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.
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 grace 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!’
