The Quick and the Dead (A Sister Agnes Mystery) (14 page)

‘We weren’t to know.’

‘And after what he’d been through, anyone would have a weak heart, and I just go and fill him up with fucking poison — ’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Agnes said firmly.

He looked at her. ‘It’s nice of you to say so,’ he said flatly. She returned his stare. ‘And what had he been through? You just said, “after what he’d been through —”’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ There was a distance in his eyes.

‘Oh come on, Bill —’

He surveyed the surrounding trees.

‘Last night,’ she went on, ‘it seems to me that you were close enough behind me to help with Col — almost as soon as I found him, you were there.’

‘So?’

‘So how come you appear not to have seen the person who was shadowing me?’

Bill eyed Agnes for a moment. ‘I don’t get you.’

‘It’s quite simple, Bill. Someone was walking behind me, making sure that their footsteps were in time with mine, almost as soon as I left the camp. Now either it was you — in which case, why so furtive? Or, it was someone else, someone known to Dog, too — in which case, why didn't you see them?’

Bill paused, then said, ‘I thought we might be getting on better than this by now.’

‘Or,’ Agnes went on, ‘you did see them, in which case the question is, why didn’t you say anything? Now I’m sure you have your own reasons for lurking in the forest, and I’m not actually interested in what they might be. But when it comes to someone’s life being in danger, a boy not yet out of his teens, and you lurk and lurk and know more than you bother to tell until it’s too bloody late —’

Bill’s voice was quiet. ‘You’re angry with me?’

‘Of course I’m bloody angry with you. You and your silly hippy ego trip of Knowing the Ways of the Forest, when we all know that for every vole or fox you see, you see ten bloody detectives or bailiffs or security guards or whatever they are — it seems to me, you could have done more than you did.’ Bill was staring at the ground. His voice was quiet. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

There was silence between them. Bill said, ‘You’re right to be angry. I’m angry too. And yeah, I should have been quicker. I knew he was in danger, and I was too late.’ Agnes looked at his profile as he stared out towards the edge of the wood. He blinked and turned to her. ‘And unlike you, I have no one to shout at.’

Agnes swallowed. ‘Bill.’ He was looking at her. ‘Bill, I’m —’ She took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t mean to sound as if I was accusing you.’ He waited. ‘I’m upset, I suppose.’

‘We both are,’ he said. He sat on the ground, and she sat down next to him, pulling her raincoat around her. 

‘OK,’ he said, after a while. ‘In answer to your questions. Firstly, yeah, sure, I see the odd geezer sizing the place up at odd hours of the night, usually at first light when all your crusties there are still asleep. But what’s the big deal? It’s Department of Transport land and they want it back. Secondly, there wasn’t anyone else following you last night. It was me.’

‘So why —?’

‘Why creep along? Because, Little Sister, I wanted to know where you were going. It’s simple. You interest me.’ Agnes fiddled with a loose button on her coat. ‘But — but you must have seen Col come into the woods earlier?’

Bill shook his head. ‘He must have come from the village, across the fields. He wouldn’t have passed me.’

‘But you knew he was in danger. You just said —’

‘I know only what I told you,’ Bill said sharply. ‘I heard one conversation about their shared history, and that’s all. And I knew they were scared. And, yeah, sure, I should have known more, but like I say, I live here. I have my meat to hunt for. My purpose is not to look out for the safety of that lot, although I do what I can. In this case, it wasn’t enough.’ He pulled at some bits of moss on a tree-stump next to him. ‘Agnes?’ he said, and she turned to him. ‘Once you’ve decided that someone’s a prat, do you ever change your mind?’

Agnes wound the loose thread around its button. ‘I’m sorry about that.’

Bill stood up and stretched. ‘Shall we go back?’ Agnes got to her feet next to him, and he reached over and brushed a twig from her hair. ‘I’m only a prat sometimes,’ he said. 

Agnes turned towards the camp, smoothing her coat where she’d been sitting on it. ‘That makes two of us, then,’ she said.

‘I’m not sure women can be prats,’ he said, as they walked back to the camp. ‘Isn’t it just a masculine noun?’

‘Like priest, you mean?’

Bill stopped and looked at her. ‘You’re angry about an awful lot, aren’t you, Little Sister?’

*

Agnes joined the M25 at the slip road and swerved fast into the middle lane, ignoring the flashing lights of the driver behind her. It had never occurred to her before to question the masculinity of the priesthood; let alone to be angry about it. In her calling she had met so many interesting, scholarly, maverick, intelligent women that it had never crossed her mind that being excluded from the priesthood was any kind of issue at all. She put her foot down and dodged into the fast lane to overtake a BMW, and wondered why she had let slip that remark to Bill. Why him, she asked herself, realising as his name crossed her mind that once again, he had eluded her; his slippery sympathy, his apparent concern being a screen behind which he could hide, opaque, invisible.

She stopped for bread and cheese on the way home. There was a message on her machine from Madeleine giving Agnes her hostel rota days for the next week. She picked up the phone and dialled Mike’s number.

‘Hi,’ she heard Mike’s voice on a recorded message. ‘Mike and Sam aren’t able to come to the phone right now, but please leave us a message after the tone.’

Agnes hung up. Mike and Sam. It was all too neat, too easy. This Us, this Father-and-Daughter Us after a mere few weeks of half-hearted administration on the part of overstretched Social Services departments. Agnes picked up her London street map and looked up the estate in Stepney where Linda and Annie had spent their uneasy, chaotic childhood. She put the map in her pocket and went out, back down the stairs to her car, and drove, seeing the dilapidated blocks of post-war housing grow more grey, more shabby, until she reached the Atherton Estate. She parked in the main road opposite the estate, next to a high fence. There was a smell of burning plastic. She walked past the first block, called ‘Aberdeen Court' and found herself in a courtyard surrounded on three sides by balconied, three-storey flats. Some were obviously still well-maintained, with window boxes of petunias and geraniums; others were derelict, their broken windows boarded up. The tarmac yard was covered in broken glass, crushed cans and graffiti. Amongst the scrawled, brightly coloured names someone had written ‘Death, First and Last’. Agnes wandered further in, under an archway, emerging into another, similar courtyard. She surveyed the neat, optimistic architecture, the new hope of slum clearance, now dying in the embers of the welfare state. Somewhere in here, she thought with sudden conviction, lies the key to Sam's past. She looked up, at the nailed-up doors, at the straggling washing, signs of the struggle to maintain some kind of life amongst the debris. Where to begin, she wondered, walking back to the street. When she reached her car she saw two young men, their feet huge in roller blades, one lounging against the driver’s door, the other sitting on the bonnet. She smiled at them and they stayed exactly where they were, eyeing her as she approached them. Then the boy on the bonnet suddenly smiled back, slid off the car and both glided away down the street.

Agnes drove back to Southwark, wondering whether Julius was free to go out to eat that evening; thinking that she must phone Athena; wondering where to start to trace Sam’s early life. Back home she tried Mike’s number again and he answered.

‘Hi, Agnes, good of you to call. How’s things?’

‘I suppose you know about Sam’s friend Col having died?’ There was the briefest pause. ‘Yes. She told me he had asthma. I guess living rough doesn’t help all that. Hey, she’s here, do you want a word?’

Sam came on the line. ‘I was going to ring you,’ she said quietly. ‘Running off and that, lunched it, you know.’

‘It’s OK,’ Agnes said. ‘It must have been a bit much for you after Becky too.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So you haven’t told Mike the whole story?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He said Col’s death was asthma.’ Agnes waited. Eventually Sam said, ‘It was.’

‘And Becky?’

‘What about her?’

‘And the past lives? And Emily Quislan?’

Agnes heard Sam catch her breath, before she said, ‘Oh, you know, all that that —’

‘Sam, I need a straight answer.’

‘It weren’t really me, it were Becky and Col, and now they’re gone anyway, like she said — ’ 

‘Like who said?’

‘I never met her, Col told me about her, and when Becky died he got scared ’cos of what she’d said.’

‘Sam — who’ll be next?’

‘No one. That’s it now.’

‘Not you?’

‘She never knew about me. It was only what Col told me, that’s all I knew. He said it was secret. I gotta go now.’

‘Sam, you’ve got to tell me more. If Becky’s murderer is out there —’

‘Mike says it’s me tea. Bye.’

‘Sam —’

‘I’ll tell you what I think, Agnes. I think they made it up. I think they wanted to liven things up a bit. Anyway, it’s over now. Gotta go. Bye.’

Agnes held the receiver in her hand, then slowly put it down. She remembered that Julius had said he was visiting friends that evening; anyway, she wasn’t hungry. She poured herself a glass of Côtes du Rhône and sat at her desk, thinking. Emily Quislan was a mid-Victorian lady who owned a nice little patch of land in Essex. Col was a young homeless boy who had died in hospital the night before from a weak heart and an asthmatic attack. Agnes put down her glass and began to doodle on a notepad. And, she thought, Col and Emily were linked because Emily Quislan once had the rights to a water source called Fyffes Well, which was on the land occupied by the Ark, and which was blocked up, only to be reopened 150 years later. And now someone was threatening to poison it. And Becky and Col were both found with rosemary. 

Agnes sipped her wine. And Bill knows more than he’s letting on, she thought, remembering the measured tread of cracking twigs behind her in the forest. And Sam is now rewriting her story so that all her terror has vanished, and it turns out that Becky and Col were just making things up.

She drained her glass, stretched, got up and looked absently out of the window. It had begun to drizzle, although the night was still warm. She felt as if everyone was drifting away from her, Bill with his rhetorical tricks, Sam with her new-found loyalty to Mike; Becky and Col, now beyond her reach altogether. Someone went into the call-box, hesitated, then picked out a card and left hurriedly. Agnes stared down into the street, thinking it was time to do her evening worship and go to bed. She drew the curtains. The truth about someone, she thought, is separate from them. Emily Quislan, long since dead, still has a truth about her that I can uncover: maybe several, conflicting truths. And Sam, whatever she tries to tell me now, still has a history that is accessible to me. And Becky and Col — yes, even Becky and Col, Agnes thought, lighting a candle and preparing to pray — even they have left behind a truth that can be uncovered — not only can be, but must be. She stared into the candle flame as it threw juddering shadows onto the plain white wall. 

Chapter Twelve

On Sunday afternoon, Agnes was startled by a ring at her doorbell. She had attended Julius’s Mass in the morning, and had had lunch at her community, and was now at home, not expecting visitors; so it was with some surprise that she opened the door to find Nic standing there. The rain of the night before had cleared, and he stood in the sunshine in denim jeans and a plain white T-shirt.

‘I’m — um — I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ he began.

‘No. Well, come in.’

He looked uneasily around her bed-sitting-room, choosing eventually to sit on the chair by her desk.

‘Can I get you a drink or something?’ Agnes offered. Nic shook his head, so she sat opposite him on the bed. ‘Is it about Athena?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he replied, and she realised then that the reason he looked so different was that he no longer had a ponytail but had had his hair cut short. ‘She’s told you, presumably,’ he went on.

‘About the — the baby, yes.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’ His hand went to the back of his neck where his hair used to be, then dropped to his lap again. 

‘I couldn't think of anyone else I could talk to about it.’ Agnes waited, then said, ‘How is Athena?’

‘Not brilliant. You’ve seen her, I guess?’

‘On Thursday. Not — um, not since then.’

‘She didn’t say what happened. Only that you both —’

‘She wouldn’t listen,’ Agnes said. ‘I didn’t want to judge her, really I didn’t.’

‘Anyway, she went to her house in Gloucestershire on Friday. You know it? It’s just a little terrace apparently.’

‘Yes,’ Agnes said, remembering the beginning of their friendship, the boozy evenings by Athena’s fireside, the lopsided Grecian rug hanging on the wall, the chrome dolphins in the bathroom. ‘Yes, I know that house. When’s she due back?’

‘This evening, supposedly. The thing is, Agnes, she’s made an appointment. For a termination.’

‘Oh. When?’

‘Tuesday.’

‘Right.’

Nic looked at her. ‘I really want her to keep the baby.’

‘Look, are you sure you don’t want some tea or something?’

‘And,’ Nic went on, ‘I thought perhaps you’d feel the same.’

‘What I feel is hardly relevant.’

‘But, about life — I mean, surely you believe, with your faith, that abortion is wrong. And in my work I’ve come to believe the same. You see, there are times when I’m really aware of this kind of legacy, this sense of lives that haven’t formed, it’s kind of karma and I think, who are we to know what’s right? The problem with our society, now, is that we live in the short-term, with no regard for the consequences. It’s all Me Me Me and —’

‘And what do you think is right for Athena?’ she interrupted.

Nic matched her direct gaze. ‘That’s what I’m trying to say,’ he said. ‘If she gets rid of that baby, no one knows what she’ll have done to herself.’

‘And if she doesn’t get rid of it?’

‘Then she’ll be a mother. And I’ll be …’

‘You’re already a father, aren’t you?’

‘That was a long time ago.’

He looked away and Agnes studied him for a moment. He turned to her again. ‘I really like Athena,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised by her. She’s so uncertain, and vulnerable, and she has all this passion and everything.’ He smiled. ‘She’s so honest, you see. She pretends all this sophistication stuff, but she’s so instinctively truthful she can’t hide. She’s an innocent. I never thought I’d feel like this about her.’

Agnes looked at the grey streaks in his newly-shorn hair, at his frank, clear eyes, at the long, tanned fingers which once again searched the back of his neck. ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘I’m not very happy about the idea of this termination either. But if she’s sure it’s right for her —’

‘But you know her. She’s not sure about anything really. It’s like my ponytail, I knew she didn’t like it but she wouldn’t say. She never actually asked me to cut it off. She wasn’t sure enough of what she thought to impose her views on me.’

‘She seems sure about this, though.’ 

Nic sighed. ‘Yes. Yes, she does.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Agnes, what do you think?’

Agnes looked at him. ‘I think, like you, that life is sacred.’

*

After Nic had gone, Agnes was restless. It was still early in the afternoon, but the sunshine had given way to the same damp humidity of yesterday. She had promised Nic she would talk to Athena, although now it seemed unlikely that Athena would want to listen. She thought about Nic, his obvious affection for Athena, his attempt to explain his views. Did he believe the soul was eternal, she wondered. For that matter, did she?

She thought of Ross Turner and his faithful followers, and on a sudden impulse picked up the phone and dialled Roger’s number. Elizabeth answered.

‘Hello, it’s Sister Agnes here, do you remember, you very kindly introduced me to Ross.’

‘Pastor Turner isn’t here at the moment,’ Elizabeth replied.

‘No, it’s just a quick question for you or Roger, perhaps.’

‘I’m not sure I’ve the authority to —’

‘Did a boy called Colin Hadley, known as Col, did he ever attend your church?’

Elizabeth seemed to be whispering to someone in the background. ‘It’s that nun who visited,’ Agnes heard, before she came back on the line. ‘Sorry about that, Steven was talking to me.’

‘Colin Hadley,’ Agnes prompted.

‘Colin Hadley?’

‘He was a friend of Becky’s.’

‘Here?’ 

‘That’s what I’m asking you,’ Agnes said.

There was more conferring, then Elizabeth said, ‘No. We don’t know anyone of that name.’

Agnes thanked her and hung up. As if, she thought, I could expect anything to break through the wall of secrecy surrounding Ross Turner. She opened her notebook again and stared at the phone number of the Stanton household. She picked up the receiver, imagining the conversation with Shirley, probably still silent with grief, or worse, the call being taken by Morris, who would swear blind that Becky knew no one called Col; whether she did or not. She replaced the receiver and stared out of the window, and tried to imagine what it would be like to have a father like that, so desperate to be a part of one’s life. She remembered how, aged eight, she had a best friend called Antoinette, and how, after that, her father would refer to any girl who came to the house as Antoinette. In the end, it was in part his negligence that had driven her, aged eighteen, into the arms of Hugo. She frowned and fiddled with a pen, and then thought, everyone has their reasons; Sam had, finally, had enough. Col, who knows? And Becky; what drove Becky to run away? All the papers in the file, all the conversations with the people at the Ark, even meeting her parents, nothing had quite answered that question. Whatever had triggered her decision to stay away from home had also driven her into circumstances that were to cause her death.

It was five thirty-five. Agnes picked up her coat and bag and went out.

*

The grey outlines of the Atherton Estate looked even more forbidding against the thunderous sky. Four kids were playing some kind of gambling game throwing coins in one corner by the staircase. They broke off to stare at her as she walked through the archway into Kincaid Court. Once again, she wondered why she’d come. She looked up to the first floor, imagining Linda Whittaker hanging out washing, shooing children back indoors. Her eye was caught by an elderly man making painstaking progress along the walkway. She heard him slowly descending the flights of stairs, heard the tap of his stick at each step, until eventually he emerged, breathlessly, into the courtyard. She went up to him.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ she began. He blinked at her nervously with opaque, watery eyes. ‘I wonder if you could help me. Have you lived here long?’

‘Since the sixties,’ he said, eyeing her suspiciously.

‘Did you know — did you know the Whittakers?’

He stared at her, then said, ‘Aye. Those two girls, Anne and — Linda, weren’t it?’ He nodded. ‘Proper tearaways. Drove their poor mother to drink.’

‘I wonder if —’

‘1962 I moved down here from Sheffield, me and the wife, Joan, God rest her soul. Yes, I remember the Whittakers.’

‘But there were other young people, weren’t there, who hung around with the girls?’

The man laughed suddenly, a wheezing laugh. ‘If you mean lads, oh aye, there were lads what hung around those girls. And those girls give ’em reason to an’ all.’

‘Can you remember their names?’

There was a sudden shouting overhead, a stream of abuse, then a door slammed. 

‘The Wheeler boy, what was his name, Bob. And my boy would have done, only he were a bit young for all that, young Edward. He lives in Milton Keynes, you know.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Those Reynolds, there were a girl and boy — Julie and Mike, that was them. Their dad worked for the Post Office and moved out Wembley way, I think.’

‘Mike Reynolds.’

‘Aye, that were ’im. In fact, now’s I come to think of it, he ’ad a kid wi’ one. That Linda, weren’t it? Everyone said it were ’is kid. And those Yates boys, David and Alex, rough kids, they used to swap cigarettes for favours. And the Bevan boys, you’ve got me started now, aye, those Bevan boys —’

‘Did you say Bevan?’

‘Aye, Tom and Greg Bevan.’

‘T — Tom Bevan?’

‘Greg were the older one, he made good he did, had a chain of video shops in the end. Don’t know what happened to Tom.’

The door above opened again, and there was more shouting and then the sound of glass breaking. The elderly man looked at Agnes and smiled vaguely. ‘It’s been very nice talking to you. Don’t often get to hear the sound of my own voice these days. Goodbye.’

He tapped his way across the courtyard and Agnes followed at a distance. The kids stopped their game to watch him pass. A boy, smaller than the rest, spat in his direction, and was slapped by one of the older boys. As Agnes went out of the courtyard, she could still hear the sound of the small boy’s crying. 

Back at her flat, she put some pasta on to boil. Tom Bevan, she thought, going to her bag and fishing out Col’s bus ticket. She laid it out on her desk, staring at the scribbled name, the phone number underneath. It was a London exchange. The same Tom Bevan, Agnes wondered. Or just a coincidence?

She felt suddenly tired, turned down the heat under the pasta and flopped on to her bed. Becky and Col, she thought, and Sam and — and Athena. She got up, picked up her phone and dialled Athena’s number.

‘Hi.’ Athena’s voice was tired.

‘It’s Agnes.’

‘I thought it might be.’

‘Do you want some supper?’

‘What, now?’

‘It’s suppertime, isn’t it?’

‘Dunno, I feel so sick that food has just become some awful tyranny. Yes, I’ll come over if you’re sure that’s OK.’

‘Great. Athena?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve been thinking of you.’

‘Oh. Right.’ She rang off.

Athena looked terrible. There were more grey roots showing in her hair and she was wearing a pair of garish pink leggings with holes in the knees and a pilled grey jumper. She flopped on to the bed, while Agnes chopped onions and tomatoes for a sauce.

‘How was Gloucestershire?’ she shouted from her kitchen. 

‘It was nice to be home, actually,’ Athena shouted, brightening a little.

‘Didn’t you have tenants there?’

‘I did, they’ve left. I’ve got to work out whether to rent it out again, if I’m staying in London.’

‘What do you mean, if?’ Agnes said, coming into the room and pulling out the flaps on her table.

‘Oh, you never know, do you,’ Athena said. Agnes looked at her, then disappeared back into the kitchen. ‘Guess who I saw?’ Athena said, her voice lightening again.

‘Don’t tell me,’ Agnes said. ‘My horrible ex-husband. Back in Gloucestershire.’

‘You don’t think he’s horrible. Ever since he remarried you’ve been quite well-disposed towards him. Anyway, I bumped into them in the High Street.’

‘Them?’

‘Hugo. And Gabrielle. The third Madame Bourdillon.’

‘Oh.’

‘You’d like her.’

‘I doubt it.’

Athena laughed. ‘Yes, you would. Anyway, they’re thinking of buying property in England again.’

‘How lovely for them. I hope they’re not expecting me to visit.’

‘Do you know, he never mentioned you. Not once.’

‘He must have been on his best behaviour, then,’ Agnes said, pouring Athena a glass of red wine.

‘I’m not supposed to drink this,’ Athena said, screwing up her nose and taking a huge swig of wine.

Agnes was about to speak, but instead she went quietly back to the kitchen to stir the sauce.

As they sat over plates of tagliatelle, Agnes said, ‘Nic was here this afternoon.’

‘Yes, he told me.’

‘You’ve seen him?’