Doreen thought of the envelope Cassie had passed her at the car when they’d come back from the pig barn. Fat, it was, and contained all the cash she’d been promised. While she’d never scrub what she’d seen and heard from her mind—amongst other things from her past, those pigs grunting would forever be the soundtrack of her nightmares—the money would certainly go some way to easing things.
“I’ll do whatever,” Doreen said. “I’ve already done the worst thing I could do by slashing Karen’s face.” And the other stuff. Dare she admit it had felt good to take all her anger out on Karen’s skin? That she’d killed her? “I liked it.” A vast difference to before when she’d— Don’t think about that.
Francis laughed. “It gets addictive, and when you don’t have that outlet… Let’s just say I had to content myself with being Lenny’s sounding board and waiting for him to describe what he’d done to people to get my fix.”
Doreen remembered how she’d felt years ago. She’d been eighteen, that terrible time when— “I’m scared of the police, of them finding out we—”
Francis smiled. “The cleaners will have dug up the bloodied snow by now and scrubbed The Beast, bleached it. If someone saw us, we’d appear as indistinct shapes, people, yes, but our features were too far away for proper identification. As for when we were near houses, all the lights were off. We have the police on our side, coppers willing to make things go away, so don’t even worry about it.”
Doreen didn’t say they ought to be careful, to never become complacent, but it wasn’t her place, and she didn’t fancy getting up close and personal with Marlene, ending up inside pigs’ bellies. For now, she’d spy for Cassie, take her five hundred a week, and deal with any daunting requests when they occurred. At the minute, she had to come to terms with how killing again had given her a new lease on life, and she wasn’t just talking Martin Barnett either. Lou knew her secret, she’d been a part of it, and they’d promised never to tell, not even Lenny.
It was a past better left buried.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cassie had dropped Mam off so she could change, and Doreen had gone home to burn her clothes and boots in her living room fireplace. What a night, but it wasn’t over yet. Cassie waited for Jimmy on New Barrington in a car park behind the parade of shops, the interior light on. She’d had the chance at home to listen to the recording he’d sent earlier and now needed him to be more than a grass.
He coasted into the space beside her, switched the engine off, and got out to climb into her passenger seat. “All right?”
“Yes, had a bit of business to attend to and I’ve only just finished.”
He stared across at her. “You’ve got blood on you.”
She shrugged. “Probably. Like I said, business.”
“Fucking hell. I won’t ask.”
“Good. I have another job for you.” She’d picked up five grand from Mam’s safe, tucking it inside a padded brown envelope, then she’d phoned the thorn in her side and demanded he meet her, too, just not here. “Babysitting.”
“I don’t think that’s my bag,” he said. “Kids are a bit much for me.”
“It isn’t a kid, although he acts like one sometimes. The person’s meeting us outside the squat. He wasn’t best pleased at me getting him out of bed, pissed up as he still is, but he’s my right hand and has to do whatever I ask him.”
“You want me to babysit Jason?”
“Is that going to be a problem?” She took the envelope out of the door cubby, opened it, and showed him the contents. “Five Gs. You can split it with Shirl, take it in shifts.”
“Not being funny, but I don’t want Shirl anywhere near him. What if he hurts her?”
“He won’t be in a position to hurt her, trust me on that. Do you want the job or not?”
Jimmy sighed. “Yeah, I could do with that amount of cash, to be honest.”
“How are you at witnessing violence?”
“Not sure.”
“You’ll be seeing a fair bit. Follow me to the squat. If I give you an order when we’re there, you follow it, right?”
Jimmy nodded and left the car. She switched the interior light off, drove round the side of the shops, and waited for the beam of his headlamps behind. They slashed into her car, and she eased out onto the road, heading for the squat, hers, Mam’s, Karen’s, and Zhang Wei’s clothes and footwear in a bag, ready for the furnace. She also had to sort that machete.
Jason’s belligerent, drunken ranting replayed in her mind.
“Oh, so you want me now, do you, when it’s dark?”
“Just get to the bloody squat.”
“I’ve been drinking.”
“So? You managed to get home in your car from The Donny, I’ll bet.”
“Whatever. If I get stopped…”
“You’ll get done for drink driving, no biggie, although I can get it arranged that you weren’t stopped at all, and any paperwork at the cop shop meets a shredder, computer files deleted. Please, for once, just do something without arguing.”
She arrived at the squat, angry at seeing Jason standing there, the bottom-right and top-left lights on in the house, the lower yellow glow creating a rectangular shaft that bled onto his back, giving him a mustard aura. She pulled up to the left and got out, slamming
