Introduction 4

It was while weaving unsteadily backwards from the off license, clutching his bounty of alcohol, that he saw the police cars outside the pub. Several officers were filing in.

There's some justice in the world - now the little wasters will get their just deserts.

Skittering over the road, he crouched against the door with his eye pressed up against the window, straining to hear what was going on.

A hulking brute of an officer spoke first. He had a nose that had clearly been broken several times sppearing over the top of a thick, bushy beard. He looked, Handysides thought to himself, like your archetypal sailor on shore leave, certainly not like a member of Her Majesty's constabulary.

"Here you had a bit of trouble tonight." He said. Undercutting his fierce appearance, his voice had a distinct West Country twang.

"Nothing we couldn't handle officer." said Dylan, the barman.

On one of the stools, Harry, who had been responsible for at least three of the broken ribs Handysides had, muttered something that he couldn't quite make out. Knowing Harry however, Handysides was fairly certain it had been "Yeah, fuck off, pig."

The bang made Handysides throw himself instinctively back from the window. Unable to quite believe what he'd just seen, he scrambled back to the window and pressed his eye up against it.

On the floor at the base of the stool on which, just moments before he'd been sitting, Harry Leather's lifeless, and mostly headless body was lying in an ever-expanding pool of blood. Sailor's colleague, a rat-faced individual whose hat looked propped on by his massive, protuding ears, was leaning against a wall, his right arm dangling lazily by his side. In the hand of his arm there was a gun.

"What the...you can't do that!!!!" spluttered an outraged Dylan.

"Can't I?" said Sailor, dead pan. Drawing his own gun with a speed which belied the apparent effortless movement, he fired it straight into Dylan's chest.

Suddenly a face appeared in the doorway. Another of Sailor's colleagues was bolting the door. Handyside's reeled away from it, but as he staggered backwards, he slipped on something (probably his own blood) and crashed to the ground. The officer looked out as he drew the curtains and saw the movement. Even over the continuing sound of gun fire that ahd erupted in the pub, Handysides heard the officer shout "there's one out here!"

Without waiting to think, in a blind panic, Handysides ran off down the alley.

Introduction 3

Curled up in a foetal position, he didn't move. A good idea, though he didn't have much choice in the matter. Every bone was screaming at him not to move or else there would be dire consequences. Besides which, the slightest movement would alert the fuckers to the fact that he wasn't actually dead.

So he lay, curled up in a ball, his face embedded deep in the soft, yielding detritus at the side of the alley, eyes screwed up tight. He felt like a child hiding in the corner of a playground, hoping the world would go away and leave him alone.

He could feel the blood caking on his face, and the smell of ammonia was over-whelming. Certain that the alley was now quite deserted he lifeted himself up painfully onto his knees, where he convulsed and threw up what little food hadn't been beaten out of his stomach earlier.
Supporting himself on the wall with his left arm, he dragged his body upright. His right arm hung lifelessly by his side, sending waves of pain crashing against his numbed brain. He felt something hard in his mouth, and spitting, was not at all surprised to see one of his teeth on the floor amidst the mess of blood and saliva.

Get a grip. What you need is a drink.

He beat down his ragged suit and shirt, yet only succeeding in smearing mud and God knows what else into the fabric. Straightening the frayed remains of his tie, he felt in his pocket and was relieved to find his wallet still in place.

Mind, it wasn't as if he was beaten for his money.

With tentative steps, he staggered uncertainly along the alley in the opposite direction from the pub and his home in the direction of the reassuring plate glass window of the off license.

Introduction 2

There was a time when this kind of thing wouldn't have happened to Jeremy "Handysides" Lindsay.

He'd been a Big Man. And not just in the physical sense. He'd headed up the "Investigative Journalism" team at the IPC Network, and had had an entire newsroom's worth of minions at his command. Most of the major scandals of the 60s and 70s had their roots in work that Handysides' team had done. It hadn't made him popular in the outside world, but within IPC he'd been God. No, scrap that, he'd been bigger than God. The Beatles claimed it, but he knew it. A word from Handysides and he could break you.

But things had changed. He'd got lazy - his nickname said it all. He'd spent more and more time enjoying the "perks" of his position, and not actually doing his work. He'd delegated everything, without thinking of the consequences.

And now he was living those consequences. Having the crap beaten out of him in an alley beside a dirty inner city pub, knowing that there was no-one he could call on. No, that wasn't strictly true, there WERE people he could call on, but they'd probably just ask him to leave the phone on so they could hear some of the punches being rained into his ample belly.

Yes, laziness. Shortcuts. That had been the problem. In fact, he could blame everything on shortcuts. Even this pub was on one of his shortcuts from his God-awful hovel of a flat to the off-license and back. But perhaps if he hadn't been too busy drinking away his vast salary and fucking whichever innocent little temp came his way, while leaving his minions to do the dirty work, perhaps he wouldn't have screwed everything up quite so spectacularly.

Introduction

Handysides hadn't always been a failure.

But then no-one is ever "always a failure". I mean, it'd be a pretty harsh thing to say to a child just after birth:

"You are a failure".

What kind of start is that for a kid? Condemning them to a life of mediocrity the second they emerge from their warm hiding place.

A slap in the face broke his reverie.

Handysides eyes re-focussed gradually, before they were swiftly unfocussed by a punch in the face. But never let it be said that Handysides Lindsay falls after the first blow.

It was funny, he'd always found the taste of blood to be "not that bad". Other people gagged when made to tip their heads back to stop a nose bleed, Handysides just lay back and enjoyed it. But then, he always was good at lying back...

Oh, a boot in the face. That always tends to wake you up from whatever strange world your brain takes you to. He had to admit this wasn't going the way ti had done in his head. Surely if someone called you a failure, YOU were supposed to administer the kicking?