Sunday 7 October, 11 p.m.
Kath knew something was different about Chi. She wasn’t looking at her when she spoke but was keeping her gaze low, fixed, it seemed, on studying the stains on the carpet. She was fidgeting with her hands too, in a world of her own. And when she looked at her she noticed her ‘friend’ was practically squirming under her stare.
‘You all right, Chi?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Her response was all an act. Kath was good at sniffing out traitors, but for now she stayed silent and watched her, her anger permeating right through her until she felt she might explode with incandescence.
Chi was trying to hide something.
Chi sat in the corner, trying to pretend she was invisible, that if she kept perfectly still and silent, Kath might stop studying her with that evil look. But her thoughts had returned to a night less than a month ago when she had been on a late shift and the last customer had come in round about ten. A plump, cheerful black girl who’d looked exhausted. ‘God,’ she’d said to her, ‘get me some chips. I’m starving and knackered.’ She’d pulled a cigarette out of her bag and Chi had stretched out a hand. ‘I’m sorry. You can’t smoke in here.’
‘I know that. I wasn’t going to light it. I just needed to know it was there.’
Half an hour later, when the girl had smothered her chips with more tomato sauce than you see on a body in a Hollywood horror movie, they’d gone outside together to share a fag and the girl had introduced herself. ‘I’m Jubilee.’
Chi had held out her hand. ‘And my real name is Rachel, but no one calls me that. Everyone calls me Chi.’
Jubilee hadn’t made any of the usual comments about her oriental looks, and out of that considerate beginning a friendship had been born. When Chi had finished her shift, they’d gone up to the Butter Market, found an empty seat and shared a bottle of wine they’d paid half and half for. Jubilee Watkins was the result of a Jamaican mother and a Welsh father. To describe her as black wasn’t quite true. But to describe her as Welsh wouldn’t cut it either. She had wiry hair and dark eyes and skin, but delicate, pretty features and high cheekbones. She was striking at six feet tall and with a powerful physique which bordered on huge. Somehow or other, her family had ended up living in Stoke-on-Trent and, liking the nearby moorlands town of Leek, she had found herself a bedsit and a job as a health-care assistant at a local residential home. The talk meandered between drags and swigs, through boyfriends and work, debt and families, trying to lose the inches of fat that seemed to have landed from nowhere around their middles, everything that was wrong with their lives, and they soon realized they had a shared problem – lack of money. A theme they developed over their next few outings. Meeting Jubilee initially had seemed like paddling along with someone in the same boat, which didn’t help Chi’s position, although she was good fun with a wicked sense of humour. But one night that had changed.
‘I’d just love to visit my hometown,’ Jubilee said.
Chi giggled. ‘Well, it isn’t very far to Wales.’
Jubilee gave her a mock punch. ‘I don’t mean Wales,’ she scolded. ‘I mean Spanish Town, Jamaica. Looks a lovely place on the h’internet.’
Chi giggled. ‘Internet, silly.’
Jubilee gave her a hard look. ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘I’m not stupid.’
Chi had one word, one response to Jubilee’s dream. ‘How?’
Jubilee regarded her with those big black eyes fringed with curly lashes. Then she drew in a deep breath and moved in closer to speak directly into her ear. ‘I don’t know whether to tell you this.’
Sitting motionless in the corner, Chi remembered the urgency in her new friend’s voice.
Such a little crime, so easy too. Like taking candy from a baby. Perhaps she should have remembered that all actions have consequences. By altering the status quo, you interfere. And who knows where the ripples from such actions might end?
That night Chi had listened. Sceptical at first. But something in her had absorbed the story. She wanted out. She needed to escape but she couldn’t let Kath know.
Kath … would … kill … her.
But now, sitting in this dingy room, looking through windows, searching a night sky for even one solitary star, being scrutinized by that suspicious, pale, lardy prison face, she could see that Kath was already wondering. Chi knew that stare. Close on the heels of that facial expression, particularly when accompanied by the finger rubbing of her damaged tooth, came violence. Even against friends who were soon to become ex-friends. Possibly even dead ex-friends. Chi had witnessed it first-hand.
It wasn’t just Craig.
Years ago, before Kath’s jail sentence, they had had a mate called Patsy. Patsy had had the most irritating, high-pitched, squeaky voice imaginable. It almost hurt your eardrums when she spoke. And when she shouted – or screamed – your eardrums burst like glass shattered by a soprano. It was strange that she’d even been one of their mates because they’d all found her irritating. But she had been one of the gang, right up until she’d pinched one of Kath’s fags without asking. Just … pinched … a … fag.
Chi still squeezed her eyes shut and clapped her hands over her ears just at the memory. Kath had seen her smoking a Benson & Hedges, counted the fags in her packet and made the connection. She hadn’t needed to ask or check her facts. It had begun. Her assault had started with a glare which had soon morphed into a hand on Patsy’s neck and she squeezed and squeezed until Patsy couldn’t breathe and her eyes started to bulge. And then Kath had let go. Patsy had staggered out of the bar they’d been in and they’d never seen her again. Anywhere. God only knew what had happened to her.
Significantly there had been no formal complaint – not even from the people in the bar, who had watched, horrified. Nobody spoke. The place fell quiet.
Kath had that effect on you.
And now she was turning that very same stare on to Chi. Chi knew what it meant, and she was frightened.
How she’d guessed something was up, Chi could not imagine, unless Kath had a sixth sense – but in a way it didn’t matter. Far from the prison sentence reforming Kath, she had been further deformed. These days suspicion was enough. And now she was sitting there, glaring at her with that look, finger on sharp tooth-stump, eyes reflective. Without realizing what she was doing, she rubbed her neck at the same time as Kath stopped rubbing her tooth to speak. ‘You seem a bit quiet today, Chi. What’s the matter, love? Having cold feet as usual? Or is it something else?’
How did she know that?
‘No. Nothing.’ Chi could hear the waver in her voice.
Kath’s eyes were skewering her now. ‘You don’t seem very keen on my ideas, Chi. You don’t want Piercy to get her comeuppance?’
All eyes turned on her, Fifi and Debs slewing around so they could get a good look. Chi glanced worriedly at them, trying to gauge their loyalty to her or Kath by surreptitiously moving her gaze from side to side. Nothing too obvious. She couldn’t afford for Kath to realize maybe she didn’t have quite as many loyal followers as she’d thought.
But she couldn’t read any doubt in either Debs or Fifi. Were they that thick that they didn’t realize this was dangerous ground? Surely neither of them wanted any of it? They couldn’t be that stupid that they thought they wouldn’t be implicated in an assault on a serving police officer? But when she looked first at Fifi who was fingering her nose ring, mouth dropped open giving her a vacant look, and then at Debs who had the most unflattering haircut ever – shaved up the sides and little tufts on the top, both of them watching Kath with a sort of mesmerized hero worship, she wondered. They were all wearing the team uniform of ripped jeans and tight T-shirts, Fifi with more success than Debs, who displayed a roll of fat between nipple and knee. In spite of the heaviest make-up ever, all thick black lines and clumpy eyelashes, Debs was still as plain as the proverbial pikestaff, but she did have an impressive pair of 36D cups. Fifi, on the other hand, was so heavily decorated with piercings and tattoos, a lizard down one arm, Chinese writing on the other, pierced tongue, lips, eyebrows and God knew where else, it was hard to decide whether she was grotesque or attractive. But, even with all that decoration, her chest was as flat as a boy’s. She was always talking about having a breast enlargement but at a guess she’d never get around to it.
Or be able to afford it.
Fifi blinked as a sticky false eyelash became detached and scratched her eye. She scowled and chuntered, making a noisy fuss over nothing. But Chi was glad of the distraction. Even Kath stopped staring at her for a brief, blessed moment to laugh at Fifi who was tugging at the lash distorting her eye like the rubber effects on a character in a horror movie. But Chi was soon back to being the focus of all their attention. She felt their suspicious stares like tendrils of wet hair down her face. And the worst part? Chi was convinced that Kath’s suspicions were seeping through her skin into her cells, making her guilt glow from inside. And then Debs locked curious eyes with her and Chi wondered. Out of the two of Kath’s devotees, Debs was the one with insight. Chi read her interest and curiosity even as Kath drove her point home, a sulky tone belying her native paranoia. ‘You don’t want me to get my revenge, Chi? I wonder why not.’
Maybe she did have a sixth sense.
Revenge, Chi thought, tasting fear, salty, on her tongue. It was what Kath lived for; it was what had kept her together through her years in prison, her blood constantly simmering, her brain constantly plotting.
Kath hadn’t finished her jibes. ‘You scared?’ She was jeering now, using her instinct of betrayal as a weapon. All the more frightening, Chi thought, because she was hiding it, like a knife in the folds of a cloak. You didn’t know when or how or even whether she would use it. But, Chi thought wearily, she did know when it ripped through the fabric it would not only be DI Piercy who would suffer but her too. If she didn’t escape.
She had a go at moving out of the shadow of Kath’s suspicions. ‘Course not.’ She affected nonchalance and tried to disguise her fear by taking a noisy slurp from the cider flagon, swilling it round her mouth like mouthwash before passing the bottle on and only then swallowing. ‘I’m right behind you, Kath,’ she said, noting that Kath had got bloody fit inside. She was bulkier and more muscular. She looked strong and powerful. Look at those biceps and those hamstrings. And Kath always had been able to pull a punch.
Chi couldn’t stop herself adding lamely, ‘But I don’t want to end up inside.’
‘You don’t want to end up inside?’ Kath tossed the comment out into the room where it sounded even lamer. Fifi and Debs joined in the mockery with inane leers and splashes of laughter while Kath continued her taunts.
‘Oh, someone find her dummy for her.’
Which provoked another laugh from her fanbase.
Prison would be full of knobheads like these, Chi thought. And the strongest and most frightening would always be the ones with the cheerleaders. That was how the world worked. Inside and out.
Her only chance of escape was the plan. And that depended on Jubilee.
Sometimes people are strewn across your path like leaves on Palm Sunday. (Where did they get those leaves from?)
Jubilee had been one of those palm leaves.