The barber sat in the middle chair. He had the now legendary brown envelope open and had clearly been savouring its contents.
“How dare you bustle in here,” the barber complained. “Me being busy with myself. What game is yours and oh …”
“Oh?” said Icarus.
“Oh, it’s you, boy, back again. I thought they …”
“Murdered me?” said Icarus.
“Not murdered surely. Took you off to have a nice sleep.”
“No,” said Icarus, approaching the barber.
“I not like the look of you, boy. You kindly leave by the door where you came.”
Icarus grasped the chair’s back and swung the barber around. The barber gripped the arms of the chair and the steel bands swished and clamped his wrists.
“Now look what you make me do, boy. Press the button on the back and set me free at once.”
“I think not,” said Icarus Smith. “I have questions to ask and you have answers to supply.”
“I tell you nothing,” said the barber. “I sign the Official Secrets Act. Say nothing to you about nothing.”
Icarus patted the barber on the head.
“Help!” screamed the barber. “Help me!”
Icarus took the Velocette and rammed it into the barber’s mouth. “Now,” said he. “I am going to give your head a little massage. I think I can remember exactly where Ms O’Connor applied the pressure. Let’s hope I don’t get it wrong. It would really be a shame if you were to suffer some permanent damage.”
“Mmph!” went the barber, shaking his head violently from side to side. “Mmph!”
“What was that?” asked Icarus. “Did I hear you saying that you would answer all my questions, clearly and precisely, without any need for painful measures being taken?”
The barber’s head nodded up and down.
Icarus removed the Velocette.
“Please don’t think of calling out for help again,” he said. “Or I will put my thumbs in your eyes and twist them inside out.”
Johnny Boy turned his face away. “I don’t want to watch that,” he said.
“You’ve finished watching TV now, then, have you, chief?”
“That’s why I woke you, Barry, yes.”
“And so, are we off on our way?”
“We are, Barry, we are off on our way to Black Peter’s Tavern.”
“Black Peter’s Tavern, chief? Please don’t tell me we’re going to Black Peter’s Tavern. Oh no no. Not Black Peter’s Tavern.”
“You know it, then, Barry?”
“Never heard of it, chief.”
I’d always fancied a night at Black Peter’s Tavern. It was the kind of joint where all the big knobs hang out. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do. This joint was swanky. It had class. If you were here, you were someone.
The decor was stylish to a point where it transcended style and entered the realms of perspicuous harmony, shunning grandiloquent ornamentation in favour of a visual concinnity, garnered from aesthetic principles, which combined the austerity of Bauhaus and ebullience of Burges[14] into an eclectic mix before stripping them down to their fundamental essentials, to create an effect which was almost aphoristic, in that it could be experienced but never completely expressed.
So there is no need to bother with a description.
But trust me, it was sheer poetry.
I breezed in, like a breath of spring
And wafted my way to the bar
The hour was the hour known as happy
Which is happy, wherever you are.
I took in the decor, the dudes and dames
And all found favour with me
They had class written through them, like words in a rock
That you buy in Blackpool on sea.
In the time I’ve spent as a private dick
I’ve drunk in all manner of bars
From doss house dives with pools of sick
To the haunts of movie stars.
I’ve cast my fashionable shadow
In many a wayside inn
And raised my glass to beaus and belles
And sailors and Sanhedrin.
But you know you are home
When you’re in amongst your own
And this was home to me
So I leaned my elbow on the bar
And summoned the maitre d’.
“Set ’em up, fat boy,” said I. “A pint of pig’s ear and a packet of pork scratchings.”
The maitre d’ raised a manicured eyebrow and viewed me down a narrow length of nose. “Would sir care to rephrase that?” he asked.
“Certainly,” I said, with more savoir-faire than a Sophoclean sophist at a sadhus’ seminar. “A pig’s ear scratching packet and a pint of pork, please.”
“Sir has the wit of Oscar Wilde, which combined with the droll delivery of Noel Coward creates a veritable tour de force of rib-tickling ribaldry.”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” said I.
“Kindly sling your hook,” said the maitre d’. “We don’t serve your kind in here.”
“Just make mine a Guinness, then, and forget the pork scratchings.”
“Coming right up, sir.”
The maitre d’ drew off the pint of black gold, and I waited the now legendary one hundred and nineteen seconds for it to fill to perfection.
“On the house,” said the maitre d’. “And help yourself to the chewing fat.”
“Why thank you very much,” said I. “And what brings on this generosity?”
“Look at this place,” said the maitre d’, whose name, if you hadn’t guessed, was Fangio. “This is one classy number. Top-notch clientele, thirty-two brands of whisky, carpet on the floor and even paper in the gents’ bog. This is my kind of bar, Laz. Do you think you might keep coming back to this one throughout the rest of your case? I didn’t take much to the Lion’s Mane, a wildebeest trod on my toe.”
I gave the place a once-over glance about. With my new sense of Super-vision, given to me by the Red Head tablet I’d taken in mistake for an aspirin, I could see the men within the men and the women within the women. They all looked pretty damn fab gear and groovy and not a wrong’un amongst them. This place had everything that a place that had everything had. So to speak.
“It’s definitely us, isn’t it?” I said.
“Too true. And look at this uniform. The waistcoat favours my wasp-waist and the fitted slacks show off my snake hips to perfection. You look pretty dapper in the new trenchcoat and fedora, by the way.”
“We’re a regular pair of dandies, ain’t we?”
Fangio tipped me the wink. “So,” said he. “What brings you here?”
“A cab,” I said. “But I left it outside.”
Oh how we laughed.
And laughed.
The barber at the Ministry of Serendipity wasn’t laughing at all. The hands of Icarus Smith gripped the barber’s head.
“Tell me”, said Icarus, “all about this barber’s shop. Tell me exactly why it’s here.”
The barber’s lips were all a-quiver. Icarus kneaded his skull.
“It’s for training purposes,” whimpered the barber.
“Go on,” said Icarus. “Tell me.”
“To train up operatives in the art of exo-cranial massage. We’ve trained thousands. Thousands and thousands.”
“To what purpose?” Icarus asked.
“World peace,” blurted the barber.
Icarus squeezed his head.
“It’s true. Everybody goes to a barber’s or hairdresser’s at some time. By using exo-cranial massage on them, the Ministry’s operatives keep them in a passive state.”
“Keep them under control,” said Icarus.
“I wouldn’t put it like that,” said the barber, hunching down his head.
“I would,” said Icarus, yanking up the barber’s head. “So the Ministry has infiltrated thousands of these trained operatives into barbers and hairdressers up and down the country, so that they can use their techniques to keep the population pacified and under control.”
“I prefer the term world peace,” said the barber.
14
William Burges, the now legendary nineteenth-century architect, notable for such gothic extravaganzas as Castel Coch. Not to be confused with the other Cardinal Cox.