The Barbershop Seven (62 page)

'You didn't see him coming the last time, did you, Mr Smartarse Wankstain. Brother Bloody Raphael didn't see him coming!'

'That's 'cause I was watching this eejit taking a piss.'

'Don't bring me into it,' said Edward, aroused from cold slumber by the raised voices. 'What, you're saying that I should just have pished in my breeks?'

'Oh, shut up, you 'n all,' barked Mulholland. 'The snow's falling, so there's cloud cover, so it's not as cold as it could be. We're all wrapped up well enough, and there's no reason why the four of us can't make it to Durness tomorrow.'

'Aye there is,' said Martin. 'There's one bloody good reason why we're not making it to Durness tomorrow.'

'Not if we're careful, not if we don't take our eyes off each other, and not if we stop the fuck arguing.'

'What? You think I'm going to trust you? I wouldn't trust you with my sister's tits.'

'Oh, for God's sake!' snapped Proudfoot, finally joining the fray. 'Would the lot of you just be quiet. However close he is, Barney Thomson is probably watching us and killing himself laughing at you lot. So can we all just shut the fuck up, stay awake, and keep a good lookout for something moving quickly over the snow at a low level?'

A few deep breaths were taken; a few words thought about; but nothing said. The words
away and shite
were on the tip of Martin's tongue, but this was life and death here, not some pointless argument in a pub after a long night's drinking.

Silence descended.

***

B
ut, in her way, Proudfoot was wrong. Barney Thomson was not watching them and laughing. He lay no more than twenty yards away, low behind a small rise in the ground. He heard every word, but had not made an effort to look at them, knowing that they would not be going anywhere before daybreak. He had seen the drama with Brother Raphael, he had heard the raised voices, though not the subdued. He didn't know the whereabouts of Brother Steven; indeed, did not know that Steven's knife had hovered no more than two inches above his back before the killer had decided at the last second to spare his life; however, he knew Steven was at that moment doing the same as he himself, watching the small group around the dying fire.

At times since they had all left the monastery within fifteen minutes of each other, he had been aware of Steven; he had followed him, as Steven had followed the others, but since darkness had fallen and the snows returned, Steven had been lost to him. But all this time he had been waiting for something. The same thing which had so miraculously transformed his fortunes all those months earlier.

He had been waiting to come up with a brilliant idea. He had done it once before, so he assumed he should be able to do it again. A bit like Jim Bett; played a good game once – although no one could remember whom it was against – and everyone waited for him to repeat the performance. It just never happened. Barney had never heard of Jim Bett; he was not aware of the analogy, but he thought he could create another brilliant plan.

He knew he couldn't just barge into the middle of this little group, reveal all and expect everyone to believe him. The lynch mentality would probably take over. There had been too much said about Barney Thomson for everyone to readily believe anything he said.
Honestly, Chief Inspector, the Abbot had two left hands...
Not a hope. Unless he could think of some brilliant and spectacular plan, he was screwed. Condemned to be on the run for ever more. Of course, he'd been on the run even before he'd arrived at the monastery, but that had been another matter. Getting out of that would take a different plan altogether.

The group went silent for a while, then Barney could hear low voices starting up again. No arguments this time, so they were not clear enough for him to hear. He lay on his side, pulled his topcoat more closely to him, and settled down. He was tired, but there was little chance he would fall asleep. Too many things to think of. Or only one thing to think of, but it was a big one.

A brilliant plan; Barney needed a brilliant plan. And if it wasn't for the fact that he kept going slightly mad every now and again, imagining he was in a barber's shop, he might have got on a lot better.

***

'W
hat happened to the monk in you?' asked Proudfoot.

The snow fell around her and she could feel herself giving in to tiredness and to the cold and to desperation.

Both Edward and Martin looked up, then Edward dropped his head when he realised she wasn't speaking to him.
I'm not much of a monk either
, he thought.

'What's the point?' said Martin. 'The Abbot, Herman, Saturday, Steven. All these guys with their God, it hasn't helped them. Look at Raphael, the poor bastard. What did he get for believing in God? A knife in the chops. Hallelujah, I don't think.'

'You must have believed some time, or you wouldn't have gone there,' said Mulholland. Despite the argument, despite being called a
wankstain
and not reacting by either a) arresting the bloke or b) kicking his head in, he had the same need for conversation as the rest.

Martin grunted. He would have reacted more favourably if the question had come from Proudfoot. Saw the opportunity for his first post-monastic conquest; knew there was stiff competition to come from Edward.

'I don't know, I suppose. But everyone who goes there has to have a reason. You don't shut yourself off from the world and its temptations if you're not seriously messed up in some way in the first place.'

'Ha, ha,' said Edward. 'The man's on the ball. You've just got to look around at the sorry collective. Too many weird guys with secrets to hide. We all went there with them, but they'd all come out in the wash eventually.'

'Yep,' said Martin, beginning to warm to Brother Edward, a monk he had barely spoken to in the past. 'Herman's a great example. The stern, deeply religious monk and all that. Mince. The guy killed a man once, you know. Committed murder, and ended up at the monastery on the run. I suppose he felt he had to stay there for a while, and eventually just got used to it. His true home, bullying weirdoes and secret-keepers like himself.'

'Adolphus, ridiculed out of his home town for cross-dressing.'

'Common enough these days,' said Proudfoot.

'You think? He was cross-dressing with donkeys. Used to walk around the town centre at two in the morning wearing nothing but a nosebag and a harness.'

'But you see,' said Martin, 'it's not just the idiosyncrasies, it's the men who had them. Sure, some guys are delighted to be put in nappies and get breast-fed when they're thirty, like Brother Jerusalem, but some folks just can't handle it. The shame or whatever. Drives 'em nuts, so that they end up at places like that monastery.'

'So, you're saying that everyone there was a total pervert of some description?' said Mulholland. Fully prepared to believe it, too.

'No, no,' said Edward. 'You have to give some of these characters their due. Frederick's been there since the Great War, the poor guy. Driven there by shellshock. There are a bunch of us sent by women in some way or another; nothing wrong about that. Festus went just because he couldn't be accepted anywhere else. A bit weird, but not any kind of a loon. But you see, that's the point; maybe we weren't all perverts 'n all, but we did all have some serious mindset problems which drove us there. Drove us away from society, you know what I mean?'

'The lad's talking a lot of sense,' said Martin. 'Not all perverts, certainly, but a bigger bunch of social screw-ups you couldn't hope to find.'

'So what was your thing?' asked Mulholland. A bit sadistically, he had to admit, hoping that it still upset the man.

'Doesn't matter,' said Martin, which was certainly true. 'It was a long time ago. It was a woman that did it, though, a bloody woman. No offence there, miss.'

'None taken,' said Proudfoot.

'And what about the Abbot?' said Mulholland. 'Until just before the end there, he seemed like a reasonably normal bloke.'

A look passed between Edward and Martin, then it was lost in the snow.

'No one was really sure,' said Martin. 'There was a guy with secrets that no one could uncover. Sure, there were all sorts of rumours and stuff, but nothing any of us could ever get to the bottom of.'

'It might have been something to do with the right hand,' said Edward.

'Yep,' said Martin. 'That was the big one. The big rumour.'

'What do you mean?' said Mulholland. 'What about his right hand? I didn't notice anything odd about it.'

'That, Chief Inspector, was because you didn't see it at all. I thought you police were supposed to be observant?'

'What d'you mean, I didn't see it?'

'Think about it,' said Edward, and Proudfoot got to it before Mulholland, although the man was not far behind.

'Right,' she said. 'He kept it tucked away in his cloak the whole time. I just presumed he was cold.'

'Right,' said Mulholland. It had registered at the time, then had moved slowly into that part of the brain from where thoughts were rarely retrieved.

'None of us knew the score. There were a hundred guesses, but no one knew the right answer. Webbed fingers, a claw, a talon...'

'A third eye on the end of his thumb...'

'Exactly,' said Martin. 'Who knew? The guy could have had anything up there. It could have been something onto which he screwed stuff, like drills and razors and electric toothbrushes. But whatever it was, it was way weird, and that's why he was at the monastery.'

Fred and Gene, who had vanished with the near-attempt on her life, suddenly danced across the front of Proudfoot's vision; and then, before she could pin them down and ask them why they'd returned, they were off again.

'So I reckon he was toying with us, this Barney Thomson character,' said Edward.

'How come?' asked Mulholland. Stupid question, he thought. Barney Thomson had been toying with the police since the very first time he'd been interviewed by MacPherson and Holdall.

'The hand thing. He knows every one of us was dying to know what the Abbot's right hand was like. So what does he do? He taunts us. He cuts off the bloke's left hand and leaves it lying there.'

'Some sort of weird Freudian thing,' said Martin.

'No,' said Edward, 'I'm not so sure. I think it was more of a subtle irony kind of a business. Freud didn't do subtle irony.'

'Get out of my face!' said Martin incredulously.

'Yeah, all right. Maybe it
was
Sigmund Freud, maybe it was Ziggy Stardust. Whatever, the guy was taunting us. Messing with our minds, even more than he's messed with them already. And it's the jouisance of it all, the sheer revelling in barbarism. Really cool in a way, but not when it could happen to us.'

'Cool?' said Mulholland.

'Aye, well, cool, aye, sort of,' said Edward.

'You people are even more screwed in the head than I thought.'

'But you can see his point,' said Martin, warming still to Edward, despite the gentle altercation over Freud. 'He's been killing monks with general alacrity all over the shop, leaving the evidence for everyone to see. Tied to one another, propped against a tree, burned to a crisp, whatever. Then, suddenly, he changes his method. For no apparent reason, rather than leave the two bodies lying around, he only leaves the hands. The left hands. We know they're both dead, and yet the bodies are missing. And mixed in with that you've got the symbolism of the left hand, when he knows full well that Ed, Raphael and me would love to see the right. If that ain't cool, Chief Inspector, what is it?'

Mulholland stared at him, his mouth slightly open. A snowflake landed on his bottom lip. He didn't blink. Turned his head slowly to look at Proudfoot, and she stared back at him, the same look on her face and in her eyes. At last, for the first time since they'd set out on their journey to find Barney Thomson, they were beginning to think like detectives. Something didn't sound right; something demanded an explanation; and it was staring them in the face. Fred and Gene lay dead on the table in front of Proudfoot, while the same vision came to Mulholland. Two left hands. Different sizes, but the same colouring.

Killers don't just change their methods overnight for nothing. And Barney Thomson was no killer. There was always an explanation.

'This right hand of the Abbot. Any other suggestions as to what it was? Were any of the rumours stronger than the others?' asked Mulholland. Not really concerned with the answer, just giving himself more time to think. But already he felt the fear beginning to creep up his back; the hairs on the back of his neck slowly lift against the collar of his jacket; a shiver cascade across his body. The knowledge that Barney Thomson, the harmless killer, had not been murdering these monks, knowledge that he'd had all along, and which had been denied by the evidence, was making a late entrance to the party of the investigation.

'There were a stack-load of other things,' said Edward. 'Some said he had a cloven hoof, and you can guess why he'd want to hide that. Some said it was a gangrenous stump, some said leprosy, some said he had two left hands, some said he had a pincer. There were all sorts of things. All sorts. Don't know that any of them... what?'

Mulholland and Proudfoot stared at one another. Immediately they both took quick looks over their shoulders and around the unprotected, vulnerable field of snow which marked their territory. Suddenly the enemy had become much, much more dangerous.

'What?' said Edward. Martin said nothing, but his eyes squinted at the two police officers, his mind slowly beginning to catch up. 'What?' said Edward again.

'Two left hands,' said Martin.

Mulholland stood up and took a more solid look around the area. Vulnerable didn't cover it. They were sitting ducks. But then there were four of them and one of him, and as long as they stuck together and kept their eyes open.

'No,' said Edward, 'no way. That was just about the weirdest of the lot. How can you tell? Just because his left hand was there and so was Brother Steven's... Oh.' The slow process of Edward's thoughts. 'Steven? Steven? What are you saying?'