Moonlight painted a strange, spectral bloom on Isaiah’s cheeks, Billy noticed. All colour washed away. As if he was looking at the world in monochrome. Isaiah’s expression was equally monochrome; he was giving nothing away. His eyes, though, were watering with the intensity of his gaze.
‘What’s so interesting about a full moon?’ said Billy, more to shatter the unsettling silence that had fallen between them. He noticed the man was gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles glared white. He joined his companion, looking out of the windscreen to the swollen moon hanging over the rooftops of the block of flats, making it look as if it were coated in silvery frost.
‘You are sure this is the place?’ Isaiah asked, his voice low.
‘Yeah. Third floor. Number 349. What’re you going to do to her?’
Isaiah craned his neck forward, checked the streets around. It was after midnight and it was deathly quiet. ‘None of your business,’ he said.
‘You’re not going to hurt her, are you?’
‘What do you care, Billy? You were the one who sold her out.’
‘Yeah, but not to get hurt. She’s a nice woman.’ Coming from him it sounded odd, he thought. Because he meant it, and Billy had never really meant anything nice about anyone before.
‘You should have thought about that before you set your price.’
‘So what’s she done, exactly?’
Isaiah looked at him, his eyes now shaded and set into deep black pits of nothing. ‘You heard Camael; she’s evil.’
Billy gave a nervous chuckle. ‘Surely you can’t believe that crap, that anyone can be evil. You know, evil like the devil, like Hitler.’
Isaiah turned back to the moon. ‘What do you know?’
‘So who is Camael? And you ain’t telling me your real names are Gabriel and Isaiah — sounds like a bloody nativity play!’
‘Shut the fuck up, Billy!’ snarled Isaiah, thumping the wheel with the flat of his hand. ‘You’re starting to drive me nuts!’ He pulled the keys out of the ignition. ‘Come with me; we’re going to check the place out.’
‘I’ve told you already, it’s number 349. You don’t need me up there.’
‘You haven’t got a choice,’ he said, popping the boot of the car.
Billy got out of the car, followed Isaiah round the back. The man reached in and took out a large leather bag, like a sports holdall, and another plastic carrier bag filled with something bulky and heavy, which he passed to Billy. ‘What’s this?’
‘Just make yourself useful and carry it for me.’
‘And what’s in the leather bag?’
‘You don’t need to know. Show me the way now, quickly whilst there’s no one around.’
They hurried across a square that had once played host to carefully manicured grass and a few trees, but it was mainly bare earth and ragged stumps now. Billy led Isaiah to the block of flats, to the dark, tunnel-like entrance to the lift and stairs. The smell of urine hadn’t got any better, thought Billy. Without waiting Isaiah bound lithely up the concrete stairs, which Billy found quite impressive for such a heavy-set man, and not least because he found it difficult to keep up with him.
‘You don’t need me here,’ Billy moaned breathlessly. ‘And we could have taken the lift…’
‘Keep the fucking noise down!’ Isaiah hissed. ‘You want your money then do as you’re told.’
The gasping young man nodded and spat on the ground.
They reached the third-floor walkway. Lights were burning in a few of the flat windows, but mostly they were in total darkness. They padded softly down the walkway, stopping outside the door to flat number 349. Beth’s place. Isaiah nodded at it and Billy nodded back in confirmation. The man put a finger to his lips, reaching into his coat pocket for gloves, which he put on as he studied the window frame, running a gloved finger around it. Billy noticed the place was in darkness.
‘Maybe she’s out,’ he whispered, hoping this would make Isaiah turn round and leave. Some hope.
‘All the better,’ he said. He put the bag down on the ground, gave a quick look all around and then reached inside his coat pocket again. He took something metallic out that blinked briefly in the moonlight, and he set about the door lock. In seconds he was able to turn the handle slowly and ease open the door. He made a sign for Billy to stay by the door and in no uncertain terms made it clear that he was not to scarper.
The man crept silently inside, waiting a second or two before signalling for Billy to enter. They were in a small living room. Isaiah bound swiftly over to what Billy presumed was the bedroom and gently pushed open the door. ‘She’s not in,’ he said in a hushed voice difficult to catch.
‘Maybe she’s got another night job, like the one at the supermarket,’ said Billy. ‘Can we go now? You can come back when she’s in.’
He grasped Billy by his shirtfront and yanked his face close to his own. ‘I don’t want to hear another word from you, not one!’ he growled. ‘Now sit over there and make like a mouse in a trap!’
Billy didn’t like the image it conjured up, but he did as he was told, going over to a threadbare sofa and wondering what possessed Beth to live in a flea-bitten, grotty dump like this; and what on earth she was involved with when it included guys like these. He looked around; the room was a dive, little better than a doss house.
He watched as Isaiah reached up to the light in the centre of the ceiling and took out the bulb. Then he went over to his bag and unzipped it. He gingerly withdrew a long red velvet bundle edged with gold, and carried it across the room as carefully as if he carried a delicate baby. He placed it on the floor and mumbled something incoherent over it. Billy stared in both amazement and with an escalating fear. He looked over to the door. It was but a few short yards away. He could make a dash for it. He’d had enough of these weird games. He wanted out. Forget the bloody cash. Forget his plans. This was all going a step too far.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Isaiah without even looking up from the bundle.
‘I shouldn’t be here. This is all wrong,’ he said.
Isaiah peeled back the red folds of the bag, like skin on a great, fleshy wound, wide enough to take out what looked to be a two-foot long silver hammer. He’d seen something similar before; a mace, the type of things knights used in movies. It seemed to glow with a white fire as it flashed in the narrow panel of moonlight thrown in through the window. Isaiah inspected it keenly, his hands running up and down its surface. Finally he went to stand with his back against the wall, near the door, the mace resting on his right shoulder.
‘I need to go back now,’ Billy whimpered.
‘Go through into the kitchen. Close the door. Don’t make a sound.’
‘Why can’t I go back?’
‘Do as you’re told, Billy, and you’ll not get hurt.’
Billy wasn’t convinced, but he groaned and did as he was ordered. He didn’t close the door entirely. He left a tiny crack to peer through, though in truth there wasn’t a great deal to see besides the patch of moonlight sitting on the floor. He looked about him. The state of the kitchen was every bit as grotty as the living room, a smell of stale food hanging in the damp air. He was drawn to the window near the kitchen sink as a means of possible escape, but one quick look outside convinced him otherwise. Even if he managed to open it and climb out without Isaiah hearing him the fall would kill him, or at the very least break most of the bones in his body.
That’s when he heard the sound of a key being put in the door, the sound sickening because he had desperately not wanted to hear that tonight. He shot over to the partially opened kitchen door, stared hard through the gap. He made out a shadow flitting beyond the frosted glass of the door, a slim woman’s shadow. He couldn’t make out Isaiah but he knew he was there, absorbed into the darkened room, almost a part of the wall he leaned against.
Billy’s faint heart began to run the Derby and his mouth was sponged dry. The urge to scream out a warning was overwhelming, and yet he choked it back as if choking down bile.
The door opened and the woman stepped into the room, a hand reaching out for the light switch. Billy heard it click a couple of times, and he sensed the woman’s hesitation in the dark, the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. He saw the moonlight catch the side of her face as she moved cautiously into the room. Billy could not help himself; he called out.
‘Beth!’ he shouted, his voice ripping through the silence like an explosion.
The woman made a dart for the door, but Isaiah’s arm lunged out like a striking serpent from the darkness and he clasped her round her slender neck. She was dragged back into the room, his hand a blur as he now moved it to cover her mouth and stifle her scream. They played out their struggle in the patch of cold moonlight, as if they were actors on a macabre stage, the rasping sound of cloth against cloth as harsh and distressing as their combined heavy breathing. Billy saw Isaiah’s arm rise, the mace flashing silver for a split second; saw the weapon whipping in a cruel arc to smash against the woman’s head. Her body collapsed into a shadowy heap on the carpet, a drawn-out bubbling groan fading into silence like a dribble of water disappearing down a plughole.
Billy stumbled into the room. ‘Oh my god, you’ve killed her!’ he said.
She was face down. Isaiah was already kneeling over her, feeling the pulse in her neck. An oil-like pool of blood was seeping across the carpet. ‘Not quite. Not yet,’ he said. He said it like he was checking a microwave dinner.
That was it; Billy couldn’t take any more. He sprang over the outstretched legs of the woman and grabbed the door. Isaiah shot to his feet, his hand grasping at clothing, but he stumbled over the body, cursing as Billy ran out of the door beyond his reach. Billy turned to run back along the walkway and came up against Camael and Gabriel who were headed towards him.
He spun on his heel to take the opposite direction, knowing there had to be another exit, another stairwell at the end of the walkway, and he bolted headlong towards it.
Isaiah came to the doorway.
‘What the fuck are you doing letting him out?’ said Gabriel in a hush, indicating the man was to go back inside. He looked about him but no one stirred. He imagined this place wasn’t a stranger to weird noises during the night, and it paid not to investigate. ‘Do what you have to do,’ he told a contrite Isaiah. ‘I’ll take care of Billy.’ With that he went chasing after the young man, who’d already ducked rabbit-like down the black hole of the exit.
Body pumped through with adrenaline, Billy took the stairs quickly, holding onto the rail as he cleared them two at a time. Behind him he heard the machine gun clatter of Gabriel’s heels ripping his nerves to a bloody pulp. He stumbled, regained his footing, knowing now that if he were caught he’d be as cold and as dead as Beth. He wanted to scream out in alarm, scream for help, but he simply didn’t have the breath.
He emerged from the exit on the ground floor, raced across the muddy square, allowing himself a quick flick of the head to check where Gabriel was. He wished he hadn’t. He wasn’t far behind and he was closing fast. The sight of his indistinct but lean form lurching mechanically after him injected another much-needed shot of strength into his fast-failing legs.
Billy had hated sports at school. He’d since avoided any kind of physical exercise. The many hours flopped in front of the TV, or laid prone on his bed as he played on his games came back to haunt him as his flaming lungs turned against him, his legs, sucking in the last dregs of energy, were gradually being converted to rubber. His mind yelled ‘run!’ and his body yelled back ‘I can’t!’
He heard, through the fog of his fear, a car racing down the road. It drew alongside him as he ran. ‘Get in! Get in!’ he heard a man shout through the wound-down window.
A mind in panic does strange things, was his first thought. This entire night was madness and the car was part of it. The car stopped just in front of him.
‘Inside, now!’ yelled the driver.
And this time Billy didn’t hesitate, he flung open the passenger door and threw himself breathlessly inside the car. Gabriel came pounding alongside, made a hasty grab at the door as the car sped quickly away and Billy slammed the door shut. He leapt up and was relieved to see Gabriel’s form shrinking into the distance.
‘Oh, Jesus! he bawled. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ!’
‘What was happening back there?’ asked the driver. ‘Who was that guy coming after you?’
‘We’ve got to get to the police,’ Billy stammered. ‘Now, straight away. God, they’ve killed her!’
‘What? Who have they killed?’
For the first time Billy looked directly at his saviour. A hard-faced man, aged about forty maybe, thick hair, narrow eyes ‘Beth, for fuck’s sake! They killed her, that crazy Isaiah dashed her head in with a freaky mace-thing.’ He put his head into his hands and began to blubber.
‘Beth? Beth who?’
‘Heaney.’ The word was muffled by his hand.
‘The girl from the supermarket?’
Billy nodded. Then he looked up questioningly. ‘How’d you know she worked at the supermarket?’
‘Never mind that, Billy,’ he said. ‘Are you sure it was this Beth Heaney woman?’
‘You know my name? Are you the police or something?’
‘You sure it was her, Billy?’ He sounded pissed off.
‘You’re American. You’ve got an American accent. Who the hell are you?’
‘I’m Canadian, but I’ll forgive you. I’m a friend, Billy, that’s who I am.’
‘How’d you know my name?’ Panic began to sink its razor claws into his chest. ‘Let me out, I’ve got to get to the police.’
‘Yeah, sure, we’ll go to the police. Give me the number of her flat, Billy, and then we’ll head right on to the nearest station.’
‘Number 349, now stop fucking about! This is serious!’
‘Listen, you’d be dead if it wasn’t for me,’ he said. ‘Like I said, I’m your friend; you can trust me.’
Billy closed his eyes. The world had gone crazy. He began to cry, great globs of tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘I want to go home!’ he wailed, his body shaking.
‘Sure you do. I’ll take you there. But you gotta answer me a few questions first. Understand?’ Questions first, home second. You got that? Billy, listen up, this is important! You got that?’
‘Yeah, I got it,’ he snivelled, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
‘I’m your friend, Billy. Didn’t I just save your arse back there? So you gotta trust me. You got that? Trust me.’
Billy swallowed, nodded dumbly. The car sped down the deserted streets into the night.