Free No More Heroes by Ray Banks

kick down the door when I told him, I wouldn’t be suffering from black lungs right now.
    Except that didn’t meet with Beeston’s approval, obviously. Not the way a “hero” should talk, so he’s gone and made it all up. And I sound like some square-jawed smug bastard who reckons his shit doesn’t stink. But then that’s what the public need, according to Beeston. They need someone to look up to. And it’s easier to believe in a cliché, because they’re familiar with them. They’re comfortable, and God help us if we make anyone uncomfortable.
    Which explains why my brother isn’t mentioned, even though I was asked about how I came down to Manchester. Smackhead family doesn’t reflect well on a bloke. Neither does prison time, which excuses my dad — not that I’d mention him anyway — as well as my own experience.
    It also explains why Granny Rashid made half a sentence, a glance of death buried deep in the text of the story. She was old, going to die soon anyway — that’s the implication. Doesn’t matter that she burned to death, went out screaming.
    No, look at the pictures instead, people of Manchester. Look at Innes standing in front of the Lads’ Club, looking for all the world like he’s just staggered to the end of a week-long binge drink. Those half-lidded eyes, a touch of the early morning nausea, his tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth because the photographer told him that would hide the double chin he never knew he had.
    Across the page, the Lads’ Club again, this time with The Smiths in front of it. Bring up Paulo’s place, they have to trot out Morrissey and Marr. One of the commandments of Manchester journalism — tie it to the music, might make people read the fucking thing.
    Same deal with the flats that used to be the Hacienda. A mass murder in there, and they’d have a picture of Bez and Shaun to accompany it.
    Still, I never thought I’d ever be in that close proximity to Moz.
    I take a drink from my pint. I want a cigarette, but I’d have to go outside to have one. Still haven’t quite got my head round that yet.
    I keep going through the newspaper. There’s a small, but perfectly libellous story about Donald Plummer, calling him the “Slumlord of Manchester”. And for all Beeston’s promises, it’s his name on the byline and most of the story’s pure hearsay. Next, some local spokesbastard for the English National Socialists harping on about the rise in racial assaults against whites in the city centre. Got himself a right cob on about it. Reckons these cases have been overlooked by a liberal constabulary “more concerned with policy than policing”, whatever that means.
    Then there’s the gang of rude boys with baseball bats who took apart a grandmother of six, robbed her of the money she’d stashed in the biscuit tin.
    And the nine-year-old Asian lad who’s been stabbed to death in Moss Side over his mobile.
    Vox pops in small boxes, the average person on the street asked, should kids of nine have mobiles in the first place?
    The general consensus: yes, they need ’em. Too many paedo kidnappers about.
    So there it is. The good stuff engulfed by the bad. Hero news doesn’t survive when there’s tub-thumping and hand-wringing to do.
    Still, it was nice while it lasted. I knock back the rest of my pint and get up from my table. I leave the paper behind, open at the story about me. One of the regulars, a fat, oldish bloke who I think is called Terry, waddles over to the table and points one chipolata finger at the newspaper. I notice he’s missing a nail on the pointing finger.
    “You finished with that, son?”
    I glance at the paper. “Yeah, you go ahead.”
    “Ta.” He grabs the newspaper, looks at the story, then up at me. “Here, is this you, then?”
    “Yeah.”
    His mouth parts in a gummy smile. “Christ. Well done.”
    “Thanks,” I say as I’m heading to the door, one hand on my cigarettes.
    “Here,” he says, just as I’m about to