Curse Of The Clown

by Douglas Lindsay

  ‘Away from the door, you two,’ he said to Gainsborough and Monk, and led them towards the window.

  Those sitting at tables got up and joined them, and now everyone was shining a torch, all except George Walker. Walker was still using a Nokia brick phone, a model dating from 1853.

  ‘We all good?’ asked Solomon, and everyone replied with a nod or a yes or an arf or a murmur, no voice anything other than clipped and nervous. Solomon noticed Sophia gripping Keanu’s arm, his hand placed reassuringly on hers.

  You’re fucked, thought Solomon, very possibly we all are, and he was glad that no one could properly see his face.

  ‘Constable, Barney,’ he began, ‘I need you two to stay up here. Keep everyone safe. That door there’s the only way out?’ he asked, shining his torch to the back of the room.

  And that was the moment Barney was officially deputised, Solomon seeing him no differently from Constable Gainsborough. A body to be instructed, a deputy to play his part. No terms and conditions, no ceremony, no blade placed upon his shoulder. Their doom was upon them, and Barney had been called to serve.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gainsborough. Voice strained. ‘The other door’s the toilet, no other way in there.’

  ‘No window?’

  ‘It’s internal,’ said Gainsborough. ‘Fan rattles on when you go in.’

  ‘Right. Keep everyone here, away from the door. Keep a couple of torches trained on the door at all times. Have another one going round the room. Just because we don’t think there’s another way in here, doesn’t mean someone doesn’t know something we don’t.’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Solomon, ‘you and I need to go downstairs.’

  ‘Boss,’ said Monk, who had turned her thoughts to it, and was already picturing the lay out.

  The long bar, the bottles stacked up behind, the seven or eight tables, the dartboard, the little-used jukebox, the central pillar, the door, the large blanked-out window, the short corridor leading to three doors at the rear of the room. Two toilets, and the kitchen.

  ‘How many people were down there when you just passed through?’ asked Monk, shining her torch towards Gainsborough, keeping the beam low, out of his eyes.

  ‘More or less deserted,’ he said. ‘There was Maggie, of course, and there was some guy on his own I didn’t recognise, and there was Tom Wagstaff and his wife, but they were just leaving, I think.’

  ‘Who was the guy you didn’t recognise?’ asked Solomon.

  ‘I didn’t recognise him,’ said Gainsborough, unable to keep the ‘duh’ out of his tone, despite the circumstances.

  ‘Jesus,’ muttered Solomon. ‘Was he young, old, big, small, Asian, African, pasty white Scottish...? I don’t know, was he a Klingon fucking dwarf?’

  ‘Right,’ said Gainsborough. ‘He was, like, fifty maybe. Just a guy. Huddled over a pint, looking at his phone.’

  ‘Could it have been Norman?’

  Gainsborough stared at him, beginning to feel stupid. Could it have been Norman?

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Fuck,’ muttered Solomon, then, ‘D’you know if there’s a rear entrance downstairs?’

  ‘There is,’ said Monk. ‘There’s a kitchen, with a door out to a small car park, bins and whatnot. Come on, sir, we should get down there.’

  ‘Yep.’

  At the same time, Barney caught the cry of no! on his lips. She had a job to do, and now he’d been given his job to do, and he just had to hope they’d get to meet at the other end.

  ‘Constable, call this in, right now. Get as many people over here as you can. Code 2-50.’

  ‘Boss,’ said Gainsborough, lifting his phone.

  Solomon and Monk broke away from the group. In the strange half-light of the torches and street lamps Monk and Barney shared a last glance, nervy and rushed, no Disney moment where they communicated their innermost feelings of friendship, love and trust.

  Across the room, footsteps quiet through the night, a second’s pause, fingers on the handle, and then Solomon, braced for the worst, quickly opened the door.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, through gritted teeth.

  38

  Readers Should Note This Chapter

  Contains Flashing Images

  There was no door at the foot of the stairs, and from there came the electric blue pulse of a strobe light, the light chaotic on the walls.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Solomon. ‘Come on, Sergeant. Close the door.’

  He took a quick step down the stairs, Monk directly behind him, shutting the door and cutting off the horror of the light to those in the top room, Barney cursing silently as they went.

  One step, two steps. Two at a time. Five, six, seven. Another two. Another two, and Solomon was at the foot of the stairs. He stopped, face set hard. Looked at the bar area, the cacophony of lights. They suggested sound, but the bar was now in silence.

  There was a body hanging from a wooden beam that ran the length of the room. Rope around the neck, head slumped, in the strange light, on and off, on and off, flashing, the body spinning in intermittent horror, jumping from one turn to the next, dark, black blood dripping down the face, across the white shirt. Naked below the waist. Blood down the legs, dripping from the feet, the penis severed.

  A figure behind the bar, pressed against the wall beside the shelves of whisky bottles. Maggie. In the bizarre light she looked haunted, pushed so hard against the wall it was as though it was swallowing her up. She was terrified. A trembling hand at her mouth. Staring at Solomon and Monk, eyes wide, arms shaking.

  ‘Jesus,’ finally escaped Solomon’s lips.

  They both looked around the room, flashing lights and shadows, ghosts everywhere. No other people, but the horror of confused movement all over.

  ‘Don’t see anything,’ said Solomon.

  ‘No.’

  They couldn’t move.

  Maggie huddled back. The body in the middle circled slowly, blood dripping from naked legs, bare feet.

  Solomon was staring at it, and suddenly he was drawn forward. A closer look. Sharp glances left and right, an eye on the corridor at the rear of the room, moving shadows everywhere, and then he stood next to the hanged man, the corpse’s head only a few inches higher than his own. To his left, a balloon moving against the ceiling, the penis dangling beneath. This time, however, no card attached to the string.

  Monk approached with trepidation from behind, eyes darting all around. Pounding heart, ice cold skin, terror in her spine. She stood beside Solomon, but did not look at the hanged man. Couldn’t focus on anything, while trying to see everything.

  The silence was awful, terrifying, bizarre in its totality. The colour and the strobe, the tumult of light, demanded noise.

  Monk’s eyes finally settled on Maggie, the fearful presence behind the bar. Maggie’s eyes shifted quickly, jibber-jabbering to the left, behind Monk, to the passageway at the rear of the room. Monk’s head snapped round, eyes back, searching for movement in the pulsing light, but there was nothing.

  ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ said Solomon.

  Monk was still searching behind them, couldn’t make anything out. Everything moved, everything was terrifying, nothing made her scream.

  ‘What?’ she said, not yet turning.

  She looked hurriedly at Maggie, whose eyes were wide, her look now directed behind the bar.

  ‘You have got to be fucking kidding me,’ Solomon repeated.

  Now Monk looked back at him. Solomon standing still, right arm lifted to the hanged man as though about to touch him, just stopping short.

  ‘What?’

  Nothing. A moment. Solomon pointed at the corpse.

  ‘It’s Norman,’ he said. ‘It’s fucking Norman.’

  Monk found herself staring blankly at Solomon first of all, then finally she forced herself to look at the face of the hanged man.

  It was Norman. Clear as the blood that dripped down his body, even in this idiocy of
light and silence.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said.

  Norman’s face briefly trapped her there, and then she whirled quickly back to Maggie, and then she was looking behind herself, fearful and tense, every muscle ready to fight.

  The light bounced around the room. Everything moved.

  ‘Where is he?’ said Monk.

  Question directed at Maggie, eyes aimed at the menace of the corridor doors.

  ‘Maggie! Where is he?’

  She turned now. Maggie’s face still contorted in fear. A desperate, strangled cry from her lips. Hand to her mouth.

  Monk and Maggie’s eyes locked.

  Maggie’s eyes wide. They dropped. Looked in terror down at the ground.

  She was gone.

  Her whole body fell in a second. Shock on her face as she disappeared. Hair flew. A crash as she hit the ground. A scream.

  Silence.

  ‘Fuck.’

  The low mutter, Monk or Solomon, didn’t matter. They ran the few yards. Monk coming round the end of the bar, Solomon jumping up, landing on the counter with his backside, grabbing the handle of the draft McEwan’s, swinging himself quickly over the counter and behind the bar.

  There was Maggie, throat slit, blood still pulsing from the wound. Eyes open, staring at Solomon, looking right through him. Crouching over her a small creature, human in form, childlike in height, though bulky and muscular. The face grinning at them, lips painted into a wide smile, white face, dark eyes.

  Monk and Solomon were frozen, even the word ‘Jesus’ stalling on Solomon’s lips. The Klown grinned wickedly, then bounced up on its haunches, jumped from that position up onto the bar, and then brought itself up to its full height. Its head did not come close to touching the ceiling.

  After the flurry of violence, the silence.

  The Klown looked down on his dominion, the detectives stared at him from behind the bar, no one sure of the next move. The lights still sputtered, the Klown’s teeth shone effervescent and white, on off, on off, in the ultraviolet.

  The blood had stopped pulsing from Maggie’s neck, but Maggie was already forgotten. Poor Maggie, for whom the bell had tolled. Star of her own life while alive, in death she’d been reduced to an old Star Trek, red uniform guy.

  ‘You’re under arrest for the murder of...,’ began Solomon, and then he waved a halfhearted hand at Maggie, jerked his other thumb at the swinging corpse in the middle of the room, ‘this woman and that guy. You can choose to remain sil –’

  The cackle from the Klown cut him off, and in the blink of an eye, in the pulse of a strobe light, he was gone from the counter, and they watched him scuttle to the rear of the room and then up the stairs.

  ‘Fuck!’ shouted Monk, and then she and Solomon were after him. Round the bar, to the foot of the stairs, and already the Klown was up at the top, crashing through the door into the upper room, a cackle on his lips.

  The scream from the room cut sharply across the pound of police footsteps. One bound, two bounds, three bounds, four, and Monk was into the room.

  And there, in an instant, the scene had unfolded. The Klown in the corner, having grabbed Sophia on the way past, now on the floor, sitting up, pressed against the wall, a razor at Sophia’s throat, the light from the others’ phones trained upon him.

  39

  The Monologuing Situation

  ‘Back – the fuck – off, son,’ said the Klown. ‘Any closer, and your girlfriend dies.’

  He cackled. Keanu edged an inch closer, backed off an inch. Eyes wide, mouth open, shocked, armed with the torch on his phone.

  ‘All of you,’ said the Klown, ‘back the fuck off.’

  He laughed again. Eyes darting quickly around the crowd, the movements of them all within his view. Barney and Igor, Garrett and Walker, Keanu and Gainsborough, Monk and Solomon, names read out in a starting line up, or scrolling quickly by in the credits of a film, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb.

  ‘Constable,’ said Solomon, ‘you called it in?’

  ‘Sir,’ said Gainsborough.

  ‘What’s the time frame?’

  Solomon wasn’t looking at him. Hoped Gainsborough would know to lie. Didn’t know him to trust him.

  ‘Chopper’s on its way from Largs,’ said Gainsborough. ‘Told them to land in the square outside the George.’

  ‘What’s that then?’ said Solomon. ‘Five minutes?’

  ‘Five minutes.’

  ‘Five minutes,’ repeated Solomon.

  ‘Chopper from Largs,’ sneered the Klown. ‘Sure, just one of the many Largs police helicopters. One of hundreds.’

  ‘You’ve got five minutes,’ said Solomon, ignoring the taunt. ‘What’s the plan, then, you freak? What’re you going to achieve in five minutes?’

  ‘Ha!’ laughed the Klown. ‘Well, I don’t know, detective, how about kill you all, get the fuck out of here, aim a few missiles at the helicopter as it comes in to land, bring it down, then get the fuck off this miserable island. You? What’re your plans for the next five minutes, aside from dying?’

  Another laugh.

  The laugh was becoming really, really irritating.

  ‘Constable,’ said Solomon, still looking at the Klown, ‘will you lead the others out of here, please? The sergeant and I will deal with this.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Keanu, eliciting a worried look from Sophia, and another laugh from the Klown.

  ‘How lovely. Such sweet, young love. Too bad, sunshine, no one’s going anywhere. Anyone moves towards the door, she dies.’

  ‘I thought we were all dying anyway, you freak?’ snarled Solomon.

  ‘But you’ll be you,’ said the Klown. ‘You’ll want to stall as long as possible before anyone dies, thinking you can be the hero, waiting for this mythical helicopter which, if it does come, will take a damn sight longer than five fucking minutes.’

  ‘Just go,’ said Sophia coldly. ‘I’ll distract the mutant pigmy, you lot make a break for it.’

  The Klown’s eyes narrowed, the large, smiling lips sneered, he pressed the razor harder against Sophia’s neck, so that a thin line of blood appeared on the blade.

  ‘No!’ shouted Keanu, moving closer, before the Klown brandished the razor in his direction, then quickly placed it back, flush against Sophia’s throat, with a, ‘Don’t do it, kid!’

  Keanu remained two yards shy. The sneer on the Klown’s face turned to a derisive smile.

  ‘There you go, back off,’ said the Klown. ‘All so conventional. All so afraid of death.’

  He looked around the assembled crowd. The Klown was not concerned about the imminent arrival of a police helicopter bearing reinforcements. He knew that the nearest police helicopter was likely sitting, cold and quiet, at a small Ayrshire airfield somewhere, while the pilot sat at home with a cup of tea, watching an old crime drama on ITV3, where the killer was clearly identifiable by being the biggest name on the cast list, because some things never change. That’s just the way it is.

  There was one man amongst them who was not in the least afraid of death, however, and it was he who now stepped forward. Monk swallowed, held the fearful gasp on her lips, as Barney separated himself from the crowd and came alongside Keanu. He put his hand on Keanu’s arm, and ushered him back a step or two.

  ‘Ah!’ said the Klown. ‘A leader emerges. Interesting.’

  ‘Who are you, then?’ said Barney.

  His tone was matter of fact, and he wasn’t even having to pretend the ennui. Here he was again, another killer had hoved into view. Inevitably, inescapably, inexorably, predictably, because wasn’t this just Barney Thomson’s life? This was who he was cursed to be. Some are cursed with good luck, some with bad, some to be perpetual runners-up, some to triumph, some cursed with beauty, some with a hunchback, some with foresight, some without, and Barney Thomson, alone in the world of the barbershop, was cursed to continually come across serial killers.

  There seemed no particular reason for this, other than that this was how it w
as. Of course, there had been a time in the past when Satan himself had told Barney that he’d been the one who’d done the cursing, but it had been a long time ago now, and as the years passed and time drifted on into infinity (or as the years passed and time hurtled towards the nuclear apocalypse), Barney doubted there’d ever been an actual Satan in his life. That particular time seemed like a dream sequence, a rogue episode, like crossover fan fiction, or a random instalment written by someone who’d never previously seen the show. His show, the one where Barney was centre stage, didn’t do metaphysics. Just psychopathic dwarves with razors.

  ‘I have you at an advantage, I see, Mr Thomson,’ said the Klown.

  ‘No, you really don’t,’ said Barney. ‘That’s such a terrible cliché. I mean, I know I asked, but I don’t really give a shit who you are, other than that you’re a psycho-midget with a razor at my friend’s throat.’

  ‘She’s not your friend,’ snapped the Klown. ‘You hardly fucking know her.’

  The tone, thought Monk. He really didn’t like psycho-midget!

  ‘She’s Keanu’s friend, which makes her my friend, which means you’re going to let her go. Same as you’re going to let everyone else here go. If you want a fight, the DCI and I will give you a fight. If you’re too scared to fight, why don’t you just fuck off back to Charlie and the fucking Chocolate Factory, Oompa Loompa boy.’

  That worked. So disinterested was he in Sophia now, the Klown didn’t even bother running the razor across her throat as he pushed her aside. He sprang to his feet, Sophia quickly rolling away from him, Keanu running over beside her as the Klown approached Barney, the razor glinting bloodily in the strange light of phone beams and streetlight orange.

  ‘You don’t win this,’ said Barney, and the Klown hesitated. A classic narcissistic sociopath, thought Monk from the sidelines. Will let no opportunity to talk about himself pass.

  ‘I already won,’ said the Klown. ‘Front page of every newspaper, police chasing their tails, another couple of murders here tonight, and in a moment I’m taking out a few more of you and then jumping out that window. It’ll take so long for the cavalry to get here, I can break my fucking ankle on landing and still have time to get away.’