by Emmy Ellis
Jimmy eyed the rolls of plastic, piled along the back wall of the kitchen behind the plastic patio furniture Cassie had arranged to be brought here. It would help having somewhere to sit between torture or babysitting sessions, although he hoped that lot in the living room would be done and dusted quickly. When he’d babysat Jason, Jimmy had leant on the kitchen cabinets or sat on the floor, and he’d kipped on a blow-up bed close to the man pinned to the floor by an eight-inch nail.
Upstairs was empty, and all the windows had blackout blinds Velcroed in place so no one passing in a car saw any light and wondered why the supposedly abandoned building on the outskirts had someone in it. Cassie didn’t need nosy parkers finding out the squat was her torture and kill palace.
It’d raise awkward questions, that.
“How are you going to do this?” he asked her.
She turned from pouring boiled water into mismatched cups. “Me? I thought you could.”
“What?”
“A quick bullet to the head for each of them. Pretend you’re shooting tin cans at the Fayre if that’s what gets you through.”
He laughed, more from nerves than finding this funny. He should have known this was coming. Hadn’t Glen warned him she’d test Jimmy’s loyalty, push him to his limit? “Um, all right.”
“Glad you didn’t balk. I don’t need you flopping on me when it’s important you remain strong. There’s a bonus in it for you.”
“I don’t care about the money.”
She cocked her head at him. “D’you know, I don’t think you do.” She stirred the instant coffees. “You need this, Jim. Get this hurdle over and done with. There’ll be times you have to kill with me, where I can’t do it all by myself, and you being green out on the estate if there’s a bit of hassle involving many, well, it could fuck things up. If you do a hat trick now, it’ll hold you in good stead.”
“Are you sure that’s what it is?”
She paused, letting the spoon clink against the inside of a cup. “How do you mean?”
“Are you getting me to do this because you can’t? Emotionally, I mean. They’re innocent really, just did what they thought was best. Ben, anyroad. The parents, well, it’s their son’s fault they’re here, no other reason.”
Cassie slid a cup over the worktop towards him. “No, don’t ever think that. Don’t lose sight of who’s to blame here. It’s Mam. If she hadn’t killed their daughter, none of this would be happening.”
He decided to be bold and say, “You didn’t answer my question.”
She shrugged. “Fair enough. You’re partly right. No, I don’t want to kill them, it doesn’t seem right, but Lisa, we can’t trust that she won’t say owt later down the line, and as for Ben, you heard what he said he wanted to do. Branding can’t shush that kind of thing up. It’s unfair, but they have to go, you see that, don’t you? I can’t let anyone on the estate have the upper hand over me, and they would if they found out what Mam’s been up to on the quiet and that we let those three go unpunished. They might think I’m the same as her and try to get rid of me. I can’t allow that. I have to keep the residents safe.”
He understood, but he didn’t have to like it. “Yeah.” A sigh of resignation, then, “Where’s the gun?”
She jerked her head. “In that bag there.”
He walked over to it on the table, a case a doctor might use, and peered inside. Took out a pair of latex gloves and put them on—she must want him to wear them if they were there. He removed the gun and weighed it in his hand. The now familiar feel of it from when he’d practised in the Barrington woods with Glen was oddly like an old friend.
How quickly he’d segued into his role. How insidious was the dawning of a new Jimmy, creeping up on him like that, popping its head out now and telling him a gun was at home in his grip. A gun.
He shook off any regrets. “I’ll get on with it then.”
Jimmy walked out, thinking how weird it was that he’d have taken three lives and his coffee wouldn’t have even got cold by the time he returned. He stuffed his tender emotions down deep, to the bottom where Shirl was, beneath the floating shelves of his mind, that special place where he was the real Jimmy. He mentally hoisted himself onto the top shelf, more than one step removed, breathing in the dead space up there, allowing a coldness to take over him, Glen’s guiding voice saying, “You can do this, son. One, two, three, and they’re gone, end of story.”
Jimmy entered the living room, his body and mind hopefully stripped of owt that could hurt him. This was just a job, a family that would cause untold crap if left to roam free.
“Shit,” Paul said, his gaze zeroing in on the gun. “Can’t we talk about this? Can’t we just—”
The bullet entered the man’s forehead, shutting him up for good. Everything Paul had ever felt or thought was obliterated, just like that. Lisa screamed, fresh blood spatter coating her barbed face, dripping down, going in her mouth, and Ben shouted out, something about Jimmy being a wanker, you fucking evil wanker, that was my dad! Lisa’s scream died on the release of the second bullet, her lips still parted where the sound had poured out.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Ben chanted. “Please, for fuck’s sake, don’t do this. They didn’t do owt. It was me! Me!”
Jimmy pulled the trigger again. He missed the forehead this time and shot Ben in the eye, just like the lad’s aunt had been killed in the barn. The wall will be damaged now. Cassie will have to get the crew to patch the holes up. And with that dispassionate thought, Jimmy walked back into the kitchen, his mind a void, his feelings still suppressed, his body numb.
“That was easy,” he said.
“Glen taught you well.” She nodded once, a sharp dip of the head.
“What happens when I feel again?”
Cassie came over and gave him a quick hug, then stepped back. “You’ll cry, Jim. You’ll cry so much your throat and head hurts. Then you’ll pick yourself up and do it all over again. It’s what we do, my friend, it’s sadly what we do.”
* * * *
Late afternoon darkness wrapped the town in its cloaking veil. With Lisa and Ben in the boot and Paul in the back beneath a blanket, all of them shrouded in plastic from three of the walls, which would be burnt in the furnace later, Jimmy drove towards Grafton Meat Factory, Cassie in the passenger seat.
The faint tang of bleach filled the car where they’d mopped the floor (or maybe it clung to the hairs in Jimmy’s nostrils), and he still occupied the highest level in his head. He couldn’t risk climbing down until he got home, and even then he’d prefer to wait until Shirl was asleep so he could cry in peace when the enormity of what he’d done crashed over him.
Cassie had WhatsApped Felix and Ted, the cousins who fed Marlene, ordering them to send the workers home early then meet at the back of the factory, as per usual, unless it was a secret kill and Cassie dealt with it herself. The old cousins were well used to keeping their mouths shut about who they pushed into the mincer chute, but Jimmy wondered how they’d take the deaths of these three. Ted didn’t usually ask questions, but Felix did, and Jimmy didn’t think Cassie was in the right frame of mind to deal with any probing. All the fight seemed to have gone out of her, and he doubted she had a good snipe left in her tonight.
“Do you want me to deal with this?” he asked. “Felix can get a bit…curious.”
“He’s going to see who they are anyroad, but yes, I’ll stay in the car this time. I want you in there while they do the mincing. It’ll give me a moment to think. I’m hating myself at the minute. Need to give myself a good talking to.”
Jimmy couldn’t afford to let sentiment crawl in, not at the moment, so he didn’t offer any pointless platitudes. He and Cassie would have to cope with the murders of people who, if only they’d kept their mouths shut, would be watching the telly now after filling their bellies with a nice big dinner, maybe from The Fish Bar in town, good old sausage and chips, mushy peas, and a can of Coke. Casualties of war, that’s what they were, and al
l because Francis had waltzed into their lives and wrecked everything. For what? Why had she killed that little dot?
Stop it. You’ll crash and burn if you think about it now.
He turned onto the track that led to the factory then rounded the corner at the back, reversing to the doors where the cousins waited, all the workers’ cars mercifully gone. Cutting the engine, he glanced across at Cassie. “Will you be all right?”
“Yep.”
He got out and opened the boot. Felix swanned over, peering inside, while Ted pushed the steel trolley across.
“Bit early, this,” Felix said. “I had to make out we were closing to do a deep clean. We don’t shut until six usually.”
Jimmy ignored him; it wasn’t for Felix to question Cassie’s decisions. “There’s another one on the back seat.”
“Fuck me, three?” Felix jammed his hands on his hips. “We’ll have to do two trips, the trolley’s only got two shelves. Unless a couple will fit on one. What the bloody hell’s gone on here? What’s with all this plastic? A new thing?”
Aware Cassie could hear with the boot open, Jimmy pushed himself to say, “If Cassie wanted you to know, she’d tell you.” Shit, he didn’t like speaking to the old codger like that, but if he was her right hand, he had to. Had to show her he was worthy of the job, the money she paid him, the house she’d set him and Shirl up in, and that Audi, a car he’d only previously dreamt of driving.
He owed her.
“Will you listen to him!” Felix stared at Ted. “Someone’s gone and swallowed a big helping of balls for his tea. Did you have courage in your coffee an’ all?”
Ted chuckled. “Good on you, Jimmy. We need someone who’ll look out for our Cass, not like that ponce, Jason. Come on, let’s get the first sod on the trolley. Whoever they are must have caused trouble, so that’s good enough for me, and besides, we’re paid well, so who are we to question?”
Jimmy appreciated the telling off. Ted had put Felix back in his place.
Felix sighed and got on with helping Ted carry Ben’s corpse, then they came back for Lisa. Felix especially would be wondering who these people were, and Jimmy would bet he couldn’t wait to unwrap them and work out what they might have done.
Ted pushed the trolley into the factory, whistling as though this wasn’t owt to write home about, the wheels clattering over the slightly raised threshold. Jimmy supposed Ted had floating shelves in his head, too, or the equivalent, if whistling was the order of the evening.
Felix jabbed a thumb in the air towards the car. “Reckon we can carry t’other between us?”
“He’s a chubby one.”
Felix shrugged. “We’ll give it a go anyroad. Saves Ted coming back again.”
They dragged Paul out and, Felix holding him beneath his back, Jimmy at the ankles, the pair of them gripping the plastic, they waddled inside the building. The car boot slammed, then the factory door; Cassie had done it. In the side room, Marlene already rumbled, ready to grind the bodies. Jimmy and Felix placed Paul on the floor, and Jimmy had to look away to where Ted used a Stanley knife to slit the plastic, revealing Ben with his face stuck in an angry expression, caught that way mid-tirade.
‘They didn’t do owt. It was me! Me!’
Jimmy blinked the memory out of his head.
“Ben?” Felix frowned and looked at Jimmy. “What the fuck’s he done? Wouldn’t hurt anybody, that one.”
Ted tutted and shouted over Marlene’s noise, “Didn’t you hear the lad? If Cassie wanted you to know…”
“All right, all right.” Felix got on with undressing the body.
Jimmy moved to the door, closed it, and leant against it. He watched them do the business, feeding each body into the chute, switching out the plastic boxes when each one filled to the top with mince. Marlene coughed, went silent, then resumed her chewing. A bone must have got caught in the blades, or maybe, if Jimmy thought of her as real, she was balking at having to eat these people. His stomach churned, and he had to recall Glen’s advice to keep him on an even keel: ‘Think of something else, owt but what you’re seeing.’
Jimmy let the image of Shirl fill his mind, his sweet little girlfriend, her smile, her tinkling laugh. His eyes prickled, so he shifted his thoughts in another direction. If he didn’t, he’d fall from the top shelf and crash at the bottom, a snivelling, remorseful wreck.
And Jimmy couldn’t afford to be a wreck. Not anymore.
Ted switched Marlene off and set about clicking lids on the boxes. “I suspect you’ll be wanting to get off home to your tea, won’t you, after you’ve got rid of this plastic and their clothes?”
Jimmy nodded, even though he couldn’t stomach food at the minute. “Cassie said for you two to take the mince to Joe’s. He needs warning you’re coming.”
“Aye, we’ll do that.” Ted nodded and knocked on one of the boxes. “You killed these three, didn’t you, lad?”
Jimmy swallowed.
Felix sighed. “I hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for, kid, I really do.”
It was too late to wonder. Jimmy was in so deep there was no way he could climb out now. And, disturbed, he realised he didn’t want to.
What the fuck had he become?
Chapter Seventeen
Michelle drove towards the parade of shops, clutching the steering wheel for dear life. She’d been thinking about the email ever since she’d received it, dissecting it, seeing of there was owt written between the lines, worrying this might be a ruse, that it wasn’t a blackmailer but the police trapping her, a sting operation like you saw on the telly.
Someone had definitely seen her and what she’d done, there was no getting away from that, but maybe they’d told the coppers and the email was nowt but a big fat lie to lure her out. When she got to the laundrette, men in uniform could be waiting, shiny silver handcuffs at the ready, telling her she had the right to remain silent and all that bollocks.
Oh God.
“Don’t be daft,” she muttered to the reflection of her eyes in the rearview mirror, the fear in them lit up by the headlights of a motorist behind. That wouldn’t be a copper, would it, following her? “No, the police would have just come round to mine.” Nevertheless, she squinted into the mirror to see if it was a patrol car tailing her. It was too big. A van then. Anyroad, pigs wouldn’t leave a man chained up. “They’d want to save the fucker, not prolong his agony.”
And he would be in agony, she’d seen to that prior to leaving, and what a jolly groovy experience it had been. Fangs had feasted on the old boy’s shrivelled willy, thrown to him after Michelle had pulled it as far as she could so it stretched painfully, then lopped it off with her carving knife while singing, “Three blind mice, three blind mice…” Her doggy had licked his chops afterwards, and Michelle had gurgled out a laugh, telling him to ‘stay’ at the bottom of the stairs and guard her wailing ex-boss until Mammy came home. Then she’d turned to the dickless wonder and narrowed her eyes at him, stopping herself from kicking him in the nuts, which had blood dripping over them.
“That’ll teach you,” she’d said. “Even if I set you free, you’ll be no good to Valerie Prentiss now, or those others you salivate over. What use is a bloke without his bald-pate friar?”
“Whuh?” he’d said around the sponge in his mouth, tears streaming, the gash left behind in his groin area seeping more blood. It pulsed with his heartbeat, which must be erratic as there was a fair amount.
“Your cock, pal. You know, the end is the friar’s head.”
He’d stared at her blankly, a snotty dribble dangling from one nostril. God, he was gross.
“Oh, never mind, you stupid bastard. A joke’s never funny if you have to explain it.”
She’d giggle about it now if she wasn’t so coiled up. She relaxed her fingers on the wheel. Forced herself to calm down. Handing over two grand in an alley behind a laundrette wasn’t something on her bucket list, but it seemed she had no choice, not when the blackmailer knew so much. Thi
s had better be the end of it, that’s all she could say, else her handsome payout could rapidly deplete if this person had a mind to ask for more. And they would, wouldn’t they? Some people were so greedy it wasn’t funny. She didn’t count herself there, when she’d pushed for more redundancy. She was owed that money for being thrown out of her job.
So, this person who wanted her cash. Maybe she could punch them in the nose, tie them up, and take them to the cellar, too. It would cut short any future issues, but there was the problem of getting them into her car without anyone seeing them. It had been easy with him because he’d gone outside the pub with her, but this person she didn’t know from Adam. It could be a big strapping bloke for all she knew, someone with a bit of strength to them, easily overpowering her.
She’d brought her carving knife, just in case.
To solve the issue, she didn’t drive past the front of the parade but went around the back, parking in the street behind. She slid her arms into the backpack loops, the money safe inside, and exited the car, clutching the knife, the handle nice and solid against her palm. Off she trotted, down between two houses, coming out in the alley that spanned the length of the parade. Each shop had a yard, fences lining the path and gates for access.
It was dark—too bloody dark—and Michelle picked her way along in the blackness, her heart galloping. Her eyes adjusted, and the light coming from the flat above The Shoppe Pudding helped. She glanced up, relieved the curtains were drawn bar on one mottled window, then stopped behind the laundrette, the smell of washing powder scenting the air from the vents, but the flat there was in darkness. It would be, Helen worked until ten p.m. She was probably sitting in her back room, the machines whirring and churning, a glass of the hard stuff in hand, clear fluid that could pass as lemonade.
