Fish 'n' Chips

Steve parked the van and waited for Brian to come out of the takeaway. It was glass-fronted and dazzlingly lit, with the words Al's Fish Bar—Chippy King of Fife above the door. Inside, it was all chrome surfaces and overhead menus flashing with special offers. 

          Brian came out with two fish suppers and got into the van. They opened the greasy wrappers and ate as the air filled with the heady richness of deep-fried haddock and chips.

          "Did you get a look?" Brian eventually asked through a mouthful of chips.

          Steve told him the delivery entrance was around the back then stopped eating and sighed. "I always forget you can't get chippy sauce outside Edinburgh," he said. "I don’t like it with vinegar."

          "Well, that’s all they had," said Brian. "Anyway, I prefer it with vinegar. Brown sauce on fish? What the hell's that about?"

          "I grew up at the seaside," said Steve. "I’ve had a lot of chippy suppers."

          Brian gave Steve a narrow-eyed look and asked if he thought that made him some sort of expert.

          "No, I’m just saying I think vinegar on its own is too sharp. Chippy sauce gives it a... mellowness."

          "If it’s that good, how come it’s not caught on all over Scotland?" asked Brian. "There's a reason why nowhere else does it. It's shite."

          Steve pointed at the sign above the door. "That's quite a claim to make," he said. "How'd you suppose they get away with saying that?"

          Brian shrugged. "It's not as if chippy king of Fife is an official title. You know what I’m saying? No one's going to sue them."

          "Aye but how hard can it be to sell good fish suppers?" asked Steve. "It's simple food."

          "You think running that place to a high standard would be easy?"

          "That's not what I'm saying," said Steve. "I mean how can they make a claim like that when there must be loads of places around here that do good fish suppers?"

          "That’s what business is about," said Brian. "You say something bold, and it's up to someone else to prove you wrong. Assertion—that's what it is."

          The windscreen had steamed up, and Brian rubbed his sleeve on it so he could continue watching the comings and goings at the chippy. A man stepped out for a cigarette while he waited on his food. Brian watched him then said, "I got talking to him in the queue. He told me there was another chippy along the road, but it went bust. He told me the guy who owns this one took the lease on the other place but keeps it closed on purpose."

          Steve looked along the road, surveying the shop fronts. "I don’t like hearing things like that," he said.      

          "That’s only gonna make the street look run-down."

          Brian gave Steve the look he always gave him when he got frustrated with him. "That’s good business," he said. "It keeps competitors out of the area." Brian chewed and nodded with great confidence. "Aye, the fish ‘n’ chip trade is vulnerable right now. That’s for sure."

          "How?" asked Steve.

          "Don’t you read the news? Cooking oil and energy costs are going through the roof." Brian gestured at the fish bar. "Look at the lights and all the fryers they’ve got going. Look at that big pizza oven at the back. Those places eat up energy like nobody’s business. They go through ten barrels of cooking oil a day."

          "How'd you know that?" asked Steve.

          "I asked at the counter—casually. Not in a way that would raise suspicion."

          They carried on eating then Brian remarked again, "Ten barrels a day. Imagine that. If we got our hands on that amount of cooking oil, we could make a lot of money. We could take it to a chippy back in Edinburgh and sell it to them. Undercut the market."

          Brian watched the staff of the takeaway. They wore bright red t-shirts and matching baseball caps with the Al's Fish Bar logo in white. Brian and Steve were currently unemployed with a string of dead-end jobs behind them. Brian took an optimistic view of this, believing it made him more worldly. He felt he understood the difficulties faced by small businesses in the current climate—and the opportunities they presented to men like him and Steve.

          Steve scratched his neck and poked around in his fish supper, selecting the fattest chips. "What you’ve got in mind is maybe a bit too niche," he said.

          "How?" asked Brian.

          "It'd be a very notable type of robbery."

          "It's cooking oil," said Brian. "It's not breaking into a diamond vault."

          "That’s what I’m saying; it would have novelty value. The newspapers would have a field day."

          "No way," said Brian. "I don't see it making the news."

          "Aye, it would. The journalists would be able to write funny headlines about it."

          Brian put his fish supper on the dashboard and turned to Steve. "Go on and give me one right now, then."

          Steve thought for a moment then raised his hands as if visualising a front page splash. "Something fishy's going on—chippies report spate of cooking oil robberies. Or how about—Small fry—Desperate gang stealing chippy cooking oil."

          "Are you saying we shouldn't rob this place because the newspapers will make fun of us?"

          "I'm saying it'll draw too much attention."

          "Local news, maybe," said Brian. "But we're from out of town. We won’t sell it here. We’ll be gone."

          "It could be traceable," muttered Steve, then he didn’t speak for a while as he thought about what to do. He’d been in situations like this with Brian many times but never felt like he had any control over them.

          They had reached the bottom of their fish suppers, and their greasy fingers gathered up the dregs of the chips and sodden lumps of battered fish. They sat for a while, watching the bright lights of the fish bar.

          Brian scrunched up his wrapper and threw it into the back of the van. He turned to Steve and raised his voice and said, "Right then—are we doing this or not?"