The Barbershop Seven: A Barney Thomson omnibus

by Douglas Lindsay

  'You just don't get albums with men glorifying their maleness, do you?' said Orwell, pondering the question himself. 'Not PC, I expect. And would you really want to buy a CD entitled Man To Man anyway? I don't think so.'

  'A Woman's Touch,' said Hemingway, ignoring Orwell's ruminations because he was so pumped.

  'A Woman's Feel,' said Wodehouse.

  Barney Thomson sighed.

  'Woman Is As Woman Does,' said Hemingway.

  'A Woman In Your Bush Is Worth Two In The Hand,' said Wodehouse.

  And so they went on ...

  ***

  Monk took the train to Birmingham. Margie Crane sounded the best option for a woman with a grudge, driven to wreak this kind of terrible vengeance. Rose had given her the phone number, but she had decided that turning up on the doorstep was a better option. And it got her out of London for a few hours, away from Frankenstein and away from Barney Thomson, as if that might stop her constant visions of him.

  She'd never been to Birmingham before and was pleasantly surprised. Cafés and trees and boulevards and statues and fountains. She wondered what lay beneath it all, but stopped herself thinking about it.

  She stood on the pavement outside Crane's house and looked up at the row of terraced homes. Victorian, probably, but she was no expert. Near the centre of the city. Well maintained, trees surrounded by metal fences lining the street, as well as rows of BMWs and Audis and Jaguars, and it was obvious that however dismissive the people at BF&C had been about Margie Crane, she was doing all right for herself.

  She walked up a short flight of steps, which led off the street, up to the maroon door. Rang the bell and waited.

  The street was quiet, no cars, no one out walking. Just after eight on a cold and damp evening in March. Everyone already safely locked up in their house, kids already packed off to bed, after mummy and daddy had got home from the office and spent the requisite ten minutes reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

  She rang the bell again, left it another short while, then produced a set of keys, tried a few, found one that fitted, and walked into Margie Crane's house.

  ***

  Piers Hemingway had finally escaped – after the meeting had settled on A Woman's Magic, Barney's first suggestion – and now he and Harlequin Sweetlips were walking along the Thames embankment, looking across at all those stern government buildings, which give that part of London an Eastern European feel. Chill evening but dry, still a few people abroad. You would think old Piers had nothing to worry about.

  Sweetlips was dressed full on. High, Chinese neckline, all the appropriate bumps displayed to their best advantage, hair in a very, very erotic short black bob. The full femme fatale routine, and yet Hemingway just didn't see this coming. Too busy talking about himself. And the company.

  'I'm working on this insurance portfolio at the moment. Total scam.'

  'Your entire business is a scam,' she said, smiling her killer smile.

  'Yeah, well, maybe. Anyway, it's called Brazil. The name means nothing, it's just a cool name they've given it so that they can use sun, sea and sex to sell it.'

  'Good idea,' she said simply, and she held onto his arm a little more tightly, pressed her body up against his a little more closely, and laid her head on his shoulder, so that he felt like a man.

  'Exactly. So I've come up with this great line. Brazil: first it was a country, then it was a nut. Then it was a football team, next it was Terry Gilliam's motion picture event. Now, the Royal Bank of Scotland, in association with Picture Perfect Assurance brings you, Brazil, The Life Insurance Policy. For all those times when life's a beach.'

  She stopped. She looked at him. He finished, the smile on his face changed to a quizzical look.

  'What?' he asked.

  'You wrote that?' she asked.

  'Sure, Babe.'

  'That's so brilliant,' she gushed. 'I mean, really, you are so talented.'

  Hemingway's smiled returned, his biggest smile ever. The poor fool, completely sucked in.

  They started walking again.

  'Yeah,' he said, 'I guess it is pretty amazing.'

  And they laughed. Which was nice for Piers, seeing as he was about to die. Good to peg it with a smile on your face. There's not many of us will be able to say that.

  At this point there were another fifteen people on the embankment in their close vicinity. However, none of them were actually watching the seemingly happy couple, the woman with the black hair, snuggled into the tall, gangling man, and so their eyewitness accounts of the ensuing events would be shaky.

  'So, Miss Sweetlips,' said Hemingway, suddenly feeling imbued with the confidence of kings, 'how about heading back to my place and getting it on? I mean, no messing about, no foreplay, let's just do it.'

  Sweetlips laughed. She was almost genuinely amused.

  'Can't,' she said, however, with a damning finality.

  He was curious. All part of the old game, he presumed.

  'Why?'

  ''Cause,' she said, and she wrinkled her nose as if she was in a sitcom, 'I'm not a necrophiliac.'

  He screwed his face up, just a few seconds behind the curve.

  'But I'm not dead,' he said, rather stupidly.

  The look on Sweetlips' face changed. Laughter to death in an instant. He could see it, right there, a witness to the transformation. The microwave equivalent of Jekyll into Hyde. And the horror rose in his throat, the sure and certain knowledge that he was about to die. And the cry that he ejaculated was deflated and cramped as the knife was brought up and thrust deep into his stomach, up under the rib cage and into his chest. His body jerked up with an awkward movement, his mouth opened and only a dull croak emerged. And then, continuing the flowing movement of it all, Sweetlips had him up and over the barrier, and within three seconds of her taking the knife from within her light summer coat, Hemingway's body was splashing heavily into the water.

  She cried out for help, screaming, terrified because her boyfriend had fallen into the river. She screamed wonderfully well. The crowd gathered; none of them had seen a thing.

  Hemingway's body floated face down in the water. Sweetlips screamed even louder. Two men jumped into the river to try and rescue him. In a frantic flurry of arms and legs they swam to the body. They lifted the head out of the water and started dragging him to the side.

  And as they clumsily hauled the dead weight up onto some steps, and as the growing crowd of onlookers stared down and saw the knife embedded into his chest cavity, the screaming had stopped. And when, shocked and frightened, they looked round for the woman with the bobbed black hair who had been walking with the victim, they could not see her. For Harlequin Sweetlips had already moved on.

  ***

  Monk was back on the train one hour and fifty-three minutes later. She'd taken a call from Frankenstein telling her about the death on the Thames, a murder in early evening in a public place, that no one had witnessed; but she had been on the verge of leaving anyway.

  Margie Crane's house had given up few secrets. That could possibly have been because someone else had already been there ahead of her. The house – a tastefully decorated affair of beautiful paintings, rococo sculptures, Moroccan rugs, elegant furniture, with shelves of original editions of classic literature – had been completely trashed. Impossible to tell if it had been done during a search or purely as an act of vandalism. But it had been a thorough job, the entire house laid waste. The effect had been presented as vandalism, with paintings unnecessarily slashed, sculptures needlessly shattered, wallpaper stripped. But that did not mean the whole was not there to hide the piecework; the minute detail that might have been searched for, and might have been found.

  There were layers of dust on everything, a couple of months' worth of junk mail behind the door.

  Monk had removed all the letters that might be remotely personal, had decided against calling the local Feds, and headed for New Street.

  And as she sat on the train reading through the various pieces o
f correspondence, she discovered that Margie Crane had not been as dormant in the world of Thomas Bethlehem as Orwell had implied.

  Amazing, she thought, that some of these people realised that the Royal Mail still existed.

  His Face Contorted In Agony And Terror

  Barney Thomson leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. One day down as a marketing executive, who knew how many to go? How long would he last before he was drawn back to his life's natural place? More pointedly, how long before this whole thing came to a head and the purpose in his being dragged down to London became apparent?

  Maybe it wasn't so much the manipulation of the hair of men that grabbed him; more the position of a barber, standing behind another man whilst clutching a sharp instrument which could, under other circumstances, be used to slit his throat or be plunged into his head. Total control, that was what you possessed as a barber. Total control without necessarily having any inherent self-confidence or ability.

  Maybe he just felt the immediate pull back to the barber's chair because of habit; it was all he'd ever known.

  However, on this evening, that was not what exercised his mind. His head back, staring at the ceiling, he was thinking about the woman he had met in the bar two nights previously, and who he now felt with absolute assurance was at that moment standing outside his apartment, watching and waiting. He did not know if the wait was for him to emerge, or for him to turn the lights off and go to bed. Either way, he knew she was there, her eyes burrowing through the walls.

  Harlequin Sweetlips was a murderess if ever he had encountered one, and yet he had not even been close to telling the police sergeant about it. He had rationalised it with the obvious question: what exactly would he have said to her?

  Barney: Well, Sergeant, I had a drink with a woman who gave off the weirdest serial killer-type vibe.

  Monk: And how did that manifest itself exactly?

  Barney: You know, it was a thing. A vibe. A thing.

  Monk: I see. And how did you manage to pick up the vibe?

  Barney: It's hard to explain.

  Monk: Try me.

  Barney: My mother was a serial killer. I once killed a man who'd just murdered thirty-two monks. I attended a Murderers Anonymous group. I slept with a woman who killed eight members of the Scottish cabinet. I have been haunted by Satan and have seen his brutal and murderous work at close quarters. I'm the spawn of Death and murder has been my constant companion these last few years. It's always with me.

  Monk: Like backache.

  Barney: Exactly.

  Monk: Isn't there anything you can take for that?

  Barney: You mean, like Nurofen Serial Killer?

  Monk: Yeah.

  Barney: I don't think they make that yet.

  Monk: Too bad.

  It wasn't going to work. Harlequin Sweetlips was his problem for him to sort out. He'd dealt with her like before, and if this absurd life of his continued, he would do so again. And what if one of these days he never got to wake up in the morning, or the end came with his full cognisance, watching the knife descend from above, until it penetrated his forehead and closed his eyes forever? What if the end came in a fizz of slashing silver, his face contorted in agony and terror, his soul dispatched to the everlasting torment it more than likely deserved? What if one night his life was to be drawn to a swift and bloody conclusion, as the pitiless blade of mortality was plunged viciously into his horrified face? Would anyone care?

  His eyes were closed, and despite the feeling of unease about the presence of Harlequin Sweetlips outside, and despite his own thoughts of death which were becoming more and more grotesque, slowly he drifted off to sleep, and his head slumped down onto his chest.

  ***

  Harlequin Sweetlips flicked the cigarette butt onto the pavement, one of her classically staged movements. There was only one person watching, but Harry Monkton, on his way home to another undistinguished evening of PlayStation 3, was in no state of mind to be attracted by the balletically casual movements of a woman on a street corner, stubbing out a fag. He walked on. Sweetlips hadn't even noticed him in any case.

  She looked up at Barney's window, the light still burning behind the curtains. Watching TV, maybe fallen asleep. Checked her watch again. Past midnight. Barney Thomson wasn't the sit up late on his own watching TV personality type; he must've fallen asleep. So, would he want a late night visitor? Time to decide. Strangely she felt the flutter in her stomach, the old nervousness. Men; the only thing that had ever bothered her, that had ever tightened her nerves, made her mouth go dry.

  In her time she had risen to her feet and spoken to a room full of hundreds; she had appeared on live television; she had walked out on stage in front of eighty thousand people; she had met presidents and prime ministers, kings and queens; she had crossed borders with illegal arms and drugs; she had stared into the eyes of a South American militiaman with a machine gun, twenty kilos of uncut heroin strapped around her waist; and there hadn't been a tingle in her body. Her conviction had been total. But men, they were the driver of her nerves. Just the ones in which she was genuinely interested, the ones who got under her skin, not the pointless little Lost Boys of BF&C.

  There was a particular type she fell for and it hadn't happened often in her life; maybe twice before. And now, behind the walls across the street, there was a third. Fallen asleep on his settee, staring at the ceiling, thinking about me as much as I'm thinking about him, thought Harlequin Sweetlips. And, with fate playing its capricious games, it was almost inevitable that, as she had discovered the previous day, the man was working for BF&C, along with the abject collective. How foreseeable that had been; she had not met him in that bar for nothing. This man with whom she'd had no business in her entire life, was going to be as entangled in her immediate future as any of the clowns at the company, who would one by one receive their just desserts.

  And the thought of him, and the thought of their next contact, made her stomach feel uncomfortable and excited her at the same time. The nerves of infatuation, the first light and excitement of new love.

  She lit another cigarette. The image of the previous two occasions when she had fallen for a man – or rather the bloody image when she had put herself out of her misery – came to mind. She made the decision that she wasn't going to interrupt Barney Thomson's slumber this evening. The nerves in the pit of her stomach died away, and she turned and started the long walk back across London.

  ***

  Chief Superintendent Dick Strumpet, an absurd gentleman with an enormous moustache, was storming around the room waving wildly in a series of mad extravagant gestures, subjecting Frankenstein and Monk to the occasional volley of spittle, as it flew across the room in great arcs.

  'Fuck's sake!' he bellowed. 'What the fuck is that?'

  Frankenstein had bravely just allowed Monk to break the news about the Archbishop of Middlesex's fingerprints, and Strumpet was taking it much as they'd expected.

  'Don't shoot the messenger,' said Monk, who was a little daunted, but was at least able to keep telling herself that she was being shouted at by a man named Strumpet. How bad could it get? You can only ever allow yourself to be intimidated by shouting; how much you are daunted is within your power. Focus.

  Strumpet stopped his free-flowing movements around the room – Frankenstein felt like he was watching tennis; not that he'd ever watched tennis – and paused beside the picture of him meeting the Queen when she'd bestowed upon him the GCMG after a minor terrorist thing in the early nineties.

  'The messenger?' he screeched. 'I don't even know what a fucking messenger is, Sergeant. I suppose you think it's someone who's delivering a fucking message? Is that what you think?'

  Monk swallowed. Don't be intimidated by an idiot shouting.

  'Yes, sir,' she managed to say without her voice squeaking. Straight back, look him in the eye, be more forceful. He admires forceful women, that's what they say. Don't cower.

  'Well, you're not delivering a fuck
ing message!' he cried at the zenith of his lungs. 'Hello! You're delivering the progress report on a murder investigation! And now you're telling me that the main suspect is the Prime Minister's religious adviser, and one of the most respected theologians in the entire fucking country.'

  'No one's saying he's a suspect,' said Frankenstein, making a surprise interjection into the conversation. Monk glanced sideways.

  Strumpet moved his eyes from Monk to Frankenstein, very slowly, very deliberately, laced with menace. So he hoped. Frankenstein liked to keep his head down, but wasn't quite as enthralled by the masturbatory explosions of Strumpet's wrath.

  'What?' yelled Strumpet, cranking it up a notch. Voice now tagged with amazement. 'You don't think fingerprints, in themselves enough to get a conviction for just about any fucking crime on Planet Earth, are indicative of the man being a suspect?'

  'He's not on our list,' said Monk.

  'Yet,' added Frankenstein, 'something doesn't add up, so we need to speak to him, try to get to the bottom of what's going on.'

  'And how do you intend to do that?' asked Strumpet, voice now very low and threatening. The method actor's calm before the storm. 'Call me Dumbo,' he added, obscurely.

  'What?' asked Frankenstein.

  'I'm all ears ... ' said Strumpet, his voice dropping even lower.

  Monk kept the smile from her face. She could laugh about it later. Frankenstein stared balefully into his Superintendent's eyes.

  'I realise it's a sensitive matter, Sir ... '

  'Sensitive, he says.'

  'Which is why we're here. Rather than just charging blindly over there, I thought we should speak to you first.'

  'Oh, well that was fucking thoughtful.'

  The voice was starting to pick up again. Frankenstein decided to go on the offensive.

  'You can get mad and you can shout all you like, but the fact is that the guy's fingerprints are on at least the first murder weapon, possibly the second if they can get anything after the body's been in the river. Therefore we have to speak to him. There is no option.'