Going into the back room, he pushed the door quietly shut behind him. The shop was busy now, a full roster of staff in action, and he couldn’t risk being disturbed. Crossing to the battered bank of lockers, he slid his rucksack off his shoulder and punched in the access code. Wearily the lock slid across and he pulled the locker open.
It was empty, save for a crumpled plastic bag. Snatching it up, he removed a couple of items from it. A spare ski mask. A crowbar. The cleaver. Stowing the objects in his rucksack, he shut the locker door and secured it once more.
Funny how useful this place had become. Billed as a staff recreation area, it was nothing of the sort – just a locker bank and a couple of chairs to complement the rising damp and rusty pipes. He used to avoid this place like the plague, but now he was a fairly regular visitor. His colleagues continued to steer clear of it, however, which suited him just fine.
It had become his sanctuary, musty and unpleasant though it was. Initially, he had stored his equipment at home, though ‘home’ was an overly affectionate term for the bedraggled house he shared with four other tenants. The rooms were small and cold, the bathroom dirty and the less said about the kitchen the better. Even so, he had liked it initially. Most of the tenants spoke little English, so weren’t likely to ask him why he occasionally disappeared for the night. They weren’t much interested in what he did during the day either, so were anyone ever to come there asking questions, they would prove to be of little help. Even the landlord, a huge Romanian guy who accepted the rent in cash without ever bothering to challenge him on his patently fake ID, would be unable to provide the authorities with any cogent information.
Over time, however, his enthusiasm for his rented home had waned. He didn’t trust the other tenants – he was sure that one or two of them had taken advantage of his absences to enter his room. The padlock on his door was designed to keep them out, but he was sure someone had gained access, rummaging through his cashbox. They wouldn’t have found anything incriminating there, but the intrusion had alarmed him and he’d decided to stow his gear at work, away from prying eyes.
It was strange how history repeated itself. His childhood home had been no less chaotic or unfriendly than the ramshackle house he now lived in. His mother had seven children, but two great loves – one of which she took from the bottle, the other from a glass pipe. Her kids had largely been neglected and would have starved were it not for the best efforts of his eldest sister, Jacqueline, who begged and borrowed to buy bread and milk. He had loved her at first, until she too became crabbed and bitter, eventually doling out more violence than even his mother. Generally, it was best to keep a low profile, which of course most of them did.
But that was never in his make-up. While others took neglect and misery as their due, he had not been prepared to go quietly. Now he shunned the attention of his fellow house dwellers; back then he went out of his way to announce his presence to his siblings. He would smash treasured keepsakes, urinate on their beds and expose himself to his younger sisters. They beat him for his troubles, labelling him a jerk, a freak, the runt of the litter. The memory made him smile. They’d thought they were better than him, destined to achieve more, to be the ones that got away and made something of their lives. How wrong they had been. They were all small-town addicts, drunks and fuck-ups now, a litany of bad decisions and failed marriages behind them, whereas his deeds would go down in history. He only wished he could be there to see their reaction – on the day they opened the newspapers and saw that he was the big dog now.
Suddenly the door rattled, snapping him out of his reminiscences. For a horrible moment, he thought his sanctuary was about to be violated … but it was just a co-worker lumbering past the forgotten room, shouting to a colleague as he went. Relieved, he snatched up his rucksack and marched towards the back door. He remained invisible to those dullards, but nevertheless it wouldn’t do to linger. Legends weren’t dreamed up, they were made.
And he had work to do.