The First Cut

39 Susan

As Susan approached the Brown Cow at lunchtime on the third day, she saw two white factory vans parked in front, and before she had even got near the entrance, two men came out of the pub and walked over to them. It was impossible to be sure from such a distance, but one of them matched the image in her memory: low, dark fringe, the thick eyebrows meeting in the middle. She had to get closer to see if he had deep lines on his face and, most of all, she needed to hear his voice.

When they started their vans and pulled out, she followed on foot. At least she could see which way they turned as they drove down the lane. If they went left, they would be on their way to the factory, and if they carried on down to the main road, they would be off making a delivery somewhere. She was in luck. They turned left.

Sue hurried after them. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but there was no point in hanging around the Brown Cow any longer. When she reached the turning, the vans had already pulled up outside the loading bays a hundred yards beyond the mesh gates, and the drivers were nowhere in sight. She walked along the street as far as the row of shops. She couldn’t just wander through the factory gates and go looking for the man; nor could she sit in the café where the inquisitive woman would be on duty. What could she do?

Before she had time to come up with a plan, she noticed the man walk out of the glass doors of the office building. He seemed to be slipping a small envelope of some kind into his pocket. A pay packet, perhaps? Whatever it was, he looked as though he had finished for the day. If he was a driver, the odds were that he had just returned from an overnight run, padded his time sheet with an hour or so at the Brown Cow, and was now on his way home.

He was walking toward her, only about forty yards away now on the dirt track that led out of the factory. She had nowhere to hide. She couldn’t just stand there in the street until he came level with her. What if he recognized her? She had changed a lot since their last meeting, lost a lot of weight, though her wig was about the same length as her hair had been then. Surely he couldn’t have got a much clearer impression of her looks than she had of his? But she couldn’t stand rooted to the spot.

There was only one thing to do. She rushed forward and ducked into the newsagent’s. She needed her morning papers anyway, as she had been so absorbed in her new routine that she hadn’t even spent her usual hour in the Church Street café. She hadn’t looked for news of Keith, and she was still feeling nervous about the Grimley investigation, though no one had knocked on her door in the middle of the night yet.

The newspapers were arranged in small, overlapping piles on a low shelf just inside the window, below the rack of magazines. From there, as she pretended to make her selection with her back turned to the newsagent, she could get a closer look at the man as he went past. She bent and pretended to leaf through the stack, as if she were scanning the front pages for the best headlines, when suddenly he appeared right outside. He didn’t walk past as she had expected. Instead, he patted his pocket, turned and came inside.

Sue kept her back to the counter and examined the Radio Times and Women’s Own in the rack above the papers.

“Afternoon, Greg,” she heard the woman say. “In for some baccy, I suppose?”

“Yes, please.” The man’s voice sounded muffled and Sue couldn’t hear him clearly.

“Usual?”

“Aye. Oh, and I’ll have a box of matches, too, please, love. Swan Vestas.”

“Finished for the day?”

“Aye. Just got back from the Leeds and Bradford run. Can’t leave the poor beggars without their fish and chips, can we?”

The newsagent laughed.

Sue gripped the rack of magazines to keep herself from falling over. Her heart was beating so fast and loud that she thought it would burst. At the very least, both the newsagent and the man in the shop must be able to hear it. Her face was flushed and her breath was hard to catch. Everything seemed to swim and ripple in front of her eyes like motes dancing in rays of light: the magazine covers, the grim terraced houses across the street. And all the while she struggled to stay on her feet; she couldn’t let these two people see that there was anything wrong with her. They would rush over to help, and then…

Sue held on and fought for control as the voice, the horrible, familiar voice that had been whispering hoarsely in her nightmares for a month, carried on making small talk as if nothing terrible had ever happened.