The Barbershop Seven (174 page)

'Are they poisoned?' asked Barney.

'No!' said Randolph, taking a step back. 'No.'

'Poisoned?' said Carmichael, looking at Barney with incredulity. 'What kind of books have you been reading? Why would he want to kill me?'

'Aye,' said Randolph.

'He works for Ephesian, doesn't he?' said Barney.

'So do I,' she retorted.

Barney stared at her, then Randolph.

'So, it's all right to eat this, then?' he said.

Randolph stared at the sandwich. Shook his head, then nodded. Had no idea what to do. Wanted to grab the sandwich and do a runner but realised how much that would implicate him now.

'So, it's all right to eat this, then?' repeated Barney.

'Yes,' Randolph muttered in reply.

'Fine,' said Barney, holding one of the sandwiches forward. 'Let's see you eat it then.'

'This is insane,' said Carmichael. 'James, just tell us what's so special about the sandwich.'

'Can I have some sandwich, mum?' said a wee voice from the floor.

'Ssh.'

Randolph took the sandwich from Barney and stared at it. It wasn't poisoned. It was worse than poisoned. Now, however, he felt trapped in a corner and was just too stupid to know how to get out.

He put the sandwich up to his mouth.

––––––––

J
acobs did not even bother knocking. He had business to take care of. All formality was out of the window, including the formality of checking with his employer that he wanted him to do what he was just about to.

He had not waited to hear Ping Phat's protestation of innocence. He'd seen the man, looked at his small entourage of goons and spooks and sycophants, factored in his sudden arrival at the house and had made the instant judgement that this was Phat's first appearance on the island. Which left only one option.

'Father?' he called, standing in the hallway of the large house attached to the cathedral grounds. Very trusting of Roosevelt to always leave his door open, he'd often thought.

'Father?' he repeated. Give it five seconds and then he would check the cathedral. Maybe the man was making some last ditch attempt to pray to his God.

The hallway was illuminated only by a small lamp. No other lights had yet been turned on in the house, despite the gloom of early evening. It should have been light for another hour or two, but the low, grey cloud was making short work of the afternoon. The walls were hung with uninspiring watercolours of cold Scottish seas, and an old etching of the cathedral, badly framed.

Jacobs was about to leave when he heard the quiet pad of footsteps, and then the door to the kitchen opened and Roosevelt was standing in the dark at the end of the hallway. They stared at each other for a while, the meagre light of the small lamp illuminating Jacobs' face. Roosevelt was in shadows, his nervousness and discomfort protected by the dark.

'Where is it?' said Jacobs bluntly. There would be no artifice here. He was sure Roosevelt had taken the Grail. He didn't want some stupid, protracted argument resulting in him having to do any more bodily harm to the man than he already intended.

'I am protected by the Lord,' said Roosevelt, the nerves tumbling out with his wavering voice.

'You have the Grail,' said Jacobs coldly.

Jacobs could hear the ticking of the large grandfather clock which dominated the front room of the house. A floorboard creaked underneath Roosevelt's anxious feet.

'Where is it?' Jacobs repeated, this time taking a step along the hallway. The first coercive step, knowing that success would likely come from measured intimidation.

'I don't have it,' said Roosevelt.

'Who does?' asked Jacobs sharply, although he did not believe Roosevelt for a second.

In his way, Roosevelt was as incompetent at this game as Randolph. These were not criminals who were playing games of murder and assault and theft. They were ordinary people, dragged out of ordinary life by extraordinary circumstances. And they were rubbish at it. He did not respond to the question, and his silence spoke volumes of his guilt.

Jacobs this time took several strides quickly along the hall, stopping a few feet short of the priest, close enough now so that his own face was in shadow with the lamp behind him, and the worried and tortured features of Roosevelt were clear to him.

'These are dark times, Father,' said Jacobs harshly, 'and times that are short. We need the Grail, and we will not be stopped by your pusillanimity and faintness of heart.'

'What you are planning is wrong!' Roosevelt ejaculated.

'How can you of all people think this is wrong?' snapped Jacobs. 'We have waited two thousand years for this.'

'It is wrong!' protested Roosevelt again, becoming stronger as Jacobs took another step nearer to him.

'Who are you working for?' asked Jacobs.

'No one!'

'Who are you working for?' he repeated, face curling.

'I don't need to work for anyone,' replied Roosevelt, discovering some hidden reserves. 'I can see the blasphemy of this act of my own accord. I work for myself, yet I work for the Lord and for Christians everywhere.'

Jacobs lost control. Took one step forward, grabbed the priest by the white collar and brought his head violently down onto the bridge of his nose. With a muffled gasp, Roosevelt dropped to his knees, hands to his face.

'I work for the Grand Master and for the Brotherhood,' said Jacobs. 'As should you. You swore an oath. Tell me where I can find the Grail or you will find that you have yet to feel the full force of my God-sent brutality.'

Roosevelt looked up from his knees, then swayed to the side until he was leaning against the wall. He stared into the blackness of Jacobs' eyes then slowly shook his head.

'It is not here,' he said. 'I do not lie.'

'But it was you who dealt with Lawton,' said Jacobs, a statement rather than a question.

Roosevelt closed his eyes, remembering the feel of Archie Gemmill as he had crunched into Lawton's head. The sound of cracking bone and the guilt of drawing blood in the Lord's name.

'Yes,' he mumbled.

'Then where is the Grail?' demanded Jacobs.

'It is not here,' mumbled Roosevelt, and his head dropped.

Once more Jacobs could not contain his wrath. He kicked Roosevelt viciously in the face, sending him backwards, his head smacking on the frame of the kitchen door. Then he stepped over him, bent down and picked him up by the collar.

The priest's face was covered in blood; his head lolled easily to the side. He was unconscious. Jacobs had lost control too quickly. He may have been innately brutal, but he was in his way as unused to doing this as Randolph and Roosevelt were inept in their chosen fields of crime. His sensible and measured intimidation had lasted barely a few seconds before rude violence had taken over.

He held Roosevelt's head close to him for a second before letting him fall back to the floor, then he straightened up and looked down at the crumpled heap of the bloody cleric.

'Shit,' he muttered.

Revive him and try to get more information, or work it out himself without any further recourse to violence?

He looked at his watch. There was the other matter to take care of, the murder of Garrett Carmichael and the collecting of her blood, which he had correctly decided was no job for James Randolph. That was just as important as finding the Grail. He could take care of that, while he gave thought to the problem of locating the holy chalice.

He took a last look at the stricken priest and then walked quickly into the kitchen in search of the man's freezer.

***

J
ames Randolph was in bits, in the space of a few minutes having quickly descended into the kind of pointless mush that Ephesian and Jacobs would have expected of him in such trying circumstances. Made to feel awkward by Carmichael, discomfited by her children, embarrassed by the clumsiness and lack of aforethought in his plan, subjugated and demoralised by the presence of Barney Thomson. The man could not have felt more like a child and, although he did not suffer from the complex condition that haunted the behaviour of Bartholomew Ephesian, he wanted nothing more now than to curl up into Ephesian's foetal ball.

'Eat the sandwich,' said Barney harshly, insomuch as you can utter the words
eat the sandwich
harshly.

Randolph looked like he was having to force back tears. All mental functions breaking down. His spirit had been crushed and he genuinely suspected that if he ate the sandwich he would die.

'I can't,' he sobbed, dropping the sandwich. 'I can't.'

'James?' said Carmichael. Wondering, incredulously, if Barney hadn't been as far off the mark as she'd first thought.

'Need to pee, Mummy,' said Ella from the floor.

'Go to the bathroom, then,' said Carmichael on auto-pilot.

'Why can't you eat the stupid sandwich?' said Barney.

He took a step forward as some sort of intimidatory gesture. There would be no violence to follow, however.

'I'll explode!' ejaculated Randolph loudly. 'I can't, I can't!'

There was a brief intermission while all the other adults in the room looked at him strangely.

'I need to pee!'

'Go to the bathroom!'

'What are talking about?' said Barney. 'You've already eaten your dinner?'

'No!'

'You're Mr Creosote? You don't look like him.'

'No!'

'What then?'

'I need to pee, I need to pee!'

'Go to the bathroom!'

'I'm scared!'

'I'm talking!'

'Eat the sandwich!'

'No!'

'Need to pee, need to pee!'

'For God's sake!' exploded Garrett Carmichael, and she grabbed Ella by the hand and hauled her rudely from the kitchen. On up the stairs to the bathroom they went, where she was able to gently sidestep Hoagy's question of, 'Has she peed in her pants?'

The men were alone. Barney waited until the general mother/daughter kerfuffle had died down and then he pulled a seat out at the kitchen table and sat down. Could see the state Randolph was in, recognised that he would be easy to get information out of.

'Tell me everything while she's out of the room,' he said.

Randolph nodded, not quite able to look Barney in the eye.

'The Brotherhood...Mr Ephesian...' he began, stumbling. He had to talk, but felt a horrible, clawing self-loathing for doing so. 'They need to kill Mrs Carmichael.'

Barney raised an eyebrow. His life was so plagued by murder and death, the fact that he had stumbled upon another sordid little crime in another little town seemed hardly surprising.

'Why?' was all he said.

'I don't know,' replied Randolph, head bowed. 'There's something going to happen tonight, some ceremony. With body parts. I'm not sure of all the details, but they need blood. I don't know why it has to be Mrs Carmichael's, but those were the instructions.'

Barney paused as he listened to a further stramash from upstairs. Then he heard the sound of convoluted and ancient plumbing and realised she had started to run the bath. She had sensibly chosen to withdraw from the absurdity of the discussion.

'So you were intending to kill her with a cheese sandwich?' ventured Barney. 'And it wasn't poisoned?'

'No,' he said sorrowfully. 'No poison.'

'Well, that's something,' said Barney. 'Poison's for girls. You, on the other hand, made an exploding cheese sandwich.'

Randolph nodded. He began slowly.

'In the shop this morning,' he said, and drifted off, his eyes wandering around the fallen sandwich. 'In the shop, when I fell asleep, I had a dream. A new way to commit murder.'

'By giving someone a lethally explosive cheese sandwich?'

'The cheese had nothing to do with it,' answered Randolph prosaically, Barney's tone going several miles over his head. 'It's what I put in the sandwich spread.'

Another pause, which Barney did not push to fill.

'A blend of enzymes, acids and metal shavings, which would react with the hydrochloric acid in the stomach to generate an explosion.'

'Excuse me?' said Barney, with some curiosity.

'I created a potion which would react with the acids in the stomach to create an explosion.'

'Are you a chemist?' asked Barney, thinking that while he had never actually known a chemist, every single chemist on planet Earth had to be more intelligent than this guy.

'No,' he said, looking up. 'I dreamt it.'

'You dreamt all the ingredients of this mixture which would make someone's stomach explode?'

'Aye.'

'And did you test it on anything? A mouse or something?'

'Didn't have time,' he replied.

Barney stared at Randolph for a while.

'What?' said Randolph, edgily.

'Have you done this before? I mean, tried to kill someone?'

Randolph shook his head.

Barney held his insipid gaze for another couple of seconds and then suddenly bent down and lifted the cheese sandwich.

'No!' cried Randolph again, as Barney put it to his mouth and took a large bite.

'You...what...?' stuttered Randolph.

Barney swallowed.

'When is it I'm going to explode exactly?' he asked.

Randolph began to back away out of the kitchen.

'Now,' he said. 'It should be instantaneous.'

They looked at each other for a while. Barney did not explode.

'You are such an idiot,' he said eventually, and then he reached over the table, took a long swallow from Carmichael's wine glass and then walked quickly past Randolph and out of the kitchen.

'Rotten cheese sandwich, by the way,' he said, and then he strode up the stairs two steps at a time.

Poked his head round the door of the bathroom, where Hoagy and Ella were both submerged in bubbles and Garrett Carmichael was sitting bored on the toilet seat.

'We need to talk,' said Barney.

'I might know why they want to kill me,' she said quietly.

Barney leant against the door frame.

'Who wants to kill you, mum?' said Hoagy.

'No one,' she replied. 'We can talk when the kids are in bed.'

'Bad guys or good guys?' asked Ella.