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
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.