Peter James - A Twist of the Knife

This is how it all began...

It was Wednesday night, their last date before their wedding on Saturday, and, true to form, Michael was late. Very late. Actually, Ashley thought, that was being charitable. He was incredibly sodding bloody f***ing late. Ridiculously late. Over an hour late.

As usual.

On two occasions he had failed to turn up at all, and eight months ago, totally exasperated by his unreliability, she had dumped him. They had spent five months apart, during which time Michael was miserable as hell. He bombarded her, sometimes daily, with extravagant flowers, loving emails and tearful phone calls. She’d begun dating another guy, but he just wasn’t the same — neither as a companion nor as a lover. Michael was just such fun to be with, so full of energy and joie de vivre . It was a miserable time for her, too.

Finally she realized she could not live without Michael. They’d begun seeing each other again, and four weeks later he proposed and she accepted.

She looked at her watch and poured her third glass of wine, starting to feel a little smashed. It was now approaching 8.45 p.m. and he’d promised faithfully he would pick her up at 7.30 p.m. sharp. He was turning over a new leaf, he assured her. He would start their married life a changed man. Yeah, right.

In spite of herself, she grinned. God, she loved him, but why the hell wouldn’t he wear a damned watch? Well, maybe she could change that. She’d bought him an insanely expensive Tag Heuer Aquaracer, as a wedding present, and she was going to give it to him tonight. And make him promise to wear it!

Fifteen minutes later her doorbell rang. He stood outside her flat, his contrite expression barely visible behind the vast bouquet of flowers that almost dwarfed him.

After a long, passionate kiss, she broke away and teasingly asked, ‘So what happened this time? Were you kidnapped by aliens again? Had to take a phone call from Barack Obama? Rescue a runaway horse?’

He scratched the back of his head, looking contrite. ‘I’m so sorry, my darling. Mark rang. I had to go through some stuff urgently on the planning application. There’s just so much to do before we go away, and I want to have our honeymoon free and not be thinking about work. I’m trying to clear my desk and my email inbox, so I can devote the next two weeks to cherishing you, making love to you and then making love to you again.’

‘I like that plan!’ She grinned and kissed him again. ‘Want a drink, or shall we go?’

‘I rang the restaurant and changed the time, but we need to be there by nine. Or...’ he looked at her suggestively. ‘We could just go to bed and phone for a takeaway?’

‘I’m all dressed up, I think it would be nice to go out. We’ve got a ton of stuff to talk about. And I want to know all about your stag-night plans, coz I’m worried.’

‘Nothing to be worried about.’ He picked her wine glass up off the coffee table and took a long sip. ‘We’re just going on a pub crawl around Sussex — Mark’s hired a minibus. I’ll have the whole of Friday to recover from my hangover, Ash, and I’ll be fresh as a daisy for Saturday!’

She gave him a dubious look. ‘Why does that not reassure me?’

He gave her a hug and nuzzled her ear. ‘Come on, we’re just going to have a few drinks. No strippers, I’ve told the guys I don’t want it getting messy. We’re just going to have a few beers and then go home.’

‘Ha!’ she said.

An hour later, as their starters were being cleared away and the waiter poured more Champagne into their glasses, Ashley said, ‘How can I not worry, darling? You guys have a history of carrying out crazy pranks on stag nights.’

He shrugged and raised his glass. ‘Yep, well, they’ve promised nothing bad’s going to happen.’

‘I know them,’ she said. ‘And I don’t trust them.’

‘Trust me!’ he said.

She stared hard at him, tossing aside her long dark hair, and blew him a kiss. ‘I wish I could!’

‘You can, I promise!’

‘I’ll trust you when I turn up to the church, go inside on my father’s arm and see you standing, looking at me, with Mark by your side, on Saturday afternoon. Until then, I’m going to be worried witless.’

‘You have nothing to worry about.’

She curled her fingers around her glass, as the waiter set down her sea bass and Michael’s steak, followed by the vegetables. ‘I just don’t want to be stranded in the church, Michael, OK? I don’t want to find myself standing there for an hour until you rush in, all out of breath, saying you’re sorry, but you had some urgent emails to deal with!’

‘That is so not going to happen!’

‘It had better not,’ she said. ‘Because I won’t wait.’

He slid his arm across the table and squeezed her hand. ‘I love you, Ashley. More than anything in the world. Saturday is going to be the best day of my life. I promise you faithfully I will be there, on time and horny as hell for you. I’m a changed man.’

‘Like you just showed me tonight? You are so damned unreliable, my darling. I love you to bits. But — I don’t know — I just have this feeling that you aren’t going to turn up to our wedding.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘Then prove me wrong!’

‘I will, I absolutely will!’

So far, apart from a couple of hitches, Plan A was working out fine. Which was fortunate, since they didn’t really have a Plan B.

At 8.30 p.m. on a late May evening, they’d banked on having some daylight. There had been plenty of the stuff this time yesterday, when the five of them had made the same journey, taking with them an empty coffin and five shovels. But now, as the green Transit van sped along the Sussex country road, misty rain was falling from a sky the colour of a fogged negative.

‘Are we nearly there yet?’ said Josh in the back, mimicking a child.

‘The great Um Ga says, “Wherever I go, there I am,”’ responded Robbo, who was driving, and was slightly less drunk than the rest of them. With three pubs notched up already in the past hour and a half, and four more on the itinerary, he was sticking to shandy. At least, that had been his intention; but he’d managed to slip down a couple of pints of pure Harveys bitter first — to clear his head for the task of driving, he’d said.

‘So, we’re there!’ said Josh.

‘Always have been.’

A deer warning sign flitted from the darkness then was gone, as the headlights skimmed glossy black-top macadam stretching ahead into the forested distance. Then they passed a small white cottage.

‘How’re we doing, pal?’ said Mark in the back, with a big grin on his face, doing a passable impression of a caring best man.

Michael, lolling on a tartan rug on the floor in the back of the van, head wedged against a wheel-brace for a pillow, was feeling very pleasantly woozy. ‘I sh’ink I need another a drink,’ he slurred.

If he’d had his wits about him, he might have sensed, from the expressions of his friends, that something was not quite right. Never usually much of a heavy drinker, tonight he’d parked his brains in the dregs of more empty pint glasses and vodka chasers than he could remember downing, in more pubs than had been sensible to visit.

Of the group of friends, who had been muckers together since way back into their early teens, Michael Harrison had always been the natural leader. If, as they say, the secret of life is to choose your parents wisely, Michael had ticked plenty of the right boxes. He had inherited his mother’s fair good looks and his father’s charm and entrepreneurial spirit, but without any of the self-destruct genes that had eventually destroyed the man.

From the age of twelve, when Tom Harrison had gassed himself in his car, in the garage of the family home, leaving behind a trail of debtors, Michael had grown up fast, helping his mother make ends meet by doing a paper round then, when he was older, by taking labouring jobs in his holidays. He grew up with an appreciation of how hard it was to make money — and how easy it was to fritter it.