Jail Bird (30 page)

Some days later they visited the grave together, all three of them; Lily and her two daughters, arm in arm. And although Lily hadn’t been able to take flowers to the living, now she took flowers to the dead. They stood there solemnly in the graveyard and looked down at the beautifully carved and embellished black marble headstone.

Here Rests Leo King

Died 1996

Beloved Brother and Father

Sadly missed

There were a few red roses wilting in the urn. Lily took them out, replaced them with fresh ones – white this time.

‘Who put these here?’ she asked the girls, curious.

‘Nick comes every week,’ said Saz. ‘He leaves the roses. I’ve seen him here a couple of times. He must have loved Dad a lot; they were such good friends.’

Lily stood up and they were silent again, staring at the headstone.

‘Do you think Aunt Maeve really went abroad?’ asked Saz.

Lily nodded,
sure I do.
A few days after Maeve had pointed the Magnum at Lily’s head, Becks had told her that Maeve had phoned and said she was flying out to her and Si’s villa in Marbella for a long break.

Lily had said nothing, only expressed mild interest. But secretly, she thought that this was the deal: if you took a plane out to Malaga, and if you then booked a taxi ride to Marbella and pitched up at the villa door, Maeve would not be there to open it. Wherever she was, whatever had happened to her, was between her and Si. Lily knew she had to let that go now.

‘I still miss him,’ said Saz. Lily looked at her. Saz was shaping up now; she was even being nicer to that poor tolerant sap Richard.

‘Yeah, me too,’ said Oli sadly.

Lily wondered if Oli missed Jase, too. That night, that horrible night when she had thought Maeve was going to shoot her dead, came back to her full-force then. She remembered that she and Saz had staggered out into the hall, supporting each other, to find Oli sitting alone in a state of shock on the bottom stair.

There had been no Si, no Maeve. No Freddy. And no Jase. Only Oli, and when she’d seen them coming out of the swimming pool room she had cried out and run to them and they had stood there, the three of them, for a long time, clutching at each other, hugging each other tight, knowing that they had by some miracle come through something fearful, something that could have ended very differently indeed.

Now Lily put an arm around each of her daughters, relishing the warm feel of them, unable to quite believe her luck. She was out of prison. Si had taken care of Maeve, Lily was free, and the King boys were off her back. It had to be enough for her. Hell, it
was.

She was back with her girls, and they really were
her
girls again. Her beloved daughters, her
family.
Thoughts of family took Lily’s mind to her mother. The girls didn’t know their grandmother at all, and she felt bad about that. She couldn’t let her own difficult relationship with her mother ruin the girls’ chances of knowing their only surviving grandparent, could she? She decided that she would try again with the cantankerous old witch, introduce her to the girls, see what unfolded. Family was
important.

She thought again of Leo – big, ebullient, laughing Leo, who could fill a room with the sheer immensity of his personality. He’d given her the gift of these two lovely girls, and – finally – she found that she could forgive him for all the rest. She knew she hadn’t been blameless; she’d never loved him as a wife should: he must have known it. He wasn’t a fool.

‘He’d be so proud of you both,’ she said, knowing it was true. Leo had loved his girls. He had even, in his slightly skewed way, loved her.
Bye Leo
, she thought with a faint pang of sadness.

Then Saz said to Lily: ‘Mum, Oli and me have been thinking. Um…about selling the house.’

Lily looked in surprise at Saz. Then at Oli. Then she shrugged. ‘Well, I think it’s probably a good thing. It’s…sort of a sad place now, ain’t that the truth?’

‘Yeah, it is,’ said Oli.

It was over. And – yes – it was time to move on.

‘Saz?’ she asked her elder daughter. ‘Is that what you really want? To sell?’

Saz was nodding. ‘Yeah, and we also thought that, maybe, we could split the proceeds three ways. Matt could help us sort out the details. A share for you, me and Oli. What do you think?’

Lily looked at each of them in turn. They both looked faintly embarrassed, a little worried. ‘I think you’re a pair of bloody diamonds, that’s what I think,’ said Lily with a smile.

Saz relaxed. She sighed, looked again at the headstone. ‘Oli’s right. It’s been sad there.’

‘We’ll have one last blow-out,’ said Lily. ‘A big party. Then we go. Okay?’

Saz and Oli nodded.

‘Okay,’ said Lily, and led her girls away from their father’s grave.

That evening she sat alone in the study at The Fort and watched the tape again. There was Leo, larger than life, talking to her, telling her that if she was watching this, then he was dead.

‘Oh Leo,’ said Lily, and she cried a bit for the loss of him then, the big bruiser who was the father of her girls, the one who could always make them all laugh; Leo the wide boy, the crook, the charmer, the philanderer – just like his dear old dad Bubba King had been.

One more time she watched it right to the end.

‘The boys will look after you. I love you, Lils,’ he said, and then there was nothing but white noise, and Leo was gone.

‘You bastard,’ she said softly, and then laughed through her tears.
The boys will look after you.
He had said that again and again throughout the tape.

She couldn’t even raise an ironic laugh at that any more, it was too sad. Oh, she didn’t doubt her troubles with Si and that lunatic Freddy were at an end. They had their culprit;
she was in the clear. But look after her? No. She was on her own.

She thought again about Purbright Securities, a division of Sunstyle. She thought of one of the directors whose name Jack had given her; it was that firm that had paid for Alice’s care and fitted The Fort’s security system. She thought:
The boys will look after you.
Thought of Bubba King, Leo’s father, and Leo’s ‘boys’.

The house was silent all around her. The wall had been repaired, there was no way in now, no way out except through the gates. The security system was working. If you breached it, the alarm would go off – somewhere. Leo had always said it didn’t go off here, what was the point of it clanging away out here in the arse end of nowhere? It went off…well, he hadn’t specified. But she had always
assumed
it went straight to the local cop shop.

But wait a minute.

Would Leo
really
have wired his gaff up to a cop shop?

Answer: no. Surely not.

So when the alarm went off,
if
it went off, where was the alarm actually raised?

Lily had a suspicion, just a faint suspicion, that she knew the answer to that. She switched off the tape, and went out into the hall. Went to the security panel beside the door. Looked at it. And started to smile.

Leaving the system on, she walked out into the grounds, tripping sensors left, right and centre. She breached all the crisscrossing beams, and somewhere – she knew – an alarm was sounding, loud and clear.

It didn’t take him long to get there – she was timing it on her watch. Soon she heard a powerful car approaching,
roaring along as if speeding to an emergency. She stood there, leaning against one of the wide-open gates, and then the headlight beams caught her in a dazzling field of light and the Mercedes screeched to a halt three feet from her. Someone tall and dark got out of the driver’s seat and stalked across the gravel towards her.

‘Twelve and a half minutes,’ said Lily. ‘That’s pretty good, although I believe new guidelines for the emergency services require…’

‘What the
fuck
are you doing?’ demanded Nick O’Rourke, breathing heavily and looking, now they were
both
caught in the headlights’ glare, pretty damned angry and alarmed. Which was fitting, really.

‘Testing the system,’ said Lily.

‘
Which
system?’

‘The one Leo and you put in place, the
alarm
system that’s connected straight to your house.’

Nick was silent.

‘And I know about Purbright Securities being a division of Sunstyle, who fitted the system – oh, and that you’re on the board, as was Leo when he was alive – oh yeah, and that Purbright paid for Alice Blunt’s care.’

‘Ah.’

‘
And
I know why Si and Freddy didn’t get to me inside.’

Nick looked at her. Placed both hands on his hips, let out a breath, looked at the ground, then back at her face. ‘Now come on. You
can’t
know that.’

‘All right, then. I guessed. Bearing in mind everything else that I know for sure, and are you going to tell me I got it wrong? Because I know I haven’t, Nick. You put a ring of steel around me when I was inside. Because I was Leo’s wife, and because you knew me and loved me and you couldn’t
believe I’d done him but if I
had
, then I must have been provoked beyond reason. I guess you know by now that it was Maeve?’

‘I heard.’

Lily nodded. ‘Leo left me an old tape and on it he said the boys would look after me. He kept on saying that, the boys would look after me, but he didn’t mean Si and Freddy, and he didn’t mean any of the boys who worked for him, either.’ She paused. ‘He meant
you
, didn’t he, Nick?’

Nick was silent again for long moments. He was staring at Lily’s face.

‘You know what?’ he said at last.

‘What?’

‘You’re devious.’

Lily shrugged. ‘It’s been said.’

‘And you had the front to tell me dumb blonde jokes.’

‘You and Leo had a very special relationship, ain’t that right?’ said Lily softly.

Nick sighed. ‘Let’s go in,’ he said, taking her arm. ‘And talk about it.’

Bobby ‘Bubba’ King had been a player, just like his son Leo. He had played…

‘With my mother,’ said Nick as they sat in the sitting room.

Lily looked at him. She twined her fingers into his. He squeezed her hand. ‘I had Jack check the birth records,’ she said. ‘Your dad’s name wasn’t on it.’

‘Can’t actually blame him for that,’ sighed Nick. ‘When he found out Bubba King had been poaching on his territory, he kicked off and divorced Mum. Took off for the States when I was about a year old. Never saw him or heard from him again. Leo’s dad stepped in, looked after Mum and me. She didn’t marry again and I was an only child. She died when I was twelve.’

‘I knew that, but Jesus, I can’t get over this. You’re their half-brother. Si and Freddy and Leo.’

‘Yeah, but Si and Freddy don’t know that. Bubba was closest to Leo, and Leo was the only one he told.’

‘
When
did he tell Leo?’

‘When Mum died.’

By the age of fourteen, Lily knew that Nick and Leo had been a team, standing together on the streets, into all sorts. By seventeen, they had been driving around in hot cars and pushing the boundaries in all sorts of ways, working their way up in crim circles, two good-looking boys who attracted girls without any effort at all. Nick had attracted Lily…but when Leo stepped in, Nick had stepped back. Because
you don’t touch kin or anything that belongs to them.

‘I always wondered why you didn’t fight harder for me,’ said Lily.

Nick turned his head and looked at her with those dark, dark eyes. Nothing like Leo’s. Thank God. But maybe if they
had
been, she’d have wised up that much sooner.

‘What, go up against Leo?’ Nick sighed. ‘I was angry with him, sure I was. Furious. But I was even angrier with
you.
He was the only blood I had. My mother was dead, I had no grandparents. Bubba always helped me financially, but that was about all. Si and Freddy were kept in ignorance, because I suppose Leo and Bubba knew that there were enough contenders for the King crown as it was, and Si and Freddy might prove a threat to me if they thought I was closer than they’d previously believed me to be.’

‘You and Leo were like…blood brothers.’

Now Nick grinned. ‘We
were
blood brothers.’

He showed her a white, inch-long scar on his inner wrist.

Lily gasped. ‘Leo had one exactly the same,’ she said, fingering the whitened skin there.

‘That’s right, he did. After Bubba told us, we did it. Cut our hands and joined the blood together, swore to be brothers forever.’

The boys will look after you.

‘And then you met me…’

‘Yeah. And then Leo stormed in, and you
let
him storm in, so I stepped back.’

She had been so quiet, so obliging, then. Hurt by Nick’s sudden apparent withdrawal, she had allowed herself to be charmed by Leo.

‘I was just a dumb girl, Nick. I was snowballed by Leo. I wanted you to step in, and all you did was fucking well step
back
.’

‘Now this is bloody ironic, wouldn’t you say?’ His eyes were dancing with mirth now as he stared at her. ‘We both wanted the other to show more resistance to Leo. And we both folded.’

Lily sat back wearily, half laughing, half sad. ‘He certainly was a force to be reckoned with.’

‘Yeah. That he was.’

They were silent.

Then Nick said: ‘I was so fucking miserable when I let you go. So I thought, hey, who cares? I’ll date beautiful girls. All cats are grey in the dark. When that didn’t make me any happier I thought, what the hell? – and I married Julia.’

‘The playboy Nick,’ said Lily. She remembered how it had hurt her, seeing him with all those different, glamorous companions. And then when he had married Julia, although she would have denied it, she’d felt low for weeks. ‘Poor Julia. Second best even though she was so gorgeous. And being so gorgeous, and so vain…she went and upset Maeve.’

Nick was staring at her, drinking in her face.

‘What?’ asked Lily.

‘I thought I knew you. Gentle, quiet Lily. I thought…if she’d done that, this awful thing, then she’s been provoked beyond all reason. Then it came out at the trial that he’d been hitting you…’

‘He didn’t,’ said Lily quickly. ‘That was something the brief cooked up to lessen the sentence.’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t know that. And I wondered what
else
he might have done to you, because I knew Leo. I knew his appetites. So I thought you must have been
forced
to it. So when it all came to a head, I was torn in two. I loved Leo. I loved
you.
And Leo had always said, look after Lily if anything ever happens to me. He’d give me one of those big bear hugs of his and he’d say that, time and again:
always look after Lily.
So…I looked after you. Kept you safe inside. Si did try to get to you in there, but I put things in place.’

Lily remembered the rumours she’d heard in stir – that someone was out to get her. Yeah –
Si
was out to get her.

But not any more.

‘Ah, what the hell? It’s all water under the bridge,’ he said, and leaned over and kissed her.

‘Yeah,’ said Lily, and put her arms around his neck and pulled him in close.

All that wasted time
, she thought.

But no. It hadn’t been wasted. She had her girls. And she had grown a backbone in prison; it had toughened her up, made her strong.

‘You’ve caused me a hell of a lot of anxiety,’ said Nick against her mouth.

‘You broke my heart,’ said Lily.

‘You broke mine.’

‘Oh come on–do you actually have one?’ Lily scoffed with a smile.

Nick pulled open his shirt and put Lily’s hand in there, over his heart. His chest was hot, the skin there like silk over steel. ‘Feel that? It’s beating, yes?’

‘Then it’s not broken.’

‘Just a hairline crack, maybe,’ said Nick, his eyes playing with hers.

Lily sighed happily. ‘I love you, Nick O’Rourke. I always have and I think I probably always will.’

‘You
think?
’ His lips hovered over hers now.

She didn’t need to ask if he loved her too. Hadn’t he proved that, a thousand times over? Guarding her in prison, and outside too. And stepping back when he thought she was in love with Leo.

She had been overwhelmed by Leo. But
this
was love, faithful and enduring love. The type every woman craved, deep down.

‘I love you too, Lily King. And I think…you know what I think?’

Lily shook her head.

‘I think it’s
way
past your bedtime.’