The Barbershop Seven (159 page)

'And your theory is?' he asked. Impaled a piece of broccoli which had been cooked to perfection. (The broccoli had been termed
100% steamed alleviated legume verte
.)

'There's a third thing,' she said.

'The grey,' suggested Barney.

'Not exactly,' she said. 'I call it the Garrett.'

He paused with the fork on its way to his mouth.

'The Garrett?' he asked.

'Yeah,' she said. 'The Equal, the Opposite and the Garrett.'

'You named this thing, whatever it is, after yourself?'

'Why not?' she said, no hint of shame. 'They all do it. Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Newton's Laws of Physics. What's the difference?'

'Come on,' said Barney, 'that's totally different.'

'How?' she said, a little aggrieved. She was used to people happily sucking in her Garrett theory without question because she was the hottest woman in town and most of them weren't listening anyway. Barney was forlorn and stuck somewhere down a pit of gloom and just wasn't buying into the allure of Garrett Carmichael which fascinated most of the men on the island.

'Einstein,' he said, 'was a guy with an enormous moustache who came up with a theory of relativity. He just said, you know, this is my theory, what d'you think? Everybody else said, well that sounds like a good theory and started talking about it, and other people said, yeah that is a good theory I like that, whose is it, and the first people said, it's Einstein's, so it became known as Einstein's theory.'

She looked at him as if he was talking in strange tongues.

'Same for Newton,' he continued, ignoring the strange tongues look. 'It wasn't like either of them named some
thing
after themselves. Newton didn't call the apple Newton.'

'A newton is an amount of force,' she said, with a bit of a duh-huh look about her.

'Aye, but it wasn't flippin' Newton who named it that. It was scientists later on.'

'Well, Einstein then,' she said. 'E=mc2, what about that?'

'You think the E in E=mc2 means Einstein?'

'Of course it does,' she said sharply, heading swiftly onto the defensive.

'Einstein=mc2? You think Einstein's theory of relativity was about him personally. That he was equal to mc2? What d'you think mc2 actually is? Muscle times colon squared? Mince times cheese squared? What exactly is it you've always thought the guy was made of?'

'Are you finished?'

He lanced a piece of chicken and nodded. There was a feisty spark to the conversation but not in a Katharine Hepburn/Cary Grant kind of a way, where you knew they were going to get together at the end of the movie. This was edgier and meaner, genuine annoyance behind the acerbity.

'The equation is not about Einstein himself,' she said. 'Einstein, as a term, refers to a unit of energy or something. Just because I'm not a physics expert doesn't make me a total idiot.'

Barney stared at his plate. Not entirely trusting himself to look at her, although it wasn't as if he was laughing.

Women. Had this been a guy in the shop he would have let him away with anything. Einstein, Newton, whatever. He would have let him say that the moon made a massively elliptical orbit of the earth and at times was further away than Mars. But he couldn't sit here and let Garrett Carmichael away with it.

'E,' he said, 'means energy. M is mass, c represents the speed of light in a vacuum.'

A passing waiter, on his way to another table carrying two plates of
customised pork fillets in a clingfilm of four cheeses
, caught Garrett's eye and nodded.

'He's right,' said the waiter. '2.997925 x 108 metres per second.'

Barney gave him a glance, thinking that that hadn't really helped. Garrett looked straight through him. The waiter moved on. She turned back to Barney, a little put out. There was one of the fundamental building blocks of her life laid bare. Like finding out about Santa or the tooth fairy.

'I'm still calling it the Garrett,' she said.

'Very well,' replied Barney. 'I mean, I'm not saying you can't, because it's not like there aren't examples of guys who have done that. Although, usually people who name things after themselves are like weird dictators and stuff. Pol Pot named a cooking implement after himself for example.'

She was hurt. He smiled at his own joke, but it wasn't that kind of discussion.

'Thanks,' she said.

'So what is it?' he asked casually, in order to move on.

'What d'you mean?' she asked, although she knew. She felt like the entire evening's conversation was drawing to a close, even though they still had
caramelised profiteroles with a sea cow of raspberry custard
to come.

'The Garrett,' said Barney. 'What is it? The thing that is neither equal nor opposite?'

'Well I'm not telling you now.'

'Come on,' he said, although he knew they were well past the point when she would be prepared to discuss anything.

She had moved on to that place where words were no longer needed. Barney shrugged, took another drink, and wondered whether the evening would ever recover.

***

J
acobs knocked on the door of Ruth Harrison's house. Had not been at all concerned about dealing with Igor, yet had been happy enough to see him walking on Shore Street, having left the Harrison house a few minutes earlier. She had hoped he might stay the night but things had taken an uncomfortable turn after his condolences had turned from the sympathetic to the erotic, and the new widow and the deaf mute hunchback had made love very passionately. Once the dust had settled and all the required clothing had been put back in place, the atmosphere had been a little uneasy and Igor had excused himself to go and get a nice cup of tea, ignoring the inference that Ruth was incapable of making one.

That the door opened at all was a surprise to Jacobs. He had expected that she would look to see who was waiting and then pretend to be either out or dead. And having opened the door he expected her to be intimidated and wary.

'Mr Jacobs,' she said, instead, 'come in, come in, quickly,' and she stood back to let him enter.

Jacobs walked cautiously into the house. All the lights were on, and he felt very warm in his overcoat and scarf. She closed the door behind her and stared at him, standing at the foot of the stairs.

Suddenly he realised why she wasn't as fearful as he'd been expecting. She was not alone in the house, as he had presumed she would be. The barber must still be here.

Jacobs glanced at the stairs, his mind whirring into action. That presented a whole new set of problems. He believed, wrongly, that Barney Thomson was of much greater metal than Igor. Believed, correctly, however, that there would be far more notice paid if something should happen to the new barber than if it happened to his hunchbacked sidekick. You know, if Batman ever got killed, complete uproar. But Robin? Who'd care?

'Listen,' said Ruth, indicating the landing above.

'Imagine you have protection, do you, Mrs Harrison?' he said coldly.

'What?' she asked.

Above them, footfalls padded back and forth, a few in one direction, a pause, then the same number back. Another pause, and then once more into the routine. A few steps, pause, a few steps, pause.

'What is he doing?' asked Jacobs.

He was a prosaic man. As with his employer, he liked things straightforward, everything laid out in front of him, so that problems could be seen and dealt with.

'I don't know,' said Ruth, 'that's the thing that's scaring me.'

She hesitated, staring at him as if she was looking for Jacobs to protect her, rather than being in need of protection from him.

'Before,' she continued, 'he was just going to the toilet. Now, Jesus, I don't know! It's driving me insane. God, what is he doing? He's been at it since just after Igor left.'

The sentence trailed off at the end, as the possibilities dawned on her. Jonah had been restlessly padding back and forth since Igor left. He knew! He knew what she and Igor had just done.

'Have you spoken to him?' asked Jacobs, flexing his fingers, frustrated at her curious behaviour.

'No!' she said, and she took a step back, so that she was pressed up against the front door. 'I can't do that. I don't know if he can speak anyway, you know. I haven't heard him.'

Jacobs studied her. Her face was drawn and pale, she looked far more intimidated and frightened than before.

'I thought you said Igor had left?' said Jacobs, questioning in his mind the fact that he'd seen Igor ten minutes previously.

'Igor did leave,' she protested.

'So it's the barber upstairs? He can talk, can't he?'

'What?' said Ruth, still not attuned to the fact that Jacobs had no idea what was going on.

'I'll go and have a word,' said Jacobs with much irritation.

She looked at him wide-eyed, but said nothing. More fool you, she thought, and her only concern was that something would happen to him up there and he'd never come back down. Then she would once more be left alone, at the mercy of her dead husband.

Jacobs turned and ran up the stairs. No messing, straight in for the fight, hackles raised, ready for action. He stopped at the top of the stairs, looked around. The barber must be hiding.

And then, in his two second pause, he heard it. He heard
them
. The slow pads of the footfalls on the carpet. He listened to them go up to the bathroom door, pause and then turn back to the door of Jonah's office. He stood there for a full minute, as the feet minced forlornly back and forth. The pragmatist in him studied the floor, wondering what was making the noise, although he did not venture forward. Hairs stood on the back of his neck.

He turned and walked slowly back down the stairs. Ruth remained where he had left her, back pressed against the door.

'What is that?' asked Jacobs. 'Some pathetic trick you've got set up to make me think there's someone else in the house?' He knew it wasn't that but he needed a rational explanation.

'It's Jonah,' she said. 'He's haunting me.'

Jacobs stared coldly at her. A large part of him wanted to deny what she had said but he knew she was telling the truth. The ugly sensation which had crawled all over his body told him so. He had been standing listening to the spirit of Jonah Harrison.

Bartholomew Ephesian wasn't going to believe any of that.

'Where's the hand, Mrs Harrison?' he asked.

She appeared surprised that he would change the subject.

'The hand?' she said.

'We need it back. It's not yours to keep.'

'Someone's stolen it,' she said, as if Jacobs ought to have known that already.

'What do you mean?'

Jacobs could feel the anger rise inside him, the anger which he always managed to channel. You had to use anger well or it worked against you. This was his strength. He had the temper and the passion but he knew how to use it.

'It's gone. I found it this morning in the freezer. Well, I didn't know Jonah kept anything like that. I panicked a bit...'

She stopped and listened as there was a temporary pause in the noise from above, and then inevitably it started again, one slow padding footstep after another.

'I hid it at the bottom of the garden. Beside the roses. After you came earlier, I took Igor and that barber out to show them. It was gone. No idea where it went.'

'Is there any way they could have got to it before you showed it to them?'

Ruth Harrison tried but she wasn't really capable of any kind of clear or concise thought.

'I suppose,' she said.

Jacobs wondered if there was any point in pressing her further. However, he had been given enough of an idea to draw the conclusion that the hand was now in the possession of one of the barber shop employees. He moved towards the door.

'Whose hand is it anyway?' asked Ruth, realising he was about to leave and not wanting him to.

'I'm leaving now,' he said. 'Could you stand away from the door, please?'

She moved slowly.

'Don't go,' she said. 'Please, you can't leave me with that.'

Jacobs turned and stared back up the stairs at the gentle, horrible pad of Jonah Harrison's footsteps, felt a shiver curse its way down his spine, and then he gave her another look of cold contempt, pulled open the door and walked out into the night.

––––––––

'Y
ou sure this is wise?' asked Chardonnay Deluth.

'I know what I'm doing,' said Romeo McGhee.

She glanced at him in the way that she usually did. That looking at him like he was an idiot way that most women in relationships with men quickly perfect.

'Romeo,' she said, 'you never know what you're doing.'

'It's cool, baby,' he said, words just a little incongruous with the meely-mouthed west of Scotland accent.

'The man is going to tear you to shreds,' she said, as they opened the unlocked gate and began walking the short distance up the driveway to the big house.

Bartholomew Ephesian would have loved a huge driveway, snaking its way through trees and past lawns but there just hadn't been the ground available. Certainly not on the west side, with the view out over Bute and Arran, and if there had been space on the east side, why bother when all you had to look at was dull mainland, a large dock and a nuclear power station?

'He can't tear us to shreds,' said McGhee. 'He tears us to shreds, he doesn't get the stupid hand, does he? We have him in our power. We have total dominion over him.'

Chardonnay Deluth gave him another idiot look, then unconsciously began to hang back as they approached the front door. He was the definite salesman here. She had no idea what she was supposed to be, other than the stupid patsy who had allowed herself to be talked into coming along.

McGhee gave her a smile, acknowledging the fact that she was hanging back.

'It's cool, babe,' he said. 'Totally cool.'

***

B
artholomew Ephesian looked down on the bleak waters of the firth. Checked his watch and wondered how Jacobs was getting on with his list of errands. A man he could count on but still the overall responsibility was his, he was the one charged with changing the course of history. And history was what mattered.