The Barbershop Seven (209 page)

Igor recognised them both. Colin Waites and Craig Brown, the two missing trawlermen. They must have been bound and gagged here for several days now. They would have trouble walking.

He cut the ropes on their feet and then the straps binding them to the table. The two men moved apart, crawling along the floor, legs and arms numb. Igor stood over them, and then thought of Bernard and the Dog With No Name in the other room, making sandwiches. He held up his finger to indicate that he would just be a minute.

The gate at the front of the yard creaked. Igor tensed. Waites and Brown started trying to drag themselves to their feet. Within seconds Bernard and the Dog With No Name were in the back room, sandwiches abandoned.

'Like, did you hear...,' began Bernard, and then he saw the two guys struggling to their knees and breathed in the stench of the room.

'Like, wow! I'm guessing you two are the guys from the trawler!' said Bernard.

'Who are you?' said Waites.

'Bernard! My name's Bernard,' said Bernard. 'We're MI6.'

'Arf,' muttered Igor darkly.

'Fucking government,' said Waites.

Igor put his finger to his lips and indicated outside. Waites nodded. Bernard glanced out the door, then looked into the small, spider-ridden, malodorous room that was their only other option. Neither called to him as much as running away as fast as he could in any direction.

Igor glanced round the door and looked across the ten yards of cluttered workshop floor to the light switch, then he pointed at Bernard and pointed at the switch.

'Me? I don't think so,' said Bernard. 'Dog With No Name, will you do it for some Unnamed Snacks?'

The Dog With No Name shook its head.

'If you're worried about the guy in the mask,' said Craig Brown, from underneath his matt of shaggy hair, 'it hardly matters, he can see in the dark.'

'You've seen The Incredible Captain Death?' exclaimed Bernard.

Igor poked him and put his fingers to his lips.

'The Incredible Captain Death?' said the other two in unison.

Igor looked around them all, making the quiet! sign. There weren't many times in his life that Igor wished he could speak. He enjoyed his existence, hiding behind deafness and his hump and an inability to communicate like most of the rest of humanity. And now that his life was filled with Barney Thomson and Garrett Carmichael, two people who understood everything he tried to say but couldn't articulate, it didn't seem to matter. However, every now and again there came moments when he wished, to the bottom of his very soul, that he had the capability to shout at people, explain everything in thirty seconds and, more than anything else, tell them to shut up.

Not that shouting at anyone to tell them to shut up because you want them to be quiet as there's potentially a masked murderer in the yard actually makes any sense. It would have been nice to have had the option, however.

The others in this dim little back room all nodded and looked slightly sheepish. People always assumed that Igor would be a follower rather than a leader. He gave them another harsh look and then edged round the corner of the door.

'Igor?' whispered Craig Brown from behind. Igor turned, a look of annoyance on his face. A look that suddenly died. 'What happened to Ally?'

Igor's face changed. He couldn't speak, but wouldn't have had to say anything in this situation in any case.

'Shit,' muttered Waites.

'I'm sorry,' Igor silently mouthed.

He dropped his eyes and turned back to the door. There would be time for regret and sadness later, but for the moment he sensed the inherent danger.

He looked across the cluttered main room of the shed. Were they going to hide in this dim muddle all night? Looked at his watch. It wasn't even ten o'clock. The fog had made it seem like it had been evening forever, and yet only a few hours had passed. There were still another ten before dawn, and what then? What if this clawing fog was still in place?

He stared at the door, the door which led back out into the gloom. That was really their only option. Get out of here, and get across the road to one of the hotels. See if there was a free room where Waites and Brown could clean up. Hope there was some police presence there. Notify the families of the missing fishermen. At last, some light in the darkness of this horrible few days.

He turned, finger to his lips again and beckoned them all to follow him. Exaggeratedly mouthed be careful! as he indicated the floor. Another pause to see that they were actually going to follow him, as he was not used to leading, and then he turned and started edging his way through the minefield towards the door.

Immediately Bernard banged his knee off a small wooden cabinet, a dull thud, and he hopped comically on one leg while the others looked daggers at him.

'Like, sorry, man!' he whispered.

And then, as they all turned away and started to pick their slow and meandering path through the debris, came another sound from outside. The same as before. The slow, agonising creak of the front gate as it was pushed painfully open. Hearts skipped beats. Everyone looked at Igor, eyes full of fear.

Hesitation, then another sign from Igor, and they started once more to mince slowly across the floor. Seconds passed, nerves held. The two fisherman feeling lost and confused, facing up to the death of their friend, uncomfortable, legs cramped and stiff. Bernard and The Dog With No Name, hungry and scared, and wishing they were back in London, working in an office chasing down distant drug rings and unseen terrorists. Igor, trying to be sure of himself, trying to have a belief in his own abilities to lead this sorry gang of fools out of this place. How could they believe in him if he didn't believe in himself?

They collected at the door. Igor looked them over, and then started indicating with sweeping hand manoeuvres that he intended switching off the light, opening the door and heading out of the boatyard.

'Cool, charades!' said Bernard. 'Light, light. The Unbearable Lightness of Being?'

The Dog With No Name nudged him.

'Switch?' said Bernard. 'You think it's switch? The Switches of Eastwick?'

Igor started cutting his hand across his throat, amazed as most other people were when they met Bernard and discovered his chosen occupation. To give him some due, however, he could keep a secret.

'Beheading...beheading...The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?'

Colin Waites clamped his hand on Bernard's shoulder.

'Shut up,' he said, with great deliberation. 'You're an MI6 muppet. The man is trying to say that he will turn the light out, we will go outside and leave this place. Fucking capiche?'

Bernard nodded.

'Did you just say capiche?' said Craig Brown.

Igor once more drew a dramatic hand across his neck to silence everyone. They all acknowledged the leader, then Igor quickly put one hand on the door handle and turned off the light. He waited a second, could hear the whimper of the Dog With No Name in the darkness behind him, and then slowly began to lower the handle.

Just outside the door, something scraped along the ground. Another muffled sound. Igor froze.

––––––––

D
espite the thick fog, the killer moved easily between the boats, knowing every anchor, every mast, every misplaced nautical item left sitting around the yard. He had a small bag, and every so often he would bend down, turn something over or empty out a small metal tube and place it inside. The bag was slowly filling up.

Beneath his Dostoevsky mask, which he had specially ordered through www.noveltydeadrussiannovelistmasks.com some weeks previously, when his demonic plans had first come to him in the form of a strange and powerfully dark dream, the killer was working his way towards his goal. The operation was at an end. He would clear up on the profits. There would be none of the other ten to share in the bounty or talk to the police. Only dear old Cudge and the two fishermen bound and gagged beneath the table to be taken care of. He had so far been unable to bring himself to dispose of the youthful Brown and Waites, but the time was getting close.

Having worked his way down the line of boats, he came to the small building at the end of the row and stood outside the door. He clutched the small bag in one hand and reached out for the door handle with the other.

***

I
gor looked at the others, but now, with the light off, he could no longer see them, even though they stood only a few feet away, such was the intensity of the darkness inside the shed.

He steeled himself. He had had to put up with much in life, the deaf, mute hunchback's lot. Whatever demon waited for him outside, whatever man in a mask stood on the threshold of this door, regardless of what that man might have done to anyone else in this town, Igor could handle it.

Looking through the darkness, imagining the frightened faces of his small, ragtag army, Igor said with vigour, verve and panache, 'I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start. The game's afoot! Follow your spirit and, upon this charge cry, 'God for Igor, Scotland and St Andrew!''

Sadly this bold, if highly derivative, rallying call came out only as 'Arf!'

Igor faced the door, handle still depressed, could hear further movement outside, and, heart in mouth, stomach churning, pulled the door open.

Detective Chief Inspector Frankenstein would later admit that he damned near died of fright. He hadn't actually noticed Igor the deaf, mute hunchback on the island before and creeping around a boatyard in thick fog with a deranged lunatic killer on the loose wasn't the best time to get his initial introduction.

He staggered more than stepped back into Barney Thomson, directly behind him. Igor stared at him. The Dog With No Name bravely poked its head out of the door, followed by Bernard and the two fishermen.

'Fuck,' said Frankenstein loudly, a sharp crack of the word, not even swallowed up by the density of the fog. 'Who the fuck are you?'

'Arf!' said Igor.

'Igor,' said Barney, 'my assistant. Jesus, Colin and Craig! You guys ok?'

'Jesus?' said Bernard. 'Jesus is here?'

Craig Brown nodded.

'Physically, I suppose,' said Colin Waites, 'but mentally we're screwed. Probably need post-traumatic stress counselling for decades. And we smell like shit.'

Barney smiled. That was the Colin Waites he knew.

'We should get you across the road to one of the hotels, get you cleaned up, call your families.'

'Hi guys!' said Fred, appearing behind.

The Dog With No Name barked.

'Freddie!' said Bernard, relieved that his own people had arrived.

The gang, now suddenly grown to eleven in number, twelve including the Dog With No Name, gathered in a circle outside the door of the workshop.

'So, you're Waites and Brown,' said Frankenstein, looking between the two fishermen. 'I know you want to get away from here, but this guy has murdered at least three people tonight. You need to tell me everything you can that might possibly help us. Everything.'

Craig Brown's head twitched. He looked blankly to the side of Frankenstein's head. He wasn't saying anything about the mask of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Waites squeezed his arm. Barney and Proudfoot recognised the look on their faces, wanted to intervene to save them from this at this time, but they knew they couldn't. The guy was still out there and Frankenstein had to push them for everything they could think of.

The MI6 gang waited excitedly for anything that might be a new clue.

'There were three of you on the boat,' said Frankenstein. Aware that they couldn't stand there forever but knowing he had to gently ease one of them in to talking about their ordeal.

Waites stared at the ground.

'There were four,' he said.

Frankenstein and Proudfoot looked surprised. The MI6 gang perked up.

'I knew it!' said Selma.

Frankenstein glanced round sharply at her. His face demanded an explanation, but she was too busy making notes in a small book. No time for getting into an argument with the security services. He turned back quickly to Waites.

'Who was the fourth?'

Waites looked uncomfortably at his fellow fisherman, but Brown was staring randomly off into the mist. There was no way back for him, at least not this evening.

'An Irish guy,' he said. 'Crichton, Gram Crichton.'

'What happened to him?' said Frankenstein.

Waites swallowed. Dry mouth. Stared at the floor.

'He got him. The guy in the mask. It was a thick fog out, thick as this. We were coming through the Kyles, puttering. So slow. Then a boat came alongside. Right in beside us. Touching us. But there didn't seem to be anyone on board. Gram says he'll go over and take a look. Just as he steps on board, we're all watching, this guy leaps up out of nowhere, axe held above his head...'

He swallowed again, reliving the moment, the scene, for the thousandth time in the past five days, although this was the first time he'd been in a position to put it into words.

'Swipes the guy's head off?' said Frankenstein.

Waites nodded.

'Clean...' he began, and his voice drifted off.

'And what happened to Deuchar?' said Frankenstein quickly, worried that if he lost Waites for five seconds, it could be forever.

'The guy came on deck,' he said, each word forced out, each strand of the memory dragged from some place in his head where he had tried to hide it away. 'We were all scared. He just stood there. It was like a fucking horror movie. Fucking creepy. Then he steps forward, turns the axe head round and whacked me and Craig on the napper. Hardly had time to move. We woke up back there, tied together, in the pitch black. I didn't even know where we were until we saw Igor.'

'Deuchar?' repeated Frankenstein.

Waites shook his head.

'Just before I got whacked, I saw him collapse. I didn't know what it was. Fainted. Heart attack. I don't know.'

His head dropped. Frankenstein gave him a second. All the time he could feel it though. The menace was out there and, more probably, in here. In the boatyard, possibly only yards away through the mist.