Lady Bag

by Liza Cody

  Smister, poor little Smister, was out on public display. I’d tried so hard to keep her private. But the Commander of Catastrophe keeps his army of eight-legged probes to attack the last corners of private life. Those long, jointed palps reach in through your mouth to suck information out of you and stick it on their web of lies. It doesn’t matter if the information is wrong—like my name, or what Jerry-cop said about Smister—what matters is that it lives forever. It exists like supermarket plastic bags floating, indestructible, in the ocean.

  It won’t matter how horribly Smister mutilates his body to be a girl, somewhere on the steel spider’s web lurks the information that he is a boy. Unless he’s very careful and restrains all his natural urges, that bit of byte will persist, waiting to bite him on the arse.

  ‘Take her away,’ Sprague shouted to WPC Linda. ‘She’s a raving lunatic. Take her away and section her. I can’t deal with it anymore.’

  Chapter 41

  Toxic Hope

  They charged me with Assaulting a Police Officer and sent me to HMP Holloway on remand.

  That first night I dreamed that Electra and I were in a supermarket. We could take anything we wanted. I loaded goodies into my backpack but it weighed a ton and hard objects, like tins and boxes, dug into my back. I was exhausted, but Smister and Pierre were waiting for us in the car park. Smister opened the boot of a car so that I could put the backpack in. To my horror I found that the heavy, painful bag was empty. All our goods had fallen out. I had to retrace my steps alone until I found myself in a grubby white interview room in front of a supermarket manager, dressed like a cop, who was laughing his nasty head off. It was all a cruel joke. ‘That’s life,’ he said, just as I woke up.

  At the medical screening I was diagnosed with alcoholism, depression, paranoia, three cracked ribs, two cracked metatarsals and a severe chest infection.

  Well, no shit! Wouldn’t you be depressed, paranoid and in need of a drink if you’d been through what I’d been through?

  There were warders and Prisoner Advice people but I didn’t want to talk to anyone. This was not my life so I didn’t want anyone advising me on how to live with it. Besides, I’d been there before. I knew how to remove myself from my own body.

  On the fourth day Kaylee Yost came to see me. She said I could have visitors because I was only on remand. But no dogs. She said Pierre and Smister had sent a parcel of clean clothes which she’d left at reception.

  I was torn. I wanted Smister to see the inside of a prison for his education; so that he’d take more care. But I didn’t want him to see me there. Plus it was too dangerous because the cops still wanted to talk to him.

  All I needed from Kaylee was to know how long I’d have to wait. I hadn’t been to court yet because everyone thought I was unfit to plead. She said I’d been given twenty-one days to detox and then they’d review my case. She said Holloway ran a good detox unit and I should make the most of the opportunity.

  I knew. But they’d turned me into an anti-depressant dependant last time. Well, not Holloway, but the prison system—I couldn’t remember where exactly cos they move you around. And they take heroin addicts and turn them into methadone addicts.

  Kaylee said I was seeing the negative side and that I should be more aware of the best in people and circumstances. If I did that, she said, I’d feel all the benefits of a positive mental attitude.

  ‘Like hope?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s the s-spirit,’ she said.

  She understands nothing. You’d think, being a junior in a law firm and being dumped with all the Legal Aid cases, that she’d have learned something about who benefits from the system and why. Then she’d understand how toxic hope is to the likes of me.

  ‘Would you like to meet with your AA sponsor?’ she asked.

  I looked at her very carefully but she didn’t seem to be kidding.

  ‘I can arrange a visiting order for him,’ she went on.

  ‘Can you find out about Too-Tall Tina for me?’

  ‘What’s her real name?’ She clicked her biro in a competent legal way.

  Smister would ask why I cared about TT when it was obvious she didn’t care for me. Of course he didn’t know I’d made a pact with the Devil—Tina’s life for Electra’s. Electra was alive so TT must be dead and I must be responsible for her death. So if I end up locked away for all time or sectioned to a secure wing at least I’ll know I deserve it. And that might be some comfort.

  But I can’t forgive myself for being so naïve. There was a fire and Electra stopped breathing. I asked for her life. But I didn’t ask for her life with me, did I? So the Devil laughed and said, ‘Okay, wish granted.’

  I was so grateful. I remember it clearly. He lulled me and duped me. Then he said, ‘Ha-ha, but I forgot to mention, Electra has to live with Smister and you have to live in the chokey. You’ll never see each other again. But don’t complain—I did what you asked.’ The Shah of Shattered Dreams is considered a wit in his circle of Hell.

  My circle of hell was filled with young women; some of them still teenagers, barely out of school. Sheer incompetence had brought them to Holloway—theirs, their parents’, their teachers’, the care homes’. How does a girl become an addict with a personality disorder by the age of thirteen, and be unable to read and write unless many, many people older than her let her down? Its one thing for someone like me to find solace at the bottom of the heap—I came here almost by choice—but the bottom of the heap is where these kids started. No one gave them a choice.

  For the first few days I could smell anger and distress the same way I could hear shouts and screams in the night. I’d lie on my bed and imagine Electra and me in the West End, sitting on the steps at Trafalgar Square watching people have fun in the fountains, shrieking their pleasure, and wonder if I’d ever hear screams like that again. I’d think, this is where I live now, in Satan’s palace of iron and ice, among his handmaidens. It’s my duty to watch him thrust the icicles of want and need under their fingernails and hear them scream for love and comfort.

  I took my pills every day and waited for the misty grey gauze to settle in front of my eyes and cut me off from pleasure, pain and life. The pills don’t fill the hole in the middle of your chest. It’s still there, vaster than ever, but I don’t seem to care.

  I was waiting for the time when the taste of good red wine left my mouth, when the feel of Electra’s soft ears left my fingertips, when the smell of Smister’s girly boy hair disappeared from my nose. Then, when I heard the screams in the night, I’d pull the blanket up to my ears and go back to sleep. I’d be cured of hope.

  A week later Kaylee Yost came back. She said, ‘You’re looking b-better. You’re not l-limping so badly. How’re they treating you?’

  ‘How’s Electra?’ I asked because I wasn’t cured of hope yet.

  ‘Your friends are fine, and your dog’s b-being well looked after, but she’s missing you.’

  ‘You’ve seen her?’

  ‘Well, yes… ’

  ‘How’s her arthritis? Is her nose cool? And her ears? Are they remembering to put her coat on in the rain? She likes canned tuna but she mustn’t have it cos it runs straight through her.’

  ‘Er… she seemed p-perfectly healthy to me. I’ll remind Pierre about the coat and the tuna.’

  I should’ve just thanked her because going to see Electra was more than most lawyers would do for a client like me.

  Kaylee said, ‘I’ve brought good news.’

  ‘Good booze?’ I said, because my heart was still full of Electra.

  ‘N-no. Chantelle Cain has confessed to Natalie’s murder.’

  ‘No,’ I said, horrified.

  ‘Yes.’ Kaylee’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

  ‘You’re joking. That can’t be right.’

  ‘I-I thought you’d be relieved. If you had any lingering fears that t
he police might still try to i-implicate you.’

  ‘But she didn’t do it.’

  ‘W-what d’you mean?’

  ‘He did.’ How could she be so blind?

  ‘Graham Attwood? But why w-would Mr Attwood kill Natalie? He loved her. He was going to marry her. That’s why Chantelle killed her. It was a classic case of murderous jealousy.’

  ‘No, no,’ I shouted. ‘That’s what he would make her say. But it isn’t true.’

  ‘Well, that’s what the police believe. They say she’s pleading temporary insanity. Graham Attwood knew nothing about it whatsoever.’

  ‘How can they possibly believe that?’ I cried. ‘If she did it, it was his idea. He drove her to it. He benefited from it.’

  ‘But you were right about the murder weapon,’ Kaylee said, sounding discouraged. ‘It was the stone lion you noticed outside Natalie’s house. The police think Chantelle put it under Mr Attwood’s sink to implicate him.’

  ‘You’re wrong. It’s the other way round. He kept it there so that he’d always have something to blackmail her with.’

  ‘But what would be the p-point?’

  ‘Maybe he wanted to dump Chantelle but keep her car. Maybe she’s got a cute little riverside house and he’s tired of living in Acton. I don’t know. But the corporeal manifestation of the Devil has material ambitions. He’ll end up grabbing everything. You wait and see.’

  Suddenly I couldn’t care less what everyone else thought or why. They were wrong. They were being controlled by forces they didn’t understand. Maybe one day someone would wake up to what advantage Gram took from Natalie’s death and Chantelle’s confession. But by the time that happened Chantelle would be old, and bitterness would have ripped at her hair and skin. Her fine tanned ankles would be puffy, veiny and white.

  ‘I think you’re quite wrong,’ Kaylee said. ‘But I didn’t mean to upset you. I wanted to cheer you up before telling you the bad news. Your friend, er, T-too-Tall Tina Smith… ’

  ‘I know,’ I said dully, ‘she’s dead.’

  ‘Not exactly. She was very, very sick in St George’s for a while, but she was beginning to recover, and then she set fire to her hospital bed. Now she’s pretty badly burned. Even if she get’s better she’ll end up in a secure hospital somewhere. Arson seems to be h-habitual.’

  It sounded like a death to me. The Devil has many interesting interpretations of the word and they don’t all include a box and a hole in the ground.

  ‘When can I see a judge?’ I asked.

  ‘When your twenty-one days are up they’ll reassess your medical condition and then I’ll see what I c-can do. Do you want my advice?’

  ‘Not really. Also, I didn’t assault a police officer. I’m innocent.’

  ‘It’s n-not what you’ve done,’ she said. ‘It’s who you are. Weirdly, I quite admire your independence. You’ve wangled a lot of advantages from being someone no one wants. The police couldn’t get rid of you fast enough; the social services can’t handle you so they leave you alone. I think, in your own way, you’ve benefited from that. I don’t know how c-crazy you really are but prison is different. When a prison gets fed up with you they don’t let you go. They just move you to another prison—ad infinitum. In prison the system always wins. Always.’

  Kaylee Yost was not a total div. She was shy but she wasn’t stupid. And nor am I—I knew she was right.

  So here I am, in chokey, pretending to be sane in order to claim the privileges of the mad. I’m enduring imprisonment so that I can walk away free with Electra. I’m lonely so that I can protect my friends. I’m obedient so that I can indulge my habit of sticking two fingers up to authority. And I’m teetotal because there isn’t any booze.

  Who knows what will happen next?

  I no longer dream about Trafalgar Square; I dream about what I’ll say to Chantelle Cain when we meet. Because word on the wing says she’ll be remanded to Holloway, and if that happens maybe we’ll meet at Association. Will she ever smell of Rive Gauche and truffle oil again?

  I play games with myself. In them Electra says, ‘You will have three and a half minutes with Chantelle—you can ask her only one question. What will it be?’ Electra looks dignified and fair, like a good judge.

  What would I ask? Was it Chantelle or Natalie who I saw with Gram Satan Attwood that day, long ago, outside the National Portrait Gallery? Or, whose idea was it to kill Natalie? Or, was she the one who left the mews house the morning Natalie died, and if so, who picked her up in the sexy little red car?

  ‘No,’ Electra says, ‘that’s a bunch of questions. You aren’t Old Fanny—you can’t ask multiple questions and pretend it’s only one.’

  ‘Okay then,’ I say. ‘I’ll just ask her this—how did Gram persuade you to take the rap for him?’

  Because I know he did. He did it to me.

  I remember how his tears scorched my naked shoulder. I thought he was so young and that he should remain free. If he were to be locked up, I thought, he’d never have a chance to blossom and grow. He would be corrupted in prison I thought. And he promised to love me forever if I took all the blame. What a sick, sick joke. Listen to me laugh.

  I don’t care what the cops or Kaylee think. Gram is the Devil, and who knows what game he has in mind next? He got away with murder this time and another poor woman is paying the price.

  But however hard he tried he didn’t succeed in framing me. Maybe my luck is turning. I’ll be ready for him next time. Ready in tooth and claw. His deeds shall not go unrecorded. I will be watching. If they ever let me out of here.

  About the Author

  LIZA CODY is the award-winning author of many novels and short stories. Her Anna Lee series introduced the professional female private detective to British mystery fiction. It was adapted for television and broadcast in the UK and US. Cody’s ground-breaking Bucket Nut Trilogy featured professional wrestler, Eva Wylie. Other novels include Rift, Gimme More, Ballad of a Dead Nobody (2011), and Miss Terry (2012). Her novels have been widely translated.

  Cody’s short stories have been published in many magazines and anthologies. A collection of her first seventeen appeared in the widely praised Lucky Dip and other stories.

  Liza Cody was born in London and most of her work is set there. Her career before she began writing was mostly in the visual arts. Currently she lives in Bath. Her informative website can be found at www.LizaCody.com and you can follow LizaCody on twitter.