The Barbershop Seven (68 page)

'Don't know,' he said.

Bellows nodded seriously.

'Right,' he said. Already realised that he was going to have to do all the talking. Which was fine. Gave him more opportunities to be Dan. And that would be Rather, as opposed to Desperate or Marino. 'Let's start with your mother. A serial killer, right?'

Barney nodded. An easy one.

'I suppose.'

'She killed six people in all. Five men, one woman. Chopped up the bodies and kinda hid them in her fridge. Right?'

'Aye, I suppose.'

Bellows shook his head. 'That's a pretty goddam weird thing to do, ain't it?'

Barney shrugged. 'Don't know.'

'I mean, you must be like really embarrassed?'

'Don't know,' said Barney.

Bellows smiled – this time a small knowing one to the audience – shook his head and looked at his desk. Still holding the book towards the camera.

'Then you accidentally,' – did the inverted comma thing with his left hand – 'killed your two work colleagues. One with a pair of scissors and one with a broom. Right?'

Barney shrugged. Becoming ever more hunched, with arms folded. A psychologist's dream.

'I suppose, aye,' he said.

'Your mother died, and you had to dispose of the eight bodies. And the way you tell it in this here book, now, and listen to this one, folks, is that there were four Federal officers on to your case, and just as they were about to bring you in they all just kinda, like, killed each other in some weird
Reservoir Dogs
typa shoot-out. Am I telling it straight, barber fella?'

'Don't know,' said Barney. 'What's
Reservoir Dogs
?'

A particular section of the audience whooped and cheered. Some laughed. Bellows held up his hands. This was serious now.

'Right, let me get this straight,' said Bellows, reading from the monitor. Hadn't known the first thing about Barney Thomson until two minutes previously. 'You thought you'd got away with it, but then one of the bodies turned up, and you fled to some monastery in the north of England to get away from the Feds?'

'Scotland.'

'Right, like I said, England. But if it wasn't just the damnedest thing, there was a serial killer there too and this fellow just happened to murder thirty-two monks.'

There were extended oohs and aahs from the audience. There was no such thing as coincidence. Not on the Larry Bellows show.

'Aye,' said Barney.

Bellows shook his head and gave his audience the knowing look. This was shootie-in. There was nothing easier than turning the audience against a guest who wouldn't open his mouth.

'Well, if that ain't just the damnedest thing, eh, folks? And the way you tell it, barber fella,' said Bellows, 'is that a coupla Feds caught up with you at this point, and they let you clean go 'cause they knew you'd done nothing wrong? Like, is murdering your work colleagues in cold blood legal in England or something?'

Barney's head withdrew a little farther into his shoulders. The sweat beaded on his brow, he was aware of the redness in his cheeks. A low rumble of disapproval started to come from the audience.

'Scotland,' he muttered.

'So you killed this serial killer at the monastery, after he'd bumped off all these other fellas – honest and true men of God, I might add,' said Bellows, looking at the audience, and the low whoop of disapproval grew, 'then the Feds just upped and let you go. Seems to me to be kinda strange, barber fella, I have to say. What next? That was about ten months ago, right?'

Barney shrugged and his head almost disappeared. Slouching right down, hoping the camera wouldn't be able to see him.

'Don't know,' he said. 'Just been walking the Earth and getting in adventures. You know.'

Bellows finally placed the book flat on the table. The noise from the audience died away to silence.

'You mean,' said Bellows, 'like Cane in
Kung Fu
, like Jules was gonna do in
Pulp Fiction
?'

'Don't know,' said Barney.

Bellows smiled, nodded. Time to wrap up. Almost a commercial break, almost time to reintroduce some nose therapy.

'Seems to me, folks,' said Bellows, 'that this fella here is just a plain murderer, no more and no less than that. And he's been getting away with it far too long. Far too long. Seems to me that the time has come for this fella to face some retribution. Seems to me it's time for this fella to get the punishment his crimes deserve. What d'ya say, folks?'

Barney retreated farther into his shell. Looked at Bellows. Waited for the audience reaction, but they were silent.

'Right, folks,' said Bellows, 'that's all for now. Rejoin us in two minutes, when we're really gonna get down with the latest sounds from Celine Dion. See ya, folks.'

Somewhere Barney could hear the interval music, but the audience remained silent. No whoops, no cheers, no jeers. He stared at the desk. Half an eye on Bellows, but now that the interview was over, Bellows was no longer interested. He could begin to forget about Barney Thomson, and as soon as the drugs kicked in – in about fifteen seconds – he would have completely forgotten the previous five minutes.

Barney felt a chill, rubbed his hands up his arms. Didn't yet dare look round at the audience. Took their silence as hostile. Could feel their eyes burning into him. One pair in particular. Malevolent eyes, wishing him nothing but ill. Eyes that took as read what Bellows had just said about crime and punishment. It was time for Barney to face the music.

Bellows got out of his seat and bent down behind his desk. Barney could see the back of his head, couldn't see his hands. The draught around his shoulders was getting colder. Felt a spot of rain on his head.

The hair on Bellows's head changed colour. Black to grey. His jacket went the other way. Grey to black. Barney straightened up and sat back. Could feel the tentative tentacles of terror teasing his testicles. Up his back, hairs on his neck standing. Turned and looked at the audience. They were gone.

The seat was gone from under him and he was standing looking at Bellows from a few yards away. But it was no longer Bellows. It was a minister, crouched before God, praying.

They were in a church, roof leaking, the pews worn with time, unkempt from misuse and the dripping of water and the attentions of rats and mice and insects and spiders. The windows were broken and more rain entered this benighted house of God from every side; and wind howled through the church, rattling the few fittings left intact.

Only one window remained as it had been, and Barney looked up at it. High above the altar, large red and brown stained glass, in the style of the eighteenth century, a bloodied Jesus looking down upon his flock. His face was tortured, the eyes filled with hatred, cheeks hollow and dark, the mouth etched in a sneer for all eternity.
I shall look upon you and you shall be damned
, he said, and Barney knew it to be true.

And below this embittered and resentful Son of God knelt the minister that once was Larry Bellows, his hands clasped in supplication, neck bent to the whims of the Messiah Low words escaped his mouth, a solemn prayer. Barney tried to hear the words and tried to see his face, for he knew that it would no longer be the face of Bellows. However, he could get no closer. And neither could he turn around, for something stopped him; yet he knew that he must, for evil lurked at his shoulder, Satan waited to dance upon his grave. But no matter the feelings that suddenly haunted him, the creeping of his flesh, the pounding of his heart, he was frozen. And he knew that whatever approached him from behind had the blessing of this bloody Jesus.

He could hear it now. Above the low murmur of the cleric; above the storm, and the sound of the rain drumming against the roof and splashing on the floor and pouring through the windows; above the wind whistling through the church, what remained of shattered panes of glass, sucked from their fittings, and smashed on withered stones; above it all he heard the shuffling. A steady dragging across the floor, something low and something evil, and it was coming his way and he could not turn to face it.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed for the first time the slaughtered sheep. Hung by the neck, blood dripping from the wound in its side. Dangling above the font, its eyes removed, blood streaming from the sockets. Yet those empty sockets stared at him. They could see behind him and the look crossed the sheep's face. And beyond the tumult of the storm and the shattered church and the shuffling of his fate, he began to hear the words of the minister, and the prayer aimed at the disapproving Lord.

He knew it was a prayer for him and his lost soul. His heart throbbed, his breath stalled in his arid throat. And then it came, the touch at his shoulder. A shiver racked his body so violently his neck muscles spasmed. There were no words which could save him from this menace, and it waited to offer him up to the demons of eternity. He closed his eyes...

Barney Thomson woke up. Panting, sweat on his forehead, the air rushing in great gulps into his chest. He fumbled for the light and looked around the small, sparsely furnished room that had been his home for over four months.

A dream, it had just been a dream. But it had been the same dream that he'd had for weeks, and as his head settled back onto the pillow, and his mind tried to clear the terror from the reality, he knew that in every recurring dream there was truth or there was portent.

And as ever, when he had woken from this nightmare, he lay awake for hours afterwards, unable to allow himself the risk of sliding back into the netherworld to which his bloody past now took him. So he stared into the dark and analysed, and he had begun to believe that he was being told by some higher force to return to his roots; to go back to Glasgow, to face what he had run from for almost a year. We must all be judged, and this dream was telling him that it would be better to be judged here on Earth.

And if not that, then what of this whisper for his soul?

––––––––

'M
y name's Barney, and I'm a murderer.'

It was a busy reception desk; two officers behind the counter going about their business; fourteen or fifteen various members of the public, from concerned parents to assorted criminal element, on the other side, awaiting their turn. The man in the green jumper and purple Teflon C&A slacks had finally reached the front of the queue after an hour and a half. But this was a man who was used to waiting. Time meant very little to him, and so he had sat and listened to the problems of others while watching the occasional drama unfold. He was unsure if he was doing the right thing, but if it would rid him of his nightmares, then it had to be done.

The desk sergeant continued to write slowly, the laggard movements of the pen betraying a slight trembling of the fingers. After a while he lifted his head and looked at the middle-aged man, two yards across the counter. There was a discernible twitch in the sergeant's eye; his lips drifted between a sneer and a smile; a vein throbbed in his forehead, another in his neck. Needed a cigarette. He deliberately put down the pen, then leant forward, the palms of his hands flattened on the desktop. His head twitched.

'Barney?' he said.

'Aye,' said the man in green. 'Barney.'

'You don't mean Barney Thomson?' said the sergeant.

A glimmer of a smile came to the man's lips, but it died quickly, as had all his smiles this past year or so.

'Aye, aye,' he said. 'Barney Thomson. I suppose you'll have heard all about me.'

The desk sergeant nodded.

'Oh aye, Wee Man, everyone knows all about you. It'll be you who killed your two work colleagues in the barber's shop, disposed of the bodies of your mother's victims and may, or may not, depending on your point of view, have had something to do with the murder of thirty-three monks in the monastery in Sutherland about a year ago. Am I right?'

'Aye, aye,' said the man in purple Teflon breeks, 'that's me. Mind you, I definitely didn't kill any of they eejits in the monastery. I was there right enough, but it wasn't me that did it. Apart from the real murderer, of course.'

'Aye, of course,' said the sergeant. He went silent, fixing the man with a disconcerting stare. Didn't move a muscle, his eyes burrowing into the man. Like a jackhammer into cheese.

The silence continued.

'What?' said the man eventually. Beginning to feel unnerved. The strength of his conviction disarmed.

The sergeant raised himself up to his full height – some seven or eight feet – then continued his stare from on high. Finally he pointed a finger back into the depths of reception at another, younger man sitting on a bench; a man with Elvis sideboards and hair that required cutting by an experienced barber.

'See that wee guy sitting over there?' he said, and the man in green nodded. He had noticed him earlier; Sideboards Elvis had been sitting there since he'd arrived.

'Funny thing is,' continued the desk sergeant, 'that he's Barney Thomson 'n' all. And strangely enough, if it isn't just the kind of coincidence to make you want to slash your wrists in astonishment, but there's another Barney Thomson back here getting interviewed as we speak.'

He finished, raising his eyebrows as he did so.

'What d'you mean?'

'What do you think I mean, heid-the-ba'? Are you that stupid, Wee Man? You're the fifth Barney Thomson we've had in here today. Yesterday we had a couple and the day before that we had seven – two of them were Nigerians.' The desk sergeant continued to stare across the divide; the man in Teflon wilted. 'You getting the picture yet, Wee Man? In the past year we've had nearly a thousand Barney Thomsons giving themselves up. There isn't a stupid bastard out there who doesn't want to be Barney Thomson. There are sheep who think they're Barney Thomson. My mother thinks she's Barney Thomson. And now it's just over a week before Christmas, so even more of you sad bastards are crawling out of the woodwork.'

'But ... but I am Barney Thomson. I really am.'

'Fine. You want to be Barney Thomson, that's fine by me. You going to show us some ID?'