Complaints

You don’t become as notorious as I without ruffling a few feathers along the way. I’ve worked on some extraordinary cases and had my fair share of scuffs, bruises and contusions throughout my long, illustrious career as a P.I. I’ve flung a man out of a moving Ford Capri going at over 20 mph on a B road; I’ve uppercut a 17 stone woman with a mullet; I’ve even drop kicked a pensioner on an electric mobility chair.

But when you go gung-ho into these situations, relying solely on instinct and not giving a moment’s pause for logical thought and consideration, mistakes can be made. Mistakes often lead to gripes and gripes lead to complaints.

So here, I offer a selection of letters that have been sent to me in the post, left anonymously on my doormat or delivered personally, attached to a brick through my office window.

Dear Mr Silverwood,

     I am writing regards a recent case you have been working on for my elderly mother, one Mrs Lucy Portly.

     I was shocked and appalled to hear that you have been hired by my mother (an 82 year old lady with onset dementia and a disposition for throwing money at strangers) to track down her daughter, a Miss Joan Portly.

I was even more disgusted to learn that you have been hired six times by my mother, investigating the same case to find the same person and accepting payment each time.

I am ultimately horrified to discover that on six occasions, you have dressed up as a woman, turned up at my mother’s doorstep and pretended to be the long-lost daughter Mr Silverwood has claimed to have discovered. You have accepted over £800 worth of expenses for dragging up and playing the part of Joan Portly, before disappearing and reappearing as the Private Investigator Kurt Silverwood, to offer my mother assistance in reuniting her with long lost family and starting the cycle again! Six times!!!

I AM MISS JOAN PORTLY! I SEE MY MOTHER AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE (once a year; sometimes twice if there’s a rainy Bank Holiday). I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN IN CONTACT WITH MY MOTHER AND THERE IS CERTAINLY NO NEED IN HER HIRING A SNIVELLING, LOW-LIFE P.I. FOR HER TO SEE ME (even though I am incredibly busy and have little time to actually stay in touch with her).

The only reason I am not contacting the police over this matter is because my mother now believes she has seen me six times this year already, which dramatically increases the amount of inheritance I shall be left in her will. For this, I thank you.

Keep away from my mother Mr Silverwood. Keep away from my family. And never, ever pretend to be me!

Yours angrily,

                           Joan Portly

***

Silverwood.

     I gave you £300 to do your job. You haven’t done that job. Make the most of your legs whilst you’ve still got ‘em sunshine. Watch your back.

           -Anon.

***

For the attention of: KURT SILVERWOOD P.I.

Mr Silverwood,

     It’s come to my attention that you have been following me around in a tatty old Lincoln for the past two weeks. With your large binoculars, your car's loud, grinding clutch and your 1940’s-throwback-fashion-sence, you’re about as surreptitious as a clown in a nunnery. Doing cartwheels. With his penis hanging out.

     It is obvious my wife has hired you to bring her photographic evidence that I am having an affair – which is fair enough considering I am having an affair. But you know this! You’ve known this for three weeks now! Me and my mistress have posed for your photographs on numerous occasions; photographs that we KNOW you’ve taken.

     I can only assume that you are being paid on a daily basis and you are fleecing my wife for as much money as she can afford before you present the evidence she wants. Well you should know Mr Silverwood, that it is I who gives my wife her spending money and you are cleaning me out of every penny I own!

     Give her the bloody photos so this whole thing can be over with and you can stop draining me of cash via my wife’s expenses!

     Get a move on man!

     Sincerely,

                                Geoff Langley.

A good man can admit his mistakes and his flaws. A great man doesn’t make any mistakes or flaws to admit to. I am somewhere in between; acknowledging that I make mistakes, but not necessarily admitting to them. I’d say that makes me pretty great.

Kurt Silverwood P.I.

Temptress Amidst The Smoke

I swung open my office door and was met with a startling sight. Perched on the end of my desk, gazing out of the window sat a red haired vixen, pouting her scarlet lips and drumming her crimson nails against the mahogany woodwork. I’d only been at the corner shop to grab a half pint of milk (green-capped, semi-skimmed) and I’d returned to a fiery temptress, straddling my desk.

“Mr Silverwood, I presume.” Her voice was low and luxurious like a plump, velvet pillow or an extra large bar of Galaxy chocolate.

“Yes?” I answered in a strangled gasp.

“I hope you don’t mind me entering uninvited? There’s a slightly vegetative smell out in the corridor and your office door was unlocked.”

The smell was from a fungal patch growing upside down on the ceiling outside my room. I’d been meaning to scrape it off and throw it out of the window, but I lacked the necessary ladder-based equipment to reach that level of elevation.

“Okay,” I coughed.

The young woman flicked her locks over her shoulder as she rose from the desk. She strode towards me with long, seductive steps and proffered her hand in my direction.

“I’m Tiffany Saint Michaels” she sang.

“Right.” I shook her delicate, almost porcelain hand.

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Be my guest,” I replied, wildly ignoring the clear smoking-ban that blankets all public workplaces including my office.

I’m rarely caught off-guard when it comes to women, but Tiffany was so striking that I felt the equivalent of being punched in the kidneys. The strength of her beauty was like receiving a knee to the testicles and then being spat at in the face. I was dumbstruck. It taken a few seconds before I shook off the metaphorical blows to my body and was able to place the half-pinter in my mini fridge. As she looked dreamily out of the window, sucking gently at the cigarette betwixt her white, slender fingers, I couldn’t help thinking about that smoking ban. It was a firm rule that had been reiterated when signing the lease on the office space and I didn’t fancy losing that deposit I’d handed so readily to my landlord.

“You have quite a view from up here,” Tiffany cooed, “I’ve never seen the council estate across town from this angle before.”

“There are many delightful angles to discover in my office, Miss Saint Michaels,” I quipped, upping my game; my eyes fixed on the blue smoke rising towards the ceiling.

“I’m sure there are Mr Silverwood,” she retorted coyly, waving her cigarette in the air. “I’m sure there are.”

I fully understand and support the smoking ban. As a non-smoker myself I can appreciate that the smell of nicotine and tobacco can be repulsive to those who don’t partake in the habit – not to mention the health risks behind second-hand smoke. Tiffany puffing at her death-stick was almost as distracting as her beauty; yet her pure, uncreased complexion would soon fall victim to capillary damage; resulting in poor blood flow, stopping the provision of oxygen and nutrients to her skin. Not to mention the wrinkling process of puckering the mouth each time she took a drag of her cigarette. I acknowledged that although smoking gave her a sexy edge, the fact it was physically aging her was ironic, and I appreciated that irony.

“Allow me to get you an ashtray,” I offered, ever the gentleman.

She thanked me as I rummaged through the dustbin behind my desk and fished out an old foil case from a Cherry Bakewell tart that I’d folded into a little triangle. I carefully unfolded said triangle until it was more-or-less back to its cup shape, ideal for knocking ash into. I made a point of placing the makeshift-ashtray onto the table by saying “This is where you should put your ash from the cigarette you are now smoking”.

“I fear my husband is having an affair Mr Silverwood,” exclaimed Tiffany. “He’s not his usual self in certain... areas of our marriage.”

“I see,” I responded, not really listening but concentrating more on the lengthening strand of ash from the cigarette.

“I fear I need your assistance in the matter Kurt,” she said before taking a long drag, the ash train picking up more and more passengers. “You don’t mind if I call you Kurt, do you?”

“What? Yeah, whatever, sure.” I gestured towards the foil tray on the desk next to her.

She lifted her buxom weight and glided to where I was standing. Every inch of me tensed up and my heart raced as I hoped beyond hope that the grit on the end of her cigarette wouldn’t be knocked off from the kinetic energy created by her movements. It dangled dangerously, hanging onto the red-hot tip for dear life.

“I’m glad we can be informal with each other,” she whispered into my ear, her lips almost touching the skin.

It was as she slinked away that it happened. She idly flicked at the stick in her hand and the column of ash poured over my carpeted flooring like a monsoon from the heavens.

“Oh for Christ’s sake!” I blurted out. “I gave you an ashtray! There!”

I pointed at the bakewell casing, now sitting redundant and useless. It would take a wet cloth and some delicate sponging at the carpet to make sure the ash was all out before my next building inspection.

“I’m sorry Kurt?” Tiffany responded, feigning obliviousness at her obviously obnoxious display.

“Look, I think you’d better leave.”

“What? Why?” she asked, having the cheek to appear outraged by my outburst.

I took the cigarette from her fingers (now barely a filter set alight) and thrown it in my dustbin.

“Just leave.”

I opened the door for her and slammed it shut after she’d crossed the threshold.

After dealing with quite a large fire in my dustbin, caused by throwing Miss Saint Michaels’ lit stub into it (and exacerbated by a scotch bottle I’d dumped in there, unaware there was a small amount of whisky still residing in the bottom), I mocked up a rudimentary no smoking sign and pinned it to my office wall. Most rules are there to be broken (i.e. speed limits, public drinking and illegal gambling) but other rules are there to be adhered to (i.e. smoking bans and prohibited heavy petting in swimming pools).

Kurt Silverwood P.I.

Celebrity Clients 2

I started my list of the rich and famous a while ago, and as promised here is an expansion of some of the celeb-based people I have worked with, around or over. (Never under – Kurt Silverwood never works under anybody, no matter how many fancy sports cars they have. Let’s make that clear!)

Hugh Hefner

I wasn’t really aware of who Hugh was; what he dealt in; or why he was famous before I worked in his mansion. He hired me to go deep undercover, pretending to be one of the thirty pool-boys he employs (young men paid to fish excrement and other business out of swimming pools) so that I could spy on one of the maids whom he had suspicions was thieving from him. I found the whole case incredibly distracting and was eventually fired when Hugh found me deep undercover with one of his female friends! (The word “undercover” being used as an innuendo for having sex under the sheets of a bed.)

Simon Cowell

Si (or “Psy” as he likes it to be pronounced, on the basis that he thinks he’s “a little bit psychic” – not that it makes a difference because it’s phonetically identical!) is a difficult man. His eyes burn with a deep money-lust; churning young hopefuls on his talent-show conveyor belt to produce empty shelled corpses. I was given the task of casing his five favourite stalkers and ranking them out of ten on looks, intelligence and insanity – his eventual goal being to use the highest scorer as either a lover or another flash-in-the-pan pop star. I was fired when Simon found me undercover with all of five of the stalkers... Oh I’ve used that already.

Gary Lineker

I’ll admit to making a terrible faux pas when chatting to Gary Lineker for the first time. He sat down in my office and I immediately demanded that he take off the novelty ears. He laughed and told me that he’d heard some very similar jibes in the past. I had no idea what he was talking about, and persisted in making him take off the joke ears. He told me to leave it, that a joke was a joke and it was wearing thin now. I told him that I was a professional and I wouldn’t conduct an interview with a man in fancy dress as a gremlin. He left without even discussing what he wanted.

Katie Price

I’m not entirely sure what Katie Price is, but I can categorically say that she’s very good at being it. She is the only person I have seen keep up a pout for three hours straight without breaking, even when talking. She informed me of how she was an incredibly private person before showing me her back catalogue of photo shoots and television shows. A film crew were present throughout the whole conversation, recording a documentary or reality show or some bollocks, so I was uncomfortable with the scenario and asked whether we could continue over the phone. She never got back to me.

Morgan Freeman

I’m not legally allowed to comment on the case that I was involved in with Mr Freeman, but what I can say is that it consisted of half a tuna sandwich, three bottles of hair mousse and a lava lamp. I’ll say no more.

This list is nowhere near exhausted and I’ll update it in the future. I’ve come to realise that celebrities are like ambulance chasers – annoying as Hell until you need one to help pay the rent for your accommodation/work place.

Kurt Silverwood P.I.