The Blueprint (5 page)

‘When you’re
caught doing what?’

‘This bank
heist, you idiot.’ He doesn’t hold back on the decibels as he says
it. My eyes dart involuntarily from side to side.

‘If you could,
like,
not
announce that in public, that would be great,’ I
mutter.

‘If you’re
this jittery about even talking about it, what’re you gonna be like
when we’re doing it?’ he laughs. I’m slightly concerned, from the
tone of his voice, that he’s no longer residing in the world of
fantasy, that he’s really expecting me to join him in an even lower
budget remake of
Reservoir Dogs
. Beware the dreamers of the
day, and all that.

‘Isn’t the
point of planning a heist that you don’t get caught?’ I contend.
‘It tends to make the police’s job a lot easier when their suspect
goes around telling everyone within ten miles what crimes he’s
planning on committing.’

‘Never
underestimate just how little of a fuck the rest of mankind gives
about your life,’ Charlie smirks. ‘Here, look; close your eyes for
a sec.’

‘Last time you
said to do that, it didn’t end well for me,’ I reply, with
suspicion.

‘Oh, like I’m
going to do that again,’ he protests. ‘Grant me at least
some
originality.’

Warily, I shut
my eyes. The noise in the coffee shop lounge seems to ramp up,
somehow, ramping up from just background chatter into a kind of
tangled roar banging around inside my head.

‘Now, can you
make out anything that any one person is saying? Besides me, of
course.’

I strain my
ears some more.

‘Nope.’

‘Let alone
being able to make out an entire conversation,’ he adds. I let my
eyes snap open again.

‘Alright, fair
point,’ I concede. He claps his hands together.

‘Lovely. So
now your fragile little nerves are eased, can we start planning
this bank job?’

‘We aren’t
robbing a bank,’ I tell him firmly.

‘I thought I
just proved that no-one’s eavesdropping on us, didn’t I? We can at
least talk about it,’ he pouts.

‘No, I said we
aren’t robbing a
bank.
I didn’t say anything about not
robbing somewhere else.’

‘Why not a
bank?’

‘Because
nearly every heist attempt in history has been a bank job. Or in
film, come to that. It’s the first place they’d expect us to go
after.’

‘That’s just
because they’ve got the most money.’

‘And
because
they’ve got the most money, they’ve also got
security systems, cameras, bullet-proof glass, big signs that say,
“the tellers do not have access to the safe”, that ink stuff that
explodes all over the cash if you try and steal it…’

‘So? I could
use a challenge.’

‘Then do your
coursework,’ I smirk back at him.

‘All those
security measures just give us a chance to get creative,’ he
contests.

‘Do you want
to get creative, or not get caught?’

‘We won’t get
caught. Not if we-’

‘There’s no
way I’m spending a year of my life tunnelling into a bank vault
just because you want to do things “properly”,’ I butt-in,
pre-empting his response.

He rolls his
eyes.

‘Okay, so what
options does that leave us with? Jewel heist?’

‘Nope; all the
problems you get with robbing banks apply there as well. With the
added pain in the arse of trying to find someone to buy the stuff
off you after you’ve gone stolen it. Same goes for museums,
casinos, maybe even bookies.’ I look skyward for a minute, thinking
to myself. ‘Actually, anywhere you’ve seen getting robbed in the
movies is the sort of place you should wipe off your list of
potential targets.’

‘So all the
interesting places, basically?’

‘I’m pretty
sure even a farmer’s market would be interesting when you’re
robbing it at gunpoint.’

He grins.

‘Good,’ he
says, ‘because caffeine isn’t doing it for me anymore.’ He glances
down at his large mug of coffee with something approaching disdain.
‘I’m not even half way through this and I’m bored of it
already.’

‘What did you
get?’

‘Limited
edition gingerbread Christmas latte; three extra shots of caramel,
one extra shot of espresso.’

‘Expensive
tastes.’

‘Why, how much
did it cost me?’

I pinch the
receipt off his saucer.

‘You don’t
want to know.’

‘You’re
probably right,’ he shrugs. ‘What I
do
want to know, though,
is what places are still available for us to steal vast quantities
of cash from.’

I spoon a
marshmallow out of my hot chocolate and suck at it, mulling over
our options.

‘Restaurant?’
Charlie suggests.

‘What did I
just say about places that you’ve seen getting robbed in
movies?’

‘Supermarket?’

‘Too many
people, too many aisles. It’d be a great place for a gunfight, not
so much for a heist.’

We sit in
contemplative silence for a couple of moments. I’m pretty sure he’s
daydreaming about having an action movie-worthy shoot-out in the
supermarket freezer section.

‘Got it!’ he
suddenly exclaims. ‘Apple store. They’ll take fucking loads of
money in the run-up to Christmas, the actual shop is big, but not
unmanageably big - well, at least, not when you’ve got a shotgun
backing you up - plus, we can supplement whatever’s in the tills
with a load of smartphones and laptops. It’s perfect!’

‘Two problems:
Firstly, everything they sell in there costs at least… well,
there’s a reason why we haven’t set foot in there at any point in
the last two years, anyway.’

‘I fail to see
the problem,’ Charlie interjects.

‘Who carries
that sort of cash around with them? Shit, who even has that in
their account? Anyone who’s buying anything from there over
Christmas is doing it on credit.’

‘Ah,’ he
mutters. ‘Shit.’

‘And secondly,
have you
seen
the kind of brand loyalty that place has got?
You’d have an easier time holding up a mosque in Gaza.’

‘Hipster
suicide bombers. That
would
be worth seeing.’

‘What we’re
looking for is a place that does good business over Christmas;
that’s big, but not so big we can’t keep an eye on every person in
there; that’s pricey enough to have a decent amount of
transportable cash in the safe, but not so expensive that everyone
pays on card…’

‘Hey, what
about Topman? Those skinny-jeaned mother fuckers shouldn’t put up
too much resistance.’

‘Clothes
stores are a hazard, mate; some guy I went to high-school with got
caught shoplifting in a clothes shop, once. He went running off,
got halfway to the door, and this security guard came diving out of
a rack of jumpers like a fucking jack-in-the-box.’

‘How is that
not on YouTube yet?’ Charlie asks. I shrug. ‘We’re getting closer,
though; it was only a minor quibble that time,’ he continues, and
goes back to ruminating. I gulp down the rest of my beverage. The
parameters and variables are in place, slicing away potential
solutions, thinning the pool, filtering the waste - soon only the
answer will remain at the bottom. Charlie gets there before I do.
When he utters the correct words I stare at him for a long time
from behind my cup, then I quietly mouth back:

‘That could
work.’

Charlie’s face
breaks out into a huge, cheek-busting grin. I find myself grinning,
too, feeling that irresistible release one earns after solving a
puzzle or unravelling a particularly tricky knot.

‘So it’s
decided, then,’ Charlie declares. ‘We rob the John Lewis in Eldon
Square, two weeks before Christmas!’ I duck as though I’m hiding
from mortar fire.

‘
Jesus!
’ I hiss. ‘
Keep it down, will you!
’

Charlie just
giggles at me, but over his right shoulder I can see a kid of about
eight or nine years old, dressed in a white tracksuit, staring at
Charlie with slack-jawed intrigue. Charlie seems oblivious to this.
I shoot the kid a quick menacing glare in the hope that it will get
him to turn back around. I think this amuses him more than it
intimidates him, but he soon gets bored of watching us when Charlie
puts armed robbery away and takes up a less criminal line of
conversation.

‘So now we’ve
got that sorted,’ he says, ‘are you coming to this gig tomorrow?
John and Freddy are both gonna be there.’

‘I dunno if I
can, mate; I’ve sacked Liz off three times in the last week to
watch crappy movies with you. I’m dangerously close to having to
perform a grand, romantic gesture, and I can barely afford
half-arsed romance, right now, let alone “grand”.’ I look down at
my empty mug like it’s a one-night stand I wish I’d never met.
‘Why’d I have to get the large one?’ I mutter, half to myself.

‘Yeah, that
extra 40p would have solved all your money problems,’ Charlie
remarks with heavy sarcasm.

‘I swear, if I
had infinite cash I wouldn’t even spend that much,’ I say,
wistfully. ‘I wouldn’t need the sports car and the solid gold
watch; I’d be happy just to be able to go out on a Saturday night
without having to spend the following week eating whatever I can
find behind the sofa.’

‘If that’s how
you’re planning on spending your share from this heist I’m not sure
I’ll let you take part.’

‘Why, what are
you doing with yours?’

‘Buying the
world’s best racehorse, barbequing one burger’s worth then getting
the rest melted down to make glue.’

‘Why?’

‘‘Cause I
can,’ he shrugs, as though that answers the question.

‘You know what
we were saying about movie criminals? How they always end up hiring
one obvious psychopath to be part of their team?’

‘What, me?’ he
exclaims. I raise my eyebrows at him. ‘Okay; maybe you’ve got a
point,’ he admits. ‘I promise not to shoot you, though.’ He gives
me a wink. ‘Unless, of course, you don’t turn up tomorrow; if that
happens, you’re a dead man.’

‘I told you, I
can’t,’ I whine, but he waves me away.

‘I’m not sure
I want to be your partner in crime, if you give up on things this
easily. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and where the will is
Charlie’s the way tends to be of the needlessly Machiavellian
variety. I’ll convince Freddy to part with a few quid out of that
pile of gold his parents have stashed in the vault behind the
bookcase, and you can slip a few of Johnny’s sleeping pills into
Liz’s drink about an hour before we’re due to start. Job done.’

I sigh.

‘I’ll see what
I can do.’

MANIC PIXIE DREAM
GIRL

A lot of
movies try to justify a character’s later behaviour by using a
flashback to something that happened earlier in their life. I’d
like to try that now, if I may, and take you on a quick detour back
to my first year at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. It might
not exactly justify my later behaviour, but it might at least give
you some idea of what I was wildly overreacting to.

Near enough
everyone, in the summer holidays before they head off to uni,
spends a great deal of time deciding what identity they’re going to
try and carve out amongst the imaginary group of strangers they’ll
soon be calling friends. The virgins tell themselves they’re going
to be sex-addicts; the vomiting drunks are going to learn how to
handle their liquor; the shy guys are going to be witty raconteurs;
anyone who can stumble through Seven Nation Army on guitar is going
to be the soulful musician type, and so on. It’s usually at some
point in freshers’ week that they are disabused of this idea. For
me, the disillusionment came about forty minutes after my parents
had left, after I’d taken all my clothes out of the chest of
drawers and put them all back in again for the fourth or fifth time
just for something to keep me busy. During the first couple of
times I’d left my door open, in case any of my imaginary friends
happened to be walking past, but I closed it when my
pack-and-re-packing activities began to look like mental
illness.

Sitting down
on my bed, staring at the new posters I’d very specifically chosen
to convey a certain personality - a personality which was probably
not my own, I might add - I became damningly aware of just how much
I’d relied on my mates at school to paper over my shitty social
skills. I was never unpopular at school. In fact, by a quirk of
seating arrangements on my first day in year one, I ended up being
friends with what John Hughes would’ve called the ‘jocks’ and
‘cheerleaders’ - the guys who were the best at sport along with the
girls who were the best at procuring adolescent erections from the
school’s male contingent. Being neither a pretty girl nor competent
at anything closer to a sport than
Connect 4
, I can’t really
claim I was
one
of the cool kids, but I was, nonetheless,
tangentially associated with them. It was only when I was stripped
of this arrogance-by-association that I realised how much space
shyness took up on my pie chart of character traits. Now that the
inroads weren’t already paved out for me, I hadn’t just gone a rung
down the social ladder; I’d dropped off it entirely. In the space
of a day, I’d become, well… a nothingness, really. A blank
slate.

It was about
the time that I heard a gaggle of voices echoing down the corridor
outside that I began to panic.
Why didn’t you just go and
introduce yourself to someone when you first got here?
I asked
myself with regret and bitterness.
Why don’t you just go out
there now? It’s not like anyone’s going to say, ‘Fuck off; don’t
want to know you.’
In my brain, I knew these things to be true,
but it didn’t change the fact that something in my bones was
preventing me from going out there and giving the owners of the
voices a cheery ‘
hello!
’ The more time went past, the more
impenetrable this mental roadblock became. I’m aware that this
might all sound a bit pathetic - and it is - but you’ve got to
understand that asking me to go and start an unsolicited
conversation with a group of strangers was a bit like me asking you
to go up to a group of shaven-headed teenage lads on a bus and say,
‘Sorry guys, do you mind if I have a quick look at one of your
cocks? Y’know, for comparison.’