The First Cut

45 Susan

Sue got out of the house easily enough without anyone seeing her and went to celebrate her first housebreaking with veal scaloppine, garlic bread and a bottle of Chianti at the expensive restaurant on New Quay Road. After that, she stopped off at her room, then walked about a mile along the coast and threw her holdall, weighted down with heavy pebbles, into the sea. She stood and watched as the tide first threw it back, then sucked it out again and swallowed it. Even if it did turn up somewhere, she thought, it wouldn’t be of any interest to anyone.

Now it was time to put the final stage of her plan into operation. First, let him sweat for a while.

And sweat he did. The first time Sue saw him on the day after she had broken into his cottage, he looked harried and preoccupied as he walked in to work. It was raining, and he kept his hands deep in his pockets and his head down, but his glittering eyes swept the street and the windows of the houses all around him. He must have noticed her sitting in the front of Rose’s Café, Sue thought, but his eyes just flicked over her as they did everything and everyone else. He was nervous, on edge, as if he was expecting an ambush at any moment.

After he had gone by, Sue turned back to the local newspaper. There was no change reported in Keith’s condition and the police seemed to have got nowhere in their search for Jack Grimley’s killer. So far, so good. It would soon be over now.

Near lunchtime on the second day, from the same vantage point, Sue saw him slip into the newsagent’s. Quickly, she left her tea and crossed the street to go in after him. He wouldn’t recognize her. This time, she was dressed differently; also, she wore glasses, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. He glanced around with a start at the bell when she entered, her head lowered, then turned his gaze back to the newsagent.

“All right today, love?” the woman asked. “You look a bit peaky.”

“Not enough sleep, that’s all,” he mumbled.

“Well, you take good care of yourself, you never know what germs is going round these days.”

“I’m all right,” he said, a little testily. “Just tired, that’s all.” Then he paid for his tobacco and left without even glancing at Sue, who bent over the newspaper and magazine section as before. She picked up the local paper and the Independent. When she took them over to the counter to pay, the woman clucked her tongue and said, “I don’t know what’s the matter with him. Show a bit of polite interest and he damn near bites your head off. Some people can’t even be bothered to be civil these days.”

“Maybe he’s worried about something,” Sue suggested.

The woman sighed. “Aye,” she said. “We’ve all got plenty to worry about, haven’t we, what with nuclear war and pollution all over t’place. But I still manage to find a smile and a good morning for my customers.” She went on, almost to herself, as she counted out Sue’s change, “Not like Greg Eastcote, that isn’t. Usually such a pleasant chap.” Then she shrugged. “Ah, well, maybe he is just tired. I could do with a bit of a lie-down myself.”

“I’m sure that’s it,” said Sue, folding the newspapers under her arm and walking over to the door. “He’s just tired.”

“Aye. No rest for the wicked, is there, love? Bye now.”

As Sue walked along the street, Eastcote’s van passed her by and took the same route out of town as it had before. Another delivery. Whether he would be back later or would be staying out overnight, she had no idea. She could imagine, though, that he would be loath to leave his cottage empty for very long. In fact, if she were in his shoes, she would make sure she was back before dark. After all, he didn’t know that she had broken in during daylight.

She wondered what he had made of the extra lock of hair. Did he know it was hers? Surely he must suspect? Or perhaps he thought he was being haunted, that the supernatural was responsible for the sudden appearance of a seventh lock? Like the seventh daughter of a seventh son was supposed to be powerful in magic. One thing she did know: he had seen her, as one would notice any stranger in the street, but he didn’t know who she was. Maybe when he got over the shock, he would start to think clearly again and count the times he’d glimpsed her from the corner of his eye; perhaps he would connect the girl in the navy-blue raincoat with the girl in glasses and a ponytail. But by then it would be too late.

Sue walked by the river toward town. The good weather seemed to have made a return. It was a beautiful day, with plenty of that intense blue sky you sometimes get at the seaside, and just enough plump white clouds drifting over to give a sense of depth and perspective. Beyond the greenish shallows, the sea reflected the sky’s bright ultramarine. Sue stood on the swing bridge and looked around at the harbor. It was like another world to her now, after so long spent in the other, dingier part of town.

The tide was well out, and some of the light boats rested almost on their sides, with their masts at forty-five-degree angles to the slick mud. To Sue’s left, beyond the high harbor wall, stood the buildings of St. Ann’s Staith, a mixture of architectural styles and materials: red brick, gables, chimneys, black-and-white Tudor-style fronting, even millstone grit. Further along, toward the sheds where the fish were auctioned, the jumble of buildings rose all the way up the hillside to the elegant white terrace of hotels that formed East Terrace.

People walked by, carefree and smiling: a courting couple, the man with his arm so low around the girl that it was practically in the back pocket of her tight jeans; two elderly ladies overdressed in checked tweeds and lace-up shoes, one carrying a walking stick; a pregnant woman, glowing with health, her husband walking proudly beside her.

All this normality, Sue thought. All these ordinary people going about their business, enjoying themselves, eating ice-cream cones and bouncing garish beachballs in the street, and they have no idea about the monster walking among them.

They have no idea that Greg Eastcote murdered six women and maimed one, that he slashed at their sexual organs with a sharp, bone-handled knife, and just to make sure they were dead, he strangled them. When he’d done that, when he’d finished his crude surgery, he carefully cut off a single lock of hair from each bruised and bleeding body, took it home with him, tied it up in a pink ribbon and placed it neatly in his sideboard drawer. Six of them all in a row. Seven now.

According to the press clippings that Sue had saved, he hadn’t raped any of his victims. Clearly he was incapable of that, and the rage he felt toward women for causing his condition partly explained his actions. But only partly. There was an enormous chasm between his motives and his deeds that nobody could fathom. In a vision, the Dark One had appeared to him in a perversion of the Caedmon story and told him to sing his own song. And so he had. Only his accompanying instrument wasn’t a lute, it was a knife, and the tune it played was death.

Sue wanted to jump up on the bridge rail and shout all this out to the complacent holidaymakers heading for the beach or the amusement arcades. They would shove their coins into slots, listen to the bingo caller, or sit on the beach in the sun on striped deck chairs, newspapers shielding their faces, edging back every so often as the tide came in closer. Then, late in the afternoon, they would go to one of the many fish and chip restaurants and eat.

None of them knew about the man with the oily smell of fish on his fingers-probably the last thing his victims smelled-the Ancient Mariner eyes and the raspy voice. She wanted to tell them all about Greg Eastcote and the atrocities he had committed against women, all about the blood, the pain, the utter degradation and humiliation, and the way she had been imperfectly sewn back together again. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…That man there, the balding one with the crying toddler in his arms, she wanted to assure him that she was here to restore the balance. But she wasn’t crazy; she knew she couldn’t say anything. Instead she just watched them passing back and forth over the bridge for a while, wondering whether they were truly innocent or just indifferent, then she went to find a quiet pub.

She soon found a place on Baxtergate. Three bored-looking punks with green-and-yellow hair sat in the lounge playing the jukebox, but through a corridor by the side of the bar, separated from the lounge by swing doors, was a much quieter room, all dark varnished panels, hard chairs and benches. Sue realized that not only hadn’t she looked at the papers yet, she hadn’t even eaten since her meager and greasy breakfast at Mrs. Cummings’s. The tea was so bad at Rose’s that she hadn’t felt inclined to find out what the food was like. All the pub served was cold snacks, so she ordered a crab sandwich and a half of lager and lime.

When she had eaten, she sat back with her drink and lit a cigarette, turning to the local paper first to see if there was any news of Keith. A brief report told her that police were continuing their inquiries into the suspicious death of Jack Grimley and the “brutal assault” on a young Australian tourist, who was still in critical condition at St. Mary’s Hospital, Scarborough. Apparently, Keith had not yet regained consciousness.

Then, under the heading HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? she suddenly noticed an artist’s impression of her. She hadn’t spotted it at first because it looked nothing like her. Perhaps there was a faint resemblance to Martha Browne, but even that would be pushing it a bit. The shape of the head was all wrong, far too round, and the eyes were too close together, the lips too thick. Still, it was enough to make her pulse race. It meant they were on the right track and they were getting closer. All the caption said was that police were anxious to talk to this girl, who had been seen with the Australian in Hinderwell, as she “may have been the last person to see him before the attack.”

Sue folded the paper and turned to the crossword, but she found herself too preoccupied to concentrate on the clues. She knew that the police in general told little of what they knew to the papers. If she read between the lines, it seemed likely that they had also found the bus driver who had picked her up near Staithes. But all he could tell them was that she had got off at Whitby bus station. After that, Martha Browne had disappeared forever.

Could they also track her to the lodgings on Abbey Terrace? Certainly if they traced Keith’s movements, as they would surely be doing, then the odds were that they would check the register there, get a better description of her from the owner or his wife, and mount a full-scale search for “Martha Browne.” Why, she wondered, were they taking so long? They must have found out where Keith had been staying in Staithes quickly enough. From there, it surely wouldn’t have taken them long to work their way back to Whitby, unless there was no evidence among his belongings to say where he’d been-no journal, no brochures, no postcards unsent. What if they did know and every policeman in Whitby was on the lookout for her already? Nervously, she glanced over at a young couple by the bar, but they were only interested in one another.

Still, she told herself, she had no real cause to worry. Martha Browne no longer existed. She could have gone anywhere from Whitby bus station-Scarborough, York, Leeds-and why not on to London, Paris or Rome? Surely nobody would expect her to hang around in the area after she had attacked Keith McLaren? Even if they did know who they were after, they wouldn’t center their search in Whitby. She had told Keith that she came from Exeter, but she couldn’t remember what she had written, if anything, in the register at the guesthouse. She wondered how long it would take the police to discover that Martha Browne had never existed in the first place. And what would they do then?

Of course, she knew that all this was nothing but speculation. Even if they could link her to Keith via Abbey Terrace, the Lucky Fisherman and Hinderwell, they still couldn’t prove that she had done anything wrong. She could say that Keith had wanted to lead her into the woods but she had refused and left him, taking the bus back to Whitby. It probably wouldn’t come to that, but if it did, she knew they couldn’t prove anything. If the worst came to the worst, she could say he had tried to rape her and she had defended herself, then got scared and run away.

The only real problem was that it would look very odd indeed if they found her and discovered that Martha Browne and Sue Bridehead were the same person, and what’s more, that she was really Kirsten, the only surviving victim of the Student Slasher. That would certainly look incriminating, especially when they found his body. But would it be enough to convict her of anything? Perhaps. Still, she had known from the start that the whole business was fraught with risks, though she hadn’t expected it to turn into such a mess.

There was also a chance that the police might find out about the wig and clothes she had bought in Scarborough, but that was very unlikely. She had purposely chosen large, busy department stores, and none of the shop assistants had paid her very much attention. Since she had been in, they would have served hundreds of other customers. Then she remembered the scrawny woman with the large head, the smoker she had startled in the ladies’ toilet. She might remember. But so what? All she knew was that Sue had gone to the toilet in a Scarborough department store. Nothing unusual in that. There had been another woman who had spoken to her too that day. She remembered putting on makeup next to a woman who joked about her husband saying she always took so long to go to the toilet. But none of it mattered. She had spoken to lots of people during her time in Whitby, as anybody would.

No, there was nothing to worry about. Besides, she had divine protection, at least until she had fulfilled her destiny. Her spirit guides would hardly allow her to fail after she had got so far. Nonetheless, it was wise to be cautious, get it done quickly and leave town. There was no sense in jeopardizing the main reason for her visit just for the pleasure of toying with her prey a bit longer and watching Greg Eastcote grow more paranoid day by day. She wasn’t in this for cruelty, for pleasure. Besides, he would be growing more and more cautious. Best get it done tonight, then, if she could.

The Student Slasher seemed to have disappeared completely from the pages of the Independent, as Sue had suspected he soon would. And he wouldn’t appear there alive again. With luck, when she had killed him, the police would search his house and find the seven locks of hair. They would check the dates and places of his overnight deliveries, and they would find out who he was and what he had done. Also with luck, they would probably assume that a victim had got the better of him this time, and they wouldn’t employ all their resources trying to find out exactly who she was.

After lunch, Sue returned to the factory area. Eastcote could be on a short local run and might come back at any time. She watched from the woods, lying on her stomach, then at evening opening-time she went to the Merry Monk and took her usual table by the window. By pulling back the curtain just a little when nobody was looking, she could see straight down the convex slope of waste ground to Eastcote’s cottage. She would wait for him to come home, then she would somehow lure him away. He hadn’t struck in his own town before, perhaps due to caution, but this time he wouldn’t be able to resist.

Shortly after seven, Sue saw him arrive home. The lights went on behind the pale blue curtains in the cottage. Uncertain how to draw him out, she finished her drink and left the pub. Instead of returning to the lane, walking downhill and turning right onto Eastcote’s street, she walked straight across the waste ground, from where she could easily be seen. Sunset was almost over now, and the western sky glowed in even striations of deep violet, scarlet and purple. A jet’s trail snaked right across the western horizon, losing shape quickly, and one or two clouds blushed in the last light. Nettles and thistles stung Sue’s legs as she brushed her way through the weeds, but the pain felt distant, unreal.

She could knock on his door, or telephone perhaps. But she hadn’t seen a phone when she had been inside his house. Knocking on the door was too risky. He might react quickly and drag her inside. Instead, she just walked slowly down to the street and paused when she got to the end of the low garden wall. The curtains were still drawn. She thought she could see a shadow move behind them. She stood for a few moments, certain that they were looking at one another with only the thin blue curtains between them, then moved on, taking the dirt path across the scrub land that led down to the main road. As she walked, she felt a strange drifting sensation, as if she were floating an inch or two above the grass.

Sue stopped and just stood there, about a hundred yards from his house. It was uncanny, the certainty she felt that he had been aware of her standing outside his cottage and that he would open his door and look. And he did. She stood there in the middle of a piece of waste land, nettles, weeds and thistles all around, silhouetted by the sunset. He walked to the end of his garden path, turned his head in her direction and slowly opened the gate.