The Quick and the Dead (A Sister Agnes Mystery) (19 page)

‘Yeah. Except he didn’t know she was here.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘When she ran away, the last time, she went to London for a day or two first. That’s what she said. The trail had gone cold.’

Agnes frowned. ‘Hmm. Maybe.’

‘Anyway, the police questioned him, you said.’

‘Yes.’

‘And let him go.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s doing me in, Agnes. It just goes round and round my head. I want out of here, I’ve been full-on for months now, it’s time to go. I can’t be up for the eviction — you have to really care to carry that off, you know?’ She wiped tears from her eyes. ‘It’s not enough to die for. I just wish she’d bloody confided in me. It’s not knowing, you see. Not knowing if she loved someone else. She could’ve told me before someone bloody strangled her.’ Her voice faltered and she started to cry. Agnes put her arms round her and Jenn leaned against her, sobbing. Agnes held her for a while, until her crying abated. After a while she said, ‘Jenn — will you go back to college?’

Jenn nodded, sniffing.

‘When you get there, will you promise me that you’ll see someone? A counsellor, or chaplain, someone you can trust. Your tutor, maybe. You need to tell someone all this, else you’ll never be able to move on from it.’

Jenn nodded again, taking the paper handkerchief that Agnes passed to her. ‘And in the meantime,’ Agnes went on, getting up, ‘there’s someone else I must talk to.’

*

Half an hour later, Agnes was in the kitchen bender making a large mound of peanut butter sandwiches. People came by, some familiar, some she’d never seen before, and she handed them out. When she got to the last two rounds, she cut them in fours, wrapped them in a cleanish-looking plastic bag and set off for the forest.

There was a trail of smoke coming from Bill’s encampment as Agnes approached, and a hunched, blanket-clad figure sitting with his back to her.

‘I thought you might be tired of rabbit, so I brought you these,’ Agnes said.

Bill turned. For a moment he looked pensive, hostile even, but his face cleared on seeing her. She sat down next to him and unwrapped the sandwiches. He laughed.

‘How exquisite. Finger sandwiches. Where’s the Darjeeling tea and the scones?’

‘If only.’ Agnes smiled.

‘How’s my Little Sister, then?’

‘I am certainly not little, and neither am I your sister.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Firstly, there’s an awful lot you know about these deaths but aren’t telling me. Secondly, I’m having a crisis of faith.’

Bill chewed on a sandwich, studying her. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You seem angry to me.’

‘I am.’ Agnes’s eyes fell on a length of rope slung across a branch of his bender.

‘What about?’ 

‘It can wait. Shall we talk about Becky? And Col?’

‘I’d rather talk about you. You’re much more interesting.’

‘Too bad. Firstly, do you have rosemary amongst your herbal collection?’

‘Rosemary? No. These are just bits from the forest I’m drying off.’

‘OK. Secondly, when Col died — what did you think?’

Bill eyed her closely. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You appeared, if I may say so, to feel responsible.’

‘Only that blasted Ventolin stuff, I should have known.’

‘Is that all?’

Bill sighed. ‘I should have known, too, that he was likely just to curl up and die. I should have gone in the ambulance, kept talking to him, kept him wanting to live.’ Bill stared into the distance, as if reliving the events of that night.

Agnes spoke quietly, watching Bill. ‘Why — why did he not want to live?’

Bill turned back to her. ‘You saw him. He’d been living in fear for weeks. He hadn’t been breathing properly for ages. Then whatever happened that night —’

‘Which you know about —’

Bill’s eyes narrowed. ‘Whatever happened that night sent him into crisis. He gave up. He wanted out.’

‘Bill, a boy of seventeen with everything to live for doesn’t just give up.’

Bill laughed, mirthlessly. ‘Everything to live for, Princess? Which planet are you on, then? That kid had no home, no parents, no one who gave a toss. Then he comes here, and finds some kind of friendship with two girls — then one gets murdered and the other’s about to start a whole new life away from him.’ Bill smiled the same empty smile. ‘So that’s everything to live for, is it?’

Agnes felt a wave of rage, hearing Bill try to evade her questions yet again. She looked at him, her eyes flashing. ‘And what about Emily Quislan?’ she said.

Bill blinked, opened his mouth, checked himself. Slowly he said, ‘What about her?’

‘You tell me.’

He smiled, recovered, charming again. ‘One day. I promise.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Bill, there’s a murderer out there. You could be done for obstructing the Coroner, aiding and abetting, breaking and entering —’

‘You credit me with more intelligence than I deserve. Listen, Princess, how about this: Becky had a run-in with a heavy, all fists no brains, you know the type, shell-shocked from Belfast or Goose Green or somewhere, up to here on steroids — kills her. Oops. How’s anyone going to track him down unless he gibbers on about it over a few pints one day? And Col, like I said, asthma. End of story. You see, it seems to me, Princess, that there you are having a personal crisis of some kind, angry with your order or your parents or someone, some deep anger that’s really knocked you sideways; and so, being the kind of person you are, you’re off chasing murderers as a distraction from the real issues, the things you ought to be thinking about on a personal level.’

Agnes stood up, brushing leaves from her legs. ‘One day, Forest Bill from Colchester, who’s always so mysteriously clean, I’m going to walk up to you and punch you on the nose.’

Bill looked at her, screwing up his eyes against the sunlight. He laughed. ‘You’ll have to catch me first. Thanks for the sandwiches.’

Agnes strode back to the camp in fury, muttering to herself in rage. ‘That Bill,’ she said to Rona, as she unloaded her sleeping bag from her car, ‘I could whack him in his superior bloody face.’

‘It’s time someone did,’ Rona said. ‘He’s a creep. We think someone’s paying him to keep an eye on us — not that he’s very efficient, the nearer we get to the eviction the less interested he seems in us. Have you noticed he’s moved his camp further away?’

Agnes unrolled her sleeping bag in Rona’s bender, then went back to the car. It was three o’clock. That gave her half an hour to drive to Chingford.

*

Bob Wheeler showed her into his office. It was small but comfortable. The window was open, letting in afternoon sunlight and a slight breeze. The walls were lined with photographs, snaps of functions, of jolly people wearing dinner jackets or paper hats. On one wall there was a gallery of celebrities, black-and-white photographs, each signed ‘To Bob, many thanks …’ Agnes didn’t recognise the names or the faces.

‘It was nice of you to see me,’ Agnes began, as Bob sat down at his desk opposite her. He was balding, with a broad, open face and large blue eyes.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ he asked. ‘Or tea?’ 

‘Tea would be lovely, thank you.’

Bob picked up his phone and ordered tea, then leaned back in his chair.

‘So, you know Sam. I last saw her when she was about two. What’s she like? Pretty like her mum, I bet. Well, like her mum was. In them days.’

‘You grew up with them?’

‘We all knocked around together. On the estate. It’s not like it is now, all kids hanging about, no work, nothing to do. I’m not saying we was angels, mind,’ he laughed. ‘But it’s different now. Downright evil, some of these kids. Like that boy that was killed, up in Liverpool. It’ll happen again, you know.’

‘And so Mike and Linda?’

‘We envied him. She was a — well, let’s just say, we knew it wasn’t just talk when he told us what they got up to. And we were young, still in our teens. They both had dodgy reputations, those Whittaker girls.’

The door opened and a young woman brought in a tray with two cups of tea and a plate of biscuits.

‘Sugar?’ Bob said, taking one spoonful himself.

‘And you kept in touch with Mike?’ Agnes refused the sugar.

Bob nodded. ‘Both in business, you know. Both starting from nothing, him on building sites, me on the markets. He’s had his ups and downs, like. When his first marriage split up, over in Chelmsford, his business went under then too. He moved back this way, started again.’ He stirred his tea. ‘Has guts, that man. And getting in touch with Sam again, that takes guts too. Most men wouldn’t have the nerve. So, how’re they getting on?’

‘Well,’ Agnes took a deep breath. ‘It’s a difficult situation. Sam had no one else, so in my view, they’ve rather rushed it.’

‘Sam fallen out with Linda, then?’

‘I think Linda had to choose between her current boyfriend and Sam. And the boyfriend won.’

Bob shook his head. ‘Some things don’t change. I’m glad I left all that behind me. Me and the missus, coming up to eighteen years of marriage us, two kids. I’ve been lucky.’

‘And did you know the Bevan boys?’

‘The Bevan boys, eh?’ Bob chuckled. ‘Me and Greg Bevan, what we didn’t do, eh? Good times.’

‘And Tom?’

Bob’s face clouded. He stirred his tea again. ‘Those two, it’s like the proverbial chalk and whatsit. One gets looks, brains, the lot. Clever geezer, Greg. The other —’ He looked up from his tea. ‘Tom was a loser before he even started. Sad thing is, he was a really nice kid. Big eyes, soft, you know, wouldn’t hurt a fly. But hopeless. The kind of guy you pitch up at a club with, everyone else gets let in, the bouncer says to him, no way, mate. Just, you know, face never quite fits. And no luck, neither. Like if his car breaks down, it’s going to break down on a parking meter, ain’t it. Greg left school with all his exams and that, went to university, didn’t he. Tom left school at sixteen, worked on sites. When he was eighteen, he fell from a crane, knocked his head. In hospital for weeks. Left him with a limp. But worse than that, it kind of changed him. Greg said he was moody, depressed. Took to drink. Then he was stealing too. Greg bailed him out a few times, but he’d had it, you know? Just about disowned him.’ Bob drank some tea. ‘We all lost touch with him in the end. It’s like, we felt bad in some way.’

‘Do you know what happened to him?’

Bob shook his head.

‘You don’t think Mike still knows him?’

Bob shrugged. ‘I don’t see why he would. He was trouble, you know.’

Agnes sipped her tea. ‘When I last saw Mike and Sam, she wasn’t very happy. And Mike was … impatient with her. It made me think that if I was her father, I’d be more aware that she’d need time to adjust. It’s as if he’s just decorated a bedroom for her, bought her a whole new wardrobe, moved her into the house and everything’s fine. And it hasn’t occurred to him that life isn’t like that.’

Bob laughed. ‘That’s Mike for you. He’s always worked on the basis that money can buy anything. And what’s really annoying is that, for Mike, it works. Any time he wants a new toy, he just goes out and buys it. Wife, mistress, business, different wife —’

‘Daughter?’

Bob looked at Agnes, then picked up his empty cup and arranged it carefully on the tray. He sighed. ‘When he told me about this plan to get Sam, I have to admit, I thought here we go again. Mike wants another train set. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good bloke. Heart’s in the right place, and all that. But, yes, I have to admit, he’s not what you’d call reliable. Although, maybe now he’s got her to consider, it might be the making of him.’ Bob reached across and gathered up Agnes’s cup. ‘Let’s just hope this is one new toy he doesn’t get tired of, eh?’ 

*

That night in Rona’s bender, Agnes couldn’t sleep. She went over and over her conversation with Bob, trying to see the connection. Col had Tom Bevan’s phone number. Tom and Mike must be in touch, they must. Unless … unless Col had some other connection, totally separate. But that would be too coincidental. Tom had worked on sites. Mike had started work on building sites too. Tom had had an accident. What if … but that was ridiculous.

Agnes heard Bill’s words in her ears, his mocking, superior I-know-you-better-than-you-know-yourself words. Distracting herself from the real issues of her spiritual crisis by seeing evil where there was none. Mike might turn out to be a good enough father. Col might have died of asthma like everyone said. Becky might have been strangled by mistake … Agnes sat up, rummaged between sleeping bodies for her coat and shoes and crawled out of the bender.

It was a clear, balmy night. The moon was full, a perfect silver round, and a gentle breeze rustled through the trees. From the tree-houses came the flicker of torchlight, the sound of laughter. She laced up her shoes, wrapped her coat around her and stood, listening. The odd crack of twigs from the trees. The heavy snoring of Zak, or Dog, or both. Another crack of twigs. Agnes went and sat by the embers of the fire. People don’t get murdered by mistake, she thought. Even the most unfortunate confrontation with a stray security man isn’t going to end in that. Is it? A rustle from the trees made her look up, and she tensed as she saw a figure emerging from the woods, furtive and hurried, a flash of white smile as he saw her and she saw it was Bill.