The Baby And The Brandy (Ben Bracken 1) by Robert Parker

Spinningfields, commanding tall in its new post-modern shell.
    It’s not long before I am there, having passed the old, disused Granada Studios, previous home of TV greats such as Coronation Street. This city has transformed, the tired old in many ways making way for a brave new, with eager youth paving the way for ever-increasing steps to modernity. Business has flocked to Manchester, and I remember as I step into the plushness of the pedestrianized Spinningfields site, that within these smart tower blocks sit 64 of The Sunday Times Top 100 Companies, in a list they put together last year some time. I had read it in prison - I had always enjoyed keeping tabs on the outside world, unwilling to let Great Britain and its progress slip me by while I was working out what to do next.
    The site is probably a square of 5 blocks, cut off from cars apart from service vehicles, adorned with plush bars and restaurants punctuating big business premises, like a Christmas tree of commerce, the former sparkling the latter, providing watering holes for the eager and the tired. In another lifetime, I may have enjoyed getting a nice easy nine to five, safe in the cushion of a regular income, and might even have had friends I could meet for a drink after work. So it’s with a little tug of jealousy that I watch the groups of bright young(ish) things cavort in their loosened ties and pretty dresses, as they mill about from bar to bar with ever-slackening tongues.
    The firearm pressing against the outside of my right hip pulls me back to the present. I’m not one of those people. I don’t know whether I ever will be. At least not tonight.
    I had struggled to work out how best to carry the silenced weapon, but I was damned if I was going to leave the hotel room without it. I had resorted to popping it down my waistband directly next to my right hand at standing rest, by my side. I feel a little like a wild west gunslinger, but I’ve never had to carry a weapon in public before, or carry one without permission. I have used them without permission, sure, but whenever it’s come to storing them on my person, I’ve always been in fatigues with a purpose-built pocket or a holster. So, for now, my waistband will have to do.
    Coming into possession of it is a great piece of luck, and saves me a great deal of effort. It will come in very handy for my selected future, and would have been a real ball-ache to organize. If you want a firearm in this country, there aren’t a great many avenues to hand that don’t have the same effect as strapping a neon sign to your head announcing that you have bad intentions. You either have to steal it yourself, or cut a deal with an organized crime figure with a good connection, and considering I’m on the cusp of a tiff with Manchester’s organized crime, I hardly want to announce my possession of a tool of their destruction. No, the firearm is a great piece of luck, and I best look after it - and ammunition is so much easier to get your hands on than a piece itself.
    The only other things on me, are my Swiss army knife, wallet and phone, the latter two of which are wrapped in sandwich bags I had borrowed from the hotel kitchen, to keep them safe and dry. I check them routinely.
    The ice rink is ahead, framed in twinkling halogen, and it glassily cements the lavishness. In this quarter, Manchester is clearly thriving - but there are darker corners out there, and the man leaning against the ice rink railings on the left hand side looks like he has his head, heart and soul firmly preoccupied with one.
    I approach Jack and take a position next to him. He looks transfixed, and charged with a crackling galvanism. He looks about ready to detonate.
    ‘Tell me about today,’ I instruct, without looking at him, pleasantries seeming pointless.
    ‘It was fine. Felix is a mess, it seems all the guys are,’ Jack replies, unblinking. He seems a man on a cliff-edge, a precipice he wanted but on arrival cannot