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.

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.

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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.

Hunting a Priest Killer Day 3

Why is it that though a place may seem surrounded, especially when there are a large number of cars that are parked in almost perfect cylindrical circles around it, that people never cover the back door?

Well, whatever the reason, it meant that I could slip out and avoid detection by legions of constables that seem intent on making a name for themselves by arresting me. I take it as a testament to good sense within the police that those sent to surround and watch me were not of any rank. It's nice to see that they are growing in wisdom, well save for the issuing of the arrest warrant and still employing Fred...

I was now on my way to try and discover what, if any, involvement that Sykes had with Patrick's murder. I wasn't in the greatest of moods to be running around chasing wild geese at this stage but so far neither Mitch nor Anthony had any reason to lie to me, other than the fact that they didn't like Sykes.

The idea of gang territory expansion is always a dangerous one. Either it involves taking the territory from another gang, which leads to months of violence and retaliation or in some cases years of bloodshed with people getting caught in the middle. This is not very good for business as people become too scared of going outside to need my services. The other, and slightly more terrifying prospect is that the gang would expand into territory that no gang currently holds, that is free and moderately law abiding areas of the city.

The reason this was slightly more terrifying is that the free area of the city next to the Snake Devil's territory just happens to be where I live. In taking over free areas of the city there tends to be a lot more violence from and directed towards civilians and as stupid and annoying as people are, I wasn't about to let those who lived near me suffer under that.

I decided that in order to find Sykes, having him come to me would make my life easier. This is surprisingly difficult to do as most gang bosses don't reply to RSVPs. I couldn't risk walking into his territory either as I would most likely be shot on sight, so my first course of action was to find the nearest bar and have myself a very long drink.

Isn't it wonderful when you happen to find some of the top generals of a Snake Devil gang boss playing poker in the back room of a bar that you can hold for ransom?

PI Day...

Who on earth is it that keeps dreaming up all these days to dedicate to different groups of people? Seriously I can understand mother's day and father's day in some small manner of speaking. Ungrateful brats that demand toys and sweets all the time when they are awake and when they reach the age of 6 require a constant free taxi service should have to spend a day helping their poor parents out so the aforementioned adults don't have to kill them and bury them in the garden. This is perfectly reasonable.

The whole thing seems to be going slightly too far though when there is a day dedicated to hamsters, talking like a pirate and numbers with far too many decimal places. Not only that, but it is rather misleading for private investigators who think at last they are getting some recognition on 14th March for all that they do to improve the lives of the cattle that pace the streets below their office windows and generally are ignorant of most of the outside world, only to find that this day is not a day dedicated to the hard working, under appreciated private eye, but to 3.141592.

A mathematical constant receives more adulation than both myself and the Greek letter put together! Worst of all is when police sergeants use this tiny misunderstanding as an excuse to ridicule the sensible assumption. Hammering the point home by posting 3.14 cards reading "Happy Pi Day, here's to a number that's as irrational as you" was just cruel.

As I cannot hurt a number, I will just have to take out my frustration on hunting a certain man with a paint gun whilst he is driving his newest sports car...I wonder how long it would take to etch a legible π onto a bonnet from 12ft away...