Fred and Me

Relationships are tricky.

It's something I've never really understood, how people can fall in and out of love every day of the week and still want more of it all.

As far as I can see, all that happens with relationships is that people get hurt from misunderstandings, miscommunications and an unwillingness to simply let the other party be. Every time I have started seeing someone, from Doctor Mark Lees to other less notable men, the moment that you have been seeing them for more than a few weeks, they start trying to change things about you.

From the smallest things like trying to make you eat something different for breakfast to much bigger things, like changing your hair, dress sense and even the time you spend with your friends.

Okay in fairness to the last point, the people that I would consider my friends are not the kind of people that most respectable men would want to associate with and then of course there is Fred, it being painfully obvious how Fred feels about me does have a habit of making any lover feel somewhat threatened and insecure.

But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't spend any time with him.

There are many, much better reasons that I shouldn't spend time with Fred and yet I still do, so why on earth would a man that is unlikely to stick around for more than 3 months have any say in who I do and do not see?

Harry is constantly telling me that relationships are all about compromise, which is why he doesn't stay in them more than one night, but what these men keep asking for isn't compromise - it's a complete change to what they want.

Surprisingly when these relationships end, the reason that is always given is Fred. Fred, who always has a girlfriend whenever I am dating someone, Fred the lurking threat.

It doesn't seem to occur to any of these men that if I wanted to be with Fred, then I would be. It's not like we haven't had plenty of opportunities to be together and it's not like Fred hasn't pushed and tried at every one of those opportunities to get us together.

The thing is with Fred, whenever I look at Fred I see everything I have lost, I see that one horrific night when I first met Kevin Metis and I see a future trapped. Trapped in a house in the suburbs, trapped in triviality because Fred needs me to be safe. Safe. Safe from these streets I have walked and survived on all my life, safe from the underworld as much as I can be.

But the problem with that is, it doesn't matter where I am, I won't be safe. Being safe is just an illusion. Bad things happen to people every day in this broken world. I wouldn't be shot at every day and twice on Sunday, I will give him that, but that doesn't mean that I would be safer - especially with the way people in suburbia drive.

Fred is the very best man I know, probably ever will know. He's attractive, some would even go as far as to say handsome, and no matter what, he is always there - always. And I suppose if I really understood what it was that made people fall in love, what it was to actually be in love and want to be in love; in a perfect world then I guess I would choose Fred.

But the world isn't perfect and I know there are far too many women out there who could make him far happier than I ever could. Of course me knowing that is one thing, trying to convince Fred of that is quite another.

Salsa Lessons

Dancing is something I like, I don't do it very often, but I like it.

I like it because dancing gives you a chance to let go of all your emotions and focus on nothing except the music and moving to it. That and if you really don't like your partner you can stand on their toes in high heels repeatedly and pretend it was an accident.

I much prefer ballroom dancing to anything else though, street dance, ballet, tap, jazz and modern are all very well and good but they just don't have the same feel to them. Then there is salsa. Salsa just isn't for me, the attitude and people that you end up dancing with at salsa lessons are not the kind of people that I go dancing to mix with - yes you've guessed it, Harry does salsa.

Ah, you thought it was going to be Fred, but no, Harry loves to salsa. It's a great way to meet women apparently...I've never thought that Harry needed help meeting women, but then again, I guess that if you go to the same bars, pubs and clubs all the time there are only a small amount of women to go through before you run out - at least if you go through women the way that Harry does.

The only time I've done salsa it only took around thirty seconds before I slapped Harry and threatened to shoot him...I may have gotten thrown out for that.

Going back to ballroom dancing was the only sensible thing to do after that it rekindle my love of the sport after salsa left a bad taste in mouth and a red mark on Harry's cheek. It was then that I discovered that Fred had decided to start coming to my ballroom dancing class. Turns out he is much more of a gentleman when it comes to dancing than Harry is and that he's actually good at it.

By the end of the evening, I left Fred alone for less than a minute and found that he was surrounded by women clamouring to give him their phone number. I only hope Harry doesn't find out about this - I don't want him coming here once he's gone through all the women at his salsa class.

Murder in the First - Day 4

Finding the crime scene wasn't very hard. There are very few alleys in the city that are surrounded by police cars, police tape and people lined up to see what gruesome crime had been committed on their doorsteps - you just have to be willing to drive around long enough to find it. 

Unfortunately I ended up at four different crime scenes before I found the right one, the problems of living in a city with a high crime rate and only two or three competent police men – those being Fred, Harry and a handful of men who still worked in uniform.

So by the time I found the right crime scene, Ellis and Turndune were waiting for me. This wasn’t wholly unexpected after I ended up at the second and third wrong crime scenes, cops talk to each other, and seeing me touring crime scenes when Ryan Barlow was the number 1 suspect in a murder case – doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what I was looking for, or for that matter, what I was doing.

When I stepped out of the car, the first thing that happened was that my door was slammed shut by Turndune and Ellis pushed me up against the car. If it had been anyone else, or almost anyone else; then I would have broken their jaw without a second thought for pushing me up against my car. However with Ellis and Turndune they were both just looking for an excuse to arrest me, and assaulting a police officer was the perfect reason to lock me up so that I was out of the way whilst they steamrolled over Ryan.

So after being threatened, taunted, subjected to Ellis’ terrible halitosis and several references being made about what both of them wanted to do to my deceased mother – they forced me back into my car and had me escorted home by a very loud, and I must say unnecessary, group of police cars.

Of course what neither of them had realised is that the whole time they were taunting me, I wasn’t paying any attention to them, but was instead looking at the crime scene.

What I saw was something that looked remarkably staged and all too familiar, something that jogged some rather unpleasant memories.

In my short number of years on the earth, I have seen some of the worst that humanity has to offer. I won’t say I have seen the worst, as I am pretty sure there is someone out there who is disturbed enough to plunge to new depths of horror without even trying; but never-the-less, there are times when what I have seen before comes back to haunt me in very real ways.

What I began to realise when I actual saw the scene was that firstly Fred and Harry hadn’t seen it and secondly, this crime wasn’t just about Fred and Ryan. It was about me and Harry too. More importantly, it was mostly about Harry.

Harry has always been a ladies’ man, the string of women that he was wined and dined over the years is probably worthy of a Guiness World Record, but not every woman that crossed Harry’s path ended up sleeping with him. Something I am very proud never having stooped to myself.

One of these women that was oblivious to his charms was a girl in her early twenties that had tried to rob Harry’s apartment and had been caught in the act by the owner returning home early as someone may have thrown tomato sauce all over him when he complained about how long it was taking them to make dinner. I still maintain that I slipped.

The girl had been called Amy Barstow and after arresting her, interviewing her and letting her go, Harry had decided to help the unfortunate girl get back on her feet – or to find her feet in the first place. She had run away from home at a tender age and found herself at the mercy of some of the city’s more notorious villains, setting her up for a life of crime that was a vicious circle that would end in incarceration or death.

Having seen this happen many times before, Harry was a man on a mission to save this girl in a way that I have only seen Fred practise before.

Two weeks after Harry had helped her get out of the criminal life she had been found raped and murdered in an alley. The crime scene and positioning of the body had been identical to that of Sonja Lesner. Amy had been murdered as a message to Harry and he hadn’t tried to save anyone else since.

I still couldn’t place where I knew the name Lesner from but I was sure it would come back to me. What was keeping my mind occupied at the moment was who this message was for and how Harry would react when he found out.

I thought it would be best if I told him before Ellis or Turndune brought it up and caused Harry to start a riot in the station. Though it had occurred to me that was exactly what the perp had in mind when he set up the scene. 

Dance Hall

There is something that I have felt is missing from the different places that people have to go out to in this city, and not only in this city, in every city I have ever visited and/or lived in.

There are plenty of cafes, dinners, restaurants, bars, live music pubs and nightclubs but no matter how long I have searched for I have not been able to find what I have been looking for. An old style dance hall. I don't mean somewhere that you can go to dance with lots of sweaty drunk people as there are already plenty of places where you can do that.

What I mean are the halls from the 1930s, 40s and 50s that had live, large bands with brass and strings with large dance floors in the centre of the room surrounded by tables so that dinner came with an evening of entertainment and real dancing.

It's one thing that you see in old movies that makes me wonder whether putting up with one person for the rest of my life might be worth it, if only to go to places like that with them.

Of course the obvious answer as to why they don't exist anymore is that pop music arrived in the 60s and the way that people enjoyed music and evenings out changed dramatically, but surely I cannot be the only person in the world that thinks these places were wonderful and should not have been allowed to die out.

Especially when karaoke bars continue to thrive, though I will admit that whenever I have to go into any of them to find people; interrogate and threaten them, I will always make sure that a fight breaks out to do as much damage as possible to try and reduce noise pollution in the city.

Besides if Fred asked me out to dinner at a dance hall, I'd probably go.

12 Days of Christmas (I found Harry Lee)

On the first day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, upside down hanging from a tree.

On the second day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, with two shots of vodka and upside down hanging from a tree.

On the third day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, three streets over, with two shots of vodka and upside down hanging from a tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, with four laughing teenagers, three streets over, with two shots of vodka and upside down hanging from a tree.

On the fifth day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, five sheets to the wind, with four laughing teenagers, three streets over, with two shots of vodka and upside down hanging from a tree.

On the sixth day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, six in the morning, five sheets to the wind, with four laughing teenagers, three streets over, with two shots of vodka and upside down hanging from a tree.

On the seventh day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, seven hundred pounds poorer, six in the morning, five sheets to the wind, with four laughing teenagers, three streets over, with two shots of vodka and upside down hanging from a tree.

On the eighth day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, with eight pub bans, seven hundred pounds poorer, six in the morning, five sheets to the wind, with four laughing teenagers, three streets over, with two shots of vodka and upside down hanging from a tree.

On the ninth day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, with nine broken fingers, eight pub bans, seven hundred pounds poorer, six in the morning, five sheets to the wind, with four laughing teenagers, three streets over, with two shots of vodka and upside down hanging from a tree.

On the tenth day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, with a ten gallon hat, nine broken fingers, eight pub bans, seven hundred pounds poorer, six in the morning, five sheets to the wind, with four laughing teenagers, three streets over, with two shots of vodka and upside down hanging from a tree.

On the eleventh day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, with eleven girls' phone numbers, a ten gallon hat, nine broken fingers, eight pub bans, seven hundred pounds poorer, six in the morning, five sheets to the wind, with four laughing teenagers, three streets over, with two shots of vodka and upside down hanging from a tree.

On the twelfth day of Christmas I found Harry Lee, whistling twelve tuneless bars, with eleven girls' phone numbers, a ten gallon hat, nine broken fingers, eight pub bans, seven hundred pounds poorer, six in the morning, five sheets to the wind, with four laughing teenagers, three streets over, with two shots of vodka and upside down hanging from a tree.

This is what happens when Fred goes out of town and leaves Harry to fend for himself...and somehow I will still get blamed! What I really want to know though is why those teenagers weren't at home and asleep at 6am!

A day of time wasters

There are days in a private investigators life that really don't seem to get you anywhere. I'm sure it is the same in any profession but when you don't have savings, regular and stable employment or a ridiculously large inheritance to live off it can be a little more than frustrating when you are faced with a day of dealing with time wasters.

Having people constantly phone you and ask if you are offering Black Friday discounts is one thing, but to have people phoning and asking you to work for them and then not paying their bills and refusing any form of contact even to the extent of pretending you don't exist when you are stood a few inches in front of them.

Of course as annoying as that is, it is again but a passing frustration compared to having people coming through your door, asking for quotes for services, shaking their head and sucking air through their teeth whatever number you say and then try and negotiate a deal with you that invariably they then turn around and say "on second thoughts, I don't think I'll bother."

It really is something that more dead bodies aren't found in my office.

When you work for yourself it is always difficult making ends meet (what with people failing to pay their bills on time if they do at all) but when you have people coming through your door and wasting time, it really gets on your last nerve.

Fred tells me that I should be more patient as having a reputation for bad customer service is not a way to run a business. If I was a shop owner than I might agree but in a private investigator people don't want a happy, go lucky, sunny disposition. They want someone who looks like they can survive in the underworld and get them what they need - or at least everyone who seems to bother me wants that.

Harry on the other hand thinks that I should try and branch out into other areas, diversifying my business. I am not entirely convinced that offering to blackmail people to go to birthday parties or family events would be any more lucrative than the time wasters that I have to deal with no. I am also not sure that offering people tours of the crime hotspots of the city will be as popular as say studio backlot tours or maps to the stars homes.

Though I might not get shot at much and reducing my medical bills would be a very big plus...then again I wouldn't get to shoot as many people and where would the fun in that be?

Danger Danger Black Friday

There are many days of the year I dislike – Valentine’s Day, any day dedicated to something trivial like talking like a pirate, dress like a carrot, learn to speak Romulan, open your curtains whilst upside down, PI day (yes I know I have ranted about it before but it annoys me, okay!)  - but there is one day of the year which makes me want rip the phone out of the wall, shoot all television screens, delete the internet and barricade all shops’ doors closed.

Yes, I hate Black Friday.

I have no problem with people going out in hordes to get huge discounts on luxury items – what people choose to spend their time and money doing is their business. I don’t do shopping at the best of times except for visiting the corner store for food and the off license for my whiskey, tequila and other spirits so Black Friday doesn’t really affect my shopping habits.

Five reasons that I hate Black Friday:

1. People spend a week phoning and asking whether I am offering discounts on my services over the Black Friday Weekend
2. Harry turns up at my door every single year with a catalogue in hand trying to convince me that I need a plasma screen TV, surround system and media centre.
3. When I am trying to follow people, the crowds, screaming, random outbreaks of violence and police presence make it very difficult for me to do my job.
4. Fred buys lots of things and then tries to give me lots of useless gifts.
5. My favourite weapons and ammunition specialist shops never seem to hold Black Friday sales.

The number of phone calls I have had this year alone have been enough for me to unplug my phone from the wall. Then when people started arriving at my office and demanding Black Friday discounts I had to chase them out of my office and even had to throw my phone out of the window after them.

When Harry turned up had I had to threaten to shoot him five times and shoot the catalogue out of his hand to make him leave.

Fred then turned up with only five gifts instead of the usual fifty. This year he had bought me a kettle to replace the one that Ryan borrowed and sold for drug money, a microwave to replace the one that exploded, a new phone to replace the one that was now lying down on the street in several hundred thousand pieces, an engraved cigarette case and a sofa bed.

So this year there was only one useless gift that Fred brought with him. When I asked him why the sofa bed, he said he was sick of sleeping on the broken lump of wood and padding that I called a sofa. I told him that he had his own bed in his own home that he could go home to quite easily but for some reason the sofa bed still made its way into my home and my old sofa ended up sharing the street with my phone.

Sometimes I think that Fred is far more manipulative than anyone gives him credit for.

Cancellations

I can't just be me that finds cancellations one of the most annoying things in the world - yes there is something I find more annoying than Fred Barlow and cancellations are it.

The most irritating form it comes in is cheques. This is especially troublesome in my line of work as I deal solely in cash and cheques and there is nothing worse than when someone writes a bad cheque or writes one that will actually clear but then cancels it before I can put it in the bank.

This week alone I have had three, yes three, cheques cancelled on me so quite clearly something needed to be done and being a private investigator it really wasn't hard for me to find out where these deadbeat clients were hiding from me and took even less time for me to beat my money out of them. In my line of work you either get paid or you starve, or get whacked, or get walked all over by scumbags.

It did get me thinking though about other things being cancelled and why it is that you have no control over them. Bus and trains being cancelled are one of the more frustrating things for the general population since they often lead to people having to stand around in the cold and the wet waiting for something that is never going to come and on rare occasions does leave individuals stranded.

I tend to avoid public transport so that doesn't bother me too much though every time I seem to have to take a plane it gets cancelled.

The other form of cancellation that really annoys me is when TV series are cancelled - especially halfway through a series. The one that most people gripe about is Firefly, and yes it was amazing but there are other series like the Visitors, Sports Night, the Magnificent Seven and Caprica that were all cut short in their prime. It's one thing that Fred and Harry never seem to shut up about.

It worries me that most of their conversation seems to be orientated around topics like television and Star Wars and other things that they seem to talk about just to annoy me, but then again it is still better than listening to Rick and Harry discussing which of their female conquests that they have in common.

The case of the missing sock

It may surprise many people to learn that I do my own laundry. Yes, I do know what laundry is and how to operate a washing machine and even a tumble dryer. Even more shocking is the fact that I know where to put the washing powder/liquid and fabric softener so you don't end up with clothes that still have soap in them when you are ready to dry them.

I can even separate my dark clothes from my lights and whites - well I could if I had any white and lights and the same goes for delicate items - hosiery and lingerie have never really been something I'd had much use for, especially when ammo is a much better investment.

Granted blood doesn't really ever wash out and grease can be a pain, but on the whole I manage to keep my clothes clean enough that there isn't a repellent scent of body odor that comes wafting to the nostrils every time I open my wardrobe or my drawers.

Though I do have experience with laundry, I have never really understood why people make such fuss over machines "eating" socks. I mean it had never happened to me and on days when there really didn't seem to be anything else to discuss, Fred and Harry would bleat on about how one of their socks had got lost in the wash, or the machine had mangled one, or someone had put something red in with their whites - oh wait that's something different - but still not only did the sheer dullness of this topic numb my brain, the idea that rational people could blame a machine for losing their sock seemed utterly ridiculous to me.

Of course I voiced these views in a very adult and respectful manner...oh alright, I called them both idiots and told them they deserved shooting for exposing me to firstly boring conversation and secondly for believing that machines for cleaning had developed a consciousness that revolved around depriving them of their socks.

Needless to say it brought an end to the evening.

However the next time I came to do my laundry, I collected it from the washing machine, put it through the dryer, but when it came to pairing my socks I found that two were missing - one white and one black, and I am not talking about the kind of socks that you buy from any normal shop (they only sell really, really, really, really dark blue ones). Oh no this one sock that was part of a pair of priest's socks that Pastor Patrick had given me.

So I searched through the dryer and the washing machine and couldn't find it anywhere. I retraced my steps to see if I had dropped them anywhere, checked my laundry bag and went over my apartment and office with a fine tooth comb when it struck me that it seemed very convenient that I should lose two socks just days after I had ridiculed Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Sleep-with-everything-that-moves over their enjoyment of trivialities.

Both denied all knowledge of stealing my socks, so when a pair of red knickers got mixed in with both Fred and Harry's white shirts, it was complete mystery as to whom they belonged to.

You might call it petty, but pettiness works for me.

Murder in the First - Day 3

If it had been any other time of day when I had walked in Ryan, the sound of him yelling in surprise and fear would have brought all the boys in blue to investigate why people were screaming in Rogers' office when he was elsewhere in the world.

But even at 2am, I wasn't so sure that Ryan screaming wouldn't cause the officers on duty to fly into a panic, find him and arrest him.

So I made sure that my hand was placed firmly over Ryan's mouth when I woke him up.

This seemed like a sensible precaution on the surface, however I had failed to take into account that Ryan had been woken up like this before by men with big guns and malicious intent. So his reaction to a hand over his mouth wasn't exactly normal.

In short, he bit me.

If it had been any other time of day when I had walked in on Ryan, the sound of him yelling in surprise and fear would have brought all the boys in blue to investigate why people were screaming in Rogers' office when he was elsewhere in the world.

But even at 2am, I wasn't so sure that Ryan screaming wouldn't cause the officers on duty to fly into a panic, find him and arrest him.

So I made sure that my hand was placed firmly over Ryan's mouth when I woke him up.

This seemed like a sensible precaution on the surface, however I had failed to take into account that Ryan had been woken up like this before by men with big guns and malicious intent. So his reaction to a hand over his mouth wasn't exactly normal.

In short - he bit me.

And unlike other people my reaction to this wasn't to grip my hand in pain but something slightly more, well violent.

I punched him in the side of the head.

It didn't take long for it to descend into a bit of a brawl, which given the amount of noise we were making, I'm surprised didn't have men pounding up the stairs to investigate.

As it was, it took all of five minutes for Ryan to wake up properly, realize it was me and not one of the seventy-five different people who currently wanted him dead and stop fighting me.

The argument could always be made that if I hadn't fought back then we wouldn't have been brawling for five minutes as he would have stopped and realized it was me much earlier, but then again I hadn't had the chance to fight anyone in a while and it is such a good workout.

Ryan sat down and I told him what Fred had asked me to do. Ryan laughed - a lot and then told me I should leave it alone.

This wasn't completely unexpected.

Ryan had never wanted to get me too involved with his problems. Yes, he'd go to Fred when it was something he thought his older brother could sweep under the carpet, but big things like this were things that he tried to keep us both at arm’s length over.

It took about an hour of us arguing in hushed voices for him to not agree at all to me investigating the murder and me saying in no uncertain terms that I was going to find out who was responsible for Sonya Lesner's death whether he wanted me to or not.

There is just something about the Barlow men that just make me want to tear my hair out at times. I think it is their stubborn, self-sacrificing attitude, but it could be something else.

However I knew that Ryan was safe, well hidden and that I could access the police records through Rogers' computer without too many issues when the moment came for that. But first I needed to investigate what had been left at the crime scene and who had been in the area. Most of the witness probably wouldn't talk to the police, but with a little persuasion would talk to me.

St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day seems to me to be less and less about celebrating the man who drove the snakes out of Ireland and more about people getting horrendously drunk in whiskey and Guinness.

Considering the excessive consumption of whiskey that I engage in, I'm not really in a position to comment on anyone getting drunk. Especially not when you consider the number of times that Fred has shown up at my place and found me passed out on the floor and had to put me to bed.

What I object to is the stereotype that seems to be cast on the Irish because of how people celebrate St. Patrick's Day, and not only that but the number of people who decide to tell the world that they are Irish because they have an ancestor fifty seven generations back who once visited Ireland for thirty one seconds.

Joe always puts on a bit of an Irish theme for St. Patrick's Day mainly because it's one of the biggest days of the year in terms of increasing his profit. I can't really fault him or other public house keepers or bar owners taking advantage of people wanting to get ridiculously drunk. They operate a business that exploits people's desire to drink like I exploit people's fears and paranoia.

If I want to go and drink at Joe's Place then I have to go early on in the day before most people start drinking - if it's a Saturday or a Sunday then I tend not to go anywhere near the place since people seem to be in there from the moment the doors open in force.

But luckily enough this year St. Patrick's Day fell on a Monday. This not only meant that most people were at work and the place was quiet, but I got to start off my week by spending most of my day in the pub.

Now there will be those amongst you that don't understand what the draw of spending all day in the pub is. Why on earth would someone want to spend so much time around alcohol with dim lighting and old decoration?

To those people I have said and will continue to say "Shut up, Fred." Yes, of all the people in the world to question my motivation for spending all day in the pub, Fred is always the first. Harry seems to understand it and well more often than not has a day off on St. Patrick's Day so is in the pub with me.

Harry says its jealousy but honestly, I think it's more because Fred doesn't like me drinking.

Now Fred is no teetotaler, he enjoys fine wine, strong spirits and ale like any other man of his class bracket. He doesn't really seem to have any problem with women drinking either. I say this because there is a group of men that seem to think that women need to have their alcohol content intake monitored more than men do. But Fred isn't one of their camp.

What Fred doesn't seem to like is watching me try and drink myself into a early grave. He does like to try and prolong my life for reasons that are completely beyond me. This includes keeping me out of gun battles and trying to get me to stop smoking because it will give me cancer.

Of course he still smokes when he is under pressure or undercover, so on that score he doesn't really have a leg to stand on. He still considers himself a non-smoker because it is only an occasional cigarette he indulges in rather than a consistent habit and he hasn't bought a packet of cigarettes in his life. In fact he only smokes when he is around me - so maybe trying to get me to quit smoking is less about me and more about him.

But even so, his trying to keep me alive extends to me not developing liver disease due to alcohol abuse. He keeps telling me that I should talk to someone about everything that has happened to me, that it would help me to get rid of some of my rage and demons and make my life better.

There possibly is a link between Kevin Metis, my family being murdered and my drinking, but then again I like drinking, I like spending time in the pub with Harry and I like the fact that when I do pass out on the floor of my office, Fred comes along, picks me up, puts me to bed and cradles me in his arms whilst I sleep.

St. Patrick's Day gives me an excuse to enjoy all of that earlier in the day before loud and obnoxious people invade and ruin it with drunken offers of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. 

Artistic Temperament

I have always thought the idea of having an artistic temperament is rather stupid.

The very idea of it seems to be designed to allow people who think they are more creative than others to behaviour in terrible ways and then to have it explained away by the phrase "artistic temperament" instead of it being labelled what it is...mardy childish fits.

I was set to thinking about this by Fred and Harry yesterday. The two of them decided that not only would it be a good idea to wake me up but that it would be an excellent idea to make me go shopping. Now waking me up is always a bit of a risk, the first time Harry tried to wake me up he ended up in hospital having two bullets dug out of his right shoulder...

...it's a good job that my aim isn't great when I'm drowsy...

...sleeping with a gun under my pillow has caused quite a few problems over the years...but this aside, I am generally in a bad mood when I wake up, well even more so than usual at least. Precautions are generally wise to take when waking me up.

Fred seems to have learned this lesson well, though being kicked in the crotch may have had a rather large impact on this. Harry still doesn't think he'll end up getting shot again, though there have been some close calls, as I said, my aim isn't really all that good when I am not fully awake.

Fred's way of waking me up has been to trap me in my duvet so I can't reach my gun and refuse to let me out until I have calmed down, of course what he and Harry are doing letting themselves into my apartment and office whilst I am asleep is quite another matter.

So they dragged me out shopping and as I was pulled away from the gunshop and towards the department stores where the two men were determined to make me buy something I could wear to all the charity events that they keep being invited to.

Why on earth they thought that I would want to dress up and go to dull charity events with them is beyond me, a room filled with people that I find boring and are so easily offended is about as much fun as being trapped in a box covered in honey and fire ants.

But it was this idea of making me attend charity events that got me to thinking about artistic temperament and that it is a way for overly sensitive people to justify why they constantly fly off the handle.

What I felt was a bit rich was when I told Harry about this and he told me that I was more hypocritical than most politicians as I was blessed with the most artistic temperament he has ever come across...I may have tasered him for that.

When he woke up in hospital a few hours later, I did apologize to him, not for using the taser on him as that was perfectly justified, what I did apologize for was the fact I'd tasered him right by the fireplace and he'd hit his head on the stone hearth when he fell and may have gotten concussion.

At least it'll teach him to say I have an artistic temperament.

Shrove Tuesday & Pancakes

Pancake day or Shrove Tuesday depending on your religious outlook on life has always been a day that is seemingly a day dedicated to gluttony.

My father and mother never celebrated that day at all, I'm not sure either of them knew how to cook and there wasn't a hob to cook them on in the apartment.

It wasn't until Fred and Harry took it upon themselves to include me in their lives or rather drag me kicking and screaming into their lives and traditions. Oddly enough though it wasn't Fred that had the idea to force feed me pancakes once a year, it was Harry.

Harry has only three motivations in life, women, money and food. How he gets hold of women is fairly obvious given how many of them swoon and fall at his feet when he merely throws a smile their way.

How he manages to eat all that he does without seemingly gaining weight is more of a mystery, but even more curious than that is where he gets the money to be able to afford his hideously overpriced apartment, the hot tub on the balcony and the very expensive clothing he walks around in.

Any time I've asked him about it, he has shrugged it off with some joking comment and even after I have tried to investigate him several times I am no closer to knowing where all his money comes from. Fred also doesn't talk about it, either because he doesn't know or he because he doesn't want to talk about.

Of his three motivations, the only one we can really share is his love of food, mostly because I don't swoon whenever he smiles and have no intention of ever doing so and I also don't have any money so unless I was robbing him blind, its not something we can bond over.

When it comes to food it doesn't make much difference to me what the food is as long as it keeps me alive and function in between cases and hospital visits. Harry sees food in a very different light. To him food is something that needs to be endured and great care needs to be taken over its preparation and production.

The first time I went round to Harry's to join him and Fred for pancakes on Shrove Tuesday I was a little bit astounded that not only did he have several mixers that he used to whisk up the pancake batter in and the number of different pans for cooking the pancakes in but also the fact he threw brandy in with them and fire came flying out of the pan was something I honestly didn't expect.

Though I will say this - as showy and faffy as they seemed to be, they didn't half taste good. Especially with the brandy.

Murder in the First - Day 2

I had spent the first day of my investigation finding out what Turndune and Ellis knew. It really shouldn't have taken up a whole day when you consider that their combined IQ is about four and that they wouldn't be able to find their way out of a wet paper bag, even with directions. 

However trying to find out what they knew, without them finding out what I was up to, required some degree of finesse. Now ordinarily I despise stealth and sneaking and all that kind of behaviour that you expect from spies and assassins, but if I had any hope of helping out Ryan, I had to adopt some methods that I generally find deplorable.

When it comes to taking on bad guys and enemies, I have always felt it best to kick down the door and go in all guns blazing; let everyone know exactly where they stand in a very blunt and direct manner. Granted this has meant I have a hospital loyalty card, but still I like it and it does seem to get me results and pay as well as hospital visits.

As it turned out there was little to no evidence available that implicated anyone, let alone Ryan. The murder victim was a young woman, not more than twenty-two years old and was well known to the police.

She had been arrested several times for possession, solicitation, assault, burglary and a string of other petty crimes. I say petty crimes because my yard stick for criminal behaviour is Kevin Metis - crime lord, gang boss, murderer, human trafficker, drug smuggler, kidnapper, rapist and a whole lot more. 

The victim's name was Sonya Lesner, it had some vague meaning to me, buried somewhere in my memory that I couldn't quite grasp when I first saw the name, but I had no doubt that I would remember why it was important when I need to, or more likely, just after I needed to.

She had been found beaten in an alley, her clothes torn off and strangled. The bruising on her neck, arms and torso suggested that it was a man, the hand mark too big to belong to a woman. She had engaged in some form of sexual practice earlier in the evening, but it was clear from the medical examination that she hadn't been raped.

The problem was that the evidence collected showed that the sexual practice Sonya had been involved in had been with Ryan. Ordinarily that wouldn't mean that he would be the prime suspect, especially as no evidence had been found to link him to the murder scene. Yes, he would have been brought in to be questioned and asked to prove his whereabouts etc, but the way Turndune and Ellis were talking, it was very clear they were not looking for anyone else, or even considering that it wasn't Ryan.

It's not surprising for corrupt cops to act this way, especially when they both hate the Barlow family with a vengeance. They were going after Ryan to hurt Fred, and damage his reputation in the standings of the police and general community.

Yet another reason that Fred couldn't get involved in investigating.

Having discovered what I could from Tweedledum and Tweedledee, I decided that I should really get on with finding Ryan before the boys on the beat did.

There are many places for a smart man or a rich man to hide in this city and never be found. There are even more places that a smart or rich man can go and though the police know where they are, they can never be touched.

Fortunately for me, Ryan wasn't a smart man or a rich man. There were a few places that I knew he would avoid, his place, my place, the library, all pubs, clubs and pool halls. It occurred to me that there were two possible places that he could be hiding that Turndune and Ellis would never think of looking for him in - one was the police station, the other was Fred's place.

There seems to be a generally held assumption that there are certain places that are just stupid to hide in and so are never checked. Though Fred's place wasn't a bad call to go and hide in, I had the sneaking suspicion that Ryan was in the police station and not just anywhere in the police station, but in Superintendent Gary Rogers' office.

Rogers was on a three month cruise with the latest bimbo that he seemed to have collected and as a result his office was not in use, not even post was being delivered there. It was at the top of the building and unless you were going to see the Superintendent, there wasn't any reason to go up to that level. The fire escape also connected to his office on the exterior of the building that meant Ryan could come and go as he pleased.

I waited until the change of shift between 2am and 3am and crept up the fire escape to Rogers' office. The door was locked, but it didn't take a moment for me to pick the lock and sure enough, there on the floor of the office, fast asleep, lay Ryan.

Holidays

There seem to be periods of time when people do nothing save for discuss their holidays. The first of these times comes between January and March when people are so depressed by the weather here that they start planning to escape it...except they wait until June through August to do so.

So people talk about the plans they are making of where to go and what to do and see and where they have been before - especially if someone brings up a particular landmark in an area... The number of times I have heard people say "oh don't go to the Louvre, the Mona Lisa is so disappointing" makes me want to scream, take an art course and then explain to them in painstaking detail how and why they are more wrong than Fred was the time he decided I should stop smoking and drinking.

The second time is just before they actually go on holiday and all they can talk about is packing, which books they are taking and how much they need a rest. The third is when they get back from the holiday and all they can do is either talk about how wonderful it was or how truly awful and how they are never going back.

All of these conversations you would assume I would manage to avoid not working in an office with 53,000 other people, but no, apparently my clients think I want to know more about them other than if their cheques won't bounce. Sadly sometimes instead of saying they can pay me they just launch into talk of their holidays...I have had to learn not to shoot these people if I still want to get paid.

I have never been on holiday - I have too much to do hunting down villains and annoying Fred and when Fred is away on his holidays having the space and time of not having him breathing down my neck. So I guess that is technically a holiday for me.

The idea of sitting on a beach doing nothing for two weeks apart from increasing my chance of skin cancer has never appealed to me, nor has trawling around great sprawling cities - dodging pickpockets, beggars and cheap plastic tat being waved in my face also doesn't particularly thrill me.

So when Fred and Harry turned up at my office, put me in handcuffs and threw me in the back of the car I assumed that I was just being arrested again - this time for break and entering, however when I was taken to the airport and frog marched between the two of them onto a plane that took off; I got the impression that I wasn't being taken to the police station - call me crazy.

When we got off the plane into heat that made me lose half my body weight in sweat in three seconds I found I wasn't in Kansas any longer.

Now I am trying to get in touch with some black market arms dealers so I can get hold of some form of weapon to put bullets in the feet of both Fred and Harry so they can understand how much anguish they are making me suffer.

Looking for the perfect Christmas present for Raven Siren fans? Look no further!  The Nicolette Mace books are now available in digital and paperback from Barnes and Noble.

Space Cowboy

The wild west has always been something I have loved. The gunslingers, the outlaws, the bandits, the Indians, the lawmen and the Texas Rangers; all of them seem to be my glamourous and overly romanticised precursors.

I say all of them because there are aspects of the stereotypical Hollywood portrayals of the different groups that I can identify with. With the gunslingers, I feel that the reason I identify with them is more than obvious. I share a desire to defend my homeland and avenge those that have been unjustly taken from me by bad, bad men. Men that have dodged the law avoided paying their penance for their crimes. A penance only payable by giving what they took - an eye for an eye.

The outlaws are fighting back against the heavy hand of justice that never gave them a fair chance, let off those that had done wrong by them and forced them into a life that they never wanted or intended to lead. Well in some respects at least. The times I ignore Fred, tie Fred up, lock Fred in cupboards, throw Harry off the scent, accidentally shot Fred don't really come under the "outlaws fighting back" category, more in the category of annoying my friends when they won't leave me alone. No I feel I fall into the outlaw category because I work very hard to bring down cops like Gary Rogers, Richard Ellis and Ross Turndune. Snakes that use the law to hide behind and crush the innocent under when it suits them.

The bandits, taking what they have to in order to survive, working for and against outlaws when it suits their purpose and reveling in the violence that comes with every new day. Well aside from the reveling in the violence part, I think that accurately describes my day to day life and struggle to survive long enough to kill...bring to justice those who have wronged me.

The Indians, having been robbed of what is rightly theirs, their free soaring spirits that are at one with the land and the pride in their way of life. All three fit perfectly with me and I have been tempted more than once to scalp certain individuals who find themselves funnier than they actually are.

The lawmen, standing as a barrier between innocent people and those that wish to do them harm. Well I sort of stand between between innocent people and those that wish to harm them, I also work for guilty people and protect them from guilty people who would do them harm as well.

And finally the Texas Rangers, that always get their man, I like to feel that I am that tenacious, that relentless and that focused. That I will not rest until those that have found themselves fallen afoul of me and my employers would feel the same terror as those that tried to run from or fight the Texas Rangers. I am Rooster Cogburn reborn in a woman's body, dressed in biker leathers and a trench coat and armed with revolvers.

Bounty Hunters I feel come a little too close to what I actually do to count as being from the wild west.

Though if I had to find myself a modern day equivalent then all I have to say on the matter is, I aim to misbehave.

Looking for the perfect present for Raven Siren fans? Look no further!  The Nicolette Mace books are now available in digital and paperback from Barnes and Noble. For more information about the Nicolette Mace universe please visit the wiki.

Park

All the people, so many people, they all go hand in hand, hand in hand through their parklife. Blur definitely had it right with their analysis of the park.

I used to spend lots of time in the park, especially after Louise and Arthur were murdered. It gave me somewhere quiet to think that was busy and public and I could be lost in a sea of faces without having to interact with anyone. It also made it harder for Fred to find me.

To begin with he was just another cop to me, another busy body, another person that hadn't done anything to help find out why my mother died and then had stood idly by whilst my sister and father had been taken from me. He seemed to have fixation on trying to save from, well the same fate. He'd already been successful in keeping me alive and sending Kevin Metis to prison, but he just couldn't seem to leave me alone.

I told Harry Lee that Fred was stalking me and Harry told me that if I really thought that then I should go and talk to Ryan, Fred's brother. I asked why and Harry had merely shrugged and said "you'll see". So I went to find Ryan and when I did I understood what Fred was doing. Ryan was younger than me, about ten years old and already falling in with the wrong crowd at school, trying to cope with the death of his parents three years before.

Fred hadn't been able to save his parents, couldn't save his brother from himself and in me he saw someone who could be saved and needed to be protected if he was ever going to believe that life had some good in it. That people could be saved from the bad guys and that justice had some hope of surviving.

It's an odd thing to think now, looking back that Fred was as much in need of our friendship as I was. Of course at no point have I ever admitted to needing Fred - or Harry for that matter. You might think that every friendship would occasionally need such an affirmation for the sake of everyone's sanity; but so far none of us have found that we show each other how much we care by being there. By fighting alongside one another, by always being there to make sure the others don't get kill and rescuing each other when we get kidnapped.

This seems to be verging on being all mushy and close to a chick flick moment...so Fred and Harry are both morons who I'm as likely to shoot as sit down to coffee with.

There I feel much better for that.

Looking for the perfect present for Raven Siren fans? Look no further!  The Nicolette Mace books are now available in digital and paperback from Barnes and Noble.

Hunting the Priest Killer - The Aftermath

It turns out that Fred being stupid made me angrier than even Harry expected.

Fred is insisting that I was worried because he was in danger and so was driven to desperate action. I deny this most earnestly since 1) Fred is a moron and 2) He's just plain wrong.

Harry has informed me that our pitch battle against the forces of the underworld i.e. Bill Sykes, was more of a fairly one-sided barrage from me that caused Sykes and the Snake Devils to hide under barrels and tables until the reinforcements arrived...and when I say reinforcements I mean the police arrived to arrest them.

Harry had called them when I started indiscriminately shooting everything that moved, thinking that having back up might be necessary...go figure!

Fred escaped the hail of bullets, though not because I was intentionally not aiming for him. He was rather worse for wear, some minor internal injuries and a concussion that granted was not helped when he was hit round the head with my hand clutching a heavy pistol.

But this is all slightly ahead of where we should be, after all, the last I told of this little misadventure, Harry, Fred and I were all tied to chairs in a domestic setting.

From what Harry relates, the chair I was sitting on I splintered into kindling by leaping and thrashing about in my bonds like I was some form of demented shark crossed with a rabid dog. From this point on I felt that most of his retelling was over-exaggerated so in the interest of preserving my integrity and reputation for only reporting the absolute honest truth, I hand you over to Harry Lee (I apologize for my poor judgement in this matter)

Nicolette Mace: the Raven Siren is not a creature that most men want to cage. There is a small number of people who think that's a good idea, but they tend to be the owners of business, cars, hospitals and cities that want to stem the wide spread destruction that follows in her path.

Bill Sykes had just achieved his ambition of leading the Snake Devils gang, some considered them to be the roughest and toughest hombres the city has ever seen, I think the Devil's Hole Gang were more threatening.

Siren and I were tied to chairs in the dining room. There was a lamp in the corner casting long shadows and a cloud of dense cigarette smoke settled at my eye level. Sykes was making the biggest mistake any man can make - he was daring the wrath and scorn of a woman who is bordering on being a psychopath at the best of times. 

"Oh and that precious priest, it was a pleasure to kill him, like it will be your lover boy in the kitchen." 

I'm not sure which part of his statement made her more angrier, whether it was the admission of guilt or if Sykes referring to Fred as Siren's lover. It was probably something like a fifty fifty split, but just one of those in a statement would have been enough to make her lose it. 

She started to strain and thrash as though she was possessed and someone was trying to exorcism demons. The next thing I knew was the chair she was tied to splinted to well splinters. Three gang members tried to rush her but found themselves thrown through the wall and windows. Sykes fled to the kitchen to try and find a shield as Siren picked up some errant guns. For some reason she cut me loose and I thought it wise to phone the station for back-up, after all I was not about to try and calm her down on my own.

She started firing at everything in sight, so I hide behind the sofa as she pelted the windows, walls, furniture and everything but Fred with gunfire.

Sykes ended up surrendering and was arrested the moment that the police cars turned up on the scene and had wrestled the guns from Siren's hands.

Fred made some stupid comment about knowing that she cared and got belted round the head with her fist and 9mm.

There's not much I can say about Siren that she wouldn't threaten to shoot me for, but I can say this - she is nothing but consistent in being so terrifying when defending Fred and adamant that she'd be better off with him dead - women, go figure!

Looking for the perfect present for Raven Siren fans? Look no further! The Nicolette Mace books are now available in digital and paperback from Barnes and Noble.

New Year

New Year's Eve always seems to be the most disappointing time of the year. It is always built up by the media and by people to be this fantastic event - so much depending on it, how you spend the evening will be how you spend the rest of the year...

Rubbish!

In fact more than rubbish, completely and unutterably wrong! 

The only time anyone has been more wrong is Fred when he told me I needed to give up drinking and smoking. 

New Year's Eve has never been anything short of a drunken extravaganza designed to make bar and club owners rich and everyone else short of sleep the next day and a lot poorer to boot. 

Every year I hear people in cafes and bars and on the street and even in the off-licence talking about what they are doing for New Year's Eve and who they are doing it with - unsurprisingly some of these conversations involved a level of detail that no self-respecting eavesdropper would be comfortable hearing. Around the millennium it was almost unbearable to hear such hype that turned out to be nothing more than a doubly impressive let down.

In all honesty I try and ignore New Year, New Year's day often brings me a lot of profitable work so on the eve, getting to bed early and stuffing my ears with as much cotton wool as I can find has always been my common practice.

Now this has always proved to be somewhat difficult. There are many factors that always seem to conspire to make me stay up to see the clock change from 11:59 to 12:00 (as though I had never done that before). Most of these come in the form of, yes, you've guessed it - Frederick J. Barlow.

Fred has this horrible habit of thinking that I am lonely, that I am need of being kept cheerful on this most irritating of nights. Even worse than that is Harry Lee, yes Harry informs me continually that New Year's Eve is the perfect time to, and I quote "get Fred into bed and then let him down gently in the morning". What I don't understand is why Harry thinks I want to get Fred into bed, let alone let him down gently. I've never done anything gently in my whole life, I'm not about to start on New Year's Day.

That's the other thing that gets me about New Year, this idea that people's will power will somehow be greater at this point in the year than at any other time so they decide to create a resolution to do something... why the significance of the changing of the year? Why not when Spring becomes Summer? Or when Wednesday becomes Thursday (or Monday if you have managed to get yourself hospitalized and lost a few days in an unconscious state).

The only thing that has ever made New Year's Eve remotely fun was the time that Ryan turned up at 11pm telling me he knew where Kevin Metis was and that if I was quick I could shoot him in the knee caps and no one would ever know it was me...ah now that was a fun night - and no one ever did know I shot him in the shin and made him lose a toe the stiletto of the woman he was trying to seduce.

However it is now 10pm and I can hear footsteps on the stairs. It will be Fred coming to tell me that his girlfriend is no longer his and how he needs to drown his sorrows with me. If only I thought ahead every year I could go to somewhere remote and quite, like a monastery and not be disturbed, however I am not sure they would let me bring my guns or whiskey with me, so on balance that probably isn't the best idea.

Christmas

Christmas happens to be one of my most favourite times of year. Not because the run up to Christmas is very busy for me with people wanting people followed to find out where money is being spent and why spouses don't come home after office Christmas parties, but because there is a certain level of peace and harmony that seems to fall over the city.

Yes, homes get broken into on Christmas eve of the richer element and have their presents stolen, there are drunken brawls and drunken drivers galore and A&E is not where I want to step foot given the number of incredible Christmas related injuries that occur, but none of this seems to have any effect on dampening my spirit.

Even Fred and Harry are less annoying at this time of year. We don't fight or scream or have any form of exciting adventures, we sit down to a nice meal together with Ryan and spend two days in peace and harmony

That is until I wake up and find the frozen pipes in my apartment, no food in the fridge, Harry has gone out of town with his latest conquest, Ryan has wound up in prison and Fred... Fred is sat with his girlfriend and her family in one of the large townhouses on the other side of the city having the middle class Christmas he loves so much.

Christmas is my favourite time of year because I get to have the peace and quiet of my place all to my self, the phone doesn't ring, no one bursts in unexpectedly and tries to rescue me for dangers untold and most importantly, no one tries to drink from the bottles I have stored up for the day except for me.