magnify at 200 per cent. I pressed the redial button on Guy’s phone. A woman answered. It was the district council – the planning office. How could she help? I asked her for the fax number there. No problem, she said. It matched the last number logged on the activity report. Oh, Guy, what are you up to? I can’t pretend I wasn’t just a little excited.
I waited until Friday, when Guy usually spent the afternoon in the office clearing his paperwork ahead of the weekend rush. After lunch, while he was taking his customary endless lavatory break, I lifted his keys from his jacket. I told Rita there were a number of outstanding For Sale signs that needed picking up around town, and that I’d be out in the van if anyone asked.
Guy’s rented two-room flat was a five-minute drive away. I left the van somewhere out of sight and let myself in. I stood fora moment, just to test the atmosphere. The door to his bedroom was ajar, leaking his sour sleep-odours into the air. I pushed open a second door to reveal a bachelor lair, dark and untidy, with a leather sofa and an outsized TV with video player and a collection of action movies. Near the window was a dining area, and there, spread on the table with Guy’s unwashed coffee mug, were sheets of photocopied A4 paper arranged in a large rectangle.
This was it – a draughtsman’s plan, rubber-stamped with the council’s logo and marked RIVER DEV 1. At first glance it looked like a layout of the town centre, not very different from the ones that had accumulated over the years in a cupboard at the office. But in this version the main road with its stretch of small run-down businesses had disappeared, freeing up space for ‘pedestrianized retail’. There were shaded residential blocks, and a ‘walkway’ now snaked along the waterside. The reason for Guy’s furtive activity was highlighted in yellow: a wedge of land between the station and the river. I knew this plot – an eyesore you could see from the bridge across the railway line, piled with stones and gravel and dotted with ramshackle buildings and rusting equipment. It looked unsellable. But here it was arrowed excitedly with a pair of question marks. Obviously Guy and his friend at the council were hoping to make a killing with inside information, snapping up this land before this scheme was made public and then selling it on to a developer. But did Guy even have money? That seemed unlikely. A search through his drawers turned up nothing but old pay cheques from Mower’s and motor insurance and utility bills and overdraft statements. No tell-tale applications for mortgages; no hidden investments. Maybe his partner was the one with the money and Guy was in for a cut, presumably for reasons to do with Mower’s.
My first thought was simply to expose Guy, but then in aglorious moment of clarity, I saw instead what could be. I saw the future. I was twenty-one and I saw it right there, in Guy’s kitchen.
His breakfast dishes were still in the sink. I opened his grubby fridge. He’d done some shopping for the weekend. I remember helping myself to a mini apple pie from an open pack. And then there was the raw, thawing chicken – an invitation in itself, sitting there in its pool of pink meltwater, and requiring only a tilt of the plate (the top shelf of the fridge was conveniently full) and a minor rearrangement of the food on the deck below. What could be more perfect? It was easy to imagine Guy arriving home that evening having stopped off at the Cutters for Friday beers with his foolish friends, too tipsy to swear with any certainty that he had clingfilmed that dish of leftover pasta, just lurching in, starving for his supper, tucking instantly into the first thing he found. And don’t they say revenge is a dish best served cold? Myself, I had never cooked at home. This wasn’t the kind of accident that could happen to me. But Guy. You had to shake your head at him.
I left his flat as he would expect to find it,
I waited until Friday, when Guy usually spent the afternoon in the office clearing his paperwork ahead of the weekend rush. After lunch, while he was taking his customary endless lavatory break, I lifted his keys from his jacket. I told Rita there were a number of outstanding For Sale signs that needed picking up around town, and that I’d be out in the van if anyone asked.
Guy’s rented two-room flat was a five-minute drive away. I left the van somewhere out of sight and let myself in. I stood fora moment, just to test the atmosphere. The door to his bedroom was ajar, leaking his sour sleep-odours into the air. I pushed open a second door to reveal a bachelor lair, dark and untidy, with a leather sofa and an outsized TV with video player and a collection of action movies. Near the window was a dining area, and there, spread on the table with Guy’s unwashed coffee mug, were sheets of photocopied A4 paper arranged in a large rectangle.
This was it – a draughtsman’s plan, rubber-stamped with the council’s logo and marked RIVER DEV 1. At first glance it looked like a layout of the town centre, not very different from the ones that had accumulated over the years in a cupboard at the office. But in this version the main road with its stretch of small run-down businesses had disappeared, freeing up space for ‘pedestrianized retail’. There were shaded residential blocks, and a ‘walkway’ now snaked along the waterside. The reason for Guy’s furtive activity was highlighted in yellow: a wedge of land between the station and the river. I knew this plot – an eyesore you could see from the bridge across the railway line, piled with stones and gravel and dotted with ramshackle buildings and rusting equipment. It looked unsellable. But here it was arrowed excitedly with a pair of question marks. Obviously Guy and his friend at the council were hoping to make a killing with inside information, snapping up this land before this scheme was made public and then selling it on to a developer. But did Guy even have money? That seemed unlikely. A search through his drawers turned up nothing but old pay cheques from Mower’s and motor insurance and utility bills and overdraft statements. No tell-tale applications for mortgages; no hidden investments. Maybe his partner was the one with the money and Guy was in for a cut, presumably for reasons to do with Mower’s.
My first thought was simply to expose Guy, but then in aglorious moment of clarity, I saw instead what could be. I saw the future. I was twenty-one and I saw it right there, in Guy’s kitchen.
His breakfast dishes were still in the sink. I opened his grubby fridge. He’d done some shopping for the weekend. I remember helping myself to a mini apple pie from an open pack. And then there was the raw, thawing chicken – an invitation in itself, sitting there in its pool of pink meltwater, and requiring only a tilt of the plate (the top shelf of the fridge was conveniently full) and a minor rearrangement of the food on the deck below. What could be more perfect? It was easy to imagine Guy arriving home that evening having stopped off at the Cutters for Friday beers with his foolish friends, too tipsy to swear with any certainty that he had clingfilmed that dish of leftover pasta, just lurching in, starving for his supper, tucking instantly into the first thing he found. And don’t they say revenge is a dish best served cold? Myself, I had never cooked at home. This wasn’t the kind of accident that could happen to me. But Guy. You had to shake your head at him.
I left his flat as he would expect to find it,
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