The First Cut

21Martha

The seagulls were grotesquely distorted, no longer sleek, white, bullet-faced birds. Their feathers were mottled with ash gray, and their bodies were bloated almost beyond recognition. They could hardly stand. Their wiry legs, above webbed feet as yellow as egg yolk, couldn’t support their distended bellies, which were stretched so tight that a pattern of blue veins bossed through the gray and white markings. Their wings creaked and flapped like old, moth-eaten awnings in a storm as they tried to fly.

But mostly it was their faces that were different. They still had seagull eyes-cold, dark holes that knew nothing of mercy or pity-but their beaks were encased in long, gelatinous snouts smeared with blood.

They still sounded like seagulls. Even though they could no longer fly, they waddled on the dark sands and keened like the ghosts of a million tortured souls.

Martha woke sweating in the early dawn. Outside, the gulls were screeching, circling. They must have been at it for a while, she thought as her heartbeat slowed. She must have heard them in her sleep, and her mind had translated the sound into the pictograph of a dream. It was like dreaming of searching for a toilet when you’ve had a bit too much to drink and your body is trying to wake you up before your bladder bursts.

Just the thought of moisture made Martha thirsty. She got up and drank a glass of water, then crawled into bed again, the sour taste of vomit still in her mouth. Unable to get back to sleep immediately, she found herself thinking of the gulls as her allies. She could imagine them with their sharp hooked beaks picking and pulling at the body in the cave, snatching an eyeball loose or making an ear bleed. Did they never stop? For them, life seemed nothing more than a long, drawn-out feast: one for which you had to go out and catch your own food and tear it to pieces while it was still alive. Had she become like them?

Martha glanced at her watch: 6:29. That day, she remembered, high tide was chalked in as 0658, so the gulls couldn’t have found the body unless it was floating on the water’s surface. Already the cold North Sea would have stuck its tongue into the cave and slurped Jack Grimley’s corpse into its surging maw.

Shivering with horror at what she had done, Martha turned on her side, pulled the covers up to her chin, and drifted back into an uneasy sleep with the paperweight in her hand and the harsh music of squabbling gulls echoing in her ears.

22 Kirsten

They came back again that night, the dreams of slashing and slicing, to invade Kirsten’s childhood room. The white knight and the black knight, as she had come to call them, both without faces. This time, they seemed to be trying to teach her something. The black knight handed her a long ivory-handled knife, and she plunged it herself into the soft flesh of her thigh. It sank as if into wax. A little blood bubbled up around the edges of the cut, but nothing much. Slowly, she eased out the blade and watched the edges of torn skin draw together again like lips closing. A pinkish bubble swelled and burst. And all the time she didn’t feel a thing. Not a thing. Somehow, she knew the faceless white knight was smiling down at her.

23 Martha

The dead fish stared up at Martha with glazed, oily eyes. Pinkish red blood stained their gills and mouths, and sunlight glinted on their silvery scales and pale bellies. The fishy smell was strong in the air, overpowering even the sea’s fresh ozone. Holidaymakers paused as they walked along St. A

The auction sheds that Friday morning were hives of activity. Earlier, while Martha had still been sleeping, the boats had come in, and the fishermen had unpacked their catches into iced boxes ready for the sales. Crab pots were stacked and nets lay spread by the sheds. As Martha watched, a man hosed fish scales from the stone quay. Gulls gathered in a raucous cloud, and occasionally one swooped down after a dropped fish.

Of course, Martha realized, they only sold the fish here; they didn’t clean them and gut them. That must be done else-where-in ca

It didn’t matter now, though, did it? Odd that he had turned out not to be a fisherman, after all. But you can’t be right about everything. Even so, as she walked by and watched the sales, she sca

Martha felt strangely dazed and light-headed as she walked down the staith toward the bridge. She hadn’t slept well after the gulls had woken her, and the thought of what she had done haunted her. At breakfast time she’d been very hungry and had even eaten the fried bread she usually left.

The old couple at the window table were still there, he gri

She crossed the bridge, bought a newspaper, and turned up Church Street. It was becoming a routine. Still, this morning she needed waking up even more than usual: there were important decisions to be made. In the Monk’s Haven, she sipped strong black coffee and smoked a cigarette while she flexed her brain on the crossword. Then she flipped through the headlines to see if there was anything interesting going on in the world. There wasn’t.

Only for a short while, when she had finished with the paper and still had some coffee and cigarette left, did she allow herself to think of the previous evening. It had been awful, a million times worse than anything she had imagined. She could still feel the loose fragments of bone shifting under her fingers, and that soft, pulpy mass, like a wet sponge, at the top of his head. She didn’t feel sorry-he had deserved everything he got-but she was appalled and amazed at herself for really going through with it. After leaving the body in the cave, she had run down to the sea and rinsed her hands and her paperweight again before going back to the guesthouse. She hadn’t seen a soul on the way. The door opened smoothly on its oiled hinges and the carpet muffled her ascent to her room. Once safe, she had brushed her teeth three times, but still hadn’t been able to get rid of the bitter taste of vomit. Even now, after the breakfast, coffee and cigarettes, she felt herself gagging as she recalled Grimley’s body jerking on the sand and those long minutes in the dank, stinking cave: the blood, the staring eye.

The tide would have carried the body out to sea by now. She wanted it to be found soon, wanted to be there to enjoy all the fuss. It wasn’t because she was conceited or proud or anything, but because the discovery was all part of the same event. To go now would be like leaving a book unfinished. And Martha always finished the books she started, even if she didn’t like them. Surely, when they found out the dead man’s identity, they would go to his home and find something to co