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  Everything, apart from the slapping of his feet on the tiles, was silent.

  Lloyd opened up two of the cupboards and browsed the contents. It was certainly very busy in there. Hordes of tins and packages were stacked up and squashed up against the wooden walls like sardines.

  Beep. Beep.

  Startled, Lloyd spun around, hitting his forehead on one of the cupboard doors in the process.

  “FUCK!” he spat angrily, furiously rubbing his head.

  Beep. Beep.

  The tinny ringing of an old mobile phone ripped patronisingly through the silence as if to taunt him.

  Face contorted with confusion, Lloyd glanced around the room and studied all of the surfaces.

  Beep. Beep.

  He stood still and listened carefully, pricking his ears.

  Beep. Beep.

  Slowly, the boy lunged to the left and carefully pulled open one of the small kitchen drawers. Sure enough, inside it, lying on top of a pile of what appeared to be utility bills, was an old Nokia phone that, frankly, resembled a brick. He chuckled at the sight of it. Imagine having a house this size and a phone from the bloody eighties!

  He lifted the phone up, which immediately stopped its beeping. On the pixelated screen popped up the words ‘(1) MISSED CALL – SARAH.’

  At that moment, Lloyd’s stomach let out another low rumble, whining at him to fill his pie hole. He was just about to toss the phone back inside the drawer when all of a sudden, a text message flashed up. Curiously, he fiddled with the peculiar cushioned buttons and opened up the inbox. Mum, where are you? Remember, it's your doc appointment today. I’m waiting outside as we agreed.

  “Oh, fuck…” gasped Lloyd, taking a step back as the phone dropped from his clammy, sausage-like fingers and collided with the tiled floor. “Oh fuck…” as fast as his fat legs could carry him, he rushed back through the corridor and banged hard on the living room door. “WAKE UP YOU LOT!” he shouted before turning on his heel and pelting up the stairs. “MUM! DAD!” he bellowed as loudly as he could, in spite of his heart hammering at 100 miles an hour. “THE DAUGHTER’S OUTSIDE. WAITING FOR THE WOMAN.” He hunched over and slapped his palms to his knees, trying desperately to catch his breath.

  A second later, his mother appeared in the doorway of the room, her face still foggy with sleep, a dressing gown that did not belong to her draped over her slender frame. “What?”

  “Someone….. called…. Sarah….the…. daughter…. is…. outside…. pick….woman…. up….” Lloyd explained through pained pants.

  Ronnie came out of the room, already fully dressed. “Damn it, Min, I told you, didn’t I? I fucking knew we shouldn’t stay here.”

  Minnie rubbed her temples, “we need to get out,” she said.

  “We haven’t properly cleaned up, Min,” Ronnie said. “Our prints and our blood are all over the fucking place.”

  Loud bands alerted the three of them to the landing, where Stella was dashing up the stairs, long blonde hair bouncing around her shoulders. “There’s a woman, she’s coming up the front path, and she’s holding a key.”

  Lloyd’s stomach dropped. He stared desperately from one parent to the other.

  “I could try and get her to leave,” Stella suggested.

  Ronnie tutted and narrowed his eyes scornfully at his daughter, “what are you, a fucking retard?” he barked. He was always nasty under pressure. “She’s not going to leave just because some random stranger tells her politely to bugger off.”

  Stella looked hurt but remained quiet.

  “We haven’t got a choice,” said Minnie, turning to Ronnie.

  Her partner groaned and rubbed his head, “fuck’s sake.”

  “I know, but there’s no other way out,” Minnie said. Her voice was regretful, and yet Lloyd was certain he saw a glimmer of excitement cross his mother’s expression.

  The sound of a key sliding into the lock caused them all to snap their heads down the stairs to the corridor that led to the front entrance.

  “Stay out of sight,” Ronnie hissed, roughly pulling Stella and Lloyd behind him whilst he and Minnie ducked and peered anxiously around the bannister.

  Each of them held their breath.

  “What about Zach and Flo?” Stella suddenly whispered, gripping onto her mother’s shoulder.

  Minnie looked back at her and gave Stella a reassuring smile, “woe betide the fucker who crosses those two.” She winked, and Stella felt the tightness in her chest release.

  They heard the front door swing open with a long, drawn-out creak. It bashed against the wall, and a few seconds later, it was being slammed shut. Footsteps. Impatient, rapid footsteps, of a daughter who had apparently had enough of her mother’s dilly-dallying.

  “Mum?” the woman shouted.

  Ronnie fixed his stare on her as she came into view. She was middle-aged, perhaps a decade or so older than Minnie and him. She had one of those bouncy perms that made her look like the type of woman who got in everyone's business, whether they liked it or not. She stomped off down the hall, out of sight.

  “I’ll go,” Ronnie said, standing up from his crouched position. “Get all our shit together,” he instructed Minnie before quietly creeping off down the staircase.

  “Mother?!” the woman barked. Just as Ronnie reached the last step, he heard her gasp. Clearly, she’d gone into the kitchen and discovered the mess on the table. With a low sigh, he quickened his pace as he charged down the hall. Just as he reached the doorway to the kitchen, the woman was talking into her phone in a hushed voice.

  “Police, please… I… I think my mother’s house has been…” the woman spun around, just as Ronnie was about to lunge for her. She let out a blood-curdling scream, and the phone fell to the ground and smashed on the floor. Ronnie stamped hard on it until the screen went black, and a spider web of glass shattered across its surface.

  “Nachos,” he bellowed as he glanced up and charged towards the woman, who was heading straight for the sliding glass doors.

  He guessed she was the kind who also did Pilates or yoga because she was surprisingly nimble. She might have even escaped had the sliding glass door not been locked.

  “Please, don’t hurt me,” she sank down to the ground, her entire body quivering as tears fell down her blotchy red cheeks.

  Ronnie slowed his pace and savoured the moment.

  There was something exquisite about how powerful he always felt in those brief, fleeting moments, just before a kill.

  Like the fucking king of the world.

  He chuckled. A nasty, dirty smirk crept up onto his stubbly face. He heard the crunch of footsteps behind him and watched the woman’s face crumple despairingly as the bleakness of the situation fully dawned on her.

  “W…w…what is it you want?” she croaked. Slowly, shakily, she attempted to stand. “I can give you whatever… money? Is that it?”

  Wordlessly, Zach came forwards so that he was standing beside his father, a grave expression on his face. In one hand, he wielded a thick kitchen knife, and Ronnie silently praised his son for taking the initiative.

  “Finish her,” Ronnie told his son. “We’ve not got time for games. The cops are on the way.”

  “What?” moaned Flo, stamping her foot on the ground. “I want to play!”

  “Well, it's tough fucking shit,” Ronnie spun around and yelled at his youngest daughter. He saw that Lloyd, Minnie, and Stella were also hovering in the doorway, each of them looking similarly disappointed. “For fuck’s sake, we hang around here much longer, we’ll all be going to jail, and you,” he jabbed a grimy finger in the direction of his youngest daughter, “you’ll go to foster care. Probably get beaten and molested and end up a damn crack whore.”

  Flo rolled her eyes.

  “Zach, kill that bitch,” he yelled at his eldest son. “Change of plan. Lloyd and I will get the old bitch out of the back of the van. Set the place alight, make it look like the old hag had fucking dementia and left the oven on.”
r />   Zach grabbed the now screaming woman by the hair and poised the blade at the side of her neck.

  “Mum… you… you killed my mu-“

  The young man rammed the knife into her flesh, its sharp point gliding almost effortlessly through the side of her throat. Immediately, blood poured from the surface, like lava erupting from a cave. He let her body fall to the ground, her head smacking into the tiles; a thick pool of red rapidly forming a halo around her.

  “I’ve got the money and our shit. Girls pick up anything worth any value. We’ll go wait in the car,” said Minnie, addressing Stella and Flo.

  Ronnie nodded and looked to Lloyd.

  Approximately ten minutes later, Ronnie and his teenage sons were standing in the middle of the kitchen, both mother and daughter lying dead on the tiles. Lloyd doused the room in the vodka that they’d thankfully not drunk the evening before, whilst Ronnie struck a match.

  “You boys get out, go to the car,” he told them. “Move it, now.”

  Neither of them argued. Perhaps other young men from normal families would have refused, instead opting to stay with their father in what could potentially be a lethal scenario. But Zach and Lloyd had been taught from a very young age that being honourable got you nowhere. Obediently, they jogged back out of the house, through the front door. Ronnie waited ten seconds, then threw the match on the ground and sprinted out of the house.

  The engine of the van was rumbling as he ran out into the open air, his lungs already feeling like they were rapidly filling with lead. Sirens erupted into the air, ringing nearer and nearer with every heartbeat.

  Swallowing, Ronnie mustered the last of his energy to hop into the passenger seat, and Minnie immediately sped off down the road. Just as they turned left at the junction, Ronnie was certain he caught a glimpse of blue light.

  Chapter Five

  Summer, 1999

  “Oh… Ron!” Minnie gasped, clutching her hands to her heart as her chest flooded with emotion. He wound his big arm around her shoulders and planted a kiss on her cheek.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Oh Ronnie, it's perfect,” gushed Minnie, slowly stepping towards the rusty, old car that had been parked in the middle of the clearing.

  It wasn’t the car that made Minnie’s heart swell. She’d seen Ronnie’s beat-up old fiesta plenty of times before.

  But not like this.

  Ronnie had decorated the discoloured blue exterior with fairy lights and cheesy, sparkly banners, which wished her congratulations. Inside, the seats were folded down, creating a wide space that was illuminated by glowing orange lanterns in each corner. A few bottles of wine and some cheap plastic wine glasses, as well as a radio, a blanket, pillows, and a box of her favourite chocolates, waited inside.

  “Oh… Ronnie,” she repeated, unable to articulate how amazed she was by it all. “This is wonderful…”

  He laughed, grabbed her hands, and twirled her around. “Is it worth a blowjob?”

  Giggling, she nudged him in the side and let him scoop her up so that he was carrying her again.

  “M’lady,” he said playfully, “your chariot awaits!”

  Chapter Six

  2019

  “Family meeting!” Ronnie announced.

  It was a redundant gesture, considering that all six of them were already sitting in the same family-sized hotel room. Nevertheless, everyone drifted closer to where he was sitting, at the foot of the double bed that he would share with Minnie.

  It had been around six hours since they’d made a run from the old woman’s house. Minnie had driven a few hours to Norfolk, a place she recognised from where she’d take caravan holidays as a child. There was plenty of family-run bed and breakfasts down the seafront, where they’d take cash with no questions asked, and they’d even been allowed to park the van in the owner’s private garage, out of sight.

  “Guys,” said Ronnie, taking a swig of his beer. “Sorry for being tetchy earlier. The whole scenario really took me by surprise.”

  Flo snorted, “no shit.”

  “But that’s life,” he continued with a shrug. “And so we’re at that point again where we need to think about our next move.” His twinkly blue eyes flitted upwards and fixed on each of his children one by one. “We’ve got about ten grand. That won’t last longer than a few months, not if we’re staying in hotels.”

  Silence descended upon the group as each of them fell into his or her own thoughts.

  Zach, a strong, good-looking 19-year-old, was naturally cocky. Ambitious. He’d had enough of bloody burglaries and muggings. He was hungry for more, and he had full faith they were more than capable of achieving more.

  Stella, whose natural beauty overcompensated for her remarkably slow-processing brain, wanted nothing more than to appease her father and win his approval. She watched him carefully, wondering what suggestion would impress him the most.

  Lloyd, as the stereotypical teenager fuelled by testosterone, wanted more women. He envisioned himself as one of those chiselled mafia members, with big-titted women on each arm whilst he smoked a pipe and kept a gun in his shirt pocket.

  Flo just wanted to play. She was happy to work, as she had the previous evening, transferring the money and hacking into the old lady’s banking account. However, what was life without any play? She’d already been deprived of pre-school and all that crap (not that the idea of sticking her fingers in play dough surrounded by twenty other snot-nosed kids appealed).

  And Minnie was torn. She wanted it all. She wanted a lavish, luxury mansion and all the riches. But she also wanted a torture chamber.

  Was that really too much to ask?

  “I know we all want to have some fun,” said Ronnie, understanding the expressions on his family’s face. “And we will,” he assured them with a nod, “but we also need a new vehicle, and we need somewhere steady to live. Enough money to keep us going.”

  “But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Minnie chimed in. She took a sip of the rich red wine that she had ordered on room service. “We can’t just get a house, can we? Fuck, we’d have to sell up and move every couple of months.”

  Zach nodded in agreement, “if we were tied down to one place, we’d have been caught by now.”

  Silence again.

  “What about one of those motor homes?” Stella suggested, suddenly. “You know, one we could drive around and shit.”

  Minnie nodded, “that’s not a bad idea,” she said, “but we’d be all sleeping on top of each other.”

  Flo wrinkled her nose. “Insect. Gross.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Flo,” laughed Zach, shaking his head, “you’re thinking of incest again.”

  Stella tapped something into her phone, then turned the screen around to reveal a YouTube video entitled “My Double-Decker RV.”

  The video had only generated a modest amount of views, a couple of thousand, but still, the family all watched in silence as a man with a heavy foreign accent showed them around. It was, quite literally, a double-decker bus that had been converted into a miniature house, complete with a bathroom, kitchen, living area, and bedrooms.

  “Damn, that really would be perfect,” said Ronnie.

  Stella’s cheeks glowed at having won his approval.

  “How much we talking?”

  “Oh, at least a million,” she said quickly, turning the phone around. “Took this guy and his wife a few years, he was saying. They’re trying to make it big on YouTube, and they travel around the UK at the moment.”

  Lloyd scoffed, “I’ll just pull a million quid out of my arse hole then, shall I?”

  Zach sucked his front teeth, “what if we robbed the money? Enough to buy it outright?”

  The others all stared at him.

  “What?”

  Ronnie sighed. “Look, son, I appreciate you are ambitious and all, but we have to be realistic. Can you really see your baby sister holding an entire fucking bank at gunpoint?”

  Flo jutted out her chin and fold
ed her arms, “don’t underestimate me.”

  “Okay,” said Zach slowly, “so what about fraud of some kind? A scam? We got a little kid on our team, and everyone knows kids are the best at scamming.”

  His parents both thought for a moment, weighing the idea up.

  “I mean, what if we dress her up all scruffy and put her on the street? She’d probably get given a decent amount,” Lloyd said.

  “Yeah, but not a million quid, Lloyd,” said Flo, rolling her eyes. “I’m thinking we get into drugs. I’d be a good runner. Mum and Stella could maybe get in with some good suppliers, and you three can be the muscle,” she nodded towards her older brothers and father.

  Ronnie and Minnie exchanged looks, but then both mutually shook their heads.

  “Flo, that is a very good idea, sweetheart,” said Minnie, “but your father and I cannot put you at risk like that. What if you got taken for ransom or something? We’d be put back at square one, and you might end up getting an ear cut off.”

  “Okay, I’ve got it!” cried Zach, “I’ve got it.”

  “What is it, son?” Ronnie asked.

  Zach pointed at Stella’s phone, “why not just fucking nick that one?”

  His father blinked back at him.

  Stella jumped up from her seat and stamped her feet excitedly. “Oh my god, yes! That’s the best idea.”

  “Because clearly there are so many double-decker mobile homes about, no-one will ever know we stole it,” scoffed Flo. “Come on, Stella, you aren’t that dumb.”

  Stella narrowed her eyes and glared at her little sister coldly, pretty eyes glittering angrily. “They’re wannabe YouTubers. They’ve spilled their fucking guts on the internet. Neither of them has a family. Both adopted from shitty backgrounds. Moved from someplace in America. We just force them into making a video saying they are quitting YouTube. They disappear off the internet; no one asks questions. We kill them, bury them someplace…”

  “We can draw up some documents,” Zach interjected, “force them to sign them. So if anyone questions us, we’ll say we fucking bought it off them fair and square.”