by Emmy Ellis
“About that.” Cassie winced. “I have intel on someone selling guns. Ben bought it off him. I’ll be dealing with him after I’ve sorted surveillance on the prat. There’s someone else I have to find first, though God knows how I’ll get hold of him when I don’t even know who it is.”
Branding stopped walking and groaned. “What now?”
“A fella who found out about something Mam did—and no, I won’t be telling you what she got up to, it’s not relevant. He threatened to spill all, and she threatened him back. I need to find him, ask him if he’s ever told anyone.”
“Why does it matter if she’s dead?” Brenda asked. “Nowt can hurt her now.”
Cassie folded her arms. “No, like nowt can hurt Lenny now, but the pair of them did things that are hurting me, and I have to fix it.”
Brenda chewed her bottom lip.
Branding set off pacing again. “Is it going to affect me, too? At work?”
“Unless a certain cold case crops up, no. For all I know, he could be dead.”
Cassie’s phone rang, and she frowned at the screen. Helen from the laundrette. What the hell did she want? Cassie had given her the speech about only ringing if it was life or death. The woman was pissed up most of the time so maybe forgot the rules.
“Excuse me a second.” She left the room and went into the office. Swiped her screen. “What.”
“I need you to come here quick,” Helen said, breathless. “Before Nicola from the cake shop pokes her nose out of a window.”
“What’s happened?”
“Your new writer for The Life has slit some woman’s throat and stabbed her in the guts.”
“What?” This is all I need.
“She was being attacked—Michelle was. Self-defence and all that, but I reckon you’ll want to deal with the body, seeing as Michelle works for you now. We can’t have the police poking about either, not with what goes on at the Jade.”
Cassie closed her eyes. “Right. Where exactly are you?”
“It happened in the alley behind the laundrette.”
Cassie opened her eyes and stared at the empty shelf. She had yet to bring the ledgers back down. “Get that body in your yard, and I’ll be down with Jimmy in a few.”
“We’ve already dragged it there.”
“Then wait.” Cassie ended the call and returned to the kitchen. “Something’s come up. You need to leave.”
Brenda stood. “It never rains but it pours.”
“At the moment, I’m in a bloody deluge with no umbrella.” Cassie saw them out, then rang Jimmy. “We’ve got a situation.”
“Shite.”
“I’ll collect you in a sec once I’ve got a body bag in the boot.”
“Bloody Nora…”
Cassie didn’t bother replying and stuffed her phone away. She collected everything she’d need, stuck her shoes on, then drove to pick Jimmy up. He got in the passenger seat, his tie skewwhiff where he must have rushed to put it on, and she sped off towards Old Barrington.
“A body bag,” he said.
“Michelle’s topped someone.”
He stared at her. “What, the new woman on The Life?”
“Yep. She was attacked, apparently.” She waved that aside and let him know what Brenda had said while she drove. “So it seems like this Lionel met Mam after school and did whatever to her then. What I don’t get is, if Mam was allowed to walk home by herself, and my nan and granddad both worked, was Mam one of those latchkey kids? Did Lionel take her home and go in with her?”
“God, that’s awful. Sounds to me as if your nan catching him at her place put a stop to your grandad leaving Francis with him, but like you say, if he was meeting her…”
“We can only guess, but it’s looking fucking dodgy to me. Right, we’re here. There’s Michelle’s car.” Cassie parked behind it and got out, checking the street for anyone watching. Nowt but closed curtains and the blue of TV screens seeping around the edges. At the boot, she picked up a body bag and a large flagon of water along with a bottle of bleach. Best to be prepared in case there was a lot of blood that’d be noticed come the morning.
She led the way to the back gate of the laundrette and tapped on it. “It’s me.”
The gate swung open, and with the security light on, it was easy to see Michelle and Helen—and it was easy for other people to see a fucking dead body on the concrete if they happened to look out.
Cassie’s monster came close to the surface.
“Did you not think to switch that pissing light off?” she ground out. “Jesus Christ. Go and do it now, for God’s sake, Helen.”
The woman scuttled off, and Cassie stared down at Dawn Cottrill, someone she’d gone to school with.
“You were attacked by her?” Cassie gaped at Michelle.
“I’ve got something to tell you. It’s best I come clean, Helen said, but she doesn’t know what I’m hiding, just reckons that I shouldn’t keep secrets from you. I lied to her about being attacked to stop her asking questions.”
Cassie caught sight of a balaclava on the ground beside Dawn with her wide-open neck, the blood congealing. “Let me just get the facts on this first before you go spilling your guts.” The security light went off. “Where did you kill her?”
“On the other side of the fence, in the alley.”
Cassie turned to Jimmy. “Clean up a bit. It’ll be okay to use your phone torch out there for a minute or two. If anyone comes by, tell them it’s Grafton business and to move along.”
He took the water and bleach from her and disappeared through the gate.
Cassie sighed inwardly. “So you lied about her attacking you. Why? I see she had a balaclava, and that’s iffy in itself.”
“This is what I needed to tell you.” Michelle whispered, “Balls, Helen’s coming back.”
Cassie turned to the laundrette woman who appeared as a shape in the dark. “Bog off. We’re having a private chat. Go and settle your nerves with a vodka or ten. Neat, so you forget what you’ve seen. Someone will come by later to drop you some money.”
Once Helen had tromped off indoors, making a display of slamming the door and engaging the lock, Cassie took a deep breath to the sound of Jimmy sloshing water. She messaged one of her men to post a couple of hundred quid to Helen after midnight when there was less chance of anyone seeing him. She’d pay him back tomorrow.
“Now then. What the hell’s gone on here?”
Michelle told her tale, finishing with, “So he’s still in my cellar.”
Cassie had said a deluge to Brenda, but for God’s sake, this was more like a monsoon on top of everything else she was dealing with. “Let me get this straight. You kidnapped Henry Noble to teach him a lesson, and it’s ended up with Dawn blackmailing you, then being dead, and Henry minus his dick?”
“That about sums it up. Can I go with you, take him to Marlene?”
Was this bird on something? “You’ve got to be joking. We’ll come round yours and collect him. While we’re doing that, I want you to write a note for The Life. It needs to go out first thing. Ben, Paul, and Lisa—you know who I mean, yes?”
“Yes…”
“They’ve moved away.”
“Oh.”
“People need telling.”
“Where have they gone?”
“Ireland.”
Jimmy came back in. “All done. I saved some water and bleach for in here.”
Cassie nodded. “Thanks. Right, let’s get this poor cow in a body bag, dump her in the boot, clean the concrete, then we’re off to Michelle’s.”
Jimmy blew air out. “I heard.”
Cassie nudged him with her elbow, needing some light relief. “If I didn’t say it before, I’ll say it now. Welcome to the firm, Jim.”
Chapter Twenty
Henry Noble was petrified of the dog. The dreadful thing kept growling every time he moved in an attempt to ease the terrible pain in his groin. He’d known Michelle had a dark side, she’d always liked covering
the more macabre stories, but this?
Her work had been subpar in the months before he’d let her go, more so than usual, and that was saying something. He couldn’t keep rewriting her work, which was why, then and in the previous years, he’d put his byline, not hers. She’d sent him copy, and with him using it as a base and penning his own words, she shouldn’t have expected him to give her the credit for the final product. He’d paid her for the investigating, not her words.
While she’d been an avid journalist, good at extracting information, he’d been jealous of her. That awful night with Francis, where, without even knowing it she’d shown him what a crap journalist he was by taking over his mission, he’d lost his ability to trust himself regarding seeking out stories. Michelle had been someone he’d used to gather info, then he’d consoled himself with the byline, lapping up all the praise for writing the juicy titbits she’d done all the legwork on.
He shouldn’t have done it, he saw that now, especially since he was without his beloved penis. The woman was insane, no two ways about it, and had shown him that his actions had the ability to really twist someone’s melons.
He should have learnt that with Francis but, as always, he thought he knew best. He’d sacked Michelle, citing her lacklustre work, although he’d caved by giving her more money as she’d hinted she knew about his penchants. He’d hoped that would be the end of it, he could continue as he had been, with Valerie Prentiss and her little girl, living a brilliant life. Except Michelle had meddled there, telling Valerie exactly what he liked to do. Michelle had told him what she’d done on the night she’d bundled him into her car and brought him here. She was saving people being hurt by removing him from the world, so she’d claimed, and it made sense now, how Valerie had found out he liked—
Henry switched his mind to Francis. He hadn’t thought she’d really kill his wife, just hold her hostage somewhere to show him he couldn’t call the shots and should keep his mouth shut about little Janey. And he would have, but he wasn’t so sure about Beatrice. She might have opened her mouth under pressure—or from spite, to get back at Francis for kidnapping her, for stopping Henry revealing all in the paper and possibly being offered jobs in the nationals.
Even though Francis had warned him what was going to happen, the police discovery of Beatrice’s body had come as a shock. Francis was already well-known in the area for following through on her word, so when the coppers had turned up on his doorstep early the next morning, going inside to tell him the grave news—“A body we believe to be your wife has been discovered, sir…”—he shouldn’t have been surprised.
The manner of death had disturbed him at first, but as was the way with his brain, it latched on to it as a thing to try out himself. Some would say: Who suffocated someone with a supermarket carrier bag? Who did it in a field? Psychopaths, that’s who. Francis most definitely was one. Henry had broken down, genuinely, all his fears of being found out as being involved in this, amongst other things, pouring out of him in the form of sobs and words to the effect of: “Oh, my poor wife. Oh my God!”
“We’ll need you to formally identify her,” DCI Gorley had said.
Robin Gorley, a man Henry had gone to for soundbites from a police standpoint for stories. Robin, a man who’d had no idea of what Henry got up to behind the scenes of his apparently decent, Godfearing life with his councillor wife, a woman he’d chosen because of who she was, the level of safety she could give him, that sheen of respectability. Who would suspect a government official’s husband of the things he did?
And so the charade had played out, Henry pretending Beatrice had gone out after a tiff—to do with whose turn it was to put the bins out, of all things—and Gorley had swallowed the tale. Her car had been found where Henry had parked it in the early hours, creepily close to where Francis had left the body, so it had gelled with Beatrice being waylaid by another driver and dragged into the field then killed.
Henry had written the story for The Moorbury Times himself, and how strange that had been.
Throughout the years, he’d given Francis a wide berth, but on the occasions he had seen her, she’d smirked and mimed being suffocated, her tongue out to the side, her eyes bulging.
She was sick, and although the passage of time had dulled the sharp edges of anger at the fact she’d outmanoeuvred him, he still wished he could kill her for what she’d done.
Maybe he would when he got out of here.
If he ever did.
The dog—a stupid name, Fangs—didn’t move his petrifying, marble-like eyes when the front door banged against the wall, but he did perk his ears. The light coming down from upstairs was just enough to see them glittering.
“Mammy’s home,” Michelle trilled. “We have a couple of visitors. Isn’t that nice, Fangsy darling?”
Henry’s fear level climbed a good few rungs of the incarceration ladder, and with the accelerated beat of his heart, the place where his penis had been throbbed in time with it. The warmth of fresh blood dribbled either side of his balls, and he whimpered along with Fangs. The dog was getting a bit too excited for Henry’s liking. Was ‘visitors’ code for something else, like Fangs eating more of his body parts?
The creak of a stair serrated Henry’s nerves.
The light came on, hurting his eyes.
Footsteps. Familiar. Michelle’s. Then more followed, one set a light tread, the other heavier. Michelle swung around the newel post, coming into frightening view, and bent to kiss Fangs on the top of his meaty head.
She glared at Henry.
“You’re being taken away.” She smiled smugly. “To see Marlene.”
Oh shit, oh fuck, that could only mean one thing. Francis’ nutcase of a daughter was here. Yes, there she was, emerging from the stairwell, going to stand on the other side of Fangs.
“Please,” he tried to say around the sponge in his mouth.
Michelle stormed forward and yanked it out, then kicked him in his non-existent penis. Pain like no other seared through him, worse than when she’d sliced it off, and he cried so much he choked on his tears and mucous, eyes scrunched closed so he didn’t have to look at his audience.
“Oh, give over,” Michelle said. “Such a dramatic bastard.”
Henry willed himself to calm down. To accept he was going to die at the hands of the elusive Marlene, a woman he’d always wanted to find but never had, no matter how much he’d used his detective skills. He concentrated on his breathing and eventually stopped crying. Opened his eyes.
Young Jimmy Lews stood beside Cassie, the third set of footsteps. For a moment, Henry couldn’t accept the fella in a suit, used to seeing him in more casual attire. Henry knew Jimmy’s mam, Alice, for reasons of a sexual nature, a case of getting wires crossed on his part, back when Beatrice had been laid to rest.
The day of the funeral had seen them cramped inside the cupboard under the stairs where Henry had tugged Alice, having a quick fumble. Grief, that was what had prompted him to take what she’d offered, although halfway through him reaching for a boob, she’d asked him what he was playing at, and what did he think she was after when she’d kissed his cheek in the hallway?
“Certainly not this!” she’d said. “Get off me!”
Henry had been mortified, and the shame of that memory burnt his cheeks as he stared at her son. Word had spread that Jimmy was Cassie’s right hand now, or in training anyroad.
Seemed that training had come to an end then.
Did the lad know owt about… Was he going to fuck Henry up?
“You’ll understand we need to clean up Michelle’s mess,” Cassie said.
Henry babbled, “Oh, thank God. I thought this was about…about…your mam.” His voice had croaked out and, too late, he realised what he’d said, what he’d done, what he’d almost said before he’d mentioned Francis. Had fear poked him up the arse and prompted him to say that?
Cassie’s expression soured. “What about Francis?”
“Nowt,” he whispered. �
�Nowt.”
“Why say it then?” She folded her arms. “Unless you want me to kick you where it’s going to really fucking hurt, you’d best tell me.”
Should he confess? There were three things he could tell this young woman about her batty mother, but would she want Michelle knowing about it?
He pointed a toe at his ex-employee. “She has to leave,” he managed to get out. “Water. Please, water.”
Cassie didn’t look at Michelle. “Take your dog and go upstairs. Write what I told you to.”
All the light went out of Michelle’s face, but she clicked her finger and thumb, and Fangs followed her up the stairs. The door creaked again, snapped shut, and Henry waited for the key to turn in the lock, as it usually did, but nowt happened.
Silly billy, of course she wouldn’t lock Cassie and Jimmy down here.
“Talk to me.” Cassie lifted her chin, as defiant as her blasted mother.
Jimmy picked up a bottle of water from a package of twelve by the far wall. He walked to Henry. He unscrewed the lid and helped Henry by holding the bottle to his dry lips. “Any funny business, and it’ll be me killing you, not Marlene.”
Henry swallowed the gulp in his mouth and leant his head on the knobbly wall, used to the way the nodules jabbed his scalp. So Jimmy didn’t know about…? If he did, he wouldn’t want Marlene doing the dirty work, he’d likely stab a knife in his heart.
Henry couldn’t look at Cassie so closed his eyes. Not because her stare unnerved him but because he’d watched her grow up and wished things. Things that would never happen. She’d been too well-guarded by that mother of hers. “Francis is a bitch, plain and simple, and you can’t take my opinion of her away from me, no matter how you two see her.”
“Explain.”
Where should he start? At the very beginning? At the time when he’d been Lionel’s friend and the pair of them had looked at indecent images of children in Henry’s car, the interior light splashing on the pictures?
“She was a plaything,” he said. “A dalliance, as it were. From a young age, right up until the ungrateful cow killed the man who’d shown her so much love.” That was what it was, love, the thing they felt for those girls.
