The Barbershop Seven (92 page)

'Like I said, you're full of shite,' she said.

'And you've got brilliant tits. Can I get a shot of them some time?'

The words 'I don't think they'd fit you' had not quite escaped her mouth and Mulholland had collapsed into a heap on the steering wheel. She smiled at something, although she wouldn't have been able to explain what, then reached out and touched his hair. Laid her arm on the dashboard, rested her head upon it, and within ten seconds had joined him in sleep.

***

T
hree o'clock in the morning. The revelry over for the night. Strangely Barney had set the tone and the others had drifted off to bed in his wake. They had gone in ones and twos, but even the twos had split up when the upper floors had been reached, and tonight all these people slept alone.

A few disappointed souls, but there remained ample time to jostle for position the next day. And, of course, one more night, when deeds would be done, agendas set and promises kept or broken.

Arnie Medlock had been the most disappointed of the lot, having considered his union with Katie Dillinger inevitable. But she had made her excuses, and he had been left alone; as alone as the others. Death and taxes, he had ruefully mumbled to himself, on finally retiring to his room. But it was not somewhere he hadn't been before, and he was confident of the following night's success. Disappointed, yet sanguine, Arnie Medlock.

And so the house slept. Most in their beds, Barney in his chair, from where he could watch the door and the window. But not, however, the secret door built into the wood panelling beside the bed.

The house slept, but for one. A lone figure, walking through the dark. Along corridors, searching out secret doors, down dark passageways. Never been here before, but a long night of searching had revealed every hidden doorway, every hidden passage, every concealed flight of steps or alcove, every area of the house blocked off for some clandestine use more than three hundred years previously.

Eyes adjusted, he visited each of the bedrooms in turn. Did not know into whose room he was about to walk until he was there; then he stood over the bed and watched the breathing of every potential victim. And none awoke to him. None conceded to a sixth sense.

He let the tip of his finger run along the cheek of Katie Dillinger; he touched the hair of Annie Webster and considered that at another time he might have had a chance with her; might even have forced her. He gently kissed the lips of Ellie Winters, and she stirred and tasted the night air, then shuffled in her sleep, and ended up all the way over on her other side. And he watched her for a further fifteen minutes, hand always on the knife in his jacket pocket, before he left, to follow another directionless passage.

He stood over Barney too, for a short time. A little more circumspect here, as his was the only room with the light left on, and he did not blend so easily into the dark. A few minutes, then he was gone.

And then, half an hour later, Barney awoke in terror, the vision having visited him again in the night; but this dream even more forceful, the stage having shifted to a large house, with old paintings on the walls, and the minister on his knees, supplicant to a vengeful God, praying for Barney's soul. And once again Barney had seen the face, and once again that face was gone from his memory the instant he awoke. Sweat on his forehead, heart pounding, mouth dry.

So Barney sat in his seat, eyes wide open, waiting for the dawn. And all the while, that year's serial killer made the rounds of the house, lurked in damp and dirty passageways, danced with the rats and stood over each of the members of the Murderers Anonymous Bearsden chapter.

––––––––

P
roudfoot awoke, feeling just about as awful as it was possible for one single person to feel. Draped over the dashboard in the same position, all aches and pains and uncomfortable joints, yet with an empty bottle of Australian white now clutched curiously to her chest. She lifted her head and immediately a high-velocity train started sweeping through it. One, two, three, up and out of the car, bent over the side of the road, and vomiting violently over the wet grass and general shrubbery.

It was a full two minutes before the retching was over, her stomach had settled, and she had a temporary respite from nausea. She looked up, hands on her knees, throw-up on her shoes, face covered with sweat, panting, and saw her surroundings in daylight for the first time.

The car was parked off the road, no more than six inches away from the drop of a few feet into general bog. All around enclosed by trees, so that her immediate world was small. The aroma of rain on the forest and earth. Fresh and cold, the first hint of the chill of winter in the air. Beautiful. Across the road was the driveway up to the house; the bleak mansion slept quietly in partial obscurity. Then she finally noticed that Mulholland was no longer in the car and her head hurt so much she couldn't think straight as to where he might have gone.

Back into the car, searched her bag for something to help with a headache and came up empty. She closed the car door and wound down the window, let her head fall back on the headrest, did not even attempt to clear the growing fug in her head, and fell asleep in less than half a minute.

***

T
he late night had taken its toll of early morning risers at the weekend retreat. No one got up early on this Sunday. All except Barney Thomson, who hadn't slept since waking in a cold sweat at just before four o'clock.

He had waited for the dawn, from his position of uncomfortable terror, then, when he'd been satisfied that the night had been vanquished and the vampires put to sleep, he'd ventured out to plunge himself into a steaming shower.

And so now he made his way down the stairs that had caused him such terror the night before, past the same old paintings. In the half-light of a grey early morning, they looked more miserable than menacing, more despondent than intimidating. Wretched souls and sullen soldiers; distracted dogs, painted with the stilted strokes of an amateur brush. Barney was no art critic, but he could tell. Painted for a hobby, not for commission, most of these.

As he reached the bottom of the stairs he could smell breakfast, the glorious pungency of fried bacon, and he wondered who else had managed to drag themselves up at this time. Despite the night before, he had his first thought of the day of Katie Dillinger. Hoped it would be her who was up, and that she and Medlock had not spent the night together. Still, it was his intention to leave early regardless. He was not trapped there. Maybe even before he had seen any of them. Except the breakfast king.

He wound his way through stuffy rooms and short corridors with uneven floors until he found the kitchen and the origins of the magnificent aromas. Opened the door with little confidence, for his self-assurance was gone.

Hertha Berlin stood at the cooker, administering to a panful of frying breakfast goods. A man Barney had not seen before sat at the table, large jaw encircling a roll packed with every available morning enchantment. Sausage, bacon, black pudding, egg and mushrooms.

'How you doin' there, fella?' said the man through his breakfast bite. Mid-sixties maybe, bit of a paunch, distinct American accent through the food.

Barney looked awful. Unshaven, worry lines, whole ISO containers under his eyes, the look of the haunted man. His eyes themselves said it all, never mind the face.

'Fine,' he lied, 'just fine.'

'Surprised to see you up,' said Berlin. 'After the time you lot went to your beds, I thought it'd be lunch-time before I saw any of you.'

'Why are you making breakfast, then?' said Barney, taking a seat at the large kitchen table. Presumed breakfast would be served in the dining room, but for one of the first times in his life, he was glad of human company.

'I'm just feeding my man here. He likes a big breakfast. Got to keep him well fed for all his duties, you know. You'll be wanting something yourself, I expect,' she said.

The smell finally penetrated. Barney was the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

'I'm starving,' he said.

'Right. D'you want your food in here or will you be eating in the big room?'

'Oh, here's fine,' he said. 'I don't really feel part of that mob.'

The handyman raised his eyebrows and took another large bite from his breakfast roll. Hertha Berlin plundered the fridge for more food to heap into the frying pan. Every part of her bustled between fridge and cooker; the frying pan popped and sizzled.

'Aye, well, I'm not surprised. Right funny-looking lot, if you ask me. I said that last night, did I no'?'

'Sure,' said the handyman, spitting a small piece of sausage onto the table, 'sure you did, honey.'

Hertha Berlin started piling food into another roll.

'No' that we haven't had some strange folks staying here in the past. They Southern Baptists, they were a right weird bunch. And they devil worshippers from up Coldstream way, they were a queer lot. What kind of group are you, anyway?' she said, laying the roll in front of Barney.

Just in time, Barney remembered the code, and the word
murderers
did not pass his lips.

'We're barbers,' he said, uttering the unsurprising first thing that came into his head. 'Barbers.'

Hertha Berlin bustled, the handyman raised his eyebrows as he polished off his second roll and settled back to wait for this third. Would have to get on with a bit of plumbing soon, however.

Barney dived into his sandwich and decided he'd better change the subject.

'Either of you walking about at one o'clock this morning?' he said, a little more casually than he felt.

Looked at the table in discomfort as he said it, so missed the glance that passed between the two.

'We live in the houses at the bottom of the road, barber fella,' said the handyman. 'You heard someone at one in the morning, must've been one of your other barber folk.'

Barney nodded. Stared at the table. Fuck.

It had been the minister. He could feel it. The minister who infiltrated his dreams had followed him down here, and in this house full of killers he would be the obvious first victim. That was what the dream meant. He would die horribly. In fact, that was what the past two years had been pointing to. All this death and visceral carnage to which he'd been subjected must have had a point; and this was it. He would die, and die in a grotesque manner; his soul condemned forever to damnation; the very essence of his being cast asunder to wail for eternity in the belly of infernal Hades; destined for all time to suffer the persecution of the damned in the fiery pit of Erebus. His soul would be a bloody carcass on which the dogs of war would feast; his heart would be torn from his chest, ingurgitated by the beasts of fury, then spat out onto the playing fields of retribution; he would ride the black horses of the apocalypse and be tossed from his mount, head first into the crematorium of shattered illusion, where his very qi would be raped and plundered and tossed to the winds of abomination.

'This is a bloody good roll,' he said, to break his chain of thought.

'Damned fine,' said the handyman. 'Damned fine.'

***

A
n hour later, still early morning, still nothing much stirring the house bar the staff and the lost soul of Barney Thomson. He pulled the zip along his bag and prepared to head out into the cold of morning and the twenty-minute walk to the nearest bus station; and the projected five-hour wait, as this was the Borders and decent public transport was something that happened to other regions of the country.

He needed to get out, that was all; didn't care about the wait.

Put on his jacket, lifted the bag, out of the room and the door closed behind him. Minced along the corridor, head down, dejected. About to walk into the rest of his life. No hope of romance, no hope of anything different. For all the crap and the drama and the murder and the adventure of the last couple of years, here he was, going back to barbery and abject poverty of spirit. Nothing changed.

And anyway, why should he expect anything more? How many sad lives out there were blighted by disappointment? Millions of them. Absolute millions. Why should he be any different? He was just a guy. A bloke. A wee man. A shmuck. A duffus. He was the kind of guy John Steinbeck used to write about. He was Garth out of
Wayne's World
. He was nothing. He could be in an Ingmar Bergman movie. He was Woody Allen without the jokes.

A door opened behind him, but he walked on. Didn't care who it was. Probably Medlock, sex all over his face, with a comforting word in Barney's ear.
Never mind, mate
, he could hear him say,
she was never going to be yours anyway. I'm way more interesting and I can shag like a bulldozer.

'Barney?'

The word stopped him like a bullet in the back of the head. That soft voice, delicate and succulent, smooth as a non-stick pan. And slowly he turned, throat dry, expectation suddenly pumped up from the deflation of less than three seconds previously.

Katie Dillinger stood at her door, still attired for the night. Looking a little rough, but gorgeous with it. Up all night with Arnie, he presumed, and the hope began to fade again before another word was said.

'Where are you going?'

Barney shrugged. 'Don't know,' he said. As eloquent as if he were sitting next to Larry Bellows.

She stepped into the corridor. Wearing dark green cotton pyjamas. Dishevelled. A bit of a gap had opened up between the buttons, so that Barney had the merest glimpse of the smooth curve of a breast. Tried not to look. Swallowed. Shook his head. Stared at the carpet. Could see breasts in the carpet just as much.

'You don't have to go,' she said. 'I know you feel a bit out of it, but today should be a good day. You can get to know us all a bit better. Should be all right.'

He looked her in the eye. Already knew that the decision was made for him.

'Just ... I don't know,' he said. 'Just feel like I should leave.'

She stepped towards him. The gap in the pyjamas closed and Barney's swift look was too slow to catch another glimpse, so he stared at the floor again.