The final Claudio Reyna handed over his cash. A crisp, shiny ten-pound note for a £4.50 haircut. Barney headed towards the till.
'Keep the change, mate,' said the bloke, pulling on his Nike Rain Protection System.
Barney raised an eyebrow.
'You sure, my friend? That's a big tip.'
Manny Jackson gave Barney a long look. Knew there was something familiar about him, but couldn't quite place it. This barber had an honest face, mind, and that meant a lot to Manny. That, and he'd just given him a magnificent haircut. Deserved every bit of the tip.
'No bother, mate,' he said, glancing at himself in the mirror. The wife was going to be delighted. And the girlfriend. And her girlfriend would probably like it as well. (Yes, a man who admired honesty, Manny Jackson.) This haircut would keep him going for a month. 'Worth every penny,' he added.
Barney shrugged. Not in the mood to be appreciated.
'Thanks a lot,' was all he said.
Manny Jackson delivered a parting smile, then walked out into the drab, sullen December day. And immediately, as had happened to every one of Barney's dream haircuts that day, his hair was pummelled by the wind coming in off the Clyde, and the style utterly laid waste. (And as so often happens in life, the best-laid plans and most fevered dreams of Manny Jackson would also be brutally laid waste, when late that very day he would meet his death at the hands of Mrs Jackson, who for too long had suffered in silence the fate of the betrayed wife. The concerned reader need not fear for her plight, however, as she was destined to find a jury only too willing to be convinced by her pleadings of justification.)
Barney turned to Leyman Blizzard, who was slowly working his way through the Mirror. Headline: Thomson Expected to Reduce Global Population by 50% in Next Twenty Years.
'Nice of the lad, I suppose,' he ventured, devoid of enthusiasm.
Blizzard nodded and looked over the picture of four semi-naked women and the article on how four semi-naked women can be good for your sex life.
'Big tipper?' he asked.
'Five fifty,' said Barney, and Blizzard let out a low whistle.
'Magic,' he said, then tried to return to reading the paper, while Barney went about the meticulous business of sweeping up the hairs from another hirsutological triumph.
Blizzard seemed distracted, however, and Barney himself felt ill at ease. Sometimes his dreams came to him early on in the night, so that should he manage to get back to sleep, he might wake in the morning and feel nothing for it. But that morning he had woken just before seven o'clock, panicking, heart thumping and full of dread, body clammy and hot, the sheets already sodden. He had turned on all the lights and the television, he had leaped into the shower, he had had his breakfast. But none of it had helped, and fourteen haircuts later he remained filled with unease. He had never before had recurring dreams, but this one felt like it was closing in on him. When he allowed himself to think about it for too long during those bleak waking hours, he could feel the hand close around his guts. Real fear, that was what it was, and he couldn't place it. And it was odd, for he knew he no longer feared death. So what could be worse than that? What could truly be a fate worse than death?
No more customers awaited. A little after 3.45 in the afternoon. A slow time, until perhaps the odd straggler arrived late in the day. Blizzard, typically these days, found that he could not muster the concentration to read the paper for longer than a few seconds at a time and decided to rejoin Barney in conversation. Barney swept the floor. Knew every hair on the back of the head of the minister in the dream.
'I was going to tell you something last night, was I no'?' said Blizzard.
Barney couldn't really remember. Wondered if he was about to hear about Elvis again.
'Not sure,' he said.
'Aye, aye I was. It's something that a bloke in here told me once. Thought it might be just the thing for you, what with you being a serial killer 'n' all that.'
Barney looked up. The door opened. As it does, when you don't want it to. A young man entered: mid-twenties, grey eyes, sharp nose, verdant moustache haunting his top lip, Plasticene smile, head beautifully adorned by a recently executed Sinatra '62; Gap suit, dark grey, collar-high neckline. This was not a man who had come for a haircut, and the barbers looked at him warily.
'Hello there,' said the intruder.
They nodded guardedly in reply.
'Bit grim,' he said. 'The weather, I mean,' he added, getting no response.
'What can we do for you?' said Blizzard. 'You're no' here for a haircut.'
Adam Spiers smiled broadly.
'I like that,' he said. 'Sharp. You know what's what. You can recognise who's a customer and who's not a customer. You may be old, but at least your brain isn't turning to sludge the way it does with some people the second they hit sixty. I like that. I think we can work together. You're sharp. Very sharp. I like that.'
They looked at him. Barney clutched onto the brush as if it might be a useful implement – he had, after all, used such an instrument in the act of manslaughter. Blizzard's mouth opened slightly; a droplet of saliva waited to roll from his bottom lip.
'What are you selling?' he said.
'Selling?' said Spiers. 'Selling? I'm not selling anything. I'm here to help you sell. I'm here to help you turn this small business into a multinational hirsutological concern. I'm the begetter of your dreams. I am the Wishmaster. I'm the Bottle Imp, without the bad shit at the end. I'm Robin Williams in Aladdin. I'm Robin Goodfellow, I'm Puck, I'm a hobgoblin, a flibbertigibbet, a leprechaun. I'm everything you ever wanted.'
'What the fuck are you talking about?' snapped Blizzard.
Suddenly he had the concentration to return to reading the paper.
'Let me introduce myself. I'm Adam Spiers and I work for Magpie, Klayton, Parmentle and Clip. Pleased to meet you both.'
'A lawyer?' asked Barney.
'A consultant,' said Spiers.
They stared at him.
'What d'you mean?' said Blizzard after a few seconds' concentrated staring. 'Who do you consult?'
'You,' said Spiers. 'I consult you. You ask for my help, I give you advice on how to run your business, you pay me lots of money, then I depart, leaving your business stronger, fitter, better managed and healthier than when I arrived.'
'So you're an expert in barbershops, then?' said Barney.
'Don't know anything about them,' admitted Spiers, stating one of the consultant's fundamental principles.
'So you're going to ask us how we run our business and charge for it at the same time?' said Blizzard.
'Basically.'
'Right. Fuck off.'
Spiers smiled and shook his head. Looked around, quickly assessed the situation of this unfamiliar environment as only a highly paid consultant can, and sat down in one of the barber's chairs.
'No, no,' he said, still smiling, 'you don't understand.'
'I think I do,' said Blizzard.
'No, you can't possibly. Just give me a couple of minutes of your time.'
'No.'
'You see, we at Magpie, Klayton, Parmentle and Clip are dedicated to the service of our customers.'
'Piss off.'
'I mean, look around you. Clearly you have a fine little shop here. You've got your chairs and your mirrors and your five-month-old Sunday Post colour supplements. All very good. But where are your customers? Where's your output, where's your input? Do you have a management structure in place? You need properly laid down channels of communication between your staff. A chain of command from one level to the next, so that the ideas that prosper in the fertile undergrowth of lower management will not be lost.'
'There are two of us.'
'You need targets. Soft targets, hard targets, stretch targets. You need to take a blue sky approach. You need buzzwords. I mean, have you got any buzzwords? We can make some up for you. And there's more. You'll need to establish an Integrated Project Team, where all aspects of your business are catered for.'
/> 'An Integrated Project Team?' said Blizzard, looking round at Barney. 'What language is this guy speaking?'
'Fluent wank,' said Barney.
'You need to look to every facet of your concern to see where you can make savings. There is nothing which can't be done better, faster and cheaper. Through us you would have access to barbershop best practice. You'll be able to see the latest management techniques from outside industry. We'll teach you to facilitate meetings, map your processes and organise problem-solving and team-building sessions.'
'Map our processes?' said Blizzard. 'We cut hair!'
Adam Spiers opened his arms in an expansive gesture. I'm getting close, he thought. Another couple of words out of them and I'll be able to start charging.
'OK, so you cut hair. But do you both cut hair in the same way? Does one of you cut hair more quickly because he uses a different method? If the other was to change, would you be able to make savings? So, we'd help you to facilitate a meeting where you would map the process of cutting hair. What's the first thing you do? What next? Do you use a razor first, or the scissors? Do you wet the hair? Do you use a blow dryer? What kind of shampoo do you use? We go through all of that and, at the end, so that no one feels compromised, we have a clean-up session where we make two lists, one under a happy face and one under a frowny face. We see what we've achieved and what problems have to be addressed.'
They stared at him as if he was an alien.
Which he was.
'Am I making sense?' said Spiers. 'We're talking the latest in Experio-Millennium Consultative Indoctrination. We're talking buzzwords, we're talking maturity model frameworks, we're talking baseline assessments.'
'You're talking shite,' said Barney.
'That's a good point. Let's park that under a frowny face and come back to it. Shite, that's a good point. But what you have to ask yourself is this. Do I want to run my business as if it was a dodgy little barbershop in Greenock, or would I rather it was run as a staggeringly successful multinational corporation, like Boeing or Pizza Hut? We at Magpie, Klayton, Parmentle and Clip have advised Microsoft, we've advised Tesco's, we account for more than eighty-five per cent of the annual budget of the Ministry of Defence. We're huge. We have the knowhow to transform this small shop into a cross-continental, barbetorial conglomerate. You could be the McDonald's of the barbershop business.'
They were still looking at him as if he was an alien. He stared back. He was used to this, but it didn't mean he wouldn't get their business.
'What planet did you say you were from, again?' said Blizzard.
'So what we're talking about is a maturity model framework within a best practice, baseline assessment scenario. You'll need critical success factors, strategic objectives, key performance indicators and an overall vision. You'll need to develop management plans, human resource plans and a definition of the skills gap. You'll need a mission statement. Everyone's got a mission statement these days. How about, As God be our witness, we, the honest and true barbers of Blizzard's Hair Emporium, do solemnly swear to deliver the finest haircuts on Earth, in as short a space of time as possible. And all at low-cost prices.'
Blizzard stuck his fingers in his ears, started waving his head around and humming Nessun Dorma.
'You'll start with a matrix of functions and accountability, on which you'll be able to judge your hard and stretch targets against your query resolution. We're talking plenary sessions, we're talking empowerment, we're talking multi-divisional sanctioning, we're talking cross-integration fertilisation, we're talking triangulated post-nineties matrix differentiation, we're talking ...'
'You're making this up,' said Barney.
'What?'
'You're not just talking shite, you're actually just making it up as you go along. When you're a barber you spend your life listening to shite, and you can recognise it from fifty mile. And you're full of it.'
'You can think that if you like, my friend, but the fact is that if you don't employ a consultant in this forward-thinking day and age, you'll be left behind. Make no mistake. Analysts predict that by the year 2015 the only businesses left will be those employing a full-time consultant. Don't do it and you're dead.'
'And how many of those remaining businesses will themselves be consultants?' asked Barney.
Spiers stared at him then pulled a notebook from his jacket pocket. A wafer-thin computer notebook. Thinner than any panty liner. He flicked it open, tapped in a few numbers, looked up and smiled.
'About seventy-three per cent,' he said.
Blizzard had stopped wailing. Barney smiled.
'So in fact, the best way for any business to survive is for them to move into the consultancy world?'
This gave Spiers some pause. He looked at Barney and thought he recognised a rare intellect. A man at the peak of his mental powers; or, at least, at the meagre hilltop of his mental powers.
'Aye,' said Spiers, 'I suppose that might be the case.'
'So really, rather than us do all this crap about matrices and shite like yon, we really ought to just become consultants? Blizzard and Thomson, we could call ourselves. What d'you think of that, Leyman?'
'Sounds like a load of shite to me, son,' said Blizzard, 'but I'd go along with it. It'd be better than sitting here listening to this heid-the-ba'.'
'Perhaps,' said Spiers, 'we at MKPC might be able to give you a consultation on how to consult?'
'You mean,' said Barney, 'that the consultant consults another consultant for a consultation on how to consult?'
'Aye, we do it all the time. That's why there are so many of us.'
'Right. So how about if we give you a wee consultation on the cheap, just as a practice run.'
'You give me a consultation?' said Spiers, breaking into a condescending smile, from which his face would never recover. 'All right, why not?'
'Right,' said Barney. 'My advice to you is this. Fuck right off. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds, don't even stop to go to the fucking toilet. Just get the fuck out of this shop before I stick this broom up your arse. I've killed someone with one of these before, you know.'
Spiers's condescending smile travelled a little farther to the outer reaches of his face.
'I don't think you fully understand,' he said. 'We're talking about multidisciplinary, interdepartmental, cross-purpose ...'
'Fuck off!' said Barney, grabbing Spiers by the arm. 'That's a multifunctional, no questions asked, no shite, final and irrefutable offer.'
He opened the door and shoved Spiers out into the street.
'I obviously caught you at a bad time,' said Spiers. 'I'll be back next ...'
Barney slammed the door closed and pulled the Venetian blind. He turned back to Blizzard, who was watching him with an amused look. Barney considered his actions of the last two minutes and how his heart had not even picked up a beat. Two years previously he wouldn't have had an argument with a feather duster. Now he was telling people they were talking shite, threatening them with a broom and throwing them out of the shop. And more than that, thinking nothing of it.
'Very impressive, son,' said Blizzard.
'Thanks,' said Barney, as he slowly walked back to his station and began again the cheerless task of sweeping up. Unseen misery still resting on his shoulders.
'You've obviously got a knack for this kind of thing. A wee bit of a mean streak behind that placid exterior. Maybe you are that murdering bastard after all. Good on you.'
'Thanks,' mumbled Barney. Wasn't that just going to make all the difference in the world?
'Oh aye, I was going to tell you about this group,' said Blizzard, after a couple of minutes' attempting to drag his previous thoughts into the present. 'I know a bloke who knows a guy. Think I might be able to get you someone's phone number. You know. Seeing as you're a serial killer 'n' all that.'
Barney looked up; stopped sweeping.
'What kind of group?'
'One of they self-help groups. You know, for folk that've done t
he kind of shite you done.'
'A self-help group for killers?'
'Aye. That's what the bloke said. Think I know where I can get hold of the bastard.'
Barney stared at him. A group of like-minded people. People who might know what he was thinking. Maybe that might be worth it.
'Aye, all right,' he said. 'You never know, eh?'
'Right,' said Blizzard. 'I'll see if I can get you the number.'
'Aye,' said Barney, and once more returned to his sweeping.
Blizzard rustled the paper. Already beginning to forget the last conversation. His mind the same tangled mass of pointless information as anyone else's.
'What d'you make of these four birds,' he said. 'Would you shag any of them?'
Ride A Pale Horse
There are two kinds of men in the world. There are those who are crap at sex; and then there are those who have never even had sex. So thought super-spy Jade Weapon, as she lay back on the cool grass of a Kingston summer's evening. The three men attending to what they believed to be her erogenous zones were making a lousy job of it, and she couldn't wait until she got the green light from Walter Dickov, watching the action via satellite back at HQ in Geneva, to take the three of them out.
'Come on, Walter,' she said pointlessly to the humid night. As usual, she could hear him, but had no link-up to speak back to the bastard.
'Who's Walter?' said the abject British agent, the best that M16 could manage, as he thrust manfully, barely touching the sides of Weapon's disinterested sex hole.
'Walter?' she said, between the panting breaths of her sexual assailant. 'He's a guy with a dick. Unlike you three women.'
'Yeah, right,' said the British agent, as he continued to trudge away.
'Come on, Walter, you bastard,' she said once more to the night. 'You must've seen enough by now, for God's sake.'
And so, at last, it came, the crackling voice in her ear. Eliminate the spies. Those three words that fired her sexuality much more than any man she had ever met.
Jade Weapon grabbed the throats of her two mammiferous assailants and, with a gentle tweak of her thumbs, killed them both instantly. The other agent looked up with an air of British curiosity.
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