The Barbershop Seven (200 page)

She stepped away from the door, opened it and ushered Barney out into the cold. He turned, looked once more around the small audience to his capture, nodded finally at Igor, a nod of reassurance, of determination that he would be back and that Igor should not be overly concerned, and then he stepped out the door, out onto the cold street and the bitter wind. She followed him, quickly closing the door behind.

He was expecting to be directed straight into the incident room next door. Instead she ushered him towards a police van which was parked immediately outside the room. A constable leapt from the van and opened the rear door for Proudfoot, who ushered Barney inside and then followed him.

The door slammed shut behind them, and Barney Thomson was, for the first time in his life, in police custody.

––––––––

B
ack inside, the shop was empty. There were still four people in there, two customers, a barber and a deaf, mute hunchbacked sweeper-upper, but the spirit of the shop was gone, in a way that it hadn't been that morning before Barney had arrived. Now there was no expectation that he was about to turn up, no expectation in fact that he would ever be back. Something had died, and there were none of the four in the shop who did not feel it.

Igor leant on his brush and stood at the window, looking out across the white promenade wall, to the sea and the inscrutability of the waves. Keanu had returned to cutting the hair of Ginger Rogers in sullen silence, somehow feeling that his talents as a barber were strangely diminished, now that Barney was no longer there. Ginger Rogers looked at himself in the mirror, imagining the gun battle which had led to Barney's eventual arrest.

Old McGuire sat and stared at his reflection, trying to decide if the small mole on his chin was cancerous. He was, however, unnerved by the silence. He needed noise, even if it was just the sound of his own voice complaining about something.

'Think I might have early onset Alzheimer's,' he said, to break the melancholic tranquillity.

A pause. Igor did not turn. He had felt the vibrations, but did not need the conversation.

'Early onset?' said Ginger Rogers suddenly. 'You're ninety-one!'

'And the way my muscles are going I think I've got motor neurone coming on. And did you see that shite on the telly last night?'

***

D
CI Frankenstein and Dr Trio Semester were attending the latest crime scene. Ward Bracken, relatively recent arrival to the town – at least in comparison with all the old fellas who'd been there since being sent home from Gallipoli with shell shock – and his decapitated head.

Frankenstein was standing at the window, looking out over the town and the sea. Had spent so much of the previous few days doing just this. Wondered if that was all the town's people did. If that was all anyone who lived by the sea did. You looked at it long enough, and eventually you felt like you had to go out on it. And then you became beholden to it and then you died. Did anyone live happily by the sea? Did it not always lead you on to wanting something you couldn't truly have?

'That you getting sucked in by the grey mass of moving water?' said Semester, approaching and following his gaze out past Little Cumbrae. 'You're not going to get all nautical on us and start quoting Coleridge, are you?'

'How does anyone ever get anything done here?' he said. 'It's like watching Armageddon.'

Semester glanced at him, curiously.

'You think the end of the world is going to be an ever-changing, yet ever-constant landscape, the same year after year after year?'

'I meant the movie with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.'

'Ah... Then I still don't get you.'

'You know, you've seen it ten times before. It's an OK movie, not the best, but OK. You're flicking through the channels, searching for something to watch for ten minutes before you go to bed, boom, you come across Armageddon with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck. You think, this'll do for my ten minutes, and then you see Steve Buscemi and he makes you laugh, and you think, shit, I'd forgotten he was in it, he's pretty funny, and then wham, the next thing you know, it's an hour and a half later and you're still sitting there. Is the film any different from the previous fifty occasions you've seen it? No. But can you stop yourself looking? Not a chance.'

Semester smiled. He had picked up on the allusion after the first sentence, but had been quite happy to listen to Frankenstein unnecessarily explain himself in full.

'Aye,' he said eventually, 'I see what you mean. Like Casablanca.'

'Totally different,' said Frankenstein. 'Casablanca is acknowledged as one of the greatest films of all time. Of course you get sucked in by it when you stumble across it on the TV. But Armageddon. No one's putting that on their all-time list. If someone says to you, what's your favourite all-time movie, you don't even think about it. And yet, can you put it off? No way.'

Semester looked at a small cargo vessel, far out in the Clyde, the other side of Little Cumbrae, heading north and about to be obscured by the island.

'You want to hear about our headless friend here?' asked Semester, thinking that he might as well drag things back to the present, aware perhaps that he too could be sucked in to endlessly looking at the sea.

'Tell me about Stan Koppen first,' said Frankenstein.

He knew that Semester had worked through the night, and that he had already been on his way back down to the island when the news had come through of the discovery of a yet another two-day-old corpse.

'Well, to be honest, it would be telling you the same thing. A clean cut, both times. The woman as well. Same weapon each time, cut by the same hand. It wasn't a completely straight blade, so we're looking at a large axe head.'

'Definitely an axe?'

'Well, it wasn't a cucumber.'

Frankenstein snorted. 'How large an axe? Will you be able to pin it down? A brand?'

'What can I say? It wasn't small, not the type your Mr Average might have in his shed because he bought it once when it was on offer in B&Q. Something bigger.'

'Prints, identifying marks of any sort?'

'He entered by whatever means your guys will have established, he wore gloves, he chopped their heads off, he left. From what I hear, it doesn't look like he even had any blood on his shoes.'

'And this guy was definitely first of the three murders on the island?' said Frankenstein.

Semester nodded, walked over and gently kicked the leg.

'Feel that,' he said glibly. 'Stiff as a board. If I could get erections that stiff these days the wife would be a lot happier.'

'Nice,' said Frankenstein.

'This guy,' said Semester, 'during the storm some time. I'll try to pin that down a bit further, but don't get too excited waiting. Then Nelly Johnson the following night and Stan Koppen not long after. Could be the killer left old Nelly's house and went straight round to Stan's.'

Frankenstein walked past him, heading for the door. Time to get on with establishing some sort of mundane line of inquiry, time to get away from the decapitated heads.

'Let me know if you get anything else,' he threw over his shoulder.

'Sure,' said Semester, 'you let me know if there's anyone left alive on the island by the weekend.'

Frankenstein hesitated, smiled and then walked quickly out of the small house. As soon as he had stepped onto the short path he saw them, charging in through the front gate with unbridled enthusiasm.

'Jeepers, Detective Frankenstein,' said Selma, 'we heard there'd been another beheading.'

'Like, totally,' said Bernard. 'It's the Trawler Fiend again!'

'The Incredible Captain Death!' ejaculated Fred, pushing for his favourite serial killer appellation of the moment.

The gang of four and the dog stopped. Frankenstein looked around them all, not in the mood for their youthful enthusiasm. Not that he would have been able to imagine a time when he would ever have been in a mood for it.

'Just like the security services,' he said. 'Turn up after everyone else has done all the work.'

'We were looking for clues down at the boatyard,' said Fred.

'It was creepy!' said Bernard.

'Why do you people have to shout everything you say?' asked Frankenstein. 'Jesus, on you go. The pathologist is still in there. You'll like him, he performs his work to a laugh track.'

'Gee, thanks, Chief Inspector,' said Deirdre.

'You sure were a help,' said Fred, 'we're just going to go into the house and look for clues!'

Frankenstein waved a desultory hand as he opened the gate. Maybe, he was thinking, it was time to check with MI6 again, just to make sure.

––––––––

B
arney sat in a small room, on a chair at a desk, looking at a blank wall. There was a police constable standing by the door. A clock on the wall, the second hand ticking silently round. Occasionally he would turn and look at it, but only because it was there. He wasn't interested in the time.

He wasn't thinking about the future. No thoughts of where this might take him, the prison in which he might end up. He had wandered long and restlessly, and had never really known what it would take to allow him to settle. Now, maybe, this was it. His reckoning. Face up to the past, answer the questions, and then finally he might be able to find peace. Albeit, peace from inside a prison cell.

His list of crimes:

1. Manslaughter. Accidentally stabbing his boss Wullie Henderson in the chest with a pair of scissors.

2. Failing to report the crime. Rather than calling the police and confessing all, he'd bundled the body into the back of his car and taken it round to his mum's.

3. Failing to report his mother's crimes. On discovering that his mother had been a rabid serial killer, with a freezer stacked full of butchered bodies, he'd taken them all to a rubbish dump, rather than call the police. Or Channel 4. Such a pity that it had all happened before the current trend for reality TV.

4. More manslaughter. Accidentally killed his work colleague Chris by knocking him over with a broom. Probably more seriously, he had then set up Chris's flat to make it look like he had been the serial killer, rather than Barney's mum. As part of this nefarious plan, he had turfed Chris's body into a loch.

5. Another touch of manslaughter. While wrestling with Brother Steven – the Monastery Murderer – he had inadvertently shot the guy in the stomach. The fact that there had been two police officers in attendance who had witnessed this and then sent him on his way notwithstanding, it was still a charge that he would need to answer in court.

And that was more or less that. There had been other adventures, he had had the misfortune to stumble across murderers, weirdoes, crackpots and deranged psychopaths at every turn, but that had been his fate. Of the events that he could control or really would have to answer for, the list was short and several years in the past.

Crimes, however, always stuck around for a long time. And there was the possibility of him having to answer to no end of deeds for which he was not responsible.

Everything in life has a momentum. Sport, romance, relationships, family, business, travel, politics. Things stagnate, things build up speed, life goes on. Once something has a certain impetus behind it, then sometimes there can be no stopping it.

The door opened, footsteps. Barney looked up as the two chairs were pulled away from the desk opposite him. Frankenstein and Proudfoot. They sat down. They looked across at Barney.

Everyone stared at everyone else. The clock turned silently. Barney found himself looking up at it. Just because it was there.

'Constable,' said Frankenstein, 'you can leave us now. Note it down that I asked you to.'

The constable at the door, PC Harrington – who had been staring at the floor, bored and disinterested, thinking about Scarlett Johansson, working on the principle that since anything in life is possible, anything, there must be some way for him to meet her, and in a situation where she wasn't going to think that he was weird – snapped out of his torpor and looked at Frankenstein. He'd heard his voice, but the words hadn't gone in. Frankenstein wasn't familiar with Constable Harrington, therefore there was a little confusion.

'You want to stick to your post, Constable?' he said.

'What? Sir? Yes, I should stick to my post.'

'I'd like you to leave.'

'You want me to leave?'

'Jesus Christ, how hard is this? Constable, get out. Go and arrest someone.'

Constable Harrington finally got the hint, opened the door and stepped out into the corridor, not entirely sure what had just happened. And no nearer to meeting Scarlett Johansson.

The door closed. Frankenstein watched it for a second, then turned to Barney.

'The way I see it,' he said, 'we've got you on manslaughter, perverting the course of justice and obstruction. Probably a lot more besides, and that's just based on the things that we know are true. Then there are all the rumours and your possible involvement with no end of other murders. The fact that everywhere you go, people get killed. It's piling up.'

He paused. Stared across at Barney. Barney met his eye. Proudfoot looked at the table.

'How do you see it stacking up for you so far?' said Frankenstein.

Barney raised an eyebrow. Glanced at Proudfoot, looked back at the DCI.

'You think I'm going to confess to everything, with no lawyer contact and after you've sent the constable out?' said Barney. 'Is this where you leap up, grab my head and bang it off the table?'

Proudfoot smiled.

'Piss off,' said Frankenstein. 'You've been watching too much TV.'

Barney shrugged. Felt a little stupid about the remark. Frankenstein shook his head.

'I had you down for more intelligence than that,' he said.

'What do you want me to think so far?' said Barney. 'No phone call, no lawyer, no real reason to arrest me right now at this minute other than the fact that the press are all over me, and yet you bring me in.'