The First Cut

“What kind of feelings do you mean? Fear? Pain?”

“Yes, but not just that. Intuitions, inklings…it’s hard to describe.”

“Try.”

“Well, what I felt was that I did see his face. I don’t mean now, today, but when it happened. I know I saw him, but I’m still blocking the memory. And there was something else as well. I don’t know what it was, but there was definitely something else about him. It was almost there, like a name on the tip of your tongue, but I resisted. I couldn’t breathe, and it was so dark I just had to come out.”

“Do you want to carry on?” Laura asked, offering the bottle again. “You don’t have to. Nobody can make you. You know how painful it can be.”

Kirsten tossed back the last of her Scotch and held her glass out. The experience had terrified her, true, but it had also given her something she hadn’t felt before: a resolve, a sense of purpose. Her cold hatred had crystallized into a desire to see her attacker. It was all co

When she finally spoke, her eyes were shining and her voice sounded strong and sure. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do want to carry on, whatever happens. I want to know who did this to me. I want to see his face.”

35 Susan

The newspapers had nothing much to report the next morning. Sue sat in her new café on Church Street, drinking coffee to get rid of the taste of Mrs. Cummings’s tea. She knew she would be better off not drinking the vile brew in the first place, but she needed something hot and bitter to wake her up. It was drizzling outside, and the café was full of miserable tourists keeping an eye on the weather, spi

Sue hadn’t slept well. She had already been awake when the seagulls started at a quarter to four. Even under the blankets and the bedspread, she had been trembling with delayed shock at what she had done to Keith McLaren. She could still see his stu

When she came to analyze her actions, it was mostly the way she had deliberately set up the situation that disgusted her. Because she didn’t see herself as a cold-blooded killer, she had lured Keith into the woods and forced him to put her in a position from which she could strike out in self-righteous anger. In a way, it had been as cold-blooded as any execution; she had just needed to get herself excited enough to kill, and to that end she had seduced Keith, seduced him to death. There was a perverse logic in that somewhere that made even Sue twist her lower lip in the semblance of a smile the next morning, but the night had been dreadful, full of self-loathing, recrimination, loss of nerve. Even the talisman and the litany of victims offered scant comfort in the small hours.

She had also worried. As it happens when you lie awake during those dreadful hours of the not quite morning with something on your mind, one fear leads directly to another. The disturbed mind seems to toss up terrors with the prolific abandon of a tempestuous ocean. By killing Keith, she had more than doubled her chances of getting caught before she finished what she had set out to do. With two murders to investigate, the police would surely spot the similarities and start stepping up their search. Somebody might have seen her with Keith in Staithes, Port Mulgrave or Hinderwell, and then someone else might remember seeing her with Grimley in the Lucky Fisherman. Her only hope was that Keith’s body would remain undiscovered in the woods until she had finished her task, and that was what she prayed for as she tossed and turned and finally slipped into an uneasy sleep, lulled by the cacophonous requiem of the gulls.

The coffee and cigarette helped her wake up. There was nothing in the nationals about the Student Slasher, but according to the local paper, the police were now certain that Jack Grimley had been murdered. Detective Inspector Cromer said that they were looking into his past for anyone who might have a grudge against him, and they still wanted to know if anyone had seen him after he left the Lucky Fisherman on the night of his death. Clearly no one had come forward so far. Sue remembered that night. She was sure nobody had noticed them, and once they had gone down to the beach and the cave, no one had even known they were there.

Sue’s hands shook a little as she combed the rest of the paper for news of Keith’s body. Thank god, there was nothing; they clearly hadn’t found him yet. But she would still have to move quickly. With the police stepping up their search and Keith’s body lying out in the woods for anyone to find, time was no longer on her side.

She knew what she had to do next, but it was still too early in the day. A short distance inland, on the eastern edge of town by the River Esk, stood a factory complex. There, much of the locally caught fish was cleaned, filleted and otherwise processed for resale. Some of it was frozen. The factory employed about a hundred and fifty workers, an even mix of men and women. If the person she was looking for was not a fisherman but was still co

Even though she knew where to look, she still wasn’t sure how to go about it. She could hardly hang about outside the factory gates, check everyone’s appearance and ask all likely suspects to say a few words. But what else could she do but watch? She had thought of applying for a job there to get her foot in the door, but that would raise questions of identification, references and National Insurance stamps. She couldn’t afford that. Another alternative was to find out if the workers had a favorite pub. Whatever she decided, she would have to start with hanging around the place at five o’clock, when the workers left for the day. Then she could take it from there.

Much as she wanted to, she couldn’t rush things. The plan left so much time on her hands, and time was a gift to the enemy. Also, today was not the kind of day for sitting on the beach reading, and her room at Mrs. Cummings’s was far too depressing to spend a whole day in. She had the pere

But Sue knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on things like that. She had to be actively engaged in her search or her fears would get the better of her. At least she could walk up to the factory and reco

But first, she realized, there was something else she must do: something she had decided on during her restless, guilty, paranoid hours awake in the night. She needed something to replace her holdall. It wasn’t especially conspicuous, just a khaki bag with side pockets and an adjustable strap, but she had been carrying it all the time she had been staying in Whitby, whether as Martha Browne or as Sue Bridehead. It was exactly the kind of mistake that could get her caught. Far better, she thought, to buy something else, fill the holdall full of stones and dump it in the sea along with all her Martha Browne gear-jeans, checked shirt, quilted jacket, the lot. It would be a shame to throw away such good-quality clothing, but it would be dangerous not to. Apart from those few moments on the front at Staithes, it was only as Martha Browne that she could be linked with Keith McLaren and Jack Grimley, so Martha Browne would have to disappear completely.