He was not a liked man. Numerous folks would not stoop so low as to utter his name. Many simply called him “the bastard”.

The man I hereby refer to was their local bailiff. By ‘their’, I mean a collection of humans who didn’t like to be asked to return money that they had been accused of borrowing. And who could blame them? Half of them had been desperate, the other half had been swindled. But the debt collector didn’t care. He had learnt the art of dispassionate disassociation, which was a fine skill in his line of work, albeit one that made him rather detestable and prone to being struck by a flying egg as he walked down the high street. 

He had been in the debt industry for thirty years, which made him forty-six years of age. He hadn’t bothered with college or university; he just wished to collect money from people who needed it more than than the creditors. In many ways, you couldn’t really blame him. His father scoffed the last piece of his birthday cake at his seventh birthday party, and in doing so, fostered an ‘every man for himself’ mentality that permeated the household and his son’s future. His mother, by comparison, liked to blow her money on the ponies. She was dead now and, after fifteen years of absence, father was still out hunting for a hat that suited the shape of his head. It was all very Freudian. 

What we do know for sure is this; as soon as the debt collector got a taste for the debt collecting at the meagre age of sixteen, after being introduced to it by a very ropey Danish pastry chef called Tram, he effectively became an addict. He felt a sense of pride and impending erection while calling in debts; as though he was serving a higher, slightly saucy being. It didn’t matter if that higher being was a faceless suit in the financial sector. He liked to please. But more than that, he liked to satisfy his sense of justice. 

Eye for an eye. Tit for tit. Arse for an arse. That’s simply how he saw the world. It was his moral code. 

But please, cheerful reader, let me bring you up to the preset day. Let me tell you how it all went a bit Richard Nixon (crooked).

The debt collector was good at his job. One could never deny that. He had certificates on his bedroom wall to prove it, as well as a spotless credit rating. But all out of nowhere, he appeared to have met his match. There was a debt that he could not collect for love nor money. Letters had been sent. No answer. Calls had been made. No answer. The door had been knocked. No answer. He was pulling his hair out, even if it was a wig. 

Getting desperate after a few days of ‘no contact’, he set up camp in the bush outside the house of the absent debtor. He brought sandwiches, a flagon of tea, binoculars, and forty ounces of Catholic guilt. 

The house was quiet, but every now and again a light would turn on. He saw shadows of people but never real flesh. The door never opened. He knew they were hiding from him. It drove him mad, but he was a professional and he would never break the law by breaching the structure of the property without invitation. 

His plan? Wait for life to emerge. It always did sooner or later. His motto was this; “Where’s there’s a debt, there’s a pound of flesh.” He truly believed that debtors wanted to be flushed out. “It’s like the killer’s instinct to confess,” he once told a distant relative who had no choice but to listen as they were being kept alive on life support. “In many ways, they need me.”

And yet, this latest case was casting doubt upon his entire philosophy. Then, after three nights in the hedge, another morning arrived and a woman appeared on the doorstep with a cup of coffee. She was taking in the sun to help her circadian rhythm. He jumped out of the hedge, and in that automatic reaction sort of way, she threw her coffee in his face. 

“Are you Mrs Porterbun?” He said, wiping the coffee from his brow. 

“I can’t hear you,” she said.

“Are you Mrs Porterbun?” He repeated. “I’m looking for Mr Porterbun. He has a debt to pay.”

“I’m deaf,” she said.

He unfolded a letter. 

“Debt,” he said, pointing at the word while doing so. It was, after all, his favourite word. 

“I’m blind,” she said. Then she turned around, stepped inside and shut the door in his face.

That evening, while waiting to be seen in the Serious Burns Unit, he was not in good spirits, but he was determined to get the job done. The following morning, his face covered in bandages, he knocked on the door once again. The same woman answered. 

“Who are you, bandage man?” She said. 

“I thought you were blind,” he said. 

“Right you are,” she said. 

“Enough of this. I insist that you present Mr Porterbun. He owes a very significant debt to a very significant corporation.”

She weighed him up. 

“Fine,” she muttered. “Wait here.”

Two minutes later, she returned and handed him an urn. 

“Here is Mr Porterbun.”

He stared at the urn. 

“Go on, take him. See if you can get any money out of him, because I sure as hell can’t. He was meant to buy me a table and chair set for the garden but that didn’t happen.”

It was a discouraging bombshell, but the debt collector was committed to his work and wouldn’t take death as an answer. 

“Fine. Pass him here,” he said, somewhat put out.

“Good luck with him,” said the widowed missus, handing over her husband. “Let me know if you get any cash out of the useless bastard.”

So, with fervour in his gait, the the collector headed down the street carrying the ashes of Mr Porterbun under his pit. And carry them he did. For seventeen years he walked the earth with those ashes, every day searching for ways to extract the debt. 

Eventually, it drove him mad. He would talk to the urn. He would stroke the urn. He would sleep with the urn. He went to church with the urn. He was fired while holding the urn. And, in the end, he died cradling the urn. 

His last words? 

“Can you point me in the direction of a hat that doesn’t make me look too serious?”

Then they buried him with the ashes. On his headstone it read:

‘He Who Wandered Aimlessly With Ashes’

Yes, it was all very Freudian, and there’s probably a lesson in it. The only problem is, my doorbell just rang and I think it’s the bailiff.