The Piggy Farmer (The Barrington Patch Book 3)

by Emmy Ellis

  “Ee dint.”

  “He didn’t? What do you call it when someone takes you under their wing then? How could he not care if he killed your fucking dad? If he saved you and your mam from him?”

  Jimmy let out a grunt of surprise, and Cassie glanced his way.

  “This is what happens, Jim. Graftons do what needs to be done for residents. Jason here, his father liked to call him names all the time, hurt Gina, give her black eyes and shit, rule the house like a proper rotten bastard. Lenny stopped all that, and what does Jason do? He tells himself he’ll take the crown, that’s what, throwing everything Lenny did for him back in his face. Well…” She stared at Jason. “You forgot one thing. I’m Lenny’s daughter, and I will not allow you to ride roughshod over me—or his memory. Come on, admit it. You didn’t think I had it in me, did you? You thought I’d be crap at running the patch. What do you think now?”

  Jason shuddered and cried out from the movement. A groan followed, and she’d bet he wanted to close his eyes. Too bad he couldn’t. How dry must his eyeballs be if he couldn’t blink?

  She raised her leg as though about to kick him.

  “No! Peas, no.”

  She lowered her foot to the floor. At least she knew he was afraid of what she’d do. His usual bravado was waning; he couldn’t keep it up forever.

  “Back to Nathan—because I have a huge problem with killing him. I did it based on your information—and it was wrong. How does it feel to lay the blame at another man’s door when it was yours? You skimmed those takings, not him. You let me torture him, kill him, mince him, while knowing he hadn’t done a thing. I believed you so much that when he told us he hadn’t done owt, I didn’t listen to him, so you can congratulate yourself on that, how clever you were, how convincing. What you probably won’t realise now, though, is you did me a favour. I’ll never trust my right hand again, even if I choose Mam, Doreen, or Glen Maddock.”

  His eyeballs moved momentarily at that—Glen Maddock. He’d hate that fella taking his place. He’d been Dad’s right hand, and bloody good at it he was, too.

  “He’s a decent fella, never let Lenny down. But you did. By being such a nasty bastard in all this, you let down the one man who took you on as a son. Your own father didn’t give a fuck, but mine did.” She paused, getting ready to say the one word Jason hated when it was aimed at him. “Yours just called you a prick.”

  Another skin-stiff flinch.

  “And that’s exactly what you are. A lying, deceitful, waste-of-space prick.”

  He roared an intelligible stream of shite and looked at her, eyes bulging, and if she wasn’t mistaken, his face wounds cracked in places. Yes, they had. Fresh blood trickled, meandering down the hardened flesh, red rivers over crusty rocks.

  “Mind you don’t hurt yourself.” She laughed until her sides hurt—to release the tension in her coiled muscles or because she was enjoying this?

  “No thinking. Just get the job done, Cass.”

  Her spine straightened at Lenny’s words, and she went to the bookshelf.

  Jason snorted air through his nostrils. “No…”

  “Yes.”

  She opened the case and took out what she needed. Turned to him. Held it to her chest. “You know what this means, don’t you, Jason.”

  “Fuck,” Jimmy whispered.

  Jason’s fingers played piano. “Peas.”

  “Stop going on about fucking peas, pal.” Cassie moved to the electric socket. Slid the plug in. “The choice is yours for the first shot. Your other leg or your arm?” She held the nail gun up and waved it about. “Eight lovely inches. Who’d have thought they’d cause so much pain.” She stepped closer. “Jimmy, free his wrists from behind him.”

  Jimmy obeyed and placed Jason’s arms across his stomach. One flopped to the floor. Jimmy returned to the window.

  Cassie smirked. “Just think, if I shoot that arm there, the one over your belly, the nail will go into your guts an’ all.”

  Perhaps the instinct to get away overrode Jason’s need to stay put. He tried to get up, and his pinned shin lifted, the nail disappearing beneath the bone. His elongated scream got on Cassie’s tits, and anger at him still not conceding defeat burnt through her.

  “Admit to me you were going to take the patch,” she shouted. “Tell me to my face you wanted to ruin me. Have you got the balls?”

  She aimed the gun and shot his upper arm, securing it to his side.

  * * * *

  Pain. So much pain. It fired through Jason’s whole body, the tip of the nail digging into whatever innards were beneath the pierced skin. As for the one in his shin…his leg had gone numb. Maybe him jolting like that had done something to the nerves.

  Faint from the pain, he fought the need to tell her what she wanted to know, the insistent bitch. Part of him reckoned she’d set him free if he did—surely she wouldn’t kill Lenny’s surrogate son? And they’d got along fine until he’d blabbed about his mission. Well, as fine as you could get along with Cassie. Didn’t she have any feelings for him? He’d been in her life for a long time.

  Don’t you have any feelings for her other than to bring her down?

  No.

  So why should she feel anything for you?

  A bigger part of him whispered that she’d murder him for this.

  How odd to know that inside a few minutes, his life would end.

  What she’d said about Mam. Fuck, why hadn’t his mother rung Cassie yet? He knew the answer to that; it was stupid to ask himself that question: he’d told her he’d be away some nights for work and not to worry about him if he didn’t come home.

  Why had he opened up to Jimmy in The Donny, trusted him?

  Because he hadn’t thought he was in Cassie’s pay yet.

  The voice murmured, “But she mentioned something about bringing him into the business. Didn’t you listen?”

  Obviously not. Or he’d ignored it, thinking she was talking bullshit.

  That was his problem, he could see that now: he always knew best. But he fucking well didn’t, and Cassie was giving it her all in letting him know that.

  “You’re a waster, Jason. A fucking prick, son.”

  He growled at his father’s voice.

  His arm was more than on fire now, and he teetered on the ledge, ready to sink into oblivion again. At least then he wouldn’t see her coming at him with that bloody nail gun. He wouldn’t know he was dead if he was out of it.

  He pushed past the agony, telling himself to admit what he’d done. See if she’d let him go if he did. He had to try, didn’t he? But only if the pain got too much. He’d confess it then.

  In the meantime, he needed to remain awake—his ego wouldn’t let him do otherwise at the minute—if only to prove to her how strong he still was, how she didn’t call the shots.

  Even though she had that gun to administer them in a different way.

  And he had no doubt she would.

  * * * *

  What’s going through his head? Is he even thinking of owt other than the pain?

  Jason calmed, slumping back down, blood welling then oozing out of the shin wound, spreading over his creepy shaved leg. More blood coated his sleeve and the area where the nail had entered his side. He breathed heavily, and his eyes rolled. Cassie reckoned he was on the verge of passing out so needed to do this quickly.

  “Admit it.”

  He remained silent. Why was he being so stubborn? Was it that much of a trial to just say what he’d done?

  She poked at his injured arm, and he squealed, panted.

  “I’m not going to stop until I hear what I want,” she said. “You know enough about me by now to realise that. I’m a dog with a bone, gnawing and gnawing. And like a dog, I’ll bury you—but not in the ground.” She didn’t say he’d be in pigs’ bellies.

  Time stretched.

  Jimmy paced, a hand to his forehead. “How much longer are you going to drag this out, Jason? For fuck’s sake, she isn’t going to back down. Just
tell her, will you?”

  Jason sighed, and Cassie fancied it was one of resignation—he was beaten and he knew it.

  He managed, “Oh-gay, I…wan tid it.”

  Victory soared through Cassie, and she couldn’t stop the winner’s smirk. “I know you did. But guess what?” She bent over him. “You’re not going to have it.” She nailed his hand to his belly, the round end pushing his skin and flesh inwards.

  You absolute knob.

  He had some kind of fit, jerking, his tongue poking out. Garbled sounds came from his ruined mouth, unfinished words and “Peas, peas…” She stepped over him, one foot on either side. Gun pointing at his heart, close, she shot him again, abandoning her earlier idea of shooting him in the eye, intent on killing him a faster way while he was still with it, so he’d feel the pain and know he’d soon take his final breath.

  Blood. It spurted, landing on the ends of her dangling red hair, her clothes. He choked, scarlet filling his mouth and running out of the sides, dripping onto his top. His irises lowered then lifted out of sight, and his body relaxed. One last tremor in his good leg, his heel whacking the floor, and he was gone.

  “Christ alive.” Jimmy stopped pacing and slapped a hand over his mouth.

  “This is what happens when you cross me, Jim. I get a bit angry, like.”

  He came to stand beside her. “You didn’t look angry.”

  She straightened, reversing away from Jason, then tugging the plug out of the socket. “Good. That means Lenny taught me well.” She coiled the cord around the handle of the gun and walked over to put it back in the case, returning to stand at Jason’s feet.

  Jimmy couldn’t seem to stop staring at him. “What happens next?”

  “We take him to see Marlene.”

  “But he’s already dead. She can’t kill him again, cos that’s what she does, isn’t it?”

  Cassie chuckled. “Oh my days, you do make me laugh. You’ll see soon enough. Now, are you going to help me yank him off that nail in the floor or do I have to do it myself?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Alone in his car on the drive to the meat factory (and he’d never felt so alone in his life), Jimmy couldn’t get the sound of Jason’s flesh ripping out of his head, a squelch and tear combined, repeating over and over.

  When they’d each grabbed him beneath an armpit and hauled him off that nail… God, they’d had to tug for a bit, then the shin broke free, the nail coming away with it, leaving a hole in the carpet in the middle of a soaked-in circle of blood. Cassie, gloves on, had yanked the nail out of the calf and held the bloodied thing up to the light, turning it this way and that as though marvelling at how such a simple thing could rip into skin and bone the way it had.

  Jimmy had trembled all over, still holding Jason’s armpit, unable to believe for a second what he was doing—he was there, a dead man’s back against his legs, his new boss smiling in such a creepy manner he’d had to look away.

  Fucking hell. What have I got myself into here?

  It was too late to ask himself that now. He was in it up to his neck.

  While the lure of twenty grand was strong and could send him and Shirl on a lovely holiday and clear their debts, he asked himself whether the money was worth all the nightmares he was bound to have—there was no way he’d sleep soundly, was there. He’d never forget how Cassie had so casually unplugged that nail gun (and that act was somehow more frightening than the murder itself), as if she didn’t have any feelings one way or the other about what she’d done to Jason—and God knew who else.

  She’d mentioned Nathan Abbott (Jimmy had wondered where he’d got to), and that Jason had taken some money and blamed it on him. Yeah, that was a mega shitty thing to do, and Jason did deserve pain as punishment, but to the degree Cassie had administered it?

  Jimmy wasn’t so sure about that, but who was he to question the patch leader? He couldn’t very well tell her he thought she’d gone way over the top and expect to live afterwards. From now on, he was stuck in her employ, and if he valued his life, he’d accept that and do whatever she asked, ignoring the voice inside him that said this was wrong, all of it. Yeah, he’d grown up knowing what living on the Barrington meant, but there was listening to rumours and seeing it for yourself, two completely different things.

  And he couldn’t unsee it. Would he tell Shirl everything? He didn’t know. She was a nice woman, kind, and it might upset her. But she worked for Cassie now, too, so was it better to warn her about this shit? Get her accustomed to what she might face? Was he even allowed to pass on the events of the night?

  Jason intruded into his thoughts. Had he had time to feel that nail going into his heart, or had it been so fast he hadn’t registered it? Had Cassie shut down her emotions in order to kill him, or had she liked it, allowing those emotions to rule her with an iron fist that matched the one she employed on the Barrington?

  Jimmy couldn’t decide. A mask had come down over her face when she was in what he could only assume was ‘the zone’, an impenetrable one where however much he’d scrutinised her features, he hadn’t been able to make out what she felt while triggering that last nail.

  Did he really want to know, though? Finding out what made her tick was a step in the ‘I’m fucking mental if I do that’ direction. Her revealing feelings and, dare he even think it, enjoyment might mean he’d get infected with whatever warped creature inhabited her at these times, be changed, the old Jimmy no more.

  Face it, pal, the old Jimmy has died now anyroad.

  She’d gone out to the car and come back with a body bag—where the hell could you buy those, for Pete’s sake? Together, they’d placed him inside, and that zip going up, the rasp of it, had Jimmy shivering. It was such a final sound, so he’s dead.

  Cassie had phoned her crew to come and rip up the carpet, wash the flooring beneath, and the walls. Then she’d arranged for some fella to nip by tomorrow to lay lino—“Much better for when we need to mop up,” she’d said. “I don’t know why my dad didn’t think of it, what with having to keep scrubbing that bloody manky carpet.”

  We? Was Jimmy supposed to help her with this shit on a regular basis? He was, he knew that now, he’d be a fool to tell himself otherwise, no matter that she’d said she wouldn’t make him do it. How would he cope? Would he become as hardened as her? He was soft, maybe too soft in some eyes, but Shirl liked that about him. She’d said the other men she’d been out with before him didn’t show how they felt.

  “But you, Jimmy, you’re different. Don’t ever change on me, will you.”

  He was bound to, though, when dealing with blood and torture and murder and—

  Pissing Nora. Concentrate on this and think later.

  Ahead of him, Cassie turned onto the track that led to the factory, and he followed, shuddering at the fact she had a body in her boot—and that Marlene was waiting for them. How did the woman know they were coming? He hadn’t seen Cassie messaging her, and she certainly hadn’t phoned her. Or maybe she’d given her a bell on the way here, instructing her to meet them.

  Crikey, he wasn’t sure how to act around Marlene. What should he do, stick his hand out for her to shake it, like she wasn’t some murdering cow? Say, “Pleased to meet you” while crapping his kecks, all the while not pleased to meet her in the bloody slightest? And why was she involved if Jason was already dead?

  Maybe she’s the one who buries all the bodies.

  Then why did Cassie say we were going inside the factory? Can’t she just let Marlene take the body bag and be done with it?

  He stopped round the back of the factory beside Cassie’s car. She was already out and at the door, which was propped open by her arse, the light on in a corridor. The faint bleep of the alarm snuck into his car, out of sync with his heartbeat. She poked at some buttons, and silence returned. Well, as silent as it could be with his pulse thudding inside his aching head and his breathing going skew-whiff.

  He left his vehicle, stepping in the patches where the snow
had melted, and walked towards Cassie, his legs wobbly. Delayed shock, he reckoned. She propped the door open with a black rubber stopper wedged beneath it, and he stood in front of her, wondering what the fuck was coming next.

  “I’ll just go and get the trolley.” She turned to go down the corridor.

  Jimmy frowned. What the chuff was going on? She’d said that as if he should know. “Trolley?”

  She peered over her shoulder. “To take the body inside.”

  Off she went, leaving Jimmy once again querying why the hell Jason had to be taken indoors. This wasn’t making sense.

  At the sound of a vehicle rumbling, he jumped, nerves so frayed his neck hurt from tension. He inched along the building, shitting himself, arriving at the corner and peering round.

  Headlights. Whoever it was came from the direction of the Barrington. He held his breath as they drove closer, then his guts rolled over because… Fuck me, they’re coming here.

  He legged it to the factory door and, about to enter, halted, bracing himself with a hand on the frame, his chest tightening. I want to go home to Shirl.

  Cassie pushed a long steel trolley towards him, her mask in place again.

  “Someone’s coming,” he panted out, ready to shove the trolley so she had to go backwards, then he could lock them in, get them safe.

  But what about the body? What if they find it? What if it’s the bloody police?

  Cassie sighed. “Give over, it’s only Ted and Felix. Move your arse, will you, I need to get past.”

  “Ted and Felix?” He was parroting her again, annoyed with himself for doing it, and stepped aside to let her out, so bewildered he wished he hadn’t agreed to record Jason’s confession. Wished he hadn’t agreed to any of this. “What do they want?”

  Cassie moved past him, the trolley wheels creating a right old noise on the concrete—thank God the factory was away from any houses and no one would hear it. At her boot, she opened it. “Help me dump this wanker on there.”