by Emmy Ellis
Chapter Five
“We’ll have to go right back into the past,” Cassie said, their Chinese eaten, the leftovers stone-cold.
It was a late one, the hands of the swanky wall clock pointing to the eleven and two. Jimmy would like to get to bed before midnight, snug in his onesie, but it wasn’t his call. Instead of taking food home to Shirl, he’d arranged for her to come here in a taxi for dinner, telling her, per Cassie’s instructions, that they needed her to do a bit of digging with her nan about Francis. Shirl’s nan was the fount of all knowledge, what was known in polite terms as a ‘gossiping bitch’ back in the day, although she preferred to mind her own now, pottering about in her little semi-detached, tending to her flowers and veg.
Jimmy reckoned she was alone not because she chose to be, but people had got wise to her. If you wanted a secret kept, you didn’t tell Esther Parsons. She’d have it doing the rounds at bingo in no time, each snippet delivered between Legs Eleven and Two Fat Ladies. She was the perfect person to help Cassie.
Cassie’s cover story with Shirl was the eulogy she wanted to write, and Jimmy was more than happy to keep quiet about the rest. He didn’t want Shirl having images in her head like he did. If he could protect her, he would. The thought of Francis and Lenny with those two lads churned his stomach—by the sound of it, Francis had been more of a monster than Cassie or Lenny—and Shirl knowing that kind of nonsense wasn’t on, especially because she’d had nightmares about the Jason business on top of the ones about her childhood. She hadn’t been there or seen owt in the squat, but Jimmy’s descriptions of Jason pinned to the floor with a long nail had been enough to scare her. He’d been allowed to tell her because Shirl was supposed to share the babysitting job, but he hadn’t wanted her to, so they’d made out Shirl had the flu. He hadn’t liked lying to Cassie, but to protect his missus, he’d done it.
“Why can’t you ask my nan yourself?” Shirl asked. “She doesn’t bite, honest.”
“Because she might not open up to me.” Cassie smiled as if her mother hadn’t been gunned down today, as if she didn’t have a massive weight on her shoulders. “If I remember rightly, your nan knew mine, they went to church together. She’ll open up to you, surely.”
Shirl pushed the remains of her sauce-bloated noodles away. “I’ll have to go in the morning then because she goes to bed at nine of a night. What sort of stuff do you want?”
“Whatever she wants to give. Oh, ask her if Francis had skeletons—we’ve all got them, know what I mean?”
Shirl blinked several times, her bushy blonde hair a halo around her slim face. “Why would you want to know about those? Isn’t it meant to be all the nice stuff about dead people?”
Cassie got up to sort their plates, taking one over to the bin to scrape it off. Jimmy was surprised she didn’t demand to know why Shirl was asking questions. With Cassie, Shirl didn’t usually say boo to a goose, plus, Cassie hadn’t much liked Jason querying her, but maybe that was because of the way he’d done it; it’d got her back up. Maybe Shirl was coming out of her shell around the one person she’d been shit scared of in school. Jimmy was glad. Cassie wasn’t all bad. He liked her—even though she was a nutter—and she trusted him, so that went a long way in his book.
Cassie put the plates in the dishwasher. “Usually, yes, but this is in case someone turns up at the funeral and causes a stink. I need to know all the bad bits, right from when my mam was small, so I can be prepared with any answers I might need.”
She was good, Jimmy would give her that. If he didn’t know what Cassie was really after, he wouldn’t suspect she had an ulterior motive for that information. She was a chameleon, someone he’d have to study more as the months and years progressed, be able to read her features, judge her moods, and act accordingly. Glen had told him all this, how he’d got to know Lenny, better than he knew himself in some respects, living and breathing the other man’s mannerisms, anticipating his needs before he had to be told.
“In other words, you’re an extension of her,” Glen had said, “and that can get pretty tough if you’re a soft-hearted person. So toughen up or she’ll break you—her and everything she does. Grow a thick skin, so much so that when she kills, you don’t bat an eyelid. You don’t care. Caring gets you in the shit, gives you nightmares. I’m sure you’re aware of this already with that fuckwit, Jason.”
Glen was right. Jimmy had felt sorry for Cassie’s former right hand—all that pain he must have been in, Christ—and, despite what the weasel had done, what he’d planned to do to Cassie and Francis, Jimmy still had a hard time coming to terms with the level of violence the boss had meted out. She’d barbed Jason then shot him with a nail gun, sewn his lip up using no anaesthetic, his skin so fucked you wouldn’t know it was him, you’d think his face was a ball of mince.
During ‘Phase One’, Glen had sat Jimmy at a table and told him to get ready for the shock of his life. He’d placed some photos facedown, and Jimmy had sensed something was about to change—that he wasn’t going to unsee what he was shown, it would live with him forever.
“When I flip these over, concentrate on not showing me emotion. Focus all your energy on that, not on what you’re seeing. Look at the images dispassionately, like they’re not real—tell yourself it’s makeup, whatever you need to get through, but by the time we’ve done several rounds of this—hundreds if we have to—you won’t feel a speck of sorrow. It’ll desensitise you on one level—you keep the nice parts of yourself beneath that, the ones you reserve for Shirl and those you love. Ready?”
No, Jimmy hadn’t been bloody ready. His nerves had shot through the roof, his palms sweating, his heart beating too fast. The first image had him throwing up a bit of his breakfast crumpet in his mouth, and he’d swallowed it so Glen didn’t know. Shit, the gore. Someone’s body had been sliced down the belly, and everything hung out—reds, purples, blues, the yellow of fat, and the blood, a puddle in a dip of intestines shaped like a coiled snake.
They’d got worse—worse!—and by the twentieth, Jimmy had rushed to the loo and spewed, crying while he was at it, desperate to erase the images that seemed imprinted on the backs of his eyes. No matter how many times he told himself it wasn’t real, it was. Who were those people, folks Lenny had killed? Wasn’t it dangerous to have pictures of them, proof of them being dead? Had Glen murdered them for Lenny? Or were they random shots found on the internet on some sick site for even sicker people?
By the fifth session in Phase One, Glen’s predication had come true. Jimmy had seen the victims as colours, slices, meat, not people with families and loved ones who’d miss them. But how would he view it when faced with the reality of this sort of barbaric hacking, when it was played out in front of him? Those pictures didn’t have Dolby surround sound, he couldn’t hear their screams, them saying sorry and asking for their mam.
Those pictures didn’t tell the whole story, just the result. There was no reasoning in them, no explanation as to why those people had ended up that way—no tale of misconduct or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or errors even, mistaken identity, or someone lying to get another in the shit—like Jason had done with Nathan Abbott, where an innocent man had been killed in the name of corruption.
“Did you zone out, Jim?” Cassie asked.
He jumped. “Um, yeah. Sorry.”
“It happens.”
Perhaps she understood where he’d been, present in the room but not, how Glen’s lessons meant he slipped into another world running parallel to the real one where the main colour was red and people never woke up again. Had Lenny shown her those photos? Had she been through the same warped initiation? Or was it only for the likes of Jimmy, people who needed to become hardened?
That meant Cassie was hard enough already by the time she’d taken over. Who’d scoured away her softness, though? Had she done it herself? When she’d found out who her father really was, had she nailed on a shell and carried it on her back ever since?
He thought a
bout what she’d told him before Shirl had turned up. Hmm, she’d definitely learnt to do what Glen had said and hide her true self beneath a top layer. Jimmy had worked out a way to organise everything in his mind. He had a set of imaginary floating shelves, and above the top one there was a void—no feelings, no opinions, just a clear space he’d go to when he had to cope with the horrors. Nowt could touch him there, harm him, upset him. Below, in different degrees, were the levels of caring—the farther down he went, the more he gave a shit.
Shirl was below the bottom shelf.
“Okay, that’s about it for now,” Cassie said.
She must have finished loading the dishwasher while he’d gone off inside himself, and the worktops were wet from where she’d sprayed then wiped them.
“I’m going to have a bath then visit my bed.” She folded a cloth and hung it over the curved tap.
She was lying, Jimmy had already got that bit about her pegged. But it was the kind of lie for Shirl’s benefit, more a disguising of the truth. Anyroad, prior to Shirl’s arrival, Cassie had already said she’d be poking around the house trying to find shit out about the Francis of old before she even thought about sleeping. If Jimmy’s suggestion regarding abuse was correct, she might not discover owt. Would Francis have wanted any reminders? Or was she that deranged, she liked the nods to a possibly awful childhood?
Jimmy stood and reached for Shirl’s coat that was draped over a stool, then placed it on her shoulders, glad to be leaving, going back their townhouse on New Barrington, one Cassie had sorted for them. No more high-rise living for them, and Jimmy was glad about that an’ all. If Cassie was also digging about in the past regarding Micky Jennings, Jimmy didn’t want to be caught in Victor’s web without Cassie by his side, and he might have if he still lived in the flat. The bloke was a menace, had given many a black eye with that ring of his. Some people even had the impression of the lion’s head imprinted on their cheekbones afterwards.
Deep down, Jimmy was still the same Jimmy then. Scared of the likes of Victor. It’d take a fair while to see himself as anyone other than who he was at his core.
“Window dressing,” Glen had said. “That’s what you are to those who look at you now. You present the window to them, what you want them to see standing on the display sill. Everything else that you are is in inside the shop, hidden by the sun glinting off the glass.”
Jimmy understood. He was what he presented now, and no one needed to know he was bricking it inside.
He smiled at Cassie and patted her shoulder. “Will you be okay. Properly okay?”
She nodded, looked a bit choked up to be honest. “I have to be.”
He knew her well enough by now: she wouldn’t rest until she’d got down to the nuts and bolts of it. And Jimmy? He’d be there for her, someone she could talk to, someone she could trust. He knew enough from Glen to realise he was onto a good thing here. Money, security, and respect. But what he still worried about was the danger, the bullets or blades meant for him, all because he was Cassie’s right hand.
He just had to hope none of them pierced his skin.
“We’ll be off then.” He nodded to Cassie.
Jimmy took Shirl’s elbow and guided her down the hallway, then out into the chilly March night, onto a driveway surrounded by high hedges where anyone could be hiding, watching through gaps in the leaves. He blipped the locks of a car Cassie had given him last week, a posh grey Audi. The chirp was mournful in the darkness, or ominous, or maybe he was being fanciful. Nevertheless, a chill wiggled down his spine. It was thinking about eyes observing them that did it.
“Get in the car quick, no hanging about.”
“Where’s the fire?” Shirl said. “Blimey.”
He bundled her in the passenger side then got in the other. Engaged the central locking. “I got spooked, that’s all.”
“Why, because someone offed Francis and might be coming for Cassie?”
“You never know.” He started the engine. “But she’ll have a gun and whatever. She’ll be waiting if the alarm trips.”
“Well, flippin’ ’eck, you’ve got me all antsy now.”
“Sorry.”
Jimmy drove away, Glen’s words floating through his head: Don’t let anyone know how you’re feeling. They’re infectious, feelings, and if you’re afraid, others will sense it.
Too fucking late now, wasn’t it. Shirl was shitting her kecks.
Jimmy sighed. He had so much to learn.
Chapter Six
It wasn’t light and it wasn’t dark, more that in-between state that came with an autumn which clung on, digging its stubborn heels in, telling winter it wasn’t welcome yet. The day didn’t quite want to leave, but night was calling to take over. It was enough to see, but not enough to be seen.
Not clearly anyroad.
In the woods, Francis would be an indistinct human, the shape there but not the gender, the height but not the age. If any witnesses were around, their description would be vague. Those who’d seen her walking this way from the school gates wouldn’t take any notice: “She does it about three days a week, it’s nowt special.”
If questioned, she’d say yes, she’d walked through the woods, but no, she hadn’t been by the great oak, the one that had noted her sins with its knothole eyes, a whorl halfway down the trunk a sad mouth. She’d say she’d taken the track down the middle, as usual, and hadn’t seen anyone else around.
She’d asked Lionel to meet her in the woods, not come to the school. He’d accepted her excuse that it was embarrassing to be picked up at her age, so for the past year, he’d waited in a glade tucked to the side near the entrance, where people had picnics in the summer and paddled in the natural pool in the centre. He always had his hands in his pockets, his hair slapped to his head, growing from a side parting, his work uniform still on where he’d done his usual ‘nipping out’ for fictional errands, a T-shirt with the image of a Mr Whippy ice cream stitched to the breast.
The resident birds had given up chirping, sequestering themselves in nests built from twigs stolen from the track, dried grasses, and maybe a clump or two of sheep wool that had tumbled over from the neighbouring fields, brought there by a wind that cut to the bone and froze the tips of your fingers.
Francis was fourteen tomorrow, had planned this for a year, and would never admit to it being her first kill. The one that came after would be classed as that—and there would be more. She couldn’t get the idea of it out of her head, cutting off people’s lives. Lionel’s wouldn’t count because he didn’t deserve that honour, didn’t deserve special status. Besides, it would be all over the local news, and she didn’t want the heat from it to touch her.
This had to be a secret, just like their relationship, a sin kept to herself.
Since her first sour years as young girl and not a small child, she’d changed especially for this moment and what came next, forcing herself to be someone else, the person she may have become had she not been sentenced to a childhood riddled with that disgusting man. She was less snippy, more amenable, and she smiled, a gradual change so it didn’t look obvious. Twelve months on, and people barely recalled the unhappy little cow she was.
Good. It meant they wouldn’t suspect her of what was about to happen.
A happy girl didn’t kill a man.
She tromped beside Lionel in the woods, no words spoken, him undoubtedly anticipating the usual, her anticipating something she’d actually enjoy—or she assumed she would. Going by the thrill that went through her from imagining it, she was sure the real thing would give the same result. Her backpack contained things she’d be suspended for if a teacher had spotted them as she’d pulled her books and pencil case out, but none of them had reason to watch her closely now, not when she didn’t give them hassle these days.
“Francis, I do believe you’ve turned a corner,” Mrs Hanscombe, the head, had said. “For the better.”
Yes, this was definitely better.
Lionel headed for ‘their
’ usual tree, one Francis would cut down if she had the tools, the strength, and the ability to know where the huge trunk would fall so she didn’t get squashed.
That reminded her of Lionel’s bulk on top of her, and she shuddered. One more time, that was all, then this would be over.
The great oak was a terrible monument to the years she’d spent here. Something so blameless and majestic was a thing of beauty to others, a giant of nature to be awed, seen from the Barrington if you had a mind to stare this way, but to her, the bark meant ‘shame’, the whispering leaves said ‘pain’, the gnarled roots poking their knobbly knees through the grass spoke of innocence lost, a life that could have been so different, and the branches were the intricate web that threatened to suffocate her if the oak swooshed them down on her face. They were too high for that, but she still imagined it happening.
The times she was on her back on the ground, she stared up at the latticework canopy, dressed in its green finery during summer, and in autumn, the pretty reds, yellows, and browns were ugly to her, but more than anything, the bareness when the branches had taken their final shiver and cast off their brittle, gemstone clothes, that was the worst. The sins were exposed to the sky, the essence of them crawling into the air, shifting through the spaces—the diamonds, the squares, the shapes with no name, no shield there to hide her modesty, God’s gaze right on her, accusing.
Lionel had signed his own death warrant just before she’d created her plan. It was funny, although not in an amusing sense, that she hated him and what he did, wanted nowt more than to be rid of him, but the minute he’d said she’d only last until her fourteenth, then he’d begin again with someone new, she’d wanted it: the touches, his attention, his rancid breath hot on her skin.
She didn’t understand herself. Why would she want a big old man pawing at her? Why did the thought of him sinning with someone else give her such a desperate wrench?
