Henry Porter Lanchester

Henry Porter Lanchester liked to think of himself as a fair and simple man. He had simple tastes and simple pleasures. He rewarded loyalty and punished disloyalty. He had a simple set of rules for those who worked for him: Work hard, work only for me and never, ever steal from me. If you need something, ask don't take.
He had a reputation as a hard man to work for and he knew it. Sometimes he played up on it a little in order to keep people in line. Usually it was people in the lower ranks because people in the upper echelons of his organisation knew how things worked and they were only there because they were loyal and could be trusted.
If you asked him what the most important qualities in a man were, he would say loyal, dependable, honest, honorable and dignified. Like a lot of people in his position, he often didn't display the qualities himself that he demanded in others, but it was this dichotomy that had got him to where he was, which was effectively lord of the manor. His house wasn't actually a manor, but it was large and filled with the sorts of things that you would expect a man from a rough background to have once he got enough money.
Of course Henry didn't believe in a concept of 'enough money'. There was never enough. He currently owned several properties around the globe, had investments enough to require a manager to oversee his broker and accountant, a nice little forty-footer moored off St. Tropez with an on board bar, as well as lots of other little luxuries. His current value was quoted around two hundred and thirteen million - more than he or a couple of generation of his family would ever be able to spend, but he wanted more.
With money came power and it was power that was his real motivation. Not political power but real, tangeable power. Power over people. Particularly power over people with power. Now that was something worth having.
When he was growing up, he had no power. None at all. Before he abandoned young Henry and his mother for good, his dad beat him regularly and there was nothing he could do. He would also beat his mother, who would then drink heavily and sometimes she would beat Henry, blaming him for her own powerlessness against his father. He was a small child and was picked on at school by the bullies as well as kids who were picked on by the bullies. He was the lowest in the chain, the one everyone knew they could take their shit out on with no comeback.
He never complained. When he refused to cry during a beating, his father would beat him harder, determined to break him but Henry wouldn't break. Once when he was seven, Henry's father beat him unconscious out of sheer frustration at the boy's resiliance.
As he got older he filled out, although he was always shorter than his classmates. He started lifting weights to enhance the muscles he was growing. By the time he was thirteen, the kids at school couldn't knock him over any more. At fifteen he was expelled from school for beating the largest of the bullies into a near-coma. It was the first time he'd ever fought back in his life.
After that, no one hit him. No one dared. He got a job working in a factory to help pay for himself and his mother, who was unemployed and firmly in the grip of alcoholism by now. He's even had to write the acknowledgement letter to the school when he was expelled as she was incapable. The factory job was paid badly and cold but still Henry didn't complain about his lot.
Despite being a quiet person on the whole who just wanted to get on with his life and be left alone for the most part, trouble seemed to catch up with Henry on a semi-regular basis.
The foreman at the factory became the second man Henry taught a lesson to, after constantly berating him for no reason at all. He ended up with a broken arm and a severe concussion. Henry ended up with a warning, (the foreman refused to press charges,) and a first class ticket to the dole queue. His mother raged at him on his return for being irressponsible and stupid, putting the responsibility of putting food on the table for the family on him. She beat him in a drunken stupor but between his now well muscled frame and her insobriety, he barely felt the blows land.
He got another job at a market, working as a delivery driver. He spent his days shifting large and stinking boxes of fish, which served to tone his frame even more. He became friendly with some of the market workers, or as friendly as he could be and soon became a regular fixture.
At seventeen he started to attract female attention. He was still very inexperienced in dealings with women and tended to shy away. In truth he wasn't very interested in sex at all. He didn't have time for a relationship inbetween work and caring for his mother. Each night he would come home, shower, prepare a meal for them both and sit through a tirade of verbal abuse from his mother as she drank her evening meal, rarely eating anything he had made. Eventually she would fall asleep in a chair, cigarette still burning down towards her knuckles and he would put the cigarette out, carry her upstairs and put her into bed.
The rest of the evening would be his and most nights he would read whatever he had managed to get his hands on, either from saving a little of his pay or borrowing books from work colleagues.
When he was eighteen, his mother died from cirrhosis of the liver. She had left him the house but not much else. Henry didn't cry at the funeral and was shunned by the rest of the family, who had heard horror stories about the boy from his mother and had believed her without a shred of evidence.
Still Henry didn't complain. To him, the only difference was that he had more time to read. He continued to go to work. News of his mothers death went around the market and they took up a collection for the nice, quiet lad who drove the van and who's name most of them didn't know. They bought him a condolences card and a small gift and presented it to him at the end of the day.
Henry didn't really know what to say. He thanked them and shook hands with a few of them. Even the boss of the whole market had come down and not only did he shake Henry's hand, but he did know Henry's name. He told Henry that he was sorry about his mother. Henry always found it odd when people said things like that. What were they sorry for? The boss man told Henry that he should take a couple of days off and he would see to it that Henry was paid for those days. He also said he'd been watching Henry with interest and that when he came back, Henry should go see him in his office first thing.
Henry spent his two days off reading and cleaning the house. On his return, he walked up the four flights of stairs into the boss' office. Henry was nervous, his only previous experience with bosses and offices involved a talking to by a policeman and a subsequent sacking. The boss man welcomed Henry in, invited him to sit down and offered him a drink. Henry declined, it still only being eight in the morning. The boss man smiled and told Henry that he had a job for him, that his talents were being wasted and that he could earn a lot more money working directly for one of the boss man's other interests. He told Henry that he would pay him twice what he was currently earning for doing much the same job - delivering parcels.
Like any young man in Henry's position, Henry knew a good opportunity when he saw it. He greatfully accepted the job and boss man even told Henry he could take the rest of the day off and that he would sort out another driver for the market.
Slightly bewildered, henry went home to read again. He arrived at his new workplace on time. It was a small accountants office, wedged inbetween two other on a small back street that still had a cobbled road. He knocked and went in. For a second it looked empty until Henry's eyes got used to the gloom inside. There was a small, wizened man with large rimmed glasses and thick musty lenses sitting behind the main desk, dwarfed by stacks of musty smelling paperwork. It was only the tapping of the man's finger on the oak that even alerted Henry to his presense, he seemed to be such a part of the room.
He told Henry that he was late and held out a package for him with a slip of paper attached. Henry was, in fact fifteen minutes early but decided not to say anything. The man looked at Henry in a way that suggested that questions were not a good idea, but Henry had to ask what he was to do once he'd delivered it. Was he to come back here or go back to the boss' office? The wizened man told Henry in flat tones that he didn't give a flying fuck what Henry did, but as far as he was concerned, Henry's work day was over once he'd delivered the parcel intact and unopened.
Henry wasn't stupid. He knew that delivering one small parcel was hardly worthy of a full day's pay and pretty good pay at that, unless it contained something valuable or illicit in some way. He also knew better than to ask what the parcel contained. That really would be stupid for two reasons: One, it would make the aged accountant distrust him and second, if he got caught with it for some reason it would be better not to know what it contained.
Henry headed for the door. As he reached for the handle, the old man growled in a low voice that if he opened the parcel or failed to deliver it for any reason, he'd better not come back to the office. In fact, in those circumstances he would do well to leave town. Henry looked back over his shoulder at the man and simply nodded. The man nodded back slowly.
Henry read the address on the slip of paper. He knew roughly where it was - across town and in an industrial district. He had not been given a time to make the delivery by, but decided it might be best to do this job quickly. He grabbed a cab across town and then walked the last part of the journey through the warehouses. The package was small but felt heavy in his jacket pocket. At no point did Henry get even the slightest temptation to open it, having figured it was probably more than his life was worth.
He found the warehouse on the address slip, which looked long abandoned from the outside. He knocked on the front door and got no reply. This was something he hadn't considered. What if there was no one here to deliver to? What would he do then?
He walked the perimiter of the building, through overgrown weeds and grasses, dogshit and empty cans. He found a small side door near the back of the building. It was thick steel with a slide plate. He knocked. The slide plate opened and a pair of eyes squinted at him from between a metal lattice. He explained where he was from and the plate slid shut. He heard four bolts being slid open and the door opened just enough to let him in.
Henry stepped into the gloom and waited for his eyes to adjust. The man who had let him in said nothing but motioned for him to walk into a nearby office. Henry went in and stood in front of another large oak desk, behind which sat a fat man with slicked down hair over an obvious bald patch. The only light in the room came from a small desk lamp with a green shade, which meant he could only just make out the man. He was wearing a pin stripe suit that looked too big for him, which was impressive given his frame. He puffed clouds of blue smoke from a cigar.
The fat man said nothing, but slowly leaned forward in his chair and stretched out his hand. Henry passed the parcel across to him and returned to his spot in the middle of the room. Henry waited while the fat man weighed the parcel in his chubby hand, turning it over before placing it on the desk.
He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a parcel approximately the same size, in plain brown paper and tied with string. He held it out and Henry stepped forward and took it. Henry looked at the address on the new slip. Back across town again. The fat man sat with his elbows on the desk, hands clasped together. Henry waited to be dismissed. The fat man waved Henry away and Henry nodded to the fat man, turned on his heel and walked out through the steel side door which clunked shut behind him. Henry heard the bolts replace.
As he walked away he glanced back at the building. On his approach he hadn't noticed the figure on the roof, who was now walking away from Henry. Presumably he'd have been shot by that man if he'd have been anyone else.
He walked the few blocks back to the outskirts where he could catch a cab and directed it to somewhere just short of his destination again and walked the last few blocks.
This time he found an old jewellers shop, windows smeared with so much dust and grease that you could barely see the displays, which sat on mouldering cushions and completely failed to gleam. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the front door was not only locked, but judging by the amount of mail behind it, probably stuck anyway. Next to the shop was a covered alleyway which smelled heavily of urine.
Henry reflected on his glamourous career so far - smelling of fish, then wlaking around abandoned warehouses avoiding dog shit, now venturing down a dark, piss-stinking alley - before shrugging his shoulders and setting off to find the other way in.
After hopping a very rotten fence which almost gave under his weight, he found the back door open. He knocked on the glass and was bidden inside by a raspy voice with a scouse accent.
Inside was as gloomy as the front window and an old woman, with blonde curly hair and sloppily applied, gaudy make up sat at a table which overflowed with ashtrays, cigarette ends and scraps of cat food. There were several cats prowling around the room and one of them rubbed itself against Henry's legs. He reached down and stroked it behind the ear. The woman smiled at him, showing a mouth with an eclectic collection of teeth - some yellow, some brown some long, some short and a fair few missing.
The smile dropped after a second and she held out her hand. Henry handed over the parcel and waited. The woman didn't weigh hers like the fat man, but simply put it to one side and studied Henry for a moment. She smiled again, but this time with closed lips and reached down into her bag on the floor. She brought out a battered purse and unlocked the clasp. She handed Henry a small wad of notes. Henry took it and waited.
She studied Henry for another moment and then told him that he could go. Henry asked where he should take the money and the woman gurgled a flemmy laugh and told Henry it was for him.
He left and found a gate in the fence that opened just enough for him to squeeze through sideways and headed home.
Once he was safely home he counted the money she'd given him. It was five hundred pounds. That was more than he used to earn in a month delivering for the market and he'd earned it in a single day by delivering two parcels. Henry found himself thinking that he could get used to this.