The Barbershop Seven (162 page)

He fished around in his pockets and dug out a small piece of paper. Tony took it roughly from him and read it quickly. He squinted, he looked up at 2Tone, he thought to inquire what the hell it was supposed to mean and then decided that there was little point in asking. He turned to go before remembering that he didn't actually know which way that was supposed to be.

'Which way to the George?' he asked, expecting 2Tone to be too stupid even for that.

'Like it's totally that way,' he replied, pointing him to his left.

Tony looked along the road and wandered off without any further inane discussion. 2Tone watched him go then stood contemplating what he was going to do with the next few minutes of his life, not being one for long term plans.

He noticed a movement in the police office and looked in. Gainsborough was watching him. 2Tone waved. Gainsborough nodded and then lifted the phone to Bartholomew Ephesian.

––––––––

J
acobs returned to the house at a little after eleven o'clock. His evening had, for the most part, been completely unsuccessful. No Grail, no hand. He had already spoken to Ephesian on the phone, before completing his final errand of the day, so he knew that McGhee and Deluth had the hand and he knew what they wanted; and he had also passed on the news of Lawton's theft of the Grail, which he had then immediately regretted. Ephesian had difficulty handling situations that seemed to be spiralling out of his control. Jacobs did not yet think that that was what was happening here but equally it wasn't going smoothly. And he knew that his definition of out of control wasn't going to be the same as Ephesian's.

He stood in the large hall, listening. He had first gone to his own quarters to remove his coat and scarf and now had come through the short corridor which connected his spacious apartments to the house.

Sometimes his employer would be in bed by this hour but not tonight. Still too many things to discuss, the list growing rather than diminishing. He walked through to the dining room, with the small office off to the right, wondering if Ephesian would be standing in the dark, staring down on the dark grey of the firth, small tumbler of single malt in his left hand. Surrounded by quiet and darkness and solitude, the way he spent so many of his late evenings.

The two rooms were empty and Jacobs got his first feelings of unease. He went to the window and stood, as Ephesian usually did, looking down at the water. Did not see the same things that Ephesian saw. Then he turned and walked through to the study across the hall.

The room was illuminated by a small desk lamp but Ephesian was not in the large comfy chair by the window, which was where he always sat when he chose to take his sanctuary in here. Jacobs walked over to the book shelf which contained the complete works of Robert Louis Stevenson, pulled gently on the small hardback second edition of
Virginibus Puerisque
, then stepped forward through the doorway as it opened up before him.

He walked carefully down the stairs because he had not, after all, been a young man for some decades now and his eyesight was verging on the dysfunctional. Bottom of the stairs and the cellar room was in complete darkness. He flicked one in the row of six light switches and stood looking into the dim corners of the room. There was no one there; none of the thirteen chairs around the table occupied. He must have been wrong, he thought. Ephesian must have gone upstairs, perhaps for the first time in his life, dealing with stress by going to bed and trying to sleep on it.

As he was about to flick the light off, he heard the most meagre of sounds. He stopped, held his breath. This was a dark creepy room in the bowels of one hundred and fifty year old foundations, but it had never before spooked him in any way. However, today was the day he had for the first time in his life encountered a spirit of some sort, even if it was one who was stuck for eternity trying to get to the toilet, and his heart skipped; he felt his skin tighten. Yet he did not throw any of the other light switches. Swallowed, deep breath, banished the feelings of unease and stepped forward. He bent down and looked under the table.

When he saw what was there the feeling of unease vanished completely, to be replaced by instant determination. Another problem to be sorted out, another glitch to be added to the list and dealt with as summarily as possible.

It had been a long time since he had seen his employer in this state. Thirty years maybe, although there had been occasions in all that time when he had wondered if it had happened and he had just not been there to witness it.

When the stress became too much for him and Ephesian's brain could not cope with it, his only retreat was to fold his body and his mind up into a small black ball, to make himself as insignificant as possible, to lock himself up in darkness and silence, surrounded by nothing, to reduce sensory input to virtually nil.

And so Jacobs was kneeling down, looking under the table, where Ephesian was lying curled foetally up as small as he could make himself, his head resting on the cold stone floor at an awkward angle.

'Mr Ephesian,' said Jacobs.

No response. Jacobs breathed steadily and checked his watch, knowing that this was something which would take a while.

'Mr Ephesian,' he said again. 'We need to talk. I believe I have solutions to most of our difficulties,' he added as an enormous lie, yet with the kind of assurance which he knew would be required for the next two or three hours, in order to coax Ephesian out from his protected world.

––––––––

B
arney lay in his bedroom, contemplating some of the great matters. Why is it, he was thinking, as he stared at the orange light cast from outside, that woman are so adept at spotting cellulite in other women? A man can look at a woman in a bikini for months and not notice if she has cellulite. He'll notice what her breasts are like for the first few weeks, then he'll move on to noticing the bum, legs and stomach. But if you were to quiz him on whether or not she had cellulite he wouldn't have a clue. He probably wouldn't even be able to tell if he was asked to establish it as a specific task. Women, on the other hand, seem to be genetically trained to notice cellulite within the first quarter second of visual contact, and everything else later. They have a specific part in their eyeball, missing from men, which sees only cellulite on thighs. This means that when they see some fantastically attractive woman on a beach or by a pool, it doesn't matter if she's slim and gorgeous with long legs and amazing breasts. If she's got cellulite, the other woman thinks, 'okay, we're level.' For men though, it's relegated to somewhere in the far far distance behind breasts and an ability to keep the fridge adequately stocked with the right kind of beer.

He shuffled over in bed, lay on his left side and stared out of the window. Eyes wide open when he should have been asleep. Having been Bill Murray in
Ghostbusters
, he'd now progressed to being Bill Murray in
Lost In Translation
. And wasn't his entire life, he pondered, an extended version of
Groundhog Day
? From one barbershop to the next, one series of murders after another.

'I'm Bill flippin' Murray,' he muttered into the orange darkness. 'How sad is that?'

And he wondered if he could go down and make himself a cup of tea and whether it was worth invoking the wrath of Miranda Donaldson, for although there hadn't been a specific
Thou Shalt Not Make Cups Of Tea In The Dead Of Night
commandment, he wouldn't be surprised to find her standing erect in the kitchen clutching a rolling pin and ready to blatt him soundly over the head.

He lay like that for a few minutes and then turned onto his back once more.

'Johnny Depp,' he said to the empty sky. 'Why couldn't I have been Johnny Depp?'

***

N
ormally the cathedral door would be locked at this time of night. It certainly had been earlier, when Jacobs had had to use Ephesian's spare keys to gain entry. However Father Roosevelt had realised that on a night such as this, the penultimate day before the world changed forever, the Cathedral of the Isles was likely to be in demand. There were only a few people in the world who realised the significance of this place – although the number would be astronomically high by Thursday morning – but the number was enough, all the same, for there to be a potential stream of visitors. And so Roosevelt had decided to leave the door open for the night to allow anyone who thought there might still be something to find here, entry to the nave. That the thing for which they all searched had already been removed, was known only to him, Lawton, Ephesian and Jacobs. And, of course, to the man who had bludgeoned Lawton to unconsciousness using Archie Gemmill.

There was a window high up on the wall of the chancel, behind which was a small room, part of the college buildings, formerly the infirmary in the Canon's house. Here it was that Andrew Roosevelt had set himself up for the night, perched on an uncomfortable wooden seat, accompanied by two flasks of coffee and a packet of Jaffa cakes, to spy from behind a thin curtain on whoever might come to visit.

For years he had watched tourists and worshipers at the cathedral, wondering whether they were there simply to marvel at the intricacies of the interior or whether they knew more than they appeared to. That while they gazed with the interest of a tourist, that in truth they searched for the clue which might lead them to the Grail. Tonight, however, he could at last relax and watch with curiosity rather than anxiety.

Slowly and silently he unscrewed the lid of the first flask and poured some more coffee into the small white mug – the one he'd received a few years previously from a Maryhill rabbi, the words
Have A Kosher Christmas!
written in pink around the rim – and then he leaned forward and peered round the edge of the curtain.

Tony Angelotti had been in the cathedral for just under half an hour. He still had the strange feeling of some level of intelligence about him after his earlier discussion with an even bigger idiot than himself, but it was beginning to wear off as he minced around the nave and chancel.

He stopped just below the pulpit and looked up at the scene of the stricken Christ, post-crucifixion and in need of
Nurofen Extra Strength Nails in The Hands
. He stared for a few seconds, then turned round and looked at the rest of the small space, then he held his hands out before him, shaking his head, in a
how the fuck am I supposed to work this shit out
gesture.

Roosevelt smiled. He had spent the previous half hour wanting to toy with the man, calling out hot or cold depending on how close he'd come to the font. It had reminded him of the time a few years earlier when one seemingly innocuous and very corpulent American tourist had started intimately studying the carvings of the gospel saints. Growing worried, Roosevelt had then called out to the man from his hiding place, warning him off.

The man had then turned and begun a conversation with the empty cathedral, thinking that he had been talking to God Himself, a part Roosevelt had rather enjoyed playing. Telling the man he had to lose three hundred pounds by that Christmas or he was going to have a heart attack and die had probably been a little unnecessary and self indulgent, but Roosevelt liked to think that he had saved his life.

This time, what with the general seriousness and enormity of the occasion, Roosevelt chose to say nothing, but sipped silently on his coffee and munched on his fourth Jaffa cake of the evening.

'Fucking piss,' said Tony shaking his head. 'Fucking Scotland.'

***

L
uigi had blended seamlessly into Millport life, part of the furniture. He had needed somewhere to hide out for a few hours, to spend the night undercover, before he would emerge the following day, find Tony, which would be like finding a cockroach in Thailand, and then go about his business of finishing off the matter which had brought them to this Godforsaken island in the first place.

'You'll be having another glass of wine before you go to bed,' said the old woman, more as a statement of fact than a question.

'Thank you, Nella,' said Luigi. 'You are a kind and beautiful woman.'

The old woman shook her head at the compliment but she was smiling all the same. Her friend looked up from her knitting and tutted silently but she was still feeling good from the fact that Luigi had told her how graceful and elegant she was just a few minutes earlier, so she parked the petty jealousy to one side and smiled at Luigi as he glanced round at her.

'I am a lucky man tonight,' he schmoozed. 'And to think I could have been stuck in Rome.'

***

I
gor lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Two women in one day. How often did that happen to him, he wondered, at around the same time that Barney was considering his personal transmogrification into Bill Murray. Well, actually this was the third time this year, but hey, that's not so many compared to some other deaf mute hunchbacks.

Gently Ferguson snuggled her chin closer into the soft fat of Igor's upper arm and sleepily caressed the hairs on his chest.

'Thank you,' she said drowsily, 'I needed that.'

Igor looked down at her and kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled of apple shampoo and he breathed in the smell of it for a few seconds before resting back on the pillow and looking up once more at the ceiling.

'Arf,' he said softly, and she burrowed her face even further into the cushion of his arm.

***

A
ugustus Lawton still lay in the pool of his own blood, the merest breath of life about him, destined to lie in a vegetative state for some years to come. Sometimes the penalties of greed can be harsh, and sometimes you don't get the chance to learn your lesson.

***

T
he other woman whose company Igor had had the pleasure of that day, was still sitting on her kitchen floor, back pressed against a cabinet full of cleaning fluids, eyes permanently pointed upwards, as if she could see the noise upstairs through the floors and the walls.