helped her through the darkness, both internal and external.

  The book also helped describe what she was experiencing in a way that even Laura Henderson hadn’t been able to get at:

  Do not think because I call it a “darkness” or a “cloud” it is the sort of cloud you see in the sky or the kind of darkness you know at home when the light is out…By “darkness” I mean “a lack of knowing”—just as anything that you do not know or may have forgotten may be said to be “dark” to you, for you cannot see it with your inward eye.

  It was exactly like the dark bubble, or cloud, she felt in her mind. It came between her and the Devil, the man who had maimed her, and it wasn’t so much an object or an element as a feeling, a sense of something impenetrable anchored deep in her mind.

  The book offered more in the way of practical advice, too, and Kirsten began to wonder how she had ever sustained herself for so long without it. Especially the fifth meditation, which read:

  If ever you are to come to this cloud and live and work in it, as I suggest, then just as this cloud of unknowing is as it were above you, between you and God, so you must also put a cloud of forgetting beneath you and all creation. We are apt to think that we are very far from God because of this cloud of unknowing between us and him, but surely it would be more correct to say that we are much further from him if there is no cloud of forgetting between us and the whole created world.

  Kirsten had to distance and detach herself from the everyday world if she wanted to follow through with her purpose. There was no use clinging to sentimental notions of good and evil. She had to learn to exist in a detached, rarefied world where the object of her quest had supreme importance and everything and everyone else was lost, for as long as it took, in a cloud of forgetting. But nobody must know this. She had to appear to be making progress as far as family and friends were concerned.

  The book was arranged into seventy-five short numbered chapters, or meditations, and it was not the kind of text one could read for hours on end. Kirsten read a chapter a day, occasionally skipping a day to read a novel, so she managed to stretch the book out for over two months, as winter turned into spring.

  Soon, bluebells and forget-me-nots grew in the woods again, and dandelions and buttercups gilded the open fields. The bitter air warmed and released the scents of the countryside from its wintry grip: grass and tree bark after rain; wild garlic rubbed between the fingers; damp earth recently plowed over. As she walked and took it all in, Kirsten remembered last autumn, when she had felt dead inside and nothing could touch her. Now that she had a purpose, a sense of mission, she could enjoy the world again.

  The book continued to convince her of the holiness of her task and seemed to promise success. When, on the final page one fresh, bright morning in mid-May, she read that “it is not what you are or have been that God looks at with his merciful eyes, but what you would be,” she knew without doubt that she would succeed. “All holy desires grow by delays; and if they fade because of these delays then they were never holy desires.” Tenacity. Determination. They were the qualities she had to nurture in order to prove her desires holy. Her need would not fade; it was with her, part of her, day and night.

  Throughout this period, she still continued to visit Bath and see Laura, too, though not as frequently as before. Once a fortnight seemed enough for what they had to talk about. The main topic toward the end was Kirsten’s feelings about being a “victim.”

  Some schools, Laura explained, hold that there are people who are born victims, who somehow attract killers. When the circumstances are right, they will get what they were born for. Things happen to us because of what we are, some psychologists maintain, and because of this, some of us keep making the same mistakes time after time—marrying the wrong man or woman, for example, or seeking out situations in which we are abused, asking for trouble. It wasn’t masochism, Laura said, but something rooted deep in a person’s unconscious that led him or her to keep making the same wrong choices.

  Did Kirsten think she was one of those people? Did she feel guilt over what had happened to her? Did she feel as if she had asked for it?

  The whole subject puzzled Kirsten at first. For a long time, she had simply assumed that it had been her bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the unfortunate victim of a random assault. It had never, in fact, occurred to her that she might have been asking for it. That was the rapist’s common defense, wasn’t it, that his victim had been asking for it because she had dressed in a certain way or smiled at the wrong time? Kirsten couldn’t accept that.

  If she had given in to Hugo’s advances that night and gone home with him, none of this would have happened. If she hadn’t had to get home reasonably early and sober to pack for the next day, then she might have stayed at the party longer and walked across the park with a group of drunken colleagues. If she hadn’t walked across the park that night but had taken the well-lit roads around it, if she hadn’t strayed from the path to sit on the lion like a silly girl…and so it went on, nothing but a lot of ifs. And on the plus side, if that man hadn’t been walking his dog at precisely the right time, then Kirsten would have died like the later victims had.

  But the more she talked about it with Laura, the more she realized that things could only have been different had she been a different kind of person. Those schools were right, in a way. The roots of what happened were tangled up with who she was. She could easily have given in to Hugo, for example. He was attractive enough, and plenty of her friends would have done so; indeed, most of them had, at one time or another. But no, she wasn’t “that kind” of girl. And she did habitually cross the park alone after dark, no matter how often people expressed concern. Also, it would never have occurred to her not to give in to that childish impulse to ride the lion unless she had been with company. In other words, maybe she did think of herself as a born victim and she just hadn’t admitted it before. But she didn’t tell Laura this. She could sense that Laura was testing her, trying to find out how sensitive she was, so she gave what she thought were the right answers. Laura seemed relieved.

  But Kirsten continued to question herself. Why did she cross the park by herself in the dark, for example? Was she looking for
something to happen? She certainly hadn’t been making any kind of a feminist gesture. When women want to make a point about their right to walk the streets and parks in safety, they do so in large, well-publicized groups—the sensible way. But Kirsten often did it alone. Why? Was she inviting destruction?

  Somehow, a simple chain of causality wasn’t enough to explain what had happened to her. She had been living in a dream ever since the attack had occurred simply because she had accepted it in such a shallow way and had never really contemplated the deeper implications. That was no acceptance at all. The Cloud of Unknowing, her last talks with Laura Henderson: both of these gave a shape and depth to her quest that she had never imagined possible before; they concentrated her resolve and acted like a magnet forming a rose pattern from iron filings.

  It all meant something—everything happened for a reason—and the more she thought about it, if there was a part of her deep inside that made her the victim—just as hatred twisted deep inside the man made him a killer—then the person who had found her must have been destined to be her savior. He had found her for a purpose, she now realized. She hadn’t died like the others; she had been delivered from that. And this was when the compelling idea of fate, destiny and retribution started to occur to her. If she had been a victim not by blind chance but for a reason, then she was still alive for a reason. She bore her stigmata for a reason. She carried within her the means of destroying this evil force. In a sense, she was his nemesis. And that was destiny, too.