by Emmy Ellis
The Jade Garden - Text copyright © Emmy Ellis 2021
Cover Art by Emmy Ellis @ studioenp.com © 2020
All Rights Reserved
The Jade Garden is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events are from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
The author respectfully recognises the use of any and all trademarks.
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.
Warning: The unauthorised reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s written permission.
Contents
A Word of Advice, Cass
Dear Diary
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
A Word of Advice, Cass
“Once you get yourself properly established, Cass, you shouldn’t get any shit, but it’ll be a long road to get to that point. Remember, you’re my daughter, someone to be feared. Don’t let those no-mark twats tell you any different. They’ll try it on, believe me, but you stay firm, dig your heels in, and keep that chip on your shoulder. The Barrington belongs to the Graftons, and they’d do well to remember that. Make sure you spell it out to them, or you’ll get a heap of trouble on your doorstep. You’ll probably get it anyroad, no matter what you do, but so long as you’re prepared, you can get through anything.”
– Lenny Grafton, ex-leader of the Barrington
Dear Diary
This has been harder than I thought, getting rid of my old self and becoming someone new. It’s a struggle to run the Barrington when I don’t understand who I am these days. It’s been like putting on a new layer of skin which hides the previous Cassie Grafton, holding her tight inside, never allowing her to seep out. She has seeped out at times, of course she has. Giving Doreen that bottle of perfume was a former Cassie thing, a gift to get the old gal smiling, me feeling good inside about doing something nice for a change.
The monster I’ve chosen to be wouldn’t do that, but I don’t regret it. It’s a burden, always being so nasty, treating people the way I have, but if I don’t, at least until I’ve been in charge for a year, everything will fall apart. Dad doesn’t want bother on our doorstep, I remember him telling me that, so I behave the way I do to ensure that doesn’t happen.
The weapon I created—the monster created—is so far from something I would have usually done that it frightens me. The emotions I feel while using it are even more frightening—how can I enjoy cutting people up with barbed wire? How can I love the thrill of it?
There’s something wrong with me, but that’s a diary entry for another day. I can’t allow those whispering voices to get through, the ones belonging to my conscience. They’ll take me down if I do. I’ve got to follow Dad’s orders and keep my hard shell.
And never let it crack to show the old Cassie beneath, the girl who wanted to be a teacher and live a ‘normal’ life. Family is everything, so Dad said, and I can’t let Mam down. So I’ll sacrifice what I want, my need to be who I was—for her sake.
It’s what Lenny Grafton would expect.
Chapter One
Cassie stared at the body on the concrete again, playing for time, giving herself a moment to think. What was her next move? What would her father, Lenny, have done? The slaying of Li Jun’s nephew, Jiang, out the back of the Jade Garden was either a deliberate slight towards her—a challenge for her leadership on the Barrington—or someone had chanced his arm to snatch drugs from the Chinese takeaway while Cassie was busy settling into her role as estate leader.
Jiang’s slit throat had Cassie veering towards the former—or was she conceited to think someone was out to get her, that this was all about her? No, it was plausible. Dad had told her this sort of thing would happen. Not the murder, but an uprising, someone stepping up to the plate, wanting to eat her meal. And anyroad, who the hell carried a machete around with them to slice an innocent person’s neck if they didn’t want to make a massive point? All right, Jiang wasn’t exactly innocent when it came to selling drugs along with the chow mein, but he wasn’t a bad bloke.
He had kids, a wife.
Shit.
“You know Jiang will be taken to Marlene, don’t you.” Cassie eyed Li Jun to check if she’d get any gyp off him, but it seemed he was on her wavelength.
The woman crouching over Jiang—Yenay, her name was—let out a whimper and rested her forehead on her dead brother’s, her hair falling to obscure their faces. Of course she wouldn’t want a family member meeting Marlene, no one in their right mind would, their minced remains fed to the pigs on Handel Farm, but unless this lot wanted to go down for a stretch because of drug dealing, dragging Cassie’s arse into it, what else could they do but hide the evidence? Because if they did drag her into it, they’d end up dead, too, she’d make sure of it.
Life, as in, actually living, was better than a life term inside the nick.
Li Jun, shoulders sagging, gazed over at his two sons, who stood in the darkness at the edge of the yard. Dequan, thirtysomething, slender, shook his head in defeat, and Tai spat on the concrete, his rounding belly straining against his chef’s whites, the buttons hanging on for dear life.
“We cannot have police here,” Li Jun said, maybe to himself, maybe to his family, confirming the way things had to go. “We will say Jiang has gone back to China, and that is the end of it.”
“What about his wife and kids?” Cassie needed to make sure Li Jun covered all bases, otherwise she’d do it. Pay the woman a visit and ensure she knew what was what.
Li Jun sighed, and those sagging shoulders straightened, as though he’d bolstered himself and courage stiffened his short body. “Jiang left Mei. They had trouble in marriage. This is how the story will go. What we do brings shame on us, so if we are caught… I do not want Mei and her children in trouble.” He looked at Cassie. “Mei packages the goods.”
Mei, and Hua, Li Jun’s sister-in-law, shared that job, but what he was really saying was he didn’t want Mei in the shit for her part in the drug operation. Unexpected guilt poked Cassie with a steel-tipped finger at the thought of Mei arrested and her children scared, wondering what the fuck was going on.
Dad had made some mistakes while running the Barrington, she’d discovered that once she’d taken over. Was this also a mistake? Expecting Li Jun to store drugs in his takeaway and sell them with the meals, popping the baggies inside a plastic carton, noodles packed on top? What had Li Jun done for Dad to expect him to do that? Was it like with Joe and Lou Wilson, who ran Handel Farm, where they owed Lenny for the rest of his life, only gaining freedom upon his death? Dad had found the man who’d kidnapped and killed their three-year-old daughter, Jess—or at least he’d thought he had. The past
had come back in recent days, though, proving Lenny hadn’t found the right man at all.
Yes, Dad made mistakes all right.
“I’m sorry you’re in this mess.” She wanted to squeeze Li Jun’s arm to get her sincerity across, but that would mean showing her soft side, something Dad had advised she mustn’t do with employees and residents of the Barrington. “If Lenny hadn’t—”
“No. Stop.” Li Jun wafted a rigid hand to end her line of thought. “Lenny offered me takeaway, he offered me drugs so rest of my family could come here. I chose to do this. He did not force me. If anyone is to blame, it is me for saying yes.”
Dequan stepped into the light coming through the open back doorway, a reed in the brightness. “He’s right. We all knew what was at stake, even Jiang. He died protecting the goods, something we all promised to do.”
While Cassie felt uncomfortable about her feelings on this subject, she was relieved the drugs hadn’t been stolen. Yes, a life had been cruelly taken, but those drugs were the source of employment for so many. People would go hungry if there weren’t any to sell while she waited for another batch. And those who took the drugs would go crazy without them—or go elsewhere, and that wasn’t allowed. She had a bloke who grew the plants and sourced the cocaine, the mollies, the acid, but it would have taken time to collect a new lot.
This way, she wouldn’t be scrambling to sort out the flow of sales.
I’m wicked. I should be more bothered about Jiang.
The problem was, Dad had hammered it into her that sometimes, death was par for the course, nowt more upsetting than spilling a cup of coffee on your nice trousers. It happened, you moved on.
She’d keep her true thoughts to herself, though: no good person should die for the sake of a stash, no matter her father’s opinions. Even if it was a large one that’d net around two hundred grand. If there was a leak somewhere down the line, the machete man may have known the value. So why not take the goods after the murder?
She needed a private chat with Li Jun at some point to see if he could shed any light on that.
“Right,” she said. “I’ll get Jason here to collect Jiang.”
Cassie was supposed to be meeting her right hand in the pub down the road, The Doncaster Arms, known locally as The Donny. He’d been after her to have a relationship with him outside of work, and so far, she’d held him off, citing she was learning the ropes in the field before Dad died, then planting her feet firmly once he’d passed away. Tonight was meant to be a meal, see how they got on in a personal capacity, but this murder had fucked it up.
And business always came first.
Jason would have to wait for his ‘date’. Cassie wasn’t too cut up about it. While she thought he was a good-looking fella, he was pushy, although he was making an effort to hide that side of himself at the minute, per her order.
She gave the family a sad smile, a genuine one, because, fuck, she was upset for them. How must it feel knowing where Jiang was being taken? Would their dreams be filled of him being fed to Marlene, the adapted mincer at Grafton’s Meat Factory? Would they scream out in the middle of the night at the sheer awfulness of it?
“I’ll leave you to say your goodbyes for a bit.” Cassie walked into the kitchen and closed the door to. She took her phone out and scrolled her contacts for Jason’s number. Pressed ‘connect’.
He answered on the second ring. “Got caught up putting your face on, have you?”
Ordinarily, she’d have chewed his arse for that misogynistic comment—for fuck’s sake, so what if she had taken time to put her slap on—but now wasn’t the time, was it, and any lessons in how to behave around her—around any woman—would have to wait.
“Have you been making sure you always have a body bag in your boot?” she asked.
“You fucking what? Is someone dead?”
She resisted barking at him. “That’s usually what we use body bags for.”
His ragged breathing drifted down the line. “Um, yeah, I do. I always have two in there. You never know when you’re going to kill someone, do you.” He chuckled.
Cassie didn’t find him amusing. “I need you at the Jade. I’ll tell you what’s happened when you arrive. Park round the back.”
“Shite. What’s going on?”
“Jason… Just do as you’re fucking told, will you?”
Angry at him stepping over the mark, again, she cut the call, shoved her phone away, and moved to the hob. When she’d arrived, a pot of something had been boiling, the water milky. She turned the gas off and looked beneath the steel worktable for a colander. Rice poured into it in the large sink, she gazed at the bloated, puffy white grains, thinking of something Dad had said.
“From space, we’re all like grains of rice, insignificant, tiny specks on a green-and-blue planet. But on that planet, up close, we mean something, we’re important, and if we try hard enough, we’re fucking important.” He’d smiled. “You, my precious little bird, will be fucking important, and no one is allowed to stop you.”
Tears burned. She hated showing emotion, but at least she was alone while doing it. The rice was fucked, overcooked, but that was the least of Li Jun’s worries. She used a paper towel to dab her eyes so her liner didn’t run and cringed at the sound of Yenay wailing followed by Tai’s soft voice of comfort. Their family had been ripped apart, and for the sake of appearances, they’d have to hide their grief from the public.
Cassie knew how that went. She hadn’t mourned openly for her father, instead crying in her old bedroom at the family home while staying with Mam, the usually unconquerable Francis, who sobbed on the other side of the wall and once told Dad’s ghost she wished she could join him but couldn’t bear to leave Cassie.
Maybe she’s waiting until she knows I can cope without her, then she’ll…
No. Cassie needed Mam. Not just for her guidance—Francis Grafton knew how to run the estate just as well as Dad had and was a valuable source of information—but for an anchor in her world, someone who’d keep her from going too far. Although that was debateable, seeing as Mam had encouraged her to make a homemade weapon, a whip with barbed wire around the leather thong. Mam had come alive at the idea of Cassie using it to show the Barrington lot she meant business.
Mam’s as warped as Dad.
And I’m as warped as them.
A tap from the front of the takeaway had her jumping, and to cover the slip in composure, she turned to stare through the cutout in the wall behind the main counter. Jason stood outside, glancing left and right as if checking for anyone watching, and Cassie almost screamed in frustration.
What was he doing out there?
She rushed through the swing door, annoyance lending her speed, out through the gap in the counter, and opened the shop. “I told you to go round the fucking back. Get in, for God’s sake.”
He walked inside, frowning, hands stuffed in his trouser pockets, casual as eff. “I parked round the back, like you said.”
“And I meant stay round there. Christ.” She cursed herself for not being more specific, locked up, and led the way to the kitchen, gesturing for him to join her in the corner farthest from the back door so that poor family outside wouldn’t overhear her.
“Jiang’s had a machete to the throat,” she whispered. “Whoever it was wanted the drugs.”
Jason’s eyebrows rose, and his mouth pursed. “Who was it? I’ll fucking kill them.”
Cassie’s nerves prickled. He wasn’t calling the shots, she was. “No, we’ll get them, together, like we did with Nathan Abbott.”
Jason’s eyes all but gleamed. “Too right. So, you didn’t answer me. Who was it?”
“No one knows. I haven’t had a proper chat with Li Jun yet to get the full story. One bloke, and he had a mask on, probably a balaclava.”
Jason pinched the bridge of his nose and found the tiled floor interesting, tapping his foot. “Did they get the drugs?”
“Thankfully, no.”
A tic flared beside
Jason’s left eye, and he raised his head to look at her. “Good. That’s good.” He cleared his throat. “So this must have been a warning. Someone’s after taking over the drug patch.”
“It could be that twat, the one Richie Prince worked for.”
She thought about Richie, a man Jason had killed in the squat, a house out in the sticks they used to threaten people, kill people. Dad hadn’t wanted Jason to shoot Richie, just said to give him another ‘warning’ for selling on the Barrington without permission, so that was a bone of contention with Cassie that Jason had defied orders, something he tried to do often. But it was done now, Richie taken to Marlene then fed to the pigs, and his mother, Doreen, now worked for Cassie, spying on the two women, Karen Scholes and Sharon Barnett, who wrote and distributed The Barrington Life, a weekly flyer that kept everyone on the estate up to date with what was going on.
Karen and Sharon were up to something, but Cassie didn’t know what. Suspicions and gut feelings weren’t solid proof. Doreen had agreed to keep ‘helping out’ on The Life to see if she could pick up any info. She needed a distraction from her possible guilt at kicking Richie out once she’d sussed he was selling drugs behind Dad’s back, then his death. While Richie was a little prick, Cassie had planned to use him as a grass. Jason killing him had messed that up, so she was on the lookout for another young bloke who’d listen in for the price of a few quid and report back to her.
She pulled herself out of her head and cocked it at Jason, a nudge for him to respond to what she’d said. “So, do you think it’s the dealer Richie was involved with?”
“I doubt it. All right, he was stupid enough to put Richie on our streets, but to come here and steal from us via Li Jun? Got to be mental. If I were him, I wouldn’t want owt to do with me and you—like, he must know I killed Richie.” Jason puffed himself up, clearly proud of what he’d done. “Or that someone did on your dad’s behalf.”
