Chapter 3: The Man in the Hoody

Chapter 3: The Man in the Hoody

A raw, damp cold clawed its way into the garage, a signature of the Welsh winter that no amount of industrial heating could fully repel. It was a biting cold that seeped through the thickest overalls, settled deep in the bones, and made steel tools feel like blocks of ice against the skin. Kaelen felt it as he arrived, the pre-dawn chill clinging to him as he clocked in. He shrugged off his heavy coat but knew it wouldn't be enough. For the first time that year, he pulled on the simple, dark grey hoody he kept in his locker for days like this, pulling the hood up for a moment to ward off the drafts before pushing it back down. It was a purely practical decision, an extra layer of fleece against the gnawing cold.

The morning passed in a haze of focused work. Kaelen submerged himself in the familiar world of engine diagnostics, the logical flow of cause and effect a welcome refuge from the messy, illogical world of men. The cold fury from the canteen incident hadn't dissipated; it had simply settled, a dense, heavy weight in his chest. He worked with a controlled, almost unnerving intensity, his movements precise and economical. He was aware of Thompson's presence, a blustering, disruptive force at the edge of his perception, but he refused to engage, refused to even look in his direction. His strategy, for now, remained the same: observe, endure, and wait for the opening that he knew must come.

He finished a complex job on a DAF XF’s braking system ahead of schedule and moved on to the next truck on his list: a Volvo with a reported power-loss issue. After hooking up the diagnostics tablet and running the initial checks, he knew he’d need a new set of fuel filters and a specific flow-rate sensor from the parts department.

He walked over to the stores counter, a caged-off area at the far end of the workshop. The parts-man was on the phone, waving a hand to indicate he’d be a minute. Kaelen leaned against the wire mesh, his tablet in hand, reviewing the Volvo's error codes. The low hum of the workshop was a familiar comfort, the distant clatter of an air wrench and the hiss of a pressure washer providing a steady rhythm.

Then, through the mesh, he saw them. Mark Thompson and Geoff, the supervisor, were standing by the coffee machine just a few feet away. They were speaking in low tones, their backs mostly to him. Kaelen paid them no mind, his attention fixed on the screen in his hand. They were part of the background noise, the unpleasant but unavoidable static of his workday.

He heard Thompson let out a low, derisive chuckle. Kaelen’s focus didn’t waver, but his senses sharpened, a subconscious reflex honed by years of navigating hostile environments.

“...can’t be too careful,” Thompson was saying, his voice a greasy whisper that still managed to cut through the ambient noise. Geoff nodded mutely, nursing his styrofoam cup.

Kaelen felt a prickle on the back of his neck. He didn’t look up. He kept his eyes glued to the tablet, feigning complete absorption in his work. He became just another mechanic waiting for a part, a fixture of the workshop, invisible.

Thompson’s voice dropped even lower, becoming a venomous, conspiratorial hiss. It was a tone Kaelen hadn't heard from him before. The booming, public racism of the canteen was for an audience. This was different. This was the man’s true self, speaking in the dark.

“See him over there?” Thompson murmured, and Kaelen knew with a sickening certainty that he was the subject. He could feel the weight of their gaze on his back. “It’s always the quiet ones. Tell you what my old man taught me, Geoff, and it’s never steered me wrong.”

There was a pause. Kaelen could hear the glug of Geoff swallowing his coffee. He could hear the ticking of the wall clock in the parts department. Each second stretched into an eternity.

Then came the words, delivered with the quiet confidence of a man sharing an unshakeable truth.

“Never trust a coloured man with a hoody on.”

The workshop, the noise, the cold—it all vanished. The world contracted to the space between those six words. Coloured man. An archaic, demeaning term, a verbal fossil from a time he was meant to believe was long past. With a hoody on. A simple piece of clothing, worn for warmth, suddenly twisted into a symbol of criminality, a uniform of inherent threat.

It wasn't a joke about "smoke signals." It wasn't a pseudo-intellectual tirade about IQ. This was personal. This was immediate. This was an assessment of him, Kaelen Adebayo, standing right there, being judged as untrustworthy, as dangerous, simply for the crime of being a Black man trying to stay warm.

The wall inside him, the carefully constructed fortress of stoicism he had spent a lifetime building, did not crack. It did not crumble. It vaporized. In its place was a void of absolute, silent, arctic rage. The hot flashes of anger he’d felt before were a child’s tantrum compared to this. This was the cold, perfect fury of a collapsing star.

All the hurt, the exhaustion from a lifetime of small and large aggressions, the isolation of the canteen, the betrayal of Geoff’s laughter—it all coalesced. It compressed into a single, diamond-hard point of purpose.

The quiet, non-confrontational mechanic who just wanted to do his job and be left in peace was gone. He had been murdered in the space of a single sentence. The man who remained was someone else entirely. A man who now understood that endurance was not a strategy; it was a slow surrender. Peace was not an option, because it had never been offered.

His desire for justice, a vague and noble concept, was incinerated. What replaced it was something far more primitive and far more precise: revenge. Cold, calculated, and absolute. He would not just defeat Mark Thompson. He would dismantle him. He would find the load-bearing pillar of the man’s petty, pathetic life and kick it out, and he would watch the whole rotten structure come down on his head.

The parts-man finally hung up the phone. "Alright, Kaelen, what can I get you?"

Kaelen turned from the counter, his face a perfect, unreadable mask. He didn’t answer. He didn’t get his parts. He simply walked back towards his bay, his movements fluid and deliberate. He walked past the coffee machine where Thompson and Geoff were still standing. He did not look at them, but he felt their sudden, uncomfortable silence as he passed.

They had no idea what they had just done. They had no idea who they had just created. The hunt had begun.