The Quick and the Dead (A Sister Agnes Mystery) (2 page)

‘I’m so glad you understand, Julius, dear,’ said Agnes from the doorway. ‘So many men wouldn’t,’ she laughed, closing the door behind her.

*

‘I’ve already ordered the Chablis,’ Athena announced. ‘What’s so funny?’

They were sitting in an Italian brasserie just off Fulham Broadway. Athena was wearing her lilac linen suit, and her thick black hair was pinned into an untidy bun, from which long tresses escaped. She wore red lipstick and from her ears hung huge twists of silver.

‘Oh, just something Julius said,’ Agnes replied, hanging her raincoat on the back of her chair.

‘He’s never approved of me,’ Athena said. ‘From the very beginning —’

‘You’re quite wrong there,’ Agnes replied. ‘Julius is very fond of you.’

‘But when we first met —’

‘When we first met it was over Hugo. Julius hates Hugo, that’s all.’

‘Hmm.’ Athena tasted the wine, paused for a carefully poised moment and then nodded graciously at the waitress.

‘So, how are you?’ Agnes smiled.

‘Oh, OK.’

‘As in, not OK.’ 

‘Well …’ Athena took a sip of wine. ‘Bored, really, that’s all.’

‘How’s the gallery?’

‘Fine. Selling more and more. We’ve got some lovely watercolours in at the moment, sort of Oriental things, and then in the main room we’ve got this huge installation, it looks like a pile of broken old radios, those big chunky ones from the fifties, and they’re draped in pink quilted dressing-gowns, and there’s Henry Mancini music coming out of it. Anyway, everyone comes in to see the installation and goes out with a watercolour. Great, eh? That’s art for you.’

‘But it’s not enough?’

Athena put down her glass. ‘I think it’s my age. Even me, decadent old hedonist that I am, even I’m starting to think, what’s it all for? What does it all mean? And don’t look at me with that gleam in your eye, I’m not about to convert.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Athena. It’s a broad church, I know, but there are limits.’

‘Of course, the sad fact is,’ Athena went on, ‘that all this cosmic doubt would probably disappear if a gorgeous hunky geezer appeared on the horizon.’

Agnes sighed. ‘So much for the yearnings of the soul,’ she said, as their pasta arrived. ‘So easily displaced by altogether different yearnings.’

‘And talking of yearnings, that Jonathan wrote to me.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes,’ Athena went on, taking a forkful of tagliatelle. ‘He wants to put up my rent. Bloody cheek.’

‘How much was he charging?’

‘Well, nothing at all — but it’s the principle, isn’t it?’ 

Agnes laughed. ‘It must mean things are going well for them if he wants you to rent out his flat long-term.’

Athena nodded.

‘So he’s — they’re — staying in New York?’

Athena nodded again.

Agnes fiddled with her fork. ‘How’s Alexander?’

‘His paintings are doing really well, he said. Nothing more, really. You know what men are like. The whole letter was barely half a page long, and that was big writing too.’ Athena looked at Agnes. ‘You still miss him, then, Alexander?’

Agnes met her eyes. ‘No.’

Athena grinned. ‘As in, yes. There’s no point waiting for these things to go away. What you need, poppet, is to chase it away. In fact, that’s it. What we
both
need is some gorgeous hunky geezer to appear on the horizon —’

Agnes laughed. ‘Speak for yourself, Athena. Spiritual yearning is enough for me these days.’

‘As if you had the choice,’ Athena giggled.

They walked back to South Kensington underground station together.

‘Do you have access to the Internet?’ Agnes asked suddenly.

‘Whatever for?’ Athena said.

‘I’m trying to track down a road protest, that’s all. I thought they might have an email address.’

‘I just can’t keep up with you.’

‘Well, do you?’

‘Simon’s got some screen thingy in the back office that whirrs and beeps at him from time to time. But I’m not sure it’s any good on eco-warriors; it only knows about art.’

‘Hmm. Would it be all right if I came back to your office and made a few phone calls, then?’

*

‘See?’ Agnes announced to Julius. ‘It’s only two forty-five. Not only that but I’m empty-handed.’

‘It must be a record,’ Julius laughed. ‘Whereas Madeleine and I are still here. And the Chablis?’

‘Only a glass — I’m driving.’

‘Julius told me that Sam’s gone,’ Madeleine said.

‘Yes. I think she’s at an anti-road protest. I spoke to a couple of campaigning organisations on the phone, and there’s one in Epping which sounds likely. They’ve even got a mobile phone number, but I couldn’t get through, so I thought I may as well drive over and check it out.’

‘Well, good luck,’ Madeleine smiled.

‘By the way,’ Julius said as he got up to close the window against the traffic noise, ‘talking of Sam, her social worker phoned again.’

‘Great. Did she apologise for her stupid, heavy-handed —’

‘If you’d just let me finish — she said they’d had a call from a man claiming to be her father. Not her stepfather, this is her birth father. He hasn’t seen her since she was a few months old, when he left her mother, but he’s tracked them down, and wants to renew contact with Sam.’

‘How odd.’ Agnes looked at the piece of paper he handed her. ‘How very unusual. And what are we supposed to do about it?’

‘Ask her what she feels about it. If we see her again. See, I wrote the name down. Michael Reynolds.’

‘Not the same surname, then?’ Agnes put the slip of paper in her pocket.

‘He wasn’t married to the mother.’

‘Well,’ Agnes said, getting up. ‘I’ll tell her. If I ever see her again.’

‘What car are you hiring this time?’ Julius grinned. ‘The Jag again? The Rolls?’

‘If only. No, these days I have to rely on the community’s own horrible chuggy little Metro. If it goes over fifty-eight, bits start falling off it.’

The M25 snaked its way round London, flashing with mirages in the July heat. Agnes turned off towards Ongar, glad to leave the traffic jam behind. She passed leafy villages, golden arable fields ripe and swaying, flat pastures where elegant horses grazed. She reached the village of Broxted, then turned off up a dirt track as directed, and parked by a gate at the end. The field sloped upwards away from the village, and at the top she could see a clump of trees, interspersed with bright blue tarpaulins. She climbed the gate and set off up the hill to the camp. As she approached she saw the trees were festooned with streamers, the tarpaulin tents decorated with flowers, tinsel and old coat hangers.

A young woman was crouched by a smouldering fire, prodding at the embers, trying to balance a blackened kettle on the stones. She looked up, grinned at Agnes, then carried on. A boy was sitting further off, playing the guitar. He had long blond dreadlocks. He looked up. ‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hello,’ Agnes said. ‘I’m — um — looking for someone called Sam. She might have come here. She’s a friend of a girl called Becky.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, they’re here. They went off to buy stuff in town.’ A few notes trickled from his guitar.

‘Sort of shoulder-length hair, mousy-brown —’ Agnes asked.

‘Yeah, that’s the one. They shouldn’t be long. Have a cup of tea if Jenn ever gets the kettle to boil.’

‘Oh yeah, and you have a PhD in thermodynamics,’ the girl by the fire said.

‘Might do.’

Agnes sat down, screwing up her eyes against the smoke. There was a jangle from the nearest tree and a boy abseiled gracefully down. He threw some rope to the young man. ‘Jeff — we’ve done the walkway between these two,’ he said. ‘Rona’s up there now.’

Agnes looked up and saw a young woman suspended in mid-air. On each side of her the huge oaks reached out their ancient branches into the shimmering sky. Her long red curls danced as she began to move, and Agnes saw that her hands were on one rope, her feet on another. Against the blue sky she walked from one tree to the next. Agnes began to see why Sam would want to stay.

Jenn rinsed some mugs out and made tea, squeezing every last thick brown drop out of each teabag. Agnes watched a figure sauntering lazily up the hill from the village. As the girl came close she saw Agnes and stopped in her tracks.

Agnes looked at her. ‘No, I haven’t come to take you back.’

Sam broke into a broad smile. ‘Great. ’Cos you can’t, I’m staying here, it’s great, look these are my friends, this is Jeff and this is Jenn and there’s Rona up there and there’s Col, only he’s away somewhere, and Paz, and Becky, she’s still in town, and there’s Zak and his dog called Dog and — and we’re saving these trees from the diggers,’ she finished. Jenn grinned and handed her a mug of tea. Agnes looked at Sam’s tanned skin, her clear grey eyes, the laughter that bubbled from her. She remembered the nervous, huddled person that she’d last seen at the hostel.

‘No,’ Agnes said. ‘Of course I haven’t come to take you back.’

The day wore on. Paz arrived with bags of vegetables and started to cut them up for stew. People worked up in the trees, building platforms. The fire was stoked up, the sky turned pink. Sam took Agnes into the woods to show her where the road would go. Agnes saw a column of smoke rising some way away. ‘What’s that?’ she asked Sam.

‘Oh, that’s Bill. He’s lived here for years, I think. He eats rabbit and dandelions and things. Got a gun and everything.’

‘He’s not one of you, then?’

‘Nah. He’s quite friendly if you meet him, but he keeps himself to himself. Bit of a weirdo. Come on, let’s get back, Becky might be there by now.’

They wandered back to the camp, and Agnes told Sam about Mike Reynolds.

‘My dad, he says? Never ’eard of ’im.’

‘He left when you were a baby, apparently.’

Sam shrugged. ‘Nah. Bet me mum just made it up to get me back. Lyin’ cow.’

They sat around the fire and ate stew, as the moon rose in the darkening sky. Someone wondered where Becky had got to. Someone else picked up a guitar and started a song, and other voices joined in. Sam was singing by the fire, her face radiant. Up in the trees, lights went on in a tree-house and there was laughter and shouting.

Then, a scream. A strangled cry from the woods. The music stopped. Another scream, a man’s voice crying for help.

‘Paz,’ someone said. They scrambled to their feet, people slid down from the trees, grabbing torches, heading towards the sound, the voice which cried again, ‘Help, help, come quickly.’

They ran into the trees, and their torchlight picked out the outline, the chalk-white face of Paz. He was speechless, pointing back the way he’d come, and he led them stumbling into the woods, then stopped.

They all converged at a point between the trees. Torch beams swayed across the rough ground, picking out a bundle. It wore a striped jumper, and thick locks of hair fell around its face.

Agnes heard Sam whisper, ‘It’s Becky.’

Chapter Two

Becky’s eyes were wide and staring and bloodshot, and her face in the torchlight was white, twisted in horror. She was lying at an odd angle, one arm flung out stiffly to one side. Agnes noticed there were deep red marks around her neck.

Sam burst into tears, an escalation of shrieking sobs, and Paz put his arm round her and tried to lead her away, but she ran back, screaming Becky’s name.

Rona caught her, restrained her. ‘We’ll call the police,’ she said.

‘Hang on,’ Jeff said, above Sam’s cries. ‘Do we want to invite them in?’

‘What else do we do?’ Rona shouted. ‘Bury her ourselves? Someone’s done this.’

Jeff looked at Rona, looked at Becky, looked at Rona again. He nodded.

Rona took Sam’s arm. ‘Come with me,’ she said, heading back to the camp. As Sam allowed herself to be led away, Agnes heard her say, between sobs, ‘I didn’t know she meant it.’

The others began to stumble back to the camp. Paz said to Agnes, ‘We ought to sit with her, maybe?’ 

They crouched down next to the body. Paz kept shaking his head, his hand over his mouth, his eyes staring fixedly at Becky. ‘Shouldn’t we close her eyes?’ he asked at one point.

‘No, just leave her,’ Agnes said. She, too, was staring at the body, at the bruising on the face and neck, at the dishevelled clothes, the face seared with the anguish of a soul wrenched to freedom. She tried to remember Becky alive, as she’d been for the few brief days she’d spent at the hostel, when Sam had first become friends with her. Agnes recalled spending an afternoon with her, sitting over mugs of tea and trying to find out from gentle questioning why she’d run away. Agnes remembered her neat brown hair, her ordinary jeans and cheap trainers. She’d been quiet and well-behaved, and in her three days with them had given nothing away. It was the raucous ones who survived, Agnes always felt, the loud, rude ones who pierced their noses and tattooed their arms with safety pins and somehow managed to fight their way out of their hell. It was the Beckys of this world who would accept their lot, who would drift quietly away, unable to say what they’d run from in the first place; defeated by their belief that disclosing what had happened would just make everything much, much worse.

And now, here she was. How many others have we failed, Agnes thought, staring at the body. And of those we fail, how many end up like this?

The night was still pitch-black, and the warm air hung heavily over the trees. Agnes got up and stood over Becky, allowing every detail to imprint itself on her mind. She saw a rope slung across a nearby tree-stump, and wondered whether anyone would leave behind a murder weapon like that. Some spiky twigs were sprinkled across Becky’s face and around the body. Very carefully Agnes picked one up and sniffed it. It was rosemary.

From the camp they could hear voices, sobbing, shouting. Agnes smelt wood-smoke nearby. Then there were sirens, the flash of blue lights from the lane below.

‘Thank God,’ Paz said.

After that came the slow invasion of the outside world. Policemen, floodlights, a photographer, people with sticky tape and plastic bags, at one point a police surgeon, the crackle of radios, the taking-down of statements.

Agnes stood at the edge, eavesdropping on the barked instructions, the snatches of speculation. At one point she was asked by someone to give a statement.

‘Sister Agnes?’ he repeated when she told him her name.

‘Yes, I’m a nun,’ she said.

‘Hardly your cup of tea here,’ he remarked.

‘I knew Becky. She stayed in a hostel I work at.’

‘Oh. Right Charlie Woods,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Detective Sergeant.’

‘She was strangled, wasn’t she?’ Agnes asked.

‘Can’t say anything at this stage.’

‘But those marks —’

Charlie met her eyes. ‘Not a nice way to go,’ he said.

The outside world retreated, taking its photos and statements with it. The dawn was cold and grey, and everyone found themselves huddled around the tiny fire, tear-stained faces, fingers wrapped around mugs of tea. Agnes began to build the fire up into a blaze. Sam gazed into the flames, grey with exhaustion and shock.

Finally Jeff spoke. ‘What shall we do now?’

‘What is there to do?’ Rona asked.

‘I mean, now Becky’s gone.’

‘We carry on, don’t we?’

‘With her, I mean, not even buried or anything …’

‘Are you saying we should give up now?’ Jenn said, ‘We should think about what Becky would have wanted.’

‘And Becky would have wanted us to stay and fight,’ Rona said.

Jeff stared at the fire. ‘Yeah,’ he said at last.

‘Maybe whoever killed her wanted us to go,’ Paz said.

‘You mean it was to scare us?’

‘Oh, I dunno,’ Paz said. ‘It seems a bit fuckin’ strong for the usual heavies, however much they hate us.’

‘Might be a security guard?’

‘On his own? In the woods at night? No.’ Jeff shook his head. ‘On an eviction, maybe, but one on his own —’

‘What about the Press?’ Zak said.

‘What about them?’

‘Oh God,’ Rona said, ‘that’s all we need. “Anti-Road Girl Murdered on Mil Link Protest” …’ She buried her head in her hands.

Agnes looked across at Sam. She was gazing blankly into the fire; but there was a terror behind her eyes.

Someone started a warning cry, a ‘Yip, yip, yip,’ as a figure approached the camp.

‘It’s only Col,’ someone said. 

‘Col —’ Sam shook herself, jumped up and ran to meet him, flinging her arms around him, talking at him. The others watched as he stopped dead, hearing the terrible news, staring at Sam in disbelief, then breaking into a run.

‘Is it true?’ he said, stumbling to the fireside. He was a slight, dark-haired boy of about seventeen, with hollow eyes and a thin face. Sam sat next to him and they whispered for a while.

Now that Col was here, Sam was edgy, anxious, desperate. Agnes remembered her words when she’d first seen Becky’s body — ‘I didn’t know she meant it.’ She watched Sam for a while, then quietly went and sat with her and Col. They both fell abruptly silent.

‘Sam,’ Agnes said, ‘you need to eat. And we need to talk. Do you fancy breakfast somewhere?’ Sam looked at Col. ‘Both of you, if you like?’ Agnes added.

Col shook his head and wandered off towards the trees. Sam shrugged and followed Agnes rather aimlessly down the hill, away from the camp, back to the track where, a lifetime ago, Agnes had left her car.

‘So, what do you want to do?’ Agnes sat opposite Sam in the garish restaurant of a service station just off the Mil. She took a mouthful of limp bacon. ‘You can stay at the camp. You can come back with me — I can find room at the hostel. And you ought to have a think about Mike Reynolds too.’

Sam pushed a mushroom around her plate. ‘I can’t think straight, can I?’ she mumbled. ‘I’ve ’ad it wiv me mum, I’ve ’ad it wiv fuckin’ do-gooders trying to send me back there, and now Becky’s dead and me and Col —’ She stopped herself, glanced at Agnes, took a huge mouthful of toast.

‘You and Col what?’ Agnes said gently.

Sam shook her head, her mouth full. After a moment, Agnes said, ‘No one’s going to force you to do anything. You’re sixteen now, you have rights of your own. If you feel safe at the camp you have every right to stay there.’

‘It’s like, I feel I belong there, you know?’ Sam said.

They drove back to the camp. A police car was parked by the gate, and two officers were standing by the kitchen bender, talking to Jeff.

‘… advise you all to leave here,’ Agnes heard one of them say.

‘Is that all the protection you can offer us, then,’ Jeff said angrily, ‘that we have to go?’

‘The choice is yours, sir,’ the officer said. Jeff muttered something and wandered off towards the woods.

Agnes turned to the police. ‘Those marks around her neck,’ she began. ‘Becky’s, I mean. Was it that rope? Only I noticed, near the scene of the crime …’ The policemen exchanged glances and Agnes felt suddenly foolish.

‘The rope’s being examined,’ one said.

‘But those marks —’ Agnes tried again.

The policeman eyed her closely. ‘We’re still searching for the ligature,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘A chain, we think. Like jewellery. That sort of chain. It might have broken in the process, hence the rope. Off the record, you understand.’

From the corner of her eye Agnes saw Col appear by the furthest benders. Sam ran to join him, and together they went off to the woods.

*

‘I don’t know, Julius,’ Agnes said. ‘I felt bad leaving her there. I’m not sure she’s safe.’

‘I’m surprised the police haven’t just cleared them out. If there’s some psychopath at large —’

‘But I’m not sure there is. Sam seemed to know — to know something about it.’

‘Aren’t you being a bit —’

‘Fanciful?’

‘Well, you do have this tendency …’

Agnes yawned. The church clock chimed four, and Julius closed the file on his desk, raising a cloud of dust which sparkled in the sunlight. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve slept,’ he said.

Agnes shook her head. ‘By the way, I told Sam about Mike.’

‘He’s been on to us again.’

‘What now?’

‘Apparently he got quite heavy with Mary, her social worker. She asked whether you’d phone him, although in the circumstances —’

‘No, that’s fine. Maybe tomorrow? I’m having supper with Athena, if I can stay awake.’

Leaving Julius, Agnes was tempted to linger in the empty church for a while. But she thought of Becky lying dead in the woods, and the image was so strong, so overwhelming, she was frightened to allow it in.

*

‘Well, frankly, poppet, if you must set up home in some filthy patch of trees, what can you expect? Oh these blasted cartons, the stuff inside’s delicious, but you die of starvation before you can ever get to it. Thanks, sweetie,’ she added, as Agnes came over and neatly opened a carton of fresh asparagus soup.

‘So you think she deserved it then?’

‘Oh, sweetie, no, of course not. But I mean, the rest of us manage to live our lives without having to swing from trees. Does that wood-smoke smell ever wash out?’

‘I hope so. It’s the fleas I’m worried about.’ Agnes laughed as Athena recoiled in horror. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, breaking off a piece of bread, ‘you seem happier than before. It must be that some lovely man has appeared on the horizon.’

‘Not at all, darling,’ Athena said, absently scratching her head. ‘It’s not as if I depend on having a man around to give me a purpose in life. I just decided to think positive, that’s all. I enjoy my work, Simon’s really pleased with how the gallery’s going, I’ve got friends, a nice flat …’

‘And?’

Athena poured the soup into bowls and brought them to the table. ‘Well, there is this man, actually, not like that, I’ve hardly spoken to him, but he’s been coming into the gallery a lot, and there is a sort of something between us, you know, a
frisson
… and yesterday he came in with these leaflets and asked if I’d display them. Some workshop thing he’s doing.’

‘What sort of workshop?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Probably one of those drumming things for New Men when they all cry about their dads. And he’s got a ponytail, I never trust that in a man, you know.’

‘No, quite.’

‘Nice eyes, though, sort of blue, intense. When he looks at you, it’s kind of like he knows you — am I boring you?’ she added, as Agnes yawned again.

‘No, of course not, I’m just knackered, that’s all.’

‘Poor you. Finding that girl dead like that, it must have been awful. Mind you, there must be all sorts of people who’d want those kids out of the way.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, there they are, trying to take on the Government, and big business, and people like bailiffs and security guards — in fact, it’s amazing they survive at all.’

*

Next morning, Agnes sat in the chapel of her community, joining her voice to those of her fellow sisters in the Mass. She listened to the murmuring liturgy and felt cleansed by it, soothed, like sand at the tide's edge. Afterwards Madeleine joined her in the kitchen.

‘So, you OK for the hostel rota this week, Agnes?’

‘Oh. Um, yes. Except, not tomorrow. And maybe not the next day, I’m not sure yet.’

‘Julius told me about Becky. But I don’t see why —’

‘I’m needed at the camp,’ Agnes said, as if it was obvious. They were alone in the kitchen now. Madeleine sat at the table.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘Well, Sam’s there, and she’s quite upset, and there’s this business with this Michael, her father. In fact, that reminds me, I must phone him today, I promised Julius — and anyway, I think Sam’s in danger too.’ 

Madeleine traced the rings of the pinewood with her finger. ‘Aren’t the police dealing with it?’