The Barbershop Seven (220 page)

'You could be freelance, getting paid for each individual job,' she said with a tone. 'I'm establishing that you're paid by the company, and the employees don't pay for the haircuts themselves.'

Barney smiled.

'Fair point,' he said. 'I'm paid a flat wage, the employees make appointments, they get their hair cut for free.'

'Any of them tip?' she asked, expecting that the type of person employed in this company would take the opportunity not to.

'Not yet,' said Barney.

'How long have you worked here?' she asked, this time venturing a glance over her shoulder. Caught his eye, saw that look again, confirmed the fact that there might be a thing there, and she turned away.

'This is my second day,' said Barney.

This time she turned all the way round.

'You're kidding me?'

'Is that a disappointment to you?' asked Barney.

'What happened to the last barber?' said Monk.

'I'm the first.'

She held his gaze and then laughed, thinking of Frankenstein and his brilliant idea of her speaking to the guy who does the hair, and all the information he'd have at his fingertips.

'You've got a nice smile,' said Barney from nowhere, and it slowly faded from her lips.

'Thank you.'

Another look exchanged.

'Why are you telling me that?' she said suddenly.

'Because you have.'

'So how many haircuts have you done in the last two days?' she asked, again at a rush. Get the questions back on track, stop acting like an idiot.

'About twelve,' said Barney. 'Couldn't tell you all the names, but if you speak to Madonna on the front desk, she's probably got a note of them.'

And Monk found herself exercising that nice smile of hers again. Madonna on the front desk ...

'You do Hugo Fitzgerald?' she asked.

'Aye,' said Barney. 'Did a good job too. Complete waste.'

She slowly tapped a pen on the notebook she'd taken from her pocket, whilst standing at the window.

'Anyone talking about his murder today?' she asked.

Barney smiled again. Maybe he was enjoying the police interview this time. Maybe he was just enjoying it because of Daniella Monk. She could be asking him anything. All words would sound sweet from those lips.

Jesus, Barney, he thought, get a grip of yourself.

'Not in any proactive sense,' he said. 'There were no confessions, nor I'm afraid, any implicating of anyone else in the company. Bit disappointing really.'

Monk took the sarcasm this time, slipped the notebook into her pocket. The guy's second day on the job. What was the point? Maybe in a month's time, if they still hadn't got anywhere, he might be useful; might have heard something in those intervening weeks.

'I'll leave you to it,' she said. 'I should be getting back to the station.'

She took her eyes from his and walked past him to the door. Didn't turn, door open.

'D'you want to have dinner tonight?' said Barney to her back. Well, why not? Nothing ventured
.

She paused, turned, a slight stiffening of the frame.

'Pardon me?' she said, although of course she had heard just fine and it was entirely a giving-herself-extra-time manoeuvre.

'Dinner?' said Barney. 'I went to a Japanese place last night. Thought I'd go back. Exceptional.'

She stalled, although this time just by staring at him a bit vaguely. You don't have to know someone to fall in love. It's in the look in the eyes, the smile, the words playing in your head.

'Can't,' she said automatically. Didn't know why. Defence mechanism. She contemplated some further explanation, but then decided that it wasn't necessary, and quickly turned once more and was gone.

Barney watched the door for a while, wondering if she was going to come back in, but knowing that she wouldn't. Still, he thought, as he looked out at the damn clouds, which were as bleak as they'd been a minute earlier, here he was, back in the old routine, and it was a fair bet that he'd be seeing more of Daniella Monk.

***

M
atty Goldbeck, a strange little man who did things with powder and sprays and microscopes, one of the army of SOCOs who'd been all over the crime scene, walked into Frankenstein's office to find him sitting in the same position as Monk had left him some time earlier.

'Got a match on the fingerprints,' said Goldbeck. Not one for introductions.

'God, what happened?' said Frankenstein. 'Usually takes you comedians about six days to come up with that kind of stuff.'

'Fuck you,' said Goldbeck, going straight into the ready banter common between police officers and scientists.

'Yeah, whatever,' said Frankenstein. 'Anyone we know?'

Goldbeck looked down at the paper in his hands, bearing the two representations of the matching prints. He lifted his head and looked at Frankenstein.

'Sort of. You're not going to like it.'

'It's not my mother again, is it?'

'The Archbishop of Middlesex,' said Goldbeck, and he shrugged and tossed the piece of paper down onto Frankenstein's desk.

Frankenstein glanced up at Goldbeck.

'Why am I not going to like that? Why do you suppose I even give a shit? You think I'm religious or something? Jesus.'

'He's the PM's personal religious adviser.'

Frankenstein wanted to curse again and say that he didn't care, but it wasn't like that didn't make a difference. He closed his eyes. Why couldn't it just have been a straightforward brutal murder enquiry? Fun for everyone. In five seconds Goldbeck had introduced politics
and
religion.

'Fuck,' he said eventually. 'I don't know anything about that shit. Tell me.'

Goldbeck dragged a chair towards him with his right foot and sat down across the desk.

'You know about the whole turmoil within the Anglican church ... ' he began, but was stopped by the look on Frankenstein's face. 'Whatever. There's turmoil in the Anglican church. Factions. These people are bastards, brutal. Anyway, vicious religious infighting, go figure. They created a new Archbishopric last year, a kind of compromise position. Middlesex, based at St Paul's.'

'And he's adviser to the PM?' said Frankenstein.

'Yep.'

'And his fingerprints are all over the weapon that was used to murder Hugo Fitzgerald?'

'Yep.'

'Holy fucking crap,' said Frankenstein softly, voice deep with melancholic resignation. He sat forward, shoulders hunched, rested his forearms on the desk.

'Now, don't bite my arse off, but I have to ask. Are you sure?'

Goldbeck smirked. 'Fair question,' he said. 'Yes, I'm sure.'

Frankenstein let out another long sigh, slowly let his forehead drop to the desk. He banged it a couple of times then sat up straight, looked across the desk at Goldbeck.

'Jesus fucking Christ,' he said. 'I mean, for a start, why on earth do we have the fingerprints of an Anglican Archbishop on file in the first place?'

'He was stopped for drink driving a couple of years ago.'

'Ah.'

Frankenstein stood up, turned and looked through the small window out into the grey of a bleak afternoon in London.

'Bollocks.'

He heard Goldbeck push back his chair, and then the slow footsteps retreat from his office as Goldbeck threw a 'see you' over his shoulder. Frankenstein didn't turn. He looked out at the grey clouds, already beginning to accept that there was no way he possessed the delicacy which was going to be required in handling this situation.

––––––––

H
arlequin Sweetlips had had an excellent, exhilarating day. Still had the monumental rush, the blood pumping, sheer visceral excitement of the kill the night before. Could feel the stem of the wine glass smoothly penetrating the skull. That explicit moment of death, when the weapon is an extension of the hand and the arm and the intention and the desire, and it all becomes one. Better than any other feeling in the world.

She had walked the streets of the city all day, looking people in the eye, daring them to know what she had done, loving the thrill of knowing what no one else knew; that she was the killer about whom they were reading in the Standard.

She stepped into the bar and looked quickly around the room. Music not too loud, a decent crowd in, a few full tables, a couple of guys sitting at the bar. Had decided not to head back to Paris that evening, and didn't yet feel like going to her London home to sit alone in her apartment, no matter how impossibly chic it was. So, needed to sit in the company of her fantastic fellow man. Didn't have to talk to any of them, just didn't want to be alone. The demons came when she was alone, and they were forever nasty.

Demons are as demons do.

She approached the bar and sat down. Barman still busy with an order of two Buds and some horrible vodka mixer, the idea for which had been conjured up in the offices of the largest marketing organisation in London. He cast a glance her way, acknowledged her, and quickened the delivery of his current order so that he could get around to her. Didn't like to keep the ladies waiting, particularly ones who looked like Harlequin Sweetlips.

Given a few seconds to spare, she held her hands out in front of her and studied her nails. Delicious varnish, a very dark red. Each nail approximately half a centimetre from the end of the finger. Good quality uniformity across both hands, but then if you're going to pay £1700 for a manicure it's got to be a pretty damn good one. And underneath the top quality varnish, her fingers still shook; an imperceptible tremble. Wouldn't have known it was there, except that she could feel it. She knew her whole body was still shaking, from her heart to the ends of her toes. A good vibration, in tune with the buzzing in her head.

She caught the next man along at the bar staring at her, strange look in his eye. He turned away as soon as she noticed him, but she'd seen the light of recognition and it increased the pounding in her chest. It'd been a fleeting glance, less than a second, but she'd read it. She knew the human condition; she knew what went on in the minds of men. This bloke hadn't looked at her and thought the usual things that men thought when they saw Harlequin Sweetlips. He hadn't used his nanosecond to undress her or to wonder what kind of performance she'd put up in bed. He hadn't exercised a little guilt and included his wife or girlfriend in his ephemeral fantasy with this woman at the bar. He hadn't been thinking about sex in any form, which was the case with every other man she met. She was gorgeous and she gave off the vibe. But this guy hadn't got it, or if he had, he'd seen something else which had overridden it.

She swallowed. She let her hands rest on the bar. Tapped a fingernail on the counter.
She don't like California, it's cold and it's damp ...
Looked at the row of single malts behind the bar. Hadn't touched them in three years. Best not to now.

'What can I get you, love?'

Violently snapped from her reverie, so sudden that she felt it in the tension in her neck. She stared at the barman, taking a few seconds to focus; trying to get her mind off the troubled feeling which had immediately begun to haunt her with the glance from the man sitting three yards away, now toying with a bottle of Miller.

'Vodka tonic?' she said, almost as if expecting them not to have it.

'Sure,' said the barman.

'Long glass, loads of ice,' said Sweetlips.

'Always,' he said.

There passed some pointless look between them and he turned to fetch the long glass. She tried to stop herself looking along the bar again, and managed it for less than a second. The man who had disconcerted her so much was doing that man-at-a-bar thing, staring blankly at the marks in the wood, bottle in hand, tapping it gently on the surface. Thinking about nothing at all, some might say, but Harlequin Sweetlips knew he was thinking about her.

Her drink appeared in front of her, and once again she was brought sharply back to focus, and she wondered how long she'd been staring.

'Six-eighty, please, love,' said the barkeep, and Sweetlips dug into her pocket for a ten pound note. She looked back along the bar, as the barkeep felt the whisper of jealousy; here was a spectacularly attractive woman who was going to be sharing her secrets with someone at his bar other than him.

She took a sip from her drink, the first cold fantastic touch on her tongue and her throat immediately calming the anxiety. Wintry, fresh alcohol. This time she didn't remove her eyes from him, no intention of doing so until he looked at her.

The man could feel her gaze burrowing into the side of his head. Had recognised the colour of the murderer, had recognised from the look in her eye that she had seen right through him, had known that he had known her. The longer his life went on, the more encounters he had with serial murderers, the more he stumbled across those who would cry havoc and wreak terrible vengeance on society for whatever ailed their minds, the more he recognised those murderers, possibly even before they had descended into the hell which led them to their crimes.

He turned finally and looked her straight in the eye; immediately saw into the depths, saw such brutality and such blunt malignancy of spirit that he felt a sudden turning in the stomach, taking him by surprise, because he hadn't thought that anything could scare him anymore.

He had recognised the evil within.

'What are you doing later?' asked Harlequin Sweetlips, regaining her confidence, feeling the power restored.

He smiled, relaxing with the words. No matter the depths of malevolence, words were only ever words. No intention was ever good or bad, only ever expedient. She may have represented some evil greater than even he had ever come across, but what could she do to him that had not been done before? Were not his wanderings so lonely and distracted and forlorn, that it would be to his benefit for someone to bring them to a necessary conclusion?

He put the bottle to his mouth, tipping the last of it down his throat. Settled it back on the counter, rose from his chair. Did up the buttons on his coat against the rain which he presumed would still be falling outside, lifted his collar and finally turned to face her.