Tuesday 19 February 2013

Hunting a Priest Killer - Day 5

Somewhere quiet, that was the last place the police – or any one for that matter, would look for me was also a very comfortable place to relax and unwind after sitting in that horrible back room. I started by running a bath and soaking for a while just to get the feel of dank bar gun fight off me.

As to where I was, nobody in the world would think that when I was being hunted by Fred I would go to his apartment to hide. In fact, he was probably sat in my office now waiting for me to come home so it was only fair that whilst he was using my place, I used his.

On balance, I definitely had the better trade. His place was big and warm with lots of plush furnishings; mine was small, cold with furniture barely holding together. Fred’s fridge was well stocked with a variety of food, mine contained milk, eggs and some three week old takeaway noodles.

Sykes wanted to rise to fame and glory in the gang scene and with his meteoric rise he also wanted more territory. At this point there would be little to be gained from just shooting him, well except for an enormous amount of satisfaction. The stunt at the bar had the Snake Devils fighting each other for the moment, but that wouldn’t last long and there were always more peons to be found. In fact, killing Sykes would probably cause more harm than good. It would leave a power vacuum that those within would fight to seize control of the gang, and those outside would fight to destroy the competition. If that were to happen then more people would get hurt, more people like Patrick would suffer. So my usual plan of attack was not one that was going to work.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I couldn’t deal with the Snake Devils on my own. Yes I could hold them off in small numbers and pick them off one by one as they started to expand their territory, but the whole gang was a just a bit too much to take on, as were all the possible repercussions of my actions. In truth, I could think of only one thing that I could do.

I called Fred. I hated doing it and the angry response to calling him on his house phone was not at all satisfying when I had to tell him that I needed to talk to him, that I needed his help.

After that phone call I had to take another bath.

Tuesday 12 February 2013

In sickness and in health

It has finally happened...

I have finally been brought to heel...

I have become sick.

I have never been sick a day in my life before. Yes I have been to hospital countless times but that has been because of bullet wounds, broken bones, head trauma, being run over, thrown through windows, well a lot of different reasons really, but I have never been sick.

I woke up this morning with a fever that was high enough to stop ice forming on the inside of my windows. I tried to get up but found myself so dizzy that I fell straight back into my bed. The last time my head felt this bad was when Bob Davies took a baseball bat to it to stop me shooting his brother. I am coughing and can barely speak and I think I must be hallucinating.

I opened my eyes and Fred was sitting on my bed next to me, a wet flannel pressed to my head to cool my temperature. I could smell chicken soup being cooked and I wasn't in my apartment any more but in his. I had the duvet pulled up around me and I was wearing some very soft, warm and comfortable pyjamas. Fred was speaking very softly, too softly to be really audible, so I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

When I woke up the second time I discovered I was not hallucinating. That in my weak and stricken state, Fred had effectively kidnapped me. Yes, the cities greatest private investigator was kidnapped from her bed by a Star Wars geek of a policeman. I wasn't sure what bothered me most about being kidnapped. It could have been that Fred had broken into my home and taken me from my bed without me waking. It could have been that I was now surrounded by luxury that I didn't have at home and realised that actually some of it was quite nice, the pyjamas for instance. Or it could have been that my guns were nowhere near me for the first time outside of a hospital. Whilst all of these were mildly irritating to semi frustrating, it was something else that bothered me.

It was the fact that whilst Florence Nightingale had brought me to the other side of the city to look after me whilst I was sick without my consent, he was right in doing so and I knew it! This revelation completely undermines my friendship or rivalry with Fred. He is not allowed to be right!  Not ever! Not because if he is right, I am wrong, but because when he is right he is so insupportably insufferable. He will use being nice to me as a way to stop me ridiculing him, or even worse stop me shooting other people. It's either that or I have to be equally nice to him to even the score and that might just make me vomit.

He had even called for a doctor to come who said that I would be in bed for a week, if I was lucky; had to take some foul tasting medicine and needed to sleep as much as possible. If I wasn't so tired, I would have argued with him about it. Fred showed him out and came back to feed me soup. He told me that I was staying here until I was well again and that he would look after me.

Can't believe it, it's going to be a year before I can shoot anyone again now! It did give me chance to talk to Fred about Patrick though. And though I would never tell him, it was nice to have someone looking after me.

Monday 4 February 2013

Weather

What is it about the weather that people find so terribly suitable to fill awkward silences or create meaningless small talk from?

Is it that the rate of precipitation of any given day has the ability to thrill even those of a low boredom threshold? Is it that the humidity is of great concern due to the effect it can have on the hair styles of individuals? Is it that atmospheric pressure is key in understanding pressure systems? Is it that it is so changeable and unpredictable in this country that there is something fascinating about it? Or is it that people just like to have something generic to complain about that they think most people will agree with them about?

I recently may have planted bugs on a certain Police Sergeant's and though some of the information has proved very useful, the topic of conversation that routinely comes up is weather. Out of four hours of listening to the recordings of the bugs, one hour was about girls that the police force seems to be enamoured with, half an hour was talk about classified cases, twenty minutes were insults being thrown back and forth between Harry and Fred, ten minutes was Fred complaining about me (I don't understand what he could possibly have to complain about personally) and two hours of the conversations were about the weather.

Complaints about how it was too hot, then too cold, too sunny, too cloudy, too windy and too calm; there was not a moment when there was talk of the weather that they were not moaning about how awful it was.

Personally I have never found the changing of the seasons to be much of an interesting topic. In fact the only difference that it seems to make to me is that I have ice on the inside of my windows or I don't. It's times like these that I am reminded of a poem that my father used to recite to me and my sister and I think that Fred should really listen to...

Whether the weather be fine, Or whether the weather be not, Whether the weather be cold, Or whether the weather be hot, We'll weather the weather, Whatever the weather, Whether we like it or not!