Last of the Magpies

by Mark Edwards

‘Am I?’ Lucy said, approaching her. ‘Am I really? I’m not the one with a ridiculous, irrational phobia.’

  A chill ran through Jamie’s blood. He knew what she was talking about.

  Lucy pointed at the corner of the ceiling and Jamie and Kirsty both looked up. There, squatting at the top of the wall, was a huge house spider. Kirsty visibly shuddered, the remaining colour draining from her face.

  ‘Don’t you—’ Jamie began, but Lucy cut him off.

  ‘Fetch it down, will you, Edmund?’

  He hesitated. ‘I’m not keen on spiders.’

  ‘Oh, for god’s sake. I’ll do it myself.’

  She stood on the bed and reached up towards the spider while Edmund kept the gun trained on Kirsty. The spider tried to run away, skittering along the wall, but Lucy caught it and held it between her cupped hands. She stepped down from the bed and stood before Kirsty again.

  ‘We’re going to have to kill you,’ Lucy said. ‘There’s no way round that. But if you do as I ask, we’ll do it quickly. A bullet to the head. Instant, no pain. If you don’t do as I ask, I’ll kill you slowly with the knife.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Kirsty said, but her voice shook.

  ‘It’s just a spider,’ said Lucy. ‘An itsy-bitsy spider. All I want you to do is eat it.’

  ‘What?’ Jamie started across the room towards Lucy, but Edmund shouted, ‘Get back!’ and swung the gun towards him. Jamie froze.

  ‘You don’t have to actually swallow it,’ Lucy said. ‘Just hold it in your mouth for ten seconds, then you can spit it out. After that, a quick gunshot to the head and it will all be over. Come on.’ She opened her palms to reveal the spider. It had curled itself into a ball. She laughed. ‘Put it in your mouth. It’ll only tickle a little.’

  Jamie eyed Edmund’s gun. Edmund was distracted, watching the interaction between the two women. Maybe if Jamie was fast enough, he could get to Edmund, knock the gun out of his hand. Or he could grab Lucy, put her between himself and the weapon. He watched, all his muscles tensed, waiting for Edmund’s focus to settle fully on Kirsty and Lucy.

  ‘Go on then,’ Kirsty said. ‘Give it to me.’

  Lucy beamed with delight. ‘Really? You’re sure you want to do it? I was quite looking forward to torturing you.’

  ‘Just give me the fucking spider.’

  Kirsty reached out a trembling hand and Lucy took hold of Kirsty’s wrist, turning the palm upwards. The two women locked eyes. Jamie could see defiance on Kirsty’s face, a desperate attempt to be brave, to not let Lucy see how scared she was.

  Lucy let the spider run on to Kirsty’s palm.

  Jamie could hardly watch. Kirsty had gone white, her breathing was ragged and sweat popped on her forehead. Her eyes were closed and she looked as if she might vomit at any moment. The spider squatted on her hand, too scared to try to run.

  And then something happened. Kirsty’s breathing changed, became slower. A little colour returned to her cheeks. She opened her eyes then, staring straight at Lucy, lifted her other hand and, very gently, stroked the spider’s back with her index finger.

  ‘Fuck you, Lucy,’ she said.

  ‘Put it in your mouth!’ Lucy shouted.

  But Kirsty, very calmly, crouched down and set the spider free. It ran beneath the bed. Kirsty stood up and faced Lucy.

  ‘You stupid bitch,’ Lucy said. ‘Edmund, handcuff her to the bed. I’m going to carve my name into her flesh. I’m going to find all the places that really hurt.’

  Edmund moved towards Kirsty and went to grab her arm. Jamie braced himself. This could be his chance. If he went for Lucy, used the same move Paul had used on Kirsty, got her by the throat, he could force Edmund to drop the gun. But just as he was about to make his move, there was a blur of motion in front of him.

  Kirsty, who had put her hand in her coat pocket, swung her hand at Edmund. He cried out and doubled over, clutching his head. Kirsty struck him again and Jamie realised, as Edmund hit the floor, that she was holding one of the stones she had thrown through the window. She must have picked it up and put it in her pocket on their way through the living room. And this was the new Kirsty. The one who had spent much of the past year doing strength training and learning martial arts.

  As Edmund collapsed, he released the gun. Both Jamie and Lucy spotted it at the same time. Lucy was closer.

  She darted forward, arm outstretched. There was no way Jamie could reach the gun first, so he charged her. His shoulder connected with her flank and she fell sideways. Jamie landed on top of her. Lucy tried to grab hold of him, to push him off her. She scratched his face, a nail digging into the spot where the glass had cut him, and he recoiled. Lucy wriggled free, lurching towards the gun.

  Kirsty had already picked it up.

  She pointed the gun at Lucy and shouted, ‘Stay still!’

  Lucy froze.

  ‘Put your hands in the air,’ Kirsty ordered. ‘Put them up!’

  Lucy had no choice but to obey. Jamie got to his feet, ignoring his stinging cheek. He crossed to the bed. The handcuffs were still attached to the bedposts but Edmund had left the keys sticking out of the keyholes. He released both sets of cuffs. He used one to secure Edmund’s hands behind his back, leaving him lying face down on the floor. He used the other pair to fasten Lucy’s wrists behind her.

  Lucy raised her face to Kirsty. Spittle dotted her lips and her eyes bulged. She looked insane. Utterly insane. ‘I’m going to get out again,’ she spat. ‘No prison can hold me. And when I get out I’m going to come looking for your daughter. Little Sasha. I’ll do all the things to her I was planning to do to you. I’ll make her beg for her life. I’ll make her curse her mummy in the moment before she dies. I’ll—’

  ‘Shut up, Lucy,’ Kirsty said, and smacked her round the head with the handle of the gun.

  16

  The sky above London was blue, clouds strung out like dinosaur bones. Jamie remembered thinking that once before, a long time ago. Back when all this started, when he and Kirsty moved into their flat together. Their nest. How happy they had been that day, when Paul had helped him transport their belongings to their new home, looking through his old records, dumping his unwanted possessions in a skip. It had been a hot day, summer in the city, and later Paul had gone off for a date with Wonder Woman.

  That was also the day they met Lucy and Chris.

  Jamie started the car engine. Beside him, Kirsty said, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ he said.

  It took fifteen minutes to get to Mount Pleasant Street. Kirsty must have figured out where they were going because she had stopped asking, humming along instead to an old song on the radio. Since the events in Normans Bay, Jamie had expected her to show signs of post-traumatic stress. Maybe it was yet to hit, but now, six weeks after that night, she seemed lighter, though not like the girl he had met years before. She had seen too many things, been through too much. She was a grown-up woman with a child and history and lines on her face. But she no longer seemed to carry that baggage as if it were a burden. She was older and stronger and there was no doubt in his mind that he loved her more than ever.

  If only she felt the same way about him.

  He parked the car outside their old flat and wound down the window.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said.

  Kirsty nodded. ‘Back where it all began.’

  It had, of course, been refurbished since the fire that had gutted the basement and ground-floor flats. The original sash windows were gone. The brickwork looked newer and the front door was blue now. Jamie had no idea who lived here these days. Did the new residents of the basement – he refused to call it the garden flat – know that the infamous Lucy Newton had once lived there? Did the people who had bought the ground floor know about its history? Perhaps they had read Brian’s book, One for Sorrow, or even Lucy’s memoir. Maybe they liked telling their friends all about it.

  Jamie knew that Brian and Linda didn’t live here anymore. When they’d met up
in Australia, Brian had told him they had moved out to the countryside.

  Just then a cat appeared, jumping up on to the front wall.

  ‘Oh my god,’ Jamie said. ‘Is that . . .?’

  ‘It’s Lennon.’

  They both opened their doors at the same time, got out and approached the cat slowly. It had been six years, and Lennon was a little grey around the ears now. The jump on to the wall had required more effort than when they’d last seen him.

  Jamie wasn’t under any illusions about the cat remembering them but he allowed them both to stroke him, and Jamie felt tears prick his eyes as he rubbed Lennon’s ears.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Kirsty asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ His voice cracked and he cleared his throat, a little embarrassed. ‘Maybe it was a mistake coming back here.’

  ‘No.’ She smiled and rested her hand on his arm. ‘It’s nice. It was a good idea.’

  He wanted more than anything to embrace her, to pull her into a hug and feel her warmth against him. But he didn’t. Instead, he said, ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They got back into the car and sat in silence for a minute.

  ‘We were happy for a while, weren’t we?’ Kirsty said.

  Jamie nodded. There was a lump in his throat and he couldn’t speak. Because today was all about goodbyes.

  ‘Come on,’ Kirsty said. ‘We’d better get going or you’re going to miss your flight.’ She sighed. ‘Australia. You know, I’m actually a little jealous.’

  ‘Maybe you could come and visit me. You and Sasha.’

  Again, she gave him a little smile. ‘Maybe.’

  After Kirsty had cold-cocked Lucy with the gun, Jamie had gone into the other room and untied Emma – she had been full of so many questions – while Kirsty called the police. Edmund had been right about there being no police station in Normans Bay. They had to come from Bexhill but they got there surprisingly quickly, with two ambulances arriving shortly afterwards.

  ‘You need to guard her carefully,’ Jamie said to the lead police officer as they took Lucy and Edmund out to the ambulances. They both needed to go to hospital to have their heads looked at. Emma, who had sprained her ankle, needed to go too.

  ‘We know all about Lucy Newton,’ said the cop. ‘Don’t worry.’

  But Jamie had worried. He’d been convinced she would somehow overpower the police officers and paramedics. Then he was sure she would escape from the hospital. This time, though, she had been kept under armed guard until she was well enough to be transferred to prison. Soon she would stand trial for Anita’s murder, along with a number of other charges, while Edmund had been charged with murdering Paul.

  The police assured Jamie and Kirsty that there was no way Lucy would escape justice this time. She would stay in prison until she was a very old woman.

  ‘We also found a manuscript in Edmund Tyler’s office,’ the police told Jamie, ‘in which she confesses to everything. All the murders at Orchard House. Everything. And Edmund has been telling us all about it. He said that she gave it to him after he fell in love with her. It’s a first, secret draft of her memoir. It’s quite a read.’

  Part of him wished Kirsty had shot Lucy instead of knocking her out. Another part of him wished he’d had the courage to do it himself. But when the police told him she was never getting out, that she would be at the highest security level for the rest of her days, he believed them.

  It was over. And although he wasn’t sure if a life in prison was enough of a punishment for all Lucy had done, all the lives she had ended or destroyed, it was the best he could hope for.

  It was all they had.

  The police had also dug up the garden at Paul’s parents’ house and found their bodies. It appeared that Paul had murdered them shortly before he brought Lucy to the house and held her captive there. Jamie blamed Lucy for that too. If Paul hadn’t had that accident, none of this would have happened. In an alternate universe, maybe Paul and Heather would be married now with a couple of kids, growing old happily together. When he thought about his former best friend now, that was what he liked to imagine. That was the real Paul. The sweaty, tortured mess they had encountered in Normans Bay had been nothing but an imposter.

  Meanwhile, Emma had gone ahead and made ‘Nemesis’, her series about Lucy. It was shorter, but far more dramatic, than she had anticipated. It was flying high in the podcast charts and Emma had become a minor celebrity. Jamie didn’t mind. At least something good had come out of all this.

  Unfortunately, the one good thing he had wanted to come from it wasn’t going to happen. Kirsty had made it clear that the kiss in the pub was a one-off.

  ‘We both need to move on,’ she had said when they met up a few days after the events in Normans Bay. ‘We can’t get back what we had, even if we both want to.’

  ‘I think we can,’ Jamie had said. ‘Or we can try, at least.’

  She had shaken her head sadly. ‘It’s time to put it all behind us. All of it.’

  ‘But . . .’

  He gave up. He wasn’t going to beg. And if Kirsty wasn’t prepared to give it another go, and Lucy was behind bars, there was nothing to keep him here in England anymore. Being in the same city as Kirsty was too painful. It was time to go back to Fremantle, to the beach and the sunshine. If he was going to be miserable, he might as well do it somewhere pretty.

  So he had booked his flight, given notice on his flat, and now here he was with his suitcases in the back of a hire car.

  Kirsty beside him. But not with him.

  They approached Heathrow. He was booked on to the direct flight to Perth. Seventeen hours in the air. His iPad was loaded with movies and he had Emma’s podcast to listen to, though he wasn’t sure he really wanted to do that.

  Kirsty had been quiet on the journey out of London and around the M25, staring out of the window at the traffic.

  ‘You were amazing,’ he said, breaking the silence as they negotiated the twisting roads into the airport.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘With Lucy and Edmund. Especially the bit with the spider.’

  She had already told him about her session at London Zoo, and how she had managed to remember everything she had learned that day.

  ‘I realised that Lucy was a lot scarier than a silly spider,’ she said. ‘Or maybe it was the thought of putting it in my mouth. Suddenly, stroking it and putting it on the floor seemed pretty easy.’

  ‘And you knew you had the stone in your pocket.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She smiled. ‘I’d like to say it was all carefully planned, that I was never scared, but . . .’

  ‘I was just about to save the day anyway. Waiting for my moment.’

  Kirsty laughed. ‘Yeah, Jamie. I know you were.’

  They drove around for a minute, searching for a free space in the drop-off area. The plan was for Jamie to leave the car with Kirsty and she would return it to the car rental place back in London.

  Jamie parked the car and killed the engine. Kirsty was looking out of the window again, her face turned away from him.

  ‘Well, this is it,’ Jamie said.

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘Kirsty?’

  Slowly, very slowly, she turned to face him. There were tears in her eyes. One spilled and ran down her cheek.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘What’s—’

  ‘Fuck it,’ she said, and she leaned forward and kissed him.

  The kiss lasted for several seconds. Jamie’s heart bloomed with hope before reality crowded in. This was a goodbye kiss, that was all. They were probably never going to see each other again. It was the end.

  But then Kirsty was saying, ‘If we give it another go, if you stay, we have to take it slow, okay, get to know each other again, and you need to get to know Sasha too. It’s important that she likes you. And I’m not promising anything, and I don’t know if things will ever be the way they were . . .’ and he was nodding, saying yes, agreeing to everything.


  He went to kiss her again but she put her hand on his chest and stopped him.

  ‘Slowly,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘And stop grinning like that.’

  He sat there, not knowing what to do with himself, unable to stop smiling, and Kirsty was smiling too, and although he wanted to kiss her more than anything, he didn’t want to blow this. He wasn’t going to do anything to blow it this time.

  A plane soared above them, and he waited for it to vanish into the blue before he spoke again.

  ‘So, where do you want to go?’ he asked, starting the engine.

  ‘Home, James.’ She laughed. ‘Let’s go home.’

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  And that is it. The end of the story. I hope you’ve enjoyed coming with me on this final journey to find out what happened to Jamie, Kirsty and Lucy.

  As always, you can contact me by email (mark@markedwardsauthor.com), on Twitter (@mredwards) or via my Facebook page: facebook.com/markedwardsbooks. I’d love to know your thoughts about this novella.

  Writing Last of the Magpies was a hugely emotional experience, partly because The Magpies has been such an important book for me. It was a bestseller that gave me the financial freedom to become a full-time writer. It’s a book that seems to have struck a chord with thousands of readers and I still get messages about it every day. Most importantly, perhaps, it was the novel that set me on the correct path as a writer. I had written several rejected books before The Magpies, but it was when I wrote that book that something clicked. I realised the kinds of stories I wanted to tell. I found my voice and my mission.

  Even then, The Magpies was rejected by dozens of publishers who said things like ‘no one wants to read a book about a couple living in a flat in London’. Shortly afterwards, my first agent dumped me. The novel languished unseen and unread by anyone except a few close friends.

  Years later, after I found success with my novels co-written with Louise Voss, I returned to my old manuscript. I only still had a copy because I had once emailed it to Sara, my then girlfriend (now wife), and she had kept it in her Gmail account. I read through it and remembered how much I had enjoyed writing it. I edited it, updated it, improved it – with help from Louise and Sara – and self-published it. After it hit number one and began to sell in the many thousands, I signed a deal with Thomas & Mercer, who published it along with all my books since.