The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series) (32 page)

On a high of murderous delirium, the killer almost stumbled into Barney Thomson. Would have done so, had not Barney heard his irregular footfalls coming towards him and hidden behind a pillar at the last minute.

However, the killer sensed something as he came into the small hall, the interconnection of four corridors. The place where Barney Thomson had chosen to make a rendezvous with Detective Sergeant Dip. A curious place for a secret assignation, but Barney Thomson was no conspirator.

The monk stopped, slowed down; he fingered the knife, now thrust into the folds of his cloak, but still warm with blood. Blood that he could taste; and he could smell the presence of another human being. His nose twitched. Someone was watching him, he could feel it; someone lurking in the shadows. He hadn’t been followed, he was quite sure of that, so whoever it was would not know the sad fate of Brother Herman.

‘Hello?’ he said to the empty chamber. ‘Who’s there?’

No reply, and he began slowly to circle the room. Almost completely dark, but for the bare light of a smouldering fire, itself only minutes away from death.

Barney Thomson hid behind a pillar and waited. He watched the man before him, on the cusp of showing himself. Some of the monks he could trust; some of them he couldn’t. Already had the two lists drawn up in his mind. This man was on the A-list. This man he thought would not betray him. Yet something stayed his hand as, all the while, his heart ba-boomed inside his chest, the sweat beaded on his face and he forced his teeth together to stop them chattering. He’d had too much of this in the past year, and this wouldn’t be the last time, he thought. Or, then again, it might.

‘Hello?’ said the killer, and his eyes swept past the pillar behind which Barney hid. Barney sucked his stomach in. The predator kept circling, and all the while Barney grew more uneasy. There was something in the way he moved; and the monk was quickly removed from the A-list. Could this be the killer, he wondered. Who else, apart from himself, would be wandering the corridors at this hour? This was not a part of the monastery where any of the monks needed to go at night; that was why he’d chosen it.

The monk circled; Barney twitched.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello,’ came the reply.

Barney twitched so hard his head banged silently off the stone pillar. He managed to keep his mouth shut as his hand went to the instant bump. He risked a glance round the corner of the pillar. The police. Of course.

The killer stared through the gloom, himself surprised. Sheep Dip had appeared as if from the shadows, and instantly the killer assumed that here was the man who had been watching him for the previous few minutes.

‘Good evening,’ he said, cool regained, fingers once again clutching the sticky hilt of the knife.

‘You’re not Barney Thomson,’ said Sheep Dip, and was immediately annoyed at himself for mentioning the name.

‘Barney Thomson?’ said the monk. ‘Never heard of him. Not one of the brothers,’ he added warily.

‘No,’ said Sheep Dip. Had to move the conversation on. ‘Late to be abroad, is it not, Brother?’

The monk shrugged. ‘I couldn’t sleep, Sergeant. Too many things going on.’

His mind was racing. Going through all the options. His hand clutched the knife, and that remained his favourite option of all; especially since his blood still fizzed with the rush of the last murder. There were pros and cons to be considered, however. This man before him was no Brother Herman, stupid and slow. This was a sensible policeman, a big man who would be faster than he looked.

‘And do you think it’s wise to be walking corridors when there’s some lunatic on the loose?’

The monk’s eyes narrowed. Barney Thomson? Brother Jacob. It made sense. He must be some criminal who was on the run, and who they had tracked to the monastery. They thought that Barney Thomson was the monastery killer, and he only just managed to keep the smile from his face.

‘I have God to protect me,’ said the monk. They couldn’t be that stupid, could they, he thought. The only thing Brother Jacob could kill was conversation.

‘God hasn’t made a very good job of protecting your brothers,’ said Sheep Dip, staring through the gloom at the monk. Something was missing and he didn’t realise it. His instinct was gone; he stood before a killer covered in blood, and he didn’t see it. Sheep Dip had always had instinct. Now it had been repressed by this house of God.

‘This Barney Thomson,’ said the monk. ‘You think that he’s the one who’s been doing these terrible things?’

‘Barney Thomson? Naw, not him. He’s just a feckless idiot. I doubt the man could tie his own shoelaces. Folk like Barney Thomson are what God had left over when he’d finished making snot.’

Barney Thomson bristled; and in any other situation he would seriously have thought about almost doing something.

‘So whom do you suspect, then, Sergeant?’ said the monk.

The tone of voice, and instantly it hit Sheep Dip. The killer stood before him. Sure as eggs were eggs and the day would die, this was the man they were looking for. What was wrong with his radar that it had taken him two minutes to realise?

The monk saw it in his face. The dawning recognition. Sheep Dip was too surprised to hide it; and instantly the knife in the killer’s hand had been freed and he was lunging towards Sheep Dip.

Sheep Dip dived to the side, stumbling. Brain in confused overload. Fumbling for the gun tucked in his back. Kicking himself. He avoided the first lunge and regained his footing. Hand on the butt of the gun, he swept it forward. The killer knew what was coming, knew he had to make one last effort before the gun was upon him.

His knife swept wildly through the air; the blade, dulled by blood, black-red in the emaciated light of the wretched fire; the killer-monk gasping with effort, his head exploding with the outrageous pleasure of the fight.

‘I know guys are weird, ‘n all, but surely it doesn’t take half an hour to go to the toilet?’

The listing of dream alternatives had long since expired – too painful to think about – and they had been sitting in silence. Mulholland stared into the fire, which had gradually burned lower. Contemplating the thought that he would have to add more fuel, coming along with the realisation that Sheep Dip had been gone a long time; realisation which he had been doing his best to ignore.

‘It takes all kinds of lengths of times,’ he said. ‘Surely you’ve read that in a
Blitz!
article?
Why Men Take Ages To Shit
. Or
Tell the Length of a Man’s Cock from How Long He Spends on the Toilet
. Or
Men and Shit - The Savage Truth
.’

‘Very funny. You don’t think something might have happened to him?’

‘Sheep Dip? The Sheepmeister? Mr Dippidy Fucking Idiot-Face? I doubt it,’ Mulholland said, while he presumed that Sheep Dip already lay dead, throat slashed, blood everywhere. Felt guilty about being so callous. ‘The amount that guy eats, it might well take him half an hour.’

‘We should go and look for him,’ Proudfoot said, ignoring the ill-humour which she had quite become used to.

‘How do you mean that, exactly?’

‘How do you think I mean it? We should go and look for him. Something might have happened.’

‘Look, it’s freezing out there, down those corridors. It’s warm in here. He’s probably just gone in search of some more food, and if he hasn’t, and he’s already dead, it’s not as if we’re going to be able to do anything for him now, is it? Are you a doctor?’

‘Chief Inspector?’

Mulholland rubbed his hand across his face. Looked with yearning once more into the fire.

‘God, all right, then. But if we find him sitting on the bog reading a porn mag, I’m going to be pissed off.’

***

Mulholland appeared from the toilet, clutching a candle in his right hand, the jumping shadows mixing with those from the candle of Proudfoot. Proudfoot shivered.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Now I know how George Michael feels,’ he said. ‘Anyway, the cupboard is empty. Not a bare arse to be seen, Sheep Dip’s or otherwise.’

‘So what do you think, then?’

‘I think he was lying when he said he was going to the toilet. I think he had other things to do. Some lead he wanted to follow up and not tell us about; some other business with one of the inmates; who knows?’

‘So, do we look for him?’

Mulholland stared through the gloom. Proudfoot was an attractive woman; in this light she was glorious. Delicious, sexy, seductive; all of those things. His ill-humour, his impatience, his rampant apathy, combined to make him want her even more. Right now, in a cold, dark, damp corridor, in a freezing monastery, with a killer on the loose, in the middle of nowhere.

‘No,’ he said. No matter what he was feeling, he couldn’t mask ill-humour this ill.

‘We’ve got to look for him. It doesn’t matter what his motives were. If he’d intended to be long about it, he would have given some other excuse. Something must have happened to him.’

‘I don’t care, Erin,’ snapped Mulholland, and he almost spat the name out, and the use of it sent a shiver down her spine, making her take a step back. ‘If he wants to be such a bloody fool as to go mincing around the bloody Monastery of Death in the middle of the night, on his own, well, sod him. He deserves to die.’

Mulholland, candle blazing its way in front, began to move off down the corridor. Proudfoot stood her ground. ‘Don’t be such a selfish arsehole.’

He stopped. His shoulders were hunched against the cold. The candle dully illuminated holes and nooks in the walls where spiders lived and where small insects went to die. And the thrown shadows moved with him as he slowly turned around.

‘What did you just say, Sergeant?’ he said. Voice on the edge, but she had had enough of it, and was not cowed.

‘You’re not the only one stuck in this bloody awful place, you know. You’re not the first person who’s split up with his wife, you’re not the first person who hates his job, you’re not the first person to spend a freezing night in a place they could not want to be in less. Get a fucking grip of yourself. And cut the
Sergeant
crap ‘n all, because I’m not letting you get away with this. There’s a fellow officer somewhere in this building and he very likely needs our help. Now, come on!’

Proudfoot marched off in the opposite direction, further into the bowels of the monastery. Towards the chamber where Sheep Dip lay prostrate on the floor; cold stone, briefly warmed by policeman’s blood.

Mulholland breathed deeply. Maybe she was right, but the thought didn’t even begin to formulate itself. Nevertheless, with the chill bitter and clutching his coat close around him, he began to walk after her, several paces behind and making no effort to catch up.

‘If we get back to the room and that big bastard is sitting there, you’re dead, Sergeant,’ he muttered to the darkness between them. And if she heard him, she did not let on.

***

Barney Thomson shook. He had moved on from shivering, and now his whole body vibrated wildly with cold and fear. He had seen so much death, more than in a gaggle of Bond movies, and yet this was worse than all of it.

He had seen the killer at work, from no more than five yards away. He had seen him strike repeatedly with a knife, carried away in a crazed frenzy of diabolical delight. He had seen him drink from the cup of evil, and eat the meat from the calf of villainy. This was a man who enjoyed his work, who’d been carried away with a brutal felicity. And this was a man whom he knew, whose hair he had cut, whose skin he had pressed his scissors against.

If only he had let those scissors penetrate that skin.