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
