right.’
Moody Cow was not the name of their favourite pit stop on this particular route, nor the woman who ran the cafe. That was the Blue Door and Sue respectively. But she’d given them enough stern looks to invite the name which had become permanent.
Andy reckoned she fancied him and was playing hard to get. Dom thought it quite likely. Over the two years he’d known Andy, Emma had called him grizzled, rough, and lived-in, and his string of casual girlfriends attested to his effect on the opposite sex.
‘Race you!’ Andy said. He caged his drink bottle, clipped in and moved off without looking back.
Dom followed. He was pretty good at sprints on the flat, and had been working hard on his turbo trainer over the previous winter to improve his power. Nevertheless, it took the whole two miles to the village of Upper Mill for him to catch Andy, and even then he had the weird feeling his friend let him win.
‘Pipped me,’ Andy said outside the Moody Cow. ‘Coffee and cake on me.’ He leaned his bike against the fence and opened the big blue door.
Dom watched him go, leaning on his handlebars. He was exhausted, breath heavy and burning in his chest, legs shaking. Sweat ran behind his biking glasses and misted them, and he had to take them off. Andy had hardly seemed out of breath.
‘Bloody hell, fat bastard,’ he muttered, taking deep breaths and feeling his galloping heartbeat beginning to settle. In truth, he wasn’t fat at all. Compared to most men in their early forties he was way above average when it came to fitness, even though he carried a few pounds extra. But Andy wasn’t most men, and Dom really wished he could stop comparing himself to his friend. They were good mates, but their lifestyles were chalk and cheese, and he wouldn’t change a thing.
Leaving the bikes against the timber fencing that surrounded the cafe’s front garden, he chose a table in the shade.
There were a couple of elderly couples having their morning coffee, and at the garden’s far end a group of businessmen nattered over fluttering sheets and a laptop.
There was also a couple of women, maybe in their early thirties, dressed in tight shorts and vest tops. They’d obviously been for a run, water bottles discarded on the table in favour of tall fruit smoothies. One of them caught his eye. He smiled; she glanced back to her friend.
Dom unzipped his jersey halfway, self-consciously turning his back on the women. As he sat down and kicked off his bike shoes, one of them laughed softly. It was nothing to do with him. It can’t have been.
He took the phone from his jersey’s back pocket and slipped it from its pouch. There were no missed calls or texts, but he took a selfie with the cafe behind him and sent it to Emma. Refuelling stop, he typed with the picture.
Andy appeared and scraped a seat across into the sunlight before slumping in it. ‘The coffee stop of kings,’ he said. ‘Our lovely hostess will bring our morning repast forthwith.’
‘Nice.’
‘Ahh, this is the life.’ Andy stretched like a cat. ‘Nice spot, this.’
‘Sue should start giving us regulars’ discount.’
‘Right, I’ll let you ask her.’
Dom smiled.
‘So what’s next week got in store for you?’ Andy asked.
‘New kitchen fit-out up in Monmouth.’
Today, Dom had given himself a rare day off from work. He ran his own small electrical firm, just himself and an apprentice who’d been with him for three years. Davey was a good worker and a pleasant lad, and Dom was pretty sure he’d soon be making a break to set up on his own. He didn’t mind that so much. It was bound to happen, and he couldn’t expect the lad to stay working for him forever.
Andy chuckled. ‘Oh, Mr Electrician, have you come to rewire my plugs?’
‘Yeah, like that’s ever happened.’
‘Sure it has.’
‘Not all manual labourers have lives resembling the plots of pornos, you know.’
‘No?’
‘That’s just you.’
‘Sure, the sordid life of a freelance technical writer.’
‘So how is the gorgeous Claudette?’ Dom asked.
Andy had been on–off dating a French doctor spending a year on a work exchange at the hospital in Abergavenny. Early-thirties and beautiful, Dom had only met her once.
Andy leaned over. ‘Porn star,’ he whispered, grinning.
Dom rolled his eyes, and when he looked at his friend again, Andy was staring across the road.
‘Take a look at that,’ he said.
Dom followed his gaze. He was expecting to see the two women jogging away, or another attractive woman perhaps walking her dog. So at first he couldn’t quite make out what Andy had been staring at.
‘What?’
‘Security guy.’
A security van was pulled up across the square, and a man was carrying a heavy black case into the local post office.
Dom had never been in there, but it was obviously a typical village post office, doubling as a newsagent and grocer. It had a selection of wooden garden furniture for sale out front, windows half-filled with flyers for local jumble sales and amateur dramatic presentations, and a homemade display wall of bird tables and feeders.
He’d seen people going in and out, and often they’d stop and chat on the wide pavement in front of the shop. This village was far smaller than Usk where he lived, and everyone seemed to know everyone else. The Blue Door cafe probably only thrived because of the main road that ran through the place. That, and the entertaining sourness of its owner.
‘So?’ Dom asked.
‘Doesn’t have his helmet on.’
‘It’s hot.’
‘And he’s left the van’s driver’s door open.’
‘It’s really hot. So, what, you’re casing the joint?’
Sue arrived then, placing a tray on their table and giving them their drinks and cake. She knew whose was whose.
‘Busy day?’ Dom asked.
‘Rushed off my feet.’ She left them and cleared a couple of tables before going back inside.
‘Wow. Positively chatty today,’ Dom said, but Andy was still staring across the street and didn’t respond. ‘What now?’
Andy stuffed some flapjack into his mouth and took a swig of coffee. Then he nodded across the small square again. ‘Just asking to be ripped off.’
The security man was
