Paid to Kill: A HOLIDAY CAN BE MURDER (The Dead Speak Book 5)

by Emmy Ellis

  “If you’d like to take a seat, we’ll get down to business,” Randall said.

  Sid bustled along and plonked himself on a sofa with all the finesse of a clumsy ape. Air puffed out of the furniture from his weight, and he waved, making it clear he wanted Jackson to sit on the adjacent settee next to Randall.

  “So.” Sid lurched forward to grab a pink-topped cupcake. “May I?”

  “Help yourself,” Randall said. “Would you like a cake, Hiscock?”

  “Uh, no, thank you, but I wouldn’t mind a drink.” Jackson swallowed tightly.

  “I don’t stand on ceremony here,” Randall said. “Pour it yourself.”

  Sid stuffed half a cupcake into his slack mouth. Jackson lifted the jug and poured three glasses.

  “What do you think of me, Hiscock?” Randall asked.

  Eh? “Not my place to say.” Jackson cleared his throat. “I’m just here to make sure you don’t get killed tonight. My opinion of you means fuck all.”

  “Jackson Hiscock!” Sid blurted, a spray of cake crumbs shooting across Jackson’s vision and landing on the table. He hauled himself up so he perched on the sofa edge. “I do apologise for my employee, sir, I really do.” He gave Jackson a murderous glare. “He doesn’t know how to behave with folks such as yourself.” Sid kicked Jackson’s foot.

  Randall laughed—hard. “Oh, thank the fucking Lord, I’ve been sent a normal babysitter. Someone who doesn’t give a bloody shit who I am.”

  Chapter Three

  Nellie thought about her life up to now. When had it gone wrong? Why had it turned out this way with her childhood friend, Matilda, getting everything she’d always wanted, Nellie ending up with nothing?

  Colin. It was when Colin left.

  It wasn’t fair, was it, to have such high hopes for the future then have things happen a completely different way. Every girl was supposed to fall in love and get married. Every girl was supposed to have babies. At least that was how she’d been brought up to expect things. Yet it hadn’t worked for her—and it rankled something chronic.

  She’d grown up with Colin, attending the village school and secretly hoping that one day they’d be together. She’d taken it as a given, because he’d told her when they were six that she’d be his missus. Except he’d been offered a live-in job at the big house, and his visits back to the village had become more and more infrequent. Then he’d joined the army, had gone off to fight in some war or other, and when he’d come home he’d gone straight to his old post in the house. Time had worn on, and she’d realised he didn’t want to get hitched to her after all. She supposed he’d met someone else.

  Of course, she was too old to meet anyone now—and let’s face it, who’d want me?—and the time for having babies was well past. A shame, that, because she thought she’d have made a fine mother. She’d had enough practice, bringing up her brother. But there was no point in bleating on about what had gone on in previous years. She knew that, yet she still did it. Every day.

  And him there, her brother, staring into space as though he watched a private film. Probably one of those filthy ones she’d found in his room. That had been such a disgusting day. He’d been at the market on one of his rare outings, ordering the weekly produce—not that they’d needed it, and it always went to waste these days. She’d been cleaning the place from top to bottom in the hopes it might make her feel better, and while in his room she’d nudged his old video recorder with the side of the vacuum cleaner, and a tape had slid out.

  If she hadn’t seen the label, everything would have been fine. She’d have popped the tape back in and continued in ignorant bliss.

  GIRLS LOVE DONKEY COCKS—that was what had been written on it.

  Well, she’d been so shocked, she’d failed to stop a sock being sucked up the vacuum hose. If the hoover hadn’t protested and shouted a sharp barking sound, she’d have stared at that label forever.

  She’d switched the hoover off then put the video in, turned the telly on—Lord knew why—and wondered what she’d do if the film was what the wording implied. Sitting on the end of the bed, she’d reached forward to press PLAY and waited. At first, a series of fluttering lines had come up on the screen, as though the tape had been watched over and over. Then a furry leg appeared, a donkey brayed, and a woman’s face shot into view. One of those filthy women who did it for money.

  What she’d witnessed after that would always be branded in her mind. It was something she wished she could forget. She’d even thought about visiting one of those hypnotherapist hippies on the outskirts of the village to see if they’d scrub her head clean, but those types had always frightened her. They’d been there ever since she could remember, living in caravans, their dogs wandering around a scrubby yard that the police had failed to move them all from. Bloody mumbo-jumbo was what the hippies spouted, and she didn’t think going to see them would do anything except lighten her bank balance anyway. So, she was stuck with the visuals.

  Having them again now, she frowned and strode across the room to her brother, hands bunched into fists. She had the desire to punch the shit out of him. He always had that effect on her. She sniffed in a deep breath to curb her temper. It smelt of hops in here, of too much alcohol and not enough air freshener, but since that day she hadn’t had the inclination to clean unless she absolutely had to. It brought back too many memories, and not just of the video either. No, memories of farther back. Ones involving her mum and dad doing similar things as that donkey woman.

  Nellie felt sick.

  “What are you staring at?” She poked Leonard on the shoulder.

  It took a while for him to look at her. When he did, his eyes were rheumy, and he appeared as though he hadn’t had much sleep lately. Perhaps he hadn’t, what with the threat of them losing their livelihood. Then again, he’d always gone through life thinking everything would be fine. That something would turn up. Except nothing ever had.

  That was another thing that wasn’t fair.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m not thinking anything.”

  Sub-standard answer from a bloody sub-standard man.

  He hadn’t done much with his life, preferring to trail around after her from the minute he’d been born. Grabbing her leg for her to pick him up because their mother had been far too busy working alongside their dad, expecting Nellie to feed him, dress him, take him to school. Always wanting something from her, and he was still at it all these years later. Neither of them had been destined to find love, to continue the family line. It would stop with their deaths.

  That was another depressing thought.

  “Don’t you think you ought to do something with yourself instead of sipping the black stuff all day long?” She poked him again, harder this time. “It can’t be doing your liver any good—nor does it help our finances. And it’s always me, isn’t it? ‘Oh, it’s all right, Nellie will clean the place, Nellie will make sure everything’s okay, Nellie will work it out. Nellie, Nellie, Nellie.’ Well, nothing is going to be okay anymore, not with how things are going at the moment. We’ll be forced to sell this place and get something smaller, but we both know that isn’t an option. Not with what’s out there.” She jabbed her thumb towards the back of the room.

  “We won’t have to sell. And no one will know what’s out there until we’re dead.” He nodded. “We’ll be all right now.” He blinked up at her from his usual chair, a ratty old thing their dad had sat in all of his adult life when he’d had a moment where he wasn’t working.

  “What, we’ll be all right because of what’s happening later today?” She laughed—too hard and for too long—then wiped her eyes and cheeks. “Oh, you’re a funny one, Leonard, you really are. It won’t help at all and you know it. Things will happen exactly as they have before, and we’ll be left here not being able to do a damn thing about it.”

  He sighed. “I told you what to do.”

  She sighed back. “And I told you that isn’t the solution.”

  “It worked before wit
h our mum and dad.”

  “Don’t, Leonard.”

  Nellie turned away to the fire, giving it the poke she wished she was giving her brother. Hot, mean, and nasty. Something that would leave a bruise and remind him of who was in charge here. Flames jumped to life out of glowing embers, and she went down on her knees to add some scrunched-up paper. It had come to them using newspapers and twigs that she scavenged from the forest that butted the end of their back garden. Coal was too expensive.

  We’ll die old and alone, cold, with no one realising we’ve even gone.

  She thought of Matilda and how, if she died, everyone would know about it. One of her adoring family members would let themselves in through her back door and find her, stiff as a bloody board.

  Nellie giggled.

  “Share the joke?” Leonard smiled. “I could do with a bit of a laugh.”

  “No,” she snapped. “It’s private. Like your donkey video.”

  She’d brought that up on purpose. It always shut him up—and him being silent was what she wanted.

  I’d shut him up for bloody good if I had my way. Like Mum and Dad. They’d gone on and on, and look where it got them. Out in the garden, buried under the strawberry bushes.

  Nellie glanced across at Leonard and thought about what they’d done to their parents. It had solved a problem or two, and Lord knew they had problems again. But surely they were too old to do that sort of thing now, weren’t they? Nellie was pushing sixty, and Leonard was an old fifty. He appeared eighty most of the time, what with his white hair and wrinkled skin. His knuckles protruded, too, like those really ancient people who had arthritis. She thought about the donkey video and where his hand would be while he watched it.

  Shudder.

  “You’re a filthy, filthy boy, Leonard, do you know that?” She got to her feet then stood before him, hot poker in hand. “Do you need punishing?” She waved the poker. “Do you need to visit the strawberries?”

  He turned fearful eyes on her—just as she’d intended—and shook his head.

  “No. Please, no. Not me. Don’t do that to me.” His eyes filled, and his mouth quivered.

  “Then don’t try to tell me what to do. Don’t tell me it will be all right later. Don’t leave all the issues to me—the worry, the stress, the…oh, everything. Get off your arse and help me out for once instead of treating me as though I’m your mother.”

  “But you are, you always have been.”

  “No.” She leant forward so her face was inches from his. Held the poker up, fighting the urge to bring it down on his head and watch his skull split in two. “No, I’m not your mother. We had one, and she was too busy to care for us. I’m your sister, the person who had no choice but to bring you up. What would have happened if I’d got married, eh? What would you have done then?”

  “But you didn’t, you—”

  “No, I didn’t.” Don’t hit him with it. Don’t hit him… “Because you were always around, that’s why. It’s all your fault. Everything is.”

  Leonard cried.

  Nellie swivelled on one foot, threw the poker towards the rest of the companion set, then stalked across the room. She went outside to the strawberry patch and cursed the air blue, railing at her parents for being so shitty, for working all the hours God sent and leaving her with Leonard. For having no time for their kids, and when they did get a spare moment, they had that nasty sex she and Leonard had witnessed. As children they’d hidden in the double wardrobe because they’d wanted to know what the grunts were night after night.

  We found out all right.

  Matilda must have had that nasty sex in order to have children. Matilda must have worked just as hard as Nellie’s parents, neglecting those children.

  Anger boiled up inside her. It wasn’t fair. The babies Matilda had should have been Nellie’s. She wouldn’t have let them spend endless days alone while she slogged to keep her business afloat. She’d have nurtured them, loved them, given them all the time in the world. Given them the childhood she’d never had.

  “What do people deserve when they don’t look after their kids?” Nellie said to the strawberry patch. She knelt then dug her hands into the earth. “That’s right, they deserve to be dead. And what do you think I’m going to do now?” She waited for an answer. “That’s right again. And it’s not because Leonard put it into my head, it’s not. It’s because I feel it needs to be done.”

  Chapter Four

  The pub was just as sinister to Langham inside as it had been outside. The air smelt musty, like the place hadn’t had a good breeze through it in months, with the faint aroma of wood from the fire burning in a grate that belonged in medieval times. An old man sat in the far corner beside a wall covered in horse brasses, the shine of which had dulled with time, the owner or the cleaner maybe having no desire to polish them up. The old boy stared at Oliver and Langham with watery eyes, his pint of Guinness held midair, him pausing in his action of sipping.

  “Should we book in somewhere else?” Langham nudged Oliver in the ribs. “The carpet—been there for sixty years, I’d say—and that bar over there looks a bit tacky, as do the tables.”

  “There isn’t anywhere else to stay around here, you said.” Oliver glanced at the old man then at Langham. “And we’re here now, aren’t we, so we may as well make the best of it. We only need a bed for the night after our drinking sessions.”

  Langham nodded. “All right.”

  He walked to the bar then leant on it, looking up and down for a member of staff. Their post was abandoned, and he supposed it would be if customers were few and far between. A woman of about seventy poked her head through a doorway at the other end, smiled brightly, and lifted the hatch to bustle along behind the bar to stand in front of them.

  “What can I do you for?” She chuckled at her joke and placed her meaty hands on the counter, breathing as though she suffered from asthma. She was of the larger persuasion, all big boobs and round belly, her floral apron stretched across it, the material taut. Her cheeks were red and shiny, and her short hair looked in need of a good wash, as did her hands. There was dirt beneath her nails, as though she’d been gardening.

  Her body hygiene and the state of the place didn’t bode well.

  “We’ve got a room.” Langham handed over a piece of paper he’d printed out, a receipt from where he’d booked through a holiday agency.

  She took it from him and peered down at it. “Ah, right. I’d totally forgotten about you. Good job the rooms are clean already, eh?”

  That’s to be determined…

  She moved away to pull out a drawer under a row of beer pumps for Murphy’s, Fosters, Guinness, and some ale he’d never heard of, Grampy’s Bevvy.

  “Here we are.” She removed a key, a small notebook, a pen, and held them up, the keys dangling from one finger. “If you could just give me your autograph.” That chuckle again. “On that line there, look, next to your names, then we’re all squared away.”

  Langham signed his first. He handed the book to Oliver and took the keys from the woman. “Thank you. And breakfast is at…?” He shuddered at the thought of eating anything she cooked.

  “Oh, any old time you like,” she said. “Doesn’t take long for me to whip something up. And it’s not like we’re heaving with custom, is it?” She eyed the pub, concentrating her focus on the old man for a moment, eyes narrowing. “Glad I joined that agency thing—you being here proves it works. Let’s hope I get some more bookings, eh? I’m bored out of my mind half the time.”

  Langham smiled, at a loss for something to say. Normally, he had no trouble getting into conversations with other people—it was part of his job—but in here, with her? Nice as she seemed, he just wasn’t feeling it.

  Oliver slid the notebook towards her. “Thank you.”

  “Very welcome.” She hefted her tits up with folded arms. “Will you be needing any dinner, or are you going out to Simmons’ Café later?” She stared at them—hard.

  Oliver’s
face brightened. “That would be nic—”

  “We’ll be going elsewhere,” Langham said. “But thank you for the offer.”

  “Righty ho.” She gave them a tight smile, trotted off to the end of the bar, then disappeared.

  “It isn’t just me, is it?” Langham asked quietly.

  They walked away from the bar towards the stairs tucked away in the shadows to their left, ones he assumed led to the rooms.

  “What, this place?” Oliver hefted his bag onto his back, holding the strap at his shoulder. “I told you. People died here.” He went up first.

  “Not recently, I hope.” The steps curved around a corner, the walls uneven and covered in some kind of gritty plaster that had been painted magnolia. “Or in the future, for that matter.”

  “Why the future?” Oliver turned the corner and continued upwards.

  “It’s probably nothing, but I saw a couple of men earlier, while we were on the way here. It’s pissed me off, that, because I keep wondering what they’re doing around here.”

  “Got form, have they?” Oliver reached the top and waited for Langham on the landing.

  “No, but they should have.” Langham glanced up and down the landing, checking the numbers on the doors. “This way.” He went left, towards two doors on either side and another, slimmer staircase at the end. “Hired killers. That’s what I think they are anyway. Just bothered me a bit that they’re where we are.”

  He stopped outside room number three and slid the key in the lock. He pushed the door open and held his hand out for Oliver to go in first. They’d opted to share a room to save money.

  Oliver put his bag on one of the single beds. Langham dumped his on the other one, unzipped it, then took some clothes out. He glanced around for the wardrobe and, not seeing one, let out a sigh of frustration.

  “Might be one of the doors over there.” Oliver nodded to the right of the beds. “Old place like this, bound to be a built-in cupboard.” He walked across and opened the doors. “Yep, like I said. Bathroom, too. Anyway, why would them being where we are bother you? Worried they’ll kill someone and you’ll be called out to assist?”