Part 1 The day before Mrs Woods had gone to her reward, I’d taken a bus ride out to the factory which was supposed to be hiring. The bus stopped several times to pick up zombie-like bums who’d apparently just scraped themselves off the sidewalks. I wondered if this was the day when these ragged, smelly subhumans went into town to fetch their food stamps...or maybe there was a cut price sale at Packetville’s 711 store?...vintage metholated spirits going cheap...free gourmet furniture polish with every bottle of bargain-priced wine! I scowled at each and every bum who even looked liked he wanted to sit on the back seat next to me. Their sluggish brains could still recognise my special brand of hostilty; it amused me how they all made sure to put plenty of space between themselves and my spot at the rear. A smile was on my face when I disembarked and headed for the factory gates - but it was soon wiped off. A snooty bitch sitting behind a reception desk handled my enquiry. She was a tall, painfully thin bottle blonde; her face had just one expression - a well practiced sneer. According to her ID badge, her name was Julie Fischer and she wanted me to have a great day. Of course, the slogan on her scrawny, titless chest turned out to be horseshit; without any pretence of regret, she told me (much as you might speak to a dog turd on the bottom of your shoe) that they were not looking for anybody. On the way out, I saw a gleaming new yellow Datsun in the staff parking area; a small sign on a metal pole announced that the spot was reserved for Ms J. Fischer. Nobody was around; so I cut some nice deep lines into the vehicles paintwork with my pocket knife. That cheered me up no end. Bitch Julie’s few moments of fun had cost her at least $500’s worth of filling and spraying. It's strange how our sense of proportion can change as we grow older and gain in maturity. Back then I was content to disfigure her car and move on...a few years later I would have looked for an opportunity to carve up Ms Julie Fischer herself. I rode back to town on a bus that smelled of warm disinfectant and stale vomit; bored, I eavesdropped on two permanently pissed-off old guys. They gave each other a jaundiced running commentary as various shops, buildings, houses and people came into view. That supermarket was a bad place to shop; this man cutting his grass had once poisoned somebody’s dog; the church on the corner was run by a priest who liked to touch up little boys. It was hard not to laugh out loud; they seemed to hate everybody and everything. The bus stopped close to a large, dilapidated, concrete-framed building. It had big double doors and a frontage which presented an expanse of plate glass. Since the glass was a particularly bilious shade of green, it had all the grace of a clumsily-made milkbottle. Years of unremoved filth and grime did nothing to enhance the unlovely appearance of the bare concrete and glass box. It was completely devoid of any kind of feature that might have been accused of beauty. The old guys had a lot to say about the crumbling monstrosity: It was Packetville’s community sports centre...one of them listed its facilities - grudgingly, as if he had paid for every one of them out of his own pocket: an olympic-sized swimming pool, a gymnasium full of every exercise machine known to athletic science, squash courts, tennis courts and even a sauna big enough for half the town to sweat in. Naturally, the old stinkers cackled, it had been virtually unused since it’s grand opening; the lard asses of Packetville had no interest in working out or sweating. After being a drain on the taxpayers for years, it was closed...but there were no plans to sell it off or send for a wrecking ball. It just stood there - gathering dust, occupying a lot of prime real estate; safe from demolition as long as the guy who championed its creation was still in charge of the local authorities. The second old fart confided to his buddy that his nephew worked for a security company which watched over a number of buildings in the area; in hushed tones, he revealed that - apart from trying the doors and checking for obvious signs of illegal entry twice every night - his sister's boy left the Sports Centre pretty much alone. This information was filed away at the back of my mind - though, at the time, I thought it would be pretty useless stuff to know...unless I had a sudden urge to steal a running machine. But killing Mrs Woods placed me in a nasty situation. I was broke, I lacked transport and her other 'paying guests' could identify me.  I failed to find any money - she probably had some stashed away, somewhere, but I had to search quietly in case the nurse and the travelling salesman were light sleepers. It would have been better if I could have blitzed the place and ripped it apart for cash and valuables; if I had been more experienced at the time, I might have sent the other lodgers to sleep permanently and ceased to worry about making too much noise; but we can all be wiser after the event. As it was, I was stuck and time was running out; morning wasn't far off and I had no intention of indecisively hanging around until the streets were full of people. After cleaning myself up, I rifled the cupboards in the kitchen and made plans. I took a large butcher's knife and as much food as I could conveniently carry in one of the late Mrs Wood's suitcases. Then, as dawn barely touched the sky, I slipped out of the back door with my travelling bag in one hand and the suitcase in the other. The air still smelled of the storm; I headed towards the suburbs and the sports centre.

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