The Cutting Crew (11 page)

I gave her the address and a few more details. Then - finally - I found a clean patch of floor and sat down to wait.

Chapter
Seven

The relationship I had with Lucy was founded on sex and murder.

Put like that, I know it sounds bad. And it was bad, too, not least because I was married to Rachel the whole time.

The most that can be said in my defence is that at least Rachel never knew, as it would have hurt her even more. As 'most's go, I appreciate that's really not much, but she didn't deserve to feel any pain at all, let alone the extra dose that knowing would have given her. My wife never did anything wrong. When I told her it was over between us it came as a complete shock; it literally knocked the air out of her the way a punch would. It's awful to fall out of love with someone; it's the kind of thing you don't want to talk about when it's happening, and then one day you realise that it's simply too late. It's hard for the other person to understand, as well. But as hard and confusing as it must have been for Rachel, knowing the real reason would have been far worse.

It was after work. We were on a night out, a group of us, drinking in cop places where we could cut loose a little. One of us was escaping - retiring - and we were seeing him off in fine style: drinking, singing and dancing, laughing like lunatics. The air was thick with smoke and the music was loud enough to set it moving.

We were all drunk, and - thinking back - it was the last time Sean ever came out with us before he disappeared. Late on, someone decided we should all head out to a nearby restaurant for a curry and so we did, but for some reason Lucy and I walked a little more slowly than everyone else and ended up lagging behind. We were chatting and didn't really notice. That was when she told me she liked me, and later on that night I kissed her. A couple of weeks later, it happened again. It built up from there. Pretty soon we were sleeping together.

The guilt I felt about sex with Lucy was exactly the same as the guilt I felt about the murders we'd committed together. I was sure deep down that it was wrong, because it felt wrong. My gut told me that there was no grey area here; no doubt. But I managed to overcome that feeling with cool logic. I was like someone trying to give up smoking and telling himself that just one won't hurt. I found excuses because I wanted to. If nobody knew about it, I figured, then nobody could get hurt. That kind of shit. I'd try to imagine the sum of happiness in the world and I'd argue that - as things stood - my actions had actually increased that sum. It made a kind of sense. But of course, in the long term, I was ruining everybody's happiness, and pretty soon things wouldn't be standing at all.

Why did I do it? Because I was stupid.

Here's one thing, though. During the day, Lucy was as hard as they come: cool, detached, confident, cynical. Loads of cops wanted her, but each of them knew in their gut that they didn't stand a chance of getting anywhere near her. So it made me feel strange inside that she chose me - out of everyone that she could have. It made me feel special, happy. And even more so, because when we were together she let her guard down. Being with her was like watching something thaw. You could see the tentative steps she took towards affection, towards openness. When you see someone cut most people dead - and if we're honest, scare the living shit out of them - it's quite amazing when they behave so differently with you: opening up, giving you access, handing you these sharp emotional weapons that you could use to hurt them and trusting that you won't.

So to begin with, perhaps because she made me feel special, I was too weak and stupid to say no. And then, as time went on, that weakness began to be coupled with a desire not to hurt her. And all of it was tinged through with fear: I felt out of control and started to quietly panic about everything, as though my life was a balancing act that was going to topple. One time, I told Lucy that I would never leave Rachel and she got mad with me - not because of what I'd said, but because I'd felt the need to say it at all. Over and over again, she told me: "I'm not an idiot and I know its not going anywhere. I just like you and want you.

And so it carried on for a while. I was worried that I was taking advantage of her. When she thawed enough, it was clear that she was unhappy and sad. But it was stupid of me to imagine she didn't know exactly what she was doing. Even more dumb was this: I was scared that she'd fall in love with me and get hurt. I was assuming that would be the way it worked: her falling for me; me remaining ambivalent; me wondering why these pesky women couldn't separate sex from love, as I so obviously could. And of course, my assumption turned out to be more than a little back-to-front.

To explain what happened, I need to break a promise.

'Have you ever loved anyone?' I asked Lucy one day.

It was two weeks after Sean had vanished and the investigation into Alison's murder had stalled, and Lucy and I were in a cheap hotel room at the edge of the city, lying in a bed that was approaching double in size without quite getting there. We were naked, with sweat drying on us, and Lucy was smoking a cigarette.

It was dark outside, but still early enough for me to be out for a drink after work with colleagues, or working late ... or whatever, really. If I needed an excuse, I'd think of one later. Right then, I wasn't thinking of much.

Cars were rushing past the window: their tyres crackled on the wet tarmac outside; their headlights came through the cheap, pale curtains and went quickly around the room in a sinister circle.

'Yes,' she said.

I knew it wasn't me, but I was stupid enough to think it might be.

I said, 'Who?'

'No, it's weird. You'll think I'm strange.'

'I already think you're strange,' I said. 'That's why we get on so well.'

'Well, you might be right there.'

'Go on.'

'No. I don't know if I should tell you.'

'Don't if you don't want to.'

She smoked the cigarette until it was nearly down to the filter, and there were a few seconds of silence while she did. Two cars went past, and then she said:

'It's someone I've never slept with.'

'Okay.'

'I've never even kissed him.'

'Wow.'

'Someone I don't even see anymore.'

She stubbed the cigarette out then. Twisted it methodically into the glass base of the ashtray by the bed.

'Who?' I said.

'Can you keep a secret?'

'Sure.'

'Seriously, I mean. None of my family even know.'

'I am serious,' I said. 'I didn't even know you had any family. But I can keep a secret, I promise.'

'Okay.' But then she thought about it and shook her head. 'It's something you need to see. I can't explain it very well. I'll let you know later.'

'Wow,' I said again.

It had seemed like a simple enough question, and now I was really curious - something I would actually need to see. I wondered what it could be, and also whether I'd regret finding out. When you're getting to know someone, questions can open trapdoors.

You fall into them - unsuspecting - and suddenly you're in a world you never knew existed. Often without a ladder.

The next day, a mid-shift break found me in an internet cafe, sitting in front of an old, battered monitor. I was just one person in a sea of plastic that was dotted with the tops of heads. There was no way I was risking logging in to this at home, because Rachel used the internet and she wasn't stupid. I straightened out a piece of paper in front of my mouse. There were two lines of text written on it in shitty biro, which was all she'd had in her handbag last night.

The first line was an email address: richjohnson@theleftroom. Com.

The second was the password: truelove.

I logged on to the account and then clicked on the inbox.

24 new messages

There were actually more like forty, but Lucy had logged in and read a few over the years - reminding herself of what she'd written.

The night before, she'd said: 'You pour your heart out to someone, taking the time to make every word right, and then ten minutes later you start doubting yourself and you need to go back to check.'

I'd said I understood, but back then I didn't really. Sitting in the cafe, I scrolled down the list of emails and read the headers. The messages had all been sent from Lucy's own email account. She told me it would be okay for me to read any of the ones that had already been opened. The rest were just for him.

I clicked on one.

My dearest Rich, it began. I was thinking about you today. I know I promised not to last time, but I couldn't stop myself. I think about you every day, every second. Even if you're not there, you're still there.

So - she thought about him every second. I didn't recognise it then, but I think those first few sentences broke my heart - like one of those mythical kung fu strikes that you don't actually feel until a little time after the blow lands. 'He's the only person I've ever loved,' she'd told me the night before. 'There was never anything physical between us, but I know that what I felt for him was real, true love. And I've never felt anything like it since.'

This was their history: they'd been childhood friends - members of a mixed group that had played together as little kids and hung out together as bigger kids. They'd been held in place by the tight geography of Goat's terraced streets and the glue of parental friendships. Thick as thieves but much more loyal, Rich and Lucy were always close, and there was something between them that they both knew was special. Despite that, they never got together as a couple.

'I don't know why we didn't,' she told me, in that hotel bedroom. She was smoking again. 'I wish we had; everything would have been different then. God knows how it didn't happen.

Maybe it was just bad timing - just that one of us would always be with someone else when the other was free.'

So they drifted around - never having an actual relationship, never quite landing - but they got on so well that their friendship survived intact.

'Nobody has ever made me laugh like he did. Nobody has ever made me feel so totally at ease about just being myself,' she told me. 'It's like we were designed for each other or something.'

'Nobody's designed for anybody.'

I was watching her smoke, and I was bothered despite myself.

Suddenly I didn't feel so special anymore. I was just ordinary.

Second place. She was making do with me when there was someone else out there she wanted more. I was married, of course, so I couldn't really complain. But even so - I realised that the flippancy of our relationship hurt a lot more now that I was on the receiving end. As she told me the story, the both of us lying there, I felt something twisting inside me. Something that was not good.

When they were seventeen, Rich's girlfriend had fallen pregnant.

He was devastated; but he was a responsible kid and he listened carefully to other people, and since her parents were adamant that the couple get married he decided that they would. It was all planned quickly; the pregnancy was an undertone that was rarely mentioned. The night before the ceremony, Lucy met with Rich in their local and they sank a few beers together. Lucy hardly ever drank when she was younger, but that night she'd wanted to. She'd never felt so miserable, and had only recently begun to understand why. Over the course of the conversation, it became clear that Rich was as miserable as she was, and that they were both feeling that way for the same reason.

'If you want to run away,' he told her towards the end of the night, 'then I'll come with you.'

She didn't tell him not to be so stupid, because she wanted to say yes.

'But I couldn't,' she told me. 'His girlfriend was five months pregnant, and I just couldn't do that to her. I wish I had done now, as bad as that is, but I told him no. And I genuinely watched his heart fucking break.'

Rich married his girlfriend the next day, and he was still married to her now. They had two sons; the oldest was fifteen years old and the spitting image of his father. Lucy had been haunted by her non relationship with Rich ever since. She had never struck me as being the kind of person who believed in souls, but she said more than once that he had been her soul-mate. Had been, she said; always will be, she meant. So I had nothing to worry about. She was never going to fall in love with me.

Because of the situation we were in and because of everything I'd said, as we were lying in the hotel room she had no idea how much this was hurting me.

'I set up that email account in his name,' she said. 'And every now and then I write to him. I know that he'll never see them, and it's stupid. But sometimes I think about sending him the address and password and letting him read what I've put there. I wonder if he's been thinking about me the whole time like I have about him.'