The Barbershop Seven (211 page)

'I'm too old for this shit,' said Semester from the back, and then he started to giggle. Frankenstein glanced over his shoulder, ruefully shaking his head. 'Always wanted to say that,' Semester added, still giggling.

'Thought you said it every night with the wife?' quipped Frankenstein from the head of the queue.

'And if the woman didn't keep renewing my Viagra subscription, I might get away with it.'

Proudfoot glanced at Igor. 'Don't think we'd get away with talking in class,' she said.

'Keep it down,' snapped Frankenstein, by way of confirmation.

'Arf.'

They crept on, a short stretch of wall that seemed to take much longer than they'd thought. The noises of the others had died away. They seemed once again to be alone in the mist and fog. The killer was out there, somewhere, but they didn't know where. The MI6 gang, one down, and still stumbling around in the dark, looking for clues. And food. The two rescued fisherman, taken from the frying pan and dropped callously into the fire. Barney Thomson lost in the mist

They reached the door. From the small window beside it, a dim light shone. Frankenstein looked over his shoulder.

'OK. Deep breath. We charge. If he's in there, it's no big deal. Just any old guy in a mask. We all need to tackle him at once, all four of us, we go for the guy. If we stand there like a bunch of lemons, he'll pick us off.'

'I am too old for that shit,' said Semester.

'Too bad,' said Frankenstein. 'I'll buy you a pint after. If you're not dead.'

'You have confidence you won't be?'

Frankenstein gave him the look, then turned quickly, sprang up, leant on the handle and pushed the door open, charging in full pelt. The rest of them followed, suddenly on the hoof, hearts pounding. Igor and Proudfoot, Semester at the back.

They careered in wildly, nearly taking the door from its hinges, and stood rowdily in the middle of the small office, low lit by a tiny lamp at the back of the room, a ragtag army, ready to fight.

––––––––

C
udge Bladestone looked up from behind the cluttered desk. Sweating profusely, clothes dishevelled, eyes manic. Fumbling about with a small bag. He pushed back in his seat, swallowed, demonically stared around the four assorted police officers, pathologists and hunchbacks. The four assorted police officers, pathologists and hunchbacks stared back.

'What the fuck do you want?' said Bladestone, after a few seconds of Mexican stand-off.

Frankenstein didn't answer, turned and started to look around the room.

'Come on,' he said hurriedly, 'look for the stupid mask. Anything.'

He moved quickly into the other room. Despite the sweaty, guilty exterior of the man at the desk, the prime suspect he'd had pegged for the man behind the Dostoevsky mask was not sitting there looking like someone who had just severed the head of an MI6 agent. He looked like he was as scared as the rest of them.

A quick look in the other room. Proudfoot followed him, then Frankenstein came back through. Stared angrily at Bladestone.

'What are you hiding?' he demanded. 'Now!'

Bladestone's tongue snaked out to lick nervous lips. No words. Frankenstein took another step towards the desk, leant over him.

Footsteps at the door and everyone turned, hearts at the ready. Barney Thomson stepped uneasily into the light, quickly assessed the situation. Looked at Igor and Detective Sergeant Proudfoot and silently asked the question if they were all right, at the same time waved away the concern on their faces about his bruised and bloodied nose.

Frankenstein watched Barney for a second, was aware how easily someone could appear from the fog, then turned back to Bladestone, Barney now coming to stand at his shoulder.

'Show me what's in the bag,' Frankenstein said sternly.

'Have you got some sort of warrant?' said Bladestone desperately.

'Careful, Frank,' said Semester from behind, a sudden calm and measured voice in amongst the turmoil and angst. 'You have to be able to get a conviction.'

Frankenstein tensed, breath coming in a hard exhalation. Bladestone stared at him, eyes relaxing, just a flicker.

'You police have your rules,' he said. 'Don't you?'

Voice the colour of a snake. Frankenstein imagined whipping a .44 from his back pocket and blasting Bladestone's head off. Clean off.

'We're not all the police, are we?' said a voice from the side.

Everyone looked at Barney. Frankenstein knew what was coming and was glad he hadn't had that plastic deputy badge to hand when enlisting Barney to the force.

'Fucking barber,' muttered Bladestone, and he clutched the bag more tightly to his chest. Barney had had enough death, murder, deceit and lies. He was no action hero, no tough guy, but he wanted this to be over with as quickly as possible. He wanted normality back, a subdued normality, and not this absurd, death-filled, death-fuelled normality which he now called his own.

Two steps, round the side of the desk, and he pounced on Bladestone. There was a flurry of arms and legs, but it was never going to take much. Barney didn't need to defeat Bladestone, didn't need to throw him down or get him in a headlock. He just needed to expose the contents of the bag.

He grabbed at the bag, took a boot in the stomach, another blow to the head, reeled but swung at Bladestone with his right arm at the same time. Caught Bladestone off balance. Pushed himself off the desk, fell towards Bladestone, made another grab.

The two men crashed together over the back of the chair, one pulled one way with the bag, the other in the opposite direction. The contents sprayed out, arching through the air, sparklingly beautiful, even in the dim light of the small desk lamp.

Diamonds.

Bladestone's head cracked off the wall. He crumpled onto the floor. Barney thudded into the wall, then pushed himself away from it, straightening up. Avoided the tangle of Bladestone's legs, looked down at his opponent, who lay on the floor, staring up angrily in defeat.

Frankenstein picked up one of the small diamonds which had fallen on the desk. Held it up to the light, looked through it. Didn't know what he was looking for, but for the moment, it didn't matter. A diamond was a diamond. Some of the story, if not exactly all of it, was unravelling this night, as the fog and the horrible feeling of demonic premonition had foretold.

'Where's the guy in the mask?' he said harshly.

Bladestone's eyes flitted frantically around the five of them, all now gathered above him.

'I don't know,' said Bladestone bitterly. 'I'm as scared of him as you.'

'Who said the fuck I was scared?' growled Frankenstein.

Suddenly the door burst open, thrown back, crashing into the wall. Selma and Deirdre came in, running full pelt.

'He's coming!' yelled Deirdre.

The men braced themselves. Barney caught Proudfoot's eye across the room and ran across quickly, through the sudden stramash of people, to put himself between her and whoever was about to come through the door. His mother?

Frankenstein stood firm, expected the MI6 girls to disappear into the back room. However they immediately crouched down on either side of the open door, primed for action, Selma with a short piece of rope in her right hand.

Further commotion through the mist, and then Bernard and The Dog With No Name came hurtling through the open door, wailing in terror.

'Like, oh my gosh!' yelled Bernard. 'The decapitator dude's coming this way! And he's super-mad!'

Bernard and The Dog With No Name were not stopping to get involved in the action. They burst through the crowd and disappeared into the small back room, which would be little protection at all, if the killer was to find his head.

They waited. A moment's pause. The briefest of seconds. Time suspended. They stood, braced for the apocalypse.

The mist parted. The masked figure in black emerged from the murkiness just outside the door, axe raised, feet flying across the ground.

Frankenstein, first in line, braced himself. Saw the flash of the axe. Noticed, with incredulity, that Selma had thrown an end of the rope across to Deirdre, and the two of them had pulled it taut, about a foot off the ground.

'Oh, for fuck's s...,' he began.

The killer burst through the door. Immediately his right leg caught in the rope. Deirdre and Selma held firm. The man in black flew forward, crashing down towards Frankenstein and Igor.

The detective and the deaf, mute hunchback lashed out at the same time. The killer hurtled towards the ground and, cast sideways, fell harshly against the edge of the desk. Banged his head with a loud thump. His whole upper body jerked awkwardly. The axe fell harmlessly to the floor. He groaned loudly, one leg twitching, a hand lifted defensively to his head. Frankenstein automatically struck out, kicking him brutally in the face so that the masked head snapped backwards, banging once more off the solid wood of the desk. And then Selma and Deirdre, using all their training and experience, leapt upon the killer with the rope, and quickly tied the legs together, tight aching knots. Another piece of rope was produced from Deirdre's pockets, and this one was tightly wound around the killer's midriff, binding his flailing arms to his sides.

And with that, the masked killer, who had so terrorized the small island community for the previous few days, was perched up against the table, trapped and bound.

Barney Thomson stared down at the beaten figure that he had presumed to be Satan, and wondered who could possibly lie beneath the mask.

Everyone remained breathless with the action of the previous few seconds, waiting for something else to happen, some coda to the event. Bladestone looked down at the captured killer, astonished. Then he noticed that everyone else seemed to have been struck by some kind of stupor. One last chance to get away, he thought, some few diamonds still in the torn bag which he clasped to his chest. If he could just get out into the mist, he would have a perfect chance to get away.

Another short pause, the briefest of hesitations, and then he rose quickly, put his foot on the desk, hoisted himself up, skipped across and jumped down onto the office floor, just three feet from the door and freedom.

Unfortunately for Bladestone's aspirations, Frankenstein saw him coming all the way. As the man's feet hit the ground, Frankenstein delivered a cutting blow to his ankles which pitched him forward with a crash into the wall on the other side. Another head knock. This time he stayed down and looked groggily back around the room.

Another pause, as the room waited to see if this would be the last of the action. Barney turned to Proudfoot and squeezed her hand. Proudfoot, who had been in a daze since witnessing the murder of Sergeant Kratzenburg.

'You all right?' he asked.

She nodded. Couldn't speak.

'Can we come out now?' came Bernard's voice from the other room.

'Sure,' said Deirdre.

Bernard and The Dog With No Name came loping into the room. The crowd automatically gathered around the killer, his head slumped forward, bound at the feet and chest, strange little noises coming from behind the mask.

'Time to find out who Fyodor Dostoevsky really is,' said Selma.

Barney swallowed, wondering if the greying old wizened face of his mother was about to be presented to the public. Knew intrinsically that she was gone, the demon was gone.

Selma stepped forward, peeled away the latex at the neck and then with two hands, tugged the Fyodor Dostoevsky mask quickly up and over the head.

The assembled crowd stared in amazement.

'Mr. Andrew the hotel manager!' they all said.

'You were the diamond smuggler?' said Semester, who had been so welcomed into The Stewart Hotel.

'Yes,' said Andrew. 'And I would have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for these meddling MI6 muppets.'

Frankenstein scowled. 'Fuck them,' he muttered. 'I was always going to get you, you bastard.'

And then he thought of the murder and havoc this man had wreaked, and forgetting that things were different in this day and age from the innocent times when he'd first joined the police, he stepped forward and kicked Andrew, the mild-mannered hotel manager, viciously in the face.

'Bastard,' he said, as the killer's head bounced back off the desk and slumped down onto the floor.

Barney Thomson, barber, had nothing to say. And while he could not in any way have articulated what had just happened to him this evening, he understood perfectly.

The demon, be it the Satan that waits at the crossroads to hand out eternal damnation in return for missing chords, or some other generic fiend who lives and inhabits every evil deed that is ever committed, was gone.

Not forever, and maybe not for long, but he had left this island for a while and he had left the life of Barney Thomson.

––––––––

T
he fog lifted slowly through the night. Gradually the police reinforcements arrived. The authorities found their way to the island. The various crime scenes were closed down. The bodies of the dead and decapitated were gradually bagged up and removed. By the time the town woke up the following morning, it had what it wished for. The fog was gone, the killer had been arrested, there would be no more murders.

There was a big sky. From where Barney Thomson was sitting, there were large patches of blue, big bulbous white clouds, floating wisps of white and grey away to the south. The sea chopped and swelled.

He was on a bench to the town side of the boatyard, sitting with Proudfoot and Igor and Keanu, watching the sea. They had sat up through the night. Proudfoot had called home. Igor had gone to see Carmichael to tell her of the evening, and had just recently returned, clutching coffees and breakfast, Keanu in tow.

Barney had had his nose cracked painfully back into place, and then had sat through the night, watching the lifting of the fog and the gradual appearance of the day from behind bruised eyes. Hadn't spoken much to whoever was close by, and now the four of them had been sitting for a long time in silence.

Away to his left Barney heard voices. He turned and looked back towards the playpark at the end of the football field. Four people and a dog were walking towards them. The MI6 gang. He felt a slight shudder of surprise, until he realised that the fourth member, the blond man walking slightly ahead of the others, wasn't Fred. Some other, look-a-like officer of the security services, instantly drafted in on Fred's demise, he presumed.