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John supposed that people from better backgrounds than his might have described this pub as atmospheric. People with two loving parents to bring them up properly. People who had had an education. People who regarded themselves as being better than him. Not that people like that ever went anywhere near the Dog's Head. And on the rare occasions that they did, they never stayed for more than a few minutes.



The place had been fashionable once, back during the war when everybody was surviving on rations and preferred to do their socialising in small establishments with nondescript doors that opened onto dingy little alleys rather than having bold shopfronts which drew attention to them. Back then, nobody knew what sort of people were sharing the place with them. As Fred the bartender never tired of telling people, they could have been German spies, or anybody. Not that anybody worried about the Germans any more. Everybody knew they were nothing but the running dogs of the Russians.



John liked this pub. It was a pokey little hole with tarnished decorations and mouldy drapes. He knew everybody, and everybody knew him. Even the newest of their patrons, who was sitting at a table in a corner drinking steadily and muttering angrily to himself, knew who John Winston Lennon was.



John knew who he was, too. Jack Henderfield was a petty-minded little sneak who had cowered and run every time John had looked in his direction. Bullying him had been almost unavoidable when they were children. The only thing that stopped him picking on Henderfield more openly had been the man's older brother - a handsome, talented sort of man whom all the girls had competed against each other for and all the boys had been insanely jealous of. If Jack Henderfield had been less of a coward, he and John might have been good friends.



John decided to go over and renew their acquaintance.



He wandered over and dropped, unceremoniously and uninvited, into the chair opposite Henderfield's. "Hello, Jack," he said. "Remember me?"



Henderfield looked up, and his eyes widened with recognition and, John was pleased to note, a little fear. "Yes, I remember you," Henderfield replied.



"Where have you been all these years, Jack?" John asked in a friendly sort of tone. "Last time we met, you were off to university to study engineering."



Henderfield suddenly looked angry. "Stupid bastards," he sneered. "They thought I wasn't good enough for them."



John's eyes narrowed. Life evidently had taken a bad turn for Henderfield - not that that was particularly unlikely. Henderfield was the sort of person to whom bad things happened. Part of it was poor luck, but most of it was a combination of anger and stupidity.



"They kicked you out, then?" John asked, his voice deceptively mild. "What did you steal?"



"Nothing!" Henderfield said, a little too quickly. Then, he amended it. "Nothing that they would have missed."



John couldn't prevent the look of contempt that crossed his face at that point. He knew that he didn't have too good a track record himself, but he still felt a better person than Henderfield was. At least he wasn't a pathetic little weasel. "They just kicked you out, then," he sneered.



"They couldn't prove anything," Henderfield protested.



"Otherwise they would have had you arrested, ey?" John replied.



Henderfield puffed up his chest. "Yeah."



By then, of course, everybody else in the place would have seen who John was talking too and made a mental note of it. John knew that, because they'd done it before. It was one of the other reasons he liked this place. People knew your worth in a place like this.



John knew that they would have identified Henderfield quite quickly. Some straight away, others after John had identified him for them. The people in this pub all worked together. But after Henderfield had left, they would compare notes and see what was to be done about him. He decided to wait and see what they said. Nobody had removed him immediately, which suggested that he might be useful. John made a few more leading remarks, and, predictably enough Henderfield rambled on about his dismissal from the university.



Eventually, he had had enough booze to be rolling drunk, and had exercised his complaint gland enough for the evening, and he staggered off into the night. John leaned back thoughtfully, taking a sip of his Scotch and Port Cola. The others started to gather around.



"He got kicked out of college years ago," Steve commented. "Last I heard he was working as an apprentice for an electrician."



"He got fired by two of them for petty thievery before he finished, though," Mark agreed.



"What else has he done?" John asked intently. "He mumbled something about photos just before he left, and I want to know more."



Cyril was frowning delicately. Cyril seemed like something of an anomaly in this place, but appearances could be deceptive. He was well-educated, and from a wealthy family, but he had been disowned by them many years ago for the same sort of thievery and general dishonesty that Henderfield had been known for. Cyril, however, was much more intelligent than Henderfield, and had proven himself useful enough that he had even become friends with the others.



"I heard of a government project recently," he said. "Something about spy equipment. There are rumours that Henderfield was involved with it."



"Henderfield?" Steve said sceptically, "In a government project?"



"They'd be good company for him," Joe snorted. "Thieving bastards they are, and picking on us, too. They're just like him."



Cyril nodded thoughtfully. "I know a person who might be able to find out more," he said. "I'll contact him, and see if Henderfield may be useful to us after all."



John nodded. "You do that, Cyril," he said, leaning back in his chair. Photos. The government had photos. Of him. Him and three other people, too. John, Paul, George, and Ringo, Henderfield had said. John had no idea who Paul, George and Ringo were. But Henderfield had made it pretty clear that John meant John Lennon.



The way he had said it, though, made John think of a jazz band. One of those big, popular ones that all the kids went to see. Why, he had no idea. Paul, George and Ringo were probably just a rival band of crooks. But maybe there was some other reason. Something the four of them had done. Something they had done without knowing it. It wasn't something that he knew he'd done, that was certain. Somehow, he doubted that the others would have volunteered. Maybe the government had even decided that whatever they had done was for the good of the Empire.



Bugger the Empire, he thought, his scowl deepening. Whatever it was the four of them had done, John wasn't being told about it. He wasn't being given any credit for it. The other three, whoever they were, probably weren't either. Typical of the government. Take what they want and shit on the workers who gave it to them.



He gulped his scotch and cola, and scowled over at Fred, who brought him more, and left again quickly. Left. Everybody was leaving him. Or they didn't bother to show up in the first place. His dad had left before he was even born. Gone off to sea and never came back. His mum had left him, too. His Aunt Mimi had tried to keep him, tried to suck him dry like the vampire she was. Like the government did. Cynthia had left him, when he wouldn't turn himself into her idea of what a man was supposed to be, and had taken Julian with her. That had been the unkindest cut of all.



Even Yoko would leave him eventually, when her next useful little plaything came along. Well, he wasn't going to let her leave him. She was going to stay, he'd make certain of that. She was his wife, and that wasn't going to change.



His thoughts continued along those lines for several more drinks, before he finally decided to go home and remind his woman of what would happen to her if she left him, like everybody else had. He got up, and was a little surprised at how difficult it was to put his feet firmly on the ground. Carefully, he went over to the bar and dumped some money down on it. Fred was not a small man, and he had made it clear that he did not tolerate spongers who couldn't pay their way in his bar. The door still showed the evidence of what could happen to a person who thought they could get away without paying their tab.



Without waiting for his change - or even to see if he'd given Fred enough - he staggered out into the night. Fred knew him well enough to treat him fairly. If it was too much, he'd have John's change waiting for him the next night. If it wasn't enough, he'd say so, and would get the rest.



The cold night air sobered him up enough to make him steadier on his feet - steady enough to want to avoid any irritating encounters with the local constabulary, and steady enough to avoid their attentions. He walked quickly, not wanting to catch a cold or something worse that would make him reliant on Yoko. She might have been his woman, but he didn't trust her.



By the time he got home, he was sober. Or, at least, sober enough to notice a lone car parked outside their pokey little terrace house. It was a car he recognised, too, and his temper started to bubble. He pulled his keys out of his pocket, and went inside. He shut the door softly, and his fist tightened around the keys.



The sounds filtering down from upstairs were unmistakeable, and his jaw tightened. A red haze descended down over his vision, and he ran upstairs, taking the stairs two at a time. As he burst through the bedroom door and hauled Yoko off the man in the bed, she screamed in shock and fury. He threw her violently across the room, and she hit the wall with a thud. The collision with the wall effectively silenced her protests, and he concentrated on her lover.



When the red haze finally left his vision, the man in the bed was a bloody mess. A dead bloody mess. Yoko had come out of her daze, and was inching toward the door, trying to escape her husband's notice. However, it was too late. He turned to face her.



She shot to her feet, and the look of fury on her face was a match for his own. She started screaming abuse at him, but she was screaming in Japanese and he couldn't understand a word she said. Instead, he grabbed her and hauled her forward, silencing her by kissing her, hard. His fingernails cut into her shoulders, and so did the keys he was still holding. She responded by kneeing him in the balls. He let go of her and staggered backwards. She aimed for his balls again, this time with a small, hard foot. He screamed in agony, and curled up in a ball. She pulled her clothes on, and ran downstairs. Dimly, through the pain, he could hear her calling the police.



He had to pull himself together. He had to get back on his feet before she came back into the room. He had to be ready for her. She would give him no quarter when she returned. She never had before, and she wouldn't again. Not for the first time, John wished he'd made sure she was unconscious before he'd had a go at her lover.



Downstairs, she was rummaging around in the kitchen, and he groaned. This was going to turn ugly. He got to his feet, and staggered towards the door. He had to get out of there. He didn't want to go back to jail. Not for anything.



He staggered downstairs, and was just about to open the front door when it slammed open. A couple of beat cops burst in, and grabbed him. Just as they started to read him his rights, he heard Yoko drop whatever it was she had picked up, and she appeared in the hallway. She'd somehow managed to wipe the cold fury from her face, and had replaced it with a look of grief and terror.



"You killed him!" she wailed. "You...you killed him!"



Bitch, John thought. You should have been an actress.



The policemen turned to look at her sharply. "Killed who?" he asked.



"My...my lover!"



The policeman who was slapping the handcuffs on him groaned. "This is going to get complicated," he predicted.



John shot her a murderous look, and he spat at her. "I should have left you a long time ago, whore," he said.



"Take him to the station," one of the policemen said. "I'll talk to her."



John felt himself being hauled outside to the waiting divvy van, and was almost grateful for it. Whatever they could have said to each other then, it wouldn't have done him any favours at all. At least this way, she might end up locked up, too.