Hunting a Priest Killer - Day 7

Harry is the kind of person to hold a grudge. Though clearly grateful that I saved him from an awkward conversation with the Mayor about the twins in the hot tub, it had dawned on him that the hole in the side was not going to fix itself. In fact he seemed to think, for some ridiculous reason, that I should have to pay for the damage.

Me pointing out that it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't hung up on me clearly was not the best thing to do, though if Harry hadn't then tried to throw me off the balcony we wouldn't have ended up having a fist fight that broke his coffee table...and his brand new TV...

I don't get invited to his place much.

It took about an hour for us to broker a peace and to sit down and think about what we were going to do about Fred. Fred going after Sykes and the Snake Devils was understandable even though it is on his top ten list of 'stupidest things he's ever done'; though not quite good (or bad enough) to grab the top spot. That still belongs to the time he decided to go undercover to break a child pornography ring and didn't tell anyone he was doing it. It took a long time and a lot of awkward, searching questions to get him out of trouble that time. 

So with Harry on side, we had at least a small fighting chance of getting Fred out alive and making sure Sykes paid for what he did to Harry. 

The other thing we had going for us was how unpopular Sykes was as a leader and how many of his gang land pals felt it was him who had arranged the downfall of the Snake Devils former leader - Jarndice. 

Normally those kind of suspicions led to feelings of respect and fear, but this was a slightly more complicated situation.

Jarndice had been a scumbag, no morals, no conscience, but he was smart. He had managed to outwit and stop Derek Long on more than one occasion, granted not without the help of yours truly, but all the same impressive. Jarndice had held together the gang through many attempts by the other neighbouring gangs to destroy them and expand their territory without opposition from residents and other gangs. 

All in all, Jarndice had made the gang untouchable and so far Sykes really didn't measure up. Shooting Patrick was seemingly the start of his campaign to prove himself, but I wasn't about to let that happen.

Harry and I both agreed that if Sykes got hold of Fred, then Fred would end up being nailed to a perch to be kept from pushing up the daisies. We had to wait until nightfall before we could go into the gang territory to try and avoid detection.

The only problem with going in at night to a gang held area of the city - walking smack into a group of low level gang peons who had a more impressive arsenal than any 80s action hero.

Needless to say the Rescuers business was safe from being threatened by Harry and I.

Also if I get shot by Sykes - I am going to kill Fred.

Sunbathing

For those of you that aren't acquainted with my dressed habits - I don't tend to ever have more of my flesh exposed than necessary in public.

The reasoning for this is two-fold. Firstly, the amount of people who regularly try and kill me, attack me, throw me through windows, means that I really want to protect my skin and vital organs as much as possible and a reinforced armoured bikini really doesn't provide as much protection as I would like.

The second reason is much less understandable - I don't like exposing myself in public! This seems to be a rare point of view as it seems that as soon as the sun comes out not only do women start dressing in little more than handkerchiefs but the male population decides that everybody desperately wants to see them walking around topless...

One of the worst offenders of this crime is Harry Lee. Though I will grant his many hours at the gym have paid off by granting him striking abs, I really don't want to see them as long as the sun is out. I may have pointed this out in no uncertain terms which has led to my current predicament.

Worse than people walking around mostly naked for me is being dragged to a beach where people wear swimwear that is either two sizes too small, speedos, white so the moment it hits the water it becomes completely see through or they just don't bother altogether.

Fred and Hardy decided that after my small complaint to Harry about his state of dress that dragged me kicking and screaming (in this case quite literally) to the sandy shores of the sea was a good idea.

I have flatly refused to give up my guns and my trilby but am now sat in less than underwear on a towel in a sandy hell.

Next time Harry walks around shirtless, I'm just going to shoot him.

Pain

Top ten most painful things I have ever gone through: -

1. Being shot in the knee and the wound being stood on
2. Being shot in the back
3. Being shot in the shoulder
4. Being shot in the foot
5. Being stabbed in the hand
6. Being shot in the arm
7. Being caught in a car explosion
8. Being shot in the knee
9. Being shot in the leg
10. Losing my two fingers.

Top ten most painful things to happen to Fred: -

1. Being hit with a baseball bat
2. Being shot
3. Being hit by a car
4. Dropping a table on his foot
5. Being in a car accident
6. Punching through a window
7. Dropping an iron on his foot
8. Breaking his toe on the shower tray
9. Burning his hand on the stove
10. Trapping his hand in the door.

Fred's life seems so much more dangerous than mine...

Bored

I spend much of my life running from people trying to kill me, hiding from Fred, trying to earn a living without getting screwed over and annoying my neighbours.

Yet there are moments, snippets in time when none of the above is occurring...in short I have bouts of earth shattering boredom. 

These are rare mainly due to the frequency in which people try to kill me, but there are other things that keep me occupied during the quieter periods of my life. Such things as cleaning, field stripping and reassembling my entire weapon stock, including the weapons that are kept in my secret weapon store. I have also been known to follow Fred about and try to cause as many problems for him as possible. 

Unfortunately I have already cleaned, field stripped and reassembled my gun collection...twice and Fred has gone on a two week holiday to either Cancun, Madagascar, Belgium or Switzerland. He may have booked several holiday packages at the same time to stop me following him or he could just be the victim of credit card fraud...

Either way it has led to my current state of affairs...I am bored and when I am bored I do all manner of stupid things

When I'm bored I generally end up in jail.

Hunting a Priest Killer - Day 6

Fred was not the kind of man to hold a grudge...after yelling at me for ten minutes, telling me how stupid I was, how unprincipled and that I was in over my head; he finally let me talk.

We stayed up most of the night talking at Fred's place about what we could do about Sykes and the Snake Devils. I was drinking whiskey and Fred was drinking coffee. Needless to say I woke up with a hangover to discover Fred had gone. 

This wasn't unusual, neither was the fact that Fred had clearly carried me to bed when I had fallen asleep in the living room and left me fully clothed. He hadn't left any note though as to where he had gone. This was problematic for several reasons.

1) If he had gone to work then I would have to wait for him to come back before I could do anything about Sykes and his serpent friends. 2) If he had gone after the Snake Devils, then he had gone alone and was probably going to end up being shot and dumped in a ditch. 3) He had taken my guns from me whilst I was asleep and I didn't know where they were. 4) I might have to also ask Harry Lee for help.

Of all these problems, the discovery of where Fred had hidden my weapons was the easiest to solve. Thinking of the last place that he would think I would look for them is often the best place to start. After I had checked the washing machine, the dishwasher, the oven and the cupboard where the vacuum is stored, I found them in the top draw of the nightstand by the bed. 

I decided that phoning Harry wasn't the most horrible of ideas as he would be able to find out if Fred was working and if he wasn't then I'd be in the perfect position to get Harry to volunteer to help find him. It took four phone calls to find Harry and a further six to actually speak to him. That's the problem of calling a man who seems to spend all of his off duty time in bed.

I swear the man has more girlfriends than brain cells.

He did however confirm that Fred was not working today and then very hurriedly hung up. It was at this point that it occurred to me that going to see Harry in person might just be the best way to get his co-operation.

He didn't live that far from me, so twenty minutes later I kicked in his door and found him in the hot tub on his balcony in a very clichéd situation with twins. 

It's amazing how effective wits and bravado are in clearing a room and even more astounding how much more effective twin revolvers can be. Harry was a tiny bit mad about having a hole in the side of the hot tub, but he seemed to calm down when I told him that the twins were related to the Mayor; and had Mayor Major Tyler found out about them being in Harry's hot tub, well, that life could have been more than a little unpleasant.

It was also this point that I chose to tell him about Fred going off to take on Sykes on his own. 

Lazy Afternoons

There are many reasons that I enjoy winter. It's dark most of the time, which makes my life much easier, lots of shadows for me to hide in. It's cold so most people tend to stay indoors and dress in thick layers of clothing. So there is always a feeling of sadness in what passes for my heart when I see the first snowdrops appear in flowerbeds.

It's not because I have anything against the summer. On the contrary, it's nice not having ice on the inside of my windows. What I have a problem with is the lazy afternoon mentality that people seem to get in the summer - that and the fact that girls seem to think letting erroneous parts of their body hang out of their clothing is a good thing.

How can I track targets covertly through parks and streets when people all look and stare at the woman walking around in a long black trench coat because they have nothing better to do than laze about in the sunshine?

Fred is also especially unbearable during the summer months. His mood always seems to be elevated to unacceptable highs. It makes it so much harder to annoy him. As soon as he has had his Star Wars geekery fed at the start of May, he is as giddy as a school girl with pigtails until September arrives.

Harry is the only saving grace of all this as he hates the summer and when I say hates, I mean he would love to pack it into a box and throw it off a cliff and then become best friends with Kevin Metis and Derek Long and throw parties in their honour...the strange thing is though, he won't explain why it is that he hates it so much.

He doesn't have hay fever, nor is he pale skinned to the extent that opening the curtains gives him sunburn. I have come to one of two conclusions on the subject though. He is either secretly a vampire (the kind that Sam and Dean Winchester would hunt) or he has an extraordinarily high body temperature that means when the climate changes to being in double digits he overheats. Personally I think the first one is much more plausible...

Temperature

Why is it that the moment that it starts to get warm that I get ill?

It never fails. Every year as soon as the temperature rises out of tundraic proportions and into that of the tropics, my temperature goes up with it.

So predictable is this annual event that I received the weather forecast cut from the paper in the post. Fred had sent it along with a box of tissues and a get well soon card that was horrifically unsympathetic...especially since he had circled the rise in temperature in red.

The card he sent read:

Nic,

I wanted to thank you in advance this year for the two week period that you will be too ill to get out of bed and cause me headaches for. It is around this time of year that I like to kick back in the office and catch up on my paperwork, safe in the knowledge that you will not be breaking into my apartment or shooting half the population of the city.

Harry will be stopping by with some supplies for you in the next few days so you don't even need to stir out of bed and run the risk of your shortened temperature causing an accidental misfiring of your weapons in public places.

Get Well Soon Slowly

Fred

The moment that my body can move without my head spinning, all his furniture is going to the charity shops.