Jail Bird

you want to.’

‘I told you. I’ll deal with Monica when this is sorted.’

‘Sure you will.’

‘I will’.

‘Fine. But listen up, Jack. I’m not stopping. I’m seeing this through to the finish.’

‘Lily – it could be the finish of you.’.

‘What do you care?’ asked Lily, slamming the door closed and walking around the car. She opened the gate and went up the black-and-white chequer-tiled pathway before knocking on the door of the little Victorian villa, one of a huge long road of identical houses.

‘Hey!’ Jack had come up behind her. ‘Now don’t go getting in a strop with me. I’m just telling you like it is, that’s all.’

‘I know how it is, Jack. I know it’s stupid and I know it’s dangerous. But it’s just something I have to do.’

‘No,’ said Jack, catching her shoulder, squeezing it hard. ‘You don’t. I’ve told you the options. There are options.’

‘Not for me.’

Jack let out a sigh. ‘Jesus, I knew you were trouble from the first moment I clapped eyes on you.’

Lily knocked harder at the door. Why was nobody answering the damned door?

‘As I told you, Jack,’ she said, ‘you can bail out.’

Jack looked at her. Crazy tart. But admirable, too. She had a focus and a determination he’d encountered in very few women, as well as being tall and blonde and pretty fucking good-looking. He’d start fancying the daft bint if he wasn’t very careful. And usually he was very careful. He knew of the King brothers. Knew of Nick O’Rourke. He believed it would be a really, really bad idea to get mixed up in anything involving them. But still…there was Lily. Her name sounded soft and pliable. But she wasn’t like that. She had the strongest will, she was like iron. She was so bloody stubborn. And struggling through all this shit alone, if he backed away.

He really, really wanted to back away.

But the truth was, she needed his help, and he’d feel like shit if he didn’t give it. So he stepped forward and hammered hard on the door.

‘She expecting you?’ he asked, peering into the window beside the door. It hadn’t been cleaned in some time. The turquoise paint on the door was peeling, and down at the base of the door were deep scratch marks, exposing the wood completely.

Lily was shaking her head. ‘I phoned her, but she said she didn’t want to talk to me. I have to speak to her.’

‘This is another one of those things you just have to do,’ said Jack, sighing.

‘It is.’

‘All right then. Let’s try round the back.’

They went down the alleyway at the side of the house and looked at the ramshackle back garden. There was a clothesline in the centre of a stretch of unmown grass. A cheap white plastic chair and a small table. Two cats were sitting on the step in front of a scruffy-looking back door with a cat-flap set in it. Jack went and looked in through the window. There was a sink in there, from what he could see – though that wasn’t much: the windows at the back were as filthy as those at the front. Lily joined him, looking in. And then something loomed into view inside, something like a Halloween mask. Jack fell back.

‘Shit!’ he blurted, stumbling over a white cat that yelled in protest and scooted away.

Lily looked aghast at the face hovering there. Oh hell, she thought. She raised a hand and tapped softly on the glass.

‘Julia?’ she called out. ‘Come on, Julia. Let me in.’ And they heard the bolt shoot back on the door.

The shock of Julia’s face was even greater because she’d once been so beautiful. Hell, on one side of her face she still was. The sunlight caught her as she opened the door and peered out at them. From this side, the side she was now being so careful to present to her unwanted callers, she was still the beauteous Julia. There was a finely arched brow, a stunning, almond-shaped violet-blue eye, silken white skin, a mouth that would give Angelina Jolie’s a run for its money.

Julia kept the right-hand side of her face turned away from them as she let them in. She was walking ahead of them into a small, scruffy living room that stank of cat piss. Slinking shapes moved about in the semi-darkness, brushing up against Lily’s legs. There was purring, arching of backs, sinuous movement, the hot silky brush of fur.

‘Fuck me,’ muttered Jack under his breath.

Lily wasn’t breathing, not much. She was trying not to. The place was filthy, and the stench was eye- watering. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom – the curtains were half pulled over the window – she was able actually to see outlines in the room. There were eight or nine cats in here. Old Berber rugs thrown over sofas. Dusty African masks on the walls. A tired-looking aspidistra in a bowl on a table that was strewn with cups and plates. A tabby cat sat in the middle of the dirty crockery, licking one paw with dainty precision.

‘I don’t know what you want,’ said Julia, moving ahead of them. She slumped down on one of the sofas. Dust plumed and danced in a shaft of faint sunlight that had managed to creep in through the window. She pulled a ginger cat onto her knee and held it there like a comforter, her hand smoothing quickly over its fur. It started to purr loudly.

The noise on the phone, thought Lily. Like a motor.

Lily sat down opposite Julia. The trick was to breathe through your mouth and not even to consider what you might be sitting on. Jack sat down too, making a face.

‘I don’t want anything,’ said Lily. ‘Just to talk to you about things.’

Does Nick know she lives this way? wondered Lily.

But then – Nick hadn’t wanted her to contact Julia. To spare her the pain of seeing this? Or to hide away a dirty secret?

Julia was eyeing Jack with cold suspicion.

‘This is Jack Rackland,’ said Lily. ‘He’s a friend of mine. A private investigator.’

‘Yeah? What’s he investigating then? Me?’ Julia shot back.

Lily looked at her with pity. The hair was almost the same – a thick, wheat-coloured mane, lustrous, wonderful – but now rendered paler by strands of grey. Julia had been one of the few pure natural blondes in their group. Lily had been born mouse-coloured. Hell, she’d been a mouse in every way in her younger years. Blonding her look up had given her a bit of confidence. She’d gone in for streaks, highlights, whatever – they all had, except Mary who had always been and probably always would be relentlessly brunette. Only Julia hadn’t needed to resort to the dye bottle.

But her face. Her poor face. Even with Julia’s best efforts to keep her head turned to one side, still the damage to the right side of her face was shocking, repellent.

‘Jack’s helping me look into what happened with Leo,’ said Lily.

Julia nodded slowly. Her poor face, thought Lily again, seeing the angry red weals and…oh fuck, it looked as if that whole half of her face had melted. It was hideous. The eyebrow was gone on that side, the eye was half closed. Even the corner of the mouth was deformed, making Julia’s speech slurry.

‘Everyone said back in the day that you reckoned you didn’t do it,’ said Julia, looking down at the cat purring away there in her lap.

‘That’s true. I didn’t.’

Julia glanced up, a hank of hair throwing a concealing shadow over the ruined side of her face. ‘Yeah, right. Then who did?’ she asked.

‘That’s what we want to find out,’ said Jack.

‘We know about you and Leo,’ said Lily.

‘Oh?’ Julia gave them that careful, sideways look.

‘We know you weren’t the only one, either.’

Julia was silent for a moment. ‘Well, he wouldn’t want me now, would he?’ she