Jail Bird

by Jessie Keane

Then they were into Savile Row for a dive into Abercrombie and Fitch. Starting to feel a bit footsore, they went on to Conduit Street for a trip into Rigby & Peller to be properly measured and fitted for new underwear. Oli did cheer up a little in there, admiring a purple basque, fingering pale pink chiffon thongs and luscious pin-tucked and ribboned bras. They lurched outside, festooned with bags, did a quick recce in Moschino, and then gave it up, both worn out. They stopped for coffee and cake.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ said Oli when they had been seated in a booth and had ordered. ‘Seriously’

  ‘Seriously? What about?’

  Oli stared at her mother. ‘Well, about all this bloody money you’ve got for a start.’

  ‘Ah. That.’

  ‘And come on. Be honest now. Please.’ Oli looked down at the table, started shredding a napkin. ‘He was trying to hurt you, wasn’t he? Uncle Si?’

  Lily blew out her cheeks, not sure how to answer.

  Oli sat back. ‘You still do that. I remember that.’ She mimicked what Lily had done. ‘You always did that…when you were trying not to answer a question. Like, oh,’ and now Oli was smiling a little, ‘like, Mummy, where do babies come from?’

  ‘Yeah, do you know the answer to that one yet?’ Lily quipped. She was touched that Oli remembered her little foibles. She remembered Oli’s, too–they were forever branded on her brain. Like the strawberry birthmark on Oli’s upper right arm, and the vertical frown-lines between Oli’s dark brows, very much in evidence now, signalling her determination to get an answer on this subject.

  ‘Answer the frigging question, Mum. This is all fun, and it feels really strange but sort of nice doing this with you, just girly things like shopping and stuff–and you haven’t explained yet about the cash, and don’t think I’ve forgotten that–but it’s just a smokescreen, ain’t that the truth? So come on. Tell me. Was he…?’

  Their waiter was back with two Americanos and cupcakes.

  ‘What is that all about?’ wondered Lily aloud. ‘A thousand types of coffee, when all a person wants is strong and black…’

  ‘Mum.’

  Lily looked at her. ‘Okay. Yeah. Si believes I did it. And he thinks twelve years of my life ain’t enough to pay for the loss of your father. Straight enough for you?’

  Oli stared at her. ‘I’ll speak to him,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Lily.

  ‘Yeah, I will. And I’ll say that if anything happens to you, I’ll know it wasn’t an accident and…I’ll go to the police.’

  Lily sipped her coffee, troubled. She didn’t want Oli going head to head with Si and that nutter Freddy. And no daughter of hers was going to turn into a grass if she had anything to do with it.

  ‘Look, Oli—’

  ‘No you look. I lost Dad. And now…now I’ve just got you back. I can’t lose you too.’

  Suddenly Oli’s eyes were full of tears.

  ‘Hey,’ said Lily, reaching out, patting Oli’s hand. ‘Hey, it’s all right. Nothing’s going to happen to me.’

  ‘No?’ Oli swiped angrily at her eyes. ‘Fuck me, Mum, how can you say that? You’ve been banged up in prison for twelve years and you tell me it was all for nothing. That the person who killed Daddy is still out here, still walking the streets, free as a bird. Maybe I’m stupid to believe what you say, but I do. I don’t think you killed him, and if that’s so, then Uncle Si has no right, no right at all, to start threatening you.’

  Lily was silent. She picked at her cupcake. Then she said: ‘Do you think we should get the security codes and the locks and everything changed at The Fort?’

  Lily could see that Oli was thinking again about the scene she had interrupted by the swimming pool. Lily there, shivering in the freezing-cold pool, and Si with the pole, keeping her in there.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said finally. ‘I think we should.’

  ‘What about Saz? What will she make of it?’

  ‘Saz ain’t here,’ said Oli, tilting her chin up. Saz was her big sis, the boss of their little tribe–Lily knew it would take guts for Oli to stand against her.

  ‘Well, okay. We’ll get that organized, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. Okay. Sunstyle Securities come and test it and maintain it. I’ll phone them, they’ll do it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And now the money,’ said Oli, and that frown-line was still there as she reached for a lavender-iced cupcake and removed a sugared violet from its centre. ‘How can you have all this money?’

  ‘Ah yeah…about that.’ And Lily told her about Leo’s emergency stash behind the wall in the master suite, and that she had…well, accessed it.

  ‘Accessed it how?’

  ‘With a pickaxe. So we’re going to need a builder as well as the security guys.’

  ‘You did that when you were supposed to be ill with a migraine,’ said Oli accusingly.

  ‘I lied about the migraine. Sorry, Oli. But I didn’t know how far I could trust you. I just had to get into the house and get that money, and then I could start to rebuild my life, start to find…’

  ‘Find what?’ Oli was diving into the cupcake but now she stopped and stared at her mother’s face.

  ‘Find some peace of mind,’ finished Lily, when she had almost blurted: Find out who murdered Leo. She didn’t want Oli getting involved in this crusade of hers. She wanted Oli safe, and once they started down this road she knew damned well that safety could no longer be guaranteed.

  Oli was staring at her. Lily had the uncomfortable feeling that she was not quite believing what her mother was telling her any more.

  ‘You know what?’ said Oli. ‘You’re devious.’

  ‘Oli…’ She was going to say, no, no Oli, I’m not, please believe me, baby, but sometimes life throws shit at you and you need to duck and dive to miss it.

  ‘Yeah, you are.’ Oli was sitting back, nodding thoughtfully, staring at her mother. ‘You’ve changed. You were never devious before. You were just…you were just my sweet quiet mum, until they took you away. I asked for you, you know.’

  ‘Oli–oh sweetheart.’ Lily felt as though her heart was breaking into a thousand tiny pieces when she looked at Oli’s lovely face and saw the pain there.

  ‘Yeah, I did. I asked to see you. I didn’t understand, but they told me you’d done a bad thing, a terrible thing to Dad and we’d lost him, and now you had to pay for it. I didn’t understand. How would a six-year-old kid understand all that shit? And I couldn’t remember…it was just awful, I couldn’t remember what happened when Dad died. I still can’t. But I cried for you night after night, Mum. Every night, I cried. And for him too, for Dad. But neither of you ever came back.’

  She was quiet a moment, looking down at her half-eaten cupcake. Lily said nothing. There was bugger-all she could say: all the damage had already been done and all she could hope for now was that she’d be allowed to make up for the crap Oli had been forced to endure in the past.

  Oli’s eyes flicked up and she stared at Lily. ‘Uncle Si and Aunt Maeve told me and Saz that you didn’t want to see us.’

  Bastards, thought Lily, the news cutting her like a knife, even though it failed to surprise her.

  She thought of those impassioned phone calls she had made on the girls’ birthdays, at Easter, at Christmas; always hopeful, always trying, but hope dying by slow degrees as the barriers sprang up, as Si said again and again: No Lily, you can’t speak to them, why would they want to talk to the bitch who’d done their father? Fuck off and die, why don’t you? Si could have got the house number changed, but he hadn’t. Lily guessed that he enjoyed turning her down, making her suffer. Change the number and he’d have to find other ways to get his jollies.

  Lily found she had to clear her throat and blink hard before she asked the next question.

  ‘Did…did Saz ask for me too?’

  Oli slumped forward, pushing the remains of the cupcake and the cooling coffee aside. She leaned on her elbows, pushed her hands deep into her wild curling mop of dark h
air, and looked at her mother.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Saz never asked.’

  ‘Oh.’ That hurt a lot.

  ‘It changed her,’ said Oli sadly. ‘It changed her, big-time.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Just…oh, she’s a bit wild sometimes. A bit out of it.’ Oli gave Lily a wan half-smile. ‘I think she’s scared herself a couple of times and that’s why she’s married Richard. He’s so straight, so flipping boring really, but a really nice man. He’s a sort of anchor for her.’

  Lily straightened, perturbed by what Oli was telling her, but knowing she had to put it to one side. She tried not to think about Saz’s anguish, or Oli’s, not now. It wouldn’t help. She had to keep strong, keep focused. She picked up her coffee cup and drained it. ‘You know what I need?’ she said.

  Oli shook her head.

  ‘A bloody good hairdresser,’ said Lily. ‘And another coffee.’

  26

  You’ll never see it coming. But it is.

  Lily remembered Freddy’s mouthed words to her outside Askham. They drifted through her brain at the weirdest times, like now, when she had left Oli at the table with all their bags, and asked the waiter where the loo was. He directed her into the back of the coffee shop, and she went down a corridor and turned right at the bottom, and all at once she had a feeling that someone was behind her, walking steadily in her footsteps, and then she could hear a heavier tread behind her, a man’s footfalls.

  You’ll never see it coming. But it is.

  Terror rocketed up from her heart to her brain, and all the time she was thinking, Don’t be stupid, it’s just one of the staff, and she tried to chide herself, to make herself look round, but she couldn’t, she was too afraid that it would be Freddy, huge, shaven-headed, pug-nosed, cleft-chinned Freddy with the cruel laughing eyes, and he would catch her and kill her, all the while saying, You see, Lily? You see it now, don’t you? Now it’s coming. Now it’s here.

  She quickened her step and she was at the loo door now, reaching a trembling hand for it. There was a little thing on the cheap brown wood-effect door–a white stick-on plaque depicting a dumpy little skirted cherub peeing into a pot. What a tacky, ridiculous thing to become your last memory of life on earth.

  She was turning the handle, moving quickly, but she knew she would never be quick enough. It was Freddy, he’d come for her, this was it. A big hand clamped down on hers and she was spun round. Another hand went over her mouth, stifling the scream that was starting there.

  Jesus. Oh God, help me.

  ‘Lily King,’ said Nick O’Rourke, his black-on-black eyes glinting with fury, ‘what the fuck you playing at, girl?’

  Lily sagged back against the loo door. Nick took his hand away.

  ‘What the fuck am I doing? What the fuck are you doing, you arsehole?’ she snapped, feeling giddy, her heart beating crazily with the fright he’d just given her. ‘Jesus! You nearly gave me a sodding seizure!’

  Nick looked mad enough to spit. He leaned back against the wall and stared at her like he was debating whether to wring her neck or jump her bones. Lily found to her annoyance that she was still finding him fiercely attractive, with his dark hair and his intense face and his good height, shown off really nicely by a slick suit that looked like Hugo Boss if she was any judge.

  All right, enough, she thought. She’d been banged up for too long and it had made her bloody rampant. But did she really want to start down that road again, lusting after high-powered bad boys and ending up in the sort of trouble she couldn’t hope to deal with?

  ‘You ain’t got a clue, have you?’ He was staring at her in wonderment.

  ‘A clue about what?’

  ‘You’re being stalked, you silly cow.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve got Tiger Wu tracking you up and down Bond Street–didn’t you even fucking well notice?’

  ‘Tiger…Tiger who?’ Lily stammered. What the hell was he talking about?

  ‘He’s a removal man, Lily. Oriental in appearance, with a ponytail. And what he removes is people.’

  Oriental in appearance with a ponytail. Jesus! She’d seen the man out there, crossing the road in front of her and Oli.

  For God’s sake, what the hell was happening here? Nick was saying she had some git on her tail, and therefore on Oli’s tail too.

  ‘What the hell are you thinking of?’ Nick demanded. ‘Don’t you think you should have told me where you were going when you decided to check out of the safe flat, so I didn’t think some damned thing had happened to you–like Freddy King going off on one and whacking you, or getting some other cunt to do it for him?’

  Lily cleared her throat. Her mouth was suddenly dust-dry. Good God, first Si had a pop at her, and now it looked as if Freddy was having a go. None of this was good news.

  ‘Is he still out there?’ asked Lily, thinking of Oli, her precious Oli, sitting alone in the coffee shop.

  One of the waiters was coming down the corridor. Nick gave him a glare. ‘It’s out of order, pal,’ he said with a face like thunder.

  The waiter looked at Nick’s expression and backed quickly up.

  ‘No, he’s not still out there,’ said Nick, turning back to Lily. ‘Good job I had someone keeping an eye on you. My boys have taken him for a little trip.’

  Lily let out a heavy breath of relief.

  ‘Word on the street is you’re back at Leo’s place,’ said Nick.

  Now Lily’s eyes flashed. ‘It’s my home, Nick.’

  ‘You think they’re going to stand for that?’

  ‘Don’t look like it–does it?’ sniffed Lily. He’d scared the crap out of her. And for fuck’s sake, what made him think he could pile in here and start playing the big I-am? She was her own woman. Oh, she never used to be. She used to be quiet mousy little wife Lily King, ruled and practically bloody owned by Leo–and look where that had landed her. Now she was going to stand on her own two feet. Fuck men.

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re playing at, Lily,’ said Nick. ‘But I don’t like it.’

  ‘And who died and made you God, Nick O’Rourke?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t have to answer to the King brothers, and I certainly ain’t going to start answering to you.’

  Nick straightened. She could see he was royally pissed off with her now, but she didn’t give that. Fuck the lot of them, what had they ever done for her?

  Had she been in a calmer state of mind she would have admitted–if only to herself–that in fact Nick had done things for her, quite a few things really. Got her into the safe flat. And now, he had–apparently, but she only had his word for that–saved her from a contract killer.

  But she was too angry to be grateful. Because gratitude was what they always wanted from you, wasn’t it, these men? Be grateful and then do as you’re bloody told, wasn’t that always the way they wanted to play it?

  Well, not now. Not with this girl. She’d been there and done that–and got caned for it.

  Nick stared at her with those cold, cruel dark eyes. He shrugged. ‘If that’s the way you want it to be, fine. You go ahead. Only don’t come crying to me next time the King brothers cut up rough.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Lily, and she brushed past him and walked off, back up the corridor to the coffee shop, even though she’d been dying for a pee. Her pride wouldn’t let her take one, not with Nick O’Rourke loitering outside the door. ‘I won’t,’ she threw back over her shoulder.

  27

  Oli went out that afternoon. ‘You going to be all right?’ she asked Lily worriedly before she left.

  ‘Sure,’ said Lily, but she felt jumpy. She hadn’t told Oli about Tiger Wu, or Nick’s intervention–fortunately the coffee shop was large and it had been packed with punters, so Oli hadn’t seen Nick passing through. But soon it would be evening, and she knew that Si could get in here any time he damned well pleased–and so could Freddy, too.

  ‘You phoned the security company to get the entry codes
changed, and the locks, everything?’ asked Lily.

  ‘Yeah, it’s done. They’re coming tomorrow morning.’

  It couldn’t come soon enough as far as Lily was concerned. For tonight she was going to sleep with Leo’s Magnum under her pillow and fuck the Firearms Act. Which reminded her. ‘Hey, Oli, is there a VHS recorder in the place?’

  Oli looked wide-eyed and smiling at her mother. ‘A VHS recorder? Mum, that’s really old shit. Seriously, that’s so over. It’s all flat screens and Blu-Ray now.’

  ‘Right,’ Lily sighed.

  ‘But I think there’s a load of old stuff, video recorders and cameras, things like that, in the study somewhere.’

  ‘Oh.’ Maybe she was in luck after all. ‘So what are your plans today, Oli?’

  ‘Nothing much. Just hanging out with the girls.’

  ‘Well, have fun.’

  And then Oli was gone. Lily sat there and thought over all that had happened since she got out of prison. She really felt she was making progress with Oli, and that was nothing short of a miracle. She was still pissed off with Nick. She didn’t understand him at all, but then she never had. Sometimes she had the feeling that he was on her side, then he started laying down the law and her back went up. Shit, if he knew what she was really up to, he’d be even more put out. Because he knew her of old. He knew that once she started chewing on a thing, she wouldn’t let up until it either squeaked or died. But maybe…and this was an uncomfortable thought…maybe he was just trying to throw her off the scent. Maybe Nick had an idea what had really happened to Leo. Hell, maybe Nick was the one she should be looking into more closely. Who the fuck knew?

  A sweet memory drifted into her brain: her and Nick dancing at a youth club do, just smooching head to head, so close, so cosy–but then Leo had cut in; Leo always cut in. Maybe Leo had cut in in other ways, too–screwed Nick on a deal. Nick might be a pretty straight shooter, but she had always known that greed was good in Leo’s eyes. Wave a fat wedge of cash under his nose and he might have been persuaded to do the dirty on anyone. Not Lily. Not the girls. Not Si or Freddy. They were family. But anyone else? Even Nick? She couldn’t swear that Leo would have always trod the line the way he should.