“Bloody hell!” George screamed.

Simon swerved right as the car raced up the left lane. It was a Lamborghini, a sleek torpedo of black metal, which was acting rather unlike a sleek torpedo as it wavered violently through the traffic. Simon honked his horn, but it was already long gone into the night by the time his shaking hand found leather.

“He could have killed us!” Simon grated out through gritted teeth. “He could have killed us. And I’m this close to getting a raise.”

Briefly, George considered sending the bollard to deal with whoever the hell had been in that thing. He’d left it in the car park, silent and dark and deadly, and also somehow convincingly like a bollard too, when it wanted. But he knew it would take just a word, a thought even, to command it. Wherever that Lamborghini turned off, it would find three feet of hungry unmovable demonflesh peeking up beyond the bonnet where nothing had been a microsecond before. It was almost tempting. And then, boring logic put a stop to the fantasy.

The driver of the Lamborghini might be a Clearway client. And in George’s masterplan, it would only be former Clearway clients who would find themselves forcibly scattered three hundred yards across the nearest convenient motorway.

He wasn’t cruel. He’d offer an unbeatable deal first, one which included complimentary breakdown cover as well as not being murdered.

So instead of summoning his pet, George turned the air con up, leant back, and smiled in the darkness. He thought he might be getting a raise too.

“He could have killed us,” Simon panted again.

“You’re starting to sound like a broken record,” George snapped. “Just get us there, get us a drink, and shut up.”

Simon chose his own order for the requests. He shut up right then. He hadn’t known George well at all, but he knew him well enough from the journey up to see that something had changed him in Raughnen. To Simon, the town was just another miserable East Yorkshire dump, a holding pen of sponges and layabouts. He’d been lucky. George had obviously seen something he couldn’t unsee. Maybe he hadn’t turned around in time before that old man had shed his tighty whities.

They drove in silence. George watched the pretty little villages go by through glowering slits of eyes, and considered the phone call he would have to make once they reached Darlington.

He’d come clean to his boss about his new business partner, and it had gone better than expected. Together, they’d formulated a trial sales approach containing a perfectly calculated ratio of cheer, menace and threat of irreversible madness. Then, HR had got their hands on it and expressed fundamental concerns about the use of unpredictable demonic forces by a marketing agent. The monster became a simple prop for a horribly inoffensive cheesefest of a routine. George and Bollard, Live at the Rear Bumper. HR had only cleared his pet at all because its ‘self-transport functionalities’ reduced risk of back strain in their ‘valuable and trusted agent’. George felt his stomach lurch at the thought. Or maybe it was that samosa he’d had for supper. He could have sworn it had rotated forty five degrees in his wrapper when he paused to scan the street for thugs and that escaped walrus he kept hearing about. Maybe it lived on now, bathing in his pool of bubbling stomach acid like it was a jacuzzi, merrily pondering its next move over a slurp of the vodka he’d had last night.

Or maybe he was just mad.

The weak act had birthed weak KPIs anyway. He’d been heckled, shoved aside, even punched for something that was never his idea. So he’d taken matters into his own inspired hands. Used his resources to their full potential. Sign ups had gone through the roof. Some of the non-sign ups were still in the park, beneath five feet of dirt and cosied up in a nest of leaves. George didn’t think they’d raise too much suspicion in a town like that.

And so that came to the phone call. The boss would be very pleased that he’d made his gimmick work, until he learned he hadn’t. But the sales didn’t lie. George was really onto something. He just needed time to find ways to get his system integrated into the company. He’d have to go high. Very high.

And for now, he needed a distraction for that intruding, wagging, tentacular nose of mighty HR. He had to convince the boss to do something that would turn their attention. Nothing that would get him sacked, just, you know, pat someone on the head or break a chair. He needed a couple of months off anyway. And while the HR ladies were having the time of their lives, rustling through towers of paperwork to get all their ‘get to the root of the problems’ and ‘prioritise your wellbeings’ in order, he’d get started on his rise to power. The world of motor insurance was in the palm of his gently sweating hand.

Another thought came to him then, so naturally that it almost disgusted him.

If his boss refused to play along, he could always use the bollard.

He could use the bollard on them all.