Curse Of The Clown Read online

‘Go on, then, what’s the big idea?’

  ‘I was thinking about social media services,’ said Keanu.

  Barney looked at him quizzically, Igor lifted the mug to cover his face.

  ‘This sounds potentially awful, but go on.’

  ‘We provide the full social media, haircut experience. We have a specified social media operative in charge of all online aspects of your haircut event. They take the before, during, and after photographs, they film the cut, and then edit a video of the highlights. I mean, we could do that kind of thing in house, in real time. The video maker could be editing as the cut progresses, then polish up the package while the customer’s putting on his jacket, paying for the cut. Sound effects, music, start and end credits. Like, some of those we can have pre-prepared, right? Sure, maybe they’ll have to wait for a couple of minutes more, but like, literally as they leave the shop, they can be posting online a beautifully filmed, fully edited, mini-feature film event of the haircut. Who wouldn’t want that?’

  Barney and Igor were now staring at Keanu, rather than the view.

  ‘We could have some bespoke barbershop music, like our own theme tune, then we could throw in songs about haircuts. Like, I don’t know, Buzzcut Season, if you’re going for a kind of melancholic, black and white, Eastern European movie vibe, or Floyd The Barber if you want something a bit more grungy.’

  ‘Floyd The Barber?’ said Barney. ‘Really?’

  ‘And it’d work best if we had more than one social media operative,’ said Keanu, oblivious. ‘Like, if you had a team of three, it could be incredible. Someone to film, someone to edit the film in real time as it came in, and then someone to manage the whole package, while live tweeting the cut. It’s kind of like an old fashioned barbershop, multiplied by all the coolest, hippest parts of the twenty-first century experience. We could have haircuts going viral every single day. It could become a thing. Oh, then we could, just thought of this, we could make a documentary about a year in the shop. Enter it at Sundance, Cannes. Could easily get picked up by Netflix, I mean that crowd make all sorts of shite, right?’

  Barney and Igor looked at each other. They smiled. Couldn’t help it.

  ‘So, you and I would each have our own social media crew?’ asked Barney.

  ‘Obvs,’ said Keanu.

  ‘There will be six social media operatives. Plus me. And you. And Igor.’

  ‘Think of the buzz,’ said Keanu. ‘The place’ll be on fire.’

  Collectively they looked around the small shop. They imagined nine people in there, every one of them working.

  ‘Where would the customers go?’ asked Barney.

  ‘I’ve got a plan for that,’ said Keanu. ‘We take that wall out at the back, open up through to the store room. Extend the shop. We could put in a new music system, we can maybe have a giant TV in the corner, that way we can get the crowds in when the World Cup’s on. Or, you know, Test Matches, the Open, Wimbledon.’

  ‘Royal weddings,’ said Igor sarcastically, though only his usual ‘arf’ found its way out into the shop. Barney laughed, Keanu decided just to run with it.

  ‘Royal weddings,’ he said. ‘Exactly. Remember how dead it was around here the day William and Kate got married?’

  Barney and Igor wistfully looked out across the promenade wall, to the sea and the sky and the great beyond, reminiscing happily about how wonderful that day had been. No customers, and on top of that, they hadn’t had to watch the royal wedding.

  Keanu looked hopefully at Barney, who finally caught his eye.

  ‘No?’ said Keanu. ‘Not buying it?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘But, Barney, when there are no events we could show regular TV. How awesome would that be? We could watch Piers Morgan.’

  He looked seriously at Barney, then Igor, and then after a few moments, in unison, they all burst out laughing.

  Outside the shop, the same quiet day continued as it had before. White clouds raced across a blue sky, white-tipped waves fought for a second’s dominance in the bay, the green hills of the mainland undulated out of sight beneath the steel beasts of old and new power, and in a distant land, far out of sight and sound, Piers Morgan screamed impotently into the void of social media.

  ‘Nah,’ said Barney, finally, when they’d all stopped laughing, and silence had once again taken over the shop. ‘I kind of like things the way they are.’

  ‘Arf,’ said Igor quietly.

  ‘Oakie doakie,’ said Keanu. ‘Still, tell you what, I’ll write out a proposal, put it up to the full executive board for consideration, and we’ll take it from there.’

  Barney took a drink of tea, then another, then tipped the mug and drained it.

  ‘Nice tea,’ he said.

  And seventeen minutes later the next customer arrived. Five minutes after that, another. And so the day continued.

  2

  The Floating Penis Situation

  ‘Jesus suffering fuck.’

  The two police officers were standing in a small kitchen. Midway down the Royal Mile, the room bright beneath the spotlights. Clean lines, every inch of space perfectly utilised, the kitchen in the old tenement had recently been expensively reimagined. Detective Chief Inspector Solomon was, however, not commenting on the high-priced, Scandinavian gadgetry and design wizardry.

  ‘That’s a cock,’ said Detective Sergeant Lane, his tone implying he’d only just worked out what they were staring at.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ said Solomon, ‘good to see you remember your biology lessons.’

  The severed penis had been attached to the bottom of a piece of string, which was itself attached to a helium-filled, red balloon. The window was open, and the balloon was moving in the cool breeze of mid-afternoon, gently bobbling against the ceiling, though little of the movement was finding its way all the way down to the end of the string.

  ‘Took a moment there,’ said Lane. ‘I was a bit like, what is that? Then I realised.’

  ‘Thanks for sharing.’

  ‘I mean, it’s not a bad size, right?’ said Lane. ‘Thought it was a sausage at first.’

  Solomon looked quizzically at him.

  ‘What are you talking about? We’re here, right? You and I, you realise we’re here? In this kitchen? Looking at this thing? I’m a chief fucking inspector. No one, not even now when every single person on earth is an overreacting snowflake fuckwomble, no one calls in a chief inspector because someone floated a flippin’ sausage from a balloon. No one thought that was a sausage.’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ said Lane. ‘Keep your hair on.’

  ‘Plus, the cock here has obviously been drained of blood, giving it a very low density. The sausage would have had a greater mass, and would likely have dragged down the balloon.’

  ‘He’s doing science now,’ muttered Lane.

  Solomon rolled his eyes, approached the balloon, then lifted his gloved finger to run it over the small note that had been attached to the string about half way down. A thin piece of paper, lightweight – crucially, so as not to weigh the balloon down anymore, he presumed – it was printed with the cartoonish head of a demonic clown, the words Something wicked, newly found, here he comes, the Koiffing Klown scrawled beneath it.

  ‘The koyfing clown?’ said Lane. ‘What does koyfing mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Solomon.

  He was tired, and not in a stayed-up-too-late-drank-too-much-wine kind of a way. He wasn’t far off four decades as a police officer. He’d seen too much shit, heard too many lies, and had had to listen to too many excuses for cuts and underfunding, had had to shoulder too much blame for the failings of government and Police Scotland. Every day on the job was a drag, and then you got home and put on the news, and you found out that your pustulent, shit-filled life wasn’t the half of it. The world out there, big and ugly and, more than anything else, literally on fire, was like life for an Edinburgh police officer times a hundred thousand. A world of immeasurable beauty, reduced by squabbling, money
-grabbing, power-hungry, mendacious mobsters, to a bitter, angry, ugly, vapid scorched earth.

  ‘Maybe he means kwaff, you know, like the haircut,’ said Solomon. ‘Except, the verb would be coiffuring, not coiffing, so not only is he a brutal, derivative, cock-slicing bastard, he’s an idiot.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Lane.

  Now he gently pressed the penis, nodding to himself as though he’d scientifically confirmed its authenticity.

  ‘So maybe we’re looking for a barber,’ said Solomon. ‘Or a clown. Or who the fuck knows? The shittest fucking poet in the history of art.’

  ‘Might be a woman, of course,’ said Lane. ‘A hairdresser. Would explain the cock, don’t you think? Someone getting revenge on men.’

  ‘Yep,’ said Solomon. ‘Already been thinking about that. But there’s nothing to say the guy’s not gay, trans, or just a straight guy who knows which part of the male anatomy men are going to be most pissed off about losing. Open mind for now, that’s all.’

  They took a moment together looking at the severed organ, then Solomon turned to the window and looked down on the Royal Mile in the evening. Busy as always, a happy bustle, regardless of the time of year, regardless of the weather.

  God, he hated Edinburgh.

  ‘We should get this thing going,’ he said. ‘We need to take the apartment to pieces, learn as much as we can about the victim, and make sure the DNA of the guy who lived here ties with the DNA of this thing. And I suppose we should find out where he got his hair cut.’

  Lane and Solomon stared at each other, then Solomon muttered, ‘Jesus,’ at the thought of yet another murder inquiry, then he waved a resigned hand in the air, and the investigation was afoot.

  3

  The Coen Brothers Proxy

  Nearing the end of the day in the shop. It had stayed a quiet one. Outside it was getting dark as evening closed in on the land. A final customer had arrived fifteen minutes before they were due to close, and Barney was carrying out the cut. Igor, having swept the floor to such an extent that some of the sweeping had carried forward in time, and the floor would sweep itself until at least the middle of the following afternoon, was reading the Evening Times. Headline, Sturgeon To Join Tories In Shock £50M Move. Meanwhile Keanu was reading the trade paper of the barbershop business, The Gentleman’s Convenience.

  So far Barney had managed to go about his work without having to engage in conversation, but he knew you could never really relax. At any stage, when you were trapped in this kind of one-on-one situation, the other man could start talking with little warning.

  ‘Lots of jobs going in Glasgow,’ said Keanu, not looking up from the paper. ‘And all over, really, but a tonne up in town.’

  ‘You thinking of applying for one?’ asked Barney. ‘You could take your sensational social media idea to one of those big chain places on Argyll Street.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Keanu, ‘I like it around here. We have our occasional flashes of excitement. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.’

  ‘I’d be looking for a substantial transfer fee anyway,’ said Barney, ‘so I’m not sure anyone in Glasgow could afford you.’

  ‘Right,’ said Keanu, laughing.

  ‘Arf!’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere, mate,’ said Barney to Igor, and Keanu laughed again.

  A moment’s silence across the shop, but it was destined not to last, not now that Keanu had started talking. However, when it came, it was from Barney’s customer.

  ‘I blame the Coen Brothers,’ he said suddenly, out of nowhere.

  Barney glanced at him in the mirror, then returned to blending the number three of the sides and back with the scissor cut of the top.

  ‘What for?’ he said, although his tone indicated how little he anticipated the reply.

  ‘The coming apocalypse,’ said the customer. ‘World War III. I mean, it’s pretty obvious, right? This year is like nineteen thirty-eight, except stupider. War is coming.’

  Barney stared at him in the mirror, not really wanting to engage. For a moment it looked like it could go either way – Barney would ask him why the Coen Brothers were to blame for the impending war, or else they would all stay in these positions, waiting for Barney to say something, until one of them died – but then Barney quickly cracked and said, ‘The Coen Brothers?’

  ‘You’ve seen Burn After Reading?’ asked the customer, getting straight to it.

  ‘Sure,’ said Barney, reluctantly.

  In the next chair along, Keanu had settled in to listen, lowering The Gentlemen’s Convenience so he’d catch every nuance of the conversation. Igor, too, had lowered the Evening Times.

  ‘Frances McDormand takes the computer disc to the Russians, and when the CIA find out she’s trying to hawk something to Moscow, they’re incredulous. Remember that scene? Remember JK Simmons’s quizzical, baffled, mocking, ‘The Russians?’ That was the embodiment of what Americans thought Russia had become. Irrelevant, a butt of jokes. Now look where we are. Who’s laughing now? Who’s the joke?’

  Barney finished off the clipper work, took a step back and examined the head of hair before him.

  ‘You think Putin saw that movie?’ he asked.

  He usually didn’t encourage political conversation. He’d had enough of Brexit and Impeachment, war in Ukraine, arms sales and famine in Yemen. There was something to be done about all these problems, but Barney had saved the world more than once. His time in the spotlight was over. His was now the quiet, island life.

  At least the man currently in the chair, on the receiving end of a Miley Cyrus, Wrecking Ball cut, was bringing a new perspective to the table.

  ‘OK, I know what you’re thinking,’ said Miley Cyrus, Wrecking Ball. ‘History tells us the Russians attacked Georgia in August of twenty-o-eight, a few weeks before that movie received its premiere. But let’s not be fooled. Chances are the Russian distributors had seen the movie, and a copy had been passed to Putin.’

  ‘Putin had already killed everyone in Chechnya,’ said Barney. ‘So there was that.’

  ‘Sure, but we brushed that off,’ said Wrecking Ball. ‘Everyone was so desperate to have a Russian leader they could deal with, they were just like, Chechnya? Sure, like, whatever. Let’s talk about your Russian money, and the hell with where it came from. Then we took their cash, and condescendingly treated them like our rich, autistic cousin. Georgia was the first sign that they weren’t going to put up with any more of our shit. Invading Georgia was them out for revenge.’

  ‘On the Coen Brothers?’ said Barney.

  ‘On the West. Up until that movie came out, the Kremlin hadn’t realised just how much we belittled them. They saw that, and boom!’

  Barney glanced at Keanu, who nodded in approval of the assessment.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Barney, turning back to the customer. ‘Your theory passes the barbershop litmus test. You’re cleared to take it on Good Morning Scotland and Radio 4 Today.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Wrecking Ball. ‘I might just do that. I mean, the guys down the Bull’s Head think I’m talking pish, but a barbershop’s a bit more of a cultural and political thought chamber, right?’

  ‘Arf,’ said Igor in agreement.

  Barney took a step back, decided that his work in general was done, then pushed down the cape at the back and quickly buzzed the razor around the lower neck area.

  ‘Have you got a solution?’ asked Barney. ‘I mean, it’s all very well laying out the genesis of the problem, but at some stage Nick Robinson’s going to cut you off mid-sentence and ask what you’re going to do about it?’

  Barney picked up the hand mirror, showed the customer the back and sides of his head, and then laid down the mirror and whisked off the cape with an understated flourish.

  Miley Cyrus, Wrecking Ball stood up, jerked his head slightly to see the movement of his hair, bared his white teeth to check for signs of afternoon snack, and then nodded to himself. Job done.

  ‘Nah,’ he said, as he took his coa
t from the peg on the wall. As he put it on, he looked outside at the day. ‘Way I look at it is,’ he continued, ‘it’s too late. The Coen Brothers sealed our fate. We are all absolutely fucked. Thanks for the cut, man.’

  He handed Barney fifteen pounds, indicated appreciatively he could keep the change, and left the shop, closing the door behind him. A couple of steps and he was out of sight.

  The three men of the shop stared at the space where he’d been, and then Igor laid down the Evening Times and got to his feet to once more take up the broom, while Keanu and Barney held each other’s gaze.

  ‘Man’s a sage,’ said Barney, drily.

  ‘History will not be kind to the Coen brothers,’ said Keanu.

  ‘Nope, not now that they’ve started World War III.’

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the shop closed for the day. Sign on the door, the lights dimmed. Igor had already gone off, family duties to which to attend. Barney was waiting, his jacket on, for Detective Sergeant Monk. Keanu was still reading The Gentleman’s Convenience, coming to the end, no need to rush away.

  ‘You all right?’ he said, looking over the top of the paper.

  ‘Sure,’ said Barney.

  ‘You seem kind of flat these days.’

  ‘Mid-life crisis.’

  ‘Cool. How long’s that been going on?’

  ‘Fifteen years maybe.’

  They smiled together.

  ‘I know,’ said Keanu. ‘Long winter ahead, every day much like the one before. Seems kind of monotonous, doesn’t it? Fortunately, I’m here to save the day. Just found something that’ll be right up your street. We could all go, if you fancied closing the shop for a day or two.’

  Barney looked at Keanu with a raised eyebrow, then he shrugged, the only sound for a moment the movement of his jacket.

  ‘There’s a barbershop convention next weekend in Perthshire.’

  A beat.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Three days, Friday evening to Sunday. There’ll be talks, a showroom with all the latest snazzy equipment, there’ll be celebrity hairdressers and barbers, there’ll be discussions about trends and the latest styles. It’ll be amazing.’