The Barbershop Seven

by Douglas Lindsay

  'And that would be Waugh or Wodehouse?' asked Barney, doubtfully.

  'Yeah, I hear you,' said Orwell. 'We're not even close, but with you in place, we're almost there. There are no problems, only solutions, mon ami.'

  Barney smiled ruefully. A fine kettle of fish. Started thinking about Daniella Monk again, for no other reason than he found it hard to get her out of his head. Wondered what she would be doing now.

  'What d'you say, Chiefo?' said Orwell. 'A hundred grand a year starting, can probably guarantee you triple that once we oust Bethlehem and I'm in sole charge of the whole shebang. A few points'll need to be ironed out along the way, but they'll sort themselves out.'

  Barney shrugged. He had already done the maths. Even if every one of the employees wanted him to cut their hair, at the current rate he would be through them all in a little over seven working days. What was he going to do then?

  'Sure,' he said eventually. 'To be honest, I think it sounds complete insanity, but what the heck?'

  'Cool,' said Orwell, finally pocketing the lipstick, then clasping Barney by the hand.

  'Arctic,' said Barney.

  'Excellento,' said Orwell, and with that he began to head for the door. Wanted to get back to his Taylor Bergerac quest. 'You're going to rock, Barn!' he announced, as he hoofed it on out into the corridor.

  Barney stared at the closed door for a short time, then turned back to his haircutting equipment. That had been a sudden change in career development. A ridiculous change at that. Did he really want to leave all this behind, no matter how tired he felt he had become of it?

  The door opened behind him. Once more the thought of Daniella Monk came to mind. Once more he was to be disappointed as he swivelled round on the chair.

  Waugh, head of Miscellaneous Anthropoid Department.

  'Barney!' said Waugh, as if greeting an old friend. Barney nodded. Checked out Waugh's short back & sides with a professional eye. This man had had his hair cut by a professional London hair stylist in the last week. He wasn't here for a haircut.

  'Can I talk to you a minute, Barney,' said Waugh, gravitating to the window.

  'Sure,' said Barney. He could sit here all day. Wondered what Waugh was about to offer him.

  'I'll cut to the last ball of the final over,' said Waugh, 'as I know you're a busy man.'

  He paused, as if wanting Barney to confirm how busy he was, regardless of the fact that he was currently sitting doing nothing.

  'These are strange times for the company,' Waugh continued, 'with Fitzgerald's murder and Bethlehem being out of town so long.'

  He stopped. He stared out the window. He turned back.

  'I should start by explaining how the executive voting structure of the company is organised,' he said.

  'I know,' said Barney.

  'You do?' said Waugh, surprised. 'Of course, of course, you're the barber, you're going to have learned all sorts of things.'

  Slowly Waugh's eyes drifted to the lipstick writing on the mirror. A look of curiosity crossed his face, and then he turned back to Barney, a little more uncertain than before.

  'So, you'll know that Fitzgerald's death leaves a crucial voting position unfilled?'

  Barney nodded. Not any more.

  'How would you like to fill that position?' asked Waugh. 'I've heard about the fantastic work you've been doing, and I've already spoken to Bethlehem. He's okayed the deal. You could be Head of TV Contracts, and with me that's a voting block of two. We'd only have to worry about the positions of Orwell and Wodehouse, and maybe we could sort one of those out quite easily, and then we can have a genuine pop at Bethlehem.'

  He had overcome the moment of uncertainty, and now his eyes were wide with the excitement of the conspiracy. Barney was nearly asleep.

  'Sure,' he said, 'that sounds brilliant. Head of TV Contracts, and working side by side with you. Fan-tastic.'

  Laced with sarcasm, Waugh didn't pick up on any of it. He clasped his hands together, his eyes widened even, well, wider, and he smiled broadly.

  'Friggin' marvellous,' he said. 'Well done, Barney, glad you're on board.'

  'Wilco that, Squadron Leader,' said Barney, managing to avoid the salute.

  Waugh stood before him as if he might have something else to say, then when neither of them did, he turned and walked from the office, rubbing his hands in a conspiratorial manner. Barney watched him go, and then looked at the writing on the mirror.

  'Not for the first time,' he muttered to himself, 'I walk amongst idiots.'

  Is There A Worse Combination On The Planet?

  'So,' said Monk, having finished off a respectable pint of Thatcher's Dry, 'I like the way you blanche every time someone mentions the Archbishop?'

  Frankenstein snorted.

  'I don't blanche,' he said gruffly. 'Blanche, for God's sake.'

  'You blanche.'

  'I don't fucking blanche.'

  'Whatever,' she said, smiling. 'Whatever it is that you do, it indicates you're not happy about it.'

  'Well, neither should you be, because you're the one who's going to have to go and talk to him.'

  'Me?'

  'Yes. If you can't come up with some other fingerprint explanation, you're going to have to go and talk to him. You.'

  'So what are we talking about?' she asked. 'An informal chat, or are we getting the man in officially for questioning? His fingerprints were all over a murder weapon after all.'

  Frankenstein mumbled something incoherent, tapped his fingers.

  'The question,' he said eventually, 'isn't whether the Archbishop touched that glass. It's how someone else managed to put his fingerprints on it. And why. And I hate to think what the answer to that might be.'

  'Why?'

  'Religion, politics. Jesus, is there a worse combination on the planet? Apart from the fact that it might have been a woman and Barney Thomson might be involved. Holy mother of crap. Is there anything else?'

  She shrugged, thought about Barney.

  'How did you get on with Thomson anyway?' asked Frankenstein. 'Anything useful?'

  Monk automatically shook her head. Tried to stop herself smiling, although Frankenstein wasn't really looking at her anyway. She thought about the questioning of Barney Thomson. How hard had she been concentrating? How much of that time had she spent imagining herself in his arms, naked, lying back on the desk?

  She closed her eyes, shook her head as if that might help dispel the image.

  'Fitzgerald was just a blank, that's the trouble,' said Frankenstein, abruptly changing tack. 'No life other than the company.'

  'It is the company,' said Monk, shrugging. 'Whoever killed Fitzgerald wasn't interested in him per se, they were taking a pop at the company as a whole.'

  'You think?' said Frankenstein.

  'Yeah,' she replied. 'They're like the Borg. I know they have a hierarchy and all, but they're a collective. They eat, drink, shit the same principles. They're clones. So what if it was Fitzgerald who was killed? It could easily have been any one of the others, and maybe it will be.'

  'If we're lucky,' said Frankenstein.

  'We should look at it,' said Monk.

  'Cordon off the entire building and put twenty-four hour protection on all the employees?' asked Frankenstein.

  'Yeah,' said Monk. 'We'll have the resources to do that.'

  'Yeah,' said Frankenstein. 'Or maybe we could just tell them all to be careful. That might be easier.'

  Monk nodded. That was all they could do. And she doubted for one second that any of them would pay the slightest attention. She settled back, a brief journey into work, and once more her head returned to the thoughts that had been dominating it all day. Frankenstein stared at the dirty floor and tried to shut his mind to his dread fear.

  'You ever been in love?' asked Monk suddenly, getting to the root of her distraction.

  Frankenstein spat some bitter over the table, then dragged the sleeve of his coat across his face. Looked at her as if she had some sort of weird f
acial infection.

  'What?' said Monk.

  'What's the matter with you?' snapped Frankenstein. 'Love? Are pulling my pudding?'

  'I just, I don't know, just wondered.' She lifted her glass, tipped it to drain the dregs. Glanced over the top to see his look of incredulity.

  'Look, piss off!' she said. 'We don't just have to talk about work every time we sit in a flippin' pub. I thought I'd broaden the scope of the discussion.'

  'Love?' said Frankenstein. 'What's wrong with football or, God, I don't know, films or politics or cooking or something? Love?'

  'Yeah,' said Monk, 'well, that's what it is. Love. You ever been in love?' she asked again.

  Frankenstein took a long drink from his pint, settled the empty glass on the table, then he let out a ripper of a burp, his hand barely acknowledging his open mouth.

  'No, Sergeant,' he said eventually, 'I've never been in love. I've been married for almost twenty years for God's sake. What d'you think?'

  'You might have loved her once.'

  'Got her up the duff, Sergeant. Love never entered into it.'

  'Have you not met anyone since then who, you know, just knocked you out the first time you met them?'

  Frankenstein nodded.

  'You know, I got put on my back one night by a right hook from some minger in Bridgeton when I was called out on a domestic.'

  'You're funny,' said Monk.

  'Tell you what,' said Frankenstein, 'I think it's my round. I'll get the drinks in and I'll give it some thought while I'm at the bar. Although, since I presume you're wanting to get something off your chest, I'm actually hoping you'll have thought of something else to talk about by the time I get back. You know what I'm saying?'

  'Your concern is almost heartbreaking,' said Monk. 'But I think I'll head off, try to get to bed sometime before midnight.'

  'Suit yourself,' said Frankenstein. 'Last chance,' he added, as he rose to his feet.

  'I'll bail,' said Monk, pushing her chair back from the table.

  'Whatever,' said Frankenstein. 'You can be in early tomorrow morning. One of us should be.'

  Monk smiled, nodded, turned and walked away; Frankenstein humphed at nothing in particular and minced over to the bar, hunch in full working order. As she got to the door of the bar, a woman heading in the same direction noticed her, held it open.

  'Thanks,' said Monk.

  'You're welcome,' said Harlequin Sweetlips, and she walked off quickly, having waited for Barney Thomson for nearly an hour, and having finally decided that no matter what she had thought about him during her first meeting, no man was deserving of her spending her time sitting mournfully in a bar, desperately hoping he would show his face. Maybe she would be missing him by doing this, but it wasn't as if she didn't know where he lived. And worked.

  Monk watched Harlequin Sweetlips for a couple of seconds, no sixth sense that this might be the woman she was looking for, then turned in the opposite direction and started the quick walk to the tube station.

  ***

  Ten minutes later, Barney Thomson walked into the bar, curious as to whether Harlequin Sweetlips would be in attendance, curious as to why he was bothering to look for her. The woman had scared him. He had recognised her evil, and yet he felt himself drawn back in search of her. It wasn't physical attraction, on any level. It was the peculiar lure of danger, aware that just knowing the woman was putting himself in the line of fire. Knew so much from such a brief encounter at the bar. That was all it had taken. The attraction in his life was Daniella Monk, a woman with whom he had made an instant connection. Had spent the best part of the day thinking about her, but still the thought of Sweetlips clawed at him.

  Quick check round the room, accepted that Sweetlips wasn't there. Squeezed in at the bar, rested his elbows, raised his eyebrows at the barman who acknowledged his presence, as he went about fulfilling another order.

  So, what was it? Was he looking to die? Was he so desperate for some adventure in his life, for something different, that he was prepared to place himself in the jaws of the beast? Whatever, he thought, as he waited to order his Miller, it seemed the beast wasn't that interested in him.

  His beer approached from the other side of the bar, the barman instinctively knowing what Barney would order, and Barney settled down to eat, drink and be unhappy.

  Ten yards away, his back turned away from him, Detective Chief Inspector Frankenstein sat hunched over his third pint, ruing the day Barney Thomson had walked into his life, and unaware that the man of his nightmares was sitting so close by.

  Blitzkreig

  The following morning Taylor Bergerac awoke to the full weight of Jude Orwell's shock & awe tactics, starting with the overnight delivery to her apartment of one thousand, three hundred and seventy-nine white roses. The billboard across the road from her apartment had, for the previous two weeks, been displaying a pair of Intimissimi breasts, beautifully filling their latest product. Overnight, in a thoroughly clandestine operation, the picture of two tits, had been replaced by the picture of a single tit. The smiling, cheesy, preposterously affected face of Jude Orwell. Twenty-three feet high, sixteen feet wide. A head-only shot. Beside his face the poster bore the legend: Go With What's Good For You. Jude Orwell.

  Things did not improve when she arrived at the office. A different billboard had been plastered up across the road, again proclaiming Orwell's wonderfulness, the picture showing him smiling and pointing at the camera. And he had blessed her e-mail account with seventeen messages, covering a variety of different topics and approaches.

  There was also a small understated bouquet of pink carnations – a lovely counterpoint, he'd thought, to the totality of the message at her house; a hand-delivered box from Harrods' jewellery department, containing a diamond pendant of a single, large stone; an envelope containing a package he had produced on his Mac, outlining to the thousandth degree all his personal qualities; a life-size cardboard cut-out of himself, left standing at the side of reception, its hands extended, bearing a sheer silk negligée; all that, and waiting in reception a troubadour, equipped with lyre, ready to serenade Bergerac with an amusing and self-deprecating piece that Orwell had produced, to the tune of Dancing in the Moonlight. The first line, We'll get 'em off most every night, more or less summed up the whole, and strangely it was pretty much all the gallant troubadour managed to evince, before being dispatched from the premises.

  Shock & awe is as shock & awe does. It didn't work. The presents were returned, the e-mails were deleted unopened, the flowers were dispatched straight to the bin. However, many a great campaign has a slow start, and just because you don't score against the Faroe Islands in the first ten minutes of your first qualifying game, doesn't mean you're not going to win the World Cup.

  ***

  Barney Thomson took a look out of the window as the Thames wearily wound its way towards the sea, then turned and faced his desk and chair. His own office, modern art prints on the wall – one of which was a delicious deep red, not unlike Hugo Fitzgerald's tablecloth – luxury carpet, decent view, all traces of the lad Fitzgerald removed.

  Barney had never sat behind a desk before, just as he'd never had an offer from a woman in a bar before, and had never fallen for a woman the first time he'd laid eyes on her. Life went on, new things happened, and as the months and years went on stretching further away from his previous trapped existence in Glasgow, so he delved further into the hilarious pool of life, as Jesus originally described it. After so long as a cypher, so long spent adrift and impotent as life happened to other people, he was now willing to let himself be drawn into almost anything. Yet, he now knew that things no longer just happened to Barney Thomson by accident. Someone was controlling matters, and there was nothing that he could do about it.

  He was, as Garrett Carmichael's six-year-old daughter had often told him back in Millport, nothing but a prawn.

  He nodded to himself, then he shrugged, then he shook his head, then he smiled, then he felt the loose-fitt
ing tie at his neck, another first. Barney Thomson in a shirt and tie. Someone, somewhere, would be turning in their grave. He just wasn't exactly sure who that'd be. He pulled the chair back, sat down then shuffled in closer to the desk. Before him there was an in-tray, an out-tray, a telephone, a keyboard, a monitor with the hard drive embedded in the desk, and a small silver executive toy, the final vestige of the presence of Hugo Fitzgerald. Barney picked it up, a magnetic cube with scores of little silver magnets attached to it, studied it for a second, and then dropped it into the bin which he had kicked as he'd shuffled his legs under the desk. He pressed the on-button on the monitor and it hummed into life. There was a yellow sticky attached to the monitor, stating: Username: Barney Thomson, Password: Barberissimo.

  'They couldn't just have made it 1234?' he muttered.

  Nothing in the out-tray, a couple of files in the in-tray. He lifted the first one and opened it. Glanced at the title, then looked at the phone. Pressed the intercom button, through to the woman who'd just been introduced to him as his PA.

  'Mary?' he asked tentatively, not entirely sure of the technology.

  'What can I get for you?'

  'Any chance of a cup of tea?'

  'Certainly, Mr Thomson. English Breakfast?'

  'Thanks,' said Barney, and clicked off. English Breakfast, identifiably different from Scottish Breakfast or Irish Breakfast by the different coloured box, if not the actual taste.

  He looked back at the open folder. Dundee Salted Snacks, the client he'd heard about during his first haircut on the job. He scanned through it quickly, made an instant decision based on all the principles he'd learned since he'd first walked through the door four days earlier, then turned to the PC, logged on, ignored the one hundred and forty-three junk e-mails which had accumulated since six o'clock the previous evening when his account had been activated, and sent off a quick outline to Orwell, on the way forward for Dundee Salted Snacks. An outline that involved signing up Ally McCoist and selling limited edition bags of crisps using the following flavour guidelines: Spit-Roasted Bacon & Red Leicester; Sea Salt & Asparagus; Charcoaled Guinea Fowl; Oak-Smoked Chicken & Honey; Stilton & Black Grape; Balsamic Vinegar & Organic Sodium; Wood-Charred Giraffe & Oregano.