No?

Marvellous, take your time and retrace the entire silly tale should you feel like it. If you don’t feel like it I’m not going to recap it here. That may sound lazy, but frankly it wouldn’t take you that long to read the damn thing. I’ll be buggered if I’m going to quite a lot of effort to pander to you. It’s why these blog things have categories after all.

Anyway, it turns out the photo he’d had left on him by a gang of assailants wasn’t anyone he’d ever known. It was, however, a girl who’d been beaten and raped a few years before. He only discovered this because they found the gang who’d done it, and it had made the local news. So he was left wondering whether it was a case of mistaken identity (as they’d found the gang after he got out of hospital). But it also turns out there’s a vigilante gang going around kicking the crap out of everyone they decide is up to no good, and they’ve adopted the poor girl as some kind of symbol.

Glad I don’t have them on my books.

Regardless, our Asshole’s reaction to this “was this karma, or just co-incidence” situation has been of the decidedly FuckIt ^TM school of reasoning and he’s actually made a serious effort to build himself a new life. He’s moved house, because the commute to the only company who would employ (i.e. hadn’t heard of) him was murderous. So it’s all new life and re-invention, with just a small dose of moral sense this time. He’s even going out with a girl, just one; seriously he’s a slightly changed man.

He’s still an Asshole though.

His business has evaporated, as both employees and clients have left him at the earliest opportunity. His savings have been wiped out, so he’s had to take a job as a labourer for a large building firm. He had to find someone he’d not had any dealings with, because he’s realised too late that the people you meet as you build a life may come in handy when you need to rebuild one.

Meanwhile he’s had plenty of time to think about why he lied to the police about the beating. Normally he’d be happily set the long arm of the law on anyone he could, but this time he held back, and he’d not sure why.

He’s also been trying to figure out the picture that was left on him when he woke up in hospital. It’s a picture of a girl he doesn’t recognise, which makes it all the more curious. He’s sure it’s a message; he’d assumed that it was a picture of someone he’d screwed over, screwed up, or perhaps simply screwed. He’s stared at the face for hours, and drawn a complete blank. He simply doesn’t recognise her.

It is fortunate then, that the news is on, and something has happened today that he may just be interested in.

He just has to ask. And so he does, he asks his doctor if he remembers him.

The doctor, of course, does; how could he forget? He could hardly forget that it was with this man that his wife finally became sloppy. It turns out she’d been having affairs left, right and centre for years. Discovering this final affair had actually meant that he’d been able to divorce her. As he’d married her for the money and she’d foolishly not asked for a pre-nuptial agreement, and he’d been quite badly wronged by her, he ended the marriage on a bit of a financial high.

The Asshole screwing him out of the money had simply meant that the divorce courts had looked on him more favourably. His rather good lawyer had made it appear that his wife was deliberately wasting money to slight him.

After the divorce, he’d gone on holiday, met a devastatingly intelligent and interesting fellow divorcee and had quite the most romantic affair of his life.

He’d come back from his holiday with his mortgage paid off, his self-esteem riding high, and the wife who had been annoying him for the past six years gone. He’d met a beautiful woman, fallen in love, and got married again. He was living happily with his new wife and child in a comfortable home, and because he had no mortgage to pay, he could afford to work only when it suited him, which was four days a week.

It turns out; having an affair with his wife was the best thing that our Asshole could have done for him.

It was to this smell that our Asshole woke up, and to the fact that someone had requested the hospital radio be playing REM.

It was also to the face of a man he hadn’t seen in a few years, quite a few years. In fact, he hadn’t seen the man since he’d screwed the man’s wife, and the man out of quite a lot of money.

The police visited him a couple of days later; they had a stack of questions about the men who’d beaten him up. They asked him about possible motives, he said he couldn’t think of any. They asked him about the photo they’d found in his hand. He said he didn’t recognise the girl in it. They asked him about the evening he was beaten up.

He lied to them constantly, throughout the entire interview. In this sense, he didn’t deviate from his normal character. But the analysts who set up this chain of events intended this beating as a catalyst, not an epiphany.

Over the next few weeks, he continued to lie to the police, and be treated by a man who had every reason to hate him.

When our Asshole makes the wrong turn down an alleyway the crowd close ranks, the man who seemed so perturbed by our Asshole’s presence in the bar last night is at the front. The Asshole realises he’s in a dead end, but he never even sees the first punch. It’s not a pretty sight; the crowd work him over in a fairly routine manner. Except the one guy, who seems to be taking it personally.

By the time they’ve finished he’s a bloody mess on the floor, he vomited during the beating and he’s lying in a puddle of his own blood and sick. In his hand is a screwed up ball of paper.

The ringleader of the thugs put the paper there, and he’d been carrying it around for the last four years.

By the time the police find him in the morning his world has just got a serious amount worse.

It turns out he’s been a little ruthless on his books, and the accountants at the tax office have just become wise. The fines aren’t too much, but given that our ringleader went and burned down his house after leaving him on the street – the fines are just another problem that he may not be able to recover from.

By the time he’ll get out of hospital, rival companies will have picked up on all his work. It turns out the short contracts he’s been keeping all his staff on will mean that when they are offered positions doing the same thing with a little more security, they’ll all jumped ship in various directions. He’ll be left with no business to run, and no work to do.

But that’s all been arranged to happen in a few weeks. At this moment, our Asshole is only just about to come round.

Our family guy arrives at home, and puts the car away in the garage; he’s just locking the garage up when his sister arrives to stay for the weekend. She’s brought along her baby daughter, but not her husband. They chat for a while and go inside; neither notices that she’s dropped her bag.

Our Asshole has noticed however, he wanders across the road and picks it up; he has a good look through the bag and picks out £100 from her purse. When panicked noises start coming from indoors he walks a little distance away, then starts walking back, acting as if he’s inspecting all the houses. When our family man’s sister appears, he pretends to notice her a little late. He rushes over to ask her about the bag. He says that he saw someone going through it round the corner, and was sure they’d taken it. He pretends they ran away when he challenged them.

Our sister is thankful, but heartbroken when she realises the money is missing. Our asshole returns to the pub to relax and congratulate himself; he eventually starts buying rounds.

A few people in the corner noticed the entire episode unfold, and they’re whispering to a few slightly more well built people about what’s happened.

A man walks into the bar, stares incredulous at our asshole, and walks to the back of the bar.

Which means he’s on to his next job, and I know what’s in store; several of my colleagues, working in the field, have arranged events just so on this particular job. His client this time is a family man, complete with family, who’s carefully managed funds just allow for extending the house. Which is fortunate; as his wife’s less carefully managed contraception require it. The house is full of nice, well-maintained things, as our family man is someone who believes in the value of things, and doesn’t like to waste an investment by not looking after his possessions. Consequently, you’d be mistaken for thinking this is a wealth family.

Our family man is reasonably well known throughout the community, and actually went to school with our Asshole – with the predictable outcome that our Asshole bullied him ruthlessly. Oddly though, that isn’t going to be relevant for what is about to unfold.

Because what is about to unfold takes place in a pub, the pub opposite our family man’s house, a pub with many many people in it.

And the football’s on.

Then you’re required to go to a series of meetings to discuss what you’ve put in the form. Each meeting involves gradually more people, until eventually a few other guardian angels are required to form a committee to plan out the eventual form of the treatment. You’re not allowed to form part of the committee, but you do have to provide information about various characters in the life of the subject; people wronged, people neglected, possible people the subject thinks highly of. After a couple of weeks you get issued with a document describing what’s going to happen, and what actions (if any) you need to take to facilitate the treatment.

The document makes for grim reading in any case, and there’s always that guilt I get that perhaps this isn’t necessary. But, like a rock that’s just been thrown, this is entirely out of my hands now (ha ha, sorry ). I’m not involved in this treatment, and I’m glad of it, it’s not going to be pretty. No-one looks forward to meting out this kind of treatment; if we took pleasure in this sort of thing we wouldn’t be here.

If the extreme measures aren’t approved then the outcome is one of two things. Either you’re told to continue and given a review date, or the case is abandoned. Working with a review date is beyond pressured, as trying to reform a character to a deadline is nigh-on impossible. Abandoned cases have their own team, I guess I talk about the abandoned cases team (ACT, which is ironic really) if I need to.

His father worked “in construction” and did well at it, it turns out there’s a lot of money to be made for a general builder with a talent for choosing the right sub-contractors. He never made it spectacularly big, but he had enough money to be ostracised by the people from the neighbourhoods he came from. One of the hazards of being the son of a builder is living on a building plot. And our Asshole grew up on what was essentially an enormous square of land with a comfortable detached house in one corner.

Building sites make wonderful, if slightly hazardous, playgrounds for growing boys, and our asshole spent an awful lot of his childhood running rampant across muddy fields, and playing with shovels. He grew up, grew bigger and stronger than most of the other boys, and with his father’s determination to succeed and wits as an example, he scorned the swots and students at his school. He inherited his father’s business, and was a ruthless businessman. He grew the building business, made a few enemies, and a fair chunk of money. He never settled into any of the neighbourhoods he moved to, and consequently ended up travelling a lot on business.

Where his father had been kind during his childhood, our asshole had seen uncharacteristic weakness. Where he had been thoughtful our asshole had seen his father being slow and stupid. Where there had been every possible moral lesson he had seen the wronged as being flawed. When he had been wrong, he had blamed himself only for being caught, when he had caused others distress he saw only their weakness.

He now finds himself, friendless, surrounded by business partners who joke about him behind his back. His life is full of those he deliberately screwed over, those he failed to show any sympathy for, and those who could have helped him, but were rejected.

But sometimes you get people who are just plain bad; every one of us generally has one or two on our books at any given time. Which, considering our workload makes them pretty rare. Most teams have weekly meetings where strategies for coping with these reprobates are discussed, formulated and dissected. It’s usually not impossible to keep these guys on the right path; it just takes a lot of work. Every so often there’s one who refuses to see the light. You can litter their life with moral lessons and warnings, but they blinkeredly refuse to learn.

There’s a term for these guys which has been in use amongst us for generations: Total Asshole. It’s not a clever term, or even (heaven forbid – and we do when we can) Latin. But it’s descriptive.

Currently I’ve got a total asshole on my books, and he’s causing me the same amount of grief as all the rest of my cases put together. I’m down to the last line now, the very final measure before I abandon any attempt at saving him, and go into damage control mode. I’ve collaborated with a few other guys, and I’ve arranged for him to get the shit kicked out of him. It’s a little more sophisticated than that, there’s a reason he’ll get beaten to within an inch of his life, but whether he sees in time, or learns the lesson only time will tell… I’ll let you know how it goes.