“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.
“Face,” Cassie said.
Doreen slashed at Karen’s features, obliterating any evidence that barbs had been used. Cassie plunged Karen’s knife into the treasonous bitch’s stomach, over and over, grunting, snarling, incensed it had come to his. Blood coated Karen’s face, spurted from between her lips, landed on Cassie’s face. Doreen, in an unplanned move, lifted her knife and drove the blade into Karen’s open mouth. Claret spewed everywhere, marring the snow with spots, and Doreen let go of her hair. Cassie stopped stabbing, Karen falling backwards, legs bent beneath her, and the image of Richie Prince in the same position when Jason had killed him in the squat entered Cassie’s mind. She shook it off, pushed away the voice of Jason as he’d described it, and bent to snatch open Karen’s coat and push up her top.
“No one’s come out to see,” Doreen panted out, “nor have any lights come on.”
Good.
Some of Karen’s guts poked through a couple of wounds, rich with redness and the oozing of blood. Cassie knelt beside the woman and hacked at her belly, slicing in a cross and exposing her innards. She cut off the four ragged triangles she’d made, some with cuts on them, and threw them on the snow for the police to ponder over. Karen gurgled and moaned, and Doreen crouched by her head. She looked at Cassie.
“Do it,” Cassie said.
Doreen dragged her blade from one side of Karen’s throat to the other, proving her loyalty, that she was as up for this as she’d promised. She was earning her murder money, and there would be more where that came from. Doreen was an excellent killer, calm and collected, her hand steady, no nerves showing.
Who the hell is she underneath it all?
Karen jolted then stilled, her neck gaping, dark blood viscous and heading down the sides to the snow. Cassie stared at Doreen, and something passed between them, not just a shared experience but a mutual respect. It cemented Doreen’s place in Cassie’s world, she’d be a permanent fixture, and Cassie blessed the day Jason had shot Richie so their paths had definitely crossed.
“Time to get her up,” Cassie said, rising.
A rhythmic crumping sound from the alley’s direction had her pausing. She glanced across at Mam walking over the snow, her back arched, a man behind her, although he wasn’t tall so Cassie couldn’t see who it was. The business end of a gun pressed to Mam’s temple, and a black-clad arm clamped over her chest.
“Get over the chain,” he commanded Mam.
Zhang Wei? What the fuck is he doing here?
Cassie switched the knife into her left hand and swept her weapon up with her right, ire surging through her so fast she went giddy. Doreen stepped up beside her, pointing her blade towards Mam and Zhang Wei, who came towards them as a staggering duo, one with fury in her eyes, the other with less anger, the moon casting a beam behind them from between two bulbous clouds.
“Let my mother go,” Cassie said. “Then we can talk.”
“No. I hold your mother until I get what I want.”
“What’s that then?”
“You kill Helen and Geoff.”
Cassie sighed. “I’ve already explained my position on that.”
“If you do not say you will do it, I will pull the trigger.”
Cassie looked at Mam, who didn’t appear as scared as she should be.
“All right,” Cassie said. “I’ll kill them. Now let her go.”
Surprisingly, Zhang Wei released Mam, shoving her to the ground.
Mam shot back up, rushing behind him. “Doreen, Cassie…split.”
Cassie dived one way, Doreen the other, and a gunshot retorted, quieter than it would have been without a silencer. Still, Cassie cursed the noise, the attention this might bring—they’d got lucky with Karen’s scream. She sat on her arse, the cold of the snow seeping through her leggings, the whip handle and knife pointing upwards. She stared at Zhang Wei, his forehead gone, his eyes wide in shock, his mouth bursting with blood. He fell forwards, landing face-first and, fuck it, there would be evidence of him now, and this would mess up what they’d had in mind for Karen—to leave her impaled on The Beast for the police to deal with.
Mam ran round to grab one of Zhang Wei’s wrists. “Get the other, Doreen. He’ll have to come with us. Cassie, you get a crew down
