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

“What if he starts to smell and people complain to the council?”

Lou went to chew on a thumbnail but stopped because of the blood on her skin. “We’ll wrap bin bags around him. Cut the bottoms off and down the sides so they’re long bits of plastic.”

Doreen shifted her gaze to the gun. “We’ll need to get rid of that, too. And the knife.”

Lou got up on her knees and pushed herself to her feet. Doreen stared at the blister on her friend’s heel. It had bled and appeared sore, but it was the least of their worries.

Lou stooped over the gun. “It looks like a toy. Plastic.”

“Oh my God, what?”

Lou picked it up. “It is one.” She stared at Doreen, her eyes filling again. “I can’t believe this is happening. What if it gets out, what we did? What if someone sees us putting him in the well?”

“They won’t. It’s late. And no one will bloody know. I won’t be saying owt. Will you?”

“God, no.”

A surge of cover-this-shit-up gripped Doreen. “There you go then. Come on, we need to get this sorted.”

It took ages to wrap Stalker, the blood creating a slippery environment, and at one point, with a layer on him, they pushed him to a cleaner part of the floor and mopped up, wrapped him again, then moved him to the washed area, repeating this until all the rubbish bags were used, all the packaging tape finished, and nearly all the blood scrubbed away. He was a mummy in black bandages, the brown tape crisscrossed. No matter how much Doreen told herself he was a rolled-up carpet, it still looked like a body.

He was heavy, cumbersome, but they managed, with Doreen gripping him beneath the armpits, praying her fingers didn’t split the plastic, and Lou holding his ankles, to carry him into the garden. As Doreen walked backwards, she checked the windows of the houses, all in darkness, no one watching. Hefting him over the lip of the well seemed an impossible task. They raised his feet, and he shot away, Doreen counting the seconds for him to hit the bottom.

There were eighteen. Eighteen long ones, and a dull thud where he’d landed. The smell Lou had mentioned bothered Doreen—a rotting corpse, the reek coming through any possible gaps in his shroud—and she had an idea what to do. Back in the house, she shut the door and plonked onto a chair. Lou stripped out of her clothes. Ran the tap with cold water, filling the sink.

“We’ll do the garden up,” Doreen said. “Order a load of bags of peat to be delivered tomorrow afternoon. Enough so we can tip some into the well and it’ll cover him. That should help with the smell. We’ll keep a bag or two, then turn the borders over, plant some flowers, and sprinkle peat on top so it looks to Janice when she comes back that we were busy while she was gone. Any nosy neighbours peering across at the garden won’t think twice about the peat delivery then either.”

“That’s going to cost a lot. How much do you think we need to cover him? I don’t get paid that much, remember.” Lou put her dress in the sink. “Give me your clothes.”

Doreen got up and tugged her shirt and blouse off, handing them to Lou. A line of blood had splashed on the window and part of the sill from where she’d arced the knife after slicing his neck. She’d clean it but would always see it, even when it was gone. “I’ve got some savings. Mam gave me spare money. And as for the bags, say twenty? That haberdasher fella will drop it round, you know, the one who owns that shop in town. We can get him to carry it into the garden, and we’ll chat to him, tell him we’re making it nice, like.”

Lou prodded Doreen’s clothes beneath the water, which turned pink. Doreen’s face was tight from the dried blood on her skin, and she stood there in her bra and knickers, shivering despite it being summer.

“I need a bath,” she said, “but we should clean up even more first, use bleach, and that front door needs cardboard over it until we can get someone to fix it. Maybe the peat bloke will do it. We’ll say we had to break in because we forgot our keys.”

Lou nodded. “I’ll get in the bath after you, so don’t stay in for ages else the water will get cold.”

What a weird thing to think about at a time like this.

Lou gave a sad smile. “This is our secret forever?”

Doreen nodded. “Forever.”

Chapter Fifteen

The snow had stopped falling around ten this morning, and a thaw had steadily crept in over the course of the day, grass valiantly poking through on some of the verges, a gulley made on pavements, tarmac on show, although it appeared shiny, coated with sparkling ice—watch your step or you’d go arse over tit.

On the breakfast news, his hair gelled back and a veneer smile covering the fact he’d probably been up since three a.m. for work, the weatherman had said it’d most likely be gone soon, all that snow, which would make for a boggy Sculptor’s Field once everyone trampled over it at the weekend, unless a frost hardened it. Wellies, Lou would need those. She was doing the pie and jam stall. Thank goodness the jam was already made, but she’d still need to bake the pies.

The February Fayre was the last thing on her mind at the minute, though. She stood beside Francis in the darkness of the yard behind The Lion’s Head, Cassie on Francis’ left. It was weird being on the Moor estate, as if they weren’t as safe as they’d be on the Barrington. That made sense, as they