The First Cut (17 page)

Nicky willed herself to calm down. She wiped away her tears, blew her nose on her dress and tried to summon the energy to think rationally. She pushed the pills out of their blisters and downed several, emptying the water glass. She breathed deeply. I am connected to people, she said to herself. She breathed deeply again. I am someone who will be missed. I have family, friends and a job. They will notice and they are the kind of people who, if they kick up a fuss, will be believed. She felt herself growing bolder. Greg would notice first, but he was several time zones and thousands of miles away. By the time his worried messages began to filter back to London, days would have passed – an eternity. She saw the tractor backing up as it turned at the edge of the lawn. She didn’t know if she had several days.

She looked beyond the torn earth at the lake and the fields beyond. The countryside was full of people, particularly in this weather. Someone would come. Perhaps he would make a mistake.

She shifted and the handcuffs clanked against metal. She needed better odds than ‘perhaps’. She thought back to when she was hanging off the estate gate, and her stomach churned again at the giddy feeling she’d sensed as the gate had swung on its rotten hinges. She’d nearly made it. He hadn’t foreseen that; she had surprised him. She didn’t know him, but he didn’t know her either. She was going to turn that to her advantage.

He might be laying out the rules, but, as Greg would say, rules are meant to be broken. An image of her husband flooded her heart and she felt his absence like a physical blow to the stomach. He had overcome the hardest challenge life throws: Greg had lived through the murder of his wife. Now she had to believe she could live through this. Defiance flamed inside her as she rubbed a chafing arm. She could see the dead man’s feet from behind the sofa and through the drawing-room door. He was evidence of what happened in a head-to-head fight with Adam. She studied the ruffles in the carpet again.

A blackness swamped her. Maybe she had been lucky. And luck eventually runs out. Greg’s deep and mature voice came to her then: ‘Think, babes, what would Bruce Willis do?’ He’d wear a cut-off T-shirt and blast the bad guy with an Uzi, Nicky thought. She turned to the hallway and imagined the gun cabinet. She dismissed it a moment later. Greg wasn’t always right. She’d never even held a gun until two days ago, didn’t know if they were loaded or where the bullets were kept. Even assuming she could get unchained she needed a different tactic to get out of here. She’d have to talk her way out.

Or something else. He might have put her in his mum’s nightie but he’d fancied her at one time and that itch had never been scratched. He was young, he was male, he was stressed and she was desperate.

The sound of the tractor faded. Her heart started thumping again and she saw him walking slowly along a new furrow, his face cast in shadow, searching. What was he searching
for
? Someone who wanted something this badly was someone who could be used, was someone with a weak spot. She would have to turn that to her advantage. She took a deep breath.

‘Adam!’ she called out, but her voice was a dry croak. She swallowed and tried again. ‘Adam!’ Louder this time, more insistent and sure. He looked up from the ground. ‘Adam! I’m hungry.’

‘I
f you try to escape I’ll get much angrier than I did before.’ Adam was crouching on his haunches near her, watching for her reaction, rubbing his palms together thoughtfully. The dried mud on his fingers made a scratchy, scraping sound and fell in a fine dust on the rug. There was no trace of his earlier anger; he looked like a man enjoying working in his garden. She nodded and he unlocked the cuffs round her wrist and helped her to stand. She gave a yowl when she tried to put her foot down. It was much more swollen after her sprint on it.

She limped along as they made for the kitchen, wincing with every step. As they got to the door of the drawing room he tired of her gasping, awkward passage and picked her up in his arms, then carried her the rest of the way to the kitchen. Nicky consciously stared at the skirting boards and held her breath. Their physical closeness seemed absurd after the traumas of the day. He set her down by a kitchen chair and she sank onto it.

‘What do you want?’

‘Bread and cheese is OK.’

‘Put your hands on the table where I can see them.’

She did as he told her and watched him as he washed the mud off his hands in the sink and moved round the room, gathering plates and provisions. The sun cast long lines of light into the room and Nicky was struck again by the absurdity of her position. One moment things seemed almost normal between them, the next they tipped over into a dark horror. She ran her hands through her hair, tucking it back behind her ears. Her lips were chapped from the sun and too many days of drinking too much. She might be a prisoner but Adam was sociable; he’d want companionship if it was available, conversation to keep him entertained. She would give it to him.

He handed her a glass of water and she realized how thirsty she was. She downed it in one and asked for another. He smiled at her as he refilled the glass and put the food down. She ate a lot, and as the food hit her stomach it made her feel a bit stronger and almost began to drag her back to the ranges of normal. He got up, crossed to the counter and picked up an apple. ‘Here.’

She looked up and he tossed the apple to her, giving a low cheer when she caught it. He came back and sat down with a bar of chocolate and snapped a piece off for her. She noticed the dark matted stain of old blood in his hair from when she whacked him with the walking stick earlier. Despite everything he had done to her, a feeling of shame came over her.

‘Does your head hurt?’ He stared at her as he touched the cut with a finger. ‘Do you want me to clean it? There’s blood in your hair.’ She saw the battle in him over whether or not to trust her. ‘I’ll just wash it.’ He stood up and got a bowl and some warm water and the cotton wool. He pulled his chair closer to hers and bent his head sideways so he could look at her as she cleaned away the blood. As she stared at his gleaming, dark hair she forced herself to concentrate on the positives. She was no longer tied up. If she could stay unchained she had a chance.

‘It’s a lot to dig up the lawn on the strength of something in a diary from over twenty years ago.’ He shrugged, non-committal. ‘Can I read your mum’s diaries?’

‘No.’

He pulled away from her dabbing, looking morose and grey, as if a mood was coming upon him. He seemed to be sinking further away from her and she tried to bring him back.

‘You only look for something if it’s lost. What’s lost, Adam?’

‘It’s not what’s lost; it’s what’s found.’ In the fading sunshine of late afternoon his dark features looked sallow. ‘What’s so special about you, Nicky, eh? Why’s it all about you?’ He was sullen, his eyes mean and staring.

She stayed silent at first, wondering if this was the safest thing to do. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Keep control, don’t lose control, she urged herself. ‘There’s nothing special about me—’

He stood suddenly and she reeled back against her chair. ‘I fought that guy for you! I ended up killing that guy for you! I’ve got a heap of shit this big on my head because of you!’

Oh God, thought Nicky. Oh God . . . ‘You know him, don’t you, Adam?’

‘No, I don’t, but someone does!’

‘You were talking to him.’

‘Yes, I was! You think it’s a coincidence he’s here? Bullshit! What was he looking for? He was trying to take it.’

‘Take
what
?’

His anger was overwhelming him now, coursing through his strong arms and making the veins on his neck stand out. ‘Are you for real? I mean, are you for fucking real?’ He started pacing the kitchen in a trance. ‘Connie’s not that mad – maybe she’s the sanest of all of us. Maybe fucking Greg deserves to go to hell for all I know!’ He picked up the chair he had been sitting on and threw it in a rage across the room, where its back legs became detached and landed broken in the corner.

Nicky sat very still on her seat. Change the subject, change the subject, her mind jabbered . . . It would be a victory if she got out of this room in one piece. ‘Shall we light the candles? It’s getting dark and I’m scared of the dark.’

This simple request pulled him back towards her. He leaned against the kitchen units and dropped his head. ‘We need some more.’ He rooted through a cupboard and found some in a bag and a moment later carried her into the drawing room, lit them and then stuck them to the plates. He didn’t give her the matches. They sat on separate couches and watched the long sunset and listened to the roar of the planes in silence.

Eventually he stood up. ‘It’s time to go to bed.’ She sat up in alarm. ‘I’m going to have to tie you up again.’

‘Adam, please . . .’

‘You can’t leave, Nicky. I don’t want to do it, but –’ he touched his head where she’d hit him ‘– I don’t trust you.’

‘If you don’t want to do it, then don’t. I know the way you’re behaving isn’t you. We can end this now if—’

‘Stop it.’

She did.

She made her long and weary way up the stairs for her night-time incarceration, Adam behind her carrying the candles. Their shadows jumped and wavered across his mum’s paintings as they went, the dead body an indistinct, dark shape below them on the hall floor. She slowed to a stop outside the bedroom, the thought of the long, black night to come a crushing weight on her soul. She didn’t know if she had the strength to endure it. ‘Please don’t do this, Adam.’

‘I’ve been left with no choice.’

He led her into the bedroom and pulled the handcuffs out of his pocket. She began to whimper, pleading with him not to do it. She backed up against the wall as he came towards her. ‘Tell me one thing, what did you mean about Greg? Earlier you talked about Greg going to hell.’

But he didn’t answer; he simply handcuffed her to the bedpost and closed the door.

Her night was scored with the dull clank of the metal handcuffs against the bedpost, a never-ending reminder of the desperate position she was in. She slept little, the house a silent and brooding prison. As dawn broke and the outline of the room became solid, she remembered watching a TV programme once about a lone hiker in the Canadian wilderness who was pursued by a grizzly. The hiker couldn’t outrun it, couldn’t climb a tree or cross a river to get away from it. He had to find a way of scaring that bear, or he was going to end up never being found. Exhausted, petrified, thirsty, cold and backed into a ravine with no exit, he tried one last-ditch ploy: he extended his tent poles, strung his canvas across the poles and fixed them like wings, then turned and ran screaming straight for the grizzly. He made himself bigger, scarier and bolder than he really was. The bear turned and fled.

Nicky thought back to the graffiti Adam had shown her by the Thames. ‘Fear makes the wolf grow bigger.’ She spent the rest of the disappearing night forcing herself to beat back her terror.

H
e knocked on the door at eight a.m., like a timid owner of a B&B bringing her breakfast in bed. He was in the same dirt-stained T-shirt and trousers he had worn the day before and he looked exhausted. Clearly she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t slept well.

‘Here, I made you some tea.’

She stared at it suspiciously, wondering if he’d put something in it, but then he unlocked her handcuffs and sat next to her on the bed and she was so glad that her hand was free that she took the tea and drank it.

‘What fun things are we doing today?’ She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice. The idea of being chained up again, or digging for hours in a futile search for who knew what, overwhelmed her spirit.

‘I’m sorry, Nicky, really.’ He couldn’t meet her eye and gazed awkwardly through the door instead.

Nicky stood up and put her foot down. He grabbed her to keep her steady, but she pushed him away and held the bedframe instead. She limped to the door, wincing with pain, but the truth was that her foot felt almost normal. She was going to keep this advantage to herself.

They came round the curve in the stairs and the sight of the dead body in the hall shocked Nicky more than she could say. She stared down at the blood, now black and matted in his hair, and saw the corner of his mouth was stained green. The flies would soon be feasting. She turned to Adam and drew herself up tall. She felt nothing but contempt for him.

He seemed to wither under her gaze before looking down at the body. ‘I’ll tell you why you’re here,’ he said.

‘What?’ He had spoken so quietly she wasn’t sure she had heard him right.

‘Help me dig this morning, and I’ll tell you why I’m keeping you here.’

‘Tell me now.’

He shook his head. ‘Not yet. But I will tell you.’

‘Does this have something to do with Grace?’

He looked stricken, almost ill. She could smell his old sweat on his clothes. She saw his indecision as he looked at the man he had killed. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

‘You’re going to bloody tell me now!’

But he was walking away from her down the stairs and Nicky simply had to follow.

They spent a boring, hot and exhausting morning digging up the lawn, Adam driving the tractor and Nicky hobbling along barefoot behind, not knowing what she was looking for in the furrows. It was a succession of stones and broken tree roots and endless black mud. The highlight was a bundle of ancient nails, rusty and disintegrating as she touched them. Her mind was mulling over Adam’s promise on the stairs. She feared he was setting her up for nothing. Her rational voice knew there was no revelation to come, knew that there was no excuse for his actions – they were unjustifiable.

Eventually, once they had ploughed to the end of a furrow by the lake at nearly lunchtime, Nicky stopped and shook her head, stretching her aching back. ‘I need a drink and a rest,’ she said.

Adam got down from the tractor cab and nodded. ‘I’ll carry you in.’ He picked her up in his strong arms and walked with her across the remaining lawn and into the kitchen, placing her down gently by the sink. He poured two large glasses of water.