Cold Calling: American Psycho meets Crime & Punishment on the Cardiff call centre circuit

by Haydn Wilks

  You amuse yourself with the thought that parliament might order airstrikes on Cardiff if you were ever found out, as your blunt object search moves to the hallway, and settles on Emma’s hefty Doc Martens.

  You return to the kitchen with a boot in hand, take a breath, then slam it down onto the ice-crusted bag, cracking the head inside like an Easter egg. You pause, then overarm the boot down onto the bag again, then again, slamming it until the bag’s more or less flattened, then you stop and say “fuck” at the sight of a crack your hammering’s left in the kitchen unit.

  “How the fuck am I gonna explain that?” you mumble, as you lift the ice-crusted bag, open it, and stare at the shards of frozen flesh and bone and brain matter splattered inside it.

  Now what?

  The pieces are small enough they could conceivably be hidden inside other things, and you reason that no one would jump to the conclusion that an unidentified bit of white or pink concealed within something else would have come from a smashed-up baby skull.

  You open the fridge and scan the shelves inside, interest piqued with a plethora of options. You start unloading possibilities onto the kitchen unit and try and whistle the theme tune from Requiem for a Dream as you force bits of baby head into the half of a thick oozing black forest gateaux that Emma bought a couple of nights ago. You rub flakes of skull and flesh between your thumb and forefinger until they powder. You dispose a surprisingly large quantity of this powder into a carton of pulpy Tropicana orange juice. What else can be easily powdered gets mixed in with Nescafe Gold Blend instant coffee and Bisto gravy granules in one of the cupboards beside the fridge. You get rid of what you can this way, keeping it all entirely inconspicuous, resisting the temptation to place one of the blackened burnt baby eyes in with a pot of pitted olives, though you eat one of the olives yourself, and have a weird half-second after biting into it where you wait for the flavour to hit to confirm that you haven’t just popped one of the baby’s eyes into your mouth by mistake. This thought causes some kind of electrical storm in your brain circuitry, and you leave the fridge open as you stare at the considerable mass of baby skull fragments in the carrier bag on the kitchen unit, still waiting to be disposed of. Your phone vibrates; Emilia’s Whatsapp’d you: hey, was nice meeting you last night! Hows your Saturday going? You stare at the iced baby fragments and briefly contemplate telling her the truth, but instead slide your phone back into your pocket, leaving her message unanswered, as you decide to take the rest of the skull and carcass upstairs to the bathroom, break it down into the smallest pieces possible, and slowly flush it down the toilet.

  On Monday morning, you leave the house at 8.20am, twenty minutes than earlier than usual. You stop off at the newsagents on the way in to work to pick some tobacco up. Someone’s at the counter talking to the shopkeeper, and your eyes drift immediately to the newspaper headlines.

  CARDIFF BABY STILL MISSING – The Times, a sombre little insert beside a bigger story on the PM’s speech to parliament in favour of airstrikes on Syria;

  THEORIES EMERGING ON CARDIFF BABY WHEREABOUTS – The Guardian, your tale again subservient to Syrian airstrikes.

  Your eyes move right to left, your story assuming prominence in screaming headlines, the PM’s speech on Syria shrinking to inserts.

  POLICE CLUELESS ON BABY MYSTERY – The Mirror.

  LACK OF SECURITY AT IMMIGRANT DETENTION CENTRE MAY ‘HOLD CLUE’ FOR MISSING BABY – The Daily Mail.

  DID FATHER KILL WIFE & BABY IN CARDIFF BABY MYSTERY? – The Sun.

  You smirk at how far off they are. You contemplate buying them all, reading the fine print, but realise how odd it would be, someone sourcing news so widely, paying for it all, and that strikes you as saying something deep and meaningful about the state of the British media and the society it serves as the person at the counter finishes their transaction and the shoptender’s free. “Yes, please?”

  You scan the half-covered row of cigarette and tobacco packets, the steel shutter across them left ajar from the previous customer’s purchase. You’re about to get a 3-in-1 box of Amber Leaf, but decide in an instant to cut back on quantity, spend more on higher quality, reduce your intake and wean yourself off them: “Ten Marlboro Lights, please.”

  You walk to work in calm mild morning and realise how disparate the press’ take on things is and realise you might have gotten away with it. You leave the fag pack unopened and concentrate on that fact as you wait for the lights to change on the pedestrian crossing. You glance from the opposite side of the street to the high walls of the prison, tucked just behind Queen Street Station, hidden in plain view. That could be you in there, you think thankfully, before correcting yourself; that’s a pretty low-level prison, and there’s no way they’d let someone who’s done what you’ve done go anywhere that near to civilisation again. No. You’d be serving time in a proper hardcore institution in the middle of a fog-choked moor somewhere in Yorkshire. The light turns green. But you’re not.

  You stroll down Atlantic Wharf, no strong desire for a cigarette on the way, then get into the office almost quarter of an hour early, much to Barney’s surprise.

  “Let’s see you transfer this new-found diligence into some sales, yeah?”

  You smile and strap your headset on.

  Your smile doesn’t fade all morning, chatting calmly whilst staring at the screen, making it all about them, telling each potential customer what a change to their insurance policy could to do to improve their lives. Breezy well wishes filter in through the headset. You send a lead through, then another, then another. Three by the eleven o’clock fag break.

  “You not coming outside, Sicko?”

  “Nah.”

  “What, you quitting?” Jake says, shocked.

  “Just cutting down a bit.”

  You spend the break Googling sales technique, jotting down tips in your notebook.

  Make it about them. Done.

  Strike up a rapport. Working on it.

  Use short, impactful sentences. OK.

  End on a call to action. I will.

  The headset’s back on and your ploughing into Callex the second 11.15 hits. Call, call, rapid-fire call. Two more leads, Barney nodding, impressed, as you mark them on the board. Two call backs scheduled for this evening, two lovely sounding ladies at opposite ends of England waiting on their husbands’ approval. You send another lead through: a guy who works at a twenty-four hour Tesco in Carlisle, resting up before his night shift. Your call wakes him up, but your good-natured pleasantness eases his annoyance off before you convince him to set up an appointment. Another lead goes through. Another. Lunch.

  “How’re we doing?” Jim says, walking in at lunch time with his gym back hanging off his shoulders.

  Barney aims his non-lazy left eye at the board. “We’re doing good. Jake, Craig, both doing well. Rhys is on fire! Jesus, Rhys, what’s happened to you this weekend? You’re one away from target already.”

  You bite into baby flesh sandwich and smile. The meat’s delicious; pure, re-energising. You keep up the good work after lunch, smash another three leads through taking you two over target, and set two callbacks for later in the week and three more for this evening.

  You treat yourself to your first cigarette of the day on the 4 o’clock break.

  “It’s crazy,” Keith says, shaking his head between drags on his ill-formed rollie, “you wouldn’t think something like that could happen round here.”

  “And they’ve still not found the baby?” Craig says.

  Keith shakes his head glumly; nope.

  “He’ll have it in prison, if they catch him,” Jake says. “Sick cunt.”

  “He’ll be safe as houses,” Keith says. “They don’t let the proper sick ones in with the rest of them, they know they’ll be shanked straight off. He’ll be in a special wing with all the paedos.”

  “Someone’ll have him,” Jake says. “One way or another. Grind up glass and put it in his food, that’s one way of doing it.”

>   “He shouldn’t go to prison anyway,” you say, suppressing a smirk. “They ought to bring back hanging for people like that.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Jake says.

  “Hanging’s too soft for him, actually, sick fucker like that.” You’re getting into it, enjoying visualising the torture wrought on this anonymous target, this person to whom you feel no connection. “They ought to cut his guts out and feed them to him.”

  “There’s something wrong with you,” Craig says, dead serious.

  The chat slips through your mind as you strap the headset back on. You plough through the evening call backs, taking three leads from four. The other had just recently renewed; you amend their details and set up a call back for 18 months into the future. You wonder what you’ll be doing then. Visions of prisoners grinding glass into food preoccupy you for a few seconds of dialtone but disappear as a lady answers, as you rattle through your spiel, Rhys Davies from Go! Life, calling her back about a review your conducting of her life insurance policy. You manage another two leads before the day ends. Barney beams at you, neck-and-neck with Jake at the top of the leader board.

  “Someone’s been putting stuff in your food, have they?” Jake says, as you walk back as a group along Atlantic Way.

  “What?” you say, stunned off your cigarette.

  “Something’s perked you right up,” Jake says. “It’s like you suddenly learned how to act like a normal human being for the duration of a three-minute phone call.”

  “I dunno,” you mumble, taking a drag on the cigarette to put your mind right. “I’ve been using olive oil spread instead of butter in my sandwiches, maybe that’s what’s doing it.”

  You spend that evening in the living room, sitting with Emma and Dave, watching telly, texting Emilia, arranging a date for tomorrow. You go to bed and fall asleep without switching the laptop on for what must be the first time in years.

  The next morning, you head to the kitchen to make your sandwiches, and open the fridge to see the baking tray’s gone. You stare at the empty space on the shelf, mind glazing over with panic. You slam the fridge door shut, throw open the oven, scan the kitchen unit, open the cupboards, then spot the tray, in the sink, full of bubbles of dishwashing liquid. You open the bin, and see the carcass.

  You can’t leave that in there, you reason, walking down Atlantic Way to work, that’s how they get caught; stupid things like that. You know Dave’s responsible; he’s pilfered the last of what he thinks is your chicken, and chucked the carcass in the bin, and he’s a prick for doing it, but you reassure yourself with the over-cigarette thought that he’s too stupid to have realised what it was, that it weren’t no chicken. It’ll be fine. Just get rid of it somewhere proper tonight. And then your phone goes; Whatsapp. Emilia.

  Hey :) good morning! Where do you want to meet tonight? xXx

  You put off answering as you plough through the first of the day’s phone calls, spirits weaker than yesterday, the call’s a little colder. You smoke a fag at 11 and listen to Craig go on about how funny it is that Americans think fags means homosexuals, and how he’d asked a Yank for a cig at a club in Ibiza once, and he’d thought he was coming on to him or something, and Jake laughs and joshes around with him, and Keith says his bit, and you smoke, silent, sullen.

  You get your first lead of the day an hour later, but by lunchtime, it’s obvious you’re not topping yesterday’s heroics. You wonder what’s changed, why your attitude’s slipped. Barney asks you just that.

  “I dunno,” you mumble. “I’m feeling kinda tired.”

  You head to the burger van round the back of the industrial estate at lunch time.

  “They’ve not got a connection to the mains water supply, have they?” Jake says when you take your greasy egg-topped cheeseburger back to the office, while your co-workers are debating the potentially unsanitary nature of your meal.

  “Bad news,” Barney tells you just as you’re about to get to back on the dialler. “Darren and Kerry Preece, you put through yesterday, have cancelled; said they thought you were calling from their existing provider, didn’t realise you wanted to set them up with someone else. Try and be a bit careful, yeah?”

  You wonder what yesterday’s secret was as you struggle through the rest of the day’s calls, then it strikes you; the sandwich. Then you remember the carcass in the bin at home. You should probably go home and deal with it before meeting Emilia. You take your phone from your pocket and tap out a Whatsapp: Hey :) Buffalo at 8?

  You force yourself through the rest of the day’s phone calls, charting another two leads, meaning you fall three short of target. You walk home as per usual, exchange pleasantries with Emma, then stare at a fresh bin liner in the kitchen bin.

  “Did you take the bins out?” you shout through to the living room.

  “Yeah, ‘course,” Emma says. “Tuesday’s bins day, innit? It was practically overflowing. You can thank me whenever.”

  You try and put it out of your mind as you brush your teeth and agonise over what to wear, settling on a red and green checked shirt, then you walk into town to meet Emilia.

  I just got to the bar, do you want me to order you a drink?

  It’s a tip you picked up in Metro, the free paper; get to the bar slightly early, send them a text. Saves you both standing around at the bar for the first ten minutes of your date. Gives a good impression. Does other positives.

  OK, thank you! She wants a cocktail. Something sweet.

  You stare at the cocktail menu; they all look sweet. £8 a pop. But 2 for 1 before Midnight. Which means you’re drinking a cocktail too. You scan the ingredients, figuring you might as well get the most alcoholic thing possible, get your money’s worth. You’re trying to decide between a Long Island Ice Tea and a Zombie, the latter of which seems to have more stuff in it, when you feel a tap on your shoulder, and you turn to see Emilia.

  “Hi!”

  “Hi.” You stare at her for a moment, stunned, your pre-ordering plan fumbled, until she leans slightly towards you, then you lean in, go for the hug, as she goes for the kiss on the cheek, and you turn toward it, and brush your nose awkwardly over her eyelid.

  You’re sitting down a little while later, she’s telling you about her native Bulgaria, you’re listening, trying to think of interesting things you can say about yourself, come up with nothing, so keep pushing for questions, about the beaches, the weather, the schooling system, the extent to which English is taught and spoken there, the amount of English-language TV they get, whether they dub or subtitle American movies, what sort of political system they have, whether or not it used to be Communist, and then it’s time for another drink, and you get another Zombie and she goes for the same as you this time, and she remarks upon how strong it is, and the second cocktail makes conversation flow easier, and you’re telling her of your ambition of spending a year travelling the world, an ambition that’s only just occurred to you, an ambition you’ll now have to pretend to harbour for as long as you two are seeing each other, and you get another Zombie, and another, and everything seems to have gone well, and you know you shouldn’t push towards sex on the first date, so you lean in to kiss her in the street, and you drunkenly probe each other’s mouths with your tongues, and you ask her if she’s alright getting home and she says she is, and her halls are in the opposite direction to where you’re heading, but as you separate you wonder if you shouldn’t have made the effort to walk her back anyway, but then you reckon that the kiss was enough that you’ll probably have sex off the back of it, and you try and calculate exactly how long it’s been since the last, and that occupies your mind for the rest of your journey, you finally settling on it being 14 months, 3 weeks and 4 days since that time you went back to that girl Jenna’s and she got her tits out and wanked you off, but you’re not sure if that really counts, and if it doesn’t, that sucks, because then you’re talking 18 months and an indeterminate number of weeks and days since you last did the deed.

  You can hear Emma a
nd Dave watching telly in the living room when you get in. You pull the front door quietly shut behind you and head upstairs, hoping they don’t hear the steps creak. You lock your door, turn on the laptop, then flip it over fast so you can shove a scissors inside to get the fan going. Six or seven minutes later, you’re watching a bound Japanese hottie lick out an obese white man’s arsehole. You spunk all over the place and barely bother wiping the worst of it off before flopping face-down onto the bed and passing out.

  You wake up and realise the alarm’s been going for fifteen minutes already. You shower, get dressed, then stagger off to work, stopping on the way to get some cigarettes, and end up arriving seven minutes late as a consequence.

  Nothing of note happens until the 11 o’clock fag break, at which point Barney calls you into his office. Jim’s there already, standing behind the desk with his big biceps folded.

  “What’s happened, mate? You were killing it on Monday, you were doing brilliantly, then you tailed off a bit yesterday, now today you’re worse than ever; showing up late, nothing going through…”

  You stitch together an excuse based on the fragility of your confidence.

  Barney nods glumly and accepts it and says he knows exactly where you’re coming from: “When I was at school, do you know what the other kids used to call me? You know Barney the purple dinosaur? Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I suffer from amblyopia.”

  Amblyopia?

  “Lazy eye.”