Jail Bird

that.

‘I…’ Oli looked around at them all, her expression uncertain. She looked at Si, who hadn’t said a single word since Lily entered the room, then at Maeve. Finally, her eyes came to rest on Lily.

Oh come on, Ols, thought Lily. Don’t let me down now.

‘I think I’d like Mum to stay,’ said Oli unsteadily.

‘Oh for God’s sake, Oli!’ said Maeve loudly, turning away, exasperated.

‘Motion carried,’ said Lily, standing up. ‘Unless you feel like grassing me up to the authorities, telling them I’ve moved house and not told them…?’

She knew they wouldn’t do that. No one in their circle ever ratted to the police.

‘No. Didn’t think so,’ said Lily.

Maeve turned back to Lily, red-faced with rage, suddenly raising a hand to strike. Instinctively Lily grabbed Maeve’s wrist and shoved herself up hard against the front of the bulkier woman, then hooked a foot in between Maeve’s thick calves and heaved. Maeve’s expression was almost comically surprised as she toppled backwards and hit the shag pile with a thud. Si came to his feet in one swift movement, his eyes fixed venomously on Lily.

Lily froze. Would he really do anything in front of Oli? For a moment she wasn’t sure; he looked furious. Then he turned aside, helped his wife up.

‘Now I’d like you both to get the fuck out of my home,’ said Lily.

‘You bitch,’ said Maeve, gasping and flustered as she scrabbled upright.

Si gave Lily a twisted little smile. ‘This ain’t over,’ he said softly, and ushered a limping Maeve out into the hall.

The two women listened as Si and Maeve crossed the hall and went out of the front door. The car engine started up and they drove away. Silence descended.

‘Holy shit,’ breathed Lily. She looked at Oli. She felt tears start in her eyes, tears of sheer relief. Oli had defended her, had come down on her side, not Maeve’s. She held out a hand to her daughter. ‘Thanks, Oli. Thanks for supporting me.’

‘That don’t alter the fact that you lied to me,’ said Oli, standing up, her face sullen and averted. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you can stay here, but I don’t want to talk to you. Okay?’

And she pushed past her mother, ignoring Lily’s outstretched hand, and left the room.

23

Next day Jack collected Lily in his beat-up old car (‘Good for surveillance work,’ he told her when she did a double-take at the rusty old heap) from The Fort. Jack did a double-take of his own when he saw the house, the gates, the security system.

‘You live here now, yeah?’ he asked as she got in the car.

‘Right,’ said Lily.

‘The bill for my services just went up.’

Lily looked at him.

‘Joke,’ said Jack, and started the engine and drove them over to the Lime Trees Clinic.

Alice Blunt, one-time mistress of Leo King, looked like a puff of wind would knock her clean off the Lloyd Loom chair she was sitting in. She was stick-thin, wearing a shapeless white dress and a cream-coloured cardigan; there were muddy white trainers on her big, bony, naked feet. Her hair, once no doubt vibrantly blonde, was like bleached straw. Her face was blank, her nose beaky, and her eyes – a pretty China blue, the only remnant of the woman she must once have been – were without interest or expression as Lily walked into her room with the buxom dark- haired nurse.

‘Visitor for you, Alice,’ said the nurse cheerily. ‘You remember Lily, don’t you?’

Don’t think she remembers too much, the nurse had told Lily when she’d arrived. Don’t get any visitors apart from her mother and brother. You’re an old friend, you say? Been abroad for some time, you lucky thing? Oh, Australia? God, I could use some of that, soak up a few rays on Bondi. Well this is good. Maybe this is what she needs, a different face, give her a little jolt.

But Alice didn’t look jolted. She went on staring out of the window, out across the manicured lawns down to the big lake with its huge massed shrubs and grasses that danced in the sun and the wind.

Lily began to feel bad about this. It was obvious the woman was out of it. She was glad now that she’d left Jack Rackland, freshly paid and pretty damned happy about it too, sitting down in reception. She felt embarrassed on this woman’s behalf – squirmingly so: there was a snail-trail of food stains down the front of the white dress. And unless Lily missed her guess, that was an adult nappy bulking up Alice’s lower regions. The room smelled sour, of sickness and bad ventilation.

‘Hi Alice,’ said Lily. She could feel a stupid talking-to-an-invalid grin pasting itself all over her face, but she couldn’t help it. ‘I’m Lily, remember me?’

Of course she don’t, thought Lily. She’s never clapped eyes on me in her life before. And look at her. The poor bitch don’t even know which way is up.

Lily looked doubtfully at the nurse, who would have ejected her straight from the room if she’d known what she had really come here for – to find out if Alice Blunt had shot Leo. One look at the wreck in the chair made it clear she wasn’t going to find out a damned thing, not here. And seriously – could this slight, pathetic piece of human flotsam ever have had the strength in her, the passion in her, to fire a single shot?

‘Take a seat and talk to her,’ said the nurse. ‘Might jog her memory.’

‘How long’s she been like this?’

‘Oh – ten years or so. Since before I came here, anyway.’

‘What, she just sits here like this? All the time?’

‘Sometimes she’s a little naughty, aren’t you, Alice?’

No answer.

‘Sometimes she goes off down to the lake by herself, but that’s okay, we always know where to find her. Alice likes the lake – don’t you, Alice?’

Alice said nothing.

‘Messes up her trainers, gets them all muddy. She was down there after tea yesterday: look at the state they’re in. I seem to spend half my life cleaning off Alice’s trainers.’

Nothing.

‘Go on,’ said the nurse, ‘talk to her. I’ll be right along the hall if you need me.’

The nurse left the room, leaving the door wide open. Lily took off her backpack but held it close to her. It was still stuffed with all the money and with the videotape. The Magnum – that damned thing scared her half to death – she’d concealed back at the house. She had considered hiding the money there too, but she was too anxious about it, too reluctant to be parted from it, to do that. If she got stopped by the Bill, the money would be hard enough to explain, but the Magnum would be impossible. She didn’t want to fall foul of the law, but it was sort of nice to know it was there, just in case.

Alice was still staring out of the window. Lily wondered if the woman was even aware that someone else was in the room. She cleared her throat. She had a prickly feeling that the nurse was listening out there in the hall somewhere, worried in case anyone upset her patient and earned her a verbal kicking from the suits in charge.

‘You remember me, don’t you?’ she tried. ‘I’m Lily. And…and you knew Leo.’

At the word ‘Leo’, Alice blinked.

Lily leaned forward in the chair and said the name again, more softly. ‘Leo.’

Another blink.

‘Do you remember him, Alice? Leo King?’

Lily felt excitement building in her gut. Although Alice’s expression hadn’t changed, she thought that maybe she did remember Leo. And now she wanted to ask more, much more, such as, Did you blow my husband’s brains out, did you flip and kill him and let me take the rap for it, you stupid cow?

‘Look,’ said Lily, and she dug out the snap of Leo that she had lifted from the study while searching for the