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

Then shut her mind off.

She walked out, closed the door, padlocked it, and joined Mam and Lou in the car.

They needed to get away before the gas cannister exploded.

She took a blonde curly wig off the passenger seat, left there once they’d arrived at the shed, jammed it on, and checked Mam and Lou in the back. They also had wigs on, disguised perfectly again for the journey. If they had been seen on the way here, their fake descriptions were so far removed from their usual that the police would be looking for illusions. She drove off, the air tense, adrenaline barking at her blood, and scanned the road behind and ahead for anyone who’d spot them.

No other vehicles on the quiet lane. She was going to enter the town from the far side of New Barrington, where the scrappy bloke conducted his sometimes-illegal business. She’d have to get this stolen vehicle torched then wrecked. Blood had splashed on her and Lou, and it was on Lou’s boot where she’d kicked Gorley’s cheek.

Barney Lipton had been sent away, a grand in his pocket instead of a flea in his ear, his silence guaranteed; he’d been one of Dad’s many listeners back in the day, a spy in The Donny. The RESIDENTS ledger said Barney had been used to watch Gorley on the allotment once the old DCI had retired. Lenny still hadn’t trusted the ex-copper then, even though it appeared the man had done as her dad wanted.

Cassie had made the decision not to mince Gorley, not to keep the detectives’ deaths quiet. During the early hours (possibly an hour of madness, depending on how this turned out), she’d decided the coppers getting killed was a proper good message, that even officers of the law weren’t safe—not that she’d be admitting she’d had owt to do with it, but people might suspect.

If they got to Simon Knight and Lisa Codderidge this evening at their usual liaison spot, where they had sex then went home to their spouses, the officers looking into Gorley’s shed fire would rush to the other crime scene. They’d be occupied, caught up in officers killed in the line of affair, not duty, while Cassie, Mam, and Lou scoffed cake from The Shoppe Pudding, something Cassie needed to pick up later.

At the breaker’s yard, she parked where the scrappy waved her to, a spot with space around it, and everyone got out, keeping their wigs on. He came over, smiling, blow torch in hand, and opened the passenger door. A quick blast, and the seat caught fire.

“Crush it afterwards,” Cassie told him and walked off, Mam and Lou in tow.

Earlier, she’d hidden her car behind a large metal storage container, no questions asked, as always. They’d gone inside and put their disguises on, then she’d driven them to the allotment. Now, they all needed to put carrier bags over their shoes, especially Lou’s boot, then they got in her car.

Cassie drove away, going over everything they’d done so far, her mental checklist, ending on CCTV. It wasn’t a worry, and neither was the route she’d taken to the allotment. No one had been around, not even dog walkers or other drivers. Lenny was watching out for them above, paving the criminal way.

“I like your weapon.” Cassie glanced at Lou in the rearview.

“It has meaning.” Lou smiled her creepy smile and stared out of the window. She looked spookier than usual with that wig on, a short purple thing Mam had dug out of a locked chest in her wardrobe, one of many hair pieces nestled inside with sunglasses, sets of contact lenses, and leather gloves.

Had she used them when she’d worked the estate with Dad, pre-Cassie? Funny how Cassie had gone down the same route, buying her blonde wig to hide who she was for when she dropped Doreen Prince’s money off on the weekly, although the subterfuge there could stop now as Doreen working for her was out in the open since she now wrote The Life.

I’m more like my mother than I realised.

Cassie headed for the farm, snatching her wig off and tossing it on the passenger seat. She hadn’t left them in the stolen car to be burnt because totally trusting the scrappy wasn’t something she was prepared to do. “Like I said briefly earlier, I want the police to know they’ve been targeted.”

“Why the change of heart?” Mam asked beside Lou.

Cassie shrugged. “Because if they’re busy with Gorley, Knight, and Codderidge, they won’t be interested in the squat. Get your wigs off. We don’t want anyone seeing us and associating them with my car.”

“Oh, I didn’t get a chance to tell you. That won’t be a problem, the police.” Mam took off her black curly wig, then nudged Lou to do the same with hers. “I received a phone call after I’d sent Barney on his way. The police car being close to the squat isn’t an issue. The officer in question will make out he knocked on the door, getting no answer. On the back of my suggestion, and considering the cleaners covered the area with snow where the car was torched, our inside man is going down the route that Bob switched off the tracker at that location somehow, disposed of the vehicle, and started a new life elsewhere.”

Cassie was well aware Mam wasn’t mentioning the police contact’s name. Didn’t she fully trust Lou?

“But with Gorley being torched, and the other two being killed tonight, the pigs may well realise the cases are connected.” Lou sniffed. “Not that I care about your decision to leave that load of scum where they died, but I do think it would have been better if Marlene was involved.”

Has she lost some of her bravado? Is she realising we might get caught and she could go down for