The Barbershop Seven (197 page)

Jackets on, the two of them walked out into the night. Frankenstein turned to the right, to the pub Proudfoot presumed, and she fell in beside him. He fiddled a cigarette from his pocket and lit up. They walked in silence for a while, along the front and on into Crichton Street. The pub had been bypassed, and she realised that this was a general mooch about town discussing the facts. For some reason she began to feel uncomfortable with the silence.

'That's really gross, you know,' she said.

He glanced at her. Blew smoke out the corner of his mouth.

'Selfish,' she added. 'If you want to smell repugnant and kill yourself, it's your shout, but to do it to everyone else.'

'Are you all right?' he said.

'My uncle used to compare it to a vote in an election,' she went on. Babbling. 'Does it make any difference if some guy blows smoke in your face? Not really. But enough people blow smoke in your face, you'll get lung cancer. You know, if one person votes...'

'What happened to your uncle?' said Frankenstein, cutting her off. 'Died of lung cancer?'

'Moved to Canada, runs a chain of Vietnamese restaurants in Vancouver,' she replied.

Frankenstein looked at her strangely, confused. Never understood women. Had a soft spot for Proudfoot, so was more likely to put up with her crap than anyone else's.

'You want me to put this out?' he said.

'Sure,' she replied, surprised.

He dropped the cigarette in front of him and stood on it as he walked.

'Now maybe we can talk about Barney Thomson,' he said.

She nodded, thrust her hands deeper into her pockets.

'The sensationalist mince of the press notwithstanding,' said Frankenstein, who had cast a hurried eye over the murder edition special of the Largs & Millport Chronicle, 'we do need to consider his presence on the island when there's all this bad shit happening.'

She still didn't say anything. Like others before her, her husband the ex-DCI Mulholland included, Proudfoot thought Barney incapable of murder, and would be marked down as last suspect on the list of every investigation. All coincidences aside. And there had been a lot of coincidences.

'So, did you have a nice chat with him today?' asked Frankenstein.

'How d'you know we talked?'

'I'm a police officer. I know things. It's my job.'

Round the bay, they passed the police station. Could see Gainsborough inside, looking at some papers. Vaguely wondered what he was doing, but the local policeman had been mostly removed from the investigation and allowed to content himself with whatever it was that local policemen did on these islands in the long, bleak winter months.

'Barney's got nothing to do with it,' she said. 'He's harmless. Kind of different from how I remember him, but he's not a killer.'

'Why different?'

They passed the bay, headed along the road out of town, the road that would take them past the Stewart Hotel, where Barney already slept.

'Seems more self-assured. He used to be bumbling, incompetent, wretchedly lacking in confidence. Dour. Nothing attractive about him whatsoever. Now, there's more of the Sean Connery about him. He's been around, I guess. Come through it all, come out the other side, sanity intact.'

'What makes you, or him, think that he's on the other side?'

'Fair point. And then there's the possibility that he's not Barney Thomson at all. Barney Thomson died at the foot of a cliff, so how come I was sitting having a coffee with him this morning?'

'Different guy would explain the different personality. So maybe he is someone claiming to be Barney Thomson, when in fact he's just some former spotty bore who didn't have a life of his own, so he took on someone else's.'

'I don't think it's that. I'm guessing that he thinks he's Barney Thomson, and doesn't think he's ever been anyone else in the past.'

'So?'

'Haven't a clue,' she said. 'But I don't think it's anything that we're going to get an answer to. I guess we could talk to him again, might as well take the time to establish his movements the past few days. Even then, I'm not sure what we'll do if we get suspicious.'

'You read that stupid newspaper tonight?'

'Yeah.'

'There'll be more of that tomorrow. We might have to bring him in just to save him from the crowd.'

'So where are we going?'

'To be honest, Sergeant, I'm not entirely sure. The investigation is quickly sinking into a quagmire of bloody confusion.'

'I meant, now, where are we going right now?'

'Ah. To see Stan Koppen.'

They were passing the Millerston, the second of the hotels out that way. They glanced in, could see a few people in the bar, could smell the food. He checked his watch.

'Maybe we'll stop in there on the way back,' he muttered, although he doubted they would have the time.

'I've been wondering why we hadn't gone to see him yet,' said Proudfoot.'

'Thought I'd let him stew. Let his defences drop. To be honest, he may be prime suspect material, but I don't think he'd be that stupid. So, I really don't think the guy is going to have gone anywhere. As soon as he heard about the old bird, his defensive wall would have shot up, but now he's had a day to relax again. Probably thinks he's clear for today, and when we get round there he'll be slumped on the sofa, watching porn and pulling his pudding.'

They walked on in silence, just another couple of hundred yards along the road. As they turned the corner, the wind drilled into them with greater force, and they both pulled their coats in more tightly. The hills of Arran were clear of cloud for once, etched against the dark sky.

They could hear music from the Westbourne as they walked by. The blinds were drawn; they couldn't see inside. Avril Lavigne's Happy Ending. Reminded Proudfoot of a walking holiday she and Mulholland had taken in Switzerland. A genuine happy ending, unlike poor young Avril and her tale of Shakespearean betrayal.

They reached the small semi-circle of cabins. No lights on in any of them. He glanced at her, wondering if his instinct was going to prove to be inaccurate. Should it be the case that Stan Koppen had fled the island, taken the forty minute trip up the road to the airport, and was already somewhere in middle America on the run, he was going to feel very stupid. He was a confident man, full of hubris and brusque poise, but there's no one, not even the most self-assured, who does not have moments, however fleeting, of testicle-crushing fear and doubt.

'Probably watching some sicko-pervo-porn with the lights off,' said Proudfoot, feeling the same fear as Frankenstein.

They came to the door. Frankenstein knocked loudly.

'Sicko-pervo-porn?' he said. 'Is that an actual genre?'

His mind running through the possibilities. Telling the chief superintendent. Telling the press. Waiting for the full details to get out. They had interviewed him the night before because of a tip-off. The person who had made the tip-off had been brutally murdered. They then took another twelve hours to go to interview him again, before finding out he was gone and issuing the nationwide alert. It was a job-endingly cataclysmic scenario. Suddenly the assurance he'd had about toying with Koppen, leaving it rest for the day, seemed unbelievably foolish. Five minutes earlier he had explained himself to Proudfoot and it had sounded sensible as it crossed his lips. And now, now his stomach curled as he contemplated the end of his career.

He knocked again, harder, some of the desperation in him finding its way into the pounding of his fist.

'Kick the door in,' said Proudfoot. 'He's...' and she let the sentence drift off. No point in stating the obvious.

Leg up, heel out, Frankenstein booted hard at the handle and the slight wooden door flew open. Hand in first to the light switch, and they walked quickly into the small main room of the cabin.

Frankenstein's jaw set in stone. Proudfoot would later tell her husband that she had felt a palpable weakening of the knees, a reaction out of a book or a film. She leant against the door and quickly turned away, after her eyes had absorbed the full horror of the scene before them.

***

'K
ingly conclaves stern and cold, where blood with guilt is bought and sold...'

Barney Thomson stirred. Still slumped in his seat by the window, finally being roused from a deep sleep. The voice seemed to be part of a dream, but a dream which woke him up.

'You can never escape guilt, my old friend, it's always there.'

He sat up in his chair, looking out of the window. Saw the reflection in the glass and turned. The monk was sitting on the bed. Barney felt no fear, no awareness of the supernatural. Still dreaming. A waking dream, perhaps, but a dream.

'I'm dreaming,' he said.

The monk smiled and leant forward, holding out his hand. Barney stared it at suspiciously, and then finally leant forward and shook it. A firm grip.

'Feel real enough?' said the monk, smiling, and he clasped his left hand on top of Barney's right, to make the handshake even warmer. 'Good to see you again, old buddy.'

Barney detached himself from the conviviality of the impossible handshake and leant back. Only a vague feeling of uneasiness. More curiosity.

'I killed you,' said Barney. 'On the snow near Durness. I saw you dead, Brother Steven.'

'You died too, buddy,' said Steven. 'Bottom of a cliff. Everyone says so. Yet you're sitting here in front of me as clear as I'm sitting in front of you.'

Barney made a small movement of his hand. Couldn't explain that either.

'So, if we're both dead...?'

'Nobody's saying that anyone's dead, my friend. The finality of death is over-estimated.'

Steven smiled, then he stood up and walked to the window. And now that he was standing up straight, his robes unfurled, Barney could see the red marks in the area of the stomach, and in the back. The marks where the bullet had entered and travelled through his body and out the other side.

'Good view of the power station,' said Steven. 'Doesn't matter where you are in this town, you can see it. It's kind of ominous, don't you think? Got that whole, portending doom bag, like you're just waiting for it to go up. Waiting for the rumble, the accident, and then the whole of the west of Scotland is blanketed in deforming radioactive gloom for decades and centuries.'

He looked down at Barney, noticed that he was staring at the gunshot wounds.

'Some say that everything portends, everything foreshadows. You can watch cherry blossom slowly emerge on a spring morning, and from that draw a prophesy for the world.'

Barney was still trying to extract something from this bizarre encounter. This wasn't guilt. He had no guilt about his part in the death of Brother Steven. It had been an out and out accident, and came only after Brother Steven had gone on a deranged murder spree and was in the process of trying to kill Barney. No guilt.

'This is not just about guilt, my friend,' said Steven. 'There's worse than that in the ultimate reckoning we must all face before God.'

Barney looked up into his face. There was a knock at the door. He turned, the knock seeming to have been against his skull. A dull thud.

'Come in,' he said.

The door opened, and Andrew poked his head round the door.

'Everything OK, Mr Thomson? Just up to collect your plate.'

Barney stared at him, then turned back to the window. Brother Steven was gone.

Of course Brother Steven was gone. Brother Steven was dead. Brother Steven had never been there.

'Aye, it was great, thanks. Sorry, I should have put the plate out on the landing.'

'Ach, don't bother yourself, Mr Thomson.'

And as Andrew came fully into the room to lift the plate and the glass, Barney rubbed the palm of his hand, where he could still feel the firm grasp of Brother Steven.

––––––––

T
he wolves had gathered. The police had been mobilised, and another boatload had been brought back across from the mainland, dragged from comfortable evenings in front of the television or down the pub.

Frankenstein's strongest emotion, on discovering the decapitated head of Stan Koppen, had been relief. He would still face questions on why he had not visited this house earlier in the day, but at least it wasn't as bad as the man having done an OJ Simpson, and Frankenstein being hung out to dry.

The body of Koppen had been left sitting upright on the sofa. His head had been severed with a very sharp instrument and left sitting on top of the television. The blood which had run down the television screen had long since hardened, and the sicko-pervo-porn which had been running on a continuous loop, had been playing behind a screen of drip-dried red. The colour of sun-roasted tomatoes.

The pathologist, Dr Trio Semester, had come down from Glasgow, himself sucked from watching an episode of Midsomer Murders, a show he clung to out of loyalty to Bergerac. He had made his initial examination, and was on the point of allowing the head and body to be bagged up. Frankenstein was waiting for a chat. Proudfoot was outside, sitting on the steps of one of the other cabins, looking out over the cruel, black sea.

Semester removed his rubber gloves with a satisfying smack, placed them in the makeshift forensic bin, closed his bag, and wandered over to stand beside Frankenstein, who had watched over him for the previous forty minutes. The two men stared at each other. Semester shrugged.

'He's definitely dead,' he said.

Frankenstein laughed. Semester turned and looked over the crime scene.

'Too early to say the cause of death.'

Frankenstein laughed again.

'You're a sick bastard.'

'Thanks. Died a while ago. At least fourteen hours, maybe twenty. I'll let you know. Either way, it's probably too late to stick the head back on. I mean, they can do amazing things these days, but this...'

Frankenstein was still laughing. Clapped his hand on Semester's shoulder.

'Anything, apart from the obvious, that we should know about? Murder weapon?'

'Well,' said Semester, taking his time, because he rarely said anything without thinking carefully about it, even if it was a sick gag, 'I'd say we're looking for a guy with a sword. Or a very, very big axe. Same as your other headless wonder along the road.'