by Emmy Ellis
“Dad messed up, going for the wrong person, and I have, too. No way am I doing that again. So I want her saying what she’s planned, and you can send it to me from her house before we meet up.”
That was fair enough, sensible, and even though Doreen had been given the green light to slag Cassie off, it didn’t sit right.
“Are you sure you can handle this?” Karen asked.
“Yes. I can’t stand the girl. Too high and mighty, her new rules are too much.”
“Exactly what I thought. I keep thinking this, but she’s not giving people time enough to be human, to correct their behaviour, and that’s what gets me the most. Lenny gave warnings, a few too many sometimes, like with your Richie, but at least people had a chance.”
Doreen winced at the reminder of her son. “Hmm.” The less they discussed that the better. She didn’t want to talk about her wayward boy, not now she’d come to terms with his death and how he’d chosen the wrong path—a bit like me at one time. What he’d done hadn’t been her decision, and she wouldn’t take responsibility for it. Instead, she mourned the lad he used to be, the one who’d giggled at the man in the moon’s face and got ice cream on his nose, every time without fail, when he had a Mr Whippy from Bert’s van. Children were innocent, and some grew into well-rounded adults while others gave you pain, no matter that you’d brought them up right. Personalities were the culprit, and egos, outside influences, steering them wrong.
“How do you plan on running things?” Doreen asked to rid her mind of the image of Richie and that bloody ice cream, his freckled nose a dot in his chubby face, his eyes alight with happiness.
“Same as I did before, except I’ll have Cassie’s lot behind me.”
“What about the meat factory and the high-rise?”
Karen’s eyes appeared to gleam. “I’ll have Francis leave them to me in that note. And her swish pad and whatever’s in her bank account. And that’s another thing, we need to check that house when we go and pay her visit, see if there are any safes or offshore bank account statements. It’s not like she can put the Barrington earnings in a normal bank, is it. We’ll have the bloody lot.”
“You’re so clever.”
Karen preened. “I know.”
* * * *
Karen’s urge to kill was getting stronger by the minute. With every topic talked about, her ire rose—and her excitement. She was stepping up the ladder again, getting to the top, only this time she’d have the support of the Grafton employees, all that money, and the knowledge of exactly what pies Cassie and Francis had their pesky fingers in. There’d be more things going on than she was aware of, schemes and scams to bring in revenue, so much knowledge that had been kept from her.
“I’ll move into Francis’ house, and you can have Cassie’s flat if you want it. That way we’ll be close so we can discuss the running of the patch.” Karen liked the idea of that.
“Won’t it be better if I stay where I am so I can spy?” Doreen asked. “Like, they won’t know I help run it with you—well, offering you advice and things like that—and I can find out what people feel about you taking over. You know, like how we feel about Cassie. You don’t want someone else doing what we’re doing, do you, plotting behind your back. I reckon it’s best to know who our enemies are.”
“You’ve got a point there. Maybe Brenda will take the flat. Sharon’s lost her chance to run things, I’m afraid, what with her saying no to this, but Brenda might want it.”
They chatted for another couple of hours, and every so often, Karen typed some more in The Life document in case the police ever suspected her of wrongdoing, not that she could see how they’d be implicated in either death. Some forensic tech might be able to see all the keystrokes and when she’d typed for all she knew, and with a couple of hours’ gap, that meant they wouldn’t think it suspicious she hadn’t done it between the hours of one forty-five and two-thirty. She’d add a few more lines once she got home.
Sorted.
Doreen got up. “I need a wee. I’ll prod Harry again while I’m on the loo because he didn’t bloody reply. I don’t need him at mine when I get back. He’d ask questions. I bet he’s fallen asleep in front of the telly.” She took her bag and ambled off.
Karen pushed down her need for time to pass quickly and went into the kitchen to make some coffee. They had a way to go yet before they left the house, and the caffeine would keep them awake and hyped up. She eyed the knife she’d use, an old one from a set she’d shoved in a drawer, the biggest. She’d carved many a Sunday roast with it.
She thought of her children then, how they’d be shocked she’d been left the Barrington, worried she’d bitten off more than she could chew, especially at her age. They didn’t hold with the goings-on regarding the Graftons and tended to follow the rules, heads down. If only her ex was still around to see her rise back to the top. He’d probably come crawling once he knew she was loaded, and she’d have the pleasure of telling him to fuck right off.
Oh, the things she could do once she had the power.
She couldn’t bloody wait.
* * * *
Doreen sat on the loo and sent the recording to Cassie. She waited for the reply, anxious. She’d have to tell Karen she was caught short with a cheeky number two if much more time passed.
Five minutes later, Doreen on edge, her phone bleeped.
Cassie: It’s a go.
Chapter Twenty-One
Midnight, and Jimmy hadn’t managed to get Jason talking about Cassie yet. He could have kissed Geoff for announcing a lock-in—“But only until one, mind.” Jimmy needed to get his skates on. All this acting pissed up was wearing thin, and Shirl had texted twice to ask if he’d finished yet. She’d agreed to work for Cassie, and a third text had sailed in with her announcing some bloke had dropped her phone and envelope round: Five hundred quid, Jimmy. Bloody hell!
Jimmy would never have thought Shirl would be up for it, but she’d surprised him earlier by crying. Relief, she’d said, at never having to touch a dead fish again. He’d explained the rules, even though Cassie had done so that time she’d nipped round after Lenny had died, and Shirl had nodded all the way through it.
They’d be set for life if they stayed on Cassie’s good side. Jimmy didn’t plan on stepping over to the bad, so from now on, yeah, they’d be minted.
“I need a piss, but when I come back, I want your advice,” he slurred to his fellow bar propper-upper. He staggered off, and in the toilet stall, once again ended one recording and set up another. Jason had waffled all evening but hadn’t said owt worth playing to Cassie. This time, Jimmy would make sure he had evidence.
He returned to the bar, phone down by his side. Jason had a coffee in front of him, another beside Jimmy’s lemonade.
“Had enough, have you?” Jimmy asked.
“Yeah, thought we could do with sobering up.”
“True enough. I need to sit down. You coming?”
“Well, yeah, if you need that advice.”
They weaved to a booth, and Jimmy placed his phone on the leather seat, beside the farthest leg from Jason, resting his arm on his thigh to hide it. The recording screen was still lit up, and he couldn’t risk the bloke seeing it. It’d go dark in a bit, he’d practised earlier with Shirl.
“Look, this is going to sound mental, seeing as you work with Cassie, but is there any way you can get her to change her new rules back to how they were with Lenny? I mean, I get that we have a warning and whatever, but only one and then we’re dead? To be honest, she’s taking the fucking piss.”
“Why would it bother you? Just do what she says and be done with it.”
Jimmy leant closer to whisper in his ear, “I’ve had someone approach me about running drugs, some fella from the Moor estate, and wondered if you’d want in on it. We’re talking big money here, and I don’t need Cassie’s one-rule bollocks messing it up.”
Jason frowned. “Is it that ponce who got Richie Prince to sell on the Barrington?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Dunno. Some blond bloke, massive mole on his cheek. The size of ten pence, it is.”
“I’ve not heard of anyone like him. Where’s he from?”
“Somewhere foreign. Weird accent.”
“He’s someone I’ll need to know about when I take over.” Jason stroked his chin.
Jimmy’s guts rolled over—had he heard him right? Did he just let something slip? “You’re going to be in charge? Something we don’t know about yet? Us on the estate, I mean.”
Jason squinted at him. “I plan to. Cassie doesn’t even know about it.”
“How the fuck are you going to do that?”
“It’s not like I can tell you, is it. She’s after employing you to be a grass.”
Jimmy laughed. “Me? I wouldn’t grass for her if my arse was on fire and she promised to put it out.”
“Well, she reckons you’ll do it. Wants you to spy on people, report back.”
“Nope, not doing it. I’ve got plans of my own, see, and that’s to earn as much money as I can to take Shirl to some fancy place abroad, a nice holiday in the sun for a month. I’ll get hold of that drug bloke and say I’m ready to do it—are you in?”
Jason nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do this on the side until I’ve got Cassie right where I want her.”
“And where’s that?”
Words dribbled out of Jason’s treacherous, loose-lipped mouth, what he was going to do, how he’d run the estate with Cassie and her mother fucked out of their heads on tablets, unable to stop him. “I’ll put word around that grief hit them, that they’re not in their right mind and Cassie can’t rule the roost. She’ll have got hold of Karen to write in The Life by then, some guff about me being the one to obey. You wait and see, in six months, it’ll be me everyone’s scared of.”
If Jimmy had whiskey in that coffee, he’d neck the lot he was that sickened. Cassie was all right, just had to show a hard face, that was all. She didn’t deserve what this wanker had in mind. Jimmy had told the truth about the rules, and if Cassie asked him about it later when they met in the early hours, once she’d heard the recording, he’d admit he thought one warning was unfair—and that residents disliked her for the decision, putting it to her that maybe it was better to have them like her over grumbling about her, hate festering. Of course, that could earn him his one warning, so maybe he’d keep that shit to himself.
“So what do you reckon?” Jason picked up his coffee. Sipped, eyes closing.
Was he so drunk he’d forget what he’d said come the morning?
“You’ll smash it, pal.” Jimmy shuddered. “You’ll get your due in the end.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
One-thirty in the morning on a cold February day wasn’t a time to be out, but there they were, Cassie and Mam down the alley, leaving the stolen car parked in the street behind, wedged between two residents’ ready-for-the-scrappy saloons. They pressed their backs to the high wooden fence of someone’s garden, and Cassie stared out at Sculptor’s Field. The Beast seemed to shine in the moonlight, its tail end facing them, and she imagined Karen impaled on it. A smile crept in, the monster obliterating everything good about her, infusing her with the will to get the job done and return home, ready to watch the fallout tomorrow.
A layer of snow glistened, sparkling as if dotted with speckles of glass, and the silence that always came with the dumping of the white stuff gave the night a creepy feel.
Doreen’s recording had incensed Cassie and sent Mam off on one, raging about disrespect, that Karen and Sharon hadn’t really run the Barrington back then, they were more like a bully and her sidekick roaming around raising their fists and gobbing off.
“Nowt like your dad,” Mam had said. “No revenue created, no real fear, not like he inspired. She always did think she was some tough nut, but we’ll show her she isn’t.”
Cassie stared across, past The Beast inside its white chain-and-post cordon surround, to the line of houses on the other side of the field. As expected, all the lights were off bar one in a porch, the residents tucked up with no clue, thankfully, of what was about to happen. A set of headlights speared the night, a car coming down a street at the end of the row, then turning to nip into a space parallel to Cassie and Mam’s position.
Doreen convinced her to leave the car on New then.
“Are you ready, Cass?” Mam whispered.
“Yes, you?”
“Yes.”
Mam would remain in the alley, keeping watch for anyone coming by. Sometimes, folks used the cut-through after work, but as they’d planned, people who walked home from a late shift wouldn’t be here until around twenty past, later if the snow slowed them down, and if they did walk, they were mental being out in the dark.
“They’re early,” Mam said.
“Fine by me.”
Two figures got out of the car, just about discernible by the light of a streetlamp. The sound of the doors closing seemed overly loud, and Cassie grimaced. They didn’t need people peering out of windows and watching a murder, and they especially didn’t need to see a stripe of light from a bloody torch bobbing.
Cassie twigged then that the usual solar lamp that lit up The Beast wasn’t working.
“What the sodding hell are they doing?” Mam muttered. “I broke the solar lamp earlier because I didn’t want any light. It’s bright as it is with the snow.”
“It’ll be Karen’s idea, the torch. Doreen’s not that stupid.” Cassie clenched her teeth, the urge to shout at them immense. What, did Karen want a spotlight on Cassie? Did she want to see the red of blood instead of the black it would be in the darkness? Was she looking forward to watching the knife go in, right up to the hilt, her hand in contact with the centre of Cassie’s pierced stomach?
Karen and Doreen tromped over the snow, reached the chains, and climbed over. Karen wiped a large patch of the plinth beneath The Beast and set the torch down, positioned so the light created a horizontal band across the gloom. With the moon’s help, they were clearly in view as they sat on the plinth, Doreen’s shoulders hunched, her hands in her coat pockets—Cassie had told her to wear all black, clothing she didn’t mind burning after—Karen ramrod straight, glancing all around. Cassie had already checked what could be seen from there, and Karen would spot nowt but murk down the alley, a slanted shadow created by the house, with a faint portion of the whitened street at the other end.
In the car, Cassie had already taken her weapon out of the briefcase and held the handle tight. Mam’s breathing was heavy, quick. Was she recalling the days when she’d gone out with Dad, on the prowl, there to have his back when he did things only those two knew about? Cassie had found another ledger last night, smaller, a burgundy diary with 1991 on it, and inside… God, so many little jobs Mam had participated in before she’d got pregnant. Mam had groused about Dad not telling her everything, but the pair of them had omitted to mention Mam’s involvement in the early days.
There was no doubt Mam knew what she was doing, that she’d cope with this. Cassie just had to hope her mother didn’t need to get involved. She wasn’t sure she could stand seeing an older, brunette version of herself doing Karen harm. It would show her what she looked like doling out pain.
Time seemed to still. Karen and Doreen must be whispering. Clouds of their breath drifted through the torchlight, reminding Cassie of the dry ice at discos in The Donny and the way it loitered in the multicoloured strobes. Maybe they were going over their plan one last time, but she’d bet Doreen was right on edge, wanting to get this over and done with so she could go home and forget her part in it.
Or maybe she wouldn’t. She might have a monster inside her, too, one that enjoyed every second.
Mam’s watch alarm vibrated, and the buzz seemed more like a shriek. “It’s time.”
Cassie held her weapon behind her, the handle in one gloved fist, the looped whip in the other. She left the alley, her heart going mad, and strode towards The Beast, the snow creaking beneath her boots
. If she didn’t know Karen planned to stab her, this would be a pathetic move, leaving herself open to getting shot. It wouldn’t harm her torso, she had a bulletproof vest on, absolutely no intention of allowing Karen to stab her there at all, but a head shot, one in the thigh, they’d do fatal damage.
She cocked one leg over a chain, then the other, and approached a now standing Karen and Doreen. “What’s with all the cloak and dagger?”
Karen eyed her up and down then flashed a kitchen knife out, waving it at Cassie. “I’m taking back what’s mine.”
“I don’t understand.” Cassie frowned. “Don’t you mean you need to me sort something so you get whatever it is back? After all, I run the estate.”
“It shouldn’t be yours. It was mine to begin with, and now he’s gone, I’m taking it back.”
“Oh dear.” Cassie stared at her. “Doreen, you might want to take a walk.”
“Don’t do owt she says, Dor,” Karen warned.
Doreen took one step sideways. “I don’t plan to. She’s scum.”
Cassie smiled inwardly. Their basic script was working well. “And after I paid for your hair and gave you perfume an’ all, Dor. What an ungrateful cow.”
“You what?” Karen glared at Doreen. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“She didn’t tell you this either…” Cassie brought the whip out.
Doreen ran, heading around The Beast, skidding to the other side, well out of range. Karen turned to Cassie and growled, lunged, the rage on her face shadowy where the torchlight didn’t quite reach. Cassie jogged backwards and swung the whip, the barbed tongue landing across Karen’s face, gripping her skin. Her scream had been factored in, and Cassie would need to be quick.
Down on her knees, trying to get the barbs out, Karen wailed. Cassie wrenched the whip away, skin coming off, her cheeks and top lip bleeding. Doreen came round, her knife at the ready, and grabbed Karen’s hair from behind. She held the blade to her throat, and Cassie dropped her whip and prised Karen’s knife from her weak fist.
