Most great ideas, or a lot of them anyway, were thought at the time to be rubbish, and you were reckoned an idiot for having them.
This was true of stupid ideas too.
Telling them apart was the tricky bit.
So a couple of years ago, when Struan Loy had his brainwave, there’d been no shortage of naysayers telling him he was dipshit crazy. But he’d had the strength of character to rise above that, to recognise the brilliance of his own invention, and to refuse to kowtow to the carping of mediocrities, so here he was, living in a shipping container, cooking past-their-sell-by sausages on a camping stove, and wondering whether that scrabbling he could hear was another rat or a Madagascan spider. These containers had been all over the world, so exotic spiders couldn’t be ruled out.
At the time, though, it had been a great idea.
Back then, things had been looking handy. Momentarily between employments, he’d been a sleeping partner at a fitness centre. Well, sleeping partner – he’d been sleeping with one of the partners. This was a divorcée named Shelley, who, to piss off her ex – the other half of the operation – had given Struan a deal on hiring the hall for evening classes: self-defence. Struan, as he sometimes let drop, had been in the security services in an earlier life; not to go into detail but there’d been training, there’d been combat. Put it like this: do not sneak up behind him. Which added frisson to his ‘Do it to Them First’ session, a fairly lively class that, with hindsight, wasn’t ideal for the over fifties. Anyway, once the paramedics were off the premises, Shelley had said something about this being the last straw, which came as a surprise to Struan, who hadn’t been counting straws. But it seemed they built up without you knowing.
Give Shelley her due, she’d been generous while it lasted, and the winter before they’d gone on a South African jaunt, safari included. All top job, but it was during a two-day stopover in Johannesburg that he’d had his eureka moment, and that moment was this: shipping containers. There were whole apartment blocks made out of them in Jo’burg: brightly coloured huge great building blocks stacked on top of each other like kids’ toys, only with people living in them. It was like, on one hand you had a housing crisis, which everyone knew about, and on the other was this solution, which some smart guys in Johannesburg had stumbled upon, but it was up to Struan Loy to carry the message home. Shipping containers. A lot cheaper than actual buildings. This, definitely, was worth putting every penny he had into, along with a lot of pennies he didn’t have but was able to borrow at rates which would seem cheap in the long run, so, post Shelley, he bought a dozen containers from a shipping company gone liquid, these particular assets being stacked behind an industrial park on the outskirts of Leicester. Struan Loy, entrepreneur. All he needed now was to recruit some of the architectural nous, design nous, which the bright lads back in S.A. had on tap, and his future was up and running.
Long story short: two years later he had no job, no money, and was shaving expenses where he could, which had meant moving into one of the containers, even though they hadn’t exactly been customised yet. It was almost like being homeless, which was in fact exactly what it was.
It made the days when he’d been a slow horse seem a career high.
Slow horses was what they’d been called, those edged out of their roles at Regent’s Park because of the envy, spite and small-minded malice of others, but also, in his case, because of an unwise group email suggesting that the then First Desk was an al-Qaeda plant. It was a lesson in how bureaucracies worked: i.e. no sense of humour. Then there’d been a thing that happened with a kid being kidnapped, and Struan’s crew – the slow horses – had ended up in the middle of it, and he’d made the perfectly rational decision to save his own skin by shopping them all to Diana Taverner at the Park, in the hope that this would salvage his career. Memo to self: didn’t happen. It could get you down, the obstacles a good man found in his way, but seriously, what was that scrabbling in the corner?
Except not in the corner, he realised. It was coming from outside: footsteps on the cracked concrete surface of the wasteground.
He moved to the door as silently as he could; peeped out into the near-dark, and the air that held a hint of coming rain. A few yards away, outside the next container along, stood a man and a woman, both of whom turned his way, despite his attempt at quiet. They were, he couldn’t help noticing, carrying a bottle of vodka apiece.
They approached, the woman unleashing a smile. ‘Struan Loy, yes? Mr Struan Loy?’
The honorific stressed, as if in despite of circumstance.
Loy said, ‘Who are you?’
‘We heard about your business scheme.’
‘The shipping containers?’ This was the man, and his accompanying glance took in Loy’s home and its immediate neighbours. ‘The residential shipping containers?’
Raincoats, black suits, white shirts. The woman attractive, but with her hair tied back severely enough that she might want you not to notice, or not yet; the man clean-shaven, and with a quiet, polite look to him.
‘I’m him, yes. Or he’s me.’ Loy was conscious of how he was dressed, suddenly: an old pair of jeans and a sweater too long in the sleeves. Not exactly primed for business discussion. But his visitors didn’t seem to care: they stood on what he supposed you could call his threshold, but might be more accurate not to, holding their bottles expectantly, as if awaiting an invitation.
If it weren’t for the vodka, thought Struan Loy, he might have taken them for missionaries.
Diana Taverner had eaten an Italian meal, had drunk two glasses of Chilean wine, but was feeling irredeemably British as she arrived at her Notting Hill home: tired, irritable, full of dread. ‘Home’, anyway – when asked she’d say ‘home’ was the Cotswolds, careful never to name the actual village; London was her workplace, her business address. But on the few occasions when she suffered through a weekend in Temple Guiting, she found herself glued to her phone, counting the hours. The cottage had woodburning stoves and exposed beams, stone-flagged floors and a curious window-seat halfway up its narrow staircase, all of which, back in the city, she’d recount as rustic charm, and most of which was a fucking nuisance. She could see stars there, true, but indoors she had to keep her head low. Exposed beams were dangerous. Home, in fact, was Regent’s Park. But the Notting Hill house was elegant and subtle and carpeted to a hush; it had spot lighting and spotless walls. It had a fridge full of wine. She shucked her shoes off, gathered the mail, padded into the kitchen and poured herself another glass. Through the sliding door, she could see the intruder light was on, which meant a fox had been doing the rounds. It would go off in a minute. She put the mail on the table, and carried the wine upstairs.
Removed her make-up. Took deep breaths. She hadn’t waded out so far she couldn’t make it back safely. She was First Fucking Desk. She’d taken apart bigger threats than Damien Cantor, than Peter Bloody Judd. And troublesome angels weren’t an unprecedented hazard. Some had tried it on with God, and look where that got them.
Her wine finished, she left the mirror to its own reflections, and took her glass downstairs to refill it.
The intruder light was still on.
The garden was a thin strip of land, most of it paved; large plants in huge pots were kept alive by a weekly gardener. There was furniture too, in case Diana ever made any friends, and ever invited them round, and they ever decided to enjoy each other’s company in the garden. It was wooden, sturdy, and when the intruder light was on looked like props on a stage. She unlocked the door, opened it and stepped down onto the path. The smoke from Jackson Lamb’s cigarette reached her even before she registered his bulk, squatting in one of the chairs.