The First Cut

37 Susan

After two days without success, Sue almost gave up. There seemed to be too many obstacles in her way, and she was making too many mistakes. For a start, the conversation with the woman in Rose’s Café worried her, then she overheard two workers talking and learned that the factory operated on a shift system. Only the office workers came teeming out of the mesh gates at five o’clock. Most of the people on the shop floor worked one of the shifts: noon to eight, eight to four and four to noon. Finding him now seemed like an impossible task. She could hardly turn up there at four in the morning and stand gawking as the workers filed out.

Even the weather continued to work against her. It rained on and off, and the temperature dropped low enough that she had to wear her cardigan under the raincoat. She was quite prepared to spend some of her fast-dwindling money on binoculars and go up to the woods, even though the ground would be wet, but luckily it didn’t come to that. A couple of pieces of good luck kept her going.

The first evening at five, she approached the gates again, and when she passed the café she noticed a different woman behind the counter. This one was younger, with long, stringy blond hair. There were a few people sitting in the place already, so Sue entered, head bowed like someone just seeking refuge from the rain, bought a cup of tea without having to answer any questions, and took the window seat. Perhaps the woman she had met there before only worked lunchtimes? She wouldn’t need to spend so much of her money on binoculars and end up catching pneumonia in the damp woods after all.

The problem of the shifts remained, and Sue didn’t know how to get around that one. She certainly couldn’t afford binoculars with infrared lenses, so the four a.m. changeover was beyond her. That left noon and eight at night, both of which she could cover from the Brown Cow.

Cheered by the turn in her fortunes, Sue left Rose’s Café just after five thirty on the first day, treated herself to cannelloni and salad in a rather expensive restaurant on New Quay Road near the station-a place that didn’t specialize in fish and chips-and then went back over the Esk at a quarter to eight to find the Brown Cow. Instead of turning right at the cul-de-sac that led to the factory, she continued up the lane past the edge of the council estate and found the pub about a hundred yards further on. It was an undistinguished modern redbrick place with a Tetley’s sign hanging outside.

The doors opened into a large lounge, completely lacking in character: dull beige wallpaper and a stained brown carpet, sticky and worn in patches. The tables were made of some kind of tough black plastic, and the molded seats were uncomfortable. It was a functional place. Clearly the only people who went there were those who lived on the nearby estate. Factory workers might drop by at lunchtime, Sue thought glumly, but they weren’t likely to make an evening of it there when the shift ended at eight o’clock.

However depressing the Brown Cow seemed to Sue, though, it was certainly busy enough. Well over three-quarters of the tables were occupied, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. The obligatory jukebox had a tendency toward ancient Engelbert Humperdinck and Tom Jones songs, and the row of one-armed bandits and video games winked seductively by the far wall like a line of tarts in a brothel. Plump women smoked and gossiped while plump men smoked and shoved coins into the machines.

In her raincoat and hood, Sue thought she looked drab and anonymous enough not to attract too much attention in her dim corner. As it turned out, though, she didn’t have to stay long. When no crowd of workers had turned up by twenty-five past eight, she felt her suspicions confirmed and left. Like most seaside cafés, Rose’s had closed at six o’clock, just about the time when people were ready for dinner, so there was nowhere else to watch from.

Lunchtime on the second day seemed more promising. Not only did several of the office workers call in at the Brown Cow, but quite a few of the factory men came in for a pie and a pint at the end of their shift. Sue still didn’t see the man she wanted, and she began to wonder how much longer she could go on. Though Keith’s body hadn’t been found yet and nothing new had appeared in the papers, she was beginning to worry that the police might be getting close. Her money wouldn’t last forever, either, and she hardly dared contemplate the consequences if she was wrong about her quarry’s origins. She had put so much energy into the search, gambled so much of herself on the outcome, that failure didn’t bear thinking about. Especially now that two innocent people lay dead because of her.

She went to Rose’s Café again that evening around five and turned up at the Brown Cow at eight. Still nothing. By the third day she was thoroughly discouraged and depressed by the endless shuttling between two such awful environments. The world she now seemed to inhabit, though no more than a mile or so from the beach, the whale’s jawbone, Captain Cook’s statue, St. Mary’s and the twee shops of Church Street, was so drab and anonymous that it could have been almost anywhere in any English city.

It was also a world of shadows. She was getting jumpy, thinking people were following her and watching her. It was silly, she told herself. She was the one doing the watching. But she couldn’t get the feeling out of her mind. She hardly slept at night now, and not only because of the gulls. She started to think that her days in the sun on West Cliff had been a dream; now she had passed through the whale’s jawbone into its dark, dank, dripping belly and there was no way out. Then, on the third day, she saw him.