Jessie Keane - Lawless

‘Please tell me you’re not going to break in,’ said Daisy.

Rob looked over his shoulder at the big wooden bulk of the outside pool house. If he ever made a fortune like Joe so clearly had, he promised himself he would have the pool inside the house, not outside, save all that shivering your bare-naked arse off running between the house and the pool.

‘Let’s look in there first,’ he said, and set off.

Daisy followed Rob through the double doors at the end of the pool house. It was humid in here, super-heated, all the windows that looked out onto the gardens were densely misted. Instantly she felt sweat break out on her skin. There were a couple of blue-padded sun beds at the far end of the pool, and they could hear the pump working next door. The water shimmered pale blue, lit by underwater lamps, throwing hypnotic dancing shapes up onto the wooden beams over their heads.

‘What the f…’ Rob said, his voice echoing as he moved ahead of her.

Daisy looked at what had caught Rob’s attention. There was a wizened old man sitting on the edge of the pool. He was wearing a navy-blue dressing gown and she could see striped pyjamas underneath, buttoned up to the neck. His scrawny legs were dangling in the water, so that the bottoms of his pyjamas and the trailing hem of the dressing gown were floating, sodden. His bony feet were bare.

He looked up as the two of them entered the pool house.

‘Mr Darke? Joe…?’ said Rob.

Joe gave a ghastly death’s-head smile. His skin was paperwhite, pulled tight over the skull beneath. Only his brown eyes had any life left in them.

‘You. I know you,’ he said weakly, wheezing the words out, then giving a long, gurgling cough.

Rob moved closer. ‘Yeah, I came out here before to see you. I was with Kit. Your nephew.’

‘That’s right.’ Joe nodded, his head waggling around on his thin neck.

‘Rob…’ Daisy was looking at the pool.

Rob hunkered down beside Joe. He indicated Daisy. ‘This is Daisy. Kit’s sister. Your niece.’

Joe’s eyes went to Daisy. She didn’t even glance at him. Her eyes were wide open with shock.

‘Rob…’ she said, more urgently. She kicked off her shoes.

Rob turned his head, looked at what Daisy was staring at, down in the depths. Jesus, wasn’t that…?

‘Fuck,’ he muttered.

‘ Don’t! ’ said Joe as Daisy threw off her cardigan. She froze there, arrested by the sharpness of his tone.

‘But that’s… she’s…’ Daisy blurted out in panic, staring fixedly down at the woman lying at the bottom of the pool.

‘That’s Betsy.’ Joe gave a breathy, rasping laugh that was almost a sob. ‘And the cow’s dead.’

Daisy stood transfixed. Down there in the blue-shimmering pool, Betsy’s streaked blonde hair was billowing softly around her head. Her eyes were half-open, glaring as she lay in a death lock with the red oxygen cylinder, its tubing coiled tight around her throat. Her skin was suffused with angry purple blotches where the tube had cut into her windpipe. Betsy was wearing a spangled pink bikini and a matching coverall. Even in death, she was flashily attired, with her pearly-pink-painted toes and fingernails, and masses of silver jewellery.

Starting to shake, Daisy turned shocked eyes upon her uncle.

He gazed right back at her. ‘She was a fuckin’ tart,’ he said weakly, struggling to draw in breath and get the words out. ‘No bloody good. I wanted to do that for years, put an end to her fuckin’ rubbish. So when she came out here yesterday for her swim I…’ he paused, coughed, then hitched in a struggling breath, ‘… I followed. Carried the fuckin’ bottle with me, sodding thing weighs a ton. She laughed when she saw me come in with it. Asked me what the hell I thought I was… was doing. She soon found out though.’

Neither Daisy nor Rob said a word.

‘I been sitting here ever since. Didn’t have the bloody strength left to move.’ Joe coughed again; it was a horrible, guttural sound.

Rob looked at Daisy. She had one hand clamped over her mouth and she was trembling. She wasn’t used to this sort of shit. He thought of the writing on the card – Betsy’s writing – matching the writing on the LP sleeve. Or did it? Was Ruby certain about that?

Not that it mattered a toss now. If Betsy had bedded Michael – among he guessed maybe a thousand others – then she’d paid the price as far as Joe was concerned. And if Joe had ordered Michael’s execution, well, the man was finished himself now. He was this close to death, any fool could see that.

‘I been sitting here, looking at her down there in the water. I loved her, you know. She didn’t love me though. For her, it was… always Charlie.’ Joe hitched in a long, painful breath and looked at Rob. ‘So here’s what I want you to do. I want you both to go, and what I’m going to do is this: I’m going to lean forward a bit, I think I can do that, and get into the water. I’m weak as gnat’s piss, but I can manage that, I reckon. Finish this whole fuckin’ thing off. OK?’

Rob stared at the man and thought of the police, cells, prison hospitals. This was Kit and Daisy’s uncle. Slowly, he nodded.

‘We can’t!’ said Daisy to Rob, understanding that Joe was talking about drowning himself. He’d never have the strength to get out of the water, once he got in there.

Rob looked steadily at Joe. Then he turned away, looked at Daisy.

‘Put your shoes on, Daise,’ he said, and walked over to where she stood.

‘We can’t ,’ she said again, almost pleadingly.

Rob took her arm. ‘We can,’ he said gently. ‘It’s the kindest thing, Daise. You know it is. Come on. Let’s go.’

They went back to Rob’s flat out near Holborn. Rob was worried about Daisy; she was shivering hard, her teeth chattering. She said nothing all the way there. Once inside his flat, he pushed a brandy into her hand.

‘Come on, drink it up.’

He downed one himself, too. It hadn’t been the best of days.

Daisy threw back the brandy with a shudder.

‘God, that was awful,’ she moaned.

‘Bathroom’s through there, go and have a nice hot shower.’ Rob was peeling off his jacket. ‘Don’t think about it, Daise. I know it’s sad, but shit happens. He was suffering and now he’s out of it. They both are. Try and think of it like that.’

Daisy went into the bathroom. Rob made his way through to the bedroom and found a robe that one of his girlfriends had left in the closet, in case Daisy needed it.

He went back into the living room and drank down another brandy. Now he could hear sobbing coming from the bathroom, over the background roar of the shower.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

He stood listening to it for a minute. Then he went over to the closed door.

He knocked. ‘Daise? You all right in there?’

‘Fine,’ she said in a tearful voice.

And then it started again – the crying. He hated her crying. He grasped the handle and pushed the door open. Steam billowed around him. The noise of the shower was suddenly louder, and her gasping sobs were louder too.

‘Daise…’ he said, going over to the shower cubicle.

And all the while he was thinking, Mate, what the fuck are you doing…?

He opened the door, and there she was. More beautiful than he ever could have guessed at, her skin pinkened by the hot water, her naked body all hot luscious curves and her face a mask of tragedy, her blue, blue eyes reddened by tears.

She saw him there, and froze.

‘Daise…’ he murmured.

‘Rob…’

‘Jesus, Daise, there’s no way around you, is there?’ he said, and quickly threw off his clothes and stepped under the hot soothing spray with her, pulling her into his arms, pressing his naked body tight against hers, knowing that this was precisely what he had been wanting to do for a long, long time.