The Barbershop Seven (228 page)

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.

***

H
arlequin 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.

***

C
hief 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 fucking 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.'

Strumpet slumped into his chair and stared across the desk. Monk and Frankenstein both realised that the danger moment had passed and there'd been no total explosion. Still unsure of what was going to come next, but they both felt the tension ease.

'Right,' said Strumpet, eventually. 'You're right. Fucking crap. Just, you know, let me give it some thought.'

He stared away from them, descended from the height of his annoyance, suddenly distracted.

'You're right,' he added as an afterthought. 'But for the moment you need to be discreet. Take discreet to new levels. If this gets out we're all, all three of us, completely fucked.'

A pause.

'Tell no one,' said Strumpet, continuing at last. 'No one. You understand what I mean by that?'

They nodded. Strumpet abruptly waved his hand towards the door, feeling mild palpitations in his chest.

Monk and Frankenstein stood up and trooped out of the room, closing the door behind them. They stared at Mrs Trevanian, typing away furiously as ever, then walked through the outer office and into the corridor.

'Well, he didn't kill us,' said Monk.

'Not yet,' said Frankenstein. 'Just wait 'til you fuck up.'

'Thanks for the vote of confidence.'

Frankenstein pushed open a swing door and sent a young PC with a tray full of six coffees for a Burton.

––––––––

A
n emergency Saturday morning meeting at the offices of BF&C, all necessary parties in attendance. Apart, of course, from the perennially absent Thomas Bethlehem. Jude Orwell was nominally running the meeting, whilst in effect leaving most of the talking and organisation to Anthony Waugh, head of Miscellaneous Anthropoid Department. Barney Thomson, the latest wunderkind of the marketing world, was feeling a little out of place, but trying to focus on enjoying the surrealism of the moment. Take what comes, enjoy it while you can.

Once you've been sucked into the partner-kids-mortgage prison, seizing the day is no longer an option. But Barney was free of that. He could live his life like he was in a male cosmetics advert. He could go sailing and pull birds and climb mountains and drive fast cars and deep sea dive and paraglide. He could even help Exron launch their new range of cosmetics. Relax, he told himself as Waugh burbled on, and have fun.

However, when you're constantly having to tell yourself to relax and have fun, you're clearly doing neither.

John Wodehouse was in the groove. Getting back all the old confidence which he'd had in spades at Oxford and which had been torn from him the second he'd landed in the real world. But now he was zipping up the company pecking order and he felt empowered. Not for a second did he consider he was in line for the same fate as Fitzgerald or Hemingway. Imagined that the two who'd died had had it coming, and if not, had at least been careless. Not for him some indiscreet date with a strange woman. A straight bat, nothing stupid and he'd be all right. Like the date he had that night. Cast-iron, guaranteed safe as houses.

Spot of dinner, discuss a little bit of business, back to his place, perfectly secure on home ground, and then a solid all-nighter. Couldn't beat it.

There were two others in attendance at the meeting, both dragged in unexpectedly from the sidelines. The first was Marcus Blade, a veteran of the trade and a one-time legend, a man who had not been heard of in years, after becoming a victim of burn-out in the mid-'80s.

That he'd helped create the '80s, then collapsed before he could enjoy them, was the popular myth around him. Most people in the business had heard of him, and most believed him dead. However, he'd spent the previous twenty-two years living in a small flat in Fulham, smoking cheap dope, listening to Radio 4, and painting pictures of fruit and empty cigarette packets. Only forty-seven, a hero that no one knew still existed.

Waugh was pleased that he'd found him. It was the first offer Blade had had since the Thatcher years, and he'd surprised himself by accepting it without a second's thought. Orwell had been genuinely gobsmacked at his arrival; and naturally was exceptionally doubtful that the bloke would still have it. A lot had happened in twenty-two years. Still, it was cool to be sharing a room with a legend, and a distracted Orwell had allowed him to be installed as Deputy Chief of Staff.

Wodehouse, while wallowing in his new-found confidence, found himself staring at Blade every few seconds, having heard all about him and having previously belonged to the Blade-is-dead pattern of belief.

The other member present was the latest of the wet-behind-the-ears brigade, dragged from obscurity to help out at Other Contracts Department, as number two to Wodehouse. Nigel Achebe, a Nigerian lad who'd arrived from Kaduna on a student visa three years previously and who had worked every day since. Poised to go far, as long as he could evade the happy blade of Harlequin Sweetlips, of course.

So, a fine collective, gathered around the table to discuss the direction of BF&C, such as it was, i.e. downhill. Waugh, focused, poised, a coiled snake; Orwell, slightly in awe of Blade, but his mind mostly on his latest, so far unproductive, moves on Taylor Bergerac; Barney, trying to persuade himself he was having fun; Blade, in a non-specific state of confusion; Wodehouse, feeling the Force; Achebe, in awe of everything, trying to pull himself out of the burger joint and to stop wishing everyone a nice day; and bringing the collective up to the Magnificent 7, there was the absent, but still overbearing presence of Thomas Bethlehem. The Marcus Blade of his day, except that Bethlehem was no burn-out.