The Barbershop Seven (188 page)

'I could murder a cup of tea,' said Keanu. 'Get you one?'

Did you ever kill a man? Yes, he thought. But not murder. I never murdered anyone.

'OK,' said Barney, vaguely. 'Tea would be good thanks. I need it.'

Keanu laid the computer down on the counter and slung his jacket on the coat rack.

'Cool,' he said. 'You must've been busy.'

Barney watched him retreat into the back room, then turned and looked in the mirror, standing behind the chair in the usual position. Tired face, needing to shave, a mouth that seemed long, lips which had long forgotten how to smile. And eyes that were beginning to look haunted.

––––––––

T
he two police officers from Rutherglen had been doing the rounds all day and they were fed up. They'd started with the right amount of enthusiasm, but six and a half hours of listening to small town gossip had just about done for them. They were glad that the deal was for them to travel home every night, and that they wouldn't have to stay in Millport for the duration of the investigation. Two more houses to go, along the bottom end of George Street, round behind Kames, and then they'd be done. Report back to Proudfoot, tell her the little which they had to hand over, and they could be on the 5.15 back to Largs.

'Still make it home in time for the Celtic game,' said Constable Gemmill.

Constable Seymour stopped at the pink door and checked his notes.

'Not watching it,' he said.

'How come?'

'Alison wants to go out for dinner. Just the two of us, you know.'

Seymour lifted his hand to ring the bell. Gemmill caught his finger before he could press.

'Celtic are playing Benfica tonight. You're going out for dinner with the missus?'

Seymour shrugged.

'Yep,' he said. 'That's about the sum of it. She wants to talk.'

'Jesus,' muttered Gemmill, as Seymour pressed the bell. 'You've been married for twelve years. What can there be to talk about?'

Seymour shrugged.

'Women...' he said plaintively.

The door opened. An old woman stared at them suspiciously, looking them both up and down, inspecting every button on the two uniforms.

'The pair of you can just bugger off,' she said. 'I'm not paying.'

Gemmill stopped himself laughing. Rolled his eyes instead.

'We're conducting enquiries regarding the fishing vessel which was found abandoned off Kilchattan Bay yesterday morning.'

'Oh,' she muttered. 'Well, you'se had better come in then.'

And she turned, leaving the two policemen standing at the door.

***

T
hey sat in an old lounge on rugged sofas. Frayed floral carpets, wooden furniture, pill boxes and pottery, mirrors on the walls and pictures of young men on hay bales. Nelly Johnson was making the tea; Gemmill and Seymour were looking at their watches.

'We're going to miss that ferry if the old bag doesnae hurry her arse.'

Seymour glanced at his watch, then took a look at the old clock on the mantleshelf. He was close enough to read the small inscription on the clock face. Allison Clockmakers, Paisley, 1936. The room smelled of apples and pipe smoke. They wondered where Mr Johnson was.

Nelly bustled back into the room, carrying a laden tray. Five different types of cake, shortbread and mince pies. A large pot of tea.

'You'll have something to eat,' she said. An instruction rather than an offer.

Gemmill and Seymour started to tuck in. Nelly watched them approvingly.

'Mince pies,' said Gemmill, putting two on his plate. 'Haven't had one of them since...well, since last Christmas I suppose.'

'It's a piece of shite,' said Nelly. Gemmill and Seymour were both drawn to look at the rich, mousse-like chocolate cake sitting grandly in the middle of the tray.

'What is?' asked Seymour.

'Mince pies and the tyranny of the supermarkets,' said Nelly. 'I mean to fuck, try and get a mince pie on the 26th December and you'll have more luck finding a Fenian at Ibrox. Christmas over, they're gone. Just like that. I mean to fuck, mince pies are a year round treat, they're not just for Christmas.'

Gemmill and Seymour were staring at her, Gemmill with a mouth full of mince pie. She could see it churning around in his teeth as he gawped.

'They should do adverts. I mean, like they do with dogs. They could have a dog eating a mince pie in June, or some shite like that, then you get one of they famous bastards off the telly to say something like, dogs aren't just for Christmas...and neither are mince fucking pies.'

Gemmill and Seymour were still taciturn on the subject.

'Couldn't you lot do something about it?' she said. 'I mean, what do you do all day anyway?'

'Can I be blunt, Mrs Johnson?' said Gemmill. His name was Norman, but everyone called him Archie.

'Nelly,' she said. 'I hate anyone using that dead bastard's name. Been stuck with it all these years.'

'Nelly, let me be blunt.'

'What? About mince pies?'

'Not mince pies. I'm not here to talk about mince pies.'

'Neglecting your responsibilities...'

'Mince pies are not the responsibility of the police.'

'Fine, if that's...

'You said when we came in, and to be honest, it's kind of the only reason we're still here, despite the delicious tea and the entertaining conversation about Christmas cakes...'

'Mince pies aren't cakes.'

'Whatever...'

'To be honest they're not technically a pie either, not really, and obviously it's not like they're a fucking biscuit. I like to call them fancies. A Christmas fancy.'

'You said you knew something about the fishermen,' snapped Seymour, as he could sense that Gemmill had lost control.

Nelly Johnson stared at them from over the top of the mince pie from which she'd just taken a bite. Eyes narrowed. Seymour could imagine them turning red.

'Very well,' she said coldly. 'It's about old Stan Koppen, lives in one of those little holiday homes, round past the Westbourne.'

The policemen shook their heads.

'No one else mentioned old Stan Koppen to you?'

Another shrug. Gemmill checked his notebook, although it was entirely for show. No one had mentioned anything. She smiled. Loose tongue. She didn't owe Stan Koppen anything, even if he thought she did.

No honour among thieves.

'Everyone's too scared to open their mouths, but not me,' she muttered. 'Stan Koppen comes round here looking for trouble, he'll get a toe in the nuts from my size 6 Rosa Klebs.'

'Tell us about Stan Koppen,' said Gemmill, writing the name Stan Koppen in his book, wondering if this was them finally getting somewhere and if it was going to ultimately keep him from watching the football. Although, deep down, he presumed that she was about to tell them that Stan Koppen preferred almond slices to mince pies and therefore was a total idiot.

'Used to run a fishing boat out of the harbour. Did all right for himself, but you know, that was back in the days when there were fish in the sea, wasn't it? Nowadays, well God knows how they catch anything. It's all because of the Icelandics. And the Spanish.'

'He lost his boat?' asked Seymour.

'His wife died. Margaret. Stomach cancer. They seemed miserable as shite the two of them, but when she went he just went to pieces. He'd always been a drinker, but without her there to pour his hidden bottles of vodka down the drain, he turned into a walking vat of 100% proof. Gave the boat up before he lost it.'

'Who did he give the boat to?'

She stuffed the rest of the mince pie in her mouth and lifted a mug of tea.

'Ally Deuchar,' said Seymour.

'No,' replied Nelly Johnson through a mouthful of mincemeat. 'Went to a firm in Campbeltown. But since you mentioned Ally Deuchar. Comes a time when old Stan ends up in hospital with the drinking. The doctor gives him the usual spiel, you know the routine, if you don't stop drinking you're going to be pushing up the fucking tulips in two months, all the while Stan's swigging the fucking booze from a brown paper bag under the covers, 'cause he's a stupid old cunt. Then one day some bunch of religious weirdoes is doing the rounds, Jehovah's or born agains or Christ knows what. And you know, I mean fucking hell, who would've seen it coming, but old Stan fell for it. He fell for it! Hook, line and stinker. Next thing you know he's out of hospital telling every other bastard about the dangers of drinking and debauchery. What a plantpot.'

'Ally Deuchar?' asked Gemmill. One day, he was thinking, the old girl might actually get around to telling us something relevant. But it's highly unlikely.

'I'm getting there, for pity's sake,' she said, starting on another mince pie. 'Last year, part of the old bastard's thing, now that he was fit again and up and at 'em, ready for business, was wanting to get back out to sea. Course, he's got no money, and even though it's been only a few years since he left, the industry has crumbled in his absence. No eejit is willing to lend him the money to get another boat, and so the old bastard, the born again Christian, starts coveting the only boat left operating out of the town.'

'The Bitter Wind...'

'Exactamundo. The Bitter fucking Wind. Ally, of course, tells him to take a hike, and I think it was all a bit of a joke at first. Eventually though, when Stan the Man starts leaving headless chickens and shite like that outside Ally's house, Ally starts getting pissed off.'

'Headless chickens?' said Gemmill. For some reason felt the hairs rise on his neck. Pavlov's dog.

'All that kind of shite,' she said. 'Got to be quite a thing. A big town dispute. I mean, none of us actually knew what old Stan wanted. Did the big eejit really think that Ally was just going to give him the stupid boat?'

She stared at the two of them, as if expecting an answer to the rhetorical question.

'Well, it's too late now, in't it?' she added.

Gemmill finished scribbling in his notepad.

'And we'll find Mr Koppen round at one of the small chalets on the west side of the island?' asked Seymour.

'Aye,' she said. 'If you're brave enough to go there. The muppet'll probably put a curse on you, or some shite like yon.'

'That doesn't sound very Christian,' muttered Gemmill, grabbing another piece of cake and thinking that it might be time to take their leave.

'Religion,' said Nelly Johnson, 'we all make of it what we choose.'

Seymour snaffled another biscuit and stood up. Gemmill did the same, his mouth crammed with cake, and folded his notebook into his pocket. Nelly Johnson gave them the benefit of her eyebrow, and decided not to tell them all the other information which she would have happily divulged about the town if only they'd been prepared to wait and ask.

***

I
t was around this time that a lone yachtsman upon the Irish Sea, a man who had endured a hellish night of storms, and who had spent the day repairing what he could of his boat on the hoof, thought he saw something floating in the water, fifty or sixty yards to starboard. However, by the time he had manoeuvred his yacht in that direction, whatever it was had been dragged under by some current, or washed further away and out of sight. He searched for a short while, but finally gave up and turned back on his heading south.

And the further he got away from the point on the map where he had stopped to search, the more he persuaded himself that he didn't need to contact any authorities and that he really hadn't seen a headless body floating on the waves.

––––––––

E
nd of the day, the returns were coming in. Items from the Bitter Wind found on the beach, a few found out at sea. The love lives of the dead and missing, some gossip some scandal, but nothing to pin an investigation on. Gemmill and Seymour presented their story from Nelly Johnson, and no one else had anything with which to corroborate the tale. A few stories from up the coast, of womanising and late night card games, but nothing of note. No gambling debts, no drugs, no enraged husbands, no vendettas, no human trafficking.

Frankenstein was perched on the edge of a desk. Proudfoot was standing by the whiteboard, where she had been noting down points of interest. The whiteboard remained almost entirely white.

'So,' said Frankenstein, when the last of his team had finished, 'we've got an old, mentally-deranged, chicken-obsessed religious nutjob to speak to, and even that's based on the testimony of some fruitcake old asylum-case who couldn't be trusted to report back on the weather.'

Proudfoot glanced at the board. She had recovered a large number of items along the beach, but it hadn't been an act of looking for clues. She had only been recovering what had already been noted and then lost.

'I spoke to Mr Koppen yesterday,' said Gainsborough.

Frankenstein lifted his head.

'So he wasn't confessing to anything then?' he said.

'I've spoken to him before, you know, but there's nothing...I don't know, he's a bit weird. Comes into the station every now and again trying to give me a Bible. Wants me to help sinners to repent. Thinks there should be a Bible in every cell. I told him, we have someone in that cell once every three years. Go and stick your Bible in the public toilets at the pier.'

'You know of any connection between him and the trawler or its crew?'

'You know, I've thought about it, but it's like, you know, the guy was a fisherman, although before my time, and now he's just a guy who seems to have gone a bit senile. No one to look after him, to keep him in check, and he's away off on his God-kick and all that chicken stuff. Just a bit mental.'

Frankenstein stared at him intently, face deadpan.

'And, so, any connection between him and the trawler or its crew?' he repeated.

Gainsborough looked at the floor, thinking that he'd just answered that.

'No,' he said.

'How did he seem when you interviewed him? Evasive in any way? Did he hurry you out? Was he quite happy to talk about it?'

Gainsborough shrugged.

'Really, nothing exceptional. Didn't seem to care, really, and when I mentioned the guys, he just started going on about how we'll all be judged by God, and all that kind of malarkey. Like, you know, whatever.'