The Barbershop Seven (192 page)

Watson was writing furiously, jealous of all the guys around him holding up a wide variety of recording devices.

'Well, I think children today are far more sophisticated than you give them credit for, and they're also desensitised to violence, but then again, you may have a point. Still, it might have been a man in a mask who chopped her head off? Can you comment on that?'

Frankenstein shrugged.

'That it might have been a man in a mask? Sure, I can comment on that. Here's my comment. Who the fuck knows? It could have been a monkey in a mask.'

The press conference did not last much longer.

The headline in that evening's newspaper: Police Search For Genetically Modified Masked Killer Monkey.

***

F
rom where they were sitting they could look back along the front at Millport. A cold morning, the town still showing the remnants of the ravaging by the storm. They had picked up a coffee each and were sitting on a bench up by the pier, a few yards from where the Bitter Wind had been swept away. The pier itself had been given at least a surface clean up, so that it took closer inspection to notice the underlying storm damage.

'So, tell me everything,' said Barney. They'd been sitting in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the peace, watching the world go by. The slowly changing artwork of small town life.

'Me?' she said, surprised that he'd even think to ask. She had been waiting to strike up the conversation about him. 'You care?'

Barney smiled.

'Sure,' he said. 'You did me a favour once. That, and you're one of the few people on the planet that I actually recognise from my past. Whatever life that was before all this insanity started.'

She nodded. Not everyone in this modern day is self-obsessed, she thought.

'Not much to tell,' she said. 'The last time I saw you I was lying in a pool of blood. Nearly died, somehow managed to hang on. Took a year out from the police, recuperated. A few months in bed, spent a few months walking in the foothills of the Himalayas.'

'Meditation and all that sort of thing?'

'Nah. Mostly internet café hopping, but it was fun. Got me back on my feet. Joel came with me.'

'The detective guy, your sidekick?'

'Yeah. We got married in Singapore at the end of it all. He left the police. I was going to, but they were really good to me during the whole thing, and, well, here I am. Been back in a few years. This is my first murder since back then. Guess they've been keeping me away from it.'

A seagull landed on the railing not far from them and inspected them for signs of food. Barney lifted his coffee cup to show that they were packing caffeine and no crumbs. The seagull moved its head to the side and then turned and flew off.

'How are you coping?' he asked.

'Denial,' she said quickly. 'Denial. Been three years since my last therapy. Maybe I'll need to go back.'

'What's Mulholland doing now?' said Barney.

'You remember him?' she asked, surprised.

'Everything from back then seems kind of vague, but yes, it's in there somewhere.'

'He works for the Forestry Commission. You remember the Wolf in Pulp Fiction?'

Barney smiled and nodded.

'That's Joel. He's the Wolf of forestry.'

They drank their coffee. They looked at the skies and the sea. An elegiac moment, the small bay stretching before them.

'Your turn,' said Proudfoot eventually, and Barney stared at the ground in front of him. 'The last I heard, whereas I nearly died, you did the job properly. Dead at the foot of a cliff, thanks to old man Blizzard.'

'Well,' said Barney, quickly, 'he didn't push me, I just slipped. Although, to be fair to the lad Blizzard, maybe he'd have pushed me if he'd had to. So then, what happened next...? Back from the dead. Hard to explain.'

He paused, sipped on his cup of joe.

'Presumably though, you must have some explanation,' she said, amused by his reticence. No impatience, just a lazy cup of coffee on a cool autumnal day by the sea. She could sit here all day, take nothing else to do with the investigation, talk to Barney Thomson, chew the fat, wait a few days to return to her own personal Wolf.

'Well, you know, Sergeant,' said Barney Thomson, 'I'm not sure that I can. I was never, to be honest, personally aware of being dead. No light at the end of a tunnel, no Heaven, no Hell, no deity-like figure casting doubts over my presence in his house, no red, bearded, long-tailed sneak, waiting to whack me over the head with a steaming iron bar, before sending me into the caves for an eternity of back-breaking, soul-crushing penance. Nothing. I fell off a cliff, woke up some time later in a bed, having been employed with the First Minister.'

She looked at him. There was a story there that she had studiously avoided at the time, since murder had been involved.

'You were the personal barber, when all those cabinet murders were being committed?'

''Fraid so.'

'Jeez, that's pretty funky. Murder has followed you around'

Barney smiled. Never a truer word...

'I'm Jessica whatshername from Murder She Wrote,' he said.

'Miss Marple,' she added.

'Poirot.'

'Hannibal Lecter.'

He laughed. She smiled with him.

'Cheeky sod. That's a bit different.'

'So how'd you find yourself here?' she asked.

'Came here a lot as a kid. Every year. Forgot about it over time. Then after the First Minister thing, I walked off into the sunset. Thought I'd walk the earth and get in adventures. But you know, that's just the movies. I went from town to town, never got into any adventures. On the one hand I was seeking the quiet life, on the other, it was too damn quiet. Remembered this place, don't know why especially. Came here, it felt like home. Stayed.'

She had almost stopped hearing what he said. Not bored, just letting the sound of his voice sweep over her, blending with the sea and the breeze and the chill of morning. She could listen to him talk for a long time, didn't really matter what he was saying. There had been a time when the name Barney Thomson had scared her. Now, however, the Barney Thomson who sat next to her, talking honestly and softly, was like an old friend.

'You're like a different person,' she said.

'Getting killed will do that to you.'

She smiled. She looked out at the grey sea, the waves chopping against the small islands in the bay. The beach, still showing evidence of the storm. Her eyes wandered back along the promenade, along the front of the town. Drawn further along, until they came to the shop front of the police incident room. A hunched figure in a long black coat, shoulders stooped against the cold, was opening the door and going inside. Frankenstein.

And with that the wistful air was gone, and the vision of Nelly Johnson's front room suddenly seared through her head. Blood.

'What's he like?' said Barney. He too had felt the seismic shift in mood. She knew who he meant.

'Classical grumpy old man. Miserable as hell, misanthropic, moans constantly, complains about everything. I love him.'

Barney laughed, but he wasn't really in the mood for laughing. They were back on to the subject of death and he knew the obvious question was coming.

'So, here you are again, in a small town and people are dying.'

He took a sip of coffee, had to tip the cup almost vertical to get the last of it. He could take another. Maybe, after she'd gone back to work – and who was he fooling with that thought, as she was working now – he'd get another coffee and go for a long walk along the front, round Kames, past the aquarium, keep on going. And what if he didn't stop? Small town island life... he'd end up back where he started.

'You think I'm involved?' he asked.

'Not for a second. I think, however, that there are plenty of people who would think you were involved if they knew you were here.'

'What about Frankenstein?'

She kept her eyes on the door of the police office, as if that might help her see into the mind of the misanthrope.

'He'd jump to the obvious conclusion. He'd want to speak to you. He'd bring you in. But for all the bluster and general haranguing of the planet that he so dedicates his life to, he's a good policeman. He'd know you weren't implicated. He'd be a bad policeman not to talk to you, just as he'd be a bad one to draw the wrong conclusion.'

'Tell him I'm here,' he said quickly.

She looked at Barney for the first time in a while. The serene face, the lines of age, greying hair. Wearing well. Bit of the Sean Connery about him. Not the man she had known. Then she looked out across the bay, back towards oblivion. The investigation of a brutal murder to be continued. Life went on. If not for Nelly Johnson.

She tapped him on the knee and stood up. 'I should get back to the grind. Walk me round.'

Barney didn't rise. Felt the chill of the day for the first time since they'd sat down, but didn't feel like moving just yet.

'I'm just going to sit here for a while,' he said. 'Keanu can take care of the shop. The day can take care of itself.'

Detective Sergeant Proudfoot looked down at Barney. A long gaze between them, she smiled weakly, and then turned and walked off the pier, back past the George. Barney watched for a short while and then turned his head away and looked out to sea.

'I've got nothing to hide,' he said to himself.

If only that had been true.

***

W
illiam Deco left the barber shop and headed straight back to his Largs office. Got down to work. Barney Thomson. The name had rung a bell, and when he checked the files, it all came back. Of course the name had rung a bell. Barney Thomson had been the most notorious serial killer of his day, and the day hadn't been that long ago. It was as if the nation had collectively absolved him of all blame for the crimes of which he'd been accused, and in doing so had chosen to forget about him, embarrassed that they had so quickly leapt to the wrong conclusion.

Maybe they'd been right, however. That's what William Deco wondered as he read the back story. Maybe they'd all been right.

And as he read, he decided that the Millport mystery, which had begun with the disappearance of the crew of a small fishing trawler out on the firth, and had picked up with a sudden decapitation, had just become even more interesting. It was time for a special murder edition of the newspaper.

William Deco, Art to his friends, finally had a story to get his teeth into.

––––––––

M
urder has come to town, and now fear hangs in the air like the putrid stench of burning cattle flesh. A pall hangs over us all as we wait in terror behind locked doors. The streets are deserted, windows are shuttered, there is not a soul who does not wait with horror, wondering where the executioner's axe might next fall...

'What d'you think?' asked Keanu, looking up from his laptop.

Igor glanced out at the sky, cloudy but still bright. A mother and her two young children walked past, the kids giggling and eating ice cream, the mum doing a funny walk to make them laugh. Old Thomas Peterson rode past on his bike. The waves fluttered in the bay.

'Arf,' said Igor.

Keanu had followed his gaze outside and nodded sombrely.

'Haven't quite caught the mood of the town, eh?' he said sadly.

***

B
arney went for his long walk. Didn't even stop in the shop to tell Keanu that he was in charge for the rest of the day. It wasn't like the kid wouldn't be able to work it out for himself. And, if it looked like he might still be out walking when it was getting dark, he could call him and get him to close up. Minimum responsibility.

Instead of walking along the front, he strolled up the hill, down along the back way to the cathedral and then up through the farm, to the highest point. It was cold up there, deserted. Not a day for tourists. He looked all around, low visibility. Cloud and mist had descended. Couldn't see the hills of Argyll that are so glorious on a sunny and clear day. Clutching his jacket close to him, he moved on, walking down the other side of the hill, swinging back round towards the town. But he was still in a mood for walking and thinking, not yet ready to return to the shop.

Three days ago it had been his place of refuge, but now, now that he had been visited there by ghosts and portents, the shop represented a haunted place for him. He wanted to stay away, and so he walked on, wondering what was left for him in this town if he could never shake the feeling. He knew, however, that there was some reckoning which had to be faced, and not until then would he know where his future lay. If he had a future.

At Kames he took another left, round the bay and out towards the aquarium. When he reached the corner at the far end of the bay, however, he turned off the main road, onto the small path which leads out towards Farland Point. A deserted rocky corner, for fishermen and the occasional seal. A perfect view of the nuclear power station just over a mile across the water.

Walking down the muddy path, past fading long autumnal grasses, he heard voices a short distance away, down by the water. Did he want human contact? Maybe, after a couple of hours of relentless solitude, his thoughts naturally getting nowhere, tied up as they were in a morass of old guilts and demons. A fair chance that whoever was down here was going to be one of his regular customers. Familiarity, perhaps that was all that was required.

He stepped off the path, through the grass and past a lone bramble bush. There were four people down by the water, working with a small boat which was tied to a short, disused jetty, sticking out into the sea, all rusted columns and broken wooden planks. Four people and a dog. The MI6 gang, if that's who they really worked for.

As Barney got closer, they turned towards him and stopped what they were doing. The Dog With No Name stopped sniffing around in the grass and approached to say hello.

'Hi there, Mr Thomson,' said Fred, the blond-haired leader of the gang. 'We wondered when you'd get here.'

Barney smiled. 'You knew?'

'We've been watching you,' said Selma. 'You were at the pier, you walked up past the church and the school, up to the highest point, and now you're here. Our paths would eventually cross.'