Chapter 2: Chapter 2

Tuesday 27th April 2010

0:04

Gary Ingalls, one of the employees of David Oswald has just stepped through the door of his house, expecting to have to apologise to his girlfriend for coming in so late from work. He is surprised when he discovers that he has managed to get back to the flat before her.

He had been the last person to leave the office having got into a conversation with David before leaving for the night. David has a habit of keeping people hanging onto his every word and making them lose track of time.

Maybe that is one of the reasons that Gary stays working for the man despite all the personal risk.

Gary is a computer programmer. He was not long out of University and had landed on his feet with the highly paid job at Progression. He found out quickly just why the job was paying so well.

It had taken just under a week. There were three employees then instead of the five David had now – Gary and two women called Alice and Belinda. He liked them both from the start but he sometimes worried about Alice. She could be a little volatile. Belinda was very funny and more his type of girl. He sometimes wondered if Isabelle had not been on the scene if he would have ever got together with her.

David took Gary into his office and had told him that there was actually a little more to the company than he had initially led him to believe in the interview. He told him that there had been a few carefully structured questions in the interview, the answers to which had secured his position in the company. Gary did not have a clue what he was talking then.

“I was kind of hoping that we could push you into this a little more slowly but it seems that you’re going to have a baptism of fire…”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

And so Gary had been forced to call his girlfriend and tell her that he was working late that night. It was not a lie. But that was just the beginning of the life of deception that he had found it was easier to live than to tell her the truth. She couldn’t handle the truth.

He was very concerned when he got off the phone and saw how serious Alice and Belinda were. He understood then there was a good chance that the job paid so well because they were going to do something illegal that night. There was no way that he could ever have been ready for what was actually going to happen

In hindsight he wondered what the carefully structured questions that David had talked about that made him a “suitable candidate” for this line of work were. He tried to remember the interview and could not think which answers would have led him to believe this.

`But the first thing he learned about David Oswald was that he was never wrong or it was so rare an occurrence that Gary didn’t even notice.

They had gone in David’s car and Gary had been allowed to sit in the front even though Belinda called shotgun. He soon saw why David had wanted him in the front. Alice appeared to be doing a weapons check in the back. At that point he could have happily told David that he was no longer interested in working for the company.

But how does one walk away from an armed criminal organisation and stay alive? Gary chose to stay where he was and see what happened. He was sure that he would regret that more than actually leaving and being shot down like a dog.

Of course, by the end of the evening he felt that it might have been better if he was working for a criminal organisation. The risks were probably lower.

The car stopped in the hills outside the city and Alice stepped outside, armed with a gun that someone with her frame should have had trouble carrying. But she managed somehow. David could see the look on Gary’s face.

“Don’t worry. I don’t envisage any real problems.”

That was comforting.

Gary managed to get out of the car because it was obvious that David and Belinda were not going to get out before him. He looked very nervous seeing Alice armed. She could tell.

“David, are you sure that he was the right guy?”

David got out of the car and was followed by Belinda.

“You said the same thing about Belinda!”

There was an awkward silence. Belinda looked at Alice. “Did you?”

Alice said nothing and smiled slightly.

“Bitch!” was all Belinda said, but they both laughed.

“What the hell’s going on?” Gary asked.

Belinda handed him a gun. He didn’t take it

“Somebody tell me what’s going on?”

“See, an inquisitive mind. That’s exactly the type of person we’re looking for.”

Gary spun round to look at David. “I have an inquisitive mind, do I? You’d have to be a fucking vegetable to not be a little inquisitive about what’s going on here.”

David seemed a little taken aback by this.

“David doesn’t really like swearing”, Belinda told Gary, as if that managed to explain the whole thing.

Belinda offered him the gun again and he shook his head.

“Gary, I’m afraid that if you don’t take that gun you can’t come with us. I don’t think I made a mistake with you. I’m pretty sure you want to know what this is all about, and that you will want to be a part of it when you find out. If you don’t want the gun, you can stay at the car and we will speak no more about it. You will have to appreciate that if this is the case then I will not be able to keep you on my staff.”

“Of course I want to know what this is all about. I’d just rather know instead of being handed a gun and being told to follow you into… whatever this is.”

“Trust me”, Alice said. “You’d rather not know. If you did know you wouldn’t come. But once you’re there you’ll understand that you had to come.”

Belinda handed him the gun and this time, Gary took it.

He could still see David’s smile as he led the way from the car, unarmed.

Gary learned a lot that night and had no idea why David lived this life but knew there was also programming to be done too. He wondered if there was a link somewhere. If there was then he could not find it.

Gary, bless his heart, decided recently that he should tell his girlfriend about his new life before she starts to wonder why he sometimes doesn’t come home until the early hours of the morning. God forbid she would start thinking that he was having an affair.

He wonders what she will think? Would she believe him? Would she ask him to quit?

Gary hopes not because, for the first time since he was a kid, he is having fun. Of course everything has its bad points. Since Gary had started this job he had seen more death than he cared to mention. Luckily it has not been anyone that Gary knew. Not yet, at any rate.

He does not know at what point exactly he starts to worry about the fact that she hasn’t come home. But it comes. They have a mutual agreement that if they were tired they would not wait up for each other. Gary can feel his eyes going together but he is never able to go to bed without her – not unless he knows that she is going to be away all night. He has always made an excuse when she comes in and sees that he is still up; he had just got up for a glass of water or something. He knows that she never believes him.

It is not even that late when he begins to worry. It’s just because of the line of work he is in now that he is thinking this way. He knows what can sometimes be lurking out in the dark. He has wanted to tell her all about the things he has seen. If she were to walk in the door right now then he would break down and tell her everything.

But she doesn’t.