Short Stories

Short: Back and Sides On Monday evening, when the Council Chief Executive's young wife was electrocuted in one of Adrian's hair driers, the coiffeur nearly had a nasty turn. `He's in a meeting,' came the secretary's cool voice down the line. `Get him out of it then, tell him Cheryl's dead - Surely that's some kind of a priority?' `Doesn't like to be disturbed, sir. I'm sorry, but I'll pass him your message.' He pocketed the mobile and went on back-combing Mrs McClaren's hair. `Adrian?' `Madam?' `Don't you think you should call the police?' He took a backward step, directing silent music with his comb. `Whatever for?' `Come off it, Adrian. That's what one does, that's all.' `Oh, one does, does one just?' His mimicry wasn't ironic in any sense - any more than his copies of Sassoon's styles were anything but serious. `Why?' Mrs McClaren knew her civic duties, but as for explaining why she did them, that was quite another matter. `It's the law.' `Why?' `Most people just don't like murder, I suppose.' `But I didn't murder her.' Shrugging, he took out the mobile again. A police sergeant came before Mrs McClaren's hair had been fully styled. He asked Cheryl Sykes some pertinent questions but couldn't hear the answers because the defective drier was making vacuous crackling noises. Before he'd completed his interrogation a plainclothes colleague arrived from Scenes of Crime and began powdering surfaces round the late Cheryl for prints, leaving nasty brown smears for Adrian to wipe off. `Just a short, I imagine,' broke in Adrian. `Short circuit.' `You stick to your job, sir, I'll stick to mine.' Adrian held the mirror behind the McClaren nape. `Satisfactory, madam?' `If perfection can be called no more than satisfactory.' Single-handed that evening, Adrian was sweeping up by himself when another uniformed copper knocked peremptorily at the closed sign, a large balding pinstripe behind him playing with his regimental tie. `Never a quiet moment,' murmured Adrian to himself, half-stumbling over Cheryl's feet as he made for the door. `This is Mr Christopher Sykes, sir. `E's come to identify 'is wife if that's all right.' `Don't mind me.' The Chief Executive stood impassively before the helmeted Cheryl, looking her up and down. `That's her all right.' `Will you sign this statement then, sir?' He placed his clipboard on the shelf, pushing tongs and clippers out of the way. `Fine, sir, thank you, sir.' And he was off. The OPEN/CLOSED sign swung like a prisoner hanging himself. `Excuse me, Mr Sykes.' The Chief Executive stood back as Adrian's broom herded a flock of curls - blond, brunette and grey - into the waiting pan. `This deserves a drink, mate.' `Name's Adrian.' `Come and have a drink with me, there's a Wetherspoons across the road.' Well, it was more than a drink as it turned out, though numerically the whole thing became rather blurred. So when Adrian unlocked Crowning Glory on Tuesday morning he was surprised to find Cheryl still there. No, of course he knew she wasn't going to leave on her own account, but . . . I mean, wouldn't old Sykes come to claim her in spite of what he said last night? - have her buried, cremated, something like that? Same on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On the following Monday he sprayed half an aerosol of lavender Haze - but she still looked in pretty good shape. Over the weeks, in the dry atmosphere of the hairdressing salon, she slowly mummified. Not that it meant a thing to his well-heeled customers: they appeared rather to enjoy sitting under the hair drier next to hers - All the smell had gone, and no Haze was necessary any longer. As for fear that their brains too might fry, it didn't occur to these little organs, everyone knowing that Adrian had had all his wiring checked since the accident. Cheryl's face was blackening by imperceptible degrees - so imperceptible indeed that it was five weeks before anyone remarked on it. And then everyone did. From that day she looked like some Thotmes or Amenhotep but for her ash-blond hair. The fact that Adrian now had only three driers to spare was immaterial because his appointments book was always full and his rates had soared. Besides, he, Josie and Gail couldn't have taken on another scalp if they'd cared to. Then Mabel Abramovitz booked in for a perm, sliding into a seat close to Cheryl like a bad fairy at a christening. She claimed to be offended, disgusted, in fact scandalised. Her husband being the borough coroner, Adrian soon found himself in court, but an enlightened jury dismissed the case. The media had publicised the trial to such an extent that Crowning Glory was eventually floated on the stock market under the popular nickname of Black Widow. Initially quoted at 200 pence a share, the figure soared to 3,560 in the space of a week. In a fortnight it was among the hundred top indexed companies. It will come as no surprise that the PM herself scheduled an appointment at the Black Widow, to which someone invited the Channel 4 News crew and a crowd of flashing paparazzi to photograph the occasion for posterity. When the scintillation of scissors and the raking of combs were over, Prime Minister Susan Tuck was seated in the drier beside Cheryl, and the brightness of bulbs nearly blinded Adrian, Gail and Josie. Not quite, though. At the very peak of the photographic lightning display they saw Cheryl shrug half-heartedly, then proceed to collapse into a heap of brown dust, almost covering the now famous shoes and clothes. Black Widow was off the FTSI one hundred that evening. But it was found that Adrian had sold his majority share early that very day.