Agatha Raisin: As The Pig Turns (21 page)

Boris advanced with the torch.

‘Someone’s coming!’ cried Richards.

Agatha Raisin, crouched over the wheel of the Mercedes, crashed straight into the barn and right into Boris. Chemicals, glass jars and retorts went flying. She swerved and gunned the car at
Richards, who leapt out of the way, but not before she had sideswiped him and broken his leg. ‘Shoot her!’ he shouted.

Flames were beginning to flare up all round. His men were running outside for the truck.

Charles and Toni jumped into the car. Agatha reversed straight out, but the truck was driving off. ‘We’ve got to get Richards out of there,’ shouted Charles.

Agatha stopped. Charles ran back in and pulled Richards, who was screaming with pain, out of the inferno. His clothes were on fire, and Charles rolled him over in the grass until the flames went
out.

Suddenly, there was a helicopter overhead and police sirens in the distance.

Richards had fallen unconscious. Agatha and Toni got out of the car and joined him. Toni sat down and put her head between her knees. ‘They were going to burn her face off, Agatha,’
said Charles.

Agatha sat white-faced, staring at Toni, cursing herself for her vanity that had nearly led the girl to a nasty death.

Then they were surrounded by police, ambulances and fire engines.

Richards was taken off in an ambulance and under police guard. His gang had been caught. Agatha wanted Toni to be taken to hospital to be treated for shock, but Toni refused to go.

Then they were taken off to police headquarters in Dover to be questioned before being transferred to a ‘safe’ house to face further questioning in the morning.

The ‘safe’ house fortunately contained nightwear and changes of clothes. They huddled together on the sofa in the small living room. Charles got up and went into the kitchen and came
back with a bottle of whisky. ‘Look what I’ve found.’

‘Toni needs hot sweet tea,’ admonished Agatha.

‘Toni needs to get drunk,’ said Toni in a weary voice.

‘So it was drugs all along,’ said Agatha at last.

‘And farm machinery and cars, probably,’ said Charles. ‘Tulloch wasn’t around. I hate to think of that psycho still being on the loose.’

Toni shuddered, and Agatha said quickly, ‘They probably got rid of him. Once he was blown, he became expendable. Let’s go to bed.’

During the night, Agatha woke up and found Charles in bed next to her.

‘What the . . . ?’

‘Just shut up and go to sleep.’ He put his arms around her. Agatha drifted back off to sleep into a world of nightmares, haunted by a picture of beautiful Toni’s ruined
face.

A policeman who had been on guard outside the door knocked in the morning and asked them if they would like breakfast. ‘We’d better eat something,’ said
Agatha.

‘There’s a McDonald’s next door.’

‘Couldn’t he do better than that?’ grumbled Agatha.

‘Nothing up with McDonald’s,’ said Charles. ‘I’m starving.’

They had just finished eating when they were told they were being escorted back to Mircester.

‘More questioning,’ groaned Agatha. ‘What about my car?’

‘You’ll need to contact your insurance company. Part of the blazing barn fell on it. It’s a write-off.’

The three of them were interviewed separately. Toni was interviewed by Bill Wong and Alice Peterson. Somehow, as they were very gentle with her, she found it therapeutic to go
through her whole story again.

When she had finished and signed her statement, Bill said, ‘You really must go to Victim Support.’

‘I’m all right now,’ said Toni.

‘I still think you are suffering from delayed shock,’ said Alice. ‘Let me make an appointment for you.’

‘Very well,’ said Toni, feeling she would have agreed to anything just to get out of police headquarters and back to her own little flat.

Agatha and Charles met up in the reception area. ‘I need a shower and scrub,’ said Agatha. ‘Toni’s evidently gone to her flat. Should we go and pick her
up?’

‘I think she’ll want to be on her own for a bit,’ said Charles. ‘I couldn’t get anything out of them. Has Tulloch been found?’

‘Wilkes told me they’re still looking for him. I don’t like it. What if that psycho decides to take revenge on one of us?’

‘I think he’s probably long gone,’ said Charles, stifling a yawn.

‘I should call the hospital,’ said Agatha, ‘and find out how Simon is getting on. I wonder if I should reemploy him.’

‘What! You must be mad. He was spying for Mixden.’

‘I know, I know. But look at it this way. Us amateurs have none of the resources of the police. What policeman would have the imagination to figure out what a man with a lot of money he
had to keep hidden would do? Who else would think about his longing for a posh car?’

‘See what Toni thinks of the idea,’ said Charles.

‘I’m not going to do anything about it now. I’ve got to phone my car insurance and get a courtesy car. Shall we ask the coppers to drive us back?’

‘I’m sick of them,’ said Charles. ‘Let’s take a taxi.’

At Agatha’s cottage, Charles said he would go home and maybe see her later. As she watched him drive away, Agatha felt strangely bereft and then gave herself a mental
shake. Charles was like a will-o’-the-wisp, coming and going, never dependable.

Her cleaner arrived with Agatha’s cats, who studiously ignored her and waited by the garden door to be let out. ‘You should get a cat flap,’ said Doris.

‘What if some intruder uses it to crawl in?’

‘Nobody would be that skinny enough.’

‘Well, they could shove a petrol bomb through it.’

‘They could do that through the letterbox.’

‘You’re a barrel of laughs this morning,’ said Agatha, and burst into tears.

Doris looked at her in shock and then hugged her. ‘I’m getting Mrs Bloxby here right now.’

Mrs Bloxby was shocked at Agatha’s appearance. Usually Agatha was an advertisement for the saying that the fifties were the new forties, but she was white-faced and
haggard.

After a cup of hot sweet tea laced with brandy, and two cigarettes, Agatha began to recover. ‘I’ve never seen you wearing a tracksuit before,’ said Mrs Bloxby.

‘Police supply from their safe house in Dover.’

‘I heard about it on the morning news. Of course, not much came out because of the impending court case. Tell me about it.’

Mrs Bloxby listened in horror to Agatha’s tale.

‘Where is Toni?’ she asked.

‘Back at her flat.’

‘And this Tulloch is still at liberty! I’m going to Mircester to get her right away.’

Charles arrived home to be told by his man Gustav that Penny Dunstable was in the sitting room. Penny was one of Charles’s old flames. Gustav privately thought that if he
did not get Charles married off to someone suitable, then one day that Raisin female might be in residence.

Penny rose to meet him. She was tall and rangy, with square hunting shoulders, thick brown hair and a long face. Charles remembered she had been an enthusiastic lover.

‘I’m done in,’ said Charles. ‘Darling Penny. Wrong day for a visit. I’m going to bed.’

‘Good idea,’ said Penny huskily.

Sex, thought Charles. Lots of it. Just what the doctor ordered. Then a vision of Agatha’s sad white face watching him as he left rose before his eyes. Damn Agatha.

‘Sorry, darling,’ he said. ‘I’m knackered. Another time.’

He walked away quickly. Gustav started to follow him up the stairs. Charles swung round. ‘I can put myself to bed, thank you. You invited her, didn’t you?’

‘I met Miss Dunstable at the farmer’s market and thought you would be glad to see her.’

‘Not now,’ said Charles. ‘Give her a drink and get rid of her.’

Toni answered the door to Mrs Bloxby and meekly accepted an invitation to stay at the rectory. Mrs Bloxby helped her pack. ‘I’m supposed to get a call from Victim
Support,’ said Toni.

‘Did you give the police your mobile phone number as well?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then they’ll be able to find you. Before you leave, wouldn’t you much rather be with your mother?’

‘She did call, but she’s just got a new job. I told her I would be all right and that I might see her at the weekend.’

When they got into Mrs Bloxby’s ancient Morris Minor, the vicar’s wife looked in the rearview mirror before she drove off. If only the police would come through with the news that
Tulloch had been found.

She heaved a sigh of relief when she finally turned down into the tree-lined road leading to Carsely. There were no cars behind her.

Once at the vicarage, she told Toni to go and find a seat in the garden. Toni stretched out in a deck chair and felt the warm sun on her face. The peace of the vicarage garden enclosed her.

Soon she was asleep.

That evening, Agatha sealed her letterbox shut with super-glue, knowing the postman would leave any letters for her at the village store. She tried to phone Charles, but Gustav
told her he wasn’t available; but then that was what Gustav always said.

She went up to the landing and looked longingly at James’s cottage, but no light showed and his car was not parked outside.

The doorbell rang, making her jump nervously. She went down the stairs and looked through the spy hole. Bill Wong’s face stared back. Agatha opened the door.

‘Come in. Has he been caught?’

‘Who?’

‘Tulloch, of course.’

‘We’re working on that. We might get one of the gang to talk soon. One of them seems weaker than the others. We’re hoping to hear that Richards got rid of him. We’re
winding up the whole business. Imagine having a successful chain of supermarkets and that not being enough. The drug lab was to be a new venture, all set up to make crystal meth, as far as
forensics could gather from the burnt-out remains. Where is Toni?’

‘Staying with Mrs Bloxby.’

‘The best thing she could do.’

‘She would have been quite safe with me,’ said Agatha huffily.

‘Let’s hope you’re not in any danger,’ said Bill, looking at the bars on the kitchen window.

Agatha followed his gaze and said bitterly, ‘I’m in a sort of prison when Tulloch may be out there, roaming free. Hey, what about Fiona Richards? Did she know anything about all
this?’

‘She denies it vehemently and tearfully. All she can wonder about is what is going to happen to her previously expensive lifestyle.’

‘And is Richards really the head of things?’

‘Before his ambition to join the drug market, it was pinching cars and expensive farm machinery and shipping it to Eastern Europe. Among the men we picked up, there were two Albanians, one
Kurd, and I regret to say two residents of Mircester, the latter both having spent time in prison in the past for grievous bodily harm.’

Bill’s phone rang. He walked out of the kitchen to answer it. When he came back, his face was grim. ‘One of the gang has started to sing. He says that Beech would earn money by
telling Richards which combine harvesters were left out on the fields and where to pick up expensive cars. Maybe the P in his ledger was for Porsche. He also tipped Richards off when it looked as
if one of the gang might be under suspicion and managed to ‘lose’ the evidence. But he felt he wasn’t getting enough and started to blackmail Richards. Richards ordered a man
called Boris Ahmid and one of the Englishmen, Marty Gifford, to deal with Beech in such a way as to frighten off anyone else who might want to play the same trick. The roast pig idea was
Boris’s. The missing feet and arms have been found in a freezer at the back of the main supermarket store in Mircester.’

‘Wouldn’t one of the staff have found them?’

‘It was a padlocked freezer. Richards is a sick and vicious man. The rest of his gang are soon going to turn against him when they learn he’s going to plead that they threatened him
into doing their dirty work.’

‘And when did Tulloch enter the picture?’

‘I think shortly after Beech’s murder. He’s a compulsive gambler and owed money to a loan shark. Richards heard about it through the loan shark. We believe Tulloch drugged
himself outside Agatha’s cottage to divert suspicion from himself.

‘Tulloch killed Amy Richards. She was about to take over the blackmailing. How on earth the silly woman thought she could get away with it is beyond me.’

‘But what is Tulloch’s record?’

‘Seemed straightforward copper until we started digging. His wife called us out one night. She had been beaten. Two broken ribs. Then she withdrew the charge. But it left a nasty taste in
the mouth. He divorced her a few months later. He was transferred to us from Manchester. Now, before he left Manchester there had been a series of brutal, sadistic murders of prostitutes. After he
left, nothing. Makes you think.’

Simon could not sleep that night. He was recovering rapidly, but not in spirit. He had never felt so low or so shamed in all his life. He was sure the army had seen through his
fake post-traumatic stress but after his treatment of Sue had decided it would be better just to get rid of him. His parents knew all about his spying for Mixden and looked at him sadly, as if they
could not believe they had created such a monster.

There had been a police guard outside his door, but when he had been considered strong enough to move to a general ward, the police guard had been taken off. The fact that his parents had not
seen fit to pay for a private room for him had shaken him.

Sometimes, in his lowest moments, he began to wish he really had died. And yet it was his fear of Tulloch returning to finish the job that kept him alert, had made him refuse the sleeping
pills.

The other patients did not talk to him. He had heard one say, ‘He’s probably a criminal.’

He was thankful he now had enough strength to go to the bathroom himself without enduring the indignity of ringing for a bedpan. He emerged from the bathroom and hesitated, wondering whether to
see if he could get any food from the kitchen. Soup and a sandwich had been served at six o’clock in the evening, and he knew he could not expect more food until the following morning. The
night nurse was not at her desk. He managed to find a small kitchen outside the ward and made himself a cup of coffee and a cheese sandwich. Beginning to feel a bit weak and shaky, he cautiously
emerged from the kitchen to make his way back to his bed. In front of him was what looked at first like a hospital orderly pushing a trolley of medicine. The orderly stopped outside Simon’s
ward, selected a syringe and filled it. Simon began to shake with fear. There was something horribly familiar about that burly figure with the fair hair. He retreated slowly and then began to run
until he reached the main desk, crying, ‘Get the police. It’s Tulloch. He’s trying to murder me!’