Jail Bird

Once all the money was out, she rummaged around in the cavity, determined to get everything, not wanting to pass up a single package, grinning now because Leo had come through for her even from beyond the grave, God bless his cheating arse. Now she was going to be able to pay Jack Rackland, get the ball rolling. Suddenly her hand encountered not more money but two different items.

She pulled out the first, her grin fading and a frown forming in its place. What the…?

She was holding a cream-coloured cloth bag. She opened the pull-cord at the top and tipped the heavy item inside out onto the bed. It was something wrapped in oilcloth. She sat down on the bed and uncovered it.

‘Jesus,’ she breathed, staring at the thing on the bed.

It was Leo’s Magnum. What had he always said about it? Yeah. She remembered. ‘A hand cannon,’ he’d said. ‘Blow you to fuck, this thing would. And it’s got a kick on it like a mule.’ There were two boxes of bullets there, too. All neatly stashed.

In case of emergency.

Well, wasn’t this an emergency? She was in the crap up to her neck, and that was a fact. If that wasn’t an emergency, then what the hell was? But she had signed the Firearms Act when she got out of nick. If she was ever caught so much as in possession of a firearm, she’d be back inside faster than you could say knife.

She stared dubiously at the gun. But Freddy. And Si. She was in danger here. Real danger. And here was Leo, reaching out to her from beyond the grave, saying, Here, Lils. Take it. You might need it.

And she might. She knew she wasn’t supposed even to handle things like this, and she wouldn’t, she swore to herself that she wouldn’t. Unless she absolutely had to.

She cautiously rewrapped the Magnum and the boxes of bullets, and tucked the whole thing into the side compartment of the rucksack. Then she looked at the remaining item. It was an old, unmarked videotape. She stared at it, and suddenly heard a motor coming up the drive. Oli’s car, she recognized the engine note. And – shit, that was another car not far behind it. Maybe Jase again?

Quickly, she tucked the tape into the top of the rucksack, ran across the room, unlocked the door, stepped out onto the landing, relocked it. She heard voices in the downstairs hall as she pocketed the key. She hurried back into the spare bedroom where she’d passed the night and threw the rucksack down beside the bed, peeled off her jeans. Footsteps on the stairs now. Fuck it, hurry up! She yanked off her t-shirt and threw herself back in between the sheets. When Oli knocked lightly and then opened the door, Lily was doing a very good impression of someone fast asleep.

‘Um…Mum?’ Oli said softly.

Lily made a great play of waking up. ‘Hm…?’ she asked groggily.

‘Um,’ said Oli awkwardly, looking unhappy and resentful. ‘You…you lied to me. You said you were only able to stay at Nick’s flat for a night. I spoke to him and he said you could have stayed there as long as you liked, and he also wanted to know where the hell you were right now…’

‘Ah,’ said Lily.

‘Ah?’ burst out Oli angrily. ‘You lied to me.’

‘Oli—’

‘No! I don’t want to hear your excuses,’ she snapped, turning away. ‘Uncle Si’s here. And Aunt Maeve. They want a word with you.’

Lily’s guts clenched. Oh shit. Whatever that word was, she doubted it would be welcome.

22

‘You really have got some balls, coming here, Lily King,’ said Maeve.

As she joined Oli, Maeve and Si in the big downstairs living room, Lily could tell that the atmosphere in here was subzero, which came as no surprise at all.

‘Hi to you too, Maeve,’ said Lily, sitting down on one of the couches, beside Oli.

‘And turning up at the wedding like that! You’ve got a bloody nerve.’

Lily shrugged. Whatever verbal Maeve dished out, she didn’t give a shit. She was more worried by Si’s presence. Maeve might yap at her like a terrier, but any real threat would come from Si himself. He was just sitting there staring at her, and if looks could kill she’d be toast.

But even while she sat there worrying over Si’s threatening glances, she knew that he wouldn’t start anything major in front of Maeve or Oli. They were her safety net. For now. But they wouldn’t always be there, she was very aware of that; aware that Si would like to rip her guts out and that one fine day he still hoped to get the chance to do it.

She had the money now. She could function, buy transport, clothes, people, whatever she needed. Thanks Leo, she thought. You old bastard. So she felt a little less shaky, a bit more as if she was on solid ground. She’d grown used to the cushion of money when Leo had been alive, and without it she’d been anxious. Now, she could settle. Now, she could get on and clear her name.

She thought again of Leo’s Magnum. What the hell was she going to do with that?

‘What you got to say for yourself?’ demanded Maeve. ‘What you doing, showing up like this?’

Lily looked at her sister-in-law coldly. ‘Wouldn’t you have turned up, Maeve, if you heard your daughter was getting married?’ Then Lily rolled her eyes and slapped her thigh. ‘Oh no. Sorry. Forgot. You couldn’t have kids, could you? Maybe that’s why you were so fucking happy to grab mine when you got the chance.’

Maeve coloured up. Lily knew she’d hit a sore spot. The family grapevine had always said that Si was a Jaffa – seedless. Maeve had tried hard to get pregnant, but it soon became obvious that it was never going to happen.

‘That’s a damned cruel thing to say,’ shot back Maeve, jumping to her feet and advancing on Lily in a rage. ‘And it’s completely bloody beside the point. Someone had to look after the girls when you did what you did and got locked up for it. And now you’ve got the gall to sit here in Leo’s home—’

‘My home, too,’ Lily cut in.

‘Yeah, the poor misguided bastard was fair to you, wasn’t he? Put both your names on the deeds, Si told me. And you…’ she glanced at Oli, who was staring down at her hands, clenched white-knuckled in her lap…‘Well, I won’t say it. It’s evil. You’re evil.’

Lily was silent for a beat.

‘Well, that’s true,’ she said at last. ‘That is, supposing I’d done it, of course. Which – by the way – I didn’t.’

Maeve gave a cynical shout of laughter. ‘Oh come on. You pleaded guilty, for Christ’s sake. You’re having a bloody laugh.’

‘Am I laughing?’ asked Lily.

‘Look,’ said Maeve, now hovering over Lily with clenched fists. ‘You done your time. Now why don’t you just bugger off? Disappear back into the hole you crawled out of.’

Lily gave the enraged woman a thin smile. ‘This is my hole, Maeve,’ she said flatly. ‘This house. Oli has no objection to me staying in it – do you, Ols?’

Lily had to hold her breath at this point. She was shoving Oli’s limits, shoving them hard, and she knew it. It was true that she’d lied to her about Nick’s flat. And about the migraine – and Oli must have noticed by now that she didn’t seem ill at all. She’d lied about quite a bit, actually. She didn’t have a clue how she was going to explain about the master bedroom – or what was left of it, now she’d taken a pickaxe to the wall behind the bed. Lily knew that Oli loved her Aunt Maeve and her Uncle Si; they had been a permanent fixture in her young life when her mother and father had vanished off the scene. She must have grown close to them.

Lily felt a stab of insane jealousy at that. Those fuckers. They’d been here, watching her kids grow up, enjoying a family life that wasn’t theirs.

Now Oli was all grown up, and there was Jase, too; Jase had reacted strongly – and badly – to the sight of Lily in the house, had hastened to tell Si, and here Si was to sort her out. Oli wanted Jase’s love and approval. Would Oli now side with Maeve, with Si, with Jase, against her own mother? Lily really didn’t know the answer to