There was a letter on the mat.

It was a simple enough fact. Should have been easy to take in. Apart from it was a Sunday, and there was never post on a Sunday. Except business of an official nature.

Brad stared down at the mat, or more precisely, the incongruous letter lying upon it, for quite some time. His half-empty mug hung limply from one hand. His pyjama bottoms, greasy from a restful day in a restful bed, slowly unruffled themselves as time busied itself with going on around him. Outside, a cat mewled. Someone slammed a car door. A cargo pod roared overhead. Youths cursed, kicked a can into the gutter. But Brad just went on staring.

Eventually, some sort of instinct kicked in. Maybe not of survival, because this sort of business, the type of business that requires letters on a Sunday, official but with a capital O, would mean he was past all that self-preservation stuff. No, the reason that he bent and put down the mug and tore open the dull brown envelope with fingers shaking with rage was pure intrigue. He had to know what the heck it was for.

A flicker of hope. It must be the wrong door. That was all. Those flitzips weren't 100% accurate. Errors could find their way into their flight paths. A squashed fly on the microfilm. Seagull excrement on the lens. It must be the wrong door because he was innocent, sweetly angelically innocent, the only clean-living law-abiding five-prayers-a-day God-fearing citizen of the Lord in a long gallery of evil. The street was a river of sin, and no doubt about it.

But his name, and his door number, were on the letterhead all the same. Daubed with the black ink of death.

And below, the reason why. He had skipped over the execution notice; he knew what these things were. He'd seen many a crumpled envelope in the same earthen shade, like a trapdoor to a tomb, through open doors as the council carried the bodies away. He'd had a hand in some himself, in defence of The Lord. He knew the second paragraph, alright. It had become etched into the nightmares of everyone this past decade, pre-written onto every tongue, the way the increasingly rare words of arrest used to enter the bloodstream through news satellites and cheap TV drama. You do not need to say anything. Well, he wouldn't have chance to say anything with a letter like this.

No, the second paragraph could not tear his twitching eye from the third. The reason. The crime.

Gross disturbance of the peace.

He straightened, suddenly studied a hairline crack in the plaster at the door's corner. Erupted into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. Disturbance of the peace.

Him? Brad Earnshaw, an enemy of the peace? And of all times, 9:31 am on a Sunday, the Lord's day, when none shall toil but in the memories of their sin and the workings of their path to the light?

He sidestepped to the hall window, peered out into the street. A thin drizzle sent by the Devil himself could not veil the piercing judgement of an apostle of the Lord. It could not be for him. His name was there, but the moment was merely a test of faith. It was for one within the seething masses all about. Like Rod, opposite in 134, the drinker, the gambler, the whoremaster, carousing long into the night, the one Brad had attempted to save last month by venturing into his garage early one morning and setting the hoarded vodka ablaze with his righteous torch. Or Will, leering from the paneless aperture of 132, whose tongue produced the foul pronouncements that Brad had listed diligently upon his wall in pure white paint, so he would know the shame of his prejudice. Maybe for Maz, whose unholy motorbike work on every Sunday morning had come to an end with the sudden disappearance of his toolbox into the shadows of last Saturday, or perhaps Violet, whose sloth through the work week would be rewarded in hell as well as with Brad's half-prepared report to the police about her filthy habits of needle and pill. Truly, there were many to be punished in this smoking, roaring Gomorrah of the modern age, and few enough to protect the Word and the lambs that were yet to be saved from eternal damnation. And yet, here was one such shepherd with a Notice of Imminent Execution through his letterbox in the middle of his afternoon of pious contemplation and just before his evening of plotting his compassionate guidance in the One True Way.

It could not be for him. And then he read again the name at the top of the paper and saw that it actually wasn't for him, because his faith had stirred the mighty power of the Lord to take out one of the letters when he wasn't looking.

It wasn't for Brad Earnshaw now. It was for Brad Ernshaw, sans a, because as a divine protector of his flock of shaggy mutton he was naturally perfect. It was a modern miracle. Either that or maybe a clerical error, a mere mixing of the files that could have resulted in Imminent dismemberment but was going to be alright now because someone else, probably a heathen coffee-drinker, was going to die instead of him.

He was sure it was the Lord staying the angel of death due to his blinding holiness, but just in case it was the second option, he hurried into the kitchen, where his mobile sat on charge on top of a thrilling dissertation on the impact of cheesecake consumption on the contemporary Christian. Chapter 19 would have to wait for later. He flicked to his contacts and found the line from muscle memory. He allowed himself a small chuckle. His eyes flickered to a sticky note on his fridge and he made a mental copy of its reminder to file the verses he would need to convince Mack from 23 to give his kebab a ceremonial burial after he'd driven back from the chippy tomorrow afternoon.

He may have been in trouble with the police years ago, but these days the Divine Denouncement Agency were good believers one and all.

The phone rang seven times, then someone wished him a good afternoon. Brad was half way through his salvation before he realised he was talking to a robot. Incredulous, he cut off and redialled with a trembling finger.

"We are sorry to announce that the national denouncements and appeals line is currently closed and will reopen Monday at 6am," said the voice, maddeningly calm.

Twenty seven miles away from the office, Brad began to shake.

"Please have a pleasant Sunday reflecting on your faith, like all our operators" advised the robot. "If you require more assistance, please wait for the tone, because machines do not have souls to save and therefore I can use my voice recognition software to help."

Brad smashed down his phone onto the book. He couldn't believe what he had just heard. There had to be exceptions to the commandments. Someone had to be on hand to save the non-sinners. It was the Masses that had to be reprimanded for disobedience.

Carefully, trying not to take even a minor saint's name in vain, he systematically went through his DDA contacts. He left several voicemails, increasingly desperate. Even Father Mason, who'd helped him shut down the youth club at the top, was too busy praying to talk.

He heard a buzz, staggered to the window on legs that felt like twigs. Nothing in the sky. The drone continued, seemingly from everywhere at once. Possibly it was some evil thing that was at this very second providing pleasure or open-minded education, but he was too busy to investigate right now. He had to act fast.

Sitting himself at the table, he rang the line for a third time. When the robot asked how it could assist, he waited as patiently as he could for the tone and carefully laid out his predicament.

"There has been a mistake with a Notice of Imminent Execution," Brad began, as slowly as he dared. "I've been issued one but I'm not the man the letter claims me to be. There has been an error with the spelling of-"

But the electrical thing was already whirring into action over the top. A list of details. Name. Address. Codes from the scrap of paper still clasped in one bloodless fist against the table. It was agony at first, but with every step, Brad felt the warmth of hope rise within. If this message was going to be sorted, if the seeker that could be sailing serenely through the unblemished heavens this very moment were to be called off, then they would need information after all. The robot patiently awaited every answer, only asking him once to repeat when a panicked choke snagged his National ID number on his teeth first time round.

A moment of measured silence. Then, the robot said, "Thank you for providing all necessary details, valued citizen. I will pass your claim over to our operators, who will contact you between 09:06 and 10:06 tomorrow, Monday morning. Thank you again for your time."

Brad's eyes bulged from their sockets. He hissed a stangled gasp into the phone. Outside, someone in a dirty grey tracksuit was lighting up some sort of glass pipe over the road. It didn't seem very important.

The robot asked him to repeat his request eight times. On the fourth, his details were passed over to the Minor Offence Department for verbal assault of a mechanised assistance device.

By the ninth go, the client was speaking clearly. All the tears had been cried out. A powerless calm had sagged his muscles, pressing pale skin into the plywood tabletop. The robot listened politely and considerately.

"We understand your concern in regards to your impending demise, valued citizen. But please take comfort in the safe knowledge that this has all been pre-ordained in the Lord's Plan."

"Gah!" Brad managed, eyes roving the sky.

The robot did not relent in its serenity. "We advise you to split your remaining time in a ratio of one to two, into a Period of Acceptance followed immediately by a Period of Reflection. Any remaining time may be spent in the comfort of a favoured hymn, dialled from our automated sister line at 539-"

"But it's wrong!" Brad sobbed into the microphone. "I'm not meant to die! It's not me! I'm innocent! I'm a peacekeeper! I'm a humble servant of the divine!"

There were audible clicks on the other end. The robot's voice was deeper, more powerful, as if it had selected a recording less worn through use. "If your claim is correct, we will pray for you tomorrow. Rest in peace. Goodbye, Mister Bernard."

And the line cut out.

Brad's prescribed Period of Acceptance lasted seven seconds. It was a resounding failure. He got up in a scamper of limbs and the cracking of ceramic. He tried to call more numbers, but the phone snaked from his hand and tumbled into the spreading pool of cooling tea. His mind was numb and frenzied at the same time. Irrelevant things came to the front in excruciating, wasteful detail. The red glue he would need for the protest at the school next Thursday. The readings from the Treatise of Saint Martholomew to memorise for the park. Disgusted, mocking faces from every door and every window. The quiet celebration when the diocese had finally shut down the council's essential services on the one day granted for rest for all. It was all the Lord's Plan.

"Lord's Plan be damned!" Brad spat. He watched his spittle fly to the window, towards the river of sin. That was his only hope now. Flight. True salvation. The preservation of flesh and bone.

But when he found his coat and burst from the door, he stopped. Because the lines of faces he saw from the kitchen weren't a memory. They were something biblical, a premonition.

Save one detail. There was no disgust now, no mockery. The sallow, filthy expressions of the lost were only of expectation.

From high above, up the stairs, to the left across the landing, from beyond the thin barrier of cotton blinds in the bathroom, too near, there came the sound of shattering glass.