Curse Of The Clown Read online

  ‘Arf!’

  ‘But what with us being men ‘n’ all, maybe you’d find it easier talking to a woman. I mean, not to make generalisations or anything...’

  ‘No, it’s a fair point,’ said Keanu. ‘Men talk about sport, movies, maybe politics or general stuff, inane chitchat and that kind of thing. But feelings?’

  ‘Arf,’ said Igor.

  ‘Right?’ said Keanu.

  ‘Perhaps we could be at the vanguard of change?’ said Barney. He looked seriously at the two of them, and then they all dissolved into giggles, Igor, in particular, having something of the Muttley about him.

  ‘Nice one,’ said Keanu.

  ‘So, how about Sophia?’ said Barney, when they’d recovered their equilibrium. ‘How d’you think it’s going to go with her?’

  ‘Too early to say,’ said Keanu. ‘But, it’s looking good. I mean, she’s nice ‘n’ all, dead easy to talk to.’

  ‘Attractive,’ tossed in Barney.

  ‘God, aye. She’s got a face that could carry a stamp.’

  Keanu smiled at his own line, staring at the floor as he thought of her, taking a slurp of tea. Barney and Igor, meanwhile, shared a glance that said, a face that could carry a stamp?

  ‘She’s coming back down this evening?’ asked Barney.

  Sophia had decided to go home, lock up the shop for good, grab a few more things, and then come back and spend some time in Millport. The lure of paradise on earth. Hard to resist.

  ‘Aye,’ said Keanu, and he looked at the clock. ‘Need to go and get her off the boat in half an hour.’

  ‘Good.’

  The door opened, and Detective Sergeant Monk walked in, looking more relaxed than Barney had feared, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, and they all greeted her in return.

  ‘Arf?’ asked Igor, Monk smiled positively in response, and Igor walked to the rear of the shop to make another cup of tea.

  ‘Well,’ said Monk, including both Barney and Keanu, ‘good day?’

  The men looked phlegmatically at each other.

  ‘Been worse,’ said Barney. ‘Been a lot better ‘n’ all.’

  ‘A lot of gossip hunters?’

  ‘That’s a nice way to describe them, but yes, gossip hunters. How’s it going? You manage to unravel the story?’

  Monk made something of a hopeless gesture, then with a look at Igor, and a returned nod from the sweeper-upper, she deposited herself in the barber’s chair that Igor had just vacated. As he returned with her cup of tea, she started recounting the day’s investigative events.

  ‘Usual kind of a shitshow,’ she said, then she took a sip of tea, and made the familiar gesture of appreciation to Igor. ‘The two main people who could explain the whole disaster are dead.’ Quick sympathetic glance at Keanu. ‘Far as we can tell, Norman had this list of enemies, but it was the Klown who actually carried them out. Well, I suppose they were both the Klown.’

  ‘That’s clear,’ said Barney, then he added, ‘So, the little guy, his name wasn’t actually Child 2, was it?’

  Monk let out a low whistle.

  ‘Found the paperwork. Jeez, those parents weren’t messing around. They tried to register the kid as Child 2, no joking. Child 2. The registrar told them they couldn’t. It’s not recorded whether they considered court action for this. They then submitted paperwork to call him Not Norman Lindorf. Again, not joking.’

  Barney’s brow furrowed.

  ‘Way to give a kid a solid start in life,’ he said. ‘What’d they go for in the end?’

  ‘Cyril,’ said Monk. ‘So our little friend from last night was called Cyril Lindorf. We’ve had people out all over, putting together his life. He was never known as Cyril at home, instead being called Child 2. Dropped out of school, drifted in and out of juvenile detention, always getting into fights, then he drifted in and out of jobs. He and Norman lived together for a long time in adulthood, but we’re still piecing that period together.

  ‘Then we come to the time Norman got fired from the barbershop in Edinburgh, and then went around searching for work, a period that ended with him unemployed, and with a serious chip on his shoulder. We don’t know, and might never, how much coordination there was between them over these murders. There was obviously some bond between them, but we believe Cyril was more or less tapping in to that chip on Norman’s shoulder. Norman too was giving himself clown face makeup, he may have been making all sorts of grandiose plans, but Cyril was the one who carried them out... So far, we’ve just got Cyril’s word for it that Norman joined him to kill Danny and his wife and the police guards, but it makes sense.’

  ‘Any idea of the end game?’

  ‘Not sure we’ll ever know. Still trying to put together all sorts of things, including who else might have been on his list. Unless, and this is a scary thought, the Klown intended killing everyone who’d ever turned Norman down.’

  ‘That would’ve precipitated a barber crisis,’ said Barney.

  ‘Yes, it would,’ said Monk, taking another drink. ‘So, lots of questions still to answer. Still so much we don’t know.’

  ‘If this was a crime novel,’ said Keanu, ‘you’d’ve needed to explain all that shit by now. You can’t just wrap it all up, and leave random parts of the story lying around unexplained.’

  ‘True,’ said Monk, ‘but fortunately this is real life, and we can go home and have dinner. Or, if it is a novel, it’s a literary novel where you don’t have to give a shit about the plot.’

  ‘I think I like the sound of being in a literary novel,’ said Barney.

  ‘Yep, that’s us,’ said Keanu. ‘Literary as fuck.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Monk, ‘when the dust has settled and the fat lady’s sung, and the thing’s done the whatever it’s going to do, maybe then you can channel some of this stuff into your books.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Keanu, ‘maybe. Wait, hasn’t the fat lady already sung? I mean the fat lady singing isn’t the same as the dust settling, is it?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Monk, ‘you got me. I was trying to think of a synonym for the dust settling and blew it. That’s what happens when you try being poetic in conversation with a writer. You get crushed.’

  Keanu laughed, Barney shook his head, Igor smiled grimly to himself.

  The smiles passed, tea was drunk, a comfortable silence fell upon the dying of the afternoon. Another day in the Millport Barbershop was over, another day nearer oncoming, total planetary destruction.

  ‘Arf,’ said Igor, and the others nodded.

  THAT NIGHT, BARNEY and Monk lying in bed together, fingers lightly touching. Lights out, but both wide awake, staring at the shadows cast by the streetlights on the bedroom ceiling. They had wanted to fall asleep, and so they’d gone through the motions. They’d come to bed, they’d read briefly, they’d said goodnight, they’d turned out the lights. Sleep, however, was not coming.

  Finally Monk spoke, aware as Barney that they were both awake, and deciding she might as well make use of the time.

  ‘Let’s say you met Alanis Morissette,’ she began.

  Barney smiled in the dark.

  ‘I’m there,’ said Barney.

  ‘How long d’you think you could last before you inadvertently used the word ironic?’

  ‘Doubt I could get past the first sentence,’ he said.

  ‘Right?’ said Monk. ‘Someone would say, this is my friend Alanis Morissette, and I’d say, ‘that’s ironic,’ and then I’d be like, d’oh! But it’d be too late. It’d be out there. The word would’ve been said.’

  ‘I’d be the same. How d’you think Alanis would take it?’

  ‘You oughta know, Barney,’ said Monk, and again Barney smiled in the darkness.

  ‘I see what you did there,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was funny.’

  And she elbowed him gently in the night.

  The Epilogue

  A chill morning in e
arly December, dawn’s grey light. A couple walking along the beach at Royale-les-Eaux. Temperature not much above zero, the cold wind from the sea meaning it feels much, much colder, and our couple – Gabriel and Camille – have their coats pulled tight, buttoned up, and are walking arm in arm.

  Why are Gabriel and Camille out walking so early on such a cold morning? They don’t appear to have a dog, and the beach is deserted, with the exception of a lone figure – who is more than likely a dog walker himself – some distance away. The truth is, the story of Gabriel and Camille is not known to us. We’ll never know. We might even have observed that the beach they’re walking along is beside a fictional town. Nevertheless, here they are. The sea and the sky are grey, the light flat, and the couple are walking arm in arm, looking out on a bleak expanse of beach on the north coast of France.

  Suddenly, Camille sees something, and she stops. Their entangled arms mean that Gabriel also stops.

  ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est?’ says Camille.

  Together they watch the small red balloon float towards them, in off the sea, carried on a cold wind. Behind, trails a long piece of string. There’s a piece of paper attached to the string, and something tied to the end.

  As fate would have it, the balloon flies right in front of Camille and Gabriel. We might note, at this point, that it is Camille who is the more dominant of the couple. She breaks the arm entanglement, reaches out and grabs the string, in between the balloon and the note.

  ‘Bizarre!’ she says.

  Letting the so-far-unidentified item at the end of the string dangle, she and Gabriel read the note.

  Soon enough, when darkness falls, the Koiffing Klown will come to call.

  They read the note a couple of times, both looking perplexed.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ says Gabriel, perhaps automatically speaking English, because he’s just read the note.

  Camille lifts the string and looks at the small object tied to the end. It has flown high, to tens of thousands of feet as it happens, and has not fared well.

  ‘Des idées?’ she says.

  ‘Looks like a tiny British penis,’ says Gabriel, his face contorted with disgust.

  ‘Ugh,’ says Camille, although she doesn’t immediately let go of the string. Instead she lifts the blistered, withered organ and takes a closer look.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’m right.’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘We should take it home. Put it with the others.’

  ‘Oui.’

  And she takes a small plastic bag from her pocket, places the penis and the note into the bag, then puts the bag back in the pocket, leaving the still-attached balloon bobbling in the wind on a short piece of string.

  They look at each other, a moment, and then they shrug in unison, once more engage arms, and then they walk along the beach, heading in the direction of the solitary figure in the distance.

  – the end –

  By Douglas Lindsay

  The Barber, Barney Thomson

  The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson

  The Cutting Edge of Barney Thomson

  A Prayer For Barney Thomson

  The King Was In His Counting House

  The Last Fish Supper

  The Haunting of Barney Thomson

  The Final Cut

  Aye, Barney

  Curse Of The Clown

  The Barbershop 7 (Novels 1-7)

  Other Barney Thomson

  The Face of Death

  The End of Days

  Barney Thomson: Zombie Slayer

  The Curse of Barney Thomson & Other Stories

  DS Hutton

  The Unburied Dead

  A Plague Of Crows

  The Blood That Stains Your Hands

  See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

  DCI Jericho

  We Are The Hanged Man

  We Are Death

  DI Westphall

  Song of the Dead

  Boy In the Well

  The Art of Dying

  Pereira & Bain

  Cold Cuts

  The Judas Flower

  Stand Alone Novels

  Lost in Juarez

  Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!

  A Room With No Natural Light

  Ballad In Blue

  These Are The Stories We Tell (2020)

  Other

  For The Most Part Uncontaminated

  There Are Always Side Effects

  Kids, And Why You Shouldn’t Eat More Than One For Breakfast

  Santa’s Christmas Eve Blues