The Piggy Farmer (The Barrington Patch Book 3) Read online

  The Piggy Farmer - Text copyright © Emmy Ellis 2021

  Cover Art by Emmy Ellis @ studioenp.com © 2021

  All Rights Reserved

  The Piggy Farmer 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

  A Word of Advice, Cass

  “There have been times I’ve kept shit to myself. Didn’t want to burden your mam, see. The thing is, if you let people know everything about you, they’ve got you trapped. Keep something back, always. Besides, it adds a bit of mystery to you. Folks get intrigued, they want to know what you’re hiding, figure you out like you’re some kind of riddle, and that’s when you’ll spot the ones who just want info from you. They’ll stand out a mile once you twig. I hope you never get shafted, but it’s inevitable. I only hope I’m around to see them off. I’d kill anyone who hurt you. If I’m not there…well, you know what to do. Fucking kill them yourself.”

  – Lenny Grafton, ex-leader of the Barrington

  Dear Diary

  All this crap with the Jade has shown me I can’t trust anyone—even Mam was hiding stuff from me. Finding out via that diary what she used to get up to… I know she’s entitled to her secrets, but for me to not have known she’d gadded about with Dad, helping him keep the patch in order…

  She’s killed people, helped make them disappear.

  Fucking hell.

  Maybe Dad had told her to keep something of herself back, too.

  At least I know now. I can count on Mam to help me like she did with Karen and Zhang Wei. For all I know, she’s been suppressed all these years, looking after me instead of being in the thick of it. Why didn’t she go back to doing her thing once I was an adult?

  Dad probably said no.

  He said a lot of things.

  He didn’t say a lot of things, too.

  I’m fast learning that his advice went deep when he took it himself. He kept a lot back, not just ‘something’. I’m wondering now whether he only showed us a percentage of himself. Maybe fifty. The other half…God knows what we’re unaware of. I get why he kept Doreen’s secret, but to not even put it in the ledgers?

  And as for Doreen… She committed the act of murder with intent. She didn’t hit Karen over the head like she had with Sharon’s ex, she stabbed the shit out of Karen’s face and slit the woman’s throat, for God’s sake.

  Should I ask her to be my right hand?

  Or is Mam the one I need by my side?

  Chapter One

  Cassie was in the same situation as when she’d been staring at Jiang on the concrete round the back of the Jade. Here she was, presented with a body in a car boot, except this time, it was going to be dodgy as eff covering it up. A risk.

  Lou Wilson had killed a copper. PC Bob Holworth’s face, squashed, had a tyre mark across it. He didn’t appear to have much of his brains left, like the top of his head had exploded from the pressure of the weight when she’d run him over. At least Cassie assumed that was what had happened.

  What had Lou been doing out in the middle of the night? Cassie, Mam, and Doreen had left her at Handel Farm after they’d taken Karen’s and Zhang Wei’s minced-up bodies to the barn for the pigs to eat. Lou must have waited for her husband, Joe, to fall asleep, then went out and did…this.

  A chill wind sliced across the back of Cassie’s neck, creating a ripple of shivers down her spine. From the darkened driveway, she glanced at the upstairs windows. No lights. Only the one on the porch glowed, something Mam kept on if Cassie wasn’t home yet. She shifted her sights to her flat above the garage.

  She’d move back in there soon.

  She was knackered—it had been a bloody long day—and she’d arrived home from torturing her useless right hand, Jason, to fill in the ledger then go to bed. Instead, she stood beside a creepy-as-fuck Lou, who’d gone even weirder than she usually was.

  Cassie recalled their recent conversation and looked in the boot, cringing. The interior light showcased blood and brain matter on the dark-grey carpet and Bob curled into a pretzel where Lou had somehow packed him inside. Killing a police officer was bad news.

  “You said you’re ‘The Piggy Farmer’.” Cassie closed the boot—she didn’t need any nosy neighbours clocking a dead uniformed officer, and besides, she couldn’t stand looking at him any longer. She’d need to warn residents to keep their gobs shut if they spotted Bob, and quite frankly, she couldn’t be arsed. “You also said you want to kill all the police who were involved with Jess’ disappearance.”

  Everyone knew Lou still hadn’t got over the murder of her three-year-old daughter, but for fuck’s sake, killing coppers? Why now, all these years later? What had happened in Lou’s brain for her to snap like this? Or had she always planned to do it and had bided her time, waiting for courage to lend her a hand?

  Lou’s face was shrouded by darkness, meaning Cassie didn’t have to see her eerie face, thank God.

  “I’ve been thinking about it for years, and now I’m ready. Like I told you, your mam’s in on it. She understands I can’t sit back and do nowt.”

  “Why didn’t you do it sooner?”

  “Because it only came to light recently that Lenny fucked up, that’s why. The Mechanic didn’t kill my girl, Vance Johnson did. I convinced myself back then that so long as one of the kidnappers was dead, some form of justice had been served. Now, knowing both people hadn’t been caught? Those coppers were just as clueless as your old man. God rest his soul and everything, but fucking hell.”

  Cassie couldn’t argue there. Dad had well messed up. It was hard for her to cope with his pedestal crumbling. At first, she’d been embarrassed at his mistake, wanted to cover it up, but soon after, anger had taken over. He wasn’t the man she’d thought, and she felt lied to. Duped.

  She sighed. “But the pigs still fucked up back then, and you knew it, Lou.”

  “The Vance business brought it all back. It was like the scab had been picked off.”

  You’ve picked it enough yourself for twenty-odd years. You never let the wound heal. “So what do you plan to do, go round running them all over?” Cassie imagined the shite left on the road, evidence Lou had mown down a copper—the one who’d kept his mouth shut and turned a blind eye on the Barrington. The man who Cassie needed on her side. Now she’d have to feel out whoever replaced Bob on
the community beat and see if they’d take a wedge of money each week to look the other way.

  Things were getting more difficult by the day. Why did Dad have to go and die? While she’d allowed her inner monster to rule since the six months before he’d passed on, hiding her true self, could she continue to do that now the police were the targets? It was a strange quandary. She broke the law, but pissing about with coppers like this seemed wrong—more wrong than the other stuff she did.

  ‘Business always comes first, Cass. You deal with shit and worry about it afterwards.’

  Dad’s voice didn’t bring her comfort like it usually did. She was out of her depth here. Pigs would be swarming the area when Bob didn’t check in, trying to find their colleague. They didn’t warm to one of their own being killed in the line of duty. They’d pull out all the stops, and that would most likely piss Lou off an’ all. Cassie could imagine it now: Oh, they’re out there looking for a cop killer, but they let my Jess’ murderer wander round the country offing other kiddies. If they’d found him before he’d legged it, those children would still be alive.

  Plus, there was limited time to get the road cleared up. While it was winter, the mornings dark, someone would be out on their way to work soon.

  “Where did you run him over?” Cassie hugged herself—not only because it was bloody cold, but for comfort. Did Mam know the method of death Lou had chosen? Had she agreed it was a good idea? Was there some of Bob’s brains and blood in the tyre treads, transferring onto the driveway?

  Lou sniffed. It was odd seeing her without her usual tartan blanket wrapped around her shoulders, a thick jacket in its place. “It wasn’t a road. It was the parking area behind the meat factory.”

  Cassie’s skin seemed to freeze, and anger boiled, soon warming her up, her face flaming. “What? The factory? For fuck’s sake.” She paced, in part to get away from Lou before she walloped her one, and also to think. Her mind raced. This was a right old dog’s dinner. She returned to Lou, her fists balled. “One, he could have radioed in that he was going there, and two, why the hell was he poking around up that way? Did he see you? Like, did you follow right up his arse so he could have also radioed it in that you were there? He’d have seen your number plate.”

  A loud snort came from Lou’s direction, spooky in the blackness, the hedge separating Mam’s from next door a clumpy backdrop. “When he took the road to the factory, I carried on, did a U-turn, drove round the back, then ploughed into the fucker as he walked towards me.”

  And you have no guilt whatsoever by the sound of it.

  It played out inside Cassie’s head. Bob was an okay fella. As old as Lou, early retirement only a few years away. What bad luck to be killed when he’d almost finished his stint. “We’re going to have to go there and clean up. I can’t have any workers seeing blood and whatever in the snow. I assume his brains are on the ground.”

  “I picked up the big lumps and put them in a carrier bag. Joe’s pigs will enjoy them.”

  Cassie closed her eyes at the image that presented. Lou getting enjoyment from holding someone’s brain. Cassie opened them again and stared at the shadowed bushes to her right that split Mam’s property from the public pavement, lowering her voice. “How the hell did you manage to get him into the boot?”

  Lou was a wisp of a woman, barely eating since Jess had died, and although she worked on her husband’s farm and must have decent muscles, she wasn’t exactly weightlifter of the sodding year, was she.

  “I got by fine, thanks very much. Anger lends a hand when you’re so steaming with it you could explode.”

  Lou came off as demented, her voice holding a breathy quality, as if she’d lost the strength to speak properly, and Cassie supposed she would be crackers, given the circumstances, the road she’d travelled up until this point. To lose a child… Cassie couldn’t imagine the pain the woman had been through, and she never would. Having kids wasn’t on her agenda anymore, not now she did such a dangerous job. She wasn’t like Mam, who’d given it all up for her kid, and despite Cassie being sickened sometimes as her old self, her new self, her inner monster, enjoyed what she did.

  She slapped her thigh. “Right, we need to get Mam up. She can sort the copper with Marlene.” Christ, a police officer going into the adapted mincer at the factory wasn’t something Cassie had ever thought would happen. “We’ll clean up the—” She paused, dread seeping into her. “Christ, Lou. His car!”

  Lou laughed quietly, and the tinkle of it had the hairs on the back of Cassie’s neck standing up.

  “Already dealt with that.”

  “What?”

  “I phoned your mam for help. She turned up at the factory and drove it way past the squat, about a mile farther on, and set it on fire. I followed, then took her back to pick hers up. We came here. I was about to go home but knocked on the door again—I couldn’t risk Joe waking up and catching me putting the copper in one of the pig pens, so I wanted your mam to help me get rid of Bob. There’s his uniform that needs burning… Then you came along.”

  That was something, the car being torched, and at least it was in the dark, out in the sticks, so it was unlikely anyone would see it unless they drove past or an insomniac looked out of a window and spotted the flames in the distance. But a mile away from the squat? That was far too close. Cassie had Jason pinned to the floor in there by an eight-inch nail through his shin, and Jimmy, her new grass, was babysitting him. She couldn’t afford for the police to roll up at the abandoned house, asking questions once they’d discovered the blackened police car shell.

  But would they even bother knocking? As far as they’re aware, it’s empty.

  “Give me a second to think,” she said. “Go and wake Mam—I’m assuming she went straight to bed, what with the house lights being off.”

  Cassie fired off a WhatsApp message to Jimmy: Make sure the blackout blind in the living room is attached to the wall—there’s Velcro on them. I forgot to tell you to do that when I was there. We can’t let any light out. Shit’s gone down. Don’t open the door unless I get hold of you first. Did my fella come by with the telly and everything?

  Lou stood at the front door, and Cassie paced the driveway, then moved to the end of it and checked the street. No lights on anywhere apart from a porch down the way a bit.

  Her phone bleeped, and she stood by Lou’s car to read it.

  Jimmy: I already did the blind. Okay about opening the door. Yes to the telly and stuff. Your guest has passed out.

  Cassie: Good. We don’t need him waking up and creating noise. If he does, punch him until he blacks out again.

  Jimmy: Right.

  Cassie wasn’t sure Jimmy was up to that, but if he wanted to earn big money and be part of her close team, he’d have to learn, wouldn’t he.

  This was beyond a dog’s dinner. She couldn’t think properly. On the one hand, her mind was fudged from lack of sleep, from the shock of seeing Bob, and on the other, she needed to work out the best course of action here.

  Before the sun reared its big ball of a head.

  The police car—would it still be burning? If it wasn’t, was it too hot for her clean-up crew to move? Ideally, to stop the police sniffing around, she needed to get rid of it. She had a scrappy on her books who disposed of vehicles, crunching them up into compacted squares, so that wasn’t a problem. He was used to being woken up in the middle of the night with a delivery, asking no questions.

  She had to act on this now so sent a message to her crew. The light in the hallway snapping on and Mam coming out of the house, fully dressed, meant she’d gone in the kitchen at the back and closed the door, hence the previous darkness. She’d probably been sitting at the island with a whiskey, steadying her nerves not only after shooting Zhang Wei and their disposal of two bodies, but also setting fire to a fucking police car. While Cassie had been torturing Jason, Mam had been doing her own kind of illegal deed.

  Cassie walked to the door and gestured for Mam and Lou to go inside. Her
phone bleeped again, and while the older women went down the hallway, Cassie checked her screen.

  Crew One: On our way.

  Cassie: Be quick. Be careful.

  Crew One: We always are.

  She locked up and joined Mam and Lou in the kitchen. Lou sat at the island, spine straight, a creepy smile in place. Mam had coffee on the go. Cassie sat opposite Lou, able to take her in properly now the light was on. The farmer’s wife had a mental-case gleam in her eyes, and she twitched, most likely manic with the excitement of what she’d done, what was happening now. Cassie understood that feeling well—hadn’t she got some perverse pleasure from hurting people? Especially Jason, the little bastard, trying to take the Barrington off her. Cutting Karen’s stomach up had given Cassie a massive rush, too, another turncoat who’d planned to rule the patch.

  Dad had warned her this might happen, but two people doing it? Were there others who hated her style of command and planned to snatch the estate from her? Why did they think they had the right?

  “We’ll have a coffee while we make plans,” she said, “then we’ll go to the factory. The crew are sorting the police car.” She gave Lou a dirty look. “Mam, you’ll deal with Bob and Marlene—you’ll also need to sort the brains Lou put in a carrier bag. Once we’re finished, I’ll go to the squat to burn the bag and Bob’s clothes.”

  “This is so exciting” Lou said.

  You bloody weirdo.

  Mam shivered, pausing with her hand on a mug, and Cassie took it that her mother thought Lou was disturbed, too.

  No more disturbed than me putting the flaps of Karen’s stomach skin in my pocket.

  Cassie eyed the nutter. “Lou, me and you will clean up the ground behind the factory and also scrub your boot and the tyres—there’s no way I can get the valet on it unless you can cover your arse with Joe. He’ll wonder where your car is if I drop you off.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Speaking of Joe. What time does he get up?”