The Day of the Jack Russell (Mystery Man) (2 page)

Beware of what you wish for.

Billy Randall was indeed becoming an international phenomenon, but for all the wrong reasons. Over a million people had viewed the video of the Cock-Headed Man. And the number of hits was growing with every hour that passed. People who had never heard of Billy Randall now knew him as the Cock-Headed Man. Billy Randall had gone viral, and he wasn’t happy about it
at all
.

Still, every cloud has a silver lining.

‘I’ve already tried the police; they’re not interested. I’ve had all manner of security companies ringing me up and promising me this or that, but none of them local, none of them who know these streets, none of them with your reputation.’

I was positively glowing.

‘I told YouTube to take it down and they did; five minutes later it was back up again. It’s spreading to other sites. It has even been on cable television. I’m getting abusive e-mails from all over the world. I want this stopped. I want them found. And I want them punished. I don’t want people to think they can mess with Billy Randall and get away with it. They’re destroying my business. People do not want to do business with someone they can’t take seriously. People may not like me, they may be jealous of what I’ve achieved, but they also respect me for what I’ve done. I know that, they’ve told me that. I’ve worked for twenty years to get where I am, I employ over two hundred people right here in Belfast, not in some fricking call centre in Mumbai. I’m not going to have it all disappear because of a couple of hooligans. I’m not going to be disrespected, not me, not Billy Randall!’

There was sweat on his brow and fury in his eyes, and I liked him a little better for it. I don’t trust people who smile too much, who are always interested in what you have to say, who are too touchy-feely, or even touchy-feely at all. I didn’t for one moment think that Billy Randall had built his business by smiling all the time and being nice to people, I’m sure he shouted and raged like the best of us, but he had concocted an image and had to live up to it every time he stepped out of his front door. This flash of anger at least showed there was a relatively normal and flawed human being behind his inflated public persona.

‘Okay,’ I said, and managed not to smile as I added, ‘but I’m not cheap.’

‘Money isn’t an issue. You can find them?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said.

‘Okay. Find them, let me know where they live, I’ll take it from there.’

I nodded, and then some more.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘What will you do to them?’

‘That’s my concern.’ And then he cracked his trademark smile. ‘Nothing
illegal
– that’s all I need! I’ll think of something, something practical. A restraining order. Something.’

I was on the verge of reminding him of the old saying, that there was no such thing as bad publicity, of suggesting that he might parlay the massive exposure he was getting into something positive, if he could just embrace the joke instead of fighting it. It could help his image and improve his business at the same time. He would be known as a man who could take a joke, instead of being one. But then I thought it was all very well saying it; I wasn’t the one who had to live with being known all over the world as the Cock-Headed Man, and also if No Alibis was going to survive the barren Christmas period, I was going to have to start earning money through some means other than bookselling, because for the moment, crime wasn’t paying.

As Billy Randall left, Jeff arrived. Jeff continues to work for me on a part-time basis, as saving political prisoners for Amnesty International apparently doesn’t pay very well. I have often thought that if Amnesty International paid its campaigners a commission they would achieve a lot more. They would also attract a better calibre of campaigner, because really, if you want to be taken seriously by despots, dictators and religious maniacs, you should at least ensure that your representatives look vaguely respectable and not like they’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards, and also that they are at least capable of conducting a reasonably intelligent conversation without falling back on punching the air and yelling out nonsensical slogans and making promises they can’t keep. I’m still waiting for my free Nelson Mandela.

Jeff’s eyes widened as Billy Randall passed by, and then he mouthed to me while pointing after him, ‘Is that . . . ?’

I nodded and quickly ushered him into the shop and closed the door. ‘He’s hired me to solve a case,’ I said.

‘Us.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘He’s hired
us
to solve a case.’

‘No, he’s hired me. You assist me. I pay you. But he’s hired me.’

‘I thought we were a team.’

‘No.’

‘When Alison stormed out, you said I could replace her.’

Alison was the girl in the jewellery shop across the road. I’d given her my heart. And she had shoved it right back in my face. Although not before stealing my virginity. I had thought her to be warm, loving, thoughtful, caring and beautiful. Now I knew her to be cold, callous, calculating and ugly. I would never, ever forgive her. Her name is in my ledger. I have a big ledger. Once your name goes into it, it’s impossible to remove. Even with Tippex.

‘Nobody will ever replace her.’

‘As your crime-fighting partner.’

‘I don’t need a crime-fighting partner.’

He snorted, and took off his jacket. This year’s fashion for the young and politically aware student was a bottle-green combat jacket, ragged jeans and Lennon glasses. This year’s fashion hadn’t changed much in forty years. He stashed the jacket behind the counter and rolled up the sleeves of his cheesecloth shirt in what had become a regular charade by implication that he was actually going to do some work.

‘So what did the Dick-Headed Man want?’

‘The Cock-Headed Man.’

‘Dick,’ said Jeff.

‘Cock.’

‘He’s known all over as the Dick-Headed Man.’

‘Cock.’

‘Dick.’

‘Cock.’

‘Dick.’

‘Cock.’

‘Dick.’

‘Cock.’

There was something oddly hypnotic about our exchange, and it might have gone on for ever if I had not broken the rhythm by suggesting that Jeff would shortly be out of a job if he didn’t agree with me, at which point he conceded that in future we would refer to Billy Randall as the Cock-Headed Man, although not to his face.

I did not expect the solving of
The Case of the Cock-Headed Man
to present me with too many difficulties. I had been down a similar path before while investigating
The Case of the Fruit on the Flyover
, which also involved a graffiti artist making life miserable for those he chose to pick on. The main difference here was that the stakes were higher; it had gone global. It also seemed to me that it was too late to do anything about it. The video was out there and always would be; what Billy Randall wanted was retribution.

But that was no concern of mine. I was being paid handsomely to track down the culprits, that was all.

I watched the video through several more times. Simple observation led me to conclude that it had been shot at a billboard on the Annadale Embankment. I very quickly deduced that the actual graffiti artist, Jimbo, was a tradesman. It was the ladders. Everyone has ladders, but usually they’re only big enough to get you up to change a light bulb. These were fully extendable. They could take you right up the side of a large house and on to the roof. It seemed to me therefore that they were
professional
ladders. There was always the possibility that Jimbo and his accomplice might have borrowed them, but in re-examining the video, I noticed that Jimbo flicked the lever to allow the extension and then switched it back to secure it in its extended position without apparently looking down, suggesting an easy familiarity with their operation, which again suggested that he might do this for a living. So he could be a roofer, a decorator, a satellite installer or perhaps a window-cleaner. And one who very probably lived in the area of the Annadale Embankment, because it seemed to me that they weren’t going to take the trouble of driving or even carrying the ladders across town to carry out their attack. They were going to do it close to where they lived. First of all, because it was easier. Second, if as it seemed they were doing it for a laugh, then they would want their friends to see it – they weren’t going to say, hey, we did this crazy thing, and then expect their friends to travel across town to see it. They’d want to do it right on their doorstep. The fact that they’d deliberately filmed their action and put it on something as international as YouTube didn’t negate the idea that they lived locally. They wanted to be admired by their pals, but also, in this networking era, further afield. According to the site info, the video had been posted by someone with the moniker RonnyCrabs. I presumed this was the cameraman and Jimbo’s partner in crime. Ronny was quite possibly his Christian name, Crabs perhaps his nickname. I was looking for Jimbo and RonnyCrabs. Forgive me tarring everyone with the same brush, but if they were painters or roofers or window-cleaners, then I was looking for a working-class area that abutted the Annadale Embankment. I’d barely been on the case for five minutes and I was already close to cracking it.

Easy money.

Jeff made himself scarce as soon as he saw Alison crossing the road to No Alibis. It was dark outside and I was on the point of closing up. If I’d been a trifle quicker I might have managed to bolt the door and pull the shutters down, but she was right in front of me before I could do anything other than open the door and allow her to enter. I gave her the look she deserved.

She looked around the inside of the shop as if she hadn’t seen it before, then snapped: ‘I’ve come to collect the money for my comics.’

‘Good luck,’ I said.

‘You owe me money.’

‘I haven’t sold any. They clearly weren’t very good.’

‘That’s not what you said before.’

‘I was just being nice.’

‘Well there’s a first. So where are they?’

‘I threw them out.’

‘You threw them out?’

‘I threw them out. You insisted on putting them in the window, even though I’m not a comics shop, and they turned yellow in the sun, so I threw them out.’

‘You insisted on putting them in the window because you said they were fantastic.’

‘I lied.’

‘You’re a miserable little shit.’

‘So’s your face.’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘Neither does your face.’

‘You’re a big baby.’

‘So’s your face.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Shut up your face.’

She laughed involuntarily. Then shook her head vigorously. ‘I was laughing at you. You think you’re so funny.’

‘Not as funny as your face.’

‘You used to love my face.’

I glared at her, then was thankful for the distraction of the door opening and a woman coming in with a small fat dog on a short lead. She wore a red knee-length coat with a fake fur collar. It had buttons like a duffle coat. It was undoubtedly expensive, but looked cheap. She said, without any introduction at all, ‘You have to help me. Every night when I’m going to bed there’s this man standing at the bottom of my front garden staring up at me.’

This, as it turned out, was
The Case of the Dog-Walking Man
, and I was grateful for the distraction of a potential client but also rigid with fear. I’m allergic to dogs. I sneeze and I sneeze. One only has to look me in the eye to set me off. I immediately held my nose. My eyes began to water. I gagged. Alison rolled her eyes.

‘What on earth is wrong with you?’ the woman asked.

I pointed at the dog, and then at the footpath.

The woman said, ‘He goes where I go.’

I nodded, and pointed at the footpath again.

Her lip curled up, but she was in a bind; she needed my expert help. She turned wordlessly and escorted the rat creature outside and tied him up. He looked at me through the glass. He had mean eyes.

The woman came back in. It wasn’t much relief. Even people who have been around dogs set me off. She should have gone home for a shower and a change of clothes. I sniffed up and rubbed at my eyes. I didn’t like her, instinctively. I don’t like most people, instinctively. There’s a basic difference between clients and customers. Customers buy books because they want to read them. Clients put their smudgy fingers on books and bend the covers and crack the spines while they work up the courage to approach the counter and spill the details of the sordid little cases they want me to solve. This woman was also the second potential client in one day not to even bother with the formality of pretending to peruse the books.

Alison turned away, as if to study the shelves behind her, but not before I saw, or thought I saw, a tear on her cheek.

I nodded at the woman. ‘This man?’

‘Every night at the same time.’

I nodded. ‘Would you like to join our Christmas Club?’ I asked. ‘It’s not a prerequisite of me taking your case.’

Said in such a way that she could have no doubt that it
was
a prerequisite. This stopped her in her tracks. ‘What are the benefits?’

Which stopped me in mine. The Christmas Club wasn’t exactly constructed to benefit anyone but me, which might account for the slow uptake in membership. There weren’t even enough members yet to call it a club. I shrugged and said rather vaguely, ‘Money off ?’

She studied me. ‘Are you in charge here?’

Behind her, Alison snorted.

‘I’m the owner.’

‘You’re the private eye?’

Behind her, Alison snorted.

‘Yes. One hundred per cent success guaranteed.’

‘That’s impressive.’

Behind her . . .

I quickly asked, ‘This man, what does he do?’

‘He just looks. His hands are hidden by the hedge.
God knows
what he’s doing. I just see his head and shoulders. He stares up at me, then he moves along the hedge a wee bit and looks up again. He goes the whole length of the hedge. I don’t know what to do. I told the police but they say there’s nothing they can do until he actually does something, which is like, yeah, useless. But when he looks up, I feel like I’m being molested.’