by Jessie Keane
Would Leo really have wired his gaff up to a cop shop?
Answer: no. Surely not.
So when the alarm went off, if it went off, where was the alarm actually raised?
Lily had a suspicion, just a faint suspicion, that she knew the answer to that. She switched off the tape, and went out into the hall. Went to the security panel beside the door. Looked at it. And started to smile.
Leaving the system on, she walked out into the grounds, tripping sensors left, right and centre. She breached all the crisscrossing beams, and somewhere – she knew – an alarm was sounding, loud and clear.
It didn’t take him long to get there – she was timing it on her watch. Soon she heard a powerful car approaching, roaring along as if speeding to an emergency. She stood there, leaning against one of the wide-open gates, and then the headlight beams caught her in a dazzling field of light and the Mercedes screeched to a halt three feet from her. Someone tall and dark got out of the driver’s seat and stalked across the gravel towards her.
‘Twelve and a half minutes,’ said Lily. ‘That’s pretty good, although I believe new guidelines for the emergency services require…’
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ demanded Nick O’Rourke, breathing heavily and looking, now they were both caught in the headlights’ glare, pretty damned angry and alarmed. Which was fitting, really.
‘Testing the system,’ said Lily.
‘Which system?’
‘The one Leo and you put in place, the alarm system that’s connected straight to your house.’
Nick was silent.
‘And I know about Purbright Securities being a division of Sunstyle, who fitted the system – oh, and that you’re on the board, as was Leo when he was alive – oh yeah, and that Purbright paid for Alice Blunt’s care.’
‘Ah.’
‘And I know why Si and Freddy didn’t get to me inside.’
Nick looked at her. Placed both hands on his hips, let out a breath, looked at the ground, then back at her face. ‘Now come on. You can’t know that.’
‘All right, then. I guessed. Bearing in mind everything else that I know for sure, and are you going to tell me I got it wrong? Because I know I haven’t, Nick. You put a ring of steel around me when I was inside. Because I was Leo’s wife, and because you knew me and loved me and you couldn’t believe I’d done him but if I had, then I must have been provoked beyond reason. I guess you know by now that it was Maeve?’
‘I heard.’
Lily nodded. ‘Leo left me an old tape and on it he said the boys would look after me. He kept on saying that, the boys would look after me, but he didn’t mean Si and Freddy, and he didn’t mean any of the boys who worked for him, either.’ She paused. ‘He meant you, didn’t he, Nick?’
Nick was silent again for long moments. He was staring at Lily’s face.
‘You know what?’ he said at last.
‘What?’
‘You’re devious.’
Lily shrugged. ‘It’s been said.’
‘And you had the front to tell me dumb blonde jokes.’
‘You and Leo had a very special relationship, ain’t that right?’ said Lily softly.
Nick sighed. ‘Let’s go in,’ he said, taking her arm. ‘And talk about it.’
75
Bobby ‘Bubba’ King had been a player, just like his son Leo. He had played…
‘With my mother,’ said Nick as they sat in the sitting room.
Lily looked at him. She twined her fingers into his. He squeezed her hand. ‘I had Jack check the birth records,’ she said. ‘Your dad’s name wasn’t on it.’
‘Can’t actually blame him for that,’ sighed Nick. ‘When he found out Bubba King had been poaching on his territory, he kicked off and divorced Mum. Took off for the States when I was about a year old. Never saw him or heard from him again. Leo’s dad stepped in, looked after Mum and me. She didn’t marry again and I was an only child. She died when I was twelve.’
‘I knew that, but Jesus, I can’t get over this. You’re their half-brother. Si and Freddy and Leo.’
‘Yeah, but Si and Freddy don’t know that. Bubba was closest to Leo, and Leo was the only one he told.’
‘When did he tell Leo?’
‘When Mum died.’
By the age of fourteen, Lily knew that Nick and Leo had been a team, standing together on the streets, into all sorts. By seventeen, they had been driving around in hot cars and pushing the boundaries in all sorts of ways, working their way up in crim circles, two good-looking boys who attracted girls without any effort at all. Nick had attracted Lily…but when Leo stepped in, Nick had stepped back. Because you don’t touch kin or anything that belongs to them.
‘I always wondered why you didn’t fight harder for me,’ said Lily.
Nick turned his head and looked at her with those dark, dark eyes. Nothing like Leo’s. Thank God. But maybe if they had been, she’d have wised up that much sooner.
‘What, go up against Leo?’ Nick sighed. ‘I was angry with him, sure I was. Furious. But I was even angrier with you. He was the only blood I had. My mother was dead, I had no grandparents. Bubba always helped me financially, but that was about all. Si and Freddy were kept in ignorance, because I suppose Leo and Bubba knew that there were enough contenders for the King crown as it was, and Si and Freddy might prove a threat to me if they thought I was closer than they’d previously believed me to be.’
‘You and Leo were like…blood brothers.’
Now Nick grinned. ‘We were blood brothers.’
He showed her a white, inch-long scar on his inner wrist.
Lily gasped. ‘Leo had one exactly the same,’ she said, fingering the whitened skin there.
‘That’s right, he did. After Bubba told us, we did it. Cut our hands and joined the blood together, swore to be brothers forever.’
The boys will look after you.
‘And then you met me…’
‘Yeah. And then Leo stormed in, and you let him storm in, so I stepped back.’
She had been so quiet, so obliging, then. Hurt by Nick’s sudden apparent withdrawal, she had allowed herself to be charmed by Leo.
‘I was just a dumb girl, Nick. I was snowballed by Leo. I wanted you to step in, and all you did was fucking well step back.’
‘Now this is bloody ironic, wouldn’t you say?’ His eyes were dancing with mirth now as he stared at her. ‘We both wanted the other to show more resistance to Leo. And we both folded.’
Lily sat back wearily, half laughing, half sad. ‘He certainly was a force to be reckoned with.’
‘Yeah. That he was.’
They were silent.
Then Nick said: ‘I was so fucking miserable when I let you go. So I thought, hey, who cares? I’ll date beautiful girls. All cats are grey in the dark. When that didn’t make me any happier I thought, what the hell? – and I married Julia.’
‘The playboy Nick,’ said Lily. She remembered how it had hurt her, seeing him with all those different, glamorous companions. And then when he had married Julia, although she would have denied it, she’d felt low for weeks. ‘Poor Julia. Second best even though she was so gorgeous. And being so gorgeous, and so vain…she went and upset Maeve.’
Nick was staring at her, drinking in her face.
‘What?’ asked Lily.
‘I thought I knew you. Gentle, quiet Lily. I thought…if she’d done that, this awful thing, then she’s been provoked beyond all reason. Then it came out at the trial that he’d been hitting you…’
‘He didn’t,’ said Lily quickly. ‘That was something the brief cooked up to lessen the sentence.’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t know that. And I wondered what else he might have done to you, because I knew Leo. I knew his appetites. So I thought you must have been forced to it. So when it all came to a head, I was torn in two. I loved Leo. I loved you. And Leo had always said, look after Lily if anything ever happens to me. He’d give me one of those big bear hugs of his
and he’d say that, time and again: always look after Lily. So…I looked after you. Kept you safe inside. Si did try to get to you in there, but I put things in place.’
Lily remembered the rumours she’d heard in stir – that someone was out to get her. Yeah – Si was out to get her.
But not any more.
‘Ah, what the hell? It’s all water under the bridge,’ he said, and leaned over and kissed her.
‘Yeah,’ said Lily, and put her arms around his neck and pulled him in close.
All that wasted time, she thought.
But no. It hadn’t been wasted. She had her girls. And she had grown a backbone in prison; it had toughened her up, made her strong.
‘You’ve caused me a hell of a lot of anxiety,’ said Nick against her mouth.
‘You broke my heart,’ said Lily.
‘You broke mine.’
‘Oh come on–do you actually have one?’ Lily scoffed with a smile.
Nick pulled open his shirt and put Lily’s hand in there, over his heart. His chest was hot, the skin there like silk over steel. ‘Feel that? It’s beating, yes?’
‘Then it’s not broken.’
‘Just a hairline crack, maybe,’ said Nick, his eyes playing with hers.
Lily sighed happily. ‘I love you, Nick O’Rourke. I always have and I think I probably always will.’
‘You think?’ His lips hovered over hers now.
She didn’t need to ask if he loved her too. Hadn’t he proved that, a thousand times over? Guarding her in prison, and outside too. And stepping back when he thought she was in love with Leo.
She had been overwhelmed by Leo. But this was love, faithful and enduring love. The type every woman craved, deep down.
‘I love you too, Lily King. And I think…you know what I think?’
Lily shook her head.
‘I think it’s way past your bedtime.’
Epilogue
The party for Lily King’s fortieth birthday was held in the grounds of The Fort the following April. The Fort sale was agreed. The recession had delayed the sale and whacked twenty-five grand off the asking price of two million, but there was still going to be plenty left for Lily and the girls.
There was a huge marquee, a guest list of villains and wives a mile long, fairy lights strung up in all the trees. Kylie was giving ‘I Just Can’t Get You Outta My Head’ her all from the huge sound system the DJ had set up beside the outdoor pool. Saz was dancing with Richard, Oli was rocking her new baby son in her arms, and Lily was looking at her birthday cake’s single lit candle and thinking: Thank Christ they didn’t try to get forty of the buggers on there. The sprinklers would have drowned the lot of us.
The party organizer, a posh twenty-year-old girl with a clipboard and fixed smile, came up to Lily.
‘Ten minutes, then we cut the cake, Mrs King, yah? I’ll start getting everyone into the marquee.’
‘Fine.’ Just time to nip to the loo, check her make-up.
Lily went indoors, attended to her ablutions, and was coming back outside when suddenly Si was there, blocking her way.
Lily made as if to step around him.
Si blocked her path again.
She looked into his eyes. What the fuck now? she wondered.
‘Hi, Lily’. He was staring at her face. ‘Happy birthday’.
Lily gulped. Si always had and always would make her nervous. ‘Thanks,’ she said. He didn’t move aside. He was still blocking her exit like a brick wall.
‘I wanted to tell you that it’s been sorted. As promised.’
‘You mean…’
‘I mean Maeve.’ He paused for a beat. He was telling her he’d disposed of his wife and he looked as calm as a millpond. Lily felt a shudder run through her. ‘But there was something I thought you should know about. Something odd.’
‘Oh? What?’ She didn’t want to know. Whatever it was, she just didn’t.
‘It troubled me, this thing. Do you know what that’s like, when something keeps niggling away at you?’
Lily nodded. What the hell’s he on about?
‘She said…Maeve admitted she was there on the night Leo got done.’
‘I know that. She did it.’
But Si was shaking his head. ‘She told me she followed the girls in, through the breach in the wall.’
Lily was frowning now. ‘Saz was there. She saw Maeve standing over Leo with the gun in her hands. She thought Maeve was me.’ But he’d said girls. Plural. ‘She’s not saying Oli was there too?’
Si looked tired all of a sudden. He sighed. ‘It’s true Maeve came on to Leo and he turned her down. It’s true she was attacking Leo’s women. But–Lily–I have to tell you this. With her dying breath she kept saying it. Both the girls were there. She followed them in. And it was Saz that fired the gun. Maybe she meant to just threaten him with it and it went off, I don’t know. The girls knew what Leo had been up to with the women, they knew you were upset.’ Si was staring at Lily. ‘Maeve saw it happen. She swore. She got the girls back out. And then you came home early, and you got fitted up for it, and she thought, better you than the girls.’
Lily was standing there, open-mouthed with shock. ‘But…she told me she’d done it,’ she managed to get out.
‘She wanted to hurt you. She hated you. She wanted Leo dead after he mocked her. And when you think about it, everything worked out just fine for Maeve. She had your life. She had your girls. All right, she didn’t have Leo. But what she did have was revenge.’
‘No…’ said Lily.
‘Why would anyone lie with their dying breath?’ Si asked her, shaking his head. ‘That’s what bugs me. I don’t think they would. So…I had to tell you.’
‘But Saz…Saz was furious with me, as if she really believed I’d killed Leo.’
‘I thought about that,’ said Si. ‘Jesus, it’s all I’ve been thinking about for months. Oli must have witnessed the killing, and after that I think she just blanked it out…’
Oli had told Lily that she couldn’t remember anything about what had happened around that time. Lily felt her guts lurch as she thought of that. Everything Si was saying…oh God, it made sense. She didn’t want it to, but it did.
‘Her mind just shut down; she couldn’t accept what had happened,’ Si was going on. ‘Maybe for a while she actually did believe that you’d killed Leo. And Saz…well, who the fuck knows. Did she pull that trigger deliberately, or did the gun go off by accident?’
‘But Si, she would have loaded the damned thing,’ said Lily.
‘Lily,’ said Si, his gaze flat as he stared at her. ‘We’re talking a nine-year-old kid here, playing up to her little sister. She may have loaded it, played the whole charade out to the full, with no real intention of firing it. Who the fuck knows?’
Lily was shaking her head. ‘Maeve could have fired it, wiped her prints off afterwards.’
Si was silent for a moment. ‘Her dying breath, Lily. She swore it was Saz. Saz with her special little gloves on. No prints to remove. Think about it. The poor kid must have been eaten up with guilt after that. She’d killed her dad. Caused you to do twelve years inside. When she saw you again, it must have crucified her, brought it all back. Don’t you think?’
‘Mrs King!’ The party organizer was pushing past Si’s bulk in the doorway. She looked at Lily, standing there pale with shock, and gave her a bright-eyed, efficient smile. ‘There you are. Come on, Mrs King. Time to cut the cake.’
Si and Lily exchanged a long look. Si stepped aside. After one faltering moment, Lily hurried past.
Si caught her arm, halting her progress. Lily’s head turned and she stared into his eyes. ‘What are you going to do? About what I told you?’
Their gazes locked.
Lily took a long, quivering breath. Then she straightened and pasted a smile on her face.
‘What did you tell me, Si?’ she asked him with a slight, puzzled frown. ‘I can’t seem to remember.’
Si looked at her for
a long moment. Then he nodded and freed her arm. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It was nothing. Nothing at all.’
Lily hurried on into the marquee. Everyone was clustering inside now. She looked around.
Si was there, edging in at the back of the crowd. So was Freddy. And there were her girls, Saz and Oli, Saz laughing at something Richard had just said to her, Oli cradling baby Leo.
Baby Leo.
Leo would have been chuffed to nuts if he could see his grandson and know that Oli had not hesitated for a second over a name choice. Baby Leo was already very visibly a King, with a mop of dark hair, black eyebrows and long girly black lashes. And, of course, navy blue eyes.
‘Don’t all babies have dark blue eyes?’ Oli–exhausted but serenely happy–had asked Lily when she first held her grandson after the birth.
‘Do they? I don’t know. God, he’s beautiful though. Isn’t he?’
Jase’s child.
Lily looked across at Oli and the baby now, held tight in his mother’s arms, and put thoughts of Jase to one side. And everything that Si had just told her? She was going to forget it. Right now. She took a deep, calming breath. Tonight, she wanted everything to be perfect; let the dead rest in peace, let the living have their fun.
Nick strolled over, smiling. He put an arm around her shoulders. Leaned in. Kissed her.
‘Mrs King,’ said the organizer, as a hush fell over the watching crowds. ‘Would you like to say a few words?’And the woman was off again, urging the waiters to top up everyone’s glasses with champagne for the toast.
‘Oh, I don’t think…’ Lily glanced at Nick. He nodded. Go on.
‘Well,’ said Lily. She raised her voice, looked around at all the faces. Many of them were the same faces she had confronted at Saz’s wedding. But their expressions were different now. Si had put the word out. Lily was in the clear over Leo. All was forgiven. She was being watched with smiles, with anticipation–not with hatred.
She saw Becks, all in pink–her favourite colour, standing in the crowd, beaming from ear to ear, with Joe. Adrienne was there, but what the fuck, what was the use of bearing grudges? And Matt–dull old dependable Matt, the company accountant–was at her side. Hairy Mary was there with her East End hard boy.
