Jail Bird (15 page)

‘Then mind your bloody own,’ he said, and went back into the kitchen.

‘She was always frail,’ Mrs Blunt went on. ‘Then she stopped eating much. Some girls teased her at school, something like that, she’d never talk about it. She was hospitalized once, she was bad with it. But then she got over that and got a job in one of his offices.’

‘Yeah, your bloody husband,’ the son chimed in from the other room.

‘And?’ prompted Lily.

‘She was mad about him. Just
mad,
’ said Mrs Blunt, her eyes dancing in her bony head. ‘He used to send her flowers, and posh presents; there was a gold bracelet in a little blue box…’

The Tiffany receipt,
thought Lily sickly. After all these years, finally she knew who’d been the recipient of that gift. Alice Blunt. Poor, weak girl, with her head turned by a rich and powerful man.

‘Alice loved him,
adored
him.’ Mrs Blunt’s gummy mouth twisted in disapproval. ‘Went crazy when he told her it was over between them.’

‘How long did it go on?’ asked Lily, although it pained her to do it.

The bony shoulders shrugged. ‘Few months. But she was a highly strung girl, our Alice. She couldn’t take it.’ Suddenly the old mouth was trembling. ‘She tried to do herself in. Slit her wrists. I found her…just in time. But she was never right after that. Needed round-the-clock care. He should never
have let her down like that, she couldn’t take that sort of thing.’

Lily cleared her throat. ‘Yeah, but he was married. Didn’t she know that?’

‘We don’t like you going near Alice,’ said the son, rejoining them and looming over Lily like a threat. ‘Who the fuck knows what you might do?’

‘Malcolm! Language!’ said Mrs Blunt.

‘Sorry, Ma.’ Suddenly he looked like a little boy slapped down by an adult. But immediately the truculent bruiser was back. ‘But it’s true, innit? She might want to do Alice too; she’s a nutter.’

Lily bit her tongue to keep back a sharp reply. But something had been bothering her and she was going to ask it, no matter what. ‘The clinic,’ she said.

‘Yeah? What about it?’ asked the son.

‘Who pays for Alice’s keep? It must cost a small fortune.’

He shrugged. ‘Government, I s’pose. We can’t afford it, for sure.’

But the clinic was lovely; a really nice place. Not the sort of place she’d envisage an NHS patient on her uppers being shipped to indefinitely.

She looked at the son, and wondered. Wondered just how far he would go to please the mother and gain her approval. Wondered if Mrs Blunt had said at the time: Look, son, he’s upset our Alice, upset her bad, what are you going to do about it? She’d have been looking at him all pleading and cunning, knowing how to manipulate, knowing which buttons to press. And did he then charge out into the night, bent on revenge, and kill Leo?

But there’d been no break-in. The alarm system hadn’t
been breached. So…had Leo let the son in, had Leo in fact
known
Malcolm, since he knew Alice?

She stood up. Felt so tired that she couldn’t bear to think about it any more.

‘Thanks for seeing me, Mrs Blunt,’ she said, and went to the door, the son dogging her heels.

‘I don’t want you coming back here,’ he hissed in her ear as she opened the door.

Lily opened the door and paused there, looking out at the rain.

‘Yeah, but you know what? We don’t always get what we want,’ she said, and walked off down the path to the waiting taxi.

That evening Freddy King was sitting at the bar in Kings, the family club. He was seriously pissed off at what Jase was telling him.

‘No one’s seen the little fucker for a while. We put the word out like you said, but no one knows a damned thing,’ said Jase, eyeing Freddy warily.

Freddy the Freak, he was called among some of the boys. Jase wasn’t one of those. Careless Talk Costs Lives was his motto. He knew Freddy could blow at a moment’s notice and take your fucking head off, and he wouldn’t want that, not when things had been starting to look so rosy.

Also, there was Si. Treated with even
more
deference by Jase. For obvious reasons. But now there was this thing with the door. Si was talking about a new system, a little experiment where one person ran the door for a fortnight, then another person took over. Jase on first shift, and then–and
then
–Brendan Gibbs.

That was the worst blow of all. Jase knew of Brendan Gibbs. All the boys did. Brendan Gibbs had a reputation
around town as the hardest of hard nuts. Brendan was a thinker, like Jase. He was no brain-dead mound of muscle like some of the guys were. And now Jase was wondering, was this a quiet way of edging him out, off the scene? Was this what they called the thin end of the cunting
wedge?

If it was, where the
fuck
did that leave him? He felt affronted. He had always done a good job on the door, tossed out the unlicensed dealers, protected the ones who were in the club on Si’s say-so. He’d restricted the numbers of partying masses coming in to a couple of hundred max, and he’d turned down a
fortune
in bribes from punters wanting to jump the mile-long queues outside or be sneaked round the back.

Jase was starting to get an uneasy feeling. He felt he was being disciplined. But for
what?
For getting in good with Oli? Jesus, was Si saying that he, Jase, wasn’t
good
enough to mix with his niece? Because if so, Jase was going to have to do a major rethink. He’d thought he was a contender for the future throne, had felt that Si liked him and was grooming him for success. But maybe he’d misread the signals.

Of course he had contingency plans. He’d been at Oli night and day, shagging her brains out, and he knew she wasn’t on the Pill. Oli was sweet, eager to please; he’d had her doing things that her dear old uncle Si would have been shocked at. Early on, he would have worn a condom if she’d insisted (although he’d have cooked up some excuse to phase it out), but she was so fucking grateful for his attention, she’d been making cow-eyes at him for months before he made his move, so he knew he had the upper hand there and he had formulated a brilliant plan, and so he’d said right from the start, no condoms, he hated the damned things.

So he was having himself a real shag-fest with Oli–and
a few others, of course, that went without saying–and wearing nothing but a smile. Oli was so obliging. Sucked him off, tried anal, anything, but she liked missionary the best and that was good, because that was when a woman really took it on board, wasn’t that right? On her back was best, and anyway he liked doing her that way, splayed her legs wide open, tucked a little pillow under her hips, kept her there, pumping away at her while she moaned with pleasure, then
bang
and off the little swimmers went to do their good work. He always tried to give her an orgasm just as he came himself; that helped get them up there, apparently. He’d read up on it. Wanted to get it right.

One of these days he was going to score a direct hit–if he hadn’t already. She was going to be up the duff with his kid soon, she
had
to be. And Uncle Si might rant and rave for a bit, but then Jase would tell him how much in love they were, him and Oli, and he’d have Oli talk to her Aunt Maeve, crying buckets all over the ugly old mare, and then it would be wedding bells and he would be inside the inner sanctum,
really
on the firm. He’d been working towards that ever since he came out of school and started kicking off, wearing the old claret and blue scarf on the terraces at Upton Park when West Ham were playing. That was how he’d come to the attention of Si’s boys, that and a little National Front demo work. It was time he moved forward and up. He was
ready.
But now, this. This little thing that didn’t quite fit right with him. This feeling that he was being slapped down.

‘There’s been a bit of trouble on the door,’ said Jase now as Freddy threw back a stiffener.

‘So? It’s your door. Sort it. Ain’t that what we pay you for?’

Freddy was on a downer. All his boys were telling him
that Tiger Wu had vanished into the ether. They didn’t know where or how or any damned thing, they knew fuck-all–and all
Freddy
knew was that the little cunt had six and a half grand of his money in his pocket for a job that would never be done, and that made him
seriously
annoyed. If he got hold of Tiger any time soon, that greasy bastard was going to be eating through a straw for a
month.

Meanwhile, there was Lily King. Who’d been out of stir no time at all and had already moved back into the house, into
his dead brother’s house,
after doing a measly twelve years for offing him. It just wasn’t good enough. All very well for Si to say, wait, give it time, but Freddy didn’t want to and by Christ he wasn’t going to either.

The club was filling up–
their
club, his and Si’s. It was a fantastic club and it easily rivalled the Ministry of Sound over in Gaunt Street. Poor fucking Leo had never seen it really take off, but they had, him and Si: it was a great place. Strobes whirling and lots of raving punters jigging along to the DJ’s mixes, dropping a little E to get them in the mood, buying high-priced drinks, the place had a real good vibe. And now, what was Jase saying, that he was having trouble on the
door?

‘Fuck’s sake, Jase,’ snarled Freddy when Jase hovered there, seeming not to want to drop it. ‘Get the sodding hell on with it. That’s your job.’

Jase had thought he was on top of it. As Head of Security in the club, he was in a position of trust, but could he trust Si in return?

He’d dealt with Si honestly. Well, honestly in business. Granted, he was shagging himself senseless with Oli, but who wouldn’t, given the opportunity? But in business, he had played it straight down the line. Now Si was playing silly buggers.

It wasn’t on.

Jase was fuming. He thought maybe Freddy might drop a word in Si’s ear, if he spoke to him in the right way. He decided to try it.

‘It’s just that I don’t like this rotation plan, Mr King,’ he said. ‘Not at all. I built up this team of boys: they’re the business. And that’s
my
door.’

Freddy looked at Jase in disgust. ‘Look,
fuck
your door, sonny,’ he snapped, coming up off the stool and glaring into Jase’s eyes.

Steady,
thought Jase. Freddy was built like a tank; he didn’t want to start anything with him.

‘Why don’t you piss off and make yourself useful?’ said Freddy, pushing a meaty digit into Jase’s chest. ‘Go and see to your frigging door, boy. Or go and find me Tiger fucking Wu, that tosser. Or better still–go and do that bitch Lily for me, okay?’

Jase went up to the office after that. Better talk to the organ grinder, not the bloody monkey. Si was there behind the desk. Jase was a tough, fit young bastard, but seeing Si always gave him the squits. Si was sitting there like a brick outhouse, staring at him as he knocked and came in–staring at him with that cold, unblinking gaze he knew so well. There was something almost reptilian about Si. The stillness there was about him–but then when he moved, when he
struck,
he struck fast.

‘What’s up, Jase?’ he asked, not looking very interested.

‘Mr King,’ said Jase, his voice sounding high-pitched and breathless. ‘I wanted to say…well, you know me. I’m a good worker. That’s my door. I’ve done a good job on it, wouldn’t you say?’

Si stared at him with that flat gaze. Then he sat back in his chair and stared some more.

‘Yeah,’ he said at last. ‘I’d say you done good, Jase.’

‘Then why the change, Mr King? The boys told me about Brendan being moved in, the new shift arrangement. Me on for a fortnight, then him…well, it can’t work that way. That’s
my
door.’

Si stared blankly at Jase until he started to fidget. ‘Sorry,’ Jase added, aware that he had raised his voice to Si King, and you didn’t do that. Not if you were fond of living. But he was pumped up on steroids, bursting with aggression. Right now, he felt he could
kill
Si King with his bare hands–fucking around with his door, for God’s sake–and enjoy doing it too. Still, he tried to swallow his rage. Tried to hold it down.

‘It’s just a thought,’ said Si, with an easy shrug. ‘We like to try new things, adjust the system now and then.’

‘But I…’

‘Brendan’s a good man,’ said Si.

‘I don’t know him. I know
of
him, everyone does,’ said Jase, feeling his temper building to dangerous levels. ‘But look, Mr King. Straight up. The door’s mine. The boys I got working it are
my
team.’

‘Correction,’ said Si, ‘they’re
my
team. They are in my employ. Just like you are.’

Jase clenched his fists. He’d worked like a slave to get that door operating smoothly. He knew what this was about. Bloody Si. All his hopes and dreams, everything he’d planned for, was crashing around his ears, he just knew it. Si was shutting him out. Out of the firm, out of Oli’s life, out of the
family.

‘This is about Oli, ain’t that right?’ he blurted out.

‘Oli?’ Si’s expression didn’t change.

‘Yeah, you’re slapping me down ‘cos you don’t want me and her together.’

‘Jase, Jase,’ said Si, gently shaking his head. ‘Whatever makes you think such a thing?’

But Jase was right. He
knew
it.

He unpinned his security tag and threw it onto the desk.

‘Fuck this then,’ he said. ‘I’m gone. I resign.’

Now
Si King would weaken. Jase knew it. He was a
good
worker, the best.

‘No, you ain’t resigning,’ said Si. ‘Because I’ve just fired you. Clear off out of it, you little shit.’

Next morning the builder was in, repairing the damage Lily had done to the wall behind the bed in the master suite. Lily made him a cup of tea and took it in to him. Oli watched from the door and, as Lily turned back towards her, she could see that Oli’s eyes were all over the place, darting around the room as if it might contain some horrible gremlin that might pounce on her in an instant.

‘All right, Ols?’ she asked her as the hammering and banging commenced.

Oli straightened. ‘Yeah. Sure. I’ve just…never been in here, not since before it all happened…’ Her voice tailed away. She wrapped her arms around herself, her face clouding.

Lily nodded. She was standing by the bed, over which the builder had thoughtfully draped a dustsheet. ‘You can come in, Ols,’ she told her gently.

Oli shook her head. ‘Nah.’ Her tone was light, there was a smile playing around her mouth, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She looked as if she was going to burst into tears.

‘It’s just a room, Oli. That’s all.’

‘It’s not just a room,’ said Oli, shaking her head firmly.

‘There’s nothing in here. Truly.’ Even as she said it, Lily was remembering her first foray back into the master suite since she had last seen it over twelve years ago.
She’d
been shit-scared, too. She joined Oli in the open doorway and Oli stepped gratefully back, out into the hall, and moved away, towards the head of the stairs.

‘Oli, you all right?’ asked Lily, hurrying after her.

‘Fine!’

Lily caught her arm at the top of the stairs. ‘No you’re not. What’s going on?’

‘I hate going anywhere near that room,’ gulped Oli. Now Lily could see that she was near to tears, genuinely upset. ‘I thought I’d try it, but…I hate it. It’s creepy’

‘There’s nothing there, Oli,’ repeated Lily firmly. ‘What, you think your dad would frighten you, hurt you? He never would, not while he was alive, and not now either.’

‘But I’ve…’ Oli bit her lip and turned away again, made to hurry off downstairs.

‘Yeah, what?’ Lily prompted.

‘Nothing, it’s nothing.’

‘Yeah it is. Go on. What were you going to say?’

Now Oli turned back towards her mother. Her face was distraught.

‘You’re going to think I’m mental.’

‘Oli.’

‘All right, all right. I’ve…
heard
things. Okay?’ And Oli was off, haring down the stairs and into the sitting room.

Lily hurried after her. Shut the door behind them to give them some peace from the noise.

Oli was sitting on the sofa, arms crossed over her middle, staring at the floor.

Lily sat down beside her, prised loose a hand and held it tight.

‘Oli? You’ve heard things? What the hell…?’ Lily was staring at her and starting to feel very worried, very
spooked.
‘What have you heard?’

‘Noises.’

‘Noises?
What noises?’

‘Um–well…’ Oli let loose a little bubble of laughter. There was more than a note of hysteria to it. ‘Voices.’

Lily sat back, her eyes fixed on Oli. She was aware of her heart, beating very fast, and that her stomach was rolling over like a fairground ride.

Voices?

What the…?

‘But the room’s kept locked, Oli,’ she reminded her daughter.

‘I know. So it don’t make sense, does it?’ Oli glanced at her, a glance full of desperation and puzzlement. ‘Unless…’

‘What, unless what? Unless there’s a ghost in the room? Come on, Oli. Get real.’

‘I know what I’ve heard.’ Oli was speaking through gritted teeth.

‘All right. So you’ve heard it. Or you think you have.’

‘I
have.
’

‘Recently?’

‘No. Not recently’

‘When was the last time then? Tell me.’

Oli shook her hand free and jumped to her feet. ‘God, can we just stop this?’

‘Just tell me the last time.’

‘Oh…about three weeks ago, I was coming in late, coming along the hall, and I heard it then. It was horrible.’ Oli shivered. ‘Frightening.’

‘More than one voice?’

‘No. Just one. It was like…like a child’s voice. Oh, look, can we drop this now? It really freaks me out.’ She glanced quickly at her watch. ‘Look, I’ve got to go. Got a busy day’

Lily reluctantly let it go. For now, anyway. ‘What’s on the agenda, then?’ she asked, trying to keep it light when Oli had in fact scared her.

A child’s voice in that room?
For God’s sake, what was that all about? She looked at Oli and thought,
Is something wrong with her?
And that frightened her very badly. Worse than the prospect of any ghost. Had what happened here in fact
unhinged
her lovely daughter, was she–and, oh fuck, now she was seeing Alice Blunt in her mind’s eyes, Alice with her adult nappy and her scarred wrists and vacant eyes–was she showing early signs of some awful mental illness?

Please God no. Not Oli.

‘I’m having a hot paraffin wax manicure,’ said Oli, seeming relieved by the change of subject. ‘They’re great, you tried them?’ And then she realized the stupidity of what she’d just said and stood there looking awkward. ‘Oh damn, I’m…’

Sure I’ve tried them, Oli. We lags get manicures all the time.

But she just smiled. Oli was upset, she wasn’t thinking straight.

‘No,’ said Lily. ‘But I will.’

Oli nodded soberly.

‘Got your keys and everything?’

‘Yeah, got ‘em.’

‘I’ll catch you later then.’

Looking embarrassed, Oli nodded and quickly left the room–leaving Lily sitting there and wondering if her daughter, her darling precious daughter, was in the first throes of madness.