by Natasha West
All in all, I’d probably made one of the worst mistakes of my life.
I wanted to talk to Alice, to… I don’t know, an apology seemed less than useless. So what else could I do? Help her with her case? No, I wasn’t as sharp as Alice, I’d probably only hinder. Then what else?
‘Your little friend is fucked, you realise?’ Ruby said, leaning in to me, that extra half foot she had on me had never been more apparent.
‘That right?’ I asked, trying not to step back. I knew that’s what she wanted me to do and I’d rather have let her punch me in the face than give her the smallest hint of fear in my eyes.
‘Yep. May’s not gonna let that man go.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘Cos it was her grandson that Olly Quinn killed.’
That was very, very bad news for Alice. Even worse news for Olly. But since Ruby appeared to be in a talking mood, I decided I might as well pump a little information out of her.
‘I presume he was asking for it?’
‘Nobody knows’ Ruby told me, scratching at her scar. ‘We found the pair of them after it was over, in Spencer’s shop. Spencer on the ground, his head cracked open, blood everywhere, Olly standing over him. Pretty damning. But you can bet your life that old Olly claimed he wasn’t even involved. Just happened by and found Spencer that way’ Ruby said, shaking her head and smiling to herself, as though remembering something amusing.
Yes, it was quite damning. But what we needed - or I should say, what Alice needed - was Olly’s side of the story.
‘Is May gonna let Alice talk to him now she’s his defence lawyer?’ I asked Ruby. I’d rather have gone through May but Ruby seemed to have been tasked with escorting us out to the place we were staying tonight.
‘Yeah, why not?’ Ruby said, easy as that. ‘But only the sister, no other family. We’re not having some free-for-all. Well, unless May hands down the maximum sentence. Then maybe he could do his goodbyes.’
‘Very nice of you’ I said dryly and called to Alice. She walked over. ‘You can go see Olly so you can find out what happened. But Jude and Emma can’t go.’
Alice licked her lips and turned to Ruby. ‘But I assume my… My security can come with me?’
I didn’t understand for a second. And then I realised with a shock that she was referring to me.
Ruby raised an eyebrow. ‘This is your body woman, is it?’ she said, looking me up and down and snorting. I almost laughed along with her at the very idea. But Alice stepped closer to me and said, ‘Yes. I need her with me.’
Alice looked at me with a please-go-along-with-this expression which I found hard to resist. ‘Yeah’ I agreed. ‘Security. Just like you do for May, right?’
Ruby straightened. ‘I’m captain of her security team. I look out for the town, oversee supply runs. I take care of the place.’
‘Well, I take care of the Quinns’ I told Ruby, realising that it was somewhat true. ‘And Alice wants me to come with her to see Olly. You can clear me on that, can’t you?’ I asked Ruby.
Ruby still seemed to find the whole thing a joke but she said, ‘Walk this way.’
Twenty-Six
Alice
I can’t fully explain why I wanted Rachel with me. I had accepted that last night had been an aberration. And in the current situation, what had happened last night had been somewhat downshifted in terms of priorities. So I wasn’t trying to keep her by my side for anything beyond the reassurance her presence still held for me.
I guess she’d become something of a comfort blanket to me over the length of the trip and despite having exchanged barely a word all day, I still found myself wanting her next to me as I charged onto the next step of the journey. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I found myself in need of her strength. Rachel’s stoic presence seemed bolstering.
Because I was going to see my brother for the first time in months and I was scared. What scared me was telling my brother that his little sister was going to attempt to save his life. How on earth would that be any kind of relief to him? Olly had ten years on me and that meant that when he hit puberty, I was still a child with food stains down my front, barely able to keep upright. And that little kid now had charge of Olly’s life.
Ruby escorted us down to the other end of the village and we passed numerous landmarks. We went around a picturesque pond, past a stone clad pub by the name of ‘The Bulls Head’ and beyond what a sign assured us had been a prize-winning set of blooming gardens in the front of people’s houses, still maintained and flourishing. Eyes peeped at us from every corner on our walk, it seemed. The people of Gable knew we were here and they didn’t like it.
Eventually, we reached a small stone cottage, more like a stable, where Ruby said, ‘That’s your digs tonight. Wife and son, you two stay here’ she said to Jude and Emma. Jude went straight in but Emma gave Ruby a tight look. ‘I still don’t understand why I can’t see my husband.’
‘Them’s the rules’ Ruby told her.
‘Whose rules?’
‘Our rules’ Ruby replied, a dash of threat in her tone. ‘We do things the way we do things and if you don’t like it, well, don’t come here trying to murder our citizens.’
This was getting us nowhere so I stepped between Emma and Ruby, pulling her round to speak quietly. ‘Emma. Do you have anything you want me to pass on?’
Emma looked at me and bit her lip. Something in her eyes, a wall, fell away. ‘Yes… I… Tell him I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry? For what?’
‘You’re right’ she admitted quietly, trying not to be heard by Jude, inside the house. ‘I wasn’t honest. We… We had a row. That’s why he rushed off like that. Because I told him… I told him that before the flu, I was going to divorce him.’
My mouth fell open. ‘Is that true?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I hadn’t decided’ she said, throwing her hands up. ‘And then there was a lot less choices left and I felt resentful of Olly, like the world had bound me to him.’ She shook her head. ‘But all I’ve wanted these last months was for him to walk through the door and kiss me.’ Emma looked me in the eye. ‘I’ve been an idiot.’
I felt a flash of anger. I knew she hadn’t told me the whole story. But we’d come so far together. It didn’t seem the moment to rake her over the coals. ‘Why didn’t you just tell us the truth?’ I asked gently.
‘I was embarrassed. As soon as Olly was gone, I knew he wasn’t the problem. It was me. And I pushed away the person that everyone preferred’ she said with a sad smile.
I looked away.
She nodded, her fear confirmed by me. ‘You don’t know how it feels not to be enough for your family, to know you’re letting them down every day.’
‘As a matter of fact, I do. I’ve been trying to keep us together too, feeling like I never get it right’ I told her with a deep sigh. We stood there a moment in thick silence, finally having something in common. Failure. ‘This is why you’ve been dragging your feet?’
‘I thought… I thought he’d left us because he hated me and if we found him, he wouldn’t want to see me. And now we’re here and they’ll probably…’ she looked like she might cry for a moment. But she pushed it down and looked me in the eye. ‘You can help him.
I blinked and began to splutter. ‘I, maybe, I don’t really know-’
‘Yes, you can’ she said determinedly. ‘I’ve been hard on you and now I need to ask you for this and I know that isn’t fair but that’s how it goes. You can help him. Because people listen to you. That’s what always drove me crazy about you, that Jude listened to you more than me. But none of that matters now. You have to fix this. For all of us’ she said, with a nod to the door, to where Jude waited.
I knew she was right. This was on me. I didn’t have time to be scared. The odds were stacked, the deck rigged, everything said I would fail. But I couldn’t. I had to get this right, even if it was impossible.
I nodded. ‘I’ll fix it.’
Emma d
id something she’d never done in all the time I’d known her. She gave me a warm smile. ‘I know.’
Ruby took us down to the ‘Prison’. It was the village post office. ‘Only place with decent security’ Ruby explained as she unlocked the door with a key on her belt and took us into the main foyer, where the shelves filled with greetings cards still stood next to small desks with pens bolted to them. At the very back of the post office, the service hatch windows were bolted shut. ‘Oi, got a meeting with your lawyer’ Ruby called to the windows and there was a shuffling noise and up popped Olly. He looked exhausted, thin, broken. His usually trim, reddish beard was wild with a new patch of grey in it. Seeing him was a shock.
‘Olly!’ I called out, racing to the window.
He looked at me and and blinked, ‘Sis?’
I turned to Ruby. ‘Unlock him.’
‘Nope. He stays in there.’
‘That space is tiny. It’s inhuman to keep a person in there!’
‘Tell it to the judge’ she said with a grin. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rachel’s lips tighten. But she said nothing and I turned back to my brother. ‘I’m gonna get you out of here’ I told him.
He sighed. ‘I don’t think so. But you don’t know how good it is to see you. Are Jude and Emma alright?’
‘They’re fine. They’re here, but they’re not allowed to see you.’
But Olly only let out a sigh of relief. ‘God. I’ve been so worried about you guys.’
‘You were worried about us?’ I asked, astonished. But that was Olly in a nutshell. On death row and all he was thinking about was how we were doing.
‘How did you find me?’ he asked.
I gestured to Rachel. ‘This is Rachel. It’s a really long story but she told us you were here and brought us to find you.’
Olly turned to Rachel. ‘I really appreciate that.’
Rachel nodded, a little embarrassed. ‘It’s fine.’
‘Look’ I said, getting to the business at hand, ‘I’m told you’re going on trial and the thing is, I kind of got them to let me be your lawyer.’ I waited to see the reaction, expecting Olly to ask what the hell I thought I was playing at. But he let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Thank god. I thought I was totally fucked.’
Honestly, he still might have been. But I wouldn’t have taken this moment from him for anything. ‘I’ll do my best, Ol. But this is serious. They told me you killed a man?’
He shook his head vehemently. ‘I swear to you, that’s not true at all. You know me. I’ve never hurt anyone.’
I believed him. The relief was immense. If my big brother said he didn’t do it, that was good enough for me.
‘Then tell me what happened’ asked.
‘I was looking for a… I went in for a gift. For Emma.’
‘Because you two had a barney?’
‘Yeah. But I shouldn’t have walked out. Not on any of you’ he said with a shamed glance at the floor. ‘But I just needed a bit of space. Me and Emma, we weren’t doing each other any good and I wanted to take a break. So I left for a little while. And before I knew it, I was all the way up here. I knew about Gable, I’d heard it was a place you could trade stuff, that it was a nice town. So I decided to come and check it out.’ He shook his head. ‘I was here for a few hours and I got into a fight with a guy, Spencer. But it was just words!’
‘Everyone saw it’ Ruby butted in.
I gave her a sharp glance and turned back to Olly.
‘What were you fighting about?’
‘He was trying to rip me off. You see, when I got in the shop, I saw that he actually had a carburettor.’ Christ, Emma had lied but somehow, she’d gotten that part right. He had been looking for his part after all. ‘I thought I could finish the van, take Emma on a trip, just the two of us’ he continued. ‘Get back to how we were. So I offered a fair trade, the last bit of money that we had. It should have been more than enough, but he said he wanted my wedding ring. I told him no, that was the one thing I wouldn’t trade and he said it was that or nothing. I said he was a con artist and it got a bit heated. But I left, went for a drink at the pub. And then I was passing later and I heard shouting and I ran in and found him sparked out with blood coming out of his head. That was all.’
‘You just happened to be passing?’ Ruby interjected.
I gave Ruby a sideways glance, irritated.
‘You gonna let her do her job?’ Rachel asked Ruby.
‘Job? This is a joke. Just plead guilty. You never know, May could have a bit of mercy for a guilty plea.’
I wondered for a moment if that was true. ‘Olly, have you considered that? Pleading guilty.’
‘No, for two reasons. The first is that I’m not, and I won’t say that I am if it’s not true’ he said defiantly. It was pure Quinn logic and I wouldn’t have known how to argue with it if I’d wanted to. ‘And the second reason…’ he trailed off. He didn’t want to say it.
‘What?’ I pushed.
‘The guy that died is May’s grandson’ Rachel told me.
I closed my eyes and groaned.
Ruby started to chuckle to herself, apparently finding this whole thing a riot.
‘Right. That’s enough’ Rachel told her and Ruby stopped laughing pretty quickly, turning to Rachel, touching the gun on her belt. ‘You gonna stop me, Short-Arse?’
‘Maybe’ she told Ruby and I felt like it wasn’t talk.
‘Rachel, it’s alright’ I told her quickly. ‘I don’t wanna have to defend you as well.’
Rachel looked at me. ‘Sorry.’ She stepped away from Ruby, who smiled smugly.
I turned back to Olly. ‘OK. So we can’t just plead guilty. We have to figure out how to prove your innocence instead.’
Twenty-Seven
Rachel
Alice spent about an hour all told, going through Olly’s story, understanding the timeline, picking through the details, trying to find anything in his story that would prove him innocent.
As the sun set, Ruby said, ‘Alright, wrap this up.’ Alice smiled at Olly and said, ‘I’ll see you in the morning’ and we left the building, escorted by Ruby. Outside, she pointed us back in the direction of our lodgings. As we walked away from her, she called out to us. ‘By the way, I’m guard tonight. So no funny shit.’ Neither of us turned around.
It had taken everything I had not to smack Ruby in the face the whole time we were in the post office. She’d been winding Alice up from the start, looking for a fight, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d like to give her one. I could get the jump if I took her by surprise, one quick pop in that mouth. I wasn’t a natural fighter, nor an experienced one, and I’d probably lose the upper hand pretty quickly after that. But if I could just knock that smug look off Ruby’s face, even for a second, it might have been worth coming out badly.
But Alice had made it clear that I’d just be causing her problems if I got into it with Ruby. So I held my tongue and kept my fist unclenched. Alice was right. I was no good to her if Ruby put me down. I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to be any use to Alice, but she’d asked me to stick close so that’s what I’d do.
I hadn’t been expecting to come to Gable and get drawn into some kind of bullshit legal battle, but Alice did seem to keep finding herself in all sorts of trouble. And I kept finding myself standing next to her. It was starting to be a habit, one that was increasingly difficult to break.
I’d gone further down this rabbit hole than I ever could have dreamed when I’d started this thing, and I felt confused, lost, not myself. I was exhausted with it. I began to imagine what it would be like to be alone again, to simply walk away from Gable and disappear from human sight for a few more years. It sounded like sheer relief, like a good night’s sleep sounds to a person who has been up for days.
But it felt another way too. It felt like…
‘Rachel?’ Alice said sharply, interrupting my thoughts of solitude.
‘Something wrong?’ I asked quickly.
&nb
sp; ‘You could say that. I don’t have any fucking clue what to do.’
I’d hoped that wasn’t the case as I’d listened to Olly’s story. That she’d heard something I hadn’t. Because what I’d heard was pretty much hopeless. But she knew it too. Olly was screwed.
‘She’s going to find him guilty, isn’t she? And then she’s probably going to have him…’ she stopped there, unable to say it.
‘She might not’ I said weakly.
But Alice wasn’t expecting comfort from me. There was none to be had. She was just letting something out.
‘And what will that do to Jude and Emma? They’re relying on me to save him. And Olly, he actually thinks I can do this. He thinks I can help him. Can you imagine?’ she said with a short, joyless laugh.
‘I’d trust you with my life’ I said without thinking.
Alice turned to me, surprised. ‘You would?’
I opened my mouth, trying to think of a way to backtrack. But it was out. ‘I suppose, I mean, in this situation… Or, I don’t know, probably not this exact…’ I decided to stop digging. But my babbling had an unintentional consequence. Alice was smiling.
‘Well… That’s something’ she said eventually, looking at me. And I felt a need well up in me. A need to do something, something to fix this whole mess, to somehow get her, Olly, Jude and Emma out of this town and get them home, safe. I wanted to do that for her, to make everything right.
But how was it possible?
I looked down the road, back to the post office. Ruby sat outside the door, on sentry duty. Just her. What was it she’d said, ‘Funny shit?’ She meant that we shouldn’t try to break him out.
So of course, that was exactly what we’d do.
‘Alice, do you want to go through with this trial? If it could be avoided?’
‘Of course not. But that’s the point. It can’t be avoided, can it?’
‘You remember the hotel? Remember how crazy it was? But how we still got out?’