Jail Bird (29 page)

Lily dived sideways, into the pool. The gun went off, a huge explosion of noise that set her ears ringing, and she had a feeling that it had been
this
close, that bullet, too close for comfort. Then she was under the blue, blue water, and she thought,
Oh shit she’s going to fire at me again, I’m a sitting duck in here
, and she swam off under water, waiting for the fatal impact.

She tried to stay under, stay deep. Under the water, bullets would be slowed – wouldn’t they? – and Maeve’s visual perception of her exact whereabouts would be distorted. That was the plan.

It was a
good
plan.

Only…she was running out of breath. Her lungs felt as though they were bursting. She was getting a feeling, a powerful feeling that she just
had
to take in air, or water, or something, but she had to open her mouth, her body was telling her: breathe or die.

She kicked further down the pool, as far as she could go, cringing, expecting at any moment to feel the shocking pain
of a gunshot, but she knew she was going to have to come up for air.

Lily broke the surface of the pool near the shallow end, the end at which Si and Saz had been standing. She whooped in lungfuls of air, her head whipping round. Si was gone. Saz was gone. There was shouting going on at the other end of the pool, Saz and Maeve grappling…

Then Lily saw what had happened, saw why Maeve had missed her when she fired.

Saz had made a run for it and grabbed her. Saz had tried to protect her mother from Maeve. She saw Maeve push Saz roughly aside, saw the gun swinging around towards Saz.

‘No!’ Lily shrieked.

But Si was there, pushing Saz aside. Husband and wife confronted each other. The gun in Maeve’s hand was steady, aimed at Si’s chest. Saz stepped back nervously. Lily froze.

Si was staring at his wife as if he had never seen her before. Finally he said: ‘You did it.’

Maeve’s chin tilted upwards. ‘Yeah. It was me. I did it.’

‘You killed my brother, just because he wouldn’t betray me? Wouldn’t jump my wife like she wanted?’ Si was shaking his head; he couldn’t take it in.

Maeve was silent, but she had grown pale.

‘And all these years,
all these years
, you let us think it was
her
? You let her take the rap for you? You were going to just stand back and let us get even for what she’d done, when all the time she
hadn’t fucking well done it
?’

Now Maeve looked uncertain. Si’s rage was not something anyone would want to incur, and he was visibly trembling with fury now. ‘He had all these women,’ said Maeve weakly.

‘That was Leo!’
shouted Si. ‘That was who he was: we all knew that. What was it you said? Si’s a dull bugger, Freddy’s
a loose cannon, but Leo had the sparkle. You got that right. Leo
did.
He charmed the knickers off more birds than you could count – that was
him.
You came on to my brother, and because he didn’t bite you just
killed
him.’ Si raised a hand and clutched at his head as if it ached.
‘Shit,’
he moaned.

‘He had all these women,’ repeated Maeve.

Si straightened. ‘Give me that bloody gun,’ he said.

For a moment Maeve’s face tightened. Her hand was gripping the Magnum so hard that her knuckles were white. Lily thought:
She’s going to shoot him; she’s going to shoot Si right now.
She saw Saz standing near to the couple, tense with dread, shivering as if with cold, and mentally willed her daughter not to intervene again, not to risk it.

But then Maeve’s hand dropped. Si stepped forward, and took the gun from her. They were nose to nose, eye to eye. Si grabbed Maeve’s arm with one hand. He pocketed the Magnum and then half turned away. Suddenly he turned back, and smacked her full-force across the face. Maeve’s head jerked back and she let out a pitiful cry.

‘You stupid
cunt
,’ snarled Si.

She saw Saz’s head turn, saw the uncertainty in her face. Her eyes caught Lily’s.
No sweetheart, keep still, keep out of it, for the love of God don’t come in between them
, thought Lily desperately, and shook her head.

Saz kept still.

Maeve was crying now, great fat tears rolling down her face. Si kept hold of her arm and started walking her back to where Lily was still in the pool, half submerged in the water. Maeve’s feet were dragging, but Si was yanking her after him, and now she was saying,
Please Si, I didn’t mean to do it, I didn’t mean it.

Twelve years too late. Lily stood there waist-deep in water,
her hair plastered to her head, her clothes sodden. Si stopped walking and looked down at her in the pool. His face looked gaunt, grey. All of a sudden she knew what Si King was going to look like when he was an old, old man.

‘I didn’t mean to do it, Si, I didn’t,’ Maeve was gabbling on, tears pouring down her face.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Si.

Maeve fell silent.

Si looked down at Lily.

Shit, he’s not going to say sorry, is he?
wondered Lily, and she felt a freakish desire to laugh, or cry. She wasn’t quite sure which.

‘I’ll sort this,’ he said instead. He stared down at Lily for long moments. ‘Okay?’

Lily gulped down a breath, aware suddenly that she hadn’t dared breathe at all for some time. She looked up at Si, who had been her enemy for so long that she had almost become accustomed to the fact. The last time they had been like this – her in the pool, Si looking down on her – he had been trying to drown her. Si had hated her just about forever. But now they both knew the truth.

Lily nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said.

And Si King, brother of the late lamented Leo, pulled his wife from the pool room. He didn’t leave Leo’s Magnum behind, and Lily was glad about that. Let the damned thing go now, what did she care?

The door slammed shut behind them.

Feeling close to collapse, Lily swam to the side of the pool and dragged herself out. She sat there, exhausted, slowly getting her breath back. She was aware of Saz moving at the other end of the pool, but she couldn’t focus on anything right now. Saz came and sat down beside her, handing her a towel. Lily nodded. She didn’t feel she could speak. Not yet.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Saz. ‘I thought she was going to kill you.’

Lily let out a mirthless laugh. ‘You know what? So did I.’

She started drying her face and hair.

‘What d’you think’s going to happen to her?’ asked Saz quietly.

‘How the hell should I know?’ snapped Lily, and now she did feel like speaking, she felt angry, she felt
furious.
She had to spit some of this bile out, or bust. ‘How did you get back in here, Saz? Come on. Tell me. How the fuck did you get in here, and lead all
that
straight in after you?’

Saz shrugged and her face clouded. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘
Stuff
your sorry, Saz.’

‘I…I always had a way in. It was like a game, beating the security systems.’

‘A
game?
’ Lily turned her head and stared hard at her daughter. Her cheek wasn’t bleeding any more, but there was a lump the size of an egg coming up there that was going to be one hell of a bruise. ‘You brought Jase in.’

‘Only because he said he wanted to surprise Oli, propose to her!’ Saz’s face was naked, pleading. ‘They’d had a row and he told me he wanted to get back in her good books. I couldn’t see any harm in it.’

Lily was silent, thinking. ‘Is Oli okay?’ she said at last.

Saz nodded. Then her face grew troubled. ‘I think…I think Jase is dead.’

Lily had a brief horror-flick running in her brain when Saz said that. Freddy grabbing Jase’s neck and wrenching it round. The noise.
Crack!

She shuddered. Then she looked at Saz. ‘Tell me what you were sorry about,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘When you were sleepwalking. You kept saying over and over, “I’m sorry, Daddy.” What was that about? Do you know?’

Saz lowered her head. ‘I came in that night. The night he died.’

I’m sorry, Daddy…

The words echoed in Lily’s brain, Saz’s voice, the voice of a nine-year-old girl coming from the mouth of a woman.

Leo with one of his tarts in the master suite, Saz coming up the stairs.
Surprise, daddy!
And then seeing what was happening on the bed, seeing and maybe even understanding; thinking,
But I’m his best girl. And that ain’t Mummy.

Lily could see it in her mind’s eye. Saz creeping back downstairs to the study, slipping on those special gloves Leo had bought for her, getting the key to the gun cabinet out of the desk drawer, opening the cabinet, loading the gun, she was
used
to loading the gun, Leo had taught her how. And then going back upstairs…and blowing Leo away.

‘I was going to surprise him,’ Saz said. ‘I climbed up the stairs, and I thought I would surprise him, I loved him so much.’ Her eyes filled with tears. After a moment’s hesitation, Lily reached out a hand and squeezed her daughter’s hand.

‘But,’ Saz went on, heaving a heavy sigh, ‘he wasn’t alone.’

‘Oh Saz,’ said Lily mournfully. ‘Did you see him in bed with another woman?’

‘No. I saw…’ Saz’s head whipped round and she stared into Lily’s eyes. Then she closed her eyes tight, blocking the memory, her face screwing up with pain.

‘It’s okay. Go on,’ said Lily reassuringly. She was holding Saz’s hand tight now. ‘What did you see, Saz?’

‘Oh God,’ said Saz, and she started to cry. ‘I saw
you.’

Lily stared at Saz.
‘What?’
she said faintly.

‘I saw you,’ sobbed Saz. ‘I…I saw you. But it wasn’t you, was it? I’ve been so stupid. I saw a blonde woman in a dark suit, holding the gun. It was smoking; there was the smell of the stuff, cordite, and I could see that Daddy was on the floor. The woman was in the doorway of the master suite; she was facing away from me. It was
your
hairstyle, and you always wore those dark suits, you remember?’

Lily remembered.

I wanted your life,
Maeve had said.

‘But it wasn’t you at all, was it? I thought it was you, but it was
Aunt Maeve
.’

‘Shh,’ said Lily, and put an arm around Saz’s shuddering shoulders. ‘Hush, it’s all right. It’s all over now. Tell me why you were sorry, Saz. Just tell me that.’

‘I was sorry because I…I didn’t protect him,’ wailed Saz. ‘You’d been arguing a lot in the weeks before that, do you remember?’

Oh yeah, Lily remembered. She’d thought Leo was playing around, taking the piss. And he’d said she was going off her head. She had actually started to believe him, had started to think she
was
going crazy. She remembered the rows. Remembered them well. But she had tried – they had
both
tried – to keep all that shit away from the girls. Obviously they hadn’t tried hard enough.

‘I thought you’d finally lost it and killed him. I
saw
you there. So I was glad when they locked you away. I was
glad
.’

Saz started to cry again, but more softly now. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, Mum. And I’ve been phoning you, and saying nothing. Trying to freak you. I’ve been a total bitch, I’m so sorry.’

Lily’s, eyes filled with tears too. For the first time in twelve years, Saz had called her Mum. It was a moment she would never forget.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said gently, and she pulled Saz’s head down onto her shoulder and stroked her silky hair. She was crying herself now, but they were tears of joy; at last,
at last
, she had her daughter back. ‘Don’t be sorry, baby. It’s all gone now; it’s all over. We’ll start from here, okay? We’ll start all over again.’

‘Purbright Securities,’ said Jack Rackland.

‘Oh for God’s sake, don’t worry about all that now,’ said Lily, wishing she could have brought Jack flowers, but they didn’t like flowers on this hospital ward because of MRSA. ‘Look at the state of you. Jack, you look like shit.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ croaked Jack, and lay back on the pillows.

He’d come out of intensive care three days ago, spent a day in high care and then been transferred onto a normal ward. He’d had a lot of transfusions. He was a mess of bruises, bandages and bloody stapled cuts, and he was just about as white as the pillowcase his mussed-up dirty-blond head rested on. But he was
alive
, and Lily had been sure she’d been looking at a corpse the day Winston had gone for him with that machete.

‘I’m not
worried
about it, I’m just telling you, that’s all,’ said Jack.

‘Can I get you anything. A glucose drink? A bottle to pee in?’ She smiled. She was just so damned pleased to see him there in one piece.

‘Look, this is undignified enough, without you taking the…Let’s get back to the case. Purbright Securities.’

‘Yeah, okay, who runs that? Who was paying for Alice’s care?’ Lily thought she already knew the answer, but she didn’t want to steal Jack’s thunder.

‘Can you hear something?’ asked Jack.

Lily could. There were raised voices in the corridor, coming closer.

‘What do you mean I can’t take flowers in?’
yelled a female voice.

‘Uh-oh,’ said Jack.

Lily poked her head out the door. A very short, angry-looking woman carrying a huge bouquet of flowers was tip-tapping imperiously down the corridor, heading for Jack’s room, while a couple of nurses tried to detain her.

‘What does Monica look like?’ Lily asked him.

‘Don’t bother to ask. That’s what she
sounds
like. They notified her when I was brought in – she’s still my wife after all, my next of kin. She’s been in and out ever since, and
every time
she gives the nurses all that about the sodding flowers. They’ve
told
her, and still she keeps bringing the bloody things in. That woman is a
nightmare.
Look, as I was saying – Purbright Securities.’

‘Yeah, go on.’ Lily was bright-eyed with interest.

‘Purbright Securities is a division of Sunstyle Security Systems.’

Lily remembered the security guy in the kitchen altering the codes, and Oli telling her he was from Sunstyle Securities.

‘Directors?’ she asked.

‘Now that’s the interesting part…’ He hesitated, aiming for impact.

‘Oh, cut to the chase, Jack.’

So he did. Lily looked gobsmacked, then she laughed out loud. ‘That other thing I asked you to look into…’

‘Jesus, have a heart! I’m in hospital, for Christ’s sake.’

‘But did you get a chance…?’

‘Yeah, I got a chance. Checked the birth certificate. You were right, his old man’s name’s not on there.’

‘Terrific’

Monica arrived at the door. She took one look at Jack.

‘Oh Jack –
baby
!’ she crooned, and ran forward and flung herself upon him, flowers and all. ‘How are you today? Are you feeling any better?’ Monica was dropping kisses and pollen and petals all over Jack’s bruised and bloodied face.

‘Ow! Fuck me, girl, have a heart,’ he complained, but he was nearly smiling.

‘Um…I’d better go,’ said Lily, edging towards the door.

At that, Monica extricated herself from Jack’s bed of pain and fastened a gorgon-like glare upon Lily. ‘And who the fuck are
you
?’ she demanded.

‘Just a friend,’ said Lily. She gave Jack one last smile. ‘Thanks, Jack. For everything.’ She had already decided that she was going to slip a little bonus in for Jack sometime soon – by God, he’d earned it.

‘Pleasure,’ said Jack, and managed a wink.

Lily went on home, and left Jack to Monica.