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 car took a sharp right and Billy was flung against Isaiah. The man’s arm was hard with muscle, like a lump of beef from the freezer. Isaiah pushed him away. ‘Stop snivelling, Billy,’ he said. ‘Go easy on the pedal, Gabriel,’ he said, ‘I’d like this one to arrive in one piece.’
‘Camael hates it when people are late,’ said Gabriel.
‘Camael?’ sniffed Billy.
He was punched again and lay doubled up on the seat. He could smell warm leather through the thin cotton bag and resisted the urge to puke up the lager he’d drunk. That would really piss them off, he thought, not even allowing the tiniest moan of fear as he choked back the first signs of vomit.
Billy found it difficult to estimate how long they’d been travelling. It felt like an age, and his escalating anxiety stretched out the minutes into achingly long periods of time. He’d lost all sense of direction long ago, the dark of the hood adding to the feeling that he was being dragged into another world entirely. A world he decided he did not want to enter. He wanted to go home like he’d never wanted it before.
The car came to a halt, the cutting of the engine plunging the car’s interior into sepulchral silence. Billy’s galloping fears began upped their tempo to a full-blown stampede. When Isaiah grabbed his arm he jumped back as if struck with a poker hot from the fire.
‘What are you going to do with me?’ he blubbered.
‘You got your wish, Billy,’ he replied, hauling him out of the car. Billy caught his head on the doorway and yelped. ‘For Christ’s sake, Billy, shut the fuck up!’ he snarled. ‘Next time, be careful what you wish for.’
Billy could smell old brick, concrete, damp grass, and he stumbled over uneven ground as he was led away. He heard the sound of some kind of door being lifted, like the shutters over a shop window. It rattled noisily, squeaking with rust. He was bundled inside, standing there in silence whilst the shutters came down at his back with a final loud crash of metal. Or it appeared loud to him, his senses honed to blade sharpness by fear. Billy cringed as the hood was whipped off his head. It didn’t make much difference to what he could see; the place was almost pitch-black.
Isaiah flicked on a torch. They were in what Billy took to be an old, disused warehouse, pieces of long- defunct and rusted machinery sitting around like pathetic creatures from another age; plaster hanging from the walls; an old Pirelli calendar torn into flaps, still pinned above what looked like a filing cabinet. Ahead was a flight of stairs up which Gabriel was already climbing. He glanced back at them impatiently.
Isaiah gave Billy a prod in the back. ‘Go ahead, follow the man.’
Rubbing his bruised side, Billy went up the stairs.’ Where are we?’ he asked. Gabriel was holding open a door at the top of the stairs.
‘Don’t talk wet, Billy,’ he said. ‘In here, now.’
They entered a large empty room, some kind of warehouse, lined on each side with windows, mostly broken. They threw patches of faint light onto a floor littered with broken bricks and other debris, onto a line of cast iron pillars that supported, half-glimpsed in the gloom, a spider’s web of iron girders. At the far end of the room was a single chair, the figure of a man sat in it.
Billy hesitated but was urged on by Isaiah’s balled fist. His feet crunched on powdered masonry, splashed in an oily-black puddle of water. The smell of decay, of a dying building, was overwhelming, stirring up a sickening soup of dread. It was eerily quiet; the faint, distant sound of a siren hurtling through the streets doing its best to puncture the silence but it was short-lived. Billy could hear Gabriel’s rhythmic breathing at his back. The sound of his own blood pumping crazily in his ears.
‘That’s far enough,’ said Gabriel’s disembodied voice.
Billy stopped. He waiting for someone to say something, but no one was taking the initiative and the tension grew hard enough to beat Billy’s legs to jelly as easily as Isaiah’s fist.
‘Some church!’ said Billy, alarmed at his own bravado. ‘And not very Christian, is what I think…’ He pawed his side. It hurt like crazy and he knew he’d pay for it in the morning. He turned to Gabriel. ‘Well, is someone going to say something or not?’
‘You are William Krodde?’ said the figure in the chair. The voice was calm, almost gentle, but Billy instinctively didn’t like it, not one bit. It caused his insides to do a polka.
He tried not to let his feelings show. ‘My name is Billy,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to be the guy Camael.’ He saw the figure, still largely hidden in shadow, visibly stiffen at the mention of his name. ‘That’s right, ain’t it?’ he asked of Isaiah. ‘That’s what you said. Camael.’
‘My brother tells me you have important information for me, Billy,’ said the man. That same creeping sensation skittered across Billy’s fevered mind like some kind of spider darting for cover.
‘Maybe I do,’ he said, his voice croaking a little. He stood erect. ‘Depends.’
‘Depends?’ echoed Camael.
‘Cut the lip, Billy,’ warned Gabriel, coming close.
He held up a gloved finger, a small gesture that saw Gabriel back off quickly. ‘Yes, I am Camael,’ he said.
He rose from the chair. He was surprisingly tall, very slim, and Billy was reminded of a large insect uncurling its limbs. He was dressed in black, head to toe, and it was probably this, combined with the strange light from the windows that gave his long face a deathly, waxen appearance. He wore round glasses, heavily tinted, not unlike the ones Billy associated with John Lennon. His hair was long and straight, touching his shoulders, as black as his clothing. He stared towards a shattered window, seemingly forgetting all about Billy, as if he were totally alone and immersed in private thoughts.
‘Where is the woman, Beth Heaney?’ he said at length.
‘I’m not saying till we’ve cut a deal,’ he returned.
Camael’s lips spread into a thin smile. ‘Cut a deal? Really, Billy, you must stop watching all those movies.’
‘Yeah, well, all the same, what I know won’t come cheap.’
‘So what exactly is it you know, Billy?’
‘Put it this way, I know where she hangs out. I could take you straight there. I also know she’s up to something. She’s flogging gold and stuff.’ He saw Camael turn from the window to face him. ‘That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? She’s part of some racket.’
‘You are very astute, Billy. You must be congratulated on your sharp and incisive mind. Where is she?’
‘I want two thousand pounds,’ he spluttered.
Camael’s brows rose. ‘As much as that? For a simple address?’
‘I reckon she’s worth far more than that to you. But I’m not greedy.’
‘Most kind of you, Billy,’ he said. ‘We’d find her eventually, of course, with or without your help.’
‘So why am I here?’ He folded his arms, his confidence beginning to peek out of the dark corner it had scuttled away to hide in. ‘Nah, you can’t risk her leaving Manchester. You need to find her and find her quick, is what I think. I can make that happen tonight, but you have to make my two thousand happen.’
Camael took a step towards the window. He wiped his finger down one of the panes; it came away dirty. ‘I don’t have to do anything. But I am a generous man. You shall have the money after you have taken us to her.’
‘No deal,’ he said defiantly.
Camael put his hands behind his back and came slowly over to Billy, his eyes on the ground. When he lifted his head, Billy saw his own frightened reflection in the dark spectacles.
‘Billy,’ he said again in that same composed and measured tone. ‘Please do not argue with me. You could be dead in less than thirty seconds and I guarantee no one will ever find your miserable little body. Do you really want that?’
He shook his head, looking agitatedly at Gabriel and Isaiah who now book-ended him. ‘Sure. As you like,’ said Billy. ‘We can settle up afterwards.’
Camael turned his back on him. ‘Describe her to me first, Billy.’
