Jail Bird

‘Oh, don’t come the fucking innocent with me. You want to gloat now, I suppose. Ain’t that it?’

Lily looked at the phone. ‘What?’ she echoed faintly.

‘Oh yeah.’ Reba sounded seriously pissed off. ‘This is you. I know this is you, you rotten little mare. You can deny it all you like, but I know what I know.’

‘Hey, Reba – why don’t you tell me what you know? Because I’m in the dark here.’

‘We’ve been raided. We’ve been shut down. I’m looking at a stretch inside. But then you know all this. You grassed me up to the cops. Didn’t you?’

She’d only phoned Reba to warn her to watch herself. But something had obviously already kicked off.

‘Reba—’ she started.

‘No! I don’t want to hear another damned thing from you.’

‘Take care, Reba,’ said Lily quickly, before the madam could hang up on her.

‘You what?’

‘I said you’ve got to take care. There’s a list of Leo’s mistresses. And I think someone’s picking them off.’

There was silence on the other end of the phone. ‘You serious?’ said Reba, more quietly.

‘That’s what I phoned for, to warn you.’

‘What the f…’ breathed Reba.

Lily told her then. Laid it all out about Alice, Bev, Suki – and Julia.

‘Jesus,’ said Reba.

‘And if you’ve been raided, it had nothing to do with me. I’ve never grassed up anyone, Reba. You can believe it or not believe it, but it’s the truth.’

‘All right. Suppose I do believe you about that – which I fucking don’t. But this other thing. What the hell…?’

‘Believe that too, Reba. Keep safe, okay?’

‘All right. I will,’ said Reba, and hung up.

59

Coming to this point on the perimeter always filled Saz with a dreamy, nightmarish sense of deja vu. It was nearly five o’clock on Thursday afternoon, and she and Jase were standing on the grass verge outside the wall surrounding the grounds of The Fort. Hardly any cars passed by, and that was good as far as Jase was concerned; that was excellent.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, thought Saz. Just being here again made her feel faintly sick. And she’d never liked Jase. She knew the feeling was mutual. She’d been doped up and pretty drunk when she had agreed to this last night. Now she wished she hadn’t, but she couldn’t very well go back on her word. Jase wouldn’t like it, and he was so uncertain of temper that you wouldn’t want to upset him, not ever.

She reckoned that Jase had been OD-ing on the steroids, he was so pumped up and aggressive. A lot of the guys in Uncle Si and Freddy’s orbit did that, big bulging muscles and an attack-dog attitude earned their keep, after all. But it was too late for second thoughts.

‘You’re sure it’s off now?’ Jase was asking her.

‘Yeah,’ she said, still feeling unhappy about this.

All around the wall there were sensors. The grounds themselves were crisscrossed with electric beams that would trigger an alarm if anything crossed them. But, between two and six every Thursday, it was all switched off, because the gardener was in the grounds.

She was sure all right. How many times as a kid had she come in and out of here on a Thursday afternoon, finding this little section of wall where the bricks were. All you had to do then was avoid the gardener, use your key to get into the house – she still had a key – and bingo, there you were, inside. It was a game, beating the system, proving how clever she was. Like Mission Impossible.

Her mother had come back and so she’d had to leave, but this was her home, she couldn’t be banished from it just like that, so she hadn’t handed back the new key. Fuck you, Mother dear.

‘I can’t see why you want to get into the house, though,’ she said to Jase.

‘I explained all that,’ said Jase with a theatrical sigh. ‘I’m going to wait until dark, okay? And I don’t want to risk being spotted by the gardener, see? He’d get spooked and I’d have to explain; it would all get too complicated and it would ruin the surprise. So I wait inside the house somewhere, in one of the spare rooms or some damned thing, until it’s dark – and then I sneak out and propose to her, ain’t that romantic?’

Yeah. It was. Very. Saz wondered if Richard would ever do such a thing, but she knew he never would. For a moment she was envious of Oli with the passionate Jase wooing her back after an argument. All she ever got from Richard after they’d rowed was sulks and the silent treatment for days on end: it really wore a person down. But then, Richard would never turn really nasty, and she had a feeling that Jase could do that in an instant.

She couldn’t back out now.

But coming here disturbed her. Brought back so many memories, of happy days and of hideous ones too. Happy times, sneaking around, hugging her secret to herself. Happy memories, and hideous ones. That night. Oh, that night. Coming back to see Dad, because he was there alone, Mum was away. Saz was Dad’s Best Girl, his favourite, so she sneaked back in to see him, surprise him. Surprise, Dad! Surprise!

And he had been surprised.

Very surprised indeed.

60

He watched them from along the road. He was tucked into the shadows of the woodland opposite the house, and he was thinking that this would be just fine if only he could lose Saz somewhere. No need to involve the poor little cow in all this – it was a shame but a man had to do what a man had to do. He’d do it, too. He’d work it out. He had to. He’d waited so long for this.

Inside prison, Lily King had been protected by an invisible ring of steel. Outside, she was more vulnerable, but Leo had done this gaff up like Fort Knox, which had been a problem when she had retreated inside the house, which she had done more and more, lately. She was getting nervous of coming out. He knew that.

She was right to be nervous, because given half a chance he was going to do it, have his revenge. Fuck Si and what he said all the time – wait, just wait; well, fuck that, and fuck Si too and fuck the horse he rode in on. Freddy was done with waiting. He’d been watching Jase chatting up Saz, and wondered what the hell all that was about, but now he knew, now he could see, and he was triumphant.

Saz had a way in. She was going to show Jase the way, probably to make up with Oli.

Oh, Jase boy, you are wasting your time, thought Freddy. Because he wasn’t going to get a chance to patch it up with Oli; he wasn’t going to get a chance for anything. Jase was long overdue a lesson, and tonight he was going to get it. Two birds with one stone, wallop. It would be sweet.

Freddy watched with satisfaction as Jase and Saz bent to the wall and started moving the bricks to one side.

Yes.

61

Nick phoned at just after six. Lily had paid the gardener at half past five, and then he’d left. She’d put the security system back on, and she was in the sitting room; the light was fading just a little outside. She went and pulled the drapes, switched on a light. A warm glow filled the room.

‘Hi,’ said Nick. ‘You okay?’

‘Shouldn’t I be?’