by Haydn Wilks
“Where did you get this number from?”
You eye the clock in the corner of the screen: 10:57. Drag it out a little, go straight into break.
“You—”
“I didn’t do anything,” the grumpy middle-aged middle Englander on the other end of the headset says sternly, “I’ve not given my number to no-one with permission to be calling me up like this about my life insurance. Let me speak to your supervisor.”
“I’m sorry, he’s busy at the moment.”
“I can wait.”
You look at the screens of your colleagues surrounding you; they’re playing the same game, dragging the last of a call out, or otherwise staring at their diallers, headsets transmitting dead air end-of-call dialtone.
10:58.
“Maybe I can have him call you back.”
“I don’t want him to call me back,” the man says, growing more irritated. “I don’t want you lot calling me, full stop. Now, tell me, where did you get this number from?”
“You must’ve given it to someone.”
“I didn’t give it to anyone.”
“Well, you must’ve.”
“I bloody well didn’t!”
“This is Mr. Remington, right?”
“Correct.”
“Then you must’ve given your number out, or how else would we know your name?”
Jake, tuned into dialtone on the opposite side of the computer bank, smirks at what you’ve said.
“Listen here, you,” he says, before stalling, trying to think up something he wants you to listen to. He’s interrupted by the cry of a baby in the background. “Ah, bloody hell, you’ve woken the little one up.”
10:59.
“Soz. Bye.”
You hang up, and slip your notepad from your pocket, jotting down an address in Gloucester, as headsets are thrown off and your colleagues head for the exit.
“It’s gotta be, haven’t it?”
“Gotta be?” you ask Jake, lifting a cig to your lips as you enter the fag break conversation.
“The same fucker what done that up in Chipping Sodbury what done that family in down here.”
You freeze for a second before lighting the cigarette. “You reckon?”
“It’s gotta be.”
“If it were them refugees what did it down here,” Keith says, “then maybe it was another lot what done it up there.
“What, another lot altogether?” Jake says. “Come off it.”
“Yeah, you don’t know what they’re like, do you?” Keith continues, relighting his rollie to try and sort out the malformed smoke’s side-burn. “They could be doing anything with them babies. They do have kids coming in for grooming them to be teen brides in a few years, constant. Or they could be doing fuck knows what else with them. Eating them, sacrificing them to Allah.”
“They probably are eating them,” you say, raising a wry smile. “They’re not allowed to eat pork, are they? And apparently, pork’s supposed to be the closest-tasting meat to human.”
Jake regards you severely, then turns to Craig, and changes the topic to football: “You see the United match?”
Back inside, you’re staring at the computer screen, flicking back-and-forth between the dialler and the news, all of it: BBC, Guardian, Times, Mirror, Daily Mail, ITV, Sky, Sun, Star, curious if any are saying anything the others aren’t. There’s a vagueness and a lack of viable conspiracy theories in the tabloids compared to the last time which makes you feel uneasy, as if they’re hiding something from you, as if the police have quietly told them to keep the full extent of their findings out of the papers. All that’s there are grim facts: the body found, the baby missing. No motives or suspects suggested.
You’re being paranoid, you tell yourself, as dialtone gives way to a woman’s “Hello?”
They’re not saying anything because they don’t know anything.
“Hi, this is Rhys Davies, just calling you back from Chipping Sodbury.”
“I’m sorry?”
You freeze. Stare into the screen. Did anyone hear it? Act normal.
“You’re Rhys Davies calling me back from where?”
You hang up. Probably the worst thing you could’ve done.
You tick the boxes that ought to keep the record from being called ever again, but realise it’ll cycle through quick enough, once the available data’s been gone through.
You listen to the chatter of those adjacent to you beyond the buzz of dialtone in your headset.
No one noticed.
But what if she… what?
What do you think might happen?
She got a phone call from a guy she’s never heard of, from a town she’s never been to, where there’s recently been a crime committed, and her first reaction is that the murder’s phoned through to her at random, confessing?
No, she’ll think it’s a wrong number, that’s all. She’ll forget about it straight away. Maybe tell her husband about when gets home, or have a natter with some other stay-at-home mums at a coffee morning about it.
And she’ll say you said you were calling from Chipping Sodbury.
And one of the other stay-at-home mums will say ‘wasn’t that the place where that woman was murdered and her baby stolen?’
It’s not like Chipping Sodbury’s in anyway connected with anything else in the imagination of middle England.
And those stay-at-homes at that coffee morning, so worried and shocked and appalled at hearing about that awful thing that happened in Chipping Sodbury, will feel their maternal protective instincts rise up in unison, telling the woman affected ‘it’s better to be safe than sorry,’ and ‘you can never be too careful,’ and she’ll phone up the local police station, very politely, say ‘I’m awfully sorry to bother you, but…’, then describe the phone call, and the kindly chap manning the desk with the big bushy middle England moustache will say ‘it’s probably nothing to worry about,’ but ‘we’ll look into that for you,’ ‘just to be on the safe side,’ and they’ll comb through the call records, pin the call back to this place, see there’s a Rhys Davies working here, and from there… what?
They have access to your internet history.
That realisation sends a shock of terror down your spine as the next woman speaks:
“Hello?”
“Hi, this is Rhys Davies—”
You rattle through the usual spiel, she tells you she’s not interested, then as dialtone returns, you try to reassure yourself.
You’ve not looked at anything that bad… Well… it’s not like you’ve been looking up recipes for baby meat, or kiddy porn, or anything proper fucked up or incriminating – just gore and porn. You’ve really looked at nothing worse than the average teenager.
But if they start asking around, asking people what kind of a character you are…
You’ll just have to start being more careful, you resolve, as the next call gives way to answerphone.
You ponder what ‘being more careful’ means – finding another source of sustenance, one not connected to your place of work, or what? Just… stop?
More calls follow, more terse, pissed-off, conversations, no leads generated from any of them. Lunch comes, and you fling your headset off, and wander out into the estate, wanting to get away from your co-workers, to think, to be alone.
As you wander past drab confabs and car parks, you remember a ping from your phone a few days ago, while you were lying in the torpor of the weekend.
You take your phone from your pocket, see Emilia’s Whatsapp: Hey! What are you doing this weekend? xXx
You frown, fearing you might have blown the only thing in your life that’s worth anything by not replying to her – a regular source of anatomically-correct sexual release.
Sorry, I just saw your message, you tap, my phone was out of battery and I didn’t realise. What are you doing tonight? xXxXxXx
The afternoon brings an endless stream of lead-free calls and dull monotony. At home, you bypass the living room, where Emm
a and Dave are watching Hollyoaks, head straight to your room, and stare at the blank screen of your switched-off laptop, frequently tapping your phone to turn its screen on, awaiting Emilia’s reply. It comes just after 9pm.
What r u doing tomorrow?
Not a single ‘x’. But she replied. You tap a Whatsapp back immediately, suggesting drinks tomorrow evening. You’re an hour deep into a descent through internet filth when she replies: OK. No ‘x’s or emojis.
But she replied.
You watch teen Latinas splayed and pounded, girls next door tied up in basements, gagging Thai hoes force-fed semen by the gallon, a regular descent through the filth and fuckedness till you’ve had your fill of it, then sit, belly matted with semen, tumbling through Reddit, through Facebook, through Twitter, saying whatever you can to get a rise out of people, but the responses are all calm and measured, pointing out quite correctly what a loser you must be to be spewing such bile into the internet, and the whole scene depresses you, makes you want to better yourself, until your tumbling through Wikipedia, filling your mind with endless knowledge, none of it complete, it all as cursory and preliminary and inconsequential as everything else you exchange with the internet, until somewhere in the daze, dawn breaks, and you slump into bed, and slip into sleep, mind giving up on the horrors of another drawn-out day in the 21st century.
You wake with the alarm at 7.15, the stench from the Fast-Slow Cooker drawn deep into your lungs through your nostrils as your eyes open, and you wonder if the smell’s not started wafting through the house yet. Resolving to get the necessary appliances to end that smoking gun rotten carcass madness before the day’s done, you tap at your phone to wake you again in an hour, and slip straight back into a frenzied dream set in a maternity ward, eyes flashing like X-rays at the insides of the swollen bellies of the bed-ridden expectants around you, cribs piled high with motionless infants at one end of the room, a bellicose grocer you’ve encountered in passing many a time at the fruit and veg stall at one end of the old market in town shouting, “Fresh babies! Ripped fresh from the womb! Five kilos a pound!”
The alarm sounds again. Your eyes open. You tap the phone, call Jim, tell him you’re sick, then drift back into the scene for a while longer, questioning the market seller on whether there’s anything morally suspect about dining on the flesh of babes, he laughing at you, telling you, “it’s alright, mate, it’s what our culture’s been bred on, us Celts, and the Anglo-Saxons weren’t no better, no, it’s what all of us where up to, until the EU come along, with their health & safety, and their human rights, and all that bollocks, no, there’s nothing wrong with it, nothing wrong with it at all!”
Upon waking for a definite third time, you smile at the stench that again fills your nostrils, knowing though the dream was but a warped outburst from a mind sickened by modern internet society, that there was truth in the market seller’s words, and that there’s really nothing wrong with living outside the rules of the mainstream majority, who’re a bunch of hypocrites and inertia-ridden cunts, passively accepting the government doing much worse to Middle Eastern babies than what you’ve formed a habit of doing with theirs.
You check the time, and seeing it’s five past eleven, you rise quickly, piss, shower, and brush your teeth within the space of 12 minutes, then bound out the door, sun shining, ready to get the deeds of the day done. By midday, you’re in John Lewis, having decided on the way that the only way to both maximise future flesh yields and deal with the pressing issue of rotting baby stench is to invest in a full-blown fridge freezer. You go for the cheapest option available, a 55cm wide Hotpoint RFAA52P Free-Standing Fridge Freezer, £229, and after you rattle off the make and model to the bloke at the counter, he asks if you’d like to take advantage of the free delivery on all orders of £50 or more.
“When will I get it?”
“It’ll be with you by six o’clock this evening.”
You run quick calculations through your mind, figuring that it’d probably arrive before Emma got home, but you struggle to remember whatever Dave’s said lately of his constant churn through hirings and firings, and decide that as he’s out of the house now, you’d better seize the day and get the fuck on with it. “I’ll take it with me.”
“Okay, no problem. Where are you parked?”
Parked? “I’m not driving.”
He looks at you quizzically. He’s a couple of years younger than you, and you can see the snide Valleys lout the middle-class John Lewis uniform is failing to hide.
“I don’t live far from here.”
He looks around, confirming you’re not with anyone, and panic and paranoia bubble up within you, informing your actions. “So you’ll be alright carrying this back by yourself? It’s a bit heavy.”
“I’ll be fine.” You snide cunt. Few hours at the gym a week and you think you can out muscle me. You stare daggers through him. He rescinds the smile. That innate working-class aggression, that desire to lash out at the world, to have a pre-kebab punch-up after the pubs shut, stares deep into your soul. You’re on the verge of striking first, slamming a fist into his smug fucking face, when his head office mandated professionalism cools the tension: “Alright. Well, we’ll get her boxed up and let you get with it.”
He walks off across the store and shares a laugh and a few sly glances at your expense with another younger-than-you yob-turned-middle England vassal grunt, then the two of them disappear into the store room, you staring at the meandering midday shoppers while you wait, hopeless numb dumb corporate consumerism sedated fuckwits, you fantasising about killing them all, getting an assault rifle through the darknet and soiling the aisles of bright-white middle-class aspirational appliances and odds and ends and endless meaningless crap mass-manufactured to keep these guileless unoriginal drones content in their impotent dry-hump through life in a world that’s long since lost its allure for the species you and they both are biologically bound in, and then the smug staff re-emerge, pushing your new Hotpoint fridge freezer across the shopfloor on a wheeled trolley stand.
“Here you go, mate,” the arsehole who sold it to you says, after he and his fuckwit mate have freed it from the trolley stand.
You grasp the vast free-standing cardboard box with both hands, and with great effort lift it from the ground, waddle across the store to the exit, stopping twice along the way when its weight becomes overbearing. You don’t turn back, but can feel the two fuckwits staring at you, laughing, and no doubt drawing the attention of others amongst John Lewis’ hideous hellbound staff and shoppers. You continue into St. David’s 2, then onto the street beyond it, stopping every five metres, each additional short burst of carrying wrecking your arms and sapping your strength. You think of the long road ahead, the seeming impossibility of carrying on like this to Cathays, and stand in the pedestrianised square outside St. David’s 2, consumers gawking, thinking of alternatives, realising there are none, and you grab the box again, continuing in five metre shuffle bursts, until you’ve almost rounded the vast shopping arcade’s exterior, when you see her, Brianna, Emilia’s mate, walking along Barack Lane towards you. You abandon the fridge freezer, and rush into the shopping centre, hoping she’s not spotted you, and then, safely hidden, you wonder if she won’t stop a while and stare at the weirdness of the free-standing fridge freezer, standing alone on a back street.
You stare out through the glass doors of the shopping centre until you’re sure she’ll have passed, then return to your Hotpoint, two fat middle-aged women eyeing you oddly as you grasp it, and having recovered some strength, make it all the way to the point where Barack Lane ends and twists into Charles Street before having to put it down again.
You get home shortly after 2, and after shoving the fridge-freezer with great effort and continual exertion to the top of the stairs, you almost drag it into your room, force it in through the doorway, recover your breath, then rip the packaging off, shuffle it besides the desk with your laptop on it, plug it in, fish the stewing carcass out of the Fast
-Slow Cooker, shove it piece-by-piece into the humming Hotpoint, and take the filth-caked innards of the Heston Blumenthal branded device downstairs for a long-overdue wash in the kitchen. You return to your room, open the windows to crisp December air, flop down upon the bed, and slip almost instantly into sleep, into an endless sprawling John Lewis superstore, the mocking arsehole staff staring snidely at you, as you file a shopping trolley full of lifeless babies earlier purchased at the maternity ward into all the fridge-freezers on display.
You’re awoken by hammering on your bedroom door.
“Hey, soft lad, open up!”
You move groggily from the bed to the door and open it a little, careful not to fully expose your room and the new fridge-freezer humming in the corner of it.
“What the fuck’ve you been up to, soft lad?” Dave asks.
“What d’you mean?”
“There’s big chunks ripped out the wallpaper on the staircase.”
“Really?” You do your best to furrow your brows and show perplexity, realising you must’ve snagged whilst forcing the fridge-freezer up.
“Yeah, well, Emma said she’s not done it, and I know I’ve not done it, so it don’t leave too many other options open, does it?”
“It weren’t me.”
Dave stares at you for a moment, searing through your façade, while the fridge-freezer hums low in the room behind you, filling you with the dread of discovery, until he gives up, shrugs, and says, “Fuck it. Maybe the neighbours were banging about next door or something. Anyway, fancy a quick one down the Woody with Branston? Liverpool’re playing.”