The Blueprint Page 2

  SCENE IX

  LOOSE ENDS

  Liz’ reaction when she opens the door is not exactly surprising, considering the toll that the day’s shenanigans have taken on my face.

  ‘What the hell happened to you?’ she asks. Either the look or the tone alone would’ve told me that she has no sympathy for my predicament – opting for both was overkill, plain and simple.

  ‘What happened to friendly greetings?’ I return, with an unconvincing attempt at a grin. Her face and tone remain the same as she replies:

  ‘I figured that I might as well dispense with them, seeing as you’ve pretty much dispensed with me entirely.’

  I give up on the grin.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry,’ I sigh in an overly dramatic fashion. ‘For a lot of things, actually.’

  Her eyes narrow. She puts her hand on her hip.

  ‘What things?’

  Suddenly I remember the police officer from the Metro.

  ‘Could I – erm - could I just come in for a bit?’

  She turns and walks away in silence, but she leaves the door ajar. I take this as a mark of acquiescence and follow her upstairs. I’ve seen her room a thousand times – I practically lived here for the first semester of my second year, before it became clear that Charlie wasn’t going to murder me in my sleep, and was, in fact, quite entertaining at times – but right now it feels like occupied territory.

  ‘So,’ she says, eyeing me suspiciously. The other hand is on her other hip as well, now. She’s standing over by the window, so that the bed forms a barrier between us. ‘Would you rather start with what happened to your face, or what you’re sorry for? Or are the two intertwined?’

  ‘I got mugged,’ I say. I don’t add anything else for a while, partly to allow the news to sink in, partly to buy myself some space in which to think of an answer for the second, more difficult question, and partly to give her time to start feeling sorry for me. ‘Some guy tried to take my wallet and I, stupidly, refused to give it to him.’

  No answer.

  ‘So he threw me to the floor and stamped on my head a few times,’ I add, by way of explanation. She opens her mouth, but it takes a while for any sound to follow the movement. She must be choosing her next words carefully.

  ‘So – uh – why didn’t you just hand over your wallet?’ she says it in a purposefully non-accusatory tone, but the underlying sentiment is obvious. Refusing to hand over the wallet is out of character for me. The me that she knows, anyway. She smells a rat. The fact that the only response I can give to this query is a weak shrug doesn’t exactly cover the scent, but I’m too burned-out to come up with any more off-the-cuff cover stories today.

  The exhaustion that’s been relentlessly chasing me ever since I walked back into the freezer and saw that the thermite hadn’t worked finally catches up. I pirouette onto the bed and lean my neck back so I can gaze up at her. One thing I always loved about Liz was that she has a perfect face to look up at, especially when your head’s resting in her lap. Most faces look ghoulish and threatening from below, but not hers. The barbs of a wild, sudden urge to confess everything to her jab into my sides. I could take the world’s disdain; I could take the papers calling me a monster; I could even take my parents thinking that I was the one who pulled the trigger on that hostage, if I could confess it all to her right now and know that she’d still love me.

  ‘So why didn’t you just hand over your wallet?’ she asks again. The underlying sentiment has now worked its way into her tone. For a long time I don’t answer; I just lie there, staring at the bottom of her chin like a besotted tween, wishing that somehow she could make the past go away.

  ‘I did it because I’m sick of being a coward. I’m sick of being too afraid of what other people might think of me or what they might do to me. I wanted to -’ I draw breath, and it rattles with the snot and juddering diaphragm of someone about to start sobbing. ‘But now I’m-’

  I roll over and jam my face into her duvet.

  But now you’re fucked.

  I’d give ten years of my life, right now, to feel the soft pressure of her hand on my shoulders. Thirty if it turns out that I’m going to be spending them in prison. All that she gives me, though, is that same icy tone:

  ‘You know what you sound like?’ she asks. I don’t answer, partly because I’m still trying to rein-in the sobs, and partly because I know she wants to answer the question herself. ‘You sound like someone who fucked some other girl, and regrets it.’

  That might be the first time I’ve ever heard her swear, I think to myself. The shock of it cuts off the burgeoning tears, and I sit up in one sudden, purposeful movement.

  ‘I didn’t cheat on you,’ I say, blankly, burying the last lurking shadow of a sob. It’s true, in the strictly physical sense of the word. ‘I just took you for granted. No, not even that. The opposite of that.’ I fear that I might be blithering now. ‘I always felt as though meeting you was the end of my script. Do you know what I mean? Like the rest of my life is just the end credits and the happily ever after. The proposal, the wedding, the kids, the job that buys us a second-hand Audi – after that moment, all that other stuff was already written, and I was just waiting to live it.’

  I sigh.

  ‘You know today was only the second real decision I’ve ever made in my life?’ I say, wrenching my neck backwards again, this time to look at the ceiling. ‘The first one was walking back over to you and asking if you wanted a drink. Remember the night we met, back in first year?’

  A small movement in that takes place in my peripheral vision suggests that she’s nodding.

  ‘I guess I wanted to make another decision. Even if it was a stupid one,’ I finish. I try to shrug, but my shoulders have gone on strike. My head rolls forward as my neck suddenly throws in the towel, as well. Liz is taking a moment to compose herself. Her chest swells, like Freddy’s does when he’s about to give a particularly self-important speech.

  ‘So what you’re saying is, now that you’ve got other options, spending time with me was becoming an inconvenience, and instead of being a man about it and breaking up with me, you lashed out…’ Her lip curls, despite her obvious anger. ‘…by heroically standing up to a mugger. Or – alternatively – by having sex with that slutty-looking girl that Johnny says you’re always hanging out with these days. And since Johnny also told me she’s been sleeping with Charlie too, it wouldn’t a wild conjecture to say that you two had a little fight – or, more accurately, that he punched you a couple of times – so now that your housemates don’t want to talk to you you’ve had a convenient attack of conscience and come running back to me.’

  ‘Liz, I-’ I start, but she waves the protest away with her hand and turns her back on me.

  ‘…Or maybe you were one of the terrorists in Haymarket today,’ she says, tossing her hair to the side and giving a snort of incredulity. ‘How the fuck should I know?’ I’m aware that she's joking, but I can’t help the involuntary jolt in my ribcage. My legs are unsteady as I climb off the bed and creep up to her.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ I whisper. ‘I swear I haven’t touched anyone else. You are what I want; just let me prove it. I know I’ve been distant lately. I just – I don’t know – I just thought, me and you…’

  ‘The problem’s not with us,’ she interrupts. ‘The problem’s with you, looking for something to blame for all the bits of yourself you don’t like and landing on us. You feel like a coward for studying statistics, because it’s what your parents told you to, instead of film studies, because you find it interesting.’

  Huh. Guess she had that worked out, after all.

  ‘So you lash out at me, because I’m the easiest thing to blame. Then you’re scared about growing up and getting a job because Hollywood told you that it would steal your soul, and you don’t know whether to get rid of me because you think I’m going to drag you down the aisle and through the maternity ward, or whether to stay with me because you’re afraid of going back to wh
at your first year would’ve been if you hadn’t had me to cling to. So you lash out with some stupid half-measure, like cheating on me or ditching me to play videogames with your other girlfriend.’

  She doesn’t know how right she is. Shit, I’m not sure I knew it myself, until she spelled it out for me. The only thing she missed was quite how stupid my outward lash was. Liz suddenly whips around to face me.

  ‘And just so you’re aware,’ she continues, her cheeks an indignant red, ‘while you’ve been doing that, I’ve spent the last two years busting my arse doing work experience, freelancing and studying so I can get a job as a journalist after I graduate, and before that I’m not planning a wedding, I’m planning to go to South America for six months with Sophia and Olivia, if you even know who they are?’

  The last clause spits violent, angry tears into her eyes. There’s nothing I can say back; she’s psychologically split me open, hung me up for all the world to see, and there are no words with which I can zip myself up again. Just like how there are no words which can bring back that person in the Marks & Spencer staff room back to life. Intellectually, I know all of this, and I know I should look contrite, but for some reason I can’t untangle my face from a snarl.

  I feel the snarl gathering momentum in my chest as we stare at each other through the thick fog of silence, drowning the shame that Liz has inflicted on me. Just as the wave gets ready to break, just as I open my mouth to say something I’ll never be able to take back, Liz’ phone starts to vibrate. As it does, something odd clicks in my brain; a fact I always knew at a subconscious level suddenly hopping over the boundary and into the sentient part of my mind.

  ‘Hello?’ Liz says. Her face screws up slightly. ‘Sorry; who is this?’ She glances at me. ‘Oh, right. Yes, he’s here; I’ll hand him over.’ She offers me the phone, with a tut in her gesture. Before I put it to my ear, I check the name on the screen. Johnny. A twisting feeling seizes at my insides, and cold, clammy hands squeeze at my lungs. Did he look inside the bag? The coward in me wants to double over in response to these sensations, but the part that came alive when I pulled the balaclava over my face this morning, the part that is snarling at Liz, tingles with a new sense of bold, dark purpose.

  ‘Hello?’ I ask. The voice on the other end is Freddy’s, not Johnny’s.

  ‘Alright, mate?’ he chirps back. The chirpiness is obviously forced, but he masks this lack of enthusiasm with an excess of volume. ‘You’re supposed to be coming back for the Star Wars marathon! Me, Charlie and Johnny have been sat here for an hour waiting for you! I think Charlie’s scared you’re trying to break up with him!’

  My eyes flick towards Liz. The tut has made its way to her eyebrows. A shuffling of movement and the creak of a door opening and then slamming comes out of the phone, then Freddy comes back on the line. His voice is much quieter now, so that neither Liz nor - I’m assuming - Johnny can hear. The strain of accusation, which had been masked by the chirpiness, now cuts through every syllable he utters:

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ he hisses. ‘I’m sat here with Sherlock fucking Holmes on one side and Crime and fucking Punishment on the other, and for all I know you’ve either been arrested or gone on the lam.’

  ‘Pipe down,’ I say, with forced calm and unconvincing colloquialism. ‘I came to Liz’ for a bit. I’ll be home in about half an hour.’

  ‘Half an hour’s too fucking long!’ Freddy seethes. He’s clearly struggling to keep his voice down. ‘Seeing you on the train has got Johnny suspicious; he knows something’s up. He keeps trying to look in your bag.’

  ‘So put it in my room.’

  ‘That would make him more suspicious! You’re just lucky curiosity didn’t get the better of him when he was carrying it home! Charlie’s not helping. He’s – well – I think he’s lost it, to be honest. When I told him what that cunt did back there… He’s been on the edge for a while, I guess. Maybe we shouldn’t have brought him along. Maybe we shouldn’t have-’

  I hear a muffled yelp in the background.

  ‘Shit,’ Freddy says. ‘Look, I can’t leave him alone for much longer. Just get the fuck back here. We need to get rid of all this evidence – tonight – and we need to work out what we’re going to do about the Phoebe situation. You’re a part of this, too; you can’t just run off without helping tie up the loose ends.’

  ‘What situation?’ I ask.

  ‘What to do when she comes round here and kills us, you fucking idiot!’ Freddy retorts. A fire alarm suddenly erupts out of the receiver. I hold it away from my ear and look up at Liz, attempting to apologise with just my eyes. She rolls her own. I can make out some panicked voices on Freddy’s end before the line goes dead. I wonder what Charlie’s done now.

  ‘Got somewhere better to be?’ Liz asks, her eyebrows raised. There’s even a hint of amusement about her now. I hand her the phone back.

  ‘Not better,’ I reply. I’m wary of lying to her, knowing that Johnny will always be there to contradict me. ‘I might have to get going, though. Freddy sounds pissed off about something. My best guess is that the something in question is Charlie.’

  ‘So all that connerie you were just talking about, proving to me that I’m what you want, was just that, then?’

  ‘Depends what “Connery” means.’

  ‘It means “bullshit”. Note the fucking context.’

  The calmness, the sense of purpose implanted in me by Elizabeth’s ringing phone must be visible behind my eyes and buried in my voice, because the anger seems to die in her the very moment I start speaking.

  ‘Believe that it’s all bullshit if you want. Believe that I cheated on you if you want to be that fucking paranoid. Just promise that you’ll meet with me tomorrow. I’ll get us a table at that Italian place. If you still believe I’m full of shit afterwards, I’ll never bother you again.’

  ‘Dorian, I-’

  ‘Although, in the interests of openness, please note that I didn’t say anything about stalking.’

  She smiles, despite herself. I smile back at her.

  ‘Don’t worry; I’ll let myself out,’ I tell her. ‘Remember, Liz; the future starts tomorrow.’

  I swirl my shoulders away and saunter off. It’s not until I’m out of sight of the streetlights that I allow myself the briefest backwards glance towards her bedroom window. The light’s still on. It’s only from a distance that I can admit the dark reciprocal of my last words to Liz: If the future’s starting tomorrow, tonight the past has to die.

  Thankfully, there aren’t any police on the train going back. Not that I need a police officer to make me a twitchy, sweaty wreck any more. Even if Liz does take me back into her warm embrace, I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll never again be more than a sudden noise away from mental breakdown. Maybe even on our wedding night I’ll be fucking with one eye on the door, waiting for Interpol to come bursting through it.

  Speaking of things that are going to give me a mental breakdown, I still haven’t worked out what’s going to greet me when I wade through the door of number thirty-four, Ilford Road, Newcastle. Might Freddy have gagged and bound Johnny in order to keep him quiet, after he opened my bag to find the gun and the money and threatened to phone the police? Might Charlie have experienced an attack of conscience, and called the police over himself? Might Phoebe have shown up and murdered the lot of them? Might I come back to a house where corpses start falling out of the cupboards and wardrobes like the last ten minutes of a Halloween movie?

  I sigh as the train rattles to a halt and I step back out into the north-England chill. There’s a nugget of anger hidden behind the nerves and exhaustion. Whatever situation those idiots have got themselves into, it’s going to be me who has to sort it all out. I’ve accepted that fact, as well. If Johnny finds out what we’ve been up to, it’ll be me who has to convince him to keep quiet. If Charlie and Freddy get dragged into prison, it’ll be me who has to get them back over the fence. If Phoebe shows up, well, I guess I’ll just have
to kill her, before she kills us.

  The commotion, alas, seems to have petered down at some point between Freddy hanging up on me and me walking through the front door, but the acrid tension characteristic of a place where an argument has recently occurred still lingers in the air.

  ‘Genetlemen?’ I inquire as I enter the living room, raising my eyebrows as if to add, ‘well, well, well; what’s going on here, then?’

  All three of them look up and left in unison, as though they’re manual labourers past whom an attractive girl has just walked. Sitting in a line on the sofa as they are, the synchronised movement initially makes them look like meerkats, but then I see the expressions on their faces and I realise that they’re more like men on the way to the gallows. Johnny included, strangely enough.

  ‘God, that mugger did a right number on you,’ Freddy remarks. He was forced to acknowledge the bruises, despite having no interest in where they came from, just as I’m obligated to make a comment on the air of tension that lurks above the three of them. The quotation marks around the word ‘mugger’ are subtle, making it difficult to tell if they’re really there, or if I’m only hearing them because I expect them to be.

  ‘He did indeed. Desecrated a masterpiece,’ I reply, turning to inspect my battered reflection in the window. I could care less about the desecration, personally, but it’s the stage direction which accompanies my words. I then turn back to survey the three of them - again, not because I have any interest in doing so, but because it simply needs to be done. ‘So,’ I say, ‘what’s been going on here, then?’

  ‘Nowt,’ mutters Freddy, though his eyes dart from Charlie, on his left, to Johnny, on his right, as he says it. There’s an almost negative value of curiosity behind Charlie’s eyes as he slouches, half-dead, against the arm of the sofa. His foot is propped lazily up on the coffee table, coming dangerously close to knocking a little plate off the table as he waggles it. The plate, I notice, has four spent fag-ends on it. He looks as though he can barely see his surroundings.

  Knowing that I’m not going to get any more than tenacious denial from Fred, and nothing better than blank incomprehension from Charlie, I direct my next question to the other end of the sofa:

  ‘You agree with that assessment?’

  Johnny scowls. Such an expression looks so foreign on his usually meek little features that it provokes the first unforced expression on my own since walking in here.

  ‘Charlie’s being a dick,’ he says, firmly and loudly, as though he’d been rehearsing this for some time, trying to pluck up the courage to say it.

  ‘How so?’ I reply, the calm façade back across my brow. Johnny directs his answer at Charlie himself, though Charlie appears not to notice.

  ‘I mean, how hard is it to walk outside if you want to have a cigarette?’ he asks.

  ‘What does it matter?’ Charlie replies, in a dull, vacant kind of voice. He continues to look off into the distance.

  ‘It matters because it makes the house stink! Because it makes the fire alarm go off! Come on, Freddy, back me up here! Because it shows that he doesn’t give the slightest shit about any of the rest of us!’

  At these words, Charlie smiles. A vein is popping in Freddy’s forehead, but he remains stubbornly silent.

  ‘You don’t show any consideration to me, making me stand outside to have a fag,’ he replies. ‘It’s cold out there.’ It’s clear that he doesn’t want a rational debate; he just wants to poke at Johnny’s temper with a stick.

  ‘Don’t fucking smoke, then! It’s not hard!’

  ‘We just happen to live in a time where it’s fashionable to be offended by smoking,’ Charlie replies. There’s nothing dancing in his eyes. ‘The fire alarm can be unplugged, and no-one found the smell unattractive fifty years ago, just like how no-one found the smell of sweat obtrusive until some cunt started marketing deodorant...’

  ‘So that’s why you never fucking shower,’ Johnny interjects with a relish that I’ve never heard in his voice before.

  ‘My nihilism has its limits, Johnny,’ Charlie recites airily. His soul seems to have escaped out of a side door, leaving just a sequence of voice recordings behind. ‘But that isn’t one of them.’

  ‘You’re not a nihilist, Charlie,’ Johnny replies. ‘You’re just an arsehole.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Charlie mutters, thoughtfully. He turns to me, and suddenly we’re the only two people in the room. ‘Do you want to know a terrifying thought?’ he asks. ‘What if turns out that God not only exists, but that he was right all along?’

  I smile, mostly to myself. I half understand what he’s talking about. Even that much has to provide the grounds to have me sectioned. ‘What if the sun really goes around the earth, but they knew we’d never bother to check?’ I reply.

  Charlie looks back at me for a few moments like a puppy trying to work out a sleight-of-hand, then he nods in a way that could be described as enlightened were it not for the thick veins of drunken self-loathing branching through it. ‘What does that make us?’ he asks the air. ‘Stuck choosing between being arseholes and being slaves?’

  He goes quiet for a moment, then he mutters:

  ‘Fuckin’ organic tomatoes. Jesus.’

  At this point Johnny sees fit to pipe back up:

  ‘What the fuck are you two talking about?’

  ‘I lost track somewhere around “organic tomatoes”,’ I shrug.

  ‘Right.’ Johnny’s pupils flick momentarily to the rucksack in the corner. As far as I’m concerned, Charlie can play Dostoyevsky fan-fiction around Johnny as much as he wants, as long as there’s no evidence lying around for the latter’s suspicions to lead him to. It’s for this reason that I suggest we all go up to bed and discuss it tomorrow, when Johnny’s calmed down and Charlie has lost interest in horticulture – and when the bag, along with its contents, is safely out of the house. Murmurs of dissent arise from either side of the sofa, what with it being only ten o’clock, so I shoot Freddy a significant glance – one which I’m sure Johnny picks up on – and he stands up and announces that this is a very good idea. Johnny picks up on Freddy’s strange tone, as well, and as he files out his gaze locks on to the incriminating backpack. I’ve seen him hold Liz with a similar gaze numerous times before.

  Four hours later, I’m sitting in the same armchair I was sitting in, watching the same film I was watching when Charlie first set this ball rolling, weeks and weeks ago. The TV is blasting light and colour into the room, but the volume is so low that it might as well be on mute.

  I check the time. It’s still too early to go and wake the other two. I remind myself to ask Freddy for one of the plastic storage crates he uses to ferry his books home for the holidays. Now we’ll be keeping our secret in it.

  A stair creaks. Reflexively my hand goes to the ‘off’ button on the TV remote, and the room goes dark. The door handle squeaks, and a figure shuffles into the room. Suddenly the shuffling stops. My eyes haven’t had time to adjust to the darkness yet, but I can still feel him looking at me.

  ‘Go back to bed, Johnny,’ I intone. For ten seconds or so, he doesn’t move; I imagine him glancing back and forth between me and the bag, wondering if he should grab it and run, knowing that his looking inside is an act that, once done, can’t be undone.

  The handle squeaks as he shuts the door behind him. The same stair squeaks under his foot on the way back up.

  Thankfully for the burgeoning length of this chapter, we didn’t have any unscheduled encounters on our way to the moor. The lack of encounters is also handy because the cover story we came up with for any policemen we met on the way – that we were carrying equipment home after a session of circuit training, after midnight, in jeans – was so hideously unbelievable. A less favourable circumstance, however, is that if we aren’t the types to have a pair of jogging bottoms spare to shore up our alibi, we’re hardly the types to have a shovel knocking about on the off-chance that we need to bury a chest full of evidence. To make things wors
e, this is December, in the north of England, so the only things stiffer than the ground are my nipples. The plastic crate which me and Freddy are carrying between us – Charlie is walking on ahead – contains a wide variety of kitchenware, with which we hope to pierce the Geordie permafrost and dig a grave for all the cash, clothing and weaponry that represents our crime.

  ‘What do you think’s up with him?’ I ask Freddy as we’re climbing up the grassy hill towards the cover of the woods. The words come out as fog. Out of reach of the streetlamps, I can barely make out Charlie’s figure up ahead.

  ‘Probably got high to take his mind off things,’ Freddy replies. ‘He’ll be fine tomorrow.’

  ‘You know something weird?’ I say. ‘It’s much less worrying to hear you say the dumb things you actually believe than the sensible things you don’t.’

  ‘What dumb things do I believe?’ Freddy hits back, with a sudden spark of anger.

  ‘How about the part where you’re going to the Middle East to start revolutions? That was pretty dumb. Also, while I’m at it, kind-of racist.’

  ‘That’s not a belief; that was just a plan,’ he explains, drawing himself up to full height. ‘We’ve all had our share of stupid plans lately. The only difference is that I didn’t put mine into action.’

  I aim my snort of laughter upwards at him.

  ‘You put that plan into action every bit as much as the rest of us did.’

  ‘I was just saying, it wasn’t my plan,’ Freddy shrugs.

  ‘So that makes you innocent? No one put a fucking gun to your head; you put a gun to other peoples’ heads, remember?’

  ‘I didn’t pull the trigger, though.’

  I could tell him that the blonde girl walked out of the front door without a scratch on her, but my neck is beginning to ache from pointing my face up to meet the condescending bastard.

  ‘We’re all arseholes; how’s that for a compromise?’ says Charlie, suddenly appearing out of the fog. He’s wearing a smile, and his arms are stretched wide in a parody of embrace. ‘You’re not a racist, though,’ he adds, kindly, to Freddy.

  ‘Well thanks a fucking lot,’ he mutters, back, sarcastically.

  ‘But you are an arsehole,’ Charlie reiterates, sounding positively gleeful about it, ‘and a hypocrite, and a murderer, and, if not exactly stupid, then, at the very least, more forgetful than all those quotations on your on Twitter feed would have us believe. Remind me: How was it that I managed to con you into taking part in this stupid escapade? Because I’m pretty sure it was just by repeating back to you some of the things you claim to believe. What were they, again? The things you believe?’

  ‘That we’re better governed by ideas than laws, and that the idea of ownership necessarily leads to exploitation,’ Freddy retorts. His eyebrows are knit defiantly, but the words come out as though he’s reading from a manifesto. Which I suppose he probably is, albeit one scrawled into the back of a schoolbook.

  ‘Look where our ideas got us,’ Charlie replies, still wearing that curious smile. I’d imagine that Freddy is now feeling the same way about Charlie as I did about him a few sentences ago, when I called him a condescending bastard.

  ‘Look where your fucking girlfriend got us!’ he spits back. His hissing words sing out across the open moor. My mind starts to place policemen lurking out just behind the fog, ready to pounce on us now that we’ve given our position away. I’d say my blood suddenly runs cold, but it’s the middle of the night in the middle of December and we’re on a moor in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, so my blood is too cold in the literal sense for me to worry about anything figurative.

  ‘We were governed by ideas,’ Charlie says. ‘Ideas made us do this, despite it being illegal. Or maybe because of it being illegal. We couldn’t give her any reason why it wasn’t wrong to walk into the shop carrying a gun, but why it was wrong to pull the trigger. We allowed a murder to happen, so we might as well have pulled the trigger ourselves. So, Fred, yes: you are an arsehole, a hypocrite and a murderer.’

  ‘Am I only an arsehole, still?’ I ask, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  You know something that movies have over real life? Editing. If this was a movie, you would only see my first three futile attempts to pierce the frozen earth with the rusty trowel, I’d say something withering, like, ‘This is gonna be a loooong night,’ in voiceover, then we’d cut to me lying dirty, shivering and exhausted with a deep, square grave carved into the ground beside me. That shit might be economical, but it doesn’t come close to giving an accurate impression of what it’s like to spend over four hours digging a three-by-three-by-three-foot hole in frozen ground with only kitchen utensils. I’m half-tempted to give you a minute-by-minute account of the whole endeavour: of all the times my hand slipped as the trowel thudded ineffectually against the ground and the blunt metal raked up my palm and cracked into my knobbly wrist bone, replacing dull, cold numbness with seething agony; of the uncontrollable shivering, which made me feel as though my body was conspiring to prevent the task being finished; of the knowledge that, no matter how much I wanted to go home, the task had to be done, and done before the sun rose; of the knowledge that Charlie and Freddy were feeling just as miserable as I was, but still hating them for slacking off and for giving me shirty looks because they thought I was slacking off; of the feeling of elation when I felt the rain start to break through the treetops, thinking that it would soften the soil, then the realisation that merely being cold is downright comfortable compared to being cold and wet. By the time my socks were finished soaking through, I was ready for them to throw me in the fucking hole along with the evidence. But, since I’m a slave to narrative economics myself, I’ll leave it at that and skip forward to the part where it gets interesting.

  It all began when the low, distant hint of a ‘woof!’ slithered out of the fog and into our midst. I guess the incident with the arms-dealer left me with some kind of conditioned response, because I knew at that first ‘woof!’ that we were in big fucking trouble.

  ‘Get in the hole!’ I hiss at them. The dog barks again, but Freddy and Charlie remain oblivious. Apparently their hearing isn’t as good as the dog’s - either that or they’re less inclined to listen to me. I sense an opportunity to unburden myself of the frustration which has been steadily brewing over the last couple of hours, and stealthily position myself behind Freddy. I’m aware of the vast gulf in strength between the two of us, so rather than simply pushing him I spring from the knees and thrust my shoulder into his thigh. He gives a dumb ‘eh?!’ as he crumples and twirls around on top of me and we go tumbling over the lip of the hole. My lungs are squeezed empty as I crash through the freezing water and hit the hard earth behind it. Freddy’s massive bulk then thumps on top of me, forcing my face under the water. Icy liquid churns into my throat as I reflexively gasp for air. I start to freak out, which only means I choke more of it in. I can feel myself turning cold from the inside. My eyes snap open in terror, and I can make out the blurry pinpricks of stars, framed by the sides of the hole I’ve just dug. The inference is not lost on me.

  At the very moment when I start believe I might actually drown in half a foot of water, Freddy sits up and the pressure on my chest is eased. I thrust my chin upwards, desperately coughing out rain and gulping in air. I wipe my eyes with my numb fingers, and see Charlie and Freddy squatting in the hole alongside me. Well, Freddy is squatting, at least; Charlie is sat cross-legged in the puddle with the plastic crate in his lap. The crate is open and he’s digging through it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask. The words have to force their way out through my chattering teeth.

  ‘There’s a dog coming over,’ he replies, tonelessly. ‘I figured you’d want the gun.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘To shoot it with, obviously.’

  ‘What? Why would I shoot it?’

  ‘Why not?’ Charlie, with the revolver now in his hands, flicks open the cylinder and inspects its contents. ‘Two rounds left. One for t
he dog, and one for the owner.’ He clicks it back shut and hands the gun to me. I look at him with bemusement.

  ‘Why would I shoot the dog?’

  His bemusement mirrors my own.

  ‘It’s odd that you would ask that about the dog, but not the owner.’

  ‘It just seemed weird; the dog can’t rat us out, can it?’

  ‘Okay, just kill the owner, then.’

  ‘I’m not fucking killing either of them.’

  ‘So what, you’re just going to leave it up to fate?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘What if he comes over?’

  ‘Then I’ll just ask him nicely to not inquire as to why we’re out here digging a hole at five in the morning.’

  ‘Think he’ll keep quiet?’

  ‘He might do.’

  ‘Or he might ring the police and tell them exactly where we buried this orgy of evidence.’

  ‘He might do that, too.’

  ‘You ready to take that risk?’

  I’m too cold to play this fucking game with him, right now.

  ‘Look, if you want him dead so fucking much, fucking kill him yourself.’

  ‘I don’t want him dead. I just want to make sure you understand the implications of leaving him alive, so you can make an informed decision about whether you’re going to kill him.’

  ‘And why the dog?’

  ‘Because it might bite me if you kill its master,’ he replies. ‘It’s a dog; who gives a shit?’

  ‘Hollywood.’

  He chuckles.

  ‘This is England, bitch.’ Suddenly his pupils dart over my shoulder, and he adds: ‘Now’s your chance.’

  I jump and spin as I feel the dog’s nose rub against the back of my neck. Its keen, inquisitive eyes stare back into my own, the brain behind them being smart enough, apparently, to realise that finding three young men crouched in a freshly-dug grave is not a normal occurrence, and yet innocent enough to not suspect that we’re up to no good. It’s a scruffy little creature; one of those mutts who makes up for his lack of poise and grace by letting passing children pat him with their little sticky hands. I raise the gun.

  ‘Rufus!’ a gruff voice calls from beyond the trees. It’s not the kind of voice whose owner would be easily threatened into silence. ‘Ere boy!’

  Even though my brain immediately dismisses the idea as a crazy one, I could swear that the dog gives me a curt nod, as if to say, ‘about your business,’ before it turns tail and leaves. As it disappears into the fog, another idea occurs, one which my brain can’t discard quite so easily. The dog walking away, the guy in the car park walking away, even Liz falling asleep on my sofa that time; over and over I keep being brought to the precipice, only to have fate pull me back before I can jump. I can’t rely on the whims of fate to keep me safe forever.