The First Cut
The First Cut
Ali Knight
UK (2012)
A best friend murdered. A marriage going nowhere. A deadly obsession.
Nicky's
had more than her share of heartache. So when she meets a hot young
stranger she thinks a little flirting can help her forget the past.
She's married, but it's innocent enough. Except what starts as fun leads
to a terrible ordeal, and a dark secret. Nicky's about to discover that
the scars of love can last a lifetime.
Table of Contents
Wink Murder
Ali Knight has worked as a journalist and sub-editor at the BBC,
Guardian
and
Observer
and helped to launch some of the
Daily Mail
and
Evening Standard’
s most successful websites. She lives with her family in London.
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Ali Knight 2012
The right of Alison Potter to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Ebook ISBN 978 1 444 71539 2
Hardback ISBN 978 1 444 71537 8
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
For Stephen, my partner-in-crime, with all my love
N
icky gave a squeal as the lounger by the pool tipped a fraction too far and she landed on her back, feet pointing at the stars.
‘Look out, red-wine tummy wash,’ Grace giggled from the seat next to her.
Nicky groaned and reached out for a towel to wipe the mess off her T-shirt. ‘Urgh, it’s everywhere.’
‘Where’s the bottle opener?’ Sam called from the patio behind them. ‘Shit!’
They heard vigorous swearing as something smashed on the paving stones.
‘We’ll never get our deposit back on this place,’ Nicky said, staring up at the large house, its stone pale grey against the inky sky beyond.
‘Who cares?’ Grace murmured. ‘We’ve had such a laugh.’
Nicky smiled to herself. Grace was right, as always. It was one of the most fun holidays any of them could remember. Grace had found the house on the internet and a group of her friends had chipped in to hire it for her thirtieth-birthday celebration. Set in winding roads a short distance from Oxford it had a pool, a pizza oven, a ping-pong table and even a lake. It was much grander than they had expected and their lives seemed shinier and more exciting now they were here. Their August week was also a heatwave, which at times made them think they were in an enchanted foreign land where the sun always shone and evenings were always this balmy.
Grace sighed. ‘It’s such a shame Greg isn’t here. Bloody cameramen.’ Nicky caught her friend’s eye and they giggled again. Grace was the first one of their crowd to get married. Nicky had resigned herself to the fact that this would mean she would see less of Grace, but Greg’s work took him away a lot and if anything she saw Grace more now than when they had been dating.
‘God, I’m pissed,’ Nicky declared loudly, having to make a big effort to raise her voice as she heard screams from behind the bushes across the lawn. Someone was spraying the hose.
‘I need some water,’ Grace said, standing and stretching. She strolled to the patio where they had eaten earlier that evening, her black dress billowing out behind her.
‘Can you get me my smokes? They’re on the table.’ Grace turned and smiled, her blonde hair turned almost white from the sun and the chlorine. Greg was lucky to have her, Nicky thought. But then she would think that about any man. Grace was her oldest and closest friend. They were the same age, the same year at school, but Grace had always played the role of older sister, the sensible one, the smarter one. The successful and beautiful one, come to that. Nicky absent-mindedly fluffed her short hair into spikes. She didn’t mind. She heard Grace and Sam’s low voices. Water. That was Grace all over: a glass of water for every glass of wine. She was cautious and moderate, so unlike herself. She burped and watched a lilo drift in a slow circle in the pool. She’d go for a swim once she’d had her millionth fag of the day—
Her thoughts were obliterated by a shrieking car alarm from the front of the house.
Sam threw her hands in the air in a ‘that curse of a bloody car’ gesture.
‘Whose is that?’ Grace shouted.
‘Probably mine,’ Sam groaned. ‘God, where are my keys?’ She looked around half-heartedly in the gloom. The noise built in intensity, ricocheting off buildings and walkways. Nicky saw bodies running through the garden in the dark towards the gravel drive on the other side of the house, disconnected shouts and questions almost drowned by the noise. ‘My keys, my bloody keys . . .’
‘Try the kitchen,’ Grace said. ‘I think I left my bag on the lawn.’ She walked off beyond the pool.
Nicky stayed put. She’d got a lift to the house with Grace so there was nothing she could do. But a few moments later she stood, swaying uncertainly. That damned alarm was bringing on a headache. Another deeper siren joined the first, like a demented electronic chorus. She walked over to the table and found her fags, but there was no lighter. The spilled drink on her T-shirt was sticky; she felt hot and bothered. She looked back at the pool, the underwater lighting making the water glow a sickly green. A much better idea came to her. She walked across the lawn and crouched down by the row of thick bushes between the lake and the house and enjoyed a wee in the great outdoors – well, a wee in the manicured Cotswolds. She carried on to the lake. The alarms faded a little. She stood on the small wooden jetty and stripped down to her bikini, then sat and let her legs swish lazily in the coldness. It was much darker out here; the lights from the house and garden didn’t encroach this far. The water slap-slapped against the wood as she lowered herself into the inky water, too deep to feel the bottom, and struck out for the middle.
Nicky loved swimming at night. She liked the feel of water caressing her skin, the way sounds penetrated further and echoed longer. A muddy lake floor didn’t make her cringe, like it did to Sam; she enjoyed the squishy sludge between her toes. She dunked her head and swam a few breaststrokes below the surface, then emerged and lay on her back, kicking gently.
The car alarm stopped and silence dropped around her like a heavy curtain. She heard a splash.
‘Hello?’ she called out instinctively, but no one answered.
It was too dark to see the edge of the lake and it took her a few strokes to swim close enough to make out the blurry jetty and the bank. ‘Are you in? It’s lovely,’ she called.
There was no answer.
Tossers, she muttered to herself, sober now and ready to get out. Damn, she didn’t have a towel. Grace would have said that was just like her, starting something without being fully prepared. It would be a cold walk back to the house. She swam for the bank and saw an indistinct, dark shape floating in the water. For an instant she thought it was a tree trunk, and then she smiled. It was the giant plastic crocodile from the pool. Perfect. She reached out to jump on it and wrestle like she was an Aussie adventurer lost in Arnhem Land, taking on the fourteen-footer in a battle of life and death . . .
It was too solid. And it rolled.
Nicky’s weight took her and the object under the water. She was caught sharply unawares and scrambled to get back to the surface. She began to struggle as fronds of weed became entangled round her neck, touching her arms and face with tickly, unnerving edges. She broke the surface with a strangled groan as the object pitched this way and that with her splashes. It was so dark she couldn’t see the thing that still floated in front of her. A terrible panic took hold. The car alarm started again, wailing with renewed force. She scolded herself for getting the jitters and forced herself to put out her hand and make the shape real, understandable and unthreatening. The fronds brushed her hand again.
This time she knew for sure it was hair.
Nicky screamed as the moon came out from behind a cloud and bathed everything in a pale shimmer. The hair was long; the body floating face down in the lake wore a black dress. She screamed much louder, half sinking with the effort as she was unable to touch the bottom. She grabbed Grace and tried to turn her, shouting incoherently. She knew she was in a desperate race against time, that every second in the water pulled Grace further away from life. With ungainly, struggling strokes she fought for the bank and finally managed to touch the soft lake floor. With the extra traction she dragged Grace, still face down, towards the edge, desperate to get her the right way up, to stop her drowning, but Grace’s unconscious body made her too heavy.
Nicky shouted to be saved, hollering for the big boys in the house to come and help her. She flailed in the reeds, the car alarm shrieking unhindered, blocking the sound of her own desperate cries. She got both feet on the bank then put her hands under her best friend’s armpits and little by little managed to pull her from the lake, Grace half on top of her like a drunken lover. Nicky dragged her a few feet along the grass to where it was flat and dropped to her knees, turning Grace’s body by yanking at her shoulders. Her white hair was a dark halo round her head, the moonlight washing colours black or midnight blue. Only the wedding ring on her lifeless finger glinted dully. Nicky bent down, ready and pumped to give her the kiss of life, but the moon illuminated only the black stain of Grace’s blood, spreading relentlessly across her chest. Her neck had been slashed from ear to ear.