D. Mitchell - The King of Terrors

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.’