SWEETIE
He’s a big guy, their boss – ginger hair, six foot four and weighs two-twenty pounds; former boxer and MMA fighter. Thinks he can throw all that weight around the business world as well as a cage. Muscling in on my customers is the quick way to a total knockdown.
I’ve been running this enterprise for eight years. I saw the niche, and started the business – I was first on the scene. It’s my living. My right. They think because I’m a mere woman, a mere kid, a mere five-four tall, that they can get away with tactics like they tried last week – three of their big boys grabbed me – up against the wall, and threatened me with a variety of painful, crippling and humiliating consequences if I don’t move out and leave the way clear for them. All in the fakest of pseudo-Italian accents – they didn’t even respond to ‘Va fanculo, maricon.’ That’s as near as I recall to ‘Go screw yourself, you wuss.’
They threatened my kids and hubby – they even mentioned cement over-shoes – how utterly Thirties! They’re gonna push me around? Undercut me? Cheat me out of my own customer base? Run me out of business?
They called me Sweetie! – that was the icing on the turd; the final straw; and the broken-off ring-pull all in one. Sweetie!
***
‘It is never gonna happen,’ I told my fore-guy when he came up, wondering about our tactics.
‘They bit the wrong one here, eh, Boss?’
‘I don’t get it, Buggs – someone must have warned them about us. They should have taken more heed of somebody. They’d know I do not pussyfoot around. I do not roll over.’
They have brought wrath upon themselves. ‘The moon will be the nearest safe haven for them,’ I said to Kelly, my Second-in-C. ‘I’ll look into it personally before calling on you.’
‘This is a lucrative business,’ I confided in Monty, my pet python. ‘Thus, it is possible to make enemies – although I do that very rarely, because I prefer to be reasonable until people see things my way, mmm? And that’s quite tight enough round my leg, thank-you, Monty.’
I have a wide contact base – suppliers and customers, working colleagues in similar lines of work, in other regions. Basically, we amount to a family of mutually supporting connections. This gives me access to things I want; things I might need now and then. From small weaponry items to police cooperation. As a rule, I need nothing from any of them, except their undying goodwill. Just occasionally, however…
***
So… I have lined up a few preliminary strategies to soften Big Ginger Inc up; just to start this week off and get it ticking, encourage them out. A tiny explosive on a lorry tyre is enough to stop it leaving the pound all day. Or in its fuel tank, and it’s out forever – that’ll start Monday off nicely.
Tuesday could witness an anonymous tipoff and bring about a police raid on their offices, finding who knows what on the computers? necessitating them to be confiscated for investigation, of course. And I expect traces of drugs could be discovered in a couple of their transports.
Acid on their poshest car would see Wednesday off to a positive dawn. A cylinder head on the pillow, perhaps? An unlit Molotov and a box of matches through the letterbox?
Thursday? Poison pills in an envelope with a scented note, perhaps. A kidnap threat to a wife or child – mere tit-for-tat retaliation on their dire warnings to me last week.
Friday could see a rush of deliveries of dubious goods to their premises – hugely expensive ones with no return address. Bricks through windows, and half-way up the walls: four thousand bricks, hardcore and general rubble delivered onto your front drive makes a statement.
Paedophile rumours can be started so easily, especially over a weekend when all the idiots are cruising the social sites looking for the latest silliness; and #Metoo is such a boon for keeping stories spreading, expanding and ballooning. They could find themselves labelled, and therefore proven, as the most heinous paedophiles the world has ever known… sex traffickers… drug smugglers… The possibilities are endless. Who needs evidence? Certainly nobody on the Internet at weekends.
And if they haven’t learned to leave me and mine alone by the weekend, I’ll roll my sleeves up, and really get started on them next week.
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