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

course of action she’d take if she had to, but for now, she’d just think about it, imagine it.

A life for a life. Or four lives for Jess’.

Maybe five if the superintendent found himself on her shit list.

Gorley couldn’t meet her intense gaze, glancing around the room like some builder totting up the cost of repairs, already mentally absent from the discussion now she’d made her intention to leave clear. He’d washed his hands of her as well as her daughter.

Knight made eye contact and mouthed ‘sorry’, his cheeks reddening, then he perused the ceiling, mimicking Gorley enough that Lou was tempted to check for damp patches up there.

Codderidge gave her a tentative smile, her eyes apologising instead of her mouth, but those eyes, they didn’t show her soul enough, the shutters to who she really was were closed, and Lou wasn’t convinced the woman’s emotions were sincere.

And Bob? He gawped at the cheap grey carpet, maybe asking himself why he hadn’t gone inside the houses of the people he’d questioned after the kidnap—if he had, he could have been the hero of the hour and found who they were looking for. And as the strained seconds ticked by on the office-generic wall clock, the air tense with Lou’s suppressed feelings, he was unaware she knew all about his part in this from the gossips at the funeral. She ought to blab about it, right this minute, tell Gorley what his precious officer hadn’t done, but no, she’d wait, get her revenge someday.

She walked out, going down the corridor, back to the door to be buzzed through. She strutted into reception and leant on the front desk. “I’d like to see Superintendent Black, please. Now. Either that or I file a complaint.”

The flustered desk sergeant made a phone call then escorted her back down the corridor, past the door to Soft Interview One, which stood open, the room empty, only the three shapes of backsides on the sofa giving any clue as to who had so recently sat on it. Up some stairs, and she was shown into an office, Black sitting behind a large desk covered in paperwork, his hair the opposite of his name, all grey-white with tufty sideburns, a leftover from the seventies. She supposed he was proud of his uniform by the way he straightened the tie. He was probably all togged up ready to do a press conference about closing the case.

He stood and shook her hand, his thin fingers unsettlingly warm, bordering on sweaty. “Ah, you had a meeting with DCI Gorley et cetera, yes? Do sit down.”

Lou didn’t want to. She wiped her palm on her thigh. “I’ll stand and get straight to the point. I’m not pleased the case has been shut down.”

“Well, it hasn’t been closed exactly, just scaled right back. DCI Gorley is still on it.”

She laughed, the sound abrupt and unlike her usual, the one before Jess was taken, where every note was carefree and merry then. “What can one man do that a hundred or so couldn’t? If your whole force couldn’t find any clues, how will he?”

“I do understand your feelings, I really do, but unfortunately, when no new clues come to light, and the ones we currently have lead nowhere, we can’t possibly keep a whole force on just one case. There are budgets and—”

“So it comes down to money. The cost.”

“I’m afraid that’s a factor, yes. When I asked DCI Gorley how things were progressing and he laid it all out, the decision was made to scale it back.”

“But she hasn’t even been dead that long. It’s all so fresh.”

“To you, I imagine it will always be fresh, and I’m incredibly sorry about that, but to us… We’ve exhausted all options. I can ask DCI Gorley to question the residents again, if you like, but it will be a long process as he’ll have to do that around his usual workload. Other crime doesn’t stop because one little girl is dead.”

Oh.

Oh.

That was a terrible thing to say. So unfeeling. So blunt.

She mentally wrote his name on her shit list.

Bright-red pen.

Capital letters.

At the top, above Gorley.

“So he’ll fit it in,” she said. “Like an afterthought. I see how it is.”

Lou stalked out, anger burning through her. These coppers, they didn’t care. And despite Codderidge acting like she gave a shit, she didn’t, not really. Her behaviour had been to keep Lou from casting the net of blame over her, to absolve her of any involvement in the decision to shut the case down.

All of them would pay. Black, Gorley, Knight, Codderidge, and that bastard Holworth. She just didn’t know how.

Yet.

Chapter Ten

Cassie’s gloves had her hands sweating; maybe a pinch of fear contributed to that, too, although it was healthy fear, the kind that whispered: Don’t be complacent. Don’t think you’ll never get caught.

The allotment was on the outskirts of the estate behind the trees near where one set of her sex workers stood at night, and someone could come by, cutting through town on their way to Worksop, spot the shed burning, the smoke rising, and call the fire brigade. While that wasn’t what she wanted or needed, she’d leave it up to fate.

Gorley was dead, main objective met.

She took his notebook off the bench, lit the edge via the gas heater, and dropped it on the shed floor, searching for something to place on top. She spotted a folded deckchair leaning against the wall and chucked it onto the mini fire. The flames caught the striped material, an orange tongue poking through, the smell plasticky. Once a good blaze was going, enough that it wasn’t likely to go out, she glanced at the ex-copper and thought about his adult kids mentioned in