The Quick and the Dead (A Sister Agnes Mystery) Read Free Page B

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