The Jade Garden (The Barrington Patch Book 2) by Emmy Ellis (reading diary txt) 📗

“We’ll come back later,” she said. “He’s probably in bed. Killing’s an adrenaline rush. If it’s him, he’ll be knackered—or he’s celebrated and zonked out, off his tits on coke.”

“Where to now then?”

“Try Graham. See if he’s really having a party.” Although if he wasn’t, the amount of food he’d bought from Li Jun was a bit much for one person. Graham lived alone as far as she was aware. Then again, buying enough food for several people was a good cover if you were involved in robbing the Jade. The money he stood to make from his part in it would more than cover the cost of the grub.

Jason headed there, Cassie staring through the passenger window at the houses whose inhabitants she kept close at heel. Amazing how she could do that, but she had her father to thank for doing the groundwork. Without him telling people they had to obey her when he died, she doubted the majority would have been so amenable. It was simple to her: Do as I ask, and no one gets hurt. If they had owt about them, they’d comply and get on with their lives.

Jason was unusually quiet. Earlier, when she’d asked where the fuck he’d been for so long, he’d told her he’d gone for a drive after delivering Jiang’s body to the meat factory, needing to clear his head of the anger that’d whipped through him at someone having the cheek to even think about robbing the drugs, robbing ‘us’. She hadn’t told him it was her and Mam being robbed, no ‘us’ about it, thinking it was a slip of the tongue on his part, that he saw them as a solid unit, and she supposed she ought to be grateful for that instead of grumbling to herself about it. Plus, she understood how he felt regarding the anger—she was keeping a tight rein on her annoyance, but she’d let it out once she got home and told Mam what had been going on.

Jason turned down Leopold Road and slowed to check the house numbers. At their destination, number fifteen, disco lights flashed inside a living room containing a fair few dancing bodies that presented as silhouettes, arms waving, heads thrown back with laughter. So he was having a party, and anyroad, Li Jun had said the intruder was slim. Graham certainly wasn’t, thick around the middle and a short-arse to boot, so he wasn’t the machete man. Still, she needed to talk to him. He could have seen someone hanging around when he’d left the Jade. Without him realising it, he might have knowledge tucked away inside his wide head that she needed in order to find the fucker.

Jason parked, and she got out, waiting for him on the pavement beneath a streetlamp. A chill swept through her, the cold air biting her straight away, and she hugged herself. Together, they walked up the garden path, and she knocked loudly, thinking it might not be heard above the thumping music, some rave crap or other, the partygoers probably reliving their twenties. She absently wondered whether any of them had bought mollies to recreate it properly.

The door opened, swinging back the way it did when someone who was drunk yanked on the handle. The music was louder, the laughter chasing it, and Cassie winced. A blonde woman stood there, about forty, half-cut, swaying, a glass of something transparent and bubbly held up. A chunk of ice jostled and butted the inside, a slice of lemon diving to the bottom, its pip falling free.

“Yeah?” She hiccupped.

“I need to speak to Graham.” Cassie didn’t recognise her. Maybe the guests were relatives from out of town or people from another estate.

“Someone moaning about the music, are they? Fucking killjoys.” She turned and shouted down the hallway, “Graham!” Then off she went, staggering past the newel post with a mound of coats hanging on it, leaving the door wide open, veering into the living room shouting, “Woi-oi! I’m back!”

Cassie glanced at Jason. He shrugged, the gesture telling her he didn’t understand the concept of getting rat-arsed. She hadn’t heard of him going out on a bender, so maybe he imbibed more than one at home in private like she did.

Movement in the corner of her eye had her looking forward. Graham came out of the kitchen ahead and ambled along, smiling away—until he clocked who stood on his step.

“Oh fuck. We’ll keep it down. I’ll get someone to—”

“It isn’t the music.” Cassie smiled tightly. “Come out here a second and close the door to. This is between you and us. No need for your friends to hear this.”

Graham obeyed, giving her a worried look. Cassie and Jason stepped back so he had room on the path. Graham straightened his curry-stained top.

Nervous Nelly or what. She should be ashamed people felt this way around her, but a life of being taught not to connect to anyone else’s emotions, to erase all empathy while she was working, meant she curbed any sorrow.

“You were at the Jade earlier,” she said.

“Yes?” Graham’s forehead wrinkled. “What’s up with that?”

She forgave him the belligerence. Drink probably lent him some bravado now he knew she wasn’t going to punch his face in or use her barbed whip on him. “Did you see anyone hanging around when you went in, and again when you left?”

Graham peered into the darkness over her shoulder, thinking, hand splayed over the stain. “Some fella by the hedge opposite, waiting for the bus.”

Li Jun had seen him, too. How bloody long was he standing there? Did he plan to go into the Jade, then Graham came along, preventing him? “What did he look like?”

“Skinny. Didn’t really take much notice, to be honest. I stuck the food in the car then