The Piggy Farmer (The Barrington Patch Book 3), Emmy Ellis [electric book reader txt] 📗

later? What had happened in Lou’s brain for her to snap like this? Or had she always planned to do it and had bided her time, waiting for courage to lend her a hand?

Lou’s face was shrouded by darkness, meaning Cassie didn’t have to see her eerie face, thank God.

“I’ve been thinking about it for years, and now I’m ready. Like I told you, your mam’s in on it. She understands I can’t sit back and do nowt.”

“Why didn’t you do it sooner?”

“Because it only came to light recently that Lenny fucked up, that’s why. The Mechanic didn’t kill my girl, Vance Johnson did. I convinced myself back then that so long as one of the kidnappers was dead, some form of justice had been served. Now, knowing both people hadn’t been caught? Those coppers were just as clueless as your old man. God rest his soul and everything, but fucking hell.”

Cassie couldn’t argue there. Dad had well messed up. It was hard for her to cope with his pedestal crumbling. At first, she’d been embarrassed at his mistake, wanted to cover it up, but soon after, anger had taken over. He wasn’t the man she’d thought, and she felt lied to. Duped.

She sighed. “But the pigs still fucked up back then, and you knew it, Lou.”

“The Vance business brought it all back. It was like the scab had been picked off.”

You’ve picked it enough yourself for twenty-odd years. You never let the wound heal. “So what do you plan to do, go round running them all over?” Cassie imagined the shite left on the road, evidence Lou had mown down a copper—the one who’d kept his mouth shut and turned a blind eye on the Barrington. The man who Cassie needed on her side. Now she’d have to feel out whoever replaced Bob on the community beat and see if they’d take a wedge of money each week to look the other way.

Things were getting more difficult by the day. Why did Dad have to go and die? While she’d allowed her inner monster to rule since the six months before he’d passed on, hiding her true self, could she continue to do that now the police were the targets? It was a strange quandary. She broke the law, but pissing about with coppers like this seemed wrong—more wrong than the other stuff she did.

‘Business always comes first, Cass. You deal with shit and worry about it afterwards.’

Dad’s voice didn’t bring her comfort like it usually did. She was out of her depth here. Pigs would be swarming the area when Bob didn’t check in, trying to find their colleague. They didn’t warm to one of their own being killed in the line of duty. They’d pull out all the stops, and that would most likely piss Lou off an’ all. Cassie could imagine it now: Oh, they’re out there looking for a cop killer, but they let my Jess’ murderer wander round the country offing other kiddies. If they’d found him before he’d legged it, those children would still be alive.

Plus, there was limited time to get the road cleared up. While it was winter, the mornings dark, someone would be out on their way to work soon.

“Where did you run him over?” Cassie hugged herself—not only because it was bloody cold, but for comfort. Did Mam know the method of death Lou had chosen? Had she agreed it was a good idea? Was there some of Bob’s brains and blood in the tyre treads, transferring onto the driveway?

Lou sniffed. It was odd seeing her without her usual tartan blanket wrapped around her shoulders, a thick jacket in its place. “It wasn’t a road. It was the parking area behind the meat factory.”

Cassie’s skin seemed to freeze, and anger boiled, soon warming her up, her face flaming. “What? The factory? For fuck’s sake.” She paced, in part to get away from Lou before she walloped her one, and also to think. Her mind raced. This was a right old dog’s dinner. She returned to Lou, her fists balled. “One, he could have radioed in that he was going there, and two, why the hell was he poking around up that way? Did he see you? Like, did you follow right up his arse so he could have also radioed it in that you were there? He’d have seen your number plate.”

A loud snort came from Lou’s direction, spooky in the blackness, the hedge separating Mam’s from next door a clumpy backdrop. “When he took the road to the factory, I carried on, did a U-turn, drove round the back, then ploughed into the fucker as he walked towards me.”

And you have no guilt whatsoever by the sound of it.

It played out inside Cassie’s head. Bob was an okay fella. As old as Lou, early retirement only a few years away. What bad luck to be killed when he’d almost finished his stint. “We’re going to have to go there and clean up. I can’t have any workers seeing blood and whatever in the snow. I assume his brains are on the ground.”

“I picked up the big lumps and put them in a carrier bag. Joe’s pigs will enjoy them.”

Cassie closed her eyes at the image that presented. Lou getting enjoyment from holding someone’s brain. Cassie opened them again and stared at the shadowed bushes to her right that split Mam’s property from the public pavement, lowering her voice. “How the hell did you manage to get him into the boot?”

Lou was a wisp of a woman, barely eating since Jess had died, and although she worked on her husband’s farm and must have decent muscles, she wasn’t exactly weightlifter of the sodding year, was she.

“I got by fine, thanks very much. Anger lends a hand when you’re so steaming with it you could explode.”

Lou came