Jail Bird

into the restaurant–with Adrienne Thomson, wife of the company accountant.

Leo was taking the mickey, making her look a bloody fool. And now she’d had enough. Now the games were going to stop. She was going to lay it out for him, spell it out plain: either he stopped, or she was walking away, and she was taking the girls with her and he was going to pay, pay and pay again for making her look like such a total schmuck.

Grimly, Lily started up the stairs.

All right, marriage to Leo had for her always been a compromise. But she had worked at it, made a life, a family, a home. But this was the final straw for her.

Lily had never been the confrontational type. She had always felt she’d struck lucky, marrying a bloke who could keep her in style. She lived well. Lunches with the girls. Spa breaks. Holidays in Marbella and Barbados. The works.

She’d grown up poor, with parents who’d been forced to penny-pinch to get by. She knew it had scarred her. This life–her life–was so different. Her mum could never quite believe it when she called–and being Mum she was always quick with the snide remarks, the ‘getting above yourself’ lectures, all that sour inverted-snobbery stuff. What did she want, the miserable bitch? That her daughter should have to scrape along through life, cleaning other people’s lavvies like her?

‘Pride comes before a fall,’ Mum would sniff, glaring disdainfully about at her daughter’s opulent lifestyle. ‘Salt of the earth, the working class, don’t you forget that, my girl.’

Lily ignored her. She knew that she, Lily, had never changed, that she never had and never would put on airs and graces. She was still herself, still true to her roots–she was still quiet, awestruck Lily Granger, who had been painfully dumped by Nick O’Rourke and then been amazed that his pal Leo King fancied her and not any of the other, more exuberant girls in her circle. She was the same Lily Granger who had become Lily King, the biddable, reserved and faithful wife of Leo King.

Biddable.

Lily’s lip curled in bitterness as she thought of what a prize idiot Leo had taken her for. Yeah, she might live in luxury, but she’d been made to look a twat. She was sure his mates and his business ‘colleagues’ would know what he was up to, would pat him on the back and think him a big man for cheating on his wife with poor Matt Thomson’s old lady.

‘You dog,’ they’d say admiringly.

And if the boys knew, then her friends knew too.

Leo was a major Essex ‘face’, and he and his boys were behind many a heist. Leo, his brothers and Nick O’Rourke led a cadre of suited-and-booted villains, all deeply dangerous and mired in running ‘front’ companies. Lily didn’t know much about their business, and she didn’t want to. The money poured in; that had to be enough. So she’d put the blinkers on, kept her head down and ignored the rest.

There was always a price to pay in this life. She had come to know that over the years, shedding her girlish innocence as she got to know the man she’d married. There was a price to pay–and that price was her dignity. And just lately that price seemed too fucking high, by about a mile.

She was outside the closed bedroom door now, and her heart was beating hard with the tension of it. Because he would kick off. She knew that. Leo had never once hit her–he never would–but his temper was formidable, his rages seemed to fill up the space all around him, to suck all the oxygen out of a room. She didn’t ever like to upset him, but now she’d been pushed too far.

Yeah, the worm’s finally doing a U-turn, she thought.

‘Leo!’ she called again, wanting to wake him quickly, wanting more than anything to get this over and done with.

He’d deny it. She knew damned well that he’d deny it. But there were things she knew for sure now; there was proof, and she had right on her side.

‘Leo, will you wake up? I want a word,’ she said, nerves making her voice harsh and demanding as she swung the door wide open, crashing it back against the wall in her haste to get in there and get the damned thing said.

And then she saw the blood–splatters and loops and obscene thick skeins of blood–and the body with its head shot clean away. She stopped dead in the doorway, all the strength draining from her limbs in an instant, her lips mouthing words that would not come.

Her long nightmare had begun.

3

2009

Lily King was out. She was standing at the gates of Askham Grange nick, wearing jeans and a white t-shirt, a grey hoodie and white trainers, clutching a black bin bag full of her worldly possessions.

The first thing she knew of her friend Becks’s arrival was the horn of the car. It blared out a merry eight-tone tune as Becks whipped round the corner in it. The second thing that announced Becks’s arrival was the colour of the car. The daft bint had a pink open-topped car. Lily cringed a bit as Becks tore along the road, waving madly, her white-blonde hair whipping out behind her in the warm June wind. So much for hopes of a quiet departure. Becks never did a damned thing quietly. Lily should have known that.

‘Lils, Lils! Hiya Lils!’ she was hollering even before she brought the car to a screeching halt.

Becks was her best mate. Only Becks had visited her inside while she’d been down south in Holloway. And Becks was the only person who’d offered to drive all the way up to Yorkshire to pick her up now she was no longer to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. She’d offered her temporary accommodation too, to keep the probation officer sweet.

Becks is a very kind girl, thought Lily as the pink monstrosity barrelled to a halt right in front of her. Barking, sure. Mad as a hatter. But kind.

‘Lils babe, jump in!’ Becks was trilling over the loud thump and grind of the Foo Fighters. She grabbed the black bin bag and lobbed it onto the back seat. ‘Jesus, it’s so good to see you.’

Lily was clutched around the neck in a tight hug. Becks’s jaws were working, chewing gum as always, and the scent of Wrigley’s surrounded Lily in a haze of sweetness. She smiled into Becks’s perfumed hair and then she looked up and stiffened.

A bull-barred 4x4 that had been parked across the street was slowly pulling out. As it drew level with Becks’s car, the darkly tinted electronic window slid smoothly down. A bulky man was behind the steering wheel, a man with a shaven head, snub nose, cleft chin and piggy dark blue eyes.

Oh shit, thought Lily.

Freddy King, Leo’s psycho youngest brother was sitting there in the driving seat staring right at her.

Becks felt her grow rigid and she drew back. Looked at Lily’s eyes. Saw where they were directed. Becks looked around, following Lily’s gaze, and saw Freddy there.

‘Fucking hell,’ Becks muttered under her breath.

Both women froze, wondering what the hell he was doing here, what the hell he was intending to do. Lily’s heart was threatening to bust its way straight out through her ribs. Suddenly she wished she was back inside. She’d felt safer inside.

Now she was out…and here was Freddy.

Freddy started to grin. Lily felt her stomach tighten with fear. Freddy had a grin like a crocodile. It wasn’t intended to convey warmth, only threat. He lifted his hand and pointed a finger at her, mimicking the pointing of a gun.

Lily gulped.

He was mouthing something now. Lily stared at his face, a face she had last seen twelve years ago whooping and hollering in triumph across a crowded courtroom. Big heavy features, pitted skin the result of childhood acne, black eyebrows that met in the middle. Freddy had never been the brains of the King outfit–and by God it showed– but he was certainly the brawn. He exuded an air of casual menace. Lily looked at that sneering mouth and tried to make out the words.

When she did, it gave her no comfort at all.

You won’t see it coming, but trust me–it is.