Murderers Anonymous (11 page)

Feet up, eyes closed.

If it had been a warm, sunny day, the air filled with luxurious summer smells, the occasional bug buzzing by, and if some bikini-clad überchick had been running at his beck and call, fetching cold beers and endless packets of Doritos, while performing a vast array of indescribably erotic things to his body, then it would have been high up in the top ten list of things to do when you were dead.

But it was Scotland in December, so you took what you could get. It was not too cold, he had a cup of tea and a ham, cucumber and mustard sandwich, and he was on his own; which, while not as good as hanging out with a bikini-clad überchick, was way up on being with some cretinous idiot who'd irritated the ham sandwich out of him.

Which just about classified everyone Detective Chief Inspector Joel Mulholland knew these days, such ill-humour had he been in these recent months.

The river rolled by, water splashing against rocks and rounding up twigs and leaves to sweep them downstream; a variety of fish loafed about, avoiding the meagre fare on offer at the end of Mulholland's line; a zither of wind rustled what leaves remained on the trees; clouds occasionally obscured the sun, before passing on their way. Somewhere overhead a plane headed west, carrying on board, by some strange coincidence, Mulholland's ex-wife, although he was not to know. It was some seven months since they'd had any direct contact, all communication between them now being conducted through, on the one hand Weir, Hermiston, Jekyll & Silver, and on the other Goodchap, Neugent, Turkey & Bratwurst.

Generally there are two or three ways you can go when nearly thirty people under your protection are murdered, and you get to view most of the mutilated bodies along the way. There's the way where you throw yourself back into your work, doing whatever minor tasks the superintendent will let you near. There's the way where you go completely off your head, wander around the streets, naked bar the pair of underpants on your head, singing the first eight verses of
Old Shep.
Or you can go quietly insane, get transferred to some sleepy backwater, and spend your days fishing and doing paperwork on whatever local youth has chosen to fall into the river the night before, after drinking too much gooseberry wine at his Uncle Andy's fiftieth birthday party.

Sergeant Erin Proudfoot had opted for the first on the list. It was the only way for her, and she had been rewarded with every trivial task coming the way of Maryhill police station for ten months; from the theft of some old granny's thimble collection, to missing cats and stray libidos, she'd seen it all.

Mulholland had tottered between the other two. A few months of intense romance with Proudfoot and then, with the breaking of any other day, but a day on which reality had finally kicked in, he'd gone gently off his head. Over thirty men dead, a police officer downed among them, he'd had to view the sort of carnage at which Genghis Khan would have winced. He had taken it out on Proudfoot – love by any other name – and when at last he had edged towards quiet insanity, he'd been posted, at his request, to the requisite sleepy town in Argyll, to fish and sleep and eat and occasionally solve some innocent crime. (Not that major crime didn't happen in Argyll, it was just that none of it was put the way of Joel Mulholland.)

So they had gone their separate ways, these two, but they had this in common. They were both in counselling, and would be for some time to come; unless destiny played its hand, as it has a tendency to do.

Not that Mulholland gave much thought to counselling as he felt a gentle pull on his fishing line; in fact, he didn't think about much at all. The past was there to be dredged up four or five hours a week by Dr Murz, and not at any other time. And if he was required to face that past in order to return to normality, then, he occasionally opined to the doctor, who needed normality?

The tug on the fishing line came a little harder. Might have something, he thought, as he tried to rouse himself from the waking dream; a dream which, as usual, had dark edges and strange, evil creatures poised to enter at any moment, should he let his guard down. Eyes slowly opened; a man stood in front of him, fingers wet from where he'd been tugging the line.

Mulholland stared for some time. Nothing worse than being interrupted when you're in the middle of nothing. The other man looked around at the trees and the river and the blue sky; there was a light smell of wood burning in the air, and despite the mildness, the promise of a crisp early evening.

'Very tree-ie around here,' said Constable Hardwood.

Mulholland closed his eyes, trying to drift back into the world of non-demons he had just left.

'Arboreal, Constable,' he said. 'The word is arboreal.'

'Aye,' said Hardwood. 'And there's a lot of trees 'n' all. Reminds me of a place my dad used to take me fishing when I was a lad.'

'Oh aye,' said Mulholland, eyes firmly closed, his netherworld receding all the time. 'Where was that?'

'About fifty yards along the river there,' said Hardwood, pointing.

'Har-de-har-har, Constable. You want to tell me what I can do for you?'

Hardwood smiled at the closed eyes. There'd been a time, not long after Mulholland arrived, when he'd been in awe of the man. There'd been a glint of madness in his eye and stories were legion of the affair at the monastery, as if he himself might have had something to do with all the murders. But over time Hardwood and the rest of the station had come to realise that Mulholland was merely shell-shocked, not mad. Harmless in his way. Although you could never be completely sure; that's what Sergeant Dawkins said.

'You're wanted,' said Hardwood.

'I'm fishing.'

Hardwood nodded and stared around at the trees. Didn't know the name of any of them. They were green, and in the winter the leaves come off; that was the limit of his knowledge. Trees weren't his thing. Constable Lauder said that Mulholland had threatened him with a knife not long after he'd arrived, but no one really believed it. And if it had been true, then so be it, because if anyone deserved to be threatened with a knife...

'It's important,' said Hardwood.

'Don't care,' said Mulholland, eyes firmly shut.

Hardwood nodded again. Beginning to wonder what to do next. On the one hand he had the perhaps not psychopathic but at least a bit strange Joel Mulholland; while on the other he had Superintendent Cunningham, a woman who ate men's testicles for breakfast. And lunch.

Tough call. He balked.

'You're still here, Constable,' said Mulholland, eyes closed, the taste of ham, cucumber and mustard in his mouth.

'Aye.'

'What could you possibly want now that I've sent you on your way?'

Hardwood didn't move. He'd known Mulholland would be like this; and he'd been told to get him under any circumstances.

'You really are needed, sir,' he said, knowing that it wasn't enough. He would need more than that to persuade the shell-shocked victim from his fishing perch.

'Don't give a hoot, son,' said Mulholland. 'Go back and tell Geraldine that she can stick her head up her arse. You can help her to stick her head up her arse if you want; you have my authority.'

The fishing line was tugged again; a sharp pull. Mulholland snapped. Eyes open, he sat up, filled with the instant rage to which he had been prone for months. Did not even try to contain it.

'Bloody hell, Constable, I told you to fuck off! It's my day off, I've got nothing to go in for, so would you just get out of my face? Leave me in peace and tell Geraldine she can go and piss in her shoes. I'll see her in the morning.'

'That wasn't me, sir,' said Hardwood dryly.

'What?'

There was another tug at the line, Hardwood nowhere near it. As ever with his explosions of anger, Mulholland felt instant regret; and as ever, it ruined the sound basis for his argument and put him a couple of goals behind.

It was time, he thought, leaning forward and rubbing his forehead, that Murz started earning her money. He didn't need counselling a few hours a week, it should be all day every day for the next twenty years. And so he ignored the jumping line.

'Sorry, Constable, that was bad.'

'That's all right, sir,' said Hardwood.

'So what's the score, then? Why's Geraldine so keen to see me? Wanting into my pants?' said Mulholland glibly, as he hauled himself from his seat and began to wind in his third fish of the day; three fish he would never get the chance to eat.

'Likes 'em younger than you, sir,' said Hardwood and Mulholland laughed.

'Right, Constable. About your age, by any chance?'

Hardwood smiled, Mulholland shook his head. So it went, and he began to get his equipment together, fishing posted to the back of his mind.

Soon he would be dispatched back to Glasgow, to be once more commissioned to follow the trail of Barney Thomson; and to be once more landed in the dark heart of a murderer's lair, to taste the putrid flesh.

'Whatever it's going to be,' said Mulholland, 'I'll bet it's a load of pants.'

'Aye,' said Hardwood, knowing no more than Mulholland. 'No doubt.'

Barney stepped back and looked at the hair from a different angle. It was not going well. In fact, it was downright ugly. There had been more successful invasions of Russia in the previous two hundred years than this. It was time for retrospection, perhaps even damage limitation.

The Tyrolean Überhosen was one of the most complex haircuts ever to have emerged from Austria, and only three or four barbers outside the general Anschluss area had ever been able to master it. And for all his greatness, for all his communication with the gods of barbery, for all the angels fluttering their wings at his shoulder, and for all the elves weaving necromancy into the very fabric of his comb and scissors, rendering household plastic and steel into wondrous instruments of sortilege and legerdemain, transforming him from the journeyman barber of his past to the thaumaturgist of the present, turning water to wine by the agency of the theurgical jewels of his workmanship, Barney Thomson wasn't one of those three or four; and he was making an arse of it.

It was a tough haircut, no question. Ask any barber in Britain to perform it and they will quail at the very mention, for the line between success and failure is a fine one, and the consequences of that failure can be monumentally disastrous.

Of all the law suits brought against barbers in Great Britain over the final twelve years of the twentieth century, more than half were as a direct result of a failed Tyrolean Überhosen. See a man wearing what is obviously the first hat he could get his hands on, on a warm day when no headwear is required, and it's a sure bet that under that ill-fitting hat is a failed attempt at this haircut of which only kings can truly dream.

Why do men take the chance, many have wondered; but only those who have never seen the finished article in all its glory. It is questioned only by those who have never seen a man, bedecked in a perfectly executed Tyrolean Überhosen, strolling through town, with more confidence about him than Muhammad Ali when he fought Sonny Liston (or anyone else for that matter), men in awe of his every word, desperate women tearing frantically at his trousers, and the sun shining down upon him while rain soaks everyone else in his vicinity.

The barber who can execute the Tyrolean Überhosen is a wealthy man, for he can command a huge fee for every cut. And so Barney had dreamed of this day. Twice before, at Henderson's so very long ago, he had been asked for the cut, but he hadn't had the confidence to agree to do it. Not with those others in the shop just waiting to pass comment; not with his confidence shattered, and even the simplest Frank Sinatra '62 causing him problems. But now he'd been offered the chance of his shot at greatness, and such was his confidence, such was the air of indefatigability about him, the all-conquering hero of hirsutology he believed himself to have become, that he'd taken it on with barely a second thought, and hardly a trembling finger.