Curse Of The Clown Read online

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ said Monk. ‘This is DS Monk, and yes, I know Barney. Mr Thomson.’

  ‘Barney? You know him well?’

  A beat. She stared out at the dark clouds and the darkening sky, and the white sail of a lone yacht out on the firth, emerging from behind the stark edge of Little Cumbrae.

  ‘Yes, Chief, I know him well.’ Hesitation, and then she decided to be boldly up front from the off. ‘I live with him. He’s my partner.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Solomon, though it was more in surprise than judgement. ‘Really? That’s brave.’

  ‘Thanks for the commentary, Chief,’ she said drily, but his tone had relaxed her. She remembered that Barney had described Solomon as being totally indistinguishable from DCI ., her regular boss, as though ‘both characters had been written by the same unimaginative writer’, and the familiarity of it immediately took the edge off the thought of what was to come. Her stomach uncurled. Whatever it was, however bad it was going to be, they could face it.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

  ‘OK, so this might sound a little insensitive, given that you’re shacked up with the guy...’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Chief,’ she said. ‘Lay it all out. We’re good.’

  ‘OK, that’s good, thanks, Sergeant. We’ve got a murder, guy was reported missing yesterday, we went round to his place in the evening, found his detached penis hanging from a red balloon.’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Monk, ‘someone’s being an asshole.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Found the stiff this morning, body dumped in the Forth, washed up at Portobello. We’ve done the DNA, confirmed the penis and body match, which is a positive, obviously.’

  ‘Where does Barney come in? He has a connection to the victim?’

  ‘No, not that. Look, Sergeant, I’ll just say again, this is pretty thin, but I have to ask, you understand.’

  ‘Really, all in, Chief, it’s no problem.’

  ‘The killer, as well as being so sad and wannabe as to detach a penis for show, left a note with the face of a demonic clown, and the words something wicked, newly found, here he comes, the Koiffing Klown. It should be noted, although it means little other than that the guy is a moron, he spelt coiff and clown with a K.’

  ‘The Koiffing Klown?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And you’re taking koiffing here to mean the guy’s a barber, or a hairdresser of some sort?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘And you thought of Barney?’

  A beat. She heard the heavy sigh from the other end of the phone.

  ‘I said it was thin. Look, your man has some history here, and on a scale of one to a hundred, I’m a big, fat zero in presuming he’s involved. Howe –’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘However, I’m doing due diligence, just the same as you would. I began by making sure he wasn’t still in this area, now I’m following the process to its logical conclusion.’

  ‘Yep, yep, OK, it’s cool, I understand.’

  ‘So...’ and his voice drifted off, so Monk said, ‘It’s fine, Chief, you can ask,’ and Solomon said, ‘Can you tell me what Mr Thomson was doing yesterday? In fact, what’s he been doing this week?’

  ‘He runs the local shop. He’s been there every day. It’s not the busiest, but there’ll be about fifty witnesses to that. Plus he’s spent every evening and night with me. He hasn’t been off the island.’

  ‘OK, that’s cool. Quite a relief, in fact, if I’m honest. No offence, but weird shit seems to follow that guy wherever he goes.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘You got stories?’

  ‘A hundred. One day when we both have several hours I can tell you about them.’

  Solomon laughed, and she could picture him at the other end of the phone.

  ‘All right, Sergeant. One more thing. Really, this stupid note is all we’ve got, but the trouble with notes like this is they usually lead to something else. You don’t leave a calling card unless you intend calling again.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Barney, see if he has any ideas. You checked out where the guy usually gets a haircut?’

  ‘Just getting started,’ he said, and Monk nodded to herself. No need to tell the DCI how to conduct an investigation.

  ‘OK, Chief,’ she said. ‘I’ll speak to Barney this evening, give you a call back. You working in the morning?’

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  ‘I’ll give you a shout. But you know, Barney doesn’t have a lot to do with other barbers, killer clowns or no.’

  ‘OK, thanks, Sergeant. Tell him I was asking for him.’

  ‘Will do.’

  The line went dead, and Monk sat still, receiver in hand, looking straight ahead, staring out of the window.

  The yacht had moved an inch to her right, the clouds had changed slightly, the darkness encroached a little further.

  What was it that was clenching her stomach again?

  Barney doesn’t have a lot to do with other barbers. That was what she’d just said. And, up until last night, that had been true. And now, suddenly, out of nowhere, Barney had signed up to go to a barber convention, just as a killer barber had appeared on the Scottish scene. Somewhere out there was a barber intent on serial murder, and Barney was about to put himself in the midst of the biggest barber gathering in Scotland in... well, she had no idea how long. A year? A decade? It didn’t matter. Barbers would be converging, and Barney would be in their midst.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said to herself. ‘Stop it. That’s not even a coincidence. Massive, massive stretch. It’ll be fine.’

  The door opened, and she turned quickly, on edge despite herself.

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Constable Gainsborough. ‘Fancy a cup of tea before you head off?’

  ‘I’m good, thanks, Thad, just leaving.’

  ‘Anything to report? I heard you on the phone.’

  ‘A body on Portobello beach, but hopefully the ramifications won’t make it all the way to the other side of the country.’

  Gainsborough looked a little curious, and then he nodded and closed the door.

  Monk got to her feet, and walked round to the window. Now, she found, she did want a cup of tea. She did want to linger at the station a little longer. She did want to postpone seeing Barney, because when she saw him, she was going to have to ask him about the Koiffing Klown, and it didn’t matter that he’d have no idea who it might be. It was just the plain and simple fact of it. DCI Solomon had been on the phone, murder had returned, the rollercoaster was back in operation.

  IT COMES SOON ENOUGH in any such tale, the scene with the detective and the pathologist and the dead body on a slab in an antiseptic, white room, with fluorescent lights and surgical instruments and a stultifying air of predictability.

  ‘Here we go,’ said Solomon, staring down at the corpse.

  Carew smiled.

  ‘Can’t have your murder inquiry without a PM now, can you?’

  ‘D’you ever feel like you’re trapped in a never ending cop show?’

  Carew laughed.

  ‘Come on, George, how many murders have you and I worked together? Seven, maybe?’

  ‘I think it might be closer to six hundred and fifty-nine,’ said Solomon. ‘Maybe a thousand.’

  Carew held his gaze for a moment until he reluctantly acknowledged he was exaggerating, then together they lowered their eyes to the naked cadaver.

  The body of Tomasz Wojciechowski was on its back, eyes closed, huge slit down the centre of the abdomen, all the way up to the slit in his neck, although the two sides of the body had been closed up again.

  ‘I see you didn’t reattach the guy’s dick,’ said Solomon.

  ‘Didn’t seem a good use of my time,’ said Carew.

  ‘What have you got, then?’

  ‘It’s all fairly straightforward. You said the guy was an estate agent?’

  ‘Yep. Selling homes in his blood, was there?’ />
  ‘Funny. Obviously spent too much time sitting at his desk. Wasn’t the healthiest guy on earth. He could have put up a fight, but there’s no sign that he did, and that’s because his drink was spiked.’

  ‘Something fancy-assed or common or gard –’

  ‘GHB, so nothing fancy-assed, and you ain’t tracking how the killer got hold of it. He administered it with the help of a single malt – still waiting for the test to identify exactly which one – then when he was easy prey, but I don’t believe completely out for the count, the killer bound him, then removed his penis.’

  ‘So the guy would’ve been aware of it happening?’

  ‘Oh yes.

  ‘Brutal.’

  ‘Yep. Then he slit his throat. So, you know, the penis thing was entirely gratuitous, intended just to inflict psychological damage before administering the final blow.’

  ‘Good to know. Wojciechowski had two or three single malts at his house, so possibly one of them, though if he was the one serving the drinks, it would be harder for the killer to administer the drug.’

  ‘We’ll let you know when we get something. Give us a couple of days, you know how it is.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Solomon.

  ‘What have you got on our man so far?’

  ‘No family in Scotland. Parents have been contacted, the dad’s already on his way over. No partner, been here over three years, no one’s really sure what he does with himself, other than that he’s a Hibs fan.’

  ‘Poor bastard.’

  ‘Aye. Imagine coming all the way from Poland, and you end up supporting Hibs.’

  ‘Life is cruel. Any reason why a barber would specifically want to kill him?’

  ‘Not so’s we know so far.’

  ‘A circus act?’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘Well,’ said Carew, ‘I’m afraid I’m not a lot of use to you yet. This here, blue and pale and dead, is all we’ve got. He was drugged and bound, the organ removed with... well, perhaps I’m being led by circumstances here, but I’d say the murder weapon was a cutthroat razor. Like an open-blade, barbershop razor. The angle of attack, the speed and precision with which the organ was removed. The same implement used for the throat.’

  ‘That sounds plausible.’

  ‘Not sure I’m going to be able to give you any more than that, but I’ll keep going.’

  ‘Pinpointing the razor manufacturer is out of the question?’ asked Solomon, a certain rueful hopelessness in his tone.

  ‘I’d say,’ said Carew. ‘Maybe if you could find me a hundred cutthroat razors, I can do a test. But, beyond the difference between blunt and sharp, I don’t know there’s an awful lot I’m going to be able to tell you.’

  Solomon let out a long sigh, and for a moment the two of them stood and looked forlornly down upon the dead, before finally Carew managed to snap herself out of it and said, ‘Right, bugger off, George, leave me alone. I’ll get a report over to you in the morning after church.’

  ‘I’m going, I’m going,’ said Solomon, and then, ‘Thanks, Jill.’

  And with that, he turned and was gone.

  And all the while, Tomasz Wojciechowski lay silently on his back, eyes closed, lips shut, not a breath to ever pass through his body again. The first, but not the last, victim of the nefarious, and soon-to-be-infamous, Koiffing Klown.

  6

  Götterdämmerung

  ‘The Koiffing Klown?’

  Barney stared across the dinner table. He’d arrived home first, inadvertently stumbled upon a radio programme about the decline, fall and imminent death of the American empire, entitled American Götterdämmerung, had lasted exactly three minutes before having to tell a Republican senator to go and take a massive fuck to himself, then he had put on a Gillian Welch CD, quickly relaxed, and started making dinner.

  ‘Yep,’ said Monk, through a mouthful of salmon fillet.

  Barney had kept the meal simple, though the sauce he’d made to accompany the salmon, with lemon, mustard, white wine and the distilled essence of a thousand butterfly wings, was divine.

  ‘Nice sauce,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks. They caught him yet?’

  ‘Nope. Have barely started.’

  ‘Ah. Establishing my whereabouts was the first thing they did?’

  ‘More or less. It’s one of your old sparring partners, so it’s no surprise he thought of you, to be honest.’

  ‘Go on.’

  For some reason that made Barney a little uncomfortable, though were he to have thought about it, he’d’ve struggled to come up with a police officer whose presence he’d find genuinely troubling.

  Well, there was one.

  ‘It wasn’t Three Beards, was it?’

  ‘Wait, what?’ said Monk. ‘Who’s Three Beards?’

  ‘Oh, doesn’t matter. A story best not told.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Monk. ‘We do live together, you know.’

  ‘So, who was it?’

  ‘Solomon, the DCI through in Edinburgh. You’ve mentioned him before.’

  ‘Yeah, right. That makes sense. Kind of how life works, isn’t it? Going around, and coming around, and all that. How’s he doing?’

  ‘Didn’t really ask.’

  ‘Suppose not. So, no, if you’re about to ask, I’ve never come across the Koiffing Klown before.’

  ‘Didn’t think you would’ve,’ said Monk. ‘You’d have mentioned it.’

  ‘Sounds like the guy might be a bit of a dick,’ said Barney, and Monk laughed.

  ‘Tell me about it. Anyway, not my case, so we’re good. I’ll call the DCI in the morning just to say you can’t help, and hopefully that’ll be us done with it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Barney.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘That next weekend you’re going away to a creepy old hotel in the middle of the country, where there’ll be a giant turnout of other barbers, one of whom is more or less guaranteed to be the Koiffing Klown because your life is a grotesque bastardisation of Scooby Doo, and in all likelihood fifteen to twenty people are going to get murdered?’

  Barney couldn’t help himself, burst out laughing.

  ‘Pretty much,’ he said. ‘Though fifteen to twenty seems a little steep. And at seven hundred and fifty quid for the two nights, this place better not be creepy. I’m looking for Gleneagles multiplied by the Burj Al Arab.’

  ‘Good luck with that,’ said Monk, before taking another bite of salmon, along with some samphire and mashed peas in butter.

  ‘Did I say the sauce was nice?’

  ‘You did. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s a great sauce.’

  ‘THERE ARE TWO TYPES of people who get given poor haircuts in a barbershop.’

  Norman was looking at himself in the mirror. He was wearing the makeup of his laughing koiffing, killer klown costume – albeit there was no actual costume to accompany the makeup, so in fact it was more a persona than a costume – so when he looked in the mirror he saw the Klown. He was speaking to the Klown. However, in his head, the one who was speaking, was himself.

  Apart from when he spoke back to himself as the Klown.

  ‘The first is the normal kind. The regular human being. The one who recognises that sometimes the barber messes up. It happens! And guess what? The hair grows back. Quelle surprise! It grows back! So, sure, that’s your normal kind of a guy. Then there’s the other kind. The asshole kind. The guy who comes back to the shop to complain. The guy who wants his money back. The guy who turns out to be a complete and utter bellend when you tell him he can get to fuck. The kind of guy who starts harassing you, the kind of guy who shouts at you in the street, who embarrasses you in public.’

  The smiling lips of the Klown curled in a snarl, then he shook his head to rid his face of the grievance, took an ostentatious deep breath, straightened his shoulders and relaxed again.

  ‘It’s all good, however, it’s all good. Such people have to be dealt with, t
o be taught the error of their ways, and then we can all move on.’

  He leaned forward now, a little closer to the mirror, his head dipping slightly to the side. The snarl returned.

  ‘It seems he learned,’ said the Klown. ‘But I don’t think he’ll be moving on any time soon.’

  And with that the Klown started to laugh, a moment while he continued to look at himself, and then he tipped his head back and laughed more loudly, the maniacal sound bouncing off the low ceiling, horrific and malevolent, the fell cry of the evil and bloody bastard.

  Then he quickly straightened up because he was hurting his neck.

  ‘Fuck,’ he muttered.

  It wasn’t entirely clear to the watchers of the universe whether it was the man himself, or his evil alter ego who had uttered the expletive, but either way it didn’t really matter. He grumbled in a low voice, cursing his fellow demons of the world, and reached for the whisky bottle.

  7

  Restless Farewell

  The following Friday afternoon. The end of a slow week. November had come, dull and grey. The main talking point in the shop had been the upcoming trip to the convention, and even then it had only been Keanu who’d been talking about it. Soon enough Barney had had to reinstall the Proscribed Subjects list, and had put the barbershop convention at the top. Thereafter, every customer who came in was quick to ask about the barbershop convention that no one was allowed to talk about, and Keanu had been happy enough to tell them, and so Barney had had to take it down again.

  Now it was four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and Barney had just placed the Closed sign on the door, with the added note that the shop would reopen at eight-thirty on Monday morning. Monk had just brought the car to the door, and the gentlemen were gathered round, drinking a fortifying cup of tea for the trip, a certain nervous tension in the air.

  None of them had ever been on a male bonding weekend before, and their only frame of reference was buddy movies.

  ‘D’you think there’ll be wild animals?’ asked Keanu, to fill a silence that was a little uncomfortable.

  Monk was there, Garrett was there, and they were all standing around as if the chaps were about to go off and spend two years trying to find the source of the Nile, or become the first chaps to walk naked to the South Pole using only pork scratchings for sustenance, no one quite sure what the final words on departure should be.