The Barbershop Seven (59 page)

He shook his head again. 'Don't know. Christ.'

From where he lay, tense, bemused, slightly odd, Barney could hear the deep breath exhaled.

'So what are we saying?' Barney heard Proudfoot say. Almost a minute later, the silence absolute. Although somewhere in the monastery, Brother Steven must have been dragging the body of the Abbot noisily along a stone cold floor.

'What are we saying, Sergeant? We're saying that this fuck-up, this Barney Thomson, came in here the second we all left – which means he was watching us, listening to everything we were saying – came in here, killed the Abbot and Brother Steven, and for some reason best known to his own warped head, cut the left hands off each of them and left them as a calling card. That's what we're saying, Sergeant. Just the sort of thing his mother, or he himself, did last spring.'

Barney watched. Incredulous. Of course they were going to think it was him, but he still hadn't been expecting it. His meagre thought processes finally caught up with those of Brother Steven. A brilliant frame-up. He must have known all along about the Abbot's disability. His weirdness. The Amazing Double Left-Handed Boy, he might have been called at the circus. And somehow Steven had known all about it. And for the frame-up to work, Steven must also be confident that Edward, Martin and Raphael did not know.

It wasn't me!
he wanted to shout through the hole, but he didn't. So he lay, surrounded by the dark, unaware of anything going on around him. And if this happened to be the room where Steven decided to hide the body of the Abbot, he would come across Barney and Barney would never be aware; not until the knife sliced into his back. Barney was beginning to take another roll down the hill of temporary madness. He watched Proudfoot come and stand beside Mulholland; they looked at the hands.

'What about someone else being loose in the monastery?' she said.

Mulholland continued the head-shaking, which had become a permanent feature.

'Don't think so. If it wasn't Thomson, I thought it might be one of this lot. But this proves it. These two idiots are dead, and those three stuck together.'

'Maybe it's all three,' said Proudfoot, but at last the words were lost to Barney as the voice was lowered; and neither did Mulholland's negative reply reach up to him.

Anyway, he had lost concentration. He was imagining cutting hair with two left hands. It would be tricky, obviously, but once you'd got used to it, maybe it would be all right. In fact, he thought, sliding deeper into the fantasy, seeing himself behind the chair, two left hands working away, maybe it would make him even better. It would certainly be distinctive. Something else to help draw the crowds to his shop, on top of his awesome abilities.

Barney was lost, oblivious to the dark room around him and to the scene of gruesome murder below. Deep in his fantasy, the contented smile forming around his face. Imagination could never be said to be as good as the real thing, but it might as well be up there. When it felt real, it was real.

That was what the mad Barney thought.

And so wrapped up was he in the phantasmagoria of his delusion that he did not hear the door partially open behind him; he did not see the shaft of light which poked its way into the darkened room; he did not hear the laboured breaths of Brother Steven, nor the faint whooshing sound of Brother Copernicus's body being dragged along the floor; he saw nothing and he heard nothing, while his mind wandered off and he could smell and feel and breathe the inside of a barber's shop.

Barney was a little bit mad.

––––––––

'W
hat now?'

Mulholland looked at her. Too shell-shocked by all this death to make a sarcastic comment. What now? Nothing had changed. They were about to leave and get to safety as quickly as possible. However now, for the first time, he felt the spectre of death lurking behind him. He hadn't come here to die, and no matter how miserable he was, he certainly didn't want to. But at last the import of what was going on here, all this carnage, was beginning to hit him.

Strange, that; there could be so much death but he hadn't thought for a second that it had been going to affect him. Suddenly, standing over two left hands on a bloody table, he realised that he and Proudfoot were on the menu, just the same as everyone else. And there were only three of them left. He shivered. Sensed the weight of foreboding which made him want to turn and look behind; not only that, it made him want eyes on every side of his head.

'What now? Now, to quote no end of movies, we get the fuck out of Dodge, Sergeant. Saddle up the horses, get these three cowboys to get their backsides in gear and let's get going.'

***

B
arney Thomson watched from above, but he was no longer paying attention as Mulholland and Proudfoot moved away from his line of vision and started distributing orders to the three lamentable surviving monks. Instead, his fingers twitched in time with his waking dream.

And all the time, unlike Mulholland, he did not feel the spectre of Death at his shoulder; even though, in his case, Death was right there, in the flesh, manoeuvring the corpse of Brother Copernicus into the little-used store room. Death quietly closed the door, then continued to pull the body farther into the room. He did not light a candle and did not try to open the shutters. Death, as a rule, was not afraid of the dark. Tough bastard, Death, no mistake.

Had Barney just been dreaming, he might have heard by now. But this hallucination went beyond that. He was sliding down that hill; madness beckoned, in all its glorious uncertainty. Everything could be as you wanted it to be in madness. You wanted to spend your life working in a barber's shop, never killing anyone and never being suspected of mass murder? No problem, you could be there any time you liked, and you could stay forever. And at the end of your day, you didn't have to go home to your own wife, you could go home to any woman you wanted; and before this fantasy had run its course, Barney would go home to Barbara, the most attractive sister-in-law on the planet; and he wouldn't have to construct a place for his brother, because in this perfect dream-world his brother wouldn't exist.

Barney closed his eyes, but sleep was a long way off. Why sleep, when you could have everything you wanted? And all the while Death went about his business behind, opening a cupboard door and moving the leaden, de-handed body of the Abbot inside. He closed the door; there was a quiet murmur of a hinge, but no more. Barney would have heard it in other circumstances.

Brother Steven made sure the door was closed properly, although it would be some time before anyone would go looking there. The adrenaline rush had slowed, and now he had that wonderful post-stabbing afterglow to which he'd become addicted.

His eyes had become accustomed to the light.

He noticed Barney.

A body on the floor, and not of my doing, he thought. And he looked at it with some curiosity. Too dark to see who it was, and so he took a tentative few steps towards it, bending low to better identify the suspect.

'Well, help m'boab!' he said upon realisation; for it was inevitable. If you are going to spend your life reciting the words of others, eventually you will quote Paw Broon. 'Barney Thomson; the great killer himself.'

The words were spoken quietly, but not so quietly that Barney should not have heard. But Barney was mad – for the moment. And so Death approached, then knelt down and looked at the face of Barney Thomson from no more than a few inches. The eyes were shut, the breathing even and regular.

Brother Steven fingered the knife which had once more been stashed inside the confines of his great cloak. This could be the easiest of the lot. One sweep of the arm and the knife would be embedded in Barney's back.

He was fascinated. Brother Jacob. Seemingly mild-mannered and innocent. And yet, the talk had been about nothing else between the monks since they'd learned of his true identity. The Great Glasgow Serial Killer, they were calling him. Brother Jacob; couldn't hurt a fly.

Brother Steven had sometimes wondered if his own exploits would be remembered. Once all this became known, would people talk about it for generations? Sometimes these things captured the imagination of the press and public and sometimes they didn't. Jack the Ripper, the great example. Five victims. Good medical work, stacks of blood, a city held in the grip of terror, a whole bunch of movies and an episode of
Star Trek
; but small potatoes in the serial killer game. There had been others who had done much more for their art, but who'd only received a tenth of the infamy. There had just been something about Jack the Ripper.

So how would it be with him? Would he get the kind of acclaim now being enjoyed by Barney Thomson? What had they said? Seven or eight deaths? He had now done that fourfold. Of the two, he was much the greater headcase. Of these two princes of the serial killer game, he was the man who should be king.

He hadn't started out thinking like this. He had initially, of course, intended to frame Brother Jacob. But that had been back then, when his plans had been small. Somewhere along the way, when the blood and the excitement had begun to infest his mind, he'd become consumed with the immensity of the whole. Of what he was achieving. And now he thought of something for the first time; only now, when Barney Thomson lay in front of him, did all the threads come together to make a Balaclava of unease.

When this was out, when all these great events at the Abbey of the Holy Order of the Monks of St John became known, when the magnificent revenge for Two Tree Hill had been revealed and popularised and turned into a Hollywood movie with Anthony Hopkins and Sean Connery, would they not all think that Barney Thomson was the killer? How, in fact, would Two Tree Hill become known at all? The press and public, those ravenous fools, feasting on mistrust and misconception, would think it a continuation of Thomson's Glasgow rampage. Would the truth ever come out?

Barney's eyes remained closed; his face lay still above the hole to the world beneath. He had moved on to a Madonna '
Like a Prayer
', just a really weird haircut to give to a bloke, but in his mind his hands wove their magic and the drier blew hot air like breath from a sun-kissed Mediterranean island.

Bastard, thought Brother Steven. He will steal my thunder, my name, my infamy. This bastard will steal my place in history.

Steven breathed deeply; an angry sneer invaded his face, his lips curled. Suddenly he hated Barney Thomson as much as he had hated all those morons who'd driven his father from the true path of his life. It was bad enough to steal a man's possessions or to steal his wife, perhaps even bad to take his life, but it was nothing to match that of taking his name and his reputation, of stealing the honour of having committed the deeds for which he should be known. From Alexander the Great pretending that it was he who'd conquered the known world, and not his half-brother Maurice, to Milli Vanilli achieving fame on the back of Pavarotti's early studio work, history was replete with those living off the deeds of others.

He, Steven Cafferty, could not allow this to happen. Before he was done, the world would know who he was and what he had achieved. Men would bow before him; presidents would drink from the poisoned chalice of his vision; kings and queens would bow in honour of his accomplishments; God himself would pay homage to him in celebration of his munificence. But, most of all, before he did anything else, before he walked down any other road, before he continued his extraordinary peregrination around the world of revenge, before he sank his teeth into the apple of retribution, Barney Thomson must die.

The knife hovered in the air above Barney's back. Steven's grip was light but steady; he could feel the blood meandering limply through Barney's veins, he could smell and taste it. This death would be sweeter than the murder of Herman, sweeter than the murder of the Abbot.

He could smell it, while Barney did not move. And so the knife began its pungent plunge towards the waiting spine of Barney Thomson.

––––––––

T
hey set out on the walk from the Abbey of the Holy Order of the Monks of St John to Durness. Twenty miles across fields and glens and hills of the deepest snow. They had to wade through it at some points; at others they had to plough through drifts nearly five feet high; everywhere the snow was at least two feet deep and the going was painfully slow. Proudfoot was at the back, walking in the cleared paths of the others. This was indeed an incredible journey; of the octopus, lion and snake variety.

Mulholland, Proudfoot, Brother Martin, Brother Raphael and Brother Edward. The monks had discarded their robes, so that this looked like any normal collection of seriously deranged hikers prepared to go out in all weathers. The sort of people who would be best booking mountain rescue in advance.

They would do well to get a third of the way through their journey before nightfall, Brother Raphael having delayed departure further by insisting on praying; in the end, he had only reluctantly left the abbey, being more than prepared to die and meet his maker.
God will take care of us
, he had said.
He's not done much of a job so far
, Mulholland had thought.

Martin led the way. He had sat and prayed along with Raphael, not wishing to upset his brother, but that had been for the last time. When he got to civilisation, if he ever reached it, he intended throwing off the shackles of the cloak forever. If he lived through this, the first thing he was going to do was get in touch with one of the tabloids, sell his story –
'I Was Too Cool to Die,' Says Brave Monk Hunk Hero
– then go on a world tour, taking large quantities of drugs and alcohol and whatever else there was on the planet to dull, remove or pervert your sensibilities; while at the same time sleeping with everything – woman, man, animal, inflatable or cardboard – he could get his hands on. Strange that only one week earlier he'd had it in mind himself to murder Brother Herman, for the man had been a bully who'd deserved all he'd received. He had thought of using Barney Thomson's scissors, little knowing that that was exactly what Barney had had in mind himself. Stupid that he'd gone to see Barney to threaten him to keep his mouth shut. Ironic.