CHAPTER 6
Jess was home just after 2 p.m., the house as quiet and gloomy as she had left it that morning. She dropped her coat and bag on the sofa and bent to pick up the mail. She took it into the kitchen, and although she knew there would be nothing other than more bad news, not least because she recognised the style and stamp on both, she ripped open the first of the two envelopes.
It was addressed to Mr and Mrs M Y Khalid and it was from Wellingford Borough Council, Council Tax Department, informing her that as previous demands for payment had not been met, they were assigning collection of council tax arrears of £625.54 to Debita Debt Management Limited.
She placed the letter on top of the Notice of Eviction, which was where she had left it earlier that morning, and opened the second envelope. It was from Northern & Midland Energy informing Mr M Khalid that due to his failure to respond to repeated demands for payment, the electricity supply would be disconnected on the twenty-first of July. Jess glanced at the wall calendar: tomorrow.
Her shoulders sank a little further, but none of this was a surprise; it had been inevitable and was simply the foreseeable consequence of events that had always been outside her control. The doorbell rang.
Without stopping for a second to wonder who might be calling at two o’clock in the afternoon, when she was almost always out, she put the letter down on the pile and headed back through the sitting room to the front door. She grasped the handle and pulled it open.
She recognised them immediately, but the shock of the unexpected visit made her gasp with fear, and in a blind panic she slammed the door shut and threw her back against it. She put her head back, eyes wide in fright and shock at the terrible image, but she knew straight away something was wrong. The door had not latched, but had bounced back against her with a crunching and splintering noise, and she could still hear the sounds of the street outside. With mounting fear and confusion, she slowly turned her head to her left, terrified at what she might see. It was worse than she had imagined.
A baseball bat was wedged between door and jamb, preventing its closure. The doorjamb was broken and pieces of shattered wood hung limply below the bat, which apart from a few chips and some sinister-looking stains, appeared unscathed. She shut her eyes again but knew there was nothing she could do. If they wanted to come in, all they had to do was push against the door, and she would have no chance resisting their strength; which meant that despite the extreme tactics, they intended no physical violence, at least not today. She slowly opened the door and stepped onto the mat.
Two men in dark suits, ties and black overcoats. One, five foot tall, bald, a clipboard cradled in his left arm, was smiling broadly at her. His associate, six feet five and eighteen stone, chipped and stained baseball bat resting casually over his left shoulder, stared directly at her, unblinking, with neither expression nor emotion, like a large fish. He sported a prominent scar down one side of his face; a scar that had never fully healed after the altercation with “Stanley Knife” Eddie five years ago, in which it was fair to say Eddie had come off worse. She had never decided which of them frightened her more: Bond villain “Baldie” or scarface “Gorilla Man”, but together they were a formidable sight.
She knew them well. They came round every week, usually in the evening at about 6.30 and always on a Friday. Jess made sure she was always in because that way, their business could be conducted with as little friction as possible, and her windows stayed intact.
But she had been taken by surprise this afternoon. This was unprecedented. Perhaps they had been tipped off? Perhaps they had seen her coming home early? Perhaps they had just got lucky, or on this occasion decided to vary the time of their visit in order to catch Mo at home for once. Whatever the reason, they were here now and they meant business.
Baldie was clearly the boss, because his companion never said anything. Gorilla Man was bag carrier, protector, minder, intimidator and enforcer all rolled into one, and without him, Baldie could not possibly do his job successfully. The mere presence of Gorilla Man imbued Baldie with a power way beyond his physical capabilities and he had the arrogance to go with it, evident every time he spoke.
“Good afternoon, Mrs Khalid,” he said, still beaming, unperturbed by the incident with the door and the baseball bat, and relishing the intense discomfort and fear clearly etched on the face of the young woman standing in the doorway. “Is your husband at home, by any chance?”
Baldie inclined his head casually, his mocking tone betraying the fact that of course he already knew the answer to the question.
Jess tried her best to appear unfazed and defiant in the face of the implied threat but made the mistake of glancing up at Gorilla Man, whose eyes simply bored into her, making her knees go wobbly. She fought back the urge to slam the door again but realised it would be futile and she would do better not to try their patience.
“No. He’s out,” she replied curtly. The same answer to the same question. Week after week, they went through the motions on the doorstep, the same choreographed routine, and although it was true, of course, it sounded disingenuous; not least because it was. Mo had been “out” for over four months now, but she was not about to explain his absence to anyone. Baldie looked at her like a fox assessing cornered prey in a chicken coop, and resumed his sarcastic tone.
“He’s out a lot, isn’t he? Not very considerate, is it?” he went on, “leaving his young wife at home to deal with his” – he paused for emphasis – “business affairs?”
Jess looked at him, although she sensed Gorilla Man’s attention remained fixated on her. She had no choice; she had to tell them.
“I haven’t got it,” she said in as matter-of-fact a way as she could. What else could she do? It was true. It wasn’t a cold day, but Jess sensed a sudden deep chill in the doorway and she tightened the grip of her arms around herself to maintain her composure. Gorilla Man didn’t flinch.
Baldie’s beaming smile dissolved as his eyes narrowed, his jocular expression supplanted by a frown which signalled a combination of surprise, confusion and disappointment as he morphed seamlessly from cheery conversationalist into Bond villain.
“Why. Not?” The ‘t’ snapped like the spring of a mousetrap.
“Get paid Friday,” said Jess, her fear rendering her incapable of constructing a proper sentence.
“It’s. Due. Today,” he said helpfully, each word distinct, articulated slowly and deliberately to ensure there could be no misunderstanding, no doubt of his disapprobation, no doubt of the menace.
“I’ll have it Friday,” countered Jess, with a growing panic that a situation she already knew was out of her control – had always been out of her control – was nevertheless spiralling further downwards.
Baldie considered her statement for a moment and performed some mental arithmetic. Jess shot a glance at Gorilla Man, who remained motionless, unmoved but focused on the prey. She turned back to Baldie who addressed her calmly and gently, like a lawyer who might advise a client of the potentially disadvantageous consequences of taking a particular course of action.
“It’ll be an extra fifty by then,” he advised. Jess’s bottom lip quivered. She couldn’t help it. She wanted more than anything else to be brave, to be resilient, to be strong and fight back, but she had nothing left. She swallowed, and mercifully the tears that had been welling up inside her subsided. She hadn’t cracked.
Perhaps sensing she was on the edge, Baldie’s earlier charm returned. Had he spotted an opportunity to have some sport, or perhaps something even better? He smiled at her playfully, slowly looking her up and down as if he were assessing a candidate for a modelling assignment and about to pass judgement on her appearance. When his eyes reached her middle, he ventured, “or maybe … we could negotiate a” – with eyes wide and brows raised, he met her gaze with his triumphant conclusion – “discount?”
Had she been in any doubt what he was alluding to, she had to look no further for confirmation than Gorilla Man, to who, having sensed some movement, she had involuntarily returned her attention. Gorilla Man had teeth, she noticed for the first time. Yellow ones, through which the tip of a purple tongue could be seen protruding. The scar, also purple, had creased up his face and his bloodshot eyes narrowed, piercing her with a lascivious glare.
This tipped her over the edge. She sucked in a huge breath which added two inches to her height, and with all her strength leapt back into the sitting room, arms flailing desperately, reaching to grab the door to her left while knowing that within a fraction of a second the bloodied and bruised baseball bat would be deployed quicker than she could possibly react, knocking her back into the house and onto the floor, after which she would surely be at the mercy of these two hideous monsters and be, who knows, entirely at their pleasure?
But then, remarkably, the door slammed shut. She fumbled for the lock and hastily turned the key. She waited for the inevitable reaction. The predictable resort to violence, the shouting, banging, crashing, breaking glass. But nothing happened. Just silence. Then, as she held her breath, she heard two sets of footsteps slowly receding. Baldie and his gorilla, off to see their next client.
She pressed her forehead to the door, closed her eyes and gathered her composure. Another crisis averted. No, postponed. Another reason. How many did she need?