2 men sat at the bar in the pub in manchester.
One of them asks the landlord for a gin & tonic in an quaint, softly spoken irish accent. The other bloke picks up on it, and tries to strike up a conversation with him.
"Howdo pal, you're not from round here, are you?" the local comments.
"No, I'm not, I'm from Ireland, I'm over here doing a bit of business, but I'm having trouble finding my way around" the reply came.
"Oh, what line of work are you in?, I might be able to help you out" he enquires politely.
The Irishman then says "My name is Arty, I'm a hitman, I'm contracted by others to eliminate spouses, rivals troublemakers etc, pleased to make your aquaintance"
The loacal man sits up suddenly, all interested.
Anyway, they get talking, and the local fella offers him all sorts of help trying to find his way round.
After a couple of hours, Arty decides it's time for him to move on and make contact with his client, but before doing so, he thanks the kindly local for his hospitality, and asks the man if there's anything he could do in return, just ask.
So....
"Well" he says, "I have been thinking of getting rid of my wife, she's a constant pain, always nagging me, always belittling me, making me feel truely worthless, could you get rid of her for me?"
Arty says "Sure, you've been very acommodating to me today, the least I can do, is return the favour. My normal rate is £100 per target, but seeing as it's you, I'll do it for £1"
The local is overjoyed by this, and accepts it.
"First, I need to know where she'll be tomorrow, what time she'll be there, and what she'll be wearing, you just leave the rest up to me"
So he tells Arty that every day at 1PM, his wife does her shopping at Sainsbury's, and every time she does, she wears her lucky red hat, as she's very superstitious, then gives him £1 out of his pocket.
"Naturally, due to the secrecy of my line of work" Arty explains "after I leave here, you'll never see me again, but you will know that your wife is dead by checking the news on Sky or BBC, if she's dead, it will be on there at some point"
So, with that, they both shake hands and depart.
Next day.
Arty, true to his word, is on his way to Sainsbury's and gets there at 12.55PM, 5 minutes before the local mans wife is due to arrive. He makes sure his gun is loaded and ready to go, then walks inside and waits.
Sure enough, at exactly 1PM, a woman fitting the local mans wifes description, complete with lucky red hat walks in, picks up a trolly, and winds her way through the aisles.
Arty, the surpreme killing machine that he is, hones in straight away, walks up behind her, takes his gun out, points it at the back of her head, then pulls the trigger....
OH NO!!!!
The gun jams, leaving it completely useless.
In a state of sharp, quick thinking, he puts the gun away, takes out a piece of twine and proceeds to strangle the woman. She struggles for a few seconds, then slumps to the floor dead.
Arty calmly puts the twine back in his pocket, and makes his way towards the door, only to be passed by another woman, also wearing a red hat. He thinks to himself "What if I've killed the wrong woman?"
He concludes that his honour and reputation requires that all traces of doubt must be removed from the equation, and decides that he must kill this second woman too.
Like the first, he stalks her into an aisle, whips out the twine, and strangles her as well.
This time, he makes a hasty retreat for the door. As he's running across the car park, he sees yet another woman in a red hat, putting groceries into her car. As with the first and second women, he convinces himself that he must terminate this target as well, to make absolutley sure that he has killed the right one.
So, out comes the twine for a 3rd time, he creeps up behind the woman just as she's about to get in her car, wraps it round her neck, then throttles the life out of her.
Once she's stopped twitching, he relaxes his hold on the twine, slips it in his pocket, and drives off in her car. Not long down the road, the police pull him over for erratic driving and arrest him. In his pockets, are 1 gun, 1 piece of paper with the details of the target on it, one piece of blood-stained twine, and 1 ID card with his name (Arty O'Hare) and picture on it.
Meanwhile, the man is sitting at home waiting and wondering if his wife will return. Hours go by, and there is no sign of her.
The man then remembers the instructions to check if she's dead or not.
He turns the TV on, switches to BBC news24, nothing on there. Then he switches to Sky News.
There it is!!!
There is a huge commotion going on, and he recognises that it's his local Sainsbury's store. He's still a little unsure about it all, then the headline comes up.....
Arty chokes 3 for £1 at Sainsbury's