Jail Bird

by Jessie Keane

‘I know that’s what you said,’ Lily replied evenly.

  ‘Just so long as we’re clear.’

  ‘Crystal.’

  His expression was amused. ‘No good looking at me like that, Mrs King. We have to be honest with each other.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lily, and put the list that Adrienne Thomson had reluctantly given her two hours ago on the desk.

  Adrienne hadn’t been keen to hand the list over. Had said she’d have to hunt around for it, she didn’t know where it would be, could Lily come back later? Lily had said that she could. Maybe when Matt was in, then they could talk it over, all three of them, together. And miraculously Adrienne had turned up the list in five minutes flat.

  ‘Oh Jesus, Lily, you ain’t going to start raking over all this rubbish again, are you?’ Adrienne had said, looking worried as she handed it over.

  ‘It may be rubbish to you, Adrienne, but it’s important to me,’ Lily had told her.

  Now Jack Rackland was pulling the list over towards him, looking it over.

  ‘That’s their names, and their last known addresses,’ said Lily. ‘I don’t know why she kept the list, but she did. She’s an odd sort, Adrienne. Didn’t think a thing about going behind my back. But when Leo started cheating on her–I suppose that’s how she saw it, the twisted mare–she went off her flipping head. But I have to say–her filing system’s a lot better than yours.’

  He glanced up at her with a glint of humour in his eyes. ‘Have a heart, girl. I don’t know of any company that keeps records on file for over twelve years. Jesus, even the bleedin’ taxman only goes back six.’

  She knew he had a point. But she was hot, tired, still upset over her unsatisfactory early morning meeting with Oli, still shaken by Nick’s boys snatching her last night–and yes, she was irritated that Jack had reminded her again about the money, and she was now wondering just how the hell she was going to get her hands on it. She had to. She had to.

  ‘Call me Lily,’ she said. ‘Mrs King don’t sound right any more somehow.’

  ‘Not after you killed off Mr King?’

  Lily stood up, her chair crashing over on its side. ‘That’s it. That’s enough. I told you I didn’t do it, but you don’t believe me. I told you you’d get your money, but you don’t believe that either. So this is just a fucking waste of time, Mr Rackland. Give me back that bloody list, I’m going to sort this out on my own.’

  ‘Whoa, whoa.’ He held up his hands, half laughing. ‘Don’t fly off the deep end, I was only winding you up.’

  ‘Well don’t fucking well wind me up,’ yelled Lily. ‘None of this is funny. I’ve got the King brothers loitering around, my daughters are like strangers to me, I’m fresh out of stir and, you know what? Somehow your little jokes ain’t going down at all well, Mr Rackland–don’t ask me why.’

  ‘Okay.’ He stood up, came around the desk, righted her chair. ‘Come on,’ he said more gently. ‘Let’s calm down and be friendly. I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘Bullshit! You did mean to.’

  Jack looked at her. ‘All right. Admitted. I wanted to get a rise out of you, see how you’d react in the heat of the moment. Mrs King–Lily–all I’ve got is your word for all this.’

  Lily stared at him, reassessing. He might look like a big lummox, but there was a sharp brain in there, clicking away. He’d baited her deliberately, and got the response he wanted.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

  Breathing hard with temper, Lily sat down again. She felt like storming out the door, but she needed his help. She knew it. He sat down too and returned his attention to the list.

  ‘Look, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll be methodical about this, okay?’ He looked up at her.

  Lily took a deep, calming breath. ‘Okay,’ she said at last.

  ‘We’ll start at the top of the list and work down. Adrienne Thomson hasn’t included herself on this roll call, I see.’

  Lily shook her head.

  ‘I have to tell you, though, Lily, that these women could be anywhere and doing anything after all this time. They could even be dead. You understand?’

  Lily nodded.

  ‘All right then. Who’s number one on the list? Alice Blunt. Oh yeah.’ He sat back. ‘This is the one I thought I remembered. I told you, right? A nurses’ hostel. I knew nurses were involved somehow.’

  ‘She’s a nurse?’ asked Lily, curious despite herself, thinking, Oh Jesus, Leo had all these women, all these damned women and I didn’t have a clue.

  He was shaking his head. ‘No, she’s not a nurse. She was in a home attended by nurses. Well, a hospital really. Jesus, I do remember her.’ He looked up at Lily’s face. ‘She was crazy. Bandaged wrists, I remember that, it’s all coming back to me. She’d tried to commit suicide. When I found her, she was in a psychiatric unit.’

  18

  Her head was whirling by the time she left Jack’s office. Alice Blunt. The name meant nothing to her, nothing at all.

  Fuck it, Leo, was this down to you? she wondered. The woman had slit her wrists and been admitted to a mental institution. She’d been seriously unstable, Jack had remembered that much.

  ‘She was spooky to talk to. Sort of locked into herself, you know?’ Jack had said.

  Spooky and unstable.

  ‘She could well be dead by now,’ Jack had warned Lily. ‘But I’ll check, okay? I’ll start in on this, and you start in on getting the cash together, all right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lily had said, and left. Thinking, Oh sure. I’ll get right on that. Go straight down the Post Office, get out a few thousand, how will that be?

  She didn’t have money to hand, not the sort of sums he was talking about. She had a roof over her head for now, thanks to Nick O’Rourke, and she couldn’t understand his motivation for that yet–but that was about it. When she thought of Nick, there was that nagging suspicion bothering her again. What, did he feel guilty because he’d done Leo, let her take the rap? Was all this unexpected kindness towards her just about him, feeling he owed her something? But…Nick and Leo had been as close as brothers. So Nick should hate her, just as Si and Freddy did, if he truly believed she’d killed Leo–shouldn’t he? Right now she was almost too tired to think about it, and she had more to do before day’s end, much more.

  She went back to the flat to pick up her rucksack, got the bus to where she needed to go, and then another bus; and it was getting dark but she didn’t care, she was on a mission. She then walked about a quarter of a mile as the night closed in around her, to get to the house. Finally, footsore and weary, she walked into the little gravelled turning and stood in front of it.

  It was full dark now. Owls hooted back in the nearby woods. Off in the distance, a fox barked. She clutched at the cold metal of the big closed security gates, put her head in between the bars and stared up the drive. The big white shape of The Fort glimmered faintly in the gloom.

  Lily drew in a shuddering breath.

  She knew every inch of that house. Fifty steps on the main staircase, five strides to the master suite, ten steps from the front door to the indoor swimming pool room. Her house. Only it wasn’t. Not any more. Although she and Leo had owned the house together, as ‘joint tenants’, a murderess could not be allowed to profit from her crime. And so the house–her home, she thought fiercely–had passed to the girls.

  Si had filled her in on these facts when she had called out time and again from prison, telling her with grim delight that the courts had appointed him and his wife Maeve as guardians of Saz and Oli and trustees of their considerable fortune, which would come to them when they passed eighteen. Oli had celebrated her eighteenth birthday in the February just gone, and Saz was twenty-one; now, they owned The Fort. Not her.

  Lily stared up at the house.

  There were a few lights on up there. It was just the same. Big, imposing.

  The last time she had come here…oh Jesus, nearly thirteen years ago!…she had been determined to conf
ront Leo because she knew he was knocking off Adrienne behind her back. And then…she screwed her eyes tight shut. Blood. That awful great gout of blood–and the numbness; the disbelief. Leo–big tough brawny Leo, who had always seemed invincible, a Sun King, undying and ever undimmed–was dead.

  Deep in shock, she’d picked up the gun and then stumbled, half falling, gibbering, down the stairs, and called the police, something she had never done in her life before. Something she–with hindsight, and wasn’t hindsight a wonderful thing?–probably shouldn’t have done at all.

  And she’d stayed there alone in the hall, the rifle in her hands, until the police came and she said, he’s dead, someone’s killed him, and they looked at her as if she was crazy and might at any second start shooting them, and they said, okay, yes, Mrs King isn’t it? Their faces had been white and fearful in the porch light. Put the gun down now, that’s right. Put it down on the floor. She had forgotten that she was still holding it. Couldn’t think why she had picked the damned thing up in the first place. But when she opened the door to the police she was standing there in the hall, blood–Leo’s blood–dripping from her clothes on to the lovely chequered marble tiles she had once picked out with such care.

  Oh God, such a nightmare.

  And then the trial, the horror building, the whole thing developing like some foul growth. The evidence all piling in against her. The arguments people had overheard, and one in particular when she had shouted: You bastard, if you’ve been playing away I’ll kill you. Not meaning it. Never meaning it. But she’d said it; it had been heard by the cleaning lady. The prosecution had laid it all out, it was plain as day. She had come storming back from the spa on that fatal Thursday to confront her husband. She knew the key to the gun cabinet was kept in the desk drawer. Leo was always punctiliously careful about locking the guns away, and he had a licence; everything was kosher. She had opened the cabinet in his study, loaded the rifle–her prints were the only ones on the gun–and then she’d gone upstairs and blown his head off.

  She could hear the prosecution shouting these words at her, accusing, snarling, while she stood there flinching, thinking, No, no, it wasn’t me, I didn’t do it, someone please help me.

  To be fair, the defence counsel had tried. Encouraged her to plead guilty, lessen her sentence. She was going to get a sentence–that went without saying. They had to try to do damage limitation, really: there was nothing else they could do. So she said Leo had beaten her. He never had, but dazed and confused and wondering what the hell had happened to her life, what was going to happen to her girls, she agreed to say he had. She was frightened of prison, being locked up–she wasn’t a criminal. Desperation took over. She pleaded guilty, just as her brief advised. She’d screamed at him that she was innocent, but he had explained it to her; don’t be a fool. You have to play the system. Admit guilt and you’ll get a lighter sentence. Guilty, but provoked. And he was right. Her sentence was lighter than it could have been.

  Not nearly light enough, though.

  Twelve long, hard, bitter and painful years.

  Now she could hear a car coming along the lane, could see the headlights beaming ahead into the darkness, lighting up the overhanging trees. It was a nice, quiet lane, never much traffic, just the odd car or two, and this one was coming at speed.

  Too fast.

  The noise of the engine was piercing, drilling into her skull. She turned, pressed herself back against the hard, cold metal of the gates. Then–Jesus!–the car came screeching around the turn of the road and headed straight towards her. It was going to go past, she knew it was, but she cringed back against the gates. Who was driving at that speed along dark lanes: a lunatic?

  It was going to go past.

  No. It wasn’t.

  She watched open-mouthed with horror as the car swung wildly to the left and came roaring straight at her, sending gravel flying, the headlights blinding her. She could see the huge shape of the 4x4 now, could see the outline of the bull bars at the front. She screamed, but she couldn’t hear herself screaming above the massive roar of the engine.

  She was going to die, mangled between the bull bars of the car and the thick metal of the gates. She was going to die right here and now, and she was never going to know who did this terrible thing to her, she was never going to know the love of her daughters again.

  No, she thought fiercely. Please God, no.

  Then there was a shriek as the brakes slammed on. The car roared to a halt, just centimetres away from the front of her body. The engine was idling. Lily could hear herself sobbing with shock. The headlights were a screen of white light, she was blinking, screwing her face up, holding a hand up to her eyes and…oh shit…now she could see the man behind the wheel.

  She could see him. Freddy King, sitting there grinning cruelly at her.

  She waited for him to get out. She couldn’t move; she was trapped, almost half falling over the bonnet of the damned car; she was fucked. As she watched, Freddy raised a finger at her and wagged it slowly from side to side as if saying, Naughty, naughty.

  Lily gulped, trying to draw in air, her heart beating crazily. She could feel heat radiating off the bonnet of the car; her nostrils were full of the stench of petrol. He was going to drag this out, relish it; this was the last thing she was ever going to know.

  All right then, you fucker, she thought, come on. Come on and finish it.

  Freddy threw the car into reverse.

  Lily stumbled to her knees, the gravel striking through her jeans, but she barely felt the pain. This time he was going to do it, get her good. She got ready to push herself to her feet at the last minute. She would wait until he gunned the engine again, then make a run for it, take off into the woods; she was fit, she could run. Hours in the prison gym had honed her body down to its fighting weight. She was pretty sure she could outrun heavy, muscle-bound Freddy King. She wasn’t going to make it easy for the bastard, that was for sure.

  She waited on the ground, gulping, gasping.

  Freddy sat in the car on the road for a heartbeat; then he gunned the engine and roared off into the night.

  Oh sweet Jesus.

  Lily slumped forward. She couldn’t believe it. He’d had his chance, right there; and he hadn’t taken it.

  Because he loved to toy with her, as a cat toys with a mouse.

  She fell sideways and lay slumped on the gravel, listening to the car getting further and further away. Heading for Si’s place, probably. He’d followed her here, the bastard. He was never going to let this go. And now another one was coming, just passing through, or–oh God–was it him coming back?

  She was going to throw up. Breathless, sobbing, she leaned back against the gates, closed her eyes, fought down the surge of vomit. Her head was spinning. Suddenly the aftermath of that cataclysmic fear hit her legs and she couldn’t get up. She just lay there, powerless.

  But the engine note was different. This was another car, smaller. And then the car–going slower than Freddy’s, but still heading straight for her where she sat outside the gates–turned in onto the gravel, blinding her in the glare of headlights once again. Lily put her arms over her head for all the damned good it would do; she was going to get flattened now, this was it.

  The car braked hard. Lily lowered her arms and squinted into the headlights’ hideous blue-white glare. She saw a low, sleek car, a red sports coupé. And someone was jumping out of the driver’s seat. She thought, Oh shit, here we go. Eyes down, look in.

  ‘Mum?’ said Oli’s voice. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  And as her daughter hauled her back to her feet, Lily started to laugh, and then she started to cry.

  19

  ‘Shit, I could have killed you,’ said Oli, putting a mug of coffee in front of her mother as Lily sat, shaking with the aftermath of shock, at the big, marble-topped island in the huge kitchen of the house.

  Well I got my wish, thought Lily dazedly. I’m in.

  But the question was, how long c
ould she stay in?

  Oli rummaged in a cupboard – the cupboards that Lily herself had chosen – and found some brandy. She added a splash to Lily’s coffee, hesitated, then added some to her own too. Lily sat there, in her own damned kitchen, feeling distinctly strange. Feeling that somehow she had slipped sideways in time. Everything was the same, on the surface. But nothing was the same, not really.

  ‘You scared me witless,’ said Oli, sitting down.

  Briefly Oli sank her head into her trembling hands. Then she looked up at Lily with angry and bewildered eyes. Her mother was here. The woman she’d cried for throughout her young life was sitting right here in front of her.

  She’d bundled Lily into the car, brought her inside The Fort. Acted totally on impulse. And now…now she hadn’t a clue what to do. Lily was bad, guilty, a terrible person. But Lily was her mother and, much as she might fight it, Oli felt the pull of Lily like a powerful magnet, drawing her in.

  ‘What the hell were you doing, squatting on the flipping ground outside the gates?’ she demanded.

  Well, what had she been doing? Lily wondered about that herself. Revisiting the past, mostly. Looking at what she had lost. It was both painful and alluring, doing that. Seeing all that was old and dear and familiar to her – her home, The Fort – when times had moved on, when she was no longer welcome here.

  All she wanted was for the decade never to have happened. To rewind the tape of life, to go back to that night when she had found Leo dead, but in this version, her version, he would not be dead, he would be alive, and they would argue. He would be sorry for what he’d done – for fuck’s sake, Adrienne Thomson of all people! – and there would be only Adrienne, only one mistress and not a veritable legion of tarts there to do his bidding. Leo would grovel (and this was unlikely, she knew it was, because she had never seen Leo grovel in his entire life, but this was her fantasy and that was the way she wanted it to play out), and all would be forgiven, and life would go on.

  But it could never have worked out that way, because Lily didn’t do forgiveness and because she had never loved Leo in the hot, heady way she had once loved Nick. Her and Leo had sort of suited each other, though: he was loud; she was quiet. He liked splashing the cash; she had enjoyed spending it. They had the girls to unite them. For a while it had been enough.