Jessie Keane - Lawless

‘There’s no way of knowing that.’

‘Why would she give him a ring? She knew he wouldn’t wear it. And why was it in his pocket, instead of in a drawer somewhere? Why was he carrying it around with him?’

‘Jesus,’ said Rob. ‘I don’t know.’

Daisy put the ring down. ‘So what else is there?’ she asked.

‘Well…’ Rob glanced around the flat. ‘There’s Michael’s record collection, Kit kept that.’

Daisy knew that Kit was into modern stuff with a hard aggressive beat, but Michael’s taste had been for the music of the fifties, the era he’d grown up in – Billy Fury, Bobby Darren, artists like that. The music of a bygone age.

Rob stood up and went over to the stereo, opened a door and lifted out a thick wodge of LPs. He took them over to the sofa.

‘Well, here we are,’ he sighed.

Daisy spread the covers out and took a look. ‘That’s Kit’s,’ said Rob, and tossed Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack to one side. ‘That too,’ he said, shuffling past an old dog-eared copy of Their Satanic Majesties Request by the Stones. ‘These are Michael’s.’ Now they were into Michael’s era: some Tony Bennett and Vic Damone, a little Johnny Rae, a soupçon of the big O.

‘Roy Orbison,’ said Rob, and sighed again, heavily. ‘That’s one of the newer ones for Michael, but he liked the Big O. Always said that man could really sing.’

Daisy was looking at the cover. ‘The title on the cover: I’m Still in Love with You ,’ she said. ‘That’s odd, isn’t it? The same as the ring.’

Now she was pulling out the white inner sleeve. ‘Oh, look at this!’ she said, and her voice was full of excitement. ‘Look, Rob.’

Rob looked. There was handwriting in the bottom right-hand corner. It read: I’m still in love with you. ‘What about the writing?’

‘I don’t recognize it,’ said Daisy, squinting hard at it. ‘This album was released last year, but that’s the same inscription as the one on the ring.’

‘So if this is from that same person, the same woman, that’s not his wife Sheila’s handwriting. It can’t be.’

‘Maybe it’s Ruby…? I don’t think so, though. Oh…’

Rob looked at her. ‘Oh what?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said vacantly.

‘Do you know the writing? Daise?’

‘No, but I just thought of something.’

‘Well, go on then.’

‘It’s too stupid.’

‘I said go on.’

‘Michael phoning Vanessa to see how she was…’

Rob stared at Daisy’s face. ‘Oh, come on. You’re kidding! Michael and her ladyship? Don’t make me laugh.’

‘She’s a lonely rich widow,’ said Daisy.

‘Daise – the woman’s as dried-up as a nun’s twat,’ said Rob.

‘Rob!’

‘Come on. It’s the truth.’

Daisy was flushed with sudden temper. ‘It might be, but I don’t want to hear it! She was all I knew as a child, and she loved me. She did her best for me. So don’t talk about her like that, OK?’

Rob shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said.

Daisy heaved a sigh. Michael and Vanessa as lovers? Vanessa buying Michael rings and LPs, little love tokens? Surely not…

‘No, Vanessa hates popular music. She’s into Dvořák and Holst, a little Wagner,’ said Daisy.

They both fell silent, staring at the sleeve of the LP.

‘But someone wrote that,’ said Rob. ‘Looks like the same person who had the ring inscribed, too.’

‘Yes,’ said Daisy. ‘I don’t think it’s Ruby’s writing, though. And I don’t think it’s Vanessa’s hand either. Too loopy.’

‘Well, whose is it?’

‘Don’t know… But, Rob…’

‘Hm?’

‘I’ve had a thought about Bridge’s skinny bloke with the beard.’

Bianca was being kept in comfort but she was still in a state of misery. She was lying on a bed in a strange house, thinking of Kit gravely ill in hospital. Her big fear was that her brothers would get to him, finish him off. She knew it wasn’t beyond them to do that.

She hated him, but she loved him too. She was so torn over Kit Miller that she thought she might go mad.

He probably killed Tito.

Yes, that was true. But… she loved him.

He lied to you.

Also true. No denying it.

Are you mad?

Yes. Maybe she was.

There was a knock on the door. She heard the key turn in the lock and one of the men entered, the slim, cold-eyed one, bringing her dinner on a tray. She was a prisoner here, confined. Oh, she had a comfy bedroom, a television, a radio, her own bathroom to use. But she was a prisoner nonetheless. Which was really no more than she deserved, after the awful thing she’d done.

What if he dies? she wondered.

If he did… then she might as well be dead, too.

If he didn’t, if he lived, then he could grass her up to the police, and it would all be over for her. Maybe these people – his people – would simply hand her over to the law, let them deal with her. Or maybe they would deal with her themselves.

Unsmiling, not speaking, the man put the tray down on a low table. She saw the food there. Fish and chips. The thought of eating anything made her guts heave.

She didn’t thank the man.

She turned her back on him, faced the wall. Presently she heard him leave the room, heard the key turn in the lock once more.

Kit was out of intensive and into high care within a week.

‘He’s a strong one,’ said Corinne to Ruby.

‘Yes, he is,’ said Ruby. She was so relieved that Kit was getting better, and she stayed with him as much as she could. Fully conscious now, growing stronger day by day, he moved his hand away when she tried to hold it.

‘You don’t have to stay here,’ he said at one point.

‘I want to,’ said Ruby.

‘Was that your voice I heard when I was out of it?’ he asked.

Ruby was startled by the question. So he had heard her. ‘I expect it was. I stayed here, I talked to you. The nurses said it would help.’

It had helped. Even though he might deny it to anyone who asked, Kit knew that Ruby’s voice had comforted him in the bleak blackness of unconsciousness, had wormed its way through, like a single bright thread tethering him to the earth. But was she telling the truth? Would she really have taken the time, the trouble?

He looked at her. His mother. She looked shitty, not her usual elegant self; she looked like she’d been through the mill.

‘You been to see Uncle Joe yet?’ asked Kit, thinking of that dark place with its screaming winds, that tunnel he had glimpsed but not gone through. Pretty soon, he knew that Uncle Joe was going to make that same trip, and he wouldn’t be coming back.

‘No.’ Ruby looked awkward. ‘We fell out some years ago. Or at least, me and Betsy did. So Joe took her side – of course he did – and the whole thing got sort of lost and forgotten. We exchange cards at Christmas. And I keep them all, every one, which I suppose is stupid. That’s about as far as it goes these days.’

‘Fuck Betsy,’ said Kit. ‘Go and see him. Say goodbye, if nothing else.’

Rob and Daisy came in, all smiles because they could tell he was on the mend.

‘Hiya, mate,’ said Rob.

‘Kit! You’re looking better,’ said Daisy, planting a kiss on her brother’s cheek.

‘I’m feeling it,’ said Kit. ‘Why don’t you and Ruby slip outside while I have a chat to Rob.’

‘Oh God. Man talk. Come on, Mum,’ sighed Daisy.

‘So how the fuck are you?’ Rob asked Kit.

‘Pretty much OK,’ said Kit. They were still dosing him with morphine for residual pain, but the wound was healing and he could feel himself getting stronger, day by day.