The First Cut by Ali Knight Page A

Regent’s Park, where a weak sun was beginning to shine. With each step he felt lighter, younger. It had worked like a dream. The crazy bitch had coughed it all up. He was nigh-on fifty grand richer because Marcia’s phone number was on Darek’s list. Darek, who was so anal he had kept a paper trail of the jealousies and hatreds of his clients and how much they had paid to try to alleviate those emotions that had set up home in their guts and weren’t letting go. And now Darek was dead and he had the list. It could turn out to be the luckiest bit of paper he’d ever come across.
    Knowledge is power – the truth can make you a king. Troy liked the feeling of wielding the sword of truth. It cut down everything before it.

7
     
    N icky ducked under the sign that berated passengers who came this far. She stared down the dark track and took a step back. He was mad. She wasn’t going down there.
    Adam retreated out of the gloom and came towards her, holding out his hand. ‘Come on.’
    ‘I’m not doing it. This is nonsense.’
    ‘Do you want to see the graffiti or don’t you?’
    ‘Yes, but I want to live more!’
    A train crawled past, slowing down for its approach into Charing Cross Station. He’d been so enthusiastic to show her a huge painting by a hot new graffiti artist that she had become infected by his energy and ended up meeting him near the river. The work, by ‘The new Banksy’, was painted on the bridge over the Thames, but now she’d realized how they were to get there she changed her mind. This was what twenty-year-olds did, not married women the wrong side of thirty-five.
    ‘It’s perfectly safe – how do you think the artist got over there to paint it?’ He had a point. ‘Come on!’ He grabbed her hand and she liked the feel of her own in his. It was their first prolonged physical contact and she didn’t want it to end. They walked over commuter litter blown down the tracks and past tools and barrels and boxes left by workmen. Another train passed, honking angrily.
    They came out into the light of the bridge. ‘Where are we going?’
    ‘Just trust me and you won’t go wrong.’
    They edged out across the river, the sun glinting off the twisting mass of rails that disappeared into the distance and round a bend to Waterloo. She felt the fear of where they were again; this was one of the busiest stations in Europe, with trains coming and going all the time.
    ‘How do you know about this place?’
    ‘I followed a graffiti artist I recognized one evening and ended up here.’ He gripped her hand tighter. ‘Right, we’re going to cross now.’
    ‘Cross?’ Nicky thought she hadn’t heard right. Cross a mainline railway? She looked up and down the tracks, trains shifting between points, switching tracks, travelling at different speeds. It was like being in a demented computer game. It was madness. ‘No. We can’t cross.’
    ‘Come on, Nicky!’
    ‘I’m not bloody Lara Croft.’
    ‘I think you’ve got potential. You might find you enjoy it.’
    And the truth was that she understood what he meant. His disregard for safety, his desire for kicks and danger, his search for an adrenalin rush – she found she was responding to all this.
    ‘Get back,’ he said, shoving her hard up against the metal struts of the bridge as a train passed by them, so close she felt the wind it created brushing her cheek.
    Grace’s death had robbed Nicky of the remains of her youth. She had stepped over into a world where unspeakable horrors lurked in corners, where life wasn’t carefree and consequence free. While she loved Greg, Adam brought the spontaneity and risk of her younger years bubbling to the surface. She didn’t want a life half lived. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m in.’
    Adam held her face in his hands. ‘You won’t regret it,’ he shouted as a train wobbled past them. ‘Follow me exactly.’
    He started out across the tracks.
    ‘What about the third rail—’
    ‘Don’t