The First Cut (6 page)

‘Greg, we need to talk.’

He caught the socks and looked at her as she lay on the bed. So here it was, finally, the moment he had been dreading. The doorbell rang and he looked out of the window. ‘That’s the cab. What do you want to talk about?’

More tassel fiddling as he slipped the socks into a side pocket and started closing what seemed like miles of zip. He got no reply, just a sigh that seemed to say more than words could. She walked down the stairs after him. They stood in the corridor looking at each other. He couldn’t have this conversation now, when the whiskey and the pills were pulling him away from himself.

She put her hand on his chest and fiddled with the buttons on his shirt as if she pitied him. He felt a flash of his anger, a hard band across his chest. He couldn’t stand pity.

‘Make sure you put the alarm on whenever you’re in – not just at night.’

He watched her nod, saw her eyes develop their telltale glaze. She just didn’t get it. But then why should she? She had no idea of the depths of his paranoia and he was going to keep it that way. She might laugh when he made her put on the seatbelt in the back of a black cab; she might groan when he got the builders to put locks on all their top-floor windows so they opened only a few inches; she had even shouted at him on a holiday in France when he rejected a much nicer hotel room because it had a balcony. Too bloody bad. He was no longer cocooned in good luck. A normal life was something he could only dream of. The problem was that Nicky felt normal was within her grasp and she was getting desperate to live it. Their reactions to what had befallen Grace were different. Nicky was getting tired of fear being used as an excuse to avoid the things that were important to her.

He was a bloke, for Chrissake. He might not get the subtleties, but he got the gist. She wanted to talk about the big issues, the ties that bound them, their love for each other, where they were going, the state of their marriage. A luxury, Greg thought. I do not have the luxury of time to think. I do not allow myself time to think. I work, I stress, I work more, I succeed. Greg wondered how successful he would have to be to compensate for the things left unsaid. Pretty alpha, he concluded.

The doorbell rang again, making him jump, as if what he was thinking was shameful. He pulled her to him in an embrace and things unsaid swirled around them. ‘I love you love you love you,’ he said, gathering her hair into a ponytail and twisting it round his fingers.

‘You need to show it, Greg.’

He grabbed her in a bear hug and picked her off the ground, swinging her round and growling into her neck. That way she couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see the despair and the hopelessness etched there. He felt Nicky limp in his arms. This time he wasn’t pulling it off. He kissed the tip of her nose and Nicky said nothing as he walked out of the house, the Samsonite bumping down the steps behind him. He opened the taxi door and gave her a lingering look as he folded himself through it. She stood on the front step with one arm holding the other, as if she was protecting herself. She looked stunning in the evening sunshine. Women, he thought: the love and the tragedy of his life. The taxi pulled away and he watched her shut the door on their unfinished conversation.

When the taxi reached the corner Greg looked behind him to make sure she was no longer there. He slipped off his wedding ring and put it in his pocket. It was a habit he’d got into whenever he left the house.

T
roy was trying to remember a Rolling Stones song about St John’s Wood but the words wouldn’t come to him. He lay in the king-sized bed and thought about Mick Jagger instead, imagining how many women he’d slept with; then he tried to think of his own tally. Troy was competitive, but the woman’s yakking at the dog in the kitchen across the hallway was distracting him from his counting, and that annoyed him. Was she the oldest woman he’d had? Not by a long way. Was she the richest? She had a St John’s Wood address but it was only a mansion flat. He leaned up on his elbows, his mind zoning in on the task ahead. She wasn’t the richest, but he was going to make absolutely sure she was the most lucrative.

He pulled open the drawer of her bedside table. The Rolex glinted at him. He moved fast to her dressing table and opened the right-hand drawer (he’d noticed last night that she was right-handed, which meant she would store her valuables on that side), and scanned the contents. He saw some small rocks set in rings, a couple of gaudy Arab-looking necklaces, nothing too big league. She’d have a safe somewhere. He glanced round at the pictures on the wall, wondering which one it was hidden behind.

‘D’ya take sugar?’ she called. He heard the clattering of cups from the kitchen, the whoop of plastic on the fridge door as it opened.

‘No thanks, Marcia.’ It always paid to be polite. That generation cared more for the niceties than his own, he reasoned. He repeated their names in the morning, to show that he’d remembered. The drinking of last night was an act, so his mind was clear. After all, he was at work; he wasn’t going to fuck it up. She was from Detroit, had been in Dubai and had ended up in London with two fat divorces behind her. It hadn’t been hard to follow her and her friends to the bar at the Hilton and alleviate her loneliness.

He started to dress, putting the pilot’s uniform back on. Women of a certain age really did fall for that shit. It was a wonder to him every time. He’d carried her over the threshold last night and she’d given a little yelp of pleasure and desire. It’s what they expected a pilot to do. His fake uniform drew women to him like moths to those smelly candles they were so keen to burn. He conjured up an era when flying was fashionable and elite; he helped them tap back into their younger selves, made them remember good times. She didn’t notice that he’d memorized her alarm code – his old thieving habits were proving hard to break.

He wandered into her en suite and washed his hands carefully. He looked in the medicine cabinet, hunting for ammunition. He saw the usual array of products that attempted to stop the clock: an HRT prescription, extortionate anti-wrinkle creams, toothpaste for sensitive teeth, post-surgical bandages. Here was the toolkit of the sixty-something divorcee bent on keeping one hand on the mythical tree of youth. Troy wasn’t going to condemn her for that. He admired her attempts to make the effort, because he understood. They were separated by a generation but their concerns were the same: they both had a desperate need to cling to physical perfection and the respect it brought. You couldn’t be loved if you weren’t respected. He slammed the bathroom cabinet shut. There had been a time when all that women wanted was a man who looked and behaved like him. A good-looking, good-time guy, flash with the cash and an animal in the sack. But now, at forty-two, he was constantly being asked about property: what he had, where it was, who really owned it. Women had changed; they wanted hard-cash money now, bricks-and-mortar wealth. He needed to get it as much as he needed to whiten those teeth. He grimaced in her backlit bathroom mirror and examined his gums. Receding. They were being beaten back by age and genes, crumbling under the pressure. Fuck that. He felt a rush of anger at his imperfections. Marcia was going to pay for a trip to the cosmetic dentist and add to his Caribbean retirement fund.

He heard her back in the bedroom, the yappy dog with her, and came out to meet her. She was dressed in something pink and too short, her hair a brassy yellow in the morning light. She had two cups on a silver tray and was keeping up the stream of banal chit-chat. It was probably one of the reasons Harvey ran into the arms of the blonde a generation removed from his wife. Troy vaguely remembered Marcia’s replacement: lots of curly hair and she chewed gum.

‘So what have you got planned for today, honey?’ Marcia was teasing him.

‘Marcia, tell me why you hated Harvey so much.’

The colour drained right off her face. Even the dog fell silent beside her. ‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was a whisper.

‘Harvey. Your first husband. He fell from the twelfth floor. He must have done something to really piss you off.’

She had recovered slightly, her back stiff and formal. She tried to gather her babydoll at the neck to protect herself from his onslaught. ‘How do you know Harvey?’

‘Oh I don’t. But I know you paid, and I know how much.’ Troy pointed his finger at her. ‘You clever little bitch. You waited and took your revenge long after he left you. The first flush of a new marriage is perfect cover—’

She was a fighter. She ran to the side of the bed and hit the panic button. ‘Get out of here!’

Troy leaned back against the armoire and picked something out from beneath his nail. ‘You paid £40,000 to Darek to have Harvey killed. Revenge, jealousy, pride, I don’t care. You paid once, but now you’re going to pay again.’

‘Who the hell are you? You’ve no proof!’

‘I’ve plenty.’

‘Liar!’

‘Room 392 at the Florina Plaza in Dubai. A hot night in March four years ago. Harvey took an unfortunate tumble from his balcony wearing only a bathrobe. Don’t look so shocked, you know how I know all this. You hired and paid Darek, who paid
me
to do the job.’ He picked up her mobile and threw it on the bed. ‘Phone the security company.’

She was shaking, mute, ugly blotches of red on her cheeks, but she didn’t move. Troy was calm, he still had time. ‘Life with Harvey wasn’t all bad – you have Arabella.’ A strangled gasp came from Marcia. ‘She’s got a nice life partying in Chelsea. I wouldn’t want to ruin that. This is simply a business decision, Marcia. I want what the middleman got.’ Her face was now deathly pale again. ‘I like you, Marcia, that’s why I came to you before ruining Arabella’s pretty face. You of all people understand the power of a pretty face. It made you your fortune. Now you’re sharing a little of that fortune with me. This way, no harm done.’

Marcia was panting now, as if on a treadmill at the gym, but she didn’t move. ‘We can do it your way, if you want.’ Troy moved to the bedroom door and made to leave.

His going shocked her into sound. ‘Wait!’ She grabbed the phone and made the call to the security company to cancel the alarm, then she dropped down on the bedcovers, her legs unable to support her. ‘I haven’t got that kind of money.’

Troy grinned. He had her right where he wanted her: vulnerable in her babydoll get-up, in her bedroom. The fleeting passion of last night was like a soiled tissue she was keen to throw away. ‘Open the safe.’

He saw her swallow nervously. ‘I don’t have a safe.’

‘Oh Marcia.
That
wasn’t very smart.’ Troy slowly shook his head before moving swiftly to the picture hanging next to the built-in wardrobes. A bullfighter swirled a red cape in front of a charging animal. He tossed it to the floor to reveal the safe.

‘How do I know you won’t plague me?’ She sounded old.

‘Marcia, I’m a fair guy, I really am. It’s just a shame that there are so many people who seem unable to play by the rules. I took the risk so I should receive the reward. But I have since discovered that the parasite in the middle gets the lion’s share. Trickle-down economics is really just what it says on the tin. A trickle. So I want what Darek the middleman got. No more, no less. Now, let’s start with the rocks Harvey gave you, shall we?’

Five minutes later he left with her cache of jewellery in a Louis Vuitton luggage bag. He started to walk towards Regent’s Park, where a weak sun was beginning to shine. With each step he felt lighter, younger. It had worked like a dream. The crazy bitch had coughed it all up. He was nigh-on fifty grand richer because Marcia’s phone number was on Darek’s list. Darek, who was so anal he had kept a paper trail of the jealousies and hatreds of his clients and how much they had paid to try to alleviate those emotions that had set up home in their guts and weren’t letting go. And now Darek was dead and he had the list. It could turn out to be the luckiest bit of paper he’d ever come across.

Knowledge is power – the truth can make you a king. Troy liked the feeling of wielding the sword of truth. It cut down everything before it.

N
icky ducked under the sign that berated passengers who came this far. She stared down the dark track and took a step back. He was mad. She wasn’t going down there.

Adam retreated out of the gloom and came towards her, holding out his hand. ‘Come on.’

‘I’m not doing it. This is nonsense.’

‘Do you want to see the graffiti or don’t you?’

‘Yes, but I want to live more!’

A train crawled past, slowing down for its approach into Charing Cross Station. He’d been so enthusiastic to show her a huge painting by a hot new graffiti artist that she had become infected by his energy and ended up meeting him near the river. The work, by ‘The new Banksy’, was painted on the bridge over the Thames, but now she’d realized how they were to get there she changed her mind. This was what twenty-year-olds did, not married women the wrong side of thirty-five.

‘It’s perfectly safe – how do you think the artist got over there to paint it?’ He had a point. ‘Come on!’ He grabbed her hand and she liked the feel of her own in his. It was their first prolonged physical contact and she didn’t want it to end. They walked over commuter litter blown down the tracks and past tools and barrels and boxes left by workmen. Another train passed, honking angrily.

They came out into the light of the bridge. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Just trust me and you won’t go wrong.’

They edged out across the river, the sun glinting off the twisting mass of rails that disappeared into the distance and round a bend to Waterloo. She felt the fear of where they were again; this was one of the busiest stations in Europe, with trains coming and going all the time.

‘How do you know about this place?’

‘I followed a graffiti artist I recognized one evening and ended up here.’ He gripped her hand tighter. ‘Right, we’re going to cross now.’

‘Cross?’ Nicky thought she hadn’t heard right. Cross a mainline railway? She looked up and down the tracks, trains shifting between points, switching tracks, travelling at different speeds. It was like being in a demented computer game. It was madness. ‘No. We can’t cross.’