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

off as demented, her voice holding a breathy quality, as if she’d lost the strength to speak properly, and Cassie supposed she would be crackers, given the circumstances, the road she’d travelled up until this point. To lose a child… Cassie couldn’t imagine the pain the woman had been through, and she never would. Having kids wasn’t on her agenda anymore, not now she did such a dangerous job. She wasn’t like Mam, who’d given it all up for her kid, and despite Cassie being sickened sometimes as her old self, her new self, her inner monster, enjoyed what she did.

She slapped her thigh. “Right, we need to get Mam up. She can sort the copper with Marlene.” Christ, a police officer going into the adapted mincer at the factory wasn’t something Cassie had ever thought would happen. “We’ll clean up the—” She paused, dread seeping into her. “Christ, Lou. His car!”

Lou laughed quietly, and the tinkle of it had the hairs on the back of Cassie’s neck standing up.

“Already dealt with that.”

“What?”

“I phoned your mam for help. She turned up at the factory and drove it way past the squat, about a mile farther on, and set it on fire. I followed, then took her back to pick hers up. We came here. I was about to go home but knocked on the door again—I couldn’t risk Joe waking up and catching me putting the copper in one of the pig pens, so I wanted your mam to help me get rid of Bob. There’s his uniform that needs burning… Then you came along.”

That was something, the car being torched, and at least it was in the dark, out in the sticks, so it was unlikely anyone would see it unless they drove past or an insomniac looked out of a window and spotted the flames in the distance. But a mile away from the squat? That was far too close. Cassie had Jason pinned to the floor in there by an eight-inch nail through his shin, and Jimmy, her new grass, was babysitting him. She couldn’t afford for the police to roll up at the abandoned house, asking questions once they’d discovered the blackened police car shell.

But would they even bother knocking? As far as they’re aware, it’s empty.

“Give me a second to think,” she said. “Go and wake Mam—I’m assuming she went straight to bed, what with the house lights being off.”

Cassie fired off a WhatsApp message to Jimmy: Make sure the blackout blind in the living room is attached to the wall—there’s Velcro on them. I forgot to tell you to do that when I was there. We can’t let any light out. Shit’s gone down. Don’t open the door unless I get hold of you first. Did my fella come by with the telly and everything?

Lou stood at the front door, and Cassie paced the driveway, then moved to the end of it and checked the street. No lights on anywhere apart from a porch down the way a bit.

Her phone bleeped, and she stood by Lou’s car to read it.

Jimmy: I already did the blind. Okay about opening the door. Yes to the telly and stuff. Your guest has passed out.

Cassie: Good. We don’t need him waking up and creating noise. If he does, punch him until he blacks out again.

Jimmy: Right.

Cassie wasn’t sure Jimmy was up to that, but if he wanted to earn big money and be part of her close team, he’d have to learn, wouldn’t he.

This was beyond a dog’s dinner. She couldn’t think properly. On the one hand, her mind was fudged from lack of sleep, from the shock of seeing Bob, and on the other, she needed to work out the best course of action here.

Before the sun reared its big ball of a head.

The police car—would it still be burning? If it wasn’t, was it too hot for her clean-up crew to move? Ideally, to stop the police sniffing around, she needed to get rid of it. She had a scrappy on her books who disposed of vehicles, crunching them up into compacted squares, so that wasn’t a problem. He was used to being woken up in the middle of the night with a delivery, asking no questions.

She had to act on this now so sent a message to her crew. The light in the hallway snapping on and Mam coming out of the house, fully dressed, meant she’d gone in the kitchen at the back and closed the door, hence the previous darkness. She’d probably been sitting at the island with a whiskey, steadying her nerves not only after shooting Zhang Wei and their disposal of two bodies, but also setting fire to a fucking police car. While Cassie had been torturing Jason, Mam had been doing her own kind of illegal deed.

Cassie walked to the door and gestured for Mam and Lou to go inside. Her phone bleeped again, and while the older women went down the hallway, Cassie checked her screen.

Crew One: On our way.

Cassie: Be quick. Be careful.

Crew One: We always are.

She locked up and joined Mam and Lou in the kitchen. Lou sat at the island, spine straight, a creepy smile in place. Mam had coffee on the go. Cassie sat opposite Lou, able to take her in properly now the light was on. The farmer’s wife had a mental-case gleam in her eyes, and she twitched, most likely manic with the excitement of what she’d done, what was happening now. Cassie understood that feeling well—hadn’t she got some perverse pleasure from hurting people? Especially Jason, the little bastard, trying to take the Barrington off her. Cutting Karen’s stomach up had given Cassie a massive rush, too, another turncoat who’d planned to rule the patch.

Dad had warned her this might happen, but two people doing it? Were