The building was quickly turning into an inferno. More fire engines raced onto the scene and hoses were played upon the blaze. Someone put a friendly, reassuring arm around his shoulder and led him away. He heard the tinkling of glass at his back.
The staff of Speed Save – the ones who had not escaped by the rear exit – were herded meekly to a corner of the car park, a shivering, frightened group clearly shaken by their experience.
Billy noticed, however, that Beth Heaney wasn’t amongst them. He looked around and caught sight of her slim dark form, some distance away, hurrying from the scene.
* * * *
12
Everlasting Bliss
‘Yes?’ he said, eyes squinting in the harsh light, speaking through a narrow crack as the door was still on its chain. His face clouded over when he saw the two young men, both wearing flashy suits in charcoal grey, white shirts and neat black ties. One of the men was white, the other black. The black guy clutched a fancy leather briefcase. They both smiled broadly but the smiles cut no ice with him. ‘We don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses here!’ he said abruptly, about to close the door unceremoniously on them.
‘Neither do we,’ said the white guy.
‘We don’t like people coming round cold selling either. Double glazing, that kind of thing.’
‘A blasted nuisance,’ agreed the white guy. ‘We’re not here to sell a thing, not even God. We came to see your son, Billy. Billy Krodde. He does live here, doesn’t he?’
‘What’s he done wrong now? He said he was sorry for nicking that poxy mobile phone. They sacked him from that poxy supermarket because of it. What else has he been up to? You the law?’
The two men exchanged a quick glance, their smiles not once showing signs of withering. ‘You could say that, in a round about sort of way,’ said the white guy.
‘The police?’
‘Dear me, no!’ said the black guy.
‘Then who?’
A pause. ‘The Church of Everlasting Bliss,’ said the black guy. ‘I’m called Gabriel. My friend here is called Isaiah.’
‘Look, it’s a Sunday, day of rest and all that,’ said Billy’s dad, for whom every day was technically a day of rest, but he felt it was the principle of the thing. ‘We don’t want any churchy people round here, especially on a Sunday, preaching the end of the world or anything. It puts you right off your day.’
‘We’ll pay,’ said Isaiah, and the door stopped in its tracks, ‘to see Billy. It’s vitally important we speak with him, Mr Krodde.’ He fished out two twenty pound notes from his wallet and handed them over to him. ‘And we promise not to mention the end of the world, not even in passing.’ He grinned.
The chain was quickly unfastened. ‘Come on in. I’ll go get him.’ They followed him into the cramped living room. A smell of onions and fat lingered in the air from the night before. ‘So what church was that again? Everlasting Peace, you say? Never heard of that one.’
‘Bliss,’ he corrected. No surprise,’ said Gabriel, wiping a handkerchief across his dark skin. ‘We tend to keep ourselves pretty much to ourselves.’
‘The congregation’s going to suffer,’ he said, stuffing the two notes into his trouser pocket.
‘The congregation’s doing just fine, Mr Krodde.’
‘Billy! Billy!’ he hollered at the foot of the stairs. ‘Come off that bastard Playstation. You’ve got a couple of blokes down here looking to have a word with you. Billy!’ He pointed to the sofa for the men to sit. ‘Cup of tea?’ he asked.
‘Rather not. Pushed for time,’ said Isaiah apologetically.
‘Suit yourself. Where is that lazy, good for nothing boy of mine? Billy!’ he screamed again.
‘What?’ screamed Billy in return.
‘Get your arse down here! Important business!’
Billy Crudd came downstairs, his footsteps laboured and heavy on the treads, and he slowly put his head round the doorway into the living room. ‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘They want to talk to you,’ said his father.
‘In private, Mr Krodde,’ said Gabriel. ‘If you please.’
He rolled his eyes and shut them in the room. Billy regarded the two smartly dressed men warily. ‘Yeah? What do you want?’
‘We need your help, Billy,’ said Isaiah. He signalled for Billy to come in and sit down before them. ‘We need information from you. Information that is important to our church.’
‘Yeah, right, you’re from the Department of Work and Pensions checking up on whether I’m entitled to my dole. Well I’m entitled, ‘cos I ain’t got a job no more, and I ain’t doing any cash in hand stuff either.’
‘We heard. We paid your ex-manager a visit – Mr Pritchard – at the supermarket, or what remains of it,’ said Gabriel. ‘He gave us your address.’
‘Why would he do that? Isn’t there such a thing as data protection?’
‘There are all manner of laws, Billy, that Speedy Save clearly fail to adhere to,’ observed Gabriel. ‘And no, we are not here to check up on your benefit entitlement, interesting though that must be. We are from the Church of Everlasting Bliss.’
‘Bible thumpers! Great.’
‘In a manner of speaking, Billy; but we’re not here to preach.’ He turned to Isaiah and the man reached into his jacket pocket. The sheen on the suit wasn’t your cheap sheen, Billy observed; this was quality, even Billy could see that. Isaiah handed over a piece of paper to Gabriel. ‘My name is Gabriel. My colleague is Isaiah,’ he introduced. ‘And this,’ he added, giving the paper to Billy, ‘is who we need to find.’
He scrutinised the copy of a photograph that had appeared in the local rag following the fire at the supermarket, a full three weeks ago now. Three weeks since Slimer had said they’d been going over CCTV footage and Billy had been spotted pocketing a mobile phone during the riots. Slimer told him that it was looting and that looters could be shot. Billy told him that was only in times of war, and the mobile was hardly loot if it didn’t work. But, said Pritchard, that wasn’t the point; it hadn’t been paid for and so was stolen.
‘We’re not going to press charges, though,’ Pritchard assured.
‘That’s because you don’t want me lifting the lid on how many of us that work here don’t have any contracts and work cash-in-hand,’ he said.
There was still a strong tang of smoke hanging over the office. Half the supermarket had been gutted but they’d cobbled together the ability to carry on trading whilst the damage was being assessed and the insurance being looked into. Half the weirdos had been laid off. The same would have happened to Billy, he thought, but Pritchard being Pritchard he liked to make a scene. ‘The tense is past, Billy. Worked here, not work here.’ He pointed a finger. ‘You’re fired!’ said Pritchard in true Apprentice style.
‘Fuck you,’ said Billy.
‘And you’re fucked,’ returned Pritchard smugly, sitting back in his chair, folding his arms and only unfolding them to point at the door again. ‘That or the police, Billy.’
Billy looked over the photograph and shrugged. ‘It’s a photo of some of the staff outside the store, the night it was set alight. It appeared in the paper. So what?’
Gabriel came over to Billy. He could smell his aftershave, clean, sharp and strong. He put a finger onto the photo. ‘Do you know where we will find this woman? Beth Heaney, I believe your Mr Pritchard called her. Do you know where she lives? You see, we asked the same of your ex-manager and he said he’d not seen her since the night of the fire. He tried contacting her but it transpires she did not live at the address she gave them. He had no idea, and didn’t care where she lived. If she didn’t want the money owed to her, fine, he said, that was her business. But he did say that you and Beth had a thing going; you sat with her at break time, spoke with her. He said you might know where we might find her.’
‘Yes, Billy,’ Isaiah joined. ‘Can you help us? We’d be most grateful.’
‘Yeah? How grateful?’ said Billy, his interest sparking
into life. ‘We can be very generous,’ said Isaiah, ‘in our gratitude. Do you know where she lives?’
Billy sat down. ‘I know a lot more about Beth than where she lives,’ he revealed. ‘She’s not what she seems.’
Gabriel raised a brow, just a fraction, but enough to tell Billy he was onto something. ‘Go on. Tell us more.’
‘Not before you tell me who you are and what you want her for. Are you the police?’
Gabriel gave a thin smile. ‘Not the police, Billy. But we do clean the streets of trash.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘The address, Billy, that’s all we want.’ The smile faded like the sun behind cloud and the room fell decidedly chillier with it.
‘So who do you work for?’ he insisted. ‘Who is the leader of this church of yours?’
‘We can’t tell you that,’ joined Isaiah, ‘but the CEO is God.’ He grinned.
‘Yeah, well, I ain’t about to throw away information for nothing.’ Billy’s plans, the ones he’d so recently screwed up and thrown away like so much trash after Slimer had given him the push, were being unfolded and put back on the table of his ambition. ‘She’s part of something dodgy, I know that. I could so easily go to the police. They’d be interested in her too.’
‘What exactly had you in mind, Billy?’ said Gabriel a little tiredly.
‘Take me to who you work for. I’ll talk with him.’
‘We can’t do that, Billy,’ said Isaiah firmly.
‘Then I won’t open my mouth and you won’t find her.’
Both men stared hard at him, like he was looking down the twin barrels of a shotgun, and Billy felt a tremor of unease. But he steeled himself. Flash suits didn’t mean a thing. Eventually Gabriel sighed, his eyes looking up to the ceiling.
‘Don’t play around with fire, Billy, unless you want to get burnt,’ he said evenly.
‘Call him. Call him now, on the phone. Tell him I want to do a deal with him.’
‘Gabriel’s jaw hardened. ‘He doesn’t do deals. And we don’t do phones.’
‘Don’t do phones? What kind of a backward outfit are you?’ Billy mocked with a burgeoning confidence threatening to bubble over into recklessness. ‘Write him a letter, bang on jungle drums, send him smoke signals, do whatever. I’m not talking to the monkeys; I want to see the organ grinder.’
Gabriel took in a slow, measured breath, attempted to hide his annoyance. ‘Billy, don’t take offence, but you’re a nobody. He will not see a nobody.’
That really pissed him off. ‘Well this nobody has something that your somebody wants, so he’ll see me or you can just fuck off, the pair of you.’
‘We’ll find her sooner or later,’ said Gabriel.
‘You’d find her sooner, I’ll bet, if he saw me,’ he said, folding his arms the same superior way Slimer had done in the office. It felt good to be on the opposite end of being sneered at. ‘And it won’t come cheap. You don’t fool me; you’re desperate to find her and she could easily stay lost in this city for ages, that’s if she hasn’t already done a runner.’
Gabriel’s dark eyes stared unblinking at Billy, like two cold black marbles that reflected hate. When he blinked his lids came down slow and deliberate. Everything about this man was slow and deliberate, thought Billy. Gabriel rose to his feet. Billy hadn’t fully appreciated how big the guy was. Isaiah followed his lead. ‘We’ll be in contact soon,’ he said.
Billy had a sudden sinking sensation that his good fortune might never be seen again once they left the house, and his self-assurance trembled on the point of bursting like a soap bubble. He’d played out a little too much line in trying to draw them in, he thought; they were getting away and he’d never get them again. ‘You definitely will contact me, won’t you? I mean, I know all sorts of things about her; weird things.’
Gabriel paused at the door, turned to him. ‘So you said. We’ll be in touch. You have my word on this.’
‘Cool!’ he said, and instantly wished he hadn’t, because it put a big dent in his newfound street cred. They left and he closed the door on them. He went over to the net curtains and peeled them back, half expecting them to have turned up in a smart black car or something, but they hadn’t. They walked away till he could no longer see them.
‘You know those two tossers?’ his father asked, coming back into the room.
‘Nah. Some kind of bible pushers,’ he said, letting the curtains fall back into place.
‘Since when have you become all religious?’ he sneered, flopping down onto the sofa. ‘You think God will get you a job?’ He laughed to himself.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Billy growled. Go ahead, you dozy lump of lard. You won’t be laughing soon. None of you will. I’ve got plans, and they don’t include you.
‘Make me a cuppa,’ he father ordered, picking up the TV remote.
Billy wanted to say fuck you, but that’s where the road of his confidence came to an abrupt end. So he went to the kitchen and put the kettle on to boil.
* * * *
13
Camael
He noticed how the pub these days was far emptier than it used to be. No one had much spare cash to spend, and anyhow you could pick up cheaper booze from the supermarket than down here at the local. Only a few hardened regulars refused to change their habits. Billy knew a few of them by name. Older blokes, generally, two or three of them slumped at either end of the bar, as if they’d been washed there like so much human flotsam by some kind of sad old river. They didn’t speak much, not even to one another. They stood, they drank their beer, their faces long and sober as they drained their glasses and passed them on to the lass behind the bar to refill them. It was a dead, quiet place, the ghost of something that once was.
Fucking morons, thought Billy. Night after night propping up the bar in some grotty washed-up little pub. What a pisser of a life. He downed his half lager, thought about ordering another, but a quick count of the coins in his pocket changed his mind.
The ancient clock mockingly chimed 10pm.
His loose change remained in the palm of his hand, the Queen’s head laughing at him. Reminding him he was skint. Reminding him that those two flashy bastards never came back. Six days and not a word from them. He began to wish he’d simply struck a deal there and then, got something out of them, even the price of a few more lagers, rather than trying to play the big shot. He came out of it with nothing. He’d played the wrong hand. Story of his fucking miserable life. Why was it every hand he played, or every hand he’d ever been dealt, turned out shit?
Pillock, he thought, feeling doubly sorry for himself and rechecking the change to see if it had somehow magically increased to the price of another lager. No amount of counting made it stretch that far so he slid off the stool, steadied himself, and decided he’d head on home.
The air was warm, the sky desperately holding onto the light of day as if it were afraid of the coming night. Billy felt a twisting of hunger so he ambled along to the local chippy, the smell of the fried fish, potatoes, salt and vinegar clawing at his stomach. But it was only as he stood in the tiny queue to get served did he remember he hadn’t enough money and turned away mouthing expletives to a God he didn’t believe in for putting him this shithole of a situation. Now he couldn’t even afford a bag of chips. It was a basic human right, he thought, to have enough to be able to afford a bag of chips!
He shuffled sullenly towards home, his head fogged by alcohol, which, in his opinion, wasn’t fogged enough. Ideally he’d wanted to afford enough to blot out his entire miserable existence for one night at least.
He passed a row of parked cars, their paintwork shining like the backs of so many beetles under the insipid sodium glow of the street lamps. Night finally smothered the last of daylight and Billy Crudd thought long and hard about whether to go and sign on the dole in the morning. He had an appointment to see some kind of employment adviser and he hated those young, jumped-up, self-righteous little shites, who, but for the gr
ace of the God he didn’t believe in, didn’t know how fortunate they were to be on the other side of that fucking desk.
His concentration was such that he didn’t hear the sound of the car door opening, the light tap of shoes on the pavement behind him. He wasn’t aware of much apart from his own murky despondency till a bag was thrust over his head, followed by a punch in his side to knock the air from his lungs and stifle any scream of alarm. He doubled up in pain and shock, unable to resist the hands that dragged him backwards, forcing his head down and pushing him into the back seat of a car.
By the time he’d regained his breath the car door had slammed shut and the vehicle was pulling sharply away, causing him to tumble uncertainly to his knees. He reached up, clutched at the makeshift cloth hood, giving out a high-pitched scream. It didn’t last long; he was punched in the stomach, his hands grabbed and hauled away from the hood. Billy groaned, spluttered, coughed; he felt the heat of his spittle soaking into the hood.
‘Take all my money, take whatever you want!’ Billy burst tearfully. ‘What do you want?’ His hand went to the hood again. ‘I can’t breathe!’
‘Leave it alone, Billy, or I’ll lay another one into you. Sit still, there’s a good man.’
The voice was all too familiar. It was Isaiah.
‘Shit, you could have just asked!’ he said. ‘You Bible-thumping moron!’
The comment was answered with another unforgiving punch. This time Billy did not argue; he sat there silently as the car threw him from side to side as it sped through the streets.
‘For your sake, Billy, I hope you’re not pissing up our backs!’
‘You’re not going to hurt me, are you?’ he pleaded. He was glad they couldn’t see his tears, but he guessed his terribly cut up voice gave them away.
The King of Terrors (a psychological thriller combining mystery, crime and suspense) Page 10