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

with that money, plus the five hundred a week for being my ears, he’ll want more, no matter what he has to do to get it. They all start off boffing then change their tune once they have cash to flash.”

“Hmm.”

Cassie ate her breakfast while Mam got up and loaded the dishwasher. Cassie should feel bad for enticing Jimmy, using him like this when he wasn’t that way inclined, but she didn’t trust many people and needed someone on hand to do whatever she asked. She thought of Shirl. Jimmy had asked whether he could talk to her about things, and Cassie had agreed, reinforcing the rule that if Shirl blabbed, she was dead meat. Jimmy had more than got the point, seeing as he’d so recently puked about the mince.

She’d have to get to his flat soon as the February Fayre started today. Sharon had taken over the running of it with gusto, according to Brenda’s latest WhatsApp report, which Cassie had read when she’d flopped into bed, exhausted.

Her mind strayed back to last night and Jimmy. He’d had several shocks but had coped well. He was definitely someone she wanted on her close team, especially with Jason no longer around to do the dirty work, although Jimmy wasn’t quite ready to torture people in the squat for her. Maybe Glen Maddock fancied doing that for some extra cash. He didn’t strike her as the sort who’d settle into retirement without getting bored.

Once Jason’s mince filled one and a half tubs, she’d guided Jimmy out of the side room, leaving the cousins to clean Marlene and take the meat to Handel Farm. In the corridor, she’d told Jimmy to go home, get some rest, while she visited the squat to burn Jason’s clothing, and her own.

Crew Two had been there when she’d arrived, the carpet already rolled up by the two fellas, a woman on the floor scrubbing the boards, another wiping a wall. Cassie had changed into clean leggings and a top from her boot, made them hot drinks once she’d fed the furnace, then got down on her knees to help wash the nasty wallpaper in the living room, still too wired up to go home and sleep. The crew had chatted as if they weren’t ridding the place of blood, and Cassie found out a lot by listening to them.

It had felt good to be a part of the team instead of the leader of it.

Breakfast finished, she sipped some coffee. “Thanks for that, Mam.”

“I thought you’d need it. You’ve hardly eaten the last couple of days.”

“Been slightly busy.” She resisted rolling her eyes. “How was Lou after I left?”

Mam squirted the worktops and hob with anti-bacterial spray. “She should crawl back into her hole now. I had a word, let her know any more shit for us to deal with, and we won’t be happy.”

“How did she take it?”

“Okay, actually.” Mam wiped the sides with a sponge. “Said she’d better get cracking making the pies for the Fayre, so she’d be baking well into the early hours.”

“She’ll have been awake when Felix and Ted turned up then.”

“Hmm. How did Jimmy handle knowing what Marlene is?”

Cassie smiled. “I think he was a bit shocked but relieved he didn’t have to meet some nutter.”

“I’ll never forget when Doreen first twigged it was the mincer.”

It seemed ages ago now that Doreen had killed Karen, yet it was so recent. The pigs’ murders had wiped away the shit with Karen and Zhang Wei, then dealing with Jason had stolen more time, stretching it so it felt as if weeks had gone by. Hopefully, there’d be no hassle for a while now. Cassie and Mam could enjoy the two days of the Fayre and kick back for a bit, Cassie only doing the usual estate business, collecting rents, managing the drugs, and all the other little things that made up her daily routine.

“Right, I’d better get down to Jimmy’s then the Fayre, show my face, wave the collection box for Gorley’s funeral flowers under their noses to take suspicion off us.” She stood. “Are you coming with me or going in your own car?”

“I’ll be down in a bit.”

Cassie went into the hallway then the office to take some cash out of the safe, ignoring the ledger that needed filling out. Work could do one for now. She put the money in her purse and, back in the hallway, stuck her boots on, slid her arms into her jacket sleeves, and zipped it up.

Excitement from childhood swirled inside her at the thought of the Fayre, although she doubted the candy floss and hot dogs would appeal to her now, but she could sniff them in the air and remember her times at Sculptor’s Field with Dad, up on his shoulders, him letting her down when she wanted to go on the merry-go-round, and she always, always chose the unicorn to sit on, pretending she was a fairy.

She drove away feeling lighter now Lou had earnt the title of The Piggy Farmer and Jason was out of the picture. Amazing really, how much he’d annoyed her just by breathing. With him dead, a weight had sloughed off her shoulders, and life had gone back to normal. Well, it would once Branding closed the cases on Gorley, Knight, and Codderidge.

Cassie dropped Jimmy’s cash off, not staying to chat, then drove to Sculptor’s Field. She parked in the cordoned-off area reserved for cars, of which there were many. The weather hadn’t prevented people from coming out—it never did for the Fayre—and most of the snow had gone, only the cold air remaining plus a weird white sky, no clouds. Dad would have predicted more snow was on the way, but the weatherman, chortling on the radio last night as she’d driven home, had said otherwise. Tomorrow, the sun was