The Barbershop Seven (201 page)

'I haven't arrested you,' said Frankenstein.

'So I can go?'

Frankenstein looked at Proudfoot, turned back to Barney. Held his hands out in a conciliatory gesture.

'Sure,' he said. 'If that's what you want to do.'

Barney stared ahead. His eyes met Frankenstein's, but they weren't looking at him. They were staring into dead space. Not even calculating the odds. Barney wasn't going anywhere and it seemed that everyone in the room knew it.

'But you don't, do you?' said Frankenstein, confirming Barney's thought. 'You've been on the run long enough. There's not many people happy who constantly wander. It's human nature to have somewhere to call home, even if it seems dull. We need dull in our lives, we need that monotonous constant, somewhere to go back to. To slow down or to pick back up, depending what the rest of our lives bring. But you, you don't have it, do you? You wander from place to place and you never find peace. Because that's what home is. Peace. And you don't have any.'

Proudfoot quickly glanced sideways at her boss. He liked to come across as thick-skinned, brusque. But he didn't just know Scooby Doo.

'I thought maybe it was Millport,' said Barney, aware that Frankenstein's one minute appreciation of the human spirit was luring him into conversation. Proudfoot may have had increasing regard for her DCI, but to Barney it was all a game. Given, however, that he had every intention of owning up to any genuine charges which were thrown his way, and that he didn't actually care whether or not that was done in front of a lawyer, it didn't seem to matter.

'What happened?'

Barney made a small gesture with his hands.

'The crew of a trawler went missing, an old woman got her head sliced off...'

'And so your ever decreasing circle went on...'

'So it seems.'

'Why Millport?' he asked quickly.

Barney wondered if Frankenstein thought that he was playing his prisoner, if he was going to walk out of there and say to his sergeant, 'That guy was putty. Putty!' However, he wasn't bothered by it, wasn't amused by it either. Things would pan out the way they were going to and at some point he would come out the other side. The only question was where that was going to be.

'Holidays forty years ago. Happy days. Saw the barbershop for sale in a Glasgow paper, came back to look, it felt like home.'

'Peace.'

'Peace.'

Frankenstein placed his hands on the table in a sudden gesture of finality. He leant forward, a panther poised to leap on his prey, although in this case it was a panther poised to walk out and leave his prey to it.

'Mr Thomson, I'll be honest. I haven't the faintest idea what to make of you. Or your weird life. Or the fact that you used to be dead, yet here you are and you appear to be who you say you are. And do I think you're responsible for the spate of deaths on the little island over there? Not for a second. You might be, I'm not ruling anything out, but if I was to put money on it, it wouldn't be you. Of course, the sad fact of this investigation so far is that I wouldn't even know where to begin placing my money. No real clues, no suspects. Apart from you. Which is why you're here. The press are all over you, they'd be all over me until I brought you in, as was my Superintendent this morning, demanding to know why you were still at large. So, that's why you're here. To protect you from yourself, or more accurately, to protect you from your reputation, deserved or otherwise. You've not been arrested, I'm not about to charge you with anything. I sense, however, that you might want to have a chat about your past. So, I'm going to leave you to talk to my sergeant, who I believe you know from your previous days of actual crime. She's going to tell me everything you tell her. We'll hold you here for a day or two, in the hope that...well, God knows. That we find the killer in the meantime? That the media forget about you? This is sticking plaster police work, I admit it. Seat of my pants. And I know, I know, I'm monologuing. I'm leaving, you two have a chat. I can't promise you that we won't charge you in connection with any of the previous stuff you did, and I can't promise you that we'll ever find you your peace that you've been searching for.'

He stood up, his words having been delivered at machine gun pace. He looked down at Proudfoot.

'Sergeant,' he said, and then he was gone, the door closed firmly behind him.

Barney looked across the desk at Proudfoot, who produced a notepad from her pocket and laid it on the desk.

'Where are we exactly?' asked Barney.

'Saltcoats,' said Proudfoot.

Barney smiled and nodded. Had never been to Saltcoats in all his years of holidays on the Clyde. Passed through it on the train, had looked out at the people and the cold beaches.

'No tape recorder?' he said.

'Really, Barney,' she said, 'this is so informal it's not happening. We don't want to get into charging you with all that crap from before if we can help it. You were dead, it's a shame we can't just leave it at that. So, no tape recorder. We'd get hung if we did that. Just a chat, a few notes, you tell me what you feel like telling me.'

Barney sat back, let out a sigh. Time to tell his story to a sympathetic audience. Trusted her completely, wasn't even too bothered if it turned out that he was wrong to do that. Looked round behind him to check if he'd missed the large two-way mirror that you always get in the movies.

'This is Saltcoats,' said Proudfoot, reading his mind.

He smiled. Looked into her eyes, read the genuine smile that was returned there. Old friends, it seemed, however odd that might have been.

'I worked in a shop,' he said suddenly, the story finally getting the chance to burst forth, 'me and two young guys. I was Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt. They were Bill and Ted...'

––––––––

F
rankenstein sighed heavily. Turned away from the sea, the view that was beginning to bewitch him. He didn't like getting bewitched by anything. Usually it was women. Occasionally a TV series. But the sea? He needed to get back up to Glasgow, where maybe he could content himself with occasional glances at the river.

He was back on the island, back in Millport. Always going somewhere he'd already been. The place was so small, so few people, it didn't seem credible that so much carnage would happen and no one knew anything about it. And this was no horror movie small town, where all the villagers were sinister and obviously hiding a dark secret. They had small town sensibilities, sure enough, but there was nothing sinister about them. They were making their presumptions that there was a reason each of the people had been murdered, and if they themselves did not feel that they were in the firing line, then it didn't affect them and it didn't cause them any fear. Just curiosity. Something to talk about, which was unexpected in this place in late autumn.

And so Frankenstein was baffled. And he no more liked being baffled than he liked being bewitched.

He was walking past the football pitch. Glanced round at the Stewart Hotel, could see a couple of journalists sitting in the bar. Unconsciously pulled up the collar of his coat and hoped they wouldn't notice him. They'd be along for the ride in a shot, reality TV on their doorstep.

Walked on, turned left off the main road and down the short track to the boat yard. Creaked open the gate and walked inside, past the main building and into the centre of the yard, in amongst the few yachts and small vessels which still came here for the winter.

There was no one around, no one working on any of the boats, even though most of them were under some kind of repair, and all of them had been battered around by the severity of the recent storm. He turned full circle, counting. Seventeen boats in all, that was it. Not much of a yard. Nothing substantial, nothing even as large as the trawler the Bitter Wind. Presumably the individual boat owners hadn't had time yet to come down and check. Maybe they wouldn't until the spring now. Maybe that was why they paid to be in a boat yard, so that the yard master could take care of all that kind of thing. Frankenstein stood there realising that he knew nothing about boats, or the yards, or the people who went out in the boats.

There were a couple of thirty-five foot yachts, a few smaller yachts. A number of small motor boats of various types, wooden and plastic. Frankenstein had no feel for this kind of thing at all. Decided, immediately, that he would have to find someone from amongst the police investigation team with more than basic knowledge of this stuff, and then come back here with him.

He shook his head at the thought of the Bitter Wind. He had almost forgotten about the Bitter Wind and the missing trawlermen. So much more recent death and bloody murder, that he had lost sight of working out how to find the two men who could possibly still be alive. Not that he thought for a second that they were.

'Who the fuck are you?'

The voice barked at him from behind.

Frankenstein turned, confronted by a middle-aged man wiping his dirty hands in a rag, walking towards him, all Wellington boots and hole-filled woollen jumper.

Oh my god, thought Frankenstein, a walking cliché. He whipped his badge from his pocket.

'DCI Frankenstein,' he said. 'Just taking a look around. You're Mr Cudge Bladestone, I take it? You fit the bill.'

'I've had enough of you people,' said Bladestone. 'Two lots of incompetent constables round asking the same questions, and then that bunch of meddling kids this morning. Wish you'd all just fuck off and let me get on with my job. What do you want? Frankenstein for fuck's sake. You made that up.'

Frankenstein smiled. It was so much easier to deal with people who were this upfront. Artifice and sophistry were for other police officers to handle. Much better to deal with plain thuggery, rudeness or stupidity.

'I can't account for the meddling kids...' he began.

'MI6 they said they were,' said Bladestone, 'but they were just a bunch of spotty little shitheads if you ask me.'

'Oh, they're MI6 all right, but I can't argue with you about their meddling. Any chance you'd tell me what kind of questions they were asking?'

Bladestone barked out a laugh.

'Cheeky cunt!' he erupted. 'No. Now piss off!'

Frankenstein turned away abruptly and started walking around the boats, looking them up and down, trying to get a feel for them. A feel for the sea, a feel for the people who took to it. Although these boats weren't the boats of people who took to the sea every day, the sort of people whose skin he needed to get under.

'There can't be many people left on the island currently involved in the fishing business. Or who were involved in it in the past,' he said, running his hand down the side of an old wooden yacht, paint crumbling beneath his fingers. Rapped his knuckles against the wood.

No reply. He turned and looked at Bladestone, who was watching him from under dark eyebrows, gravely stitched together in the middle.

Bladestone was well aware of the relationship between those who had been murdered, as well as their connection with the Bitter Wind. He now lived in fear, haunted by the darkness of night, every noise making him glance over his shoulder. He imagined honour amongst thieves however, thinking that the darkness came from outwith the small collective which had been meeting once a month in the room above the Incidental Mermaid on Cardiff Street.

'You ever work on a trawler?' asked Frankenstein.

Bladestone growled and turned away. Walked over to another boat, a plastic twenty-foot yacht, and started straightening out the tarpaulin which covered the deck. Frankenstein continued his inspection of the wooden hull, tapping every now and again, wondering at the sounds, the differing qualities of the wood.

'It seems to me,' he went on, 'that anyone on this island who ever worked in the fishing business, might be a wee bit worried about this flurry of gruesome murders.'

'I've got nothing to concern me,' said Bladestone resolutely. 'I've never done anything other than a hard day's work. I've never double-crossed anyone, never done anyone any harm.'

'Very honourable.'

Bladestone growled. Tugged harder at the tarpaulin, as he moved around the boat. Water splashed off the top.

'So, if this killer comes calling, you'll offer him a cup of tea and establish that you mean him no harm?'

'Aye, well, let's just say that I don't think any killer will be paying me a call.'

'How can you be so sure?'

Bladestone pulled at the last ripple of canvas, then turned to face Frankenstein.

'Believe me,' he said, 'I don't doubt there's a killer out there, not for one minute. The evidence is mounting up. But it's just some guy in a mask, and there's nobody in a mask got any business with Cudge Bladestone.'

'Aye, and why would he put a mask on?' said Frankenstein. 'No one's ever seen him. He turns up at someone's house, he takes the head off, he vanishes. Doesn't seem to matter if the person who he's killing gets to see his face.'

'And how d'you know that no one's seen him? Have you asked?'

Bladestone moved over to the next boat in line and began to check the bindings on the tarpaulin. Frankenstein watched him, thinking that he was fighting a battle that he was never going to win. Not with Cudge Bladestone. Not yet, at any rate.

'Who repairs all the storm damage to the boats?' he asked.

'Up to the owners,' Bladestone barked in reply. 'Course, if they want me to do it, and most of them do, they have to pay me.'

'The storm was good for business then?' quipped Frankenstein. Bladestone turned quickly.

'You accusing me of starting the storm now? You think I'm a fucking X-Man?'

'Whatever,' said Frankenstein, and he waved his hand. The pleasure of his rude bluntness was wearing off. Frankenstein moved on to a plastic boat, tapped the hull, heard the difference in sound and quality.

I'd have a wooden boat, he thought to himself. A thought quickly followed by self-loathing that he had even considered the notion, however slightly, of having a boat at all.

'Anything in the yard, any shipping tool, that could be used to cut someone's head off, you know, with one clean swipe. Not a saw or anything. Any piece of equipment that could be used like a scythe?'