The Quick and the Dead (A Sister Agnes Mystery)

by Alison Joseph

  Agnes felt in her pocket with her other hand and produced the other crucifix. ‘No, Jerry,’ she said, gently, still keeping her gun levelled at Ross. ‘This is Becky’s. That one’s mine. I swapped them.’

  It felt to Agnes like an act of terrible cruelty. Jerry took the broken chain, and held it, pinching the twisted links between his thumb and forefinger, staring at them. His eyes were hollow with anguish.

  ‘How did it end up here?’ Agnes asked him.

  ‘I — I — looked for her. Afterwards …’ Jerry said. ‘I’d won … lay dead, it lay dead … I knew I’d won, but …’ He didn’t take his eyes from Becky’s crucifix. ‘So I went to look for her. I kept … I kept this … to give it back to her. I walked all night …’ His voice faltered.

  Morris cleared his throat. ‘He gave it to me. Some time later he gave it to me. I put it there. I knew …’

  And then outside there was a burst of noise, shouting, car engines, doors slamming, an eruption of chaos. ‘Police,’ loudhailers cried, ‘the house is surrounded.’ Roger darted forward and brought his hand down hard on Agnes’s. Her pistol fell to the floor. Agnes cried out, more in rage than pain, as she saw Ross kick her gun out of the way. Morris was out in the hall, shouting. ‘There’s hundreds, guns, cars —’ and Roger ran to the window and cried, ‘We’ve got a hostage —’ and all the time Ross stood immobile, holding Agnes at gunpoint.

  ‘We’re armed,’ Agnes heard Roger call out, then there was another burst of noise from outside, sirens blazing, tinny amplified voices. Jerry sat down heavily on Becky’s bed, behind Ross. Agnes saw him lean forward to pick something up off the floor. He held it in his hand. The gun. Bill’s gun. No, she tried to say, above the noise. Ross, she tried to say, look. Jerry rhythmically stroked the barrel, wrapped his fingers round the trigger, raised it to his head. An oddly peaceful expression settled on his face, as she found her voice, shouted, ‘No, Jerry. No —’ but he put it to his temple and fired.

  Then there was silence. Blood-drenched, brain-spattered silence. Ross whirled, slowed by horror, his mouth open for several seconds before a roar of grief erupted from him. The whole room seemed to be frozen in shock, and Agnes ran. She bolted down the stairs, hearing noise on all sides — was that footsteps behind her, or gunfire? She dragged the front door open and staggered out into a haze of police, felt herself somehow lifted up, carried away on a sea of questions. Yes, they’re armed, one pistol, no two, but someone’s just shot himself, yes, dead. Is Lily all right, where’s Sheila, and Steven? Sorry? Yes, Ross, Ross Turner, he’s in there. Yes. The dead boy is the one who killed Becky, yes, Becky Stanton, are you listening to me …

  A burst of noise, a flurry of voices. Then a single gunshot.

  ‘Ross,’ Agnes said.

  There was a sudden, terrible silence. Then, out of the stillness, three police marksmen approached the front door, cautiously, silently. Two figures appeared in the doorway, and then slowly raised their hands in the air. Agnes watched as Roger and Morris stumbled down the drive into the waiting cars. She watched as a team of police swarmed into the house. She knew the awful horror they would find there, the scene of devastation that was about to meet their eyes.

  Two bodies.

  Satan had triumphed.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was pitch-dark. Agnes tethered her horse, brought out her torch and flashed it across the fence, looking for the new hole that Richard had described. Last time she was here the bottling plant had been bathed in moonlight. Now, it was a shadowy outline in the darkness. Her torch beam flashed across a line of newly cut barbed wire, and she climbed through. She listened. The wind rustled the trees. Then, a horse’s whinny in the distance, answered by her own, close by. Agnes crept towards the factory, listening hard. Once by the outside wall, she dropped down behind it and waited.

  The events of the day, which had culminated in such horror, seemed to have happened in some other time. It was now three in the morning, still only a few hours since Jerry had taken his own life with such violence, since Ross had chosen to join him. Crouching in the darkness, Agnes found herself living it again, the long, long moment in which Jerry seemed to topple sideways as his head exploded; the silence before Ross’s reverberating cry, the bedlam, her escape.

  Agnes sat on the damp earth in darkness, her mind invaded by the crimson-soaked candlewick bedspread. The stench of death. The way Jerry had smiled as he’d raised the gun to his head. She shivered, wondering if the memory would ever leave her, that smile that had twisted so horribly across Jerry’s face as the life burst out of him.

  The horse whinnied again, and she heard a woman’s voice murmur to it. She crept closer, hugging the wall. She waited, straining to hear. Silence. Then the woman’s voice. ‘Let’s just hope the dogs appreciate our little presents.’ Agnes heard faint footsteps, and then in the distance a growl, another growl, then sudden stillness which seemed to last for several minutes. Then there was the sound of running, the shout of a security guard, and a sudden flare of torches criss-crossing the tarmac. Agnes peered through the darkness, hearing dogs barking, running footsteps, men shouting to each other, and — and wasn’t that a woman’s laughter? Then there she was, running back across the field to her horse, and Agnes followed. She saw a streak of shadow across the field below her, heard Lady’s hooves pounding the earth. Agnes reached her horse, mounted and set off in a canter after her, the dogs snapping at her heels.

  Her horse was eager, with a long, easy stride, and she realised that Emma wasn’t far away. They turned into the edge of the woodland and Emma disappeared over a hedge, which Agnes jumped, too, a moment later. Agnes felt her muscles stretch, felt herself settle into the saddle, a surge of joy as she flew over another hedge, gaining on Emma with each stride. They were in the thick of the woods now, impossible to see anything at all, but she trusted to her horse to sense Lady up ahead, to enter the race with her. She could hear the rhythm of the hooves ahead, and she slowed a little, settling into a steady canter as the trees cleared and she could see a curving sweep of yellow lights ahead of them as they reached the road. She brought her horse back to a trot. She could see Emma clearly now, hear her clip-clopping on to the tarmac. Agnes halted, baffled at Emma riding so openly on to the main road. She dismounted, tethered her horse and made the last few yards on foot, keeping to the grass verge to silence her footsteps. At the top of the hill they came out on to the junction with the M25. Lady was walking in the middle of the road, floodlit by the lamplight, the motorway below them streaked with the sparse traffic. Agnes hesitated. To follow her now meant losing her cover altogether. She slipped back to the grass verge and hid herself behind the last few trees.

  Emma halted, looked around, then dismounted. She whispered to Lady, took the reins over her head and led her down the slip road towards the junction itself. Agnes realised that the little lane they had just come up was the beginning of the planned motorway link, due to be part of the same four-lane road that the protesters had been trying to prevent. In that case, she realised, they were standing on the edge of Emily Quislan’s land.

  Emma had now got to the bottom of the junction and was clambering down a slope by the M25, her horse picking her way behind her. There was a van abandoned on the mud slope, and Emma went to it, unlocked the back and took out a heavy bundle. Agnes watched as she dodged across the six lanes of the motorway to the slip road on the other side, then climbed down to the edge of the road and positioned the explosives by a concrete pillar. Agnes could hear a car approaching along the lane behind her, as she thought, that’s what Emma’s doing. If Emily can’t have her land, then no one else can either. She’s going to blow up the road.

  The approaching car came up behind her and stopped in a blaze of headlights. The lights went off. She heard the car door open and shut, heard footsteps, turned to see a towering shape, heard a voice whisper, ‘You’ve got my pistol.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Bill —’

  ‘Did I frighten you?’

  �
��No.’

  ‘Is that your horse I passed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s eating dockleaves. Not a good idea.’

  ‘What you mean is, aren’t I clever getting here before you. And no, I haven’t got your pistol anymore.’

  ‘Typical. Come on,’ he said.

  They walked out on to the slip road, then down to the junction. Emma had come back to her horse, and was now squatting on the ground. She took off her gloves and began to dig with a trowel by the edge of the hard shoulder. As they got near her, Bill called out conversationally, ‘Hello, Emma.’ She looked up, startled. She was remarkably pretty, with blonde-streaked hair and a neat, straight nose. Agnes and Bill jumped down to join her.

  ‘There you are then, Emily Quislan,’ Bill said.

  ‘So it’s you,’ Emma said, eyeing him. ‘I sussed ages ago that you were following me. Pretending to live in the forest …’

  ‘Are you really going to blow up this road?’ Bill said. She smiled at him.

  ‘Yes. And you’re too late to stop me.’ Bill looked down at the hole she was digging, at the detonator she now unearthed. ‘Will it do any good?’

  ‘Of course it will. That’s what I tried to tell the others but they wouldn’t listen. Direct action, that’s what you need.’

  ‘Including murder? You’ve tipped half a chemical works into Richard Witham’s spring water, and now you’re aiming to blow a crater across this lot, just because you don’t believe they should build the bypass?’

  ‘It’s not just that, is it,’ Emma replied. ‘They stole from Emily, they took her child, they took her land, they stole from me …’ She swallowed, then carried on. ‘Now they’re stealing from us again, with their bulldozers ripping up the land, suffocating it, killing the planet. But I won’t let them do it again.’

  Bill sighed. ‘This won’t stop them. They’ll just repair what you do —’

  ‘And we’ll do it again. It’s a warning.’

  ‘Like poisoning the water too?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Bill said, ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you, it has the opposite effect? It makes those in power more determined, not less, if they think that someone’s waging war on them.’

  ‘They’ll soon find out, then, won’t they? We are the spirit. We have the earth on our side.’

  ‘When you say “we”,’ Agnes said, ‘really, there’s just one of you, isn’t there? Becky dropped out, Col dropped out —’

  ‘I didn’t need them anyway.’

  Agnes looked at her hands, her nails lined with earth, bitten to the quick, at the lethal tube lying on the ground. She looked at Emma’s determined young face. ‘For a while,’ Agnes said, ‘I thought maybe you’d killed Becky.’

  Emma picked up her trowel and continued to dig at the scrubby earth by the road.

  ‘Emma,’ Bill said, ‘it won’t work, will it? The damage you do can be repaired, and then they’ll build the road, same as before. And by then you’ll be in prison.’

  Emma muttered something. Agnes heard the word, ‘Emily.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Bill asked.

  ‘I said, I’m Emily, not Emma.’

  Agnes crouched down beside her. ‘When did you become Emily?’

  ‘I didn’t become her, did I? I am her.’

  Agnes hesitated, looked at Emma, at her hair swinging against her cheek with the movement of her trowel. Gently she said, ‘When did they take your son away?’

  Emma stared wide-eyed at Agnes, then returned to her digging.

  ‘James, wasn’t he? Like the other Emily’s son.’

  Emma stabbed at the earth.

  ‘Emily had her James for nine years before they took him away. I don’t suppose you got that long. Maybe a few hours?’ Emma’s eyes flashed blue rage at Agnes. ‘Bitch. That bitch. She said she wouldn’t tell.’

  ‘What, his name? The secret name you gave him before they took him away?’

  ‘Only my mum knew. Bitch.’

  ‘Why did you agree to have him adopted?’

  Emma’s eyes flickered. ‘They made me. They convinced me it was for the best — “Think of your future, darling!” — when what they really meant was it was best for them, not for me, not for the baby …’ She swallowed, then looked levelly at Agnes. She stood up, defiant again. ‘And you think you’re so fucking clever, don’t you. Well, listen, whoever you are, you don’t know the first thing about it.’

  Agnes stood up too. ‘When you found Becky dead, you did nothing. Jerry had followed you both, listened to your row, waited until you left her, and then he’d killed her. It was another couple of hours before her friends from the camp found her. And before that, you’d been there. You were first at the scene — and you told no one.’

  ‘She was dead. What was there to do?’

  ‘So, you weren’t upset. She’d been your lover, but you weren’t upset. You just sprinkled rosemary and left.’

  Emma stared at the ground.

  ‘You wanted her dead,’ Agnes went on. It was more a statement than a question. Emma looked at Agnes with eyes that were blue like flint, and nodded.

  ‘Would you have killed her?’ Agnes asked.

  Emma took a strand of hair into her mouth and chewed on it. Eventually she said, ‘I didn’t have to.’

  ‘But Col was more of a problem,’ Agnes said.

  ‘Yes,’ Emma agreed. ‘I thought I’d have to get rid of him.’

  ‘He was very helpful to you.’

  ‘He knew too much. He bottled out.’

  ‘Before you dyed Richard’s spring?’

  ‘Emily’s well, you mean —’

  ‘Emily’s well, then. Before it got that far?’

  ‘He helped me nick the stuff, from the RAF base. We hid it in the woods. Then when it came to it, he got scared.’

  ‘So what happened?’ Agnes was aware of Bill, standing near her, waiting for Emma to speak.

  Emma sucked on her hair for a moment, then said, ‘I told him I’d killed Becky. I told him he was going to die. And I was right, wasn’t I?’

  ‘You killed him,’ Agnes said.

  Emma looked at her. ‘No,’ she said, mildly. ‘He had a weak heart. It was his fear that carried him off. Fear of you.’

  At Agnes’s shoulder, Bill murmured, ‘Col died from asthma —’

  ‘He’d have survived, wouldn’t he, if he hadn’t already been frightened half to death, if you, Emma, with all your silly games, hadn’t convinced him his time was up.’ Agnes’s voice was tight with rage. ‘All I know is, I’d hate to see what you see when you close your eyes to sleep.’

  For a second, Emma faltered. Her eyes clouded. She looked suddenly vulnerable. She shifted on her feet. Then the moment passed. She looked back at Agnes and smiled.

  Bill took a step towards her. ‘We should be going.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Emma was holding a kitchen timer. ‘I can turn this back to zero.’

  Agnes saw her fingers move on the dial, heard the clicking of the switch. She felt her stomach clench, looked at Bill, surprised by his calm.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Bill said. ‘I made it safe, earlier today. That’s a dummy detonator.’

  The dial clicked to zero. Agnes was unable to breathe. Nothing happened. Emma dropped to the ground, pulled at the wires of the detonator, her face expressionless. Slowly she stood up, her head bowed, her hands hanging at her sides. Behind her the yellow haze of the motorway was blurred with the dawn. In the silence they heard the whine of police cars. Emma looked up at Bill, smiled, and raised her hands. ‘Go on, then, arrest me.’ She walked towards Bill, her arms above her head. Then, as he was about to take hold of her, she bolted away from him, ran to her horse and mounted, as the sirens were upon them and cars screeched to a halt on the slip road above them. Bill was by the horse’s legs, but she turned Lady towards the lane and cantered off. Agnes saw Bill draw a gun, saw him aim at the horse. He glanced at Agnes, looked back to Emma, then shrugged. He slipped
the gun into his pocket and ambled back to where she stood.

  ‘I’ve done my bit,’ he said. He walked past Agnes to meet the police officers emerging from their cars, and after a moment two cars raced off down the lane, while other men began to cordon off the area.

  Bill took Agnes’s arm and they walked back to his car.

  ‘Your friends keep you in armaments, then,’ Agnes said.

  Bill shrugged. ‘How did you know she was coming here?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Agnes said. ‘Richard tipped me off earlier today that someone had fiddled with the fence again; I knew I might find her at the spring, and then I thought, if I wanted to follow her I’d have to do it on horseback. So I hired a horse.’

  ‘That easy, eh?’

  ‘My friend Sheila helped me. Earlier this evening we called on a friend of hers, who keeps horses, and we explained everything to her.’

  ‘And she lent you a horse in the middle of the night?’

  ‘She could see it was urgent.’

  ‘And how come you can ride?’

  ‘Oh, that. Just a misspent youth.’

  ‘You are a mystery, Little Sister.’

  ‘And now it’s your turn. How did you know she was coming here?’

  Bill looked at her. ‘That would be telling.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked beyond her, to the grey concrete, the flashing lights of the roadblock. ‘It was my job. That’s all. It’s finished now.’ He smiled. ‘Fancy a drink?’

  ‘What, whisky at this time of day?’ Agnes said. ‘Anyway, I’ve got my horse to see to.’

  ‘If it’s still alive,’ laughed Bill.

  At his car he paused, his head on one side. ‘One day I’d really like to hear your story.’

  ‘Maybe. One day. On condition you tell me yours — if MI5 let you.’

  He smiled. ‘We could meet for a drink some time?’

  ‘Sure. Give me a ring.’

  Agnes walked over to her horse and patted his neck. Bill called to her, ‘I haven’t got your phone number.’