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.

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.

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!

Snow

Waking up to a world that has become white overnight has never been overly thrilling for me. It's not because that snow is not fun to play in. In fact, last year when there was a complete white out of the city, the police department invited me to join in their city wide snowball fight. The detectives vs. the sergeants and the constables. Naturally as a private detective, I was assigned to the detectives' side, which meant that I was facing off against Fred. I took endless pleasure in pummeling him with snow for all the times he has had me arrested. Equally he took the opportunity to try and bury me in avalanches for causing him so much trouble over the years.

Most satisfying of all the detectives emerged victorious, earning me bragging rights. What I didn't know at the time was that the inspectors didn't know that the snowball fight had taken place and due to their exclusion from the battle, they banned all future such engagements.

It's not that it's cold. It's cold most of the time in my office, especially when I can't afford to pay the heating bill. It's something I have become very gradually acclimatized to and even developed a mild resistance towards it. It's not that it's wet either.

My biggest problem is that the world being white means that I stand out. The shadows are diminished by the light reflecting powder, and so my favourite places to slink around no longer exist. I dress in black, hence my moniker, but black stands out on white. Trying to hide from people trying to kill me becomes infinitely more difficult when you haven't any camouflage.

If this continues much longer I think I will have to change to being the Ivory Siren...as long as I live that long.

Hunting a Priest Killer Day 4

So having held several of the higher ups of the Snake Devils gang hostage for around seven hours before any of them thought of calling for help was not the highlight of my career. I'm not sure whether they thought I would get bored and start shooting them which would automatically raise the alarm or they just weren't at all threatened by my presence, but either way it's still a really long time to be sat in a dark, dank, back room with rough, violent men.

After seven hours I was debating whether or not just shooting them wouldn't have been a good idea, but then Sykes sent in his advanced team...and when I say advanced team, I mean overenthusiastic young boys. Three rounds in the wall was enough to send them running out the door they had boldly entered through.

Unfortunately they replied with their own gunfire. When I say unfortunately, I mean unfortunately for them...the men I was holding hostage didn't take too kindly to being shot by peons. I decided that getting in the middle of this particular gunfight probably wasn't in my best interest, so I slipped quietly out of the side door.

I would like it if one plan, just one plan, could come off without a hitch or completely falling apart.

However the seven hours I had spent with my hostages had provided me with a lot of very useful information that I should have shared with Fred but with him still wanting to arrest me, I wasn't really in the sharing mood. I need to make myself scarce though as the would be police on their way due to caring citizens not wanting the gun battle in the bar to spill out onto the street.

I needed somewhere that I could sit down and think through everything I had found out. It needed to be somewhere quiet, somewhere that people rarely visited and the last place the police would think of looking for me...

Forms

Why is it that filling out forms is one of the most laborious and tedious tasks that administration ever created? What is it about having to answer a series of questions with confining restrictions placed upon the information that you can provide is just so tortuous to do? 

Was it created as some form of passive aggressive torture by frustrated, mild mannered secretaries? Or was it an April Fools prank that really has gone too far given that forms have persisted for several years now?

Whatever the reason for the existence of forms, from now on I am making Fred fill them all in since he is responsible for me spending a week in jail...I'd only had the locks changed on his apartment...

Autumn

Autumn always seems to make so many depressed. Marking the end of the summer and the descent into the dark and cold of winter and yet Autumn is the one time of year I genuinely feel happy.

Shocked as most people are that I am capable of being happy, it happens none-the-less. Autumn isn't too hot or cold, the days are a sensible length and it rains, the trees are colourful and beautiful. The smell of burning is in the air and piles of leaves to jump in or throw at passersby. What is there to not love about the season?

Yes there is the problem of children running around damaging property when you refuse to give them sugar rushes and hiding behind Fawkesian masks so that the police can't identify them when they manage to escape arrest.

Still I have always felt that the Guy on a bonfire could always do with looking more life like...