The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series) (26 page)

Mulholland rang the bell and waited.

‘You all right?’ said Proudfoot. Annoyed for feeling concern.

Mulholland grunted.

‘Feel like I’ve just had my balls dragged over broken glass for three miles,’ he said.

‘Oh aye. And whose shadow are you going to wank in?’

Voice with a sudden edge. Mulholland looked round. Felt a dryness in the throat. Sheep Dip stared at the not-so-distant hills, watching the storm coming slowly towards them.

The door opened.

‘Bit of a cold day to be out,’ said the old man.

The moment had passed. They looked at him. Mulholland held out his ID card.

‘Good afternoon, sir. Chief Inspector Mulholland, Sergeants Proudfoot and Dipmeister. Just doing a few rounds in the area. We were wondering if you’ve had this man staying at your house in the last couple of weeks.’

He showed him the picture. The man tutted loudly, and shook his head.

‘That’ll be yon eejit who caused Alan Hansen and Wullie Miller to collide against Russia in Spain in ‘82?’

‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers,’ said Mulholland.

‘Aye, well, you shouldn’t just dismiss everything either.’

‘Anyway, that’s not really our concern. Have you had him as a guest here, or have you heard of him staying in any other establishment in the town?’

He tutted loudly once more. ‘Ach, away and boil your heid son, we’re in Durness, and this is a respectable establishment. Yon serial killers stay in houses with the windows boarded up and all that kind of thing.’

‘Bit of a sweeping assumption, Mr…?’

‘Strachan, James Strachan, that’s me.’

‘Well, Mr Strachan, you can’t be too sure. You’re positive that no one remotely resembling this has stayed at your house? Maybe under a different name, or with a slightly different appearance?’

James Strachan hesitated. He wondered if he should express his wife’s suspicions. Thought,
Ach, what does she know, the daft old pudding?

‘Ach, no, son, no one like that. Why don’t you try some dodgy area of Glasgow, or one of those places?’

‘We know him to have been in this area.’

‘Oh, is that right, now?’

‘Aye.’

‘Well, well. Still, we’ve not had him here. Why don’t you try the Cape Wrath Hotel down the road? Big place, yon. Would have space for a serial killer or two in the basement, no doubt.’

‘Aye, fine,’ said Mulholland.

James Strachan stared at them for a few more seconds. Shrugged, felt the cold.

‘Thanks for your help,’ said Mulholland, as another door closed.

Pointless, he thought. Proudfoot thought the same, though neither of them spoke.

A mirror of virtually every place they’d been. The majority hadn’t seen Barney Thomson; the minority had seen him, but still had been no help whatsoever.

From nowhere, the long fingers of the coming storm slowly reached out, and snow began to fall, in sparse, swirling, white fluffy flakes. They turned and started to walk down the road. Freezing, dispirited, unhappy, the mood and general pointlessness of their current occupation even infiltrating Sheep Dip. They were feeling useless; and unaware that the Cape Wrath Hotel was another mile and a half away.

‘Psst!’

Darkness. No sound but the muffled howl of the wind outside. Late at night or early in the morning, Barney Thomson did not know. He had lost all sense of time, except that it had been dark for many hours, the monks long since in their beds. A day hidden in the attic above the library; after removing his brush and bucket, so they would have nothing to raise suspicions as to his location.

Cold up there. Dark, damp; lonely. Spiders for company; creatures unseen that brushed past his face. Scuttling noises from near by, but the darkness was impenetrable, no amount of time had allowed his eyes to grow. Yet he had no fear of any of that, Barney Thomson; no phobias. A simple man. But knew he couldn’t live forever in the cold, damp attic of the monastery. Some warmth reached there from the floors below, but not much. He would eventually die of hypothermia. He’d realised after a time that once the monks were all in bed he could safely come back down below. To lurk in the shadows, plunder the kitchen. Now he’d had his fill of bread and cold meat; more stashed away inside his cloak for later, for the following day, as he could see nothing but another day in hiding.

Hours alone in the darkness allowed you time to think, and Barney Thomson had done a lot of thinking. Regrets. Mistakes he’d made. What the future held. He was a fish out of water in this place; like a priest at Ibrox, as Wullie always used to say. And it is of Wullie that he continued to think. Which he found funny. He had hardly given him a second’s thought in all those months. Between March and November, once the initial danger had passed. Wullie had been gone, and that was that, and he would never have given him another thought had not the body of Chris Porter been discovered.

So now, regrets. Regrets that he hadn’t made a better job of hiding Chris Porter’s body.

‘Psst!’

And was he the worse for it now, this regret? Regrets about his actions after killing Wullie, not about the death itself. Accident it might have been, but he’d still killed a man. That was what had started it all off. He’d thought, as he’d sat frozen in his miserable hideout, that this was his penance; his hairshirt. So much for avoiding detection, when he had to hide away in conditions that were worse than he would experience in prison. The blizzard would not last forever, but it might last long enough for him to get caught. He had spent some of his day in the dark wondering if there might be some higher force at work. A God after all; vengeance to be taken.

‘Psst!’

At the third attempt there was a stirring in front of him. The body shifted under the sheets. A low grumble, a hand moved, there was a mutter which sounded like,
you’re not using enough cream, Sarah
.

Sarah? All the brothers had secrets. Barney Thomson had realised that much.

‘Psst! Brother Steven!’ A forced whisper. He had been in the room for a couple of minutes and had already lifted a blanket from his own bed, and any clothes which had come easily to hand.

Finally the brother’s head moved, and he raised himself from the pillow. He squinted into the apocalyptic darkness.

‘Who’s there?’ he said. Plucked from the depths of sleep. Still hadn’t got around to remembering where he was. Could have been in any one of a hundred beds he’d woken up in.

‘Brother Steven! It’s me. Jacob. Brother Jacob,’ he added, to avoid confusion. Was glad that Brother Steven had not succumbed to the killer’s rampage as he had once suspected.

A small gasp, sheets were moved back; Barney saw Steven sit up. Shook his head, ran his hands across his face.

‘Brother Jacob? Everyone’s looking for you, man. Where’ve you been? We thought you’d run off into the blizzard.’

‘Hiding,’ he said. ‘Look, Brother, I know what everyone thinks, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t have anything to do with they murders.’

‘You didn’t?’

‘Naw, I didn’t. I’m not that sort of bloke.’

‘Well, why did you run, then Brother? Everyone thinks you’re guilty. Maybe they wouldn’t have, because we’re not judgemental here, but after you disappeared…’

‘I had to. I knew what everyone was thinking. What with the murders starting just after I arrived, and my barber’s tools getting used for to commit them. I’m no mug.’

‘So where’ve you been, Brother?’

Barney hesitated. He had decided to trust Brother Steven to find out exactly what was going on, but was not going to trust him all the way.

‘It doesn’t matter. Just hiding. I just need to know a few things, you know? Are there no other suspects? Is that bastard Herman just after me, ‘cause if you ask me, that bastard’s got something to do with it. And all they other suspicious-looking ones, like Martin and Goodfellow and Ash and Brunswick. They’re all dodgy.’

No immediate reply. He could see Brother Steven move forward slightly on the bed.

‘Do you mean what you just said, Brother?’

‘Aye. Why, what do you mean?’

Another pause. Barney felt the eyes of Brother Steven upon him, even in this sepulchral darkness.

‘Brother Ash is also dead.’

‘What?’

‘They found his body in the forest not far from the body of Brother Babel. Head bashed in.’

‘Holy fuck!’

‘Yes, Brother, indeed,’ said Steven. ‘No more the subtlety of a knife in the throat from our killer friend. He’s changed his whole bag. What goes around comes around, and all that. I remember old Ash saying he was going to live forever. Forgetting that old Horace thing:
Pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas regumque turres
. Yep, you can’t argue with that.’

‘Aye, right,’ said Barney, then added, ‘Holy fuck. And I’m getting the blame for all four of these murders now?’

‘I’m afraid so, Brother. The Abbot’s already sent Brother David out on a mission to get to Durness and contact the police. To be honest, I don’t know if you have to worry about that, because the guy’s a dead man. Not a chance he’ll make it in this weather. The poor Abbot must be really desperate. I don’t think Herman was too happy, but that’s his authority hang-up.’

‘Aw, shite, that’s all I need. The blinking police turning up here.’

‘Indeed, Brother. Are you in trouble with the police as it is?’

Barney Thomson. Cool in a crisis. ‘Me? Wanted by the police? Are you kidding? What would I be wanted by the police for? I mean, me? The police? What do you think, that I look like the kind of bloke who’d kill the people he worked with? The police? No chance.’

‘All right, Brother. Then if you didn’t kill our brothers, you have nothing to fear.’

‘But they all think I did. You’ve got to know human nature, Brother. I’ve got no defence, not a leg to stand on.’

He could see Brother Steven nodding in the dark.

‘Got you, Brother. It’s that whole guilt-innocence trip. It’s like what Bacon said:
For what a man would like to be true, that he more readily believes
. I suppose it’s just more comfortable for us all to believe that it’s the newcomer who’s guilty, rather than someone among us who we’ve grown to love over the years.’

‘So you think I’m guilty ‘n all?’

‘Guilt, innocence, that whole bag; you know, Jacob, I haven’t a clue, man. I’ve not known you too long, but we get along all right, don’t we? It’s not like I had you pegged for a killer or anything, but then I’ve no idea who I might suspect. I don’t think any of the brothers really has the genocidal edge in their eye. If I say it’s definitely not you, then I have to accuse someone else. I just don’t know, man. I’m trying to be in the zone on this one, but it’s a tough call.’

Barney hesitated, then asked the burning question.

‘You won’t turn me in, Brother, will you? I need to wait until they’ve found the real killer.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not turning anyone in. It’s every man for himself out there. But they’re not looking for anyone else, Brother, and if someone else dies, they’re going to assume it’s you who did it, because they don’t know where you are. You have a long road ahead of you, my friend.’