Sisters of Mercy (23 page)

It
was Polo.

‘
I’m so sorry to disturb you, Sister,’ he said. ‘Mr Sutton sent me. He wants to see Mr Jones.’ He sounded abnormally polite.

‘
Well, I’m afraid he’s not here’ — what could I say to alert him? ‘John.’

‘
Oh. Do you know where I might find him, please?’

‘
I think he’s gone back to London, John.’

‘
Do you have an address? Phone number?’

‘
I’m afraid not. But you should find him at the Department of Health in London.’

‘
I’ll try that, then. So sorry to have bothered you, Sister.’

‘
That’s all right. Bye, John.’

I
shut the door. Swayed with dizziness. Susan’s eyes were like stones.

‘
Go over to the window. Has he gone?’

‘
Yes.’

‘
Who was he? Why didn’t he phone?’

‘
I’ll tell you who it was!’ I shouted, having decided attack was the only defence. ‘That was … John’ — I’d nearly said Polo — ‘Len Sutton’s man. You know who Len Sutton is? The husband of the Mrs Sutton you killed. He’ll kill you without thinking about it if he finds you …’

‘
How does he know Mr Jones?’

‘
Because he was after you himself and we went round to his house to tell him to lay off, that’s why.’

It
seemed to satisfy her. She said, ‘Lie down on the floor, next to him.’

My
pulse missed a beat — was this it?

‘
Susan, I —’ Then I saw that she’d picked up the Sellotape. I lay down. She put her knee in the small of my back and taped my hands. She was quite heavy and stronger than she looked. There was nothing I could do.

Tom
said, ‘You know they’re going to get you in the end, don’t you, Susan?’

‘
Oh, shut
up
, Jones!’ I said.

‘
But I think she ought to know that,’ he said reasonably.

‘
It’s in God’s hands,’ Susan said.

‘
But doesn’t God help those who help themselves.’

‘
I don’t like to hear His name on your lips,’ she said, dangerously quiet.

‘
I’m sorry —’

‘
I must continue to do His work for as long as He will allow me. It’s in His hands.’

‘
But He wouldn’t want you to kill a true believer, would He?’

‘
Tom, please be quiet,’ I said.

‘
But I think this is important. He wouldn’t want you to kill a true believer, would He, Susan?’

‘
But you’re not a believer. Not a
true
believer.’

‘
Perhaps I’m not. But Sister Farewell is.’

She
looked at me. ‘Are you, Sister?’

‘
Er — yes, I believe I am.’

She
poked her face close to mine. ‘When did you last perform an act of worship? When did you last enter the house of God?’

‘
Yesterday. I went to St Chad’s Cathedral.’

Her
mouth worked silently, then, ‘You’re lying. What time?’

‘
It was just after five. There was a service — it was Thanksgiving.’

She
stared at me. Her mouth opened to say something — closed — opened again.

‘
It’s true,’ Tom said loudly. ‘I was there, waiting outside —’

‘
What was that noise?’ She was on her feet.

‘
The window!’ Tom said.

She
turned to it … Polo appeared in the kitchen door … She whirled round, saw him, levelled the gun at my eyes … I wanted to close them, but couldn’t … Saw her finger tighten, then a knife sliced into her hand as the gun went off … I remember thinking: I heard the bang, didn’t I? That means I’m still alive, doesn’t it …?

20

Tom and Susan were taken to the hospital when the police arrived; Susan under guard. Polo and I were taken to the police station to give statements. We were joined by Sutton, and later by Tom, who’d been examined for concussion and discharged on condition he took it easy and didn’t drive. Afterwards, we were all taken back to my house and it seemed only polite to ask Sutton and Polo inside.

‘
I knew she was going to kill us,’ Tom said, ‘which is why I risked speaking when the phone went.’ The dressing round his head made him look vaguely Arabian. ‘I was hoping you’d think of something to alert them at the other end, Jo, and you did.’

We
were in the living-room. Tom and Polo were drinking tea: Tom because of his head, Polo because he had to drive. Sutton and myself had whisky.

‘
It was lucky it was you, Mr Sutton,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I’d have been able to make anyone else understand.’

‘
Don’t undersell yourself,’ said Tom. ‘You thought pretty quickly on your feet when Polo called.’

Sutton
had sent Polo round to find out what was going on. After speaking to me, he’d got into his car and driven away, then walked back to the house next door and persuaded them to ring the police while he went through the back and forced my kitchen window.

‘
That’s when I heard him,’ said Tom. ‘Which is why I started blathering — to keep her attention on me while Polo got through.’

‘
Climbin’ through kitchen windows without makin’ a noise ain’t so easy,’ Polo said feelingly.

‘
No,’ agreed Tom. ‘Although I’d have thought you’d have had enough practice.’

‘
Funny guy,’ sneered Polo. ‘Don’t push it, man.’

‘
Sorry, Polo. Like I said earlier: we owe you. And that was the most beautiful piece of knife work I’ve seen in my life.’

Polo
shrugged, but looked pleased.

‘
Shame it wasn’t her neck,’ Sutton muttered. He’d been morose and distant from the moment he’d arrived at the police station.

Tom
turned to him. ‘If it had been her neck, Miss Farewell would probably be dead. She was shooting to kill, and hitting her hand to deflect her aim was the only way of stopping her.’

I
hadn’t realized that. ‘Thanks, Polo,’ I said.

‘’
S aw right, Sister,’ he said awkwardly.

‘
Sorry, Sister,’ said Sutton. ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

‘
That’s all right,’ I said, just as awkwardly. Although in a sense, Sutton, too, had saved our lives, there was no way I could feel comfortable with him, not after what he’d done to me that night in ITU.

‘
I still think she should be dead, though,’ he continued now.

‘
It’ll be worse for her in prison,’ Tom said.

‘
That’s what they always say.’ He paused. ‘’Sides, she won’t go to prison, will she? It’ll be one o’ them so-called hospitals, won’t it?’

Tom
looked at him sharply. ‘Don’t even think about it, Len,’ he said. ‘It ain’t worth it. Revenge is always empty, and they’d get you for it anyway.’

He
sighed heavily. ‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right,’ he said. Not long after this, they both left.

‘
Would you like something to eat?’ I asked as soon as they’d gone. We hadn’t eaten for hours, and I was afraid he might want to go back to his hotel now that the immediate danger had passed.

‘
Might not be a bad idea,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

I
went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. It was the first moment I’d been in a room, any room, by myself since Polo had broken in and rescued us and my mind started winding back …

Susan
had let out the most earsplitting screams while Polo retrieved first the gun, then his knife.

‘
No, Polo,’ Tom had shouted, ‘cut us free!’

He
told me later he thought Polo had been on the point of killing her.

‘
Would he have, really?’ I asked.

‘
He might. Remember, he knew the police were on their way, so it was his only chance. And it was what Sutton would have wanted.’

‘
She was going to try and take my place, wasn’t she?’ I said.

‘
And she might have got away with it long enough to get abroad. If Sutton hadn’t phoned.’

It
was rather ironic. He’d heard of her escape on the radio and was ostensibly phoning to offer help, although as Tom said, he was probably only looking for a chance to get his hands on her.

‘
Well, he won’t be able to now, will he?’

‘
If I were Anslow,’ Tom said slowly, ‘I’d keep a careful eye on friend Sutton. He may have saved us, incidentally, but that doesn’t make him a goody.’

One
of the most shocking things was that as I’d tried to bind Susan’s hands, she’d bitten me, drawing blood. Polo had knocked her out at that point with a blow to the neck and she’d still been unconscious when the police arrived …

I
let out a shuddering sigh. I wasn’t at all hungry myself. Some sense of irony caused me to make beans on toast for Tom, and when I put them in front of him with another mug of tea, he looked at them, then smiled wryly up at me. It was a smile that brought a lump to my throat. I sat down beside him.

Perhaps
because it was the two of us again, my mind switched back to the moment Susan had pointed the gun at me, at
me
, not Polo, and pulled the trigger …

I
began to shake again. He put his arm around me and I buried my face in his chest and bawled my eyes out. He held me, comforted me, and gradually, I became calmer again.

Then,
there was this moment when comfort became something else. I looked up into his face, reached up and gently kissed his mouth. He looked down at me, swallowed. I kissed him again, softly, then harder. Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but at that moment, my need was the greater. The beans grew cold. We went upstairs.

*

I woke the next morning to find him already up and staring out of the bedroom window.

‘
Feeling guilty?’ I asked him lightly.

He
turned. ‘A bit.’

‘
I can’t believe that this is the first time you’ve cheated on your wife.’

‘
As a matter of fact, it is.’

‘
I’m … sorry.’

He
smiled. ‘It takes two.’

We
had some breakfast, then went down to the police station to see Anslow. He was looking tired, but pleased.

‘
Well, she’s admitted everything,’ he told us. ‘Plus five others she killed before you spotted her, Sister.’

‘
Five?’

‘
Oh yes …’

She
’d started some months earlier when she heard a particularly macho patient boasting of his atheism after he’d recovered from a heart attack, and then hearing the voice of God telling her that unbelievers, being the worst kind of sinners, deserved to have their wages paid in full. She also claimed that it was God who had suggested pressurizing the vacutainer bottles.

‘
Although I suspect she’s plugging the God angle for all it’s worth, with an eye to a plea of diminished responsibility,’ Anslow observed.

That
first killing had been so easy that she’d decided to look for more sinners. She called up the patient record system on the laboratory terminal when there was no one around and noted the names of the unbelievers, i.e. atheists, agnostics or none. She then used one of her pre-pressurized sample bottles when next she bled them.

She
knew that the nurse in Thatchbury had been caught through the examination of staff rotas, so she varied the types of insulin she’d used so as to vary the times of death after administration, reasoning that that, and the comparatively large number of staff on ITU, plus the already high death rate, would cover her activities.

She
’d killed Mrs Sutton with PZI after returning from leave because, as Tom had said, she was the wife of a gangster, and she’d attempted suicide.

‘
I’ll tell you something funny,’ Anslow said. ‘I’m certain in my own mind that part of her knew that the trap we set up for her
was
a trap.’

‘
You mean, she wanted to be caught?’ I asked.

He
took a breath. ‘Yes and no. Serial killers tend to get to a point when their killings begin to sicken even them, and yet they know they’ll never stop. So they take ever greater risks, stop being careful. In a sense, they give up.’