I remember! Alex cried again. Jess couldn’t imagine now how she’d ever mistaken that voice for a little boy’s. It was a woman’s voice, with the burr of maturity behind the lightness of it.
Jess saw the outline of the truth, its angular, uncompromising shape, and it was so unlike what she’d expected that she was dazzled by it. She might have seen it before but she’d only ever known Earnshaw as a monster, a wrecking ball. She’d all but forgotten the story Shannon McBride had told her. The story of Naseem Suresh, of Liz’s fierce love for her and how her death had broken Liz along some pre-existing fault-line, turning her into what she was now.
An incredulous laugh welled up from Jess’s diaphragm, but it stopped halfway. Her crimped throat blocked all traffic.
It’s not funny, Jess!
But it was, a little bit. Jess had been wrong on every count. Ridiculously wrong. She’d seen a ghost without a shape, without a memory, and stamped it with the seal of her own guilt. And then when its real identity was right in front of her face, she’d read it backwards. She’d been so sure that Earnshaw was the nasty girl, the one who’d hurt Alex. But she was Alex’s friend. Naseem Suresh’s friend, rather. The nasty girl was…
Someone else.
The grip on Jess’s throat slackened. Her lungs had been dragging at nothing for most of a minute, and they were still at full stretch. Given something to work with, they managed to suck down a slender, burning filament of air.
Lizzie was my love. My big mummy bear. Nobody dared to touch me when she was there.
So obviously the nasty girl must have waited. Until Naseem was on her own.
Jess fell down on to her hands and knees, and into the here and now. She blinked tears out of her eyes, sipped air through her bruised and swollen throat. Earnshaw had dropped her, was turning away from her to face Grace again.
“Tell me what happened!” she said, desperation in her voice. “Grace, tell me. Naz is here, and she’s listening. What did you do?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grace said. “Lizzie, finish that bitch off. Go on. Don’t make me do it myself.”
She didn’t wait. She arranged it. She made it happen. And she got you out of the way so you couldn’t help me!
“Who did?” Earnshaw bellowed. “How?”
Jess looked up groggily to see Earnshaw and Grace face to face, one on either side of her, like two dogs fighting for the same bone. But she wasn’t the bone: Alex was. Naseem was. Earnshaw was worrying at the truth, and Grace was trying to snatch it back from her.
I’ll show you, said Alex. Said Naseem.
Grace’s cell blurred and went away again. Moulson fought against the vision this time, conscious of the danger she was in, but there was no defence against the ghost’s vivid dreaming. Threads of colour knitted themselves into shapes. Shapes coalesced and acquired volume.
This time she was in the ballroom. Liz Earnshaw was up on her feet, a fallen chair next to her that she’d just jumped up from. Dennis Devlin was poking her repeatedly in the chest, yelling into her face, which was reddening with rage. “You know how to address a warder. Try again. Try again!” Naseem Suresh, dressed now like Liz and all the other women there in a yellow and black Goodall tracksuit, was holding on to Earnshaw’s arm and stopping her from throwing a punch. It made no difference. Half a dozen guards descended upon Earnshaw and dragged her away screaming.
The vision blurred and broke apart, leaving Jess sliding on a slippery scree of afterimages.
“Devlin,” Earnshaw muttered, sounding lost and amazed. “The Devil.”
“Present,” Devlin said thickly.
He closed the door behind him and advanced on Jess. He wore a bib of blood. The lower half of his face was a swollen mess.
Jess was watching his clenched fists, so she didn’t see the kick coming.
94
Up in the solitary cells, Devlin had had a plan. Don’t make a pattern, don’t leave any presents for the forensics team, use the tools that are lying around. That had blown up in his face in every sense of the word. He was all done with plans now. Liz Earnshaw was standing in front of him stark naked and whimpering, so this was clearly the ending of days and a man had to respond accordingly. The first thing he did was to kick Moulson in the stomach, putting her down hard.
Then he went on kicking her with his steel-capped boots until, in his opinion, she was unlikely to have any more fight in her. It went some way towards relieving his feelings.
When Moulson wasn’t moving even to try to defend herself, he hauled her up off the floor and threw her down unceremoniously on to Grace’s bunk. Here he did revert to the plan, because this part of the plan was fine. He grabbed the pillow and pushed it down over Moulson’s face.
Fight him, Jess! Don’t let him!
Who the fuck was that screaming in his ear? It threw him off for a second. The voice was so loud and so close that he turned to swat away a hysterical woman who turned out not to be there.
Moulson was starting to revive a little. Her fingers clawed at the backs of Devlin’s hands. Shit! That meant his blood and tissue would be under her fingernails. More work with the disinfectant.
Moulson was trying to squirm free. The Devil shifted his weight and bore down on her, teeth clenched with effort. As her movements got weaker and weaker, he thought, Where in the name of Christ did I leave the disinfectant?
Right then, as though to admonish him for losing concentration, something exploded against his skull like a depth charge against the hull of a battleship. Suddenly he was on the ground, without any idea how he’d got there. A large mass moved above him, a towering shadow in the stark illumination of the cell’s strip light. Liz Earnshaw. Grace tackled her from the side, but Liz hurled Grace away with a convulsive one-armed shrug.
Reflexively, Devlin threw up his hands.
Earnshaw brought her arm around in a horizontal sweep, like a reaper, hitting him on the elbow of his raised right arm. He screamed in shock and agony. Her weapon was his own nightstick, which she must have swiped from his belt while he was wrestling with Moulson. She rained blows down on him, putting all her beef and all her hate into the task.
Devlin kicked at her legs but didn’t connect. Another blow from the nightstick caught him on the base of the spine, and for the first time he was actually afraid. The mad bitch was capable of crippling him, or even killing him.
He rolled under the bunk. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. Earnshaw gripped his ankle and dragged him back out into the light. He launched another kick and she let go – but only to start again with the nightstick.
Devlin was trying to get to his pepper spray, but another well-aimed smack from the sidewinder broke his wrist. After that, he just lay there. His best chance of surviving this was to pretend he was already dead.
95
Grace had a very pragmatic mind. She also had a shank which she kept to hand as a weapon of last resort.
It was taped to the inside edge of one of the legs of her bunk, and it had a cardboard sheath from which it would come free at a single tug. She had always felt ambivalent about having a weapon in her cell. If it turned up in a search, it was a mandatory two years on sentence. On the other hand, she had ways of forestalling searches, and she hated the thought of being defenceless if anyone of hostile intent came calling, or if, say, one of her own bodyguards switched her loyalties.
So there it was.
Grace tugged the serviceable little blade out of the cardboard.
And cut Moulson’s throat.
96
And then there were two.
Or three, but Dennis Devlin was playing dead.
Or four, but Jess Moulson was as close to being dead as made no difference. Her hands clutched to her throat. Thinking, Why can’t I breathe? Then, Oh.
Right.
And if the dead were included, then Naseem Suresh brought the total up to five.