Wednesday 6 May 2015

Hipstaz

For audio click here

Detective Inspector Holmes looked around the assembled clientele at the Taché café, they were not to his taste, not to his taste at all. Despite being in his late 30s, he was old school. For him tattoos were for convicts and sailors, beards for the lazy and your wore glasses because you needed them, not as a fashion statement. So he didn’t really fit in. To make matters worse, the owner had scoffed at his request for a latte, instead telling him to try the aeropress coffee, calling it a taste sensation. Holmes would be the judge of that, if it ever arrived. What were they doing, roasting the beans?
Finally the owner reappeared carrying two jugs of what looked like weak Bovril and placed them on the table.
‘So this is ethically sourced, locally roasted, coffee. The water is heated to the perfect temperature before going slowly through the aeropress.’ The owner poured the coffee into the glass in front of Holmes and invited him to try it.  God what happened to dear old Nescafe, Holmes thought. He took a mouthful and winced. That was not coffee, he wasn’t sure what it was but it was not coffee. He looked around for sugar, there was none on the tables. The owner smiled.
‘It’s better without,’ He said, reading his mind.
DI Holmes hated being patronised but he couldn’t help feeling he was being patronised now.  He took another mouthful convinced it couldn’t be as bad as he thought. It was.
‘So’ Holmes said. ’Tell me what happened. Mr …’
‘Call me Marty.’  Holmes tried not to roll his eyes, of course it would be Marty, or Cody, or Tommy.
‘They were like any old customers,’ Marty said. ‘Three guys, beards, black rimmed glasses, gauntlet tattoos, Desert boots.’
‘Let me guess they were wearing lumberjack shirts.’ Holmes said sardonically.
‘Yes,’ said Marty completely missing the sarcasm.
‘Could they, by chance, still be here?’ Holmes said, noting that every male in the place was dressed that way.
‘No they certainly left,’ Marty said. Holmes wondered if the beard was a sarcasm shield.
‘So?’ Holmes was losing patience.
‘Well it was like that film,’ Marty said. ‘Reservoir Dogs, You know, everybody be cool, this is a robbery.’
‘Pulp Fiction.’ Holmes said.
‘What?’
‘The film was Pulp Fiction not Reservoir Dogs.’
‘Yeah well these guys just stood up and calmly announced it was a robbery and we should empty our tills. They took our money, our mobile phones our computers and then just shuffled out of here.’
‘They didn’t take anything from the customers?’
‘No.’
‘So not exactly like the film then.’ Holmes had to stop with the sarcasm but it was revenge for the coffee snobbery.  ‘CCTV?’ he asked.
Marty shook his head.  ‘We don’t like to spy on our customers.’ Typical thought Holmes, bloody hippies, think they can change the world without realising the world isn’t changing around them.
‘But they did leave this.’ Marty handed the cop a calling card. Holmes looked at it.
It looked like the kind of card you get from those print your own business card machines you see in service stations. It was plain white, with one word printed on it in a cheap font - HIPSTAZ and a small picture of black-framed glasses in the bottom right corner. Holmes flicked it around in his hand before remembering it was evidence and he fished out a bag to put it in.

This was curious, a gang of hipsters, robbing a hipster joint and leaving a calling card. There must be more to this than meets the eye.

For part 2 click here 

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