Jail Bird

‘You’re going to have to learn to get used to me being here, and sometime – whenever you’re ready – the gloves are going to have to come off, and we are going to have to talk to each other, properly. Because I’m here to stay. And you’re going to have to get over it.’

Saz said nothing.

Lily walked past her daughter and headed for the stairs.

Jack had got it right; Bev and Suki were still a double act. They lived together in a poky little flat in Shoreditch, and seemed to share the attentions of a large, handsome black guy who, throughout Jack and Lily’s visit, hovered in the kitchen with the door open, cooking. The fragrant scent of frying plantains was drifting out, and reggae was chugging away from the radio. In the lounge, the sweet scent of recently smoked weed was nearly overpowering the aroma of frying plantains.

‘You’re Lily King?’ Suki asked, wide-eyed and smiling, as if she was meeting an old pal, not the wife of the man she and her sister had been shagging over a decade ago. ‘I heard you was out.’

Time had been kind to Bev and Suki. They were still very good-looking women, and each of them had a curious spaced-out innocence about them. They were both curly-haired pale blondes, both dressed in hippy-chic gear – fringed buckskin waistcoats, floral peasant blouses, skin-tight jeans and Ugg boots – and they both wore a lot of jangling, silver-coloured jewellery.

Suki settled Lily and Jack down on a shawl-strewn couch.

Meanwhile, Bev was busy taking calls on her mobile and leaving the room a lot.

‘She don’t do this much,’ said Suki when Bev had hurried off into the bedroom clutching her phone for the fourth time.

‘Oh?’ queried Jack.

Suki dropped him a wink. ‘Don’t want the benefit snoops round, now do we?’ she grinned. ‘And who does it hurt? She earns a bit of pin money talking to a few wankers on the end of the phone.’

‘Chatlines are big business, man,’ chimed in the man from the kitchen. Lily recognized the warm, syrupy echo of Mercy’s Jamaican patois when he spoke.

‘That’s Winston,’ said Suki. ‘He drives. Man and van for hire, that kind of stuff, you know. And I do the tarot.’

Suki looked at Lily and Jack’s faces.

‘For real,’ she added, and smiled. ‘I got the gift.’

‘Mrs King wanted to meet you,’ said Jack, getting down to business. ‘She knows you were knocking off her old man back in the day.’

‘Ah.’ Suki didn’t look particularly chastened at that. ‘Yeah, well. Can’t tell a lie, me and Bev did know Leo King pretty well.’ She looked at Lily. ‘Men, eh?’

‘Yeah,’ said Lily. ‘Men.’

‘We were strippers back then. Met Leo. It wasn’t a love sort of thing, don’t go thinking that. It was just fun, that’s all. Nothing serious.’

And that makes it okay? thought Lily.

‘Why did you want to meet us, anyway?’ asked Suki, tilting her head to one side and peering at Lily closely.

‘Curiosity,’ said Lily, but it was more, much more, than that. One of these women could have killed Leo. One of these women could be responsible for her doing twelve years inside. For driving a wedge between her daughters and herself. For causing her all this grief, all this pain.

‘Nah, there’s something else.’

‘I didn’t kill Leo,’ said Lily. ‘I want to find out who did.’

Suki’s eyes widened. ‘Get outta here!’

‘It’s the truth,’ said Lily.

‘What, you done time for someone else?’

‘Got it in one.’

Suki was silent for a moment, taking it in. ‘And what now?’ she said at last. ‘You want – what – revenge? Is that it?’ Suki was shaking her head. ‘Let me tell you, girl, let it go. You let that sort of stuff into your heart, what you gonna get except more heartache?’

Oh Jesus, we’ve got us a philosopher here, thought Lily.

Now Suki pulled out a pack of cards. ‘Let me do you a reading? Free of charge.’

‘No thanks,’ said Lily. Tarot cards! She didn’t believe in ghosts and ghouls, angels and devils. She’d seen hell close up, and it had bars.

‘Shuffle the cards, anyway,’ said Suki, holding them out.

Lily took the pack with an impatient sigh. Shuffled them. Suki took them back and started laying them out on the low table between them.

‘Look,’ said Lily after Suki had laid out the first card, ‘I told you. I don’t want a reading.’

‘Oh come on,’ smiled Suki.

‘No!’ snapped Lily, her face suddenly like thunder. ‘Listen up. Just because you sucked my husband’s dick, that don’t make us bosom pals, you got that?’

Suki’s smile dropped from her face in shock.

‘Got it?’ reiterated Lily.

Suki nodded.

‘Good. All I want to know is, can you think why anyone would have wanted to kill Leo?’

Suki let out a shaky laugh. ‘How long you got? Seems to me you had the best reason of all, and the Bill seemed to think the same. But there were probably others.’

‘Did you want to kill Leo? Or the call-centre queen in there, how about her?’

‘Jesus, why would we want to do that? Leo was fun. I was sorry when I heard he’d got done. Really sorry. And when they sent you down for it, I was glad. Because I thought they’d got the one who’d done it. You really didn’t…?’

‘I really didn’t.’

‘This is gonna burn in a sec,’ shouted Winston from the kitchen.

Suki was staring at Lily. ‘Let me do the reading, girl,’ she said. ‘Winston can stick the dinner in the oven, keep it warm.’

Lily stood up. ‘I told you. I don’t want your bloody reading. Come on, Jack.’

Jack passed Suki his business card. ‘If you think of anything…’ he said, and she nodded.

They piled off down the stairs. Nothing gained at all. Now I’ve met them all face to face, thought Lily as they went out into the chilly night. Every one of them. And so what? It’s got me precisely nowhere.

Inside the flat, Suki started clearing the table. Winston was a keen cook; he didn’t really like to be kept waiting when he was ready to dish up. Bev was still in the bedroom, busy with another caller. Suki cleared away the bowl of potpourri, the stack of amethyst crystal, a much-thumbed copy of Heat magazine – and the single card she’d selected for Lily. Now she paused and after a second she flipped it over.

She gasped. Then she looked at the deck that Lily had just shuffled. After a moment’s hesitation, she started laying out more cards.

50

‘Hey babe,’ said Jase cheerily, standing there at the back door of The Fort clutching a huge bouquet of flowers.

Oli stared at him dubiously. She wasn’t returning his smile. Actually, her face ached too much for that, where he’d struck her. She’d never forget that he’d done that. And she really, really hadn’t wanted to let him in the gate. She should just have told him to go fuck himself, and she had been tempted to do