Jail Bird (28 page)

She couldn’t see him coming, but she could hear him, treading soft-footed alongside the pool. She would have to wait until he opened the door into the changing cubicle. She could hear him coming closer, closer.

Her mouth was dry but there was the sweat of sheer terror rolling down her face, making her eyes sting. Her bowels felt like mush, her heart was clattering away at a gallop.

So this is it
, she thought.
Shit or bust. I kill him or he kills me and the girls.

She was holding her breath.

The steps were close now, so close.

Her hands were slippery on the gun. She rubbed one damp hand down her jeans, then the other, then she tightened her double-handed grip on it and aimed at the door.

The steps stopped, right outside.

She was going to wait until he opened it and then –
oh shit
– she was going to blast him into the next world. Lily steeled herself, teeth gritted, concentrating everything on
just holding the heavy gun steady, making the first shot count.

The handle on the door was going down.

Oh Jesus oh God in heaven help me.

She braced herself for the recoil. It would have a big kick, this gun. It was a hand-cannon. That’s what Leo had called it. A hand-cannon. And insurance. The ultimate backup plan. Now, she was going to cash in the insurance. Leo’d told her all about this gun, had told her it was so powerful that even a glancing shot could kill because it could rip a limb off.

‘And if this baby hits your mid-section your guts are going to end up in a tree in the next county,’ he had told her, and she had cringed at that.

But now she was going to have to do it. Blast Freddy fucking King to hell, where he belonged.

She was trembling, shaking, feeling that she was going to puke now.

She thought of him casually breaking Jase’s neck. She’d never forget it. That hideous
crack
as Jase’s neck gave way.

Focus
, she told herself. She was so stressed her mind was wandering off.
Shoot him now, through the door.

But she couldn’t do it. She had to look him straight in the eye, she had to
know
that he was dead; this was one dragon that had needed slaying for a long, long time, and she was going to make sure she did it. She
had
to.

The door was pushing in. She held her breath.

The door was opening.

Oh help…

Lily blinked, trying to clear the salt-sting of sweat from her eyes.

Come on then, you bastard, come and get it…

The door opened wide.

Lily’s finger tightened on the trigger, here we go, here it comes, you bastard…

And then she froze.

It wasn’t Freddy standing there; it was Maeve.

‘Lily? What the hell…?’ asked Maeve, her eyes not on Lily’s face but on the huge gun in her hand. ‘What are you
doing
?’

Lily stared at her, open-mouthed.
Shit. She’d nearly blown her sister-in-law to kingdom come.

But Freddy! Where was Freddy?

‘Where is he? Where the hell is he?’ she blurted out.

‘For God’s sake! Could you point that thing somewhere else?’ cringed Maeve.

Lily looked at the gun in her hand. Shuddered. She put it down on the seat. She dragged both hands through her hair. She was sweaty with fear. She could smell the stench of it on herself. ‘Jesus, Maeve, I could have killed you.’

‘Oli phoned and we came on over. She let us in. She was in a state.’

Maeve was still watching Lily as if she might snatch up the gun again, might take it into her head to start shooting.

Can’t blame her
, thought Lily. She knew she must look demented.

‘She…’ Now her voice wasn’t working. A cracked, hag-like
noise came out of her mouth. She swallowed, tried to compose herself…‘She’s a good girl.’

But where the hell was Freddy?

She was living in a nightmare. Freddy was stalking about the place, there was Jase lying dead in the hall, and now Maeve was standing here looking at her as if she was crazy, which at the moment she probably
was
, and her girls were here, at risk, one of them pregnant with a dead man’s child, the other guilty of patricide.

There. She’d admitted it to herself.

She hated the thought, but everything was pointing Saz’s way. Even Saz’s anger against her mother could be nothing more than her own guilt eating away at her.

Shaking, she walked to the edge of the pool and slumped down before she fell down. She crouched there with her head in her hands, thinking,
Please, no. Not Saz.
She felt devoid of energy, all the fight had gone out of her. If Freddy barged in right now and throttled her, she wouldn’t care. Saz had killed Leo. She knew it. It made her sick to her stomach to even think it, but there it was, staring her in the face.

Saz had the means to get in somehow. Saz could handle Leo’s shotgun. Saz was exhibiting signs of unbearable guilt.

Wake up and smell the coffee, you silly cow
, she thought in despair.
Saz did it.

Oh God. Lily straightened, pulled her hands through her hair, wondered if she was going to throw up. Blinking back tears of weariness and distress and terror, she looked up at Maeve and did a double-take.

Maeve was holding the Magnum, and it was pointing straight at Lily.

Lily was so shocked that she could only stare, her mouth open, her eyes wide with disbelief.

‘What the…?’ she managed to get out at last.

‘Freddy’s out in the hall. With Si. Sorting out that loser.’

Not
good news. Freddy was bad enough, but Si was deadly. Why weren’t they in here, finishing her off? They had their chance now. All her defences were down. But then – they knew she was cornered. They had time enough to get rid of Jase’s body while Maeve held her down here. They could afford to be leisurely about all this. She was trapped. And here was Maeve – dumpy, rather laughable, little Maeve – pointing Leo’s gun at Lily’s head.

‘Maeve, what on earth are you doing?’ asked Lily faintly, standing up shakily.

Maeve gave a little laugh. ‘Taking this gun off you. You tried to shoot me with it, we struggled, and I shot you. By accident.’

‘What?’

‘You just had to go stirring things up, didn’t you?’ Maeve
went on, as if Lily hadn’t spoken at all. ‘You just had to do it, even though everyone told you not to.’

Lily’s eyes were glued to the gun. The great black maw of the Magnum’s barrel seemed to yawn at her like a chasm. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ she said.

What the hell was happening here?

‘I’m on about that silly cow Adrienne, and her list.’

‘But…’ Lily was frowning, trying to make her panicking brain think about anything other than the fact that Maeve was standing there, rock steady, pointing the Magnum at her head. She gulped and tried again…‘But Adrienne didn’t tell anyone about that list. I asked her twice. She
swore.
How the fuck do you know about it?’

Maeve smirked. ‘Matt told me. He was working from home, and he went looking for some paper and he found the list, tucked away in Adrienne’s desk drawer. He came in to work all upset next day and I wheedled it out of him, asked him what was wrong. Boy, was I in for a surprise! He showed me a copy he’d taken. Showing all the
tarts
Leo was shagging. And why would Adrienne have such a thing? Matt put two and two together – he’s an accountant, after all – and he came up with the correct number. Adrienne was boffing Leo and she was jealous of these others: so jealous she’d had them tracked down. Of course I said that him and Adrienne were sound, so why start stirring things up? And he agreed. He’s such a loser, he worships the ground that daft bint walks on. I said it was best to just trash his copy of the damned list and forget it; and I screwed it up and binned it right in front of him. Of course, the minute he was out of the office I was in that bin like a long dog, getting it back out again.’

‘What are you telling me, Maeve?’ Lily asked, dry-mouthed. ‘When did all this happen?’

Maeve was silent for a beat, watching Lily.

Then she said: ‘Nineteen ninety-six. Not too long before Leo went off to the great golf course in the sky. The bastard.’

But she’d always thought that Maeve
liked
Leo. Lily stood there, shaking, watching this woman who she thought she knew and yet was suddenly strange, different.

‘He laughed at me, you know,’ said Maeve.

‘What?’ Lily shook her head, tried to clear her thoughts. It was hard to think with that thing pointing at her. And now, over Maeve’s shoulder, she saw Saz step through the hall door into the pool room. Saw her start forward, her mouth opening, eyes widening, as she saw her aunt Maeve holding a gun on her mother.

No, Saz
, thought Lily desperately.
Go away. Keep out of it.

But then Si appeared behind her. Saw the two women at the far end of the pool. Grabbed Saz’s arm, held her still.

‘He had you, and he had all these others,’ Maeve was ranting on. ‘A whole fucking procession of them. You know what? I was going to leave it. But then I saw the list, I saw that
fucking
list and I couldn’t bloody well believe it. He had all of
them
, and yet…when I approached him,
me,
one night in the club, you know what he did? He laughed in my face. Called me a fat little nobody; said he wouldn’t screw me even in the dark. He said he would
never
screw around with his brother’s wife, you
never
touched kin, what was I thinking of, what sort of slut was I? Which is funny, because he seemed to
like
sluts. And then he said I was ugly, and did I think he was desperate or something? He was a cruel bastard, your husband.’

Lily kept her eyes on Maeve, although she was terribly aware of Saz standing there in horrified silence at the other end of the pool; aware too that Si was hearing this, hearing
how his wife had propositioned his own brother – and been rejected.

She couldn’t take this in. Maeve had seen the list, had
known
Leo was fucking around. And she had been jealous of the women on the list. Pretty women, all of them. Sleek, blonde creatures, not dumpy little self-important Plain-Janes like Maeve.

‘You always looked down on me,’ said Maeve. ‘You all did. You. Becks. Mary. Adrienne. Julia. All of you.’

‘That ain’t true.’

‘Yeah it is. And you were all so good looking. Not like me. I even had my hair done like yours, Lily King. Tinted to the same shade, cut in the same style. I even started to dress like you. I wanted to
be
you. But that still wasn’t enough for him. You had Leo. He had the looks, the real sparkle. Si’s a dull bugger. He didn’t ever care about me. I was just the wife, her indoors, helping out with the books sometimes. We had no kids, no nothing. And Freddy’s a fool. Leo was the real prize and by God didn’t he bloody know it?’

‘You don’t have to tell me any of this, Maeve.’ Lily could feel Si’s presence there, taking all this in.
A dull bugger.
He and Saz had drawn closer; they were halfway down the side of the pool now.

‘Yeah, I
do.
I want you to know what sort of a shit you were married to. And that all he got, he fucking well deserved.’

Lily stared at her sister-in-law in horror as it all sank in. ‘For fuck’s sake.
You
killed him. I was talking to his mistresses, I even…good God, I even suspected my own daughter, and all the time it was you.’

It was beyond belief.
Maeve
had done it.
Maeve
had left her to stew inside for twelve years. This woman, this stroppy little cow,
she
was the one responsible for Lily’s suffering;
she
was the one who had robbed the girls of their father and convinced them of their mother’s guilt.

She’d been jealous of Leo’s mistresses, and jealous of Lily’s life. She’d
wanted
Lily’s life, Lily could see that now. She’d wanted her husband, for starters, and when she couldn’t have him she had killed him instead. Then, unable to have children herself, she had happily grabbed Lily’s girls, played the doting aunt. She’d made them depend on her while their mother served time for doing their father. Poor little mites. How skilfully she must have poisoned their minds against Lily.

Lily thought of Saz coming in here tonight. Saz had somehow bypassed the security systems. There was a way in. Saz knew it; maybe she had known it even as a child. Maybe she had even told Maeve about it. Lily knew that Maeve had been at The Fort often on Sundays; she knew Maeve had seen Leo get the key to the gun cabinet from the desk drawer on several occasions. Leo had loved showing off the Purdeys to Si, and they had enjoyed shooting clays together in the grounds some weekends.

Then she thought about Leo’s mistresses. Thought about Alice. Clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my God. Alice. You didn’t…’

Maeve’s expression was sneering. ‘You see? That’s a prime example of what I’m talking about. If you hadn’t started arsing about with that list, none of this would have had to happen. You went and saw that nutter in the home, didn’t you? Somehow seeing you made her come out of whatever cloud-cuckoo-land she’s been in for all these years.’

Not me
, thought Lily.
Leo. The picture of Leo.

‘And she started talking. Alice Blunt was in the club the night I talked to Leo, the night I…came on to him. She
heard. She
saw.
She was hanging off his arm and grinning; they were both laughing at me. She knew he’d turned me down, and you had to go and see her and start her talking, and I thought, what if she talks about
that
? How long then before you started putting it all together?’

‘You killed Alice,’ said Lily, horrified.

Maeve gave a ‘so what?’ shrug. ‘She was wandering about the place. I just led her into the lake, that was all. It was easy. Told her she was going to be with Leo again. Looked just like she’d drowned herself. Of course,
I
was the one who put the stones in her cardigan pockets, not her.’

Lily was thinking frantically now.
Jesus.
She was thinking about Reba getting raided. She was thinking about Suki, killed in the fire at the flat, and Bev, who was still in intensive care suffering the effects of smoke inhalation.

Lily’s stomach lurched with realization as it hit her. ‘You’re doing them all. You’re making it look as if it’s me.’

Maeve gave a tight little smile.

‘You
are
,’ said Lily with sudden ferocity. ‘You torched Bev and Suki’s place.’ Which had led on to Winston freaking out and attacking Jack. ‘You grassed Reba Stuart up to the police – didn’t you?’

‘See? You
can
work it out, if you try.’

‘But what about Julia? Someone threw acid at her when I was inside – you couldn’t pin that on me.’

‘I never intended to.’

‘Then why do it to the poor bitch?’

‘Why do it to beautiful,
exquisite
Julia?’ Maeve looked thoughtful. ‘Oh, let me see. Her head was so fucking big she could hardly get it through a door. She knew how good she looked; she
knew
that she only had to enter a room and every man in it was gobsmacked. She was on that fucking
list. I knew she was doing Leo behind Nick’s back. I thought I might tell him…but then I thought, no. Then she came to our tenth anniversary party and she was bragging, actually
bragging
about how men chased after her. And I thought, lady, I’m going to take you down a peg or two. And I did.’

Lily felt red-hot rage envelop her then. That poor cow Julia. All right, she’d been a pain in the arse in her younger days, she
was
vain; she was arrogant and proud of her beauty. But what Maeve had done to her had been cruel beyond belief.

‘And what about Adrienne?’ So far as Lily knew, Adrienne was fine.

‘Saving her until last,’ said Maeve gloatingly. ‘I
like
Matt. He’s a nice man. He don’t deserve a slapper like her for a wife.’

Jesus, the price they’d all paid just because Leo wouldn’t give Maeve a leg-over. ‘You stupid, malicious cow,’ Lily spat out, unable to stop herself.

‘Hey!’ snapped Maeve, raising the gun. ‘Pot, kettle, black,’ she said, and pulled the trigger.