We Are Not The Bad Guys , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - David Goff

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83 pages

English

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Like so many others, Mark and Zoe have reasons to despise Sir Nigel Percy and his crooked business practices. They have a plan to extract revenge that's so brilliant, it's certain to make them heroes down the Coach and Horses. When it all goes wrong, they spend the next thirty-six hours wishing they had never heard of Arsen Facen or his pet kakapo.With professional thieves, hired henchmen and the forces of law and order chasing them around the streets of South Manchester, they are forced to rely on the protection of new friends and unlikely allies. Can a collection of society's bad guys help them stay free of their pursuers long enough for them to figure out what is going on? Or, will they have to pay the price for refusing to get used to the way things are?

Informations

Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 juillet 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781838599850
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

David Goff was born in West London and has gradually made his way north via Bath, Manchester, Malaga, Hull, Swaledale and Northumberland.
He has looked after parks, run shops, paid soldiers, taught children, made chocolate and only been sacked twice for not knowing when to keep his mouth shut.

He encourages contact via his website and blog at
www.wearenotthebadguys.com
as well as by email at
david.goff@wearenotthebadguys.com

Copyright © 2019 David Goff

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Matador
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Tel: 0116 279 2299
Email: books@troubador.co.uk
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Twitter: @matadorbooks

ISBN 978 1838599 850

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

For Judy
Contents
1
BUMPING INTO THINGS, FALLING OVER AND SWEARING
2
WHO’S EVER HEARD OF A GET-AWAY BUS?
3
YOU SOUND LIKE THE ARTFUL DODGER
4
WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE A LIST
5
AS FOR MEN, THEY MAY LIVE AND BE SLAVES
6
HIS WILLY IS THE MINUTE HAND
7
VERY MUCH THE SHAPE OF AN EGG
8
THE UNACCEPTABLE ARSE FACE OF CAPITALISM
9
THAT’S A MIME ISN’T IT?
10
UNIMAGINATIVE NICKNAMES
11
WE’LL CALL IT A POUND THEN
12
THE TOILET POLICE
13
HE CALLED HIMSELF JACK DAWKINS
14
DO YOU WANT TO BUY A PIGEON?
15
COME HERE, SWEETUMS
16
MORE FLAGS THAN SOFT MICK
17
LANDMINES
18
THE UNIFORMED SORT
19
THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO
20
FOOD AND A FIGURE OUT
21
TODDLER RELAY
22
SWINGS NOT ROUNDABOUTS
23
YOU ARE FRIENDS AREN’T YOU?
24
WHO WOULD WANT A PAINTING OF A CHICKEN?
25
I KNOW HER FROM SOMEWHERE DON’T I?
26
NOT THE PARROT YOU IDIOT, THE GIRL!
27
LOOKING JUST A BIT SILLY
28
A BIT SCARED ACTUALLY
29
BENEVOLENT DICTATORSHIP
30
WE ARE NOT THE BAD GUYS
31
IF ONLY YOU’D BOTHERED TO ASK ME
1
BUMPING INTO THINGS, FALLING OVER AND SWEARING
Lucinda quickly concluded that the two intruders in her room were not, in fact, the same intruders as before. They were certainly just as clumsy. They were if anything even noisier, but the quality and frequency of their cursing was appreciably different.
Despite the moonlit half-darkness, her vantage point at the top of the larger study bookcase afforded Lucinda an uninterrupted view of her uninvited guests. They appeared to be expending a great deal of energy bumping into things, falling over and swearing. She thought she could make out both a male and a female voice, the owners of which were taking turns instructing, cursing and hushing each other in increasingly irritated stage whispers. Perhaps they imagined that this was the way people communicated when engaged in careful stealthily executed intruding, to reduce the danger of being overheard. If so, they had badly misjudged the situation. No passer-by within earshot of the stifled din these two were making could have failed to be disturbed by it. However, that night there wasn’t anyone within earshot; there was only Lucinda.
Even with her good, if dimly lit, view from the top of the larger study bookcase, Lucinda was unable to decide exactly what it was that this un-stealthy pair were trying to achieve. It was clear enough though that whatever it was, they weren’t very good at it. Stumbling about, they were good at. Breaking ornaments, they were good at. However, as they hadn’t thought to switch on either of the lamps they had knocked over, these intruders were failing to achieve whatever it was they were failing to achieve, in the dark. At least the first pair had had the sense to bring a torch with them. Of course, it had done them no good; in fact it had only made things worse.
This second couple had arrived no more than three minutes after Lucinda had finished persuading the first two men to leave and they were faring no better, repeating all the mistakes of their predecessors. Lucinda knew incompetence when she saw it and she had seen it in all of the evening’s steady stream of trespassers. Nevertheless, she would have liked to know precisely what it was that had made them come to her home and exhibit it in front of her. From what she could tell, this second pair of interlopers weren’t even trying to steal anything; they seemed more interested in chasing her around the room. Perhaps they were drunk. Perhaps they had intended to break into an entirely different house. Perhaps they were just terrible burglars.
Most of the problems and coffee tables that all of that night’s trespassers had run into had come as a result of pursuing, and to a lesser extent, being pursued by Lucinda. If they had left her alone, they would have fared a lot better and so would the furniture.
When she had first realised there were people up to no good in her near vicinity Lucinda had been understandably startled and afraid; it was only natural that she should become a little aggressive. By the time the second pair of burglars had arrived, appearing to be up to a similar amount of no good, she was getting used to defending herself and reckoned she had come off best in both encounters.
At one point, before their flailing about had become too chaotic to be anywhere near effective, one of this second couple had leapt at Lucinda as if they meant to catch hold of her. She had escaped that time and was hiding behind the writing desk when first the woman and then her male companion had actually laid hands on her. For a full ten seconds they had grabbed and grasped at her, each pulling her towards themselves and away from the other, which hurt Lucinda a great deal but got her assailants precisely nowhere. Lucinda had needed to fight hard to stay free. She’d landed a good blow and then another fair one. Someone had screamed and the desk was sent crashing. Plenty more bumping into things, falling over and swearing followed and in the confusion, Lucinda had managed to escape to her refuge on the top of the larger study bookcase.
From there, and through the gloom, she watched as the intruder’s silhouettes picked each other up and scurried away through the study door, apparently forgetting about the open window they had come in by. She heard their swearing recede and their footsteps scatter along the tiled hallway as they made what could have been a retreat, but seemed more like an escape. She then heard all hell break loose as the house alarms burst into life, rising and falling in screaming, wailing torrents.
Wincing at the noise and peering through the dark, Lucinda stared at the room she hadn’t left in three years. She could make out familiar objects whose shapes and angles were all wrong. Very little of the furniture remained upright. Books, picture frames, cushions and any number of the expensive things that had once been placed so precisely for effect littered every surface. Some of those things were no longer the things they had been before. A blue vase from the desk that had held all the pencils and pens, but never any flowers, lay broken on the floor surrounded by its former contents. A pile of smashed terracotta under the window ledge used to be an Andalusian dish. The decanter wa