Jail Bird

‘And is this yours? Did you leave this with Alice?’ The woman pushed the crumpled photo of Leo across the desk to her. Lily picked it up. It was damp, the image turned faintly green.

‘I thought it might…I don’t know. Jog her out of it. Or something,’ said Lily.

‘I was told by the nurses that your visit upset her. That she started acting strangely at that point. When you came here, gave her that.’

‘I didn’t intend any harm,’ said Lily, feeling nauseous. She didn’t want to start believing that she had been responsible in some way for Alice doing what she’d done. ‘How…? I mean, what happened?’

The woman sat back, her eyes still hostile but slightly less so. ‘She drowned herself. In the lake.’

Lily’s feeling of sickness intensified. She thought of Alice’s room up on the first floor, with its outstanding lakeside view. Of Alice, sitting there day after day, looking out at the cold green waters and plotting her own demise.

‘We found the photo on her body,’ said the woman.

Maybe it comforted her, thought Lily. But she couldn’t get past the remembered image of Alice screaming and screaming when she’d shown her the photo. Oh Jesus. Maybe it didn’t comfort her at all, seeing his image. Perhaps it brought home to the poor demented cow all the more that he was lost to her. It could be that the photo had set about this chain of events and led straight to Alice’s death at her own hands.

At her own hands. Alice had killed herself–so why then was Lily sitting here feeling like a murderer?

‘Of course incidents like this look very bad for us,’ said the woman.

Lily stared at her blankly. And is that all you care about? she wondered. It wasn’t the best of times to ask, but Lily thought, what the hell?

‘Can you tell me,’ she said hesitantly, ‘who paid the fees for Alice’s care?’

‘No,’ said the woman, going even redder in the face. ‘I can’t. And now, if you’ll excuse me…’

‘Well…when’s the funeral?’ The least she could do was send some flowers.

The woman’s eyes were openly hostile. ‘I don’t think that need concern you.’

‘So much for that,’ said Jack when they stood out in the foyer.

Alice’s brother Malcolm was coming down the stairs, carrying a cardboard box. Alice’s belongings, thought Lily. He spotted her standing there and bustled over, all truculent attitude and low intelligence, just like before.

‘Tell me you’re not thinking of going to the funeral,’ said Jack, eyeing the approaching man beadily. ‘You’d get lynched.’

‘No, I’m not going within a mile of that,’ said Lily with a shudder. She’d felt cold and shaky ever since Jack’s call. She couldn’t help it. Alice. Poor bloody Alice…‘Jack, I still want to know who paid her fees.’

‘Don’t sweat about it. I’ll find out, one way or another,’ said Jack, and then Alice’s brother was suddenly there in front of them, radiating aggression.

‘They said you upset her,’ he started in, dumping the box on the floor and stabbing with one pudgy finger at Lily.

Jack stepped forward. ‘Ease up, pal,’ he advised.

The brother subsided, but only slightly. He was breathing hard, pumped, eager to take his rage out on someone, anyone. ‘They said this silly mare showed her a photo of that git Leo King. Made her flip. Our mum’s in bits over this.’

Jesus, what if that’s true? thought Lily in anguish. What if I really did push her over the edge?

She was aware of people moving in the background, nursing staff pausing, their eyes anxious. Did they have security here during the day? They must have. But right now, there were no reassuring uniforms in sight.

‘You need to cool down,’ said Jack.

‘You cool down, arsehole,’ spat Malcolm, his eyes still fastened with hate on Lily’s face. ‘This is your fault. My mum’s been admitted to hospital with pains in her chest, and it’s all down to you.’

The mother bothers him, thought Lily. Not the fact that his sister’s just killed herself.

He wasn’t just angry at Lily. He was angry that his mother cared enough about his sister to mourn her death. She had that strong impression again, of this troubled man hanging on to his mother like a prize–Look, she’s all mine!–and wondered what would happen to him when the mother finally died. What then? Madness, she suspected. He looked more than a little mad already.

‘You need sorting out,’ said the brother, and surged, red-faced and bulging-eyed, toward Lily.

Jack lashed out fast and punched him right-handed. Malcolm dropped like a sack of shit and hit the floor. He lay there, eyes open but dazed and unfocused.

‘No,’ said Jack, pointing down at him. ‘You do.’

‘I think we ought to get out of here,’ said Lily as a chorus of protesting shrieks went up from the nurses.

‘Seconded,’ said Jack, and they stepped over Alice’s brother and hurried from the building.

46

‘Someone tried to kill me,’ said Lily.

They’d fled the clinic and now they were sitting in the car outside Julia’s house. When Lily blurted that out, Jack looked at her like she’d flipped.

‘You what?’ he said.

‘I think someone tried to kill me.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I think they did.’

‘Um…how?’

‘Drive-by. Obviously they missed. But I’m not absolutely sure I was the target. They could have been aiming at who I was with.’

‘Who were you with?’

‘Nick O’Rourke. Made a mess of his car.’

‘Nick O’Rourke.’

‘You’ve heard of him?’

‘Who hasn’t? He’s a face. Maybe they were after him. Not you.’

Lily shook her head, unsnapped her seat belt. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘And what makes you say that?’

‘The King brothers. They’ve threatened me. They want to even the score over Leo. They won’t believe I didn’t do it.’

Jack sat back, ran a hand through his dirty-blond hair. Looked at her with bright, inquisitive blue eyes. ‘Now come on, girl. This is shit or bust now. Having told me all that, are you really sure you want to go on with all this? See this Julia bird, and these two others? Are you sure?’

‘What else can I do? Once I find out who did it…’

Jack was shaking his head. ‘Fuck me,’ he said suddenly, ‘listen to yourself! What else can you do? I’ll tell you what else. You can fuck off out of here, go far, far away, sit on a sunny beach and sip pina bloody coladas. You can go and keep pedigree chickens down on the farm. You can do whatever the hell you like, enjoy your freedom, forget about all this shit. If the Kings are serious, they won’t let up.’

‘Neither will I,’ said Lily.

‘No, maybe not – until they finally stick a bullet in your stupid brain. Lily – don’t be a fool. Give it up. Pay me off and say goodbye.’

‘You want paying off?’ Lily threw open the passenger door and got out. She looked back in at Jack sitting there behind the steering wheel. ‘Okay, I’ll pay you off. Job done. You can bail out of this; you don’t have to keep going. You can fuck off back to your office, go back to your normal line of work peering in bedroom windows or filming someone nicking paperclips – nice, safe, normal things like that. Get back in sweet with Monica, you know