The Barbershop Seven (190 page)

'I had my own terms,' he said. No tone.

'And I'm asking you what they were.'

He glanced at her, a quick, shifty look, then started turning the Bible over in his hands.

'Business is business,' he said eventually. 'I don't have to tell you nothing I don't want to.' Particularly when it related to the illegal sideline of the gang of ten who occasionally met in the room above the Incidental Mermaid.

'Anything,' growled Frankenstein.

'What?'

'You don't have to tell us anything you don't want to, not nothing. Why can't people speak properly anymore? I mean, how fucking hard can it be?'

'When was the last time you spoke to Mr Deuchar about the Bitter Wind?' asked Proudfoot, trying to stay on track.

Koppen stared at Frankenstein, trying to work the man out. He was doomed to failure, something he had already realised, and so he could feel another quote coming on. However, for some reason when it came out, all he could think of at the time was, 'My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins.' He held the bible aloft as he said it to give the quotation some extra gravitas.

'If you think you're getting the porn back on,' said Frankenstein, 'you can fuck off.'

'I'll stick the kettle on,' said Proudfoot. 'Coffee.'

She walked into the kitchenette. Frankenstein stared loathingly at Koppen. Koppen randomly opened the Bible, finding himself at Isaiah chapter 28. We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement.

He raised his eyes, made some sort of contact with Frankenstein, and then looked back at the well thumbed pages of the Bible which he'd had since his Christening day in 1925.

***

F
rankenstein and Proudfoot were walking slowly past the Westbourne on their way back to town. An hour later. They had extracted little, if any, further information from Koppen in that time. Frankenstein took it all in, though, all the verbal feints and misinformation and bluster. He never failed to impress Proudfoot with the way he could drag up some piece of knowledge which had seemed completely trivial and unimportant at the time.

'I'm guessing,' said Frankenstein, 'that it's going to contravene some sort of human rights directive if we just nick the bastard and feed him a truth serum.'

'You think?'

'And all that Bible shite. Didn't believe a word of it. He's not a religious nutter, he's just a lying bag of crap.'

Proudfoot looked out into the mist as they walked. She hadn't thought that the man's tale of religious conversion had been credible, but neither did she suspect him of complicity in the deaths and disappearance of the crew of the Bitter Wind.

'You know who he is?' she said.

'I'm all ears,' said Frankenstein.

'He's like the mean-looking guy in Scooby Doo. The guy who's rude to the kids and looks like he's got a lot to hide. He's grumpy, usually tells a tall tale about the local ghost. But you know, he never turns out to be the guy under the mask at the end. It's always the mild-mannered puny student who thinks he's going to inherit a million dollars.'

Frankenstein scuffed his shoes, grunted. Checked his watch, relieved to see that there was still plenty of time to have a pint.

'I can see your point,' he said. 'But for every episode like that, there's a Gold Paw, where the mean guy's also the bad guy.'

She regarded him with new respect. 'Gold Paw?'

'Don't look at me in that way, Sergeant,' he said.

'What?'

'You're looking at me like, cool, he's an old fucking geezer and yet he has a full and deep understanding of Scooby Doo as a cultural reference. Piss off. Condescending bastard.'

She laughed. They reached the thirty mile an hour sign signifying the start of the town.

'As my line manager, are you allowed to call me a condescending bastard?'

He shook his head. Cider, maybe he'd have a pint of cider.

'Think I'll bring a complaint of harassment against you,' she said, still smiling.

'You can fuck right off.'

They walked on, Proudfoot laughing lightly.

––––––––

N
elly Johnson was painting. Everyone should have a hobby. Just before eleven-thirty. Nelly didn't do mornings, working to a different clock from most people. Up at two in the afternoon, retreated to bed around six a.m. Eight hours sleep. Nelly was old, never sure that she needed that much, but usually found it hard to get up to face the day. In winter she saw two hours of light. Her daughter, who lived in Kilmarnock, thought her mother was weird. Used to smoke rolled up newspaper. Had thought about getting her committed. Really she just wanted to sell the house and take the money. Hoped that her mother would die soon and save her the effort of having her put away.

She was about to get her wish, although Nelly's will would be ultimately disappointing for her.

There was a noise in the kitchen, a stumble, the low whisper of a curse. Nelly looked round. She was in her front room, bathed in artificial light, painting a curious scene of Gothic depravity. Goblins, blood, naked witches, witches' brew...

Nelly pursed her lips. Intruder. No skip of the heart, although she did briefly wonder if she should open the curtains in the room she was sitting in, so that whatever was about to happen would be in full view of the road. Not that there would be too many people abroad on George Street at this time in the evening.

The kitchen door creaked. Nelly gripped her paint brush. Doesn't sound like much, but bury one in your eye and see how much it'll upset your equilibrium. She had a thought, the sort of thought which it didn't take much for her to have. Stuck the second and third fingers on her right hand into the red paint and drew two lines on either cheek. Next into the blue and then she had a purplish streak across her forehead.

Footsteps in the hall. She contemplated a brush in each hand, decided to stick with just the one. A free hand is worth a thousand swords. Isn't that what the ancients used to say? Probably not, but it's the kind of thing the ancients in Nelly's world would have said.

She looked at her painting and noticed a tiny detail amiss in amongst her epic triangular exposition of Sapphic batcave death rock.

'Nelly?'

She didn't recognise the voice. Muffled. She leant forward and touched up the small area of dark grey in amongst the tangle of arms and legs. The door to the sitting room was pushed open and a man walked into the room. Stopped in the doorway. Nelly looked round from behind her painting.

An old man dressed all in black. Absurd hair, thin on top, long down to his neck. A long, thin beard. She shuddered for a second, thinking that it might be Mr Johnson returned from the grave, then she realised that for a kick-off he didn't look anything like Mr Johnson, and secondly, it was a mask. Just a guy in a mask. More or less what she had been expecting, from the moment she had heard the noise in the kitchen. Consequently, what with her face made up in the manner of a regulation 1950's Hollywood Red Indian, the intruder got more of a fright than Nelly.

'Bloody hell,' he muttered through the latex, before managing to compose himself.

'Who the fuck are you?' demanded Nelly, clutching her paintbrush, but not rising from her chair. 'Are you from the government? Here about the mince pies?'

'Nelly,' said the guy. Holes for the eyes and mouth. He was clutching an axe, the same brute of a weapon which had done for the still undiscovered Ward Bracken the previous evening.

'Big fucking brains on you,' said Nelly. 'Bugger off.'

The guy moved forward. Still, strangely, there seemed nothing particularly menacing about him. Despite the axe.

'What's with the mask?' said Nelly. 'You look like a drooling old gipper, all incontinence pants and falling asleep in your soup.'

'You'd know about that,' he said.

Nelly was getting mad, not scared. She stood up and raised the paint brush above her head. Lips curled in a snarl. The old man hesitated before the kill.

'Are you going to say what this is about before you kill me, or are you too pusillanimous even for that, you stupid prick?'

Took aim at his right eye.

'I wanted to murder for my own satisfaction,' said the old man, and she could sense the smile and the sweat behind the plastic.

'Oh for God's sake,' muttered Nelly, 'here we go, quoting Russian literature pish. Well you can go and stick your Dos—'

The axe fell swiftly, moving through the air with the romantic swoosh of a cricket bat swinging through the line of the ball and hitting a beautiful boundary back over the bowler's head.

Nelly's head spun into the air, blood spraying in a mathematically precise parabola around the room, bounced off the painting and fell with a thump onto the floor. Eyes open, still angry. Her body stayed inert in the seat for a second, then the arm fell to the side and the movement toppled the body over and it fell heavily onto the floor beside the head.

He stood over her body. Making sure she was dead. You never knew with Nelly. Then he straightened up, chest thumping with the excitement of the kill. Wiped the blade of the axe on the curtains. Then, almost as an afterthought, he walked quickly across the room, turned out the light, and then back and pulled the curtains to the side. Wanted the body to be discovered in the morning. Still a little disappointed that his first work of atrocity had not yet been spotted. He wanted the town to get on with the business of being in ferment and turmoil.

Another few seconds, a last glance around the room in the dim light from the street, and then he turned and walked quickly back through the house to the kitchen.

––––––––

A
grim morning. Low clouds but no rain, an edgy sea. News of the death of Nelly Johnson had spread quickly around the town.

It had happened as the killer had supposed, at dawn's first light. A little before eight o'clock, Jacob Ecclesiastics had been meandering slowly along that end of George Street, looking in windows, staring at bushes. On his way to work at a small garage behind Kames Bay, taking his time, not wanting to get there. Wishing he was still in bed, dreaming of a canal boat holiday in Norfolk, being that that was what he thought about when his mind was not required to be engaged on anything else.

He had looked in Nelly Johnson's window. The scene had registered but not been computed. He had walked on. Ten slow yards, and then he'd turned back. When he'd had a good look, and realised that he was looking at what he thought he was looking at, he had been fascinated rather than nauseated. And it was going to mean that he would have to take the morning off work.

***

'T
his,' said Frankenstein, waving a hand over the scene of grotesque murder, 'this never happened on Scooby Doo.'

Proudfoot glanced round at Frankenstein. Almost allowed herself to smile at the stupidity of the remark, but something about the decapitated head kept the smile from her face.

Nelly Johnson's house was awash with police, scenes of crime officers, photographers and the bloody remnants of her fastidious slaying. George Street was closed off, the press and public amassed a short distance from Nelly's house. Several of the town's people were there, hoping to catch a glimpse of Nelly dead. Just to make sure.

'He's in the kitchen?' said Frankenstein.

'Who?' asked Proudfoot, recognising one of those moments when Frankenstein was thinking too fast for his mouth.

'The guy who found......this.'

Proudfoot nodded.

'If you're going to speak to him, I think I'll join you,' she said. 'I've seen enough of this kind of thing before.'

Frankenstein gave her a quick glance and then picked his way between the blood spatters and forensics crew back out the room. Proudfoot followed, eyes down, watching where she was putting her feet, trying not to think about what she was in the middle of.

It had been long enough for her to forget, long enough for the psychiatry sessions to have been effective. She always knew, however, that the bandage over the wound had been slight.

There were four people in the small kitchen. Two forensics officers methodically clue searching, another constable standing guard on Jacob Ecclesiastics, and the witness himself, looking quite happy, sitting back, drinking a cup of tea. Proudfoot leant against the fridge. Frankenstein folded his arms. Ecclesiastics looked over the rim of his plain, white IKEA mug.

'You're the guy who discovered the body?' said Frankenstein.

'Aye.'

Frankenstein held his gaze for a few seconds and then glanced at his notebook.

'Jacob Ecclesiastics? What the fuck kind of name is that?'

Frankenstein usually only asked that question of people who he thought didn't know that he was named after a mythical, mad German scientist.

'That's good coming from you,' said Ecclesiastics.

There was, of course, no one on the island who didn't already know that there was a Detective Chief Inspector Frankenstein on the loose in the town.

'Whatever. You discovered the body and then proceeded to call several of your friends to come and see before you called the police, is that right?'

Ecclesiastics smiled, the smile mostly directed at Proudfoot. He winked at her. Proudfoot's face was blank.

'What was your thought process exactly?' said Frankenstein. 'You imagined we'd be happy for you to do that?”

Ecclesiastics thought about it for a while and then shrugged.

'It's just life, you know. Life, life itself, I mean actual life, is a reality TV show. It's all just, like, you know, for entertainment purposes. And let's face it, she was dead anyway, right? There was no business of rushing her to hospital to try to put her head back on. Dead.'

'What if the killer had still been on the premises?' snapped Proudfoot, annoyed by his flippancy. 'What if there had been some time-critical piece of evidence?'

Ecclesiastics sipped his tea, staring at Proudfoot's shoes. Finally he shrugged again.

'Don't know,' he said. 'But you can see my point, though, eh? Here we have this rancid old bag, the most hated woman in the town, put to the slaughter in brutal fashion. I know that the second you lot are round, wham, the place is closed off. But I also know my mates are going to want to have a gander at it, maybe take a few shots on the old mobiles. Seriously, what do you expect a lad to do? Eh?'