He became aware of a figure in front of him, could sense him as much as see him in the gloom.
'Why do you not step out of the darkness, Brother?' he said.
He heard the breathing for the first time, was aware that his visitor took another couple of steps towards him.
'There is no light into which to step, Brother,' came the reply.
'Ah, it is you,' said the brother. 'I should have known. So good of you to join me at this early hour in the library, while the blizzard rages outside. You could not sleep, then?'
It was one of the monks on his incomplete list; an opportune visit.
'There are many within these walls who cannot sleep, Brother. And I, equally, am not surprised to discover that it is you who are here, lurking among these books. Might I enquire for what it is that you search?'
'Truth, Brother, nothing but the truth.'
'Then you are not alone among us.'
'But not religious truth, Brother. We all know religion is nothing but the glue that binds us together. There is no truth in religion, no truth to be found in God. It is a stabilising force, it gives humanity some purpose, some false sense of perspective, but there is no truth to it. Nothing to be gained.'
The visitor monk did not immediately answer, and in the dark the two men gradually became more aware of the physical presence of the other. A few yards apart; and yet they could not have been farther away.
'God will surely find you out, Brother. And you will suffer his wrath for all eternity.'
The Brother laughed, the other shivered at the sound in the midst of such darkness.
'There is no God, Brother. If there was, he has forsaken us. He has forsaken you. You know, every one here knows, deep in their black, pathetic hearts, that there never was a God. There was but a Church, run by the finest spin doctors of the first few centuries, and out of it has come all of this. The modern world the way it is. There is no God, no faith, no belief. There are no rules. It's every man for himself, Brother, every man for himself.'
The visitor laughed quietly, but the nervousness of it betrayed him.
'I thought I recognised you when you first arrived. Something in the eyes, or maybe the nose. Yours was a face from the past. But I cannot believe that this is all because of what happened at Two Tree Hill. That was an inconsequence.'
The words hung in the cold air, were engulfed by the darkness and the cruelty of cold, the creaking of the monastery under the weight of the storm.
'An inconsequence? On the contrary, my friend. It had very many consequences, and they will continue for some time to come.'
It was time. They both knew that something would have to be done. Nothing left to be said. A murderer, and now someone who had stumbled across him. Thought must become deed.
Brother Babel walked slowly through the darkness.
***
They sat up later than intended, neither wishing to let the other go, neither willing to make the big move. His wife may have left, but it had not given Mulholland an immediate guilt-free shag voucher to be cashed in at the first available motorway service station serving all-day sex. He was still a married man. Proudfoot was unsure about Mulholland's marriage and this was, after all, the boss and you had to be careful. Perhaps if he'd given her some signs, but she was bad at reading signs. Generally needed a man to remove his clothes and drag her to the bedroom by the hair to feel sure she had the go-ahead to get involved.
'Seaman Stains and Master Bates and all that lot,' he said.
'Load of pish,' she said.
'What do you mean?'
'All that stuff about Pugwash getting taken off the air because of pathetic double-meaning names is a load of nonsense. There weren't characters with those names at all.'
'There bloody were!'
'Oh, aye. Can you remember them?'
He hesitated. 'No, but it's what everyone says. Everyone knows it. It's well known.'
'It may be,' said Proudfoot, 'but it's still nonsense. It's just one of those things that gets popularised and becomes fact, when it just isn't true. Like when Norman Mailer invented the fact that Bobby Kennedy slept with Marilyn Monroe; now it's considered a fact. That Disney film about lemmings throwing themselves off cliffs, which everyone now believes, but it's mince. Captain Kirk saying Beam me up, Scotty and Humphrey Bogart saying Play it again, Sam. They're all untrue. Mere manifestations of the gullibility and willingness of humankind to believe any rumour they like the sound of.'
He drained his final glass of wine. Bottle finished; determined not to have any more.
'If that's true, then why was Pugwash taken off the telly for so long? Eh? Answer me that one.'
''Cause it was shite.'
He stared into the bottom of his glass. 'Aye, well, maybe you're right.'
They smiled at each other. Drinks finished. Well after midnight. Wind howling outside; not sure if the snow still drifted against the walls.
'Should be getting to bed,' said Mulholland.
'Aye.'
Neither of them made a move. Both hoping for an invitation.
'Who knows,' he said, 'what horrors we might encounter tomorrow? Any amount of landladies armed with nuclear levels of cake and biscuits.'
He stood up. Proudfoot followed. They walked to the stairs, took the slow march to the first floor. Proudfoot behind, staring at him. Imagining. They walked along the short stretch of corridor. Creaking floorboards, thick red carpet. Fly-fishermen on the walls, low lights. The smell of wood fires, warm and damp and rich. Her room first. He stopped, turned, waited a brief second.
She put the key in the lock, opened the door, then stopped and stared.
Want to come in for the night? That was what she thought, but her tongue was silent. Their eyes cried out, but there was nothing there. And so they took the silence from the other as rejection.
She smiled weakly. 'I've had a nice evening. Thanks,' she said. I don't want it to end yet left unsaid.
'Aye,' he said. 'Me too.'
A few more painful seconds, then goodnight. She walked into the room, closed the door. Stood on the other side, let out a long sigh.
Joel Mulholland stared at the closed door.
'Fuck it,' he muttered, then began his retreat, the slow walk to his bedroom. Perhaps he would find some relief in sleep; perhaps he would lie awake until four in the morning, staring at a red ceiling.
In a B&B near by, Sheep Dip ate a late supper.
***
'Jings to goodness, would you no' put that light out, Mary Strachan? What time might it be, anyway?'
Mary Strachan glanced at the bedside clock, then looked down at the prostrate bulk of her husband, wrestling as usual with most of the covers.
'It's almost four,' she said.
James Strachan opened his eyes and looked up at her.
'Four o'clock! Help m'boab, woman, what are you doing awake at four o'clock in the morning? Can you no' just get some sleep for a wee whiley?'
'Ach, would you listen to yon storm. I can't sleep, can I, what with yon racket and you snoring.'
'Away and stick your heid in a bucket of kippers. If I snore, I don't know what it is that you'd call what you do. Can you no' put the blinking light out?'
'I'm reading, so I am. Can you no' see that?'
'Jings to goodness, what is it now? You're no' reading more of that Dostoevsky nonsense, are you? I've told you before, it's all a load of keich.'
'I'm reading Molière, if you must know.'
'Jings. That French pish! What are you reading yon for? Have you got nothing better to do with your time? On ne meurt qu'une fois, et c'est pour si longtemps, eh? Absolute shite, so it is. Absolute shite.'
'If you must know, I just happen to like the sub-Hudibrastic lineage of the prose. So much better than his Scottish or English contemporaries.'
James Strachan finally sat up in bed. Wide awake. Aware of the wind piling the snow against the side of the house; he ignored it.
'Hudibrastic? You mean his writi
ng employs a burlesque cacophonous octosyllabic couplet with extravagant rhymes?'
'Aye.'
'Away and stick your heid in a bucket of sludge, Mary Strachan. Molière did no such thing.'
'He did so!'
'You know fine well he didn't. You just wanted to say Hudibrastic.'
'I did not.'
James Strachan snorted, then lowered himself back into the bed. He grumbled a few times, pulled the covers another inch away from his wife and up around his neck, then closed his eyes. Shivered noisily with the cold.
'If you wouldn't mind just hudibrastically putting the light off when you're finished, Mother.'
Mary Strachan gave him a glance.
'I'm just going to try and get some sleep,' he continued. 'As long as the hudibrasticity of the weather doesn't keep me awake.'
'You're no' funny, James Strachan.'
'Aye, I can't believe how hudibrasticomatic the wind's being. If we're lucky by the morning it'll have hudibrastised and the hudibrastocity of the snow will have given way to weather of a much more hudibrastrous nature.'
'No one's laughing, James Strachan. Least of all me.'
He grumbled, but didn't respond. Mary Strachan decided to give in to the night. She closed the book and placed it on the bedside table. She removed her glasses and placed them on top of the book. She sighed, moved down under the covers before she turned off the light. She did her best to retrieve as many of the blankets from her husband as she could; then thought of something as she reached for the light, switched it off and let her head settle on the pillow.
'That Barney Thomson was on the news again tonight. After you'd come to bed, you know.'
James Strachan mumbled in reply.
'Seems he's suspected in an armed robbery in Dumfries. I'm not so sure, but I suppose he could've gone down there after he was here. But he did say he was going to yon monastery for a wee whiley, did he no'? Maybe I should say something to the police, what d'you think? We don't want him being accused of things he didn't do.'
'I think you're havering, Mary Strachan. Now would you try and get some sleep?'
'Oh, aye, and another thing. Apparently they're saying it was his fault that Stevie Nicol missed yon sitter against Uruguay in Mexico in 1986.'
'Aye, no doubt. That sounds reasonably hudibrastoplastic to me.'
The old couple settled into their bed, as the wind blew and the snow piled against their house. And some twenty miles away, while Barney Thomson slept and the blizzard howled up the glen, the third murder in five days was committed at the monastery of the Holy Order of the Monks of St John.
'Away and stick yer heid in a sheep's stomach, James Strachan.'
The Busted Gearbox Blues
'The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.'
'Oh, aye, Mary Strachan, that's all very well. But just what has that eejit Thomas Jefferson got to do with the fact that they're saying it was Barney Thomson's fault that Jim Leighton sold the goal against Brazil in Italy in 1990.'
***
Clear blue skies; thick snow on the ground, white and fresh. A gentle breeze blowing off the land, out to sea. The blizzard and high winds gone in the night. Freezing temperatures, but the kind of cold a good coat could combat; faces shone, noses ran, ears went red.
They sat in the Land Rover, heating on full, slithering out of Thurso and heading west. Sheep Dip was in the back, eating the third of five bacon rolls. The snowploughs had already been along the road; snow piled high at the sides, great hedgerows. Blocking out the view; like driving through Devon. Along the top of Scotland, no particular destination in mind. The plan as before, to stop at every hotel and B&B, but they knew that that was not where their destination lay. Barney Thomson would not be holed up somewhere where he had to pay his way. He could not automatically trust to all his keepers' innocence. He would have found some other refuge, or else gone on. He could easily have gone to the north islands, and it might be that they would have to come back this way. They would have to anyway, for the exchange of cars.
Sergeant Gordon had had it in mind to tell them about the Sutherland monastery when they'd come to pick up the car, but somehow it had slipped his attention. He would remember some time in the afternoon, and smile wryly to himself, then he would make another cup of tea.
Serial killers did not haunt monasteries. They went for places such as underground caverns and houses in the woods. He had seen the movies.
Past Melvich and Strathy, on towards Bettyhill. Slow going, stopping intermittently; occasional forays along small roads, down which the snowplough had not ventured. Skidding and slipping and sliding. Glad of the four-wheel drive, although Mulholland had not much experience. Sheep Dip had been used to four-wheel drive since he'd been seven, but did not feel it was for him to say anything. He enjoyed the ride, laughed quietly to himself, and munched his way through a couple of movie bags of Doritos.
A succession of rejections and blank looks. A few possibles, slipping away to nothing. Most places this far north were closed for the winter. A few hotels, a few forlorn B&Bs. Sometimes they came to houses; the sign was up, but the building was along some inaccessible road. So they would have to struggle on foot, for which only Sheep Dip was dressed.
Feet and trousers soaking after the first couple, they ended up sending Sheep Dip on his own.
A couple of tortuous hours into their day, not long after twelve, Mulholland first noticed the problem with the car. Trouble getting into third, all the other gears still available. Slowly, as they went, gears vanished, until he was driving solely in second. Waiting for it to disappear at any time. They struggled into a small garage in Tongue.
Just before he pulled in off the road, he noticed that it had not been cleared ahead. He parked in the garage next to the snowplough. Feet cold and soaking, no amount of heat directed their way having any noticeable effect. Fed up. Getting nowhere. The ups and downs of humour. Proudfoot was no different.
He took the car out of gear. For the last time. Switched off the engine, looked at Proudfoot. Had forgotten about Sheep Dip.
'Fuck it,' he said.
'How long do you think it'll take to fix?'
He shook his head. Getting annoyed at her, because he wanted her and was too racked with pusillanimity to say anything.
'I don't know, do I, Sergeant? If I was a mechanic I'd have fixed the bloody thing by now.'
He got out of the car and slammed the door. He stopped and stared at the snow at his feet. What was he doing? There was no point in losing his temper at her; some pseudo-Freudian knee-jerk reaction just because he was too much of a jessie to try to sleep with her.
'He fancies you,' said Sheep Dip from the back, before taking a bite out of a particularly green apple.
'He does not,' said Proudfoot. She got out of the car and looked at Mulholland. There was nothing there as he returned the look. He could apologise later, he thought.
A mechanic, yellow-overalled, appeared from behind the snowplough, rubbing his hands on a dirty rag.
'Good afternoon,' he said, looking suspiciously at the police vehicle. 'It's a bitty of a day to be out, is it not?'
'Duty calls,' said Mulholland. Not in the mood for conversation.
'Not from around here, then,' said the mechanic. 'Still, I see you're driving Lachlan Gordon's car. You must be the folks up from the Big Smoke looking for this serial killer fellow, is that right?'
'Brilliant, Sherlock, how do you do it?'
'Ach, it's not difficult. Everybody knows you're up here, driving around in your fancy motors and staying in all the best hotels.'
'Is that right?'
'Aye, aye. So are you two lovebirds sleeping together yet, or are you still at the hating-each-other stage?'
'Sorry?'
'Ach well, it doesn't matter, doesn't matter at all. Now, what can I be doing for you?'
Proudfoot looked at the ground. Mulholland tried not to lose hi
s temper. He had stopped analysing his feelings of hostility. Given in to them and determined to enjoy it. He was about to speak when the door of the Land Rover opened and Sheep Dip crunched into the snow.
'Hey, hey, hey,' said the mechanic. 'If it isn't the old Dipmeister! How are you doing, Sergeant? It's been a wee whiley since you've been up in these parts.'
'Aye, well, you know, after what happened with Big Mary and the combine...'
'Oh, aye, aye, right enough. Some things are better left alone, especially now with Donald back from the Falklands.'
'Hello!' said Mulholland. 'Can we get on? I've got a problem with the gearbox.'
'No!' said the mechanic.
'Aye,' said Mulholland.
'Ach, that blasted thing. There's no' a mechanic in Caithness or Sutherland who hasn't had a go at Lachlan's gearbox. And to be honest with you, we're all fair scunnert by it.'
'This happens a lot?'
'Och, aye, all the time, laddie. Didn't he tell you? Ach, no, no, I suppose he didn't.'
'So you'll know how to fix it?'
The mechanic put his hands on his hips and shook his head. Looked at the Land Rover like he'd look at a horse with a broken leg.
'Oh, it's not as easy as all that, I'm afraid, laddie. It's a big job, and all that, you know, and what with me having to fix Big Davie's snowplough. That's got to come first, you know. Have to have the roads through to Durness cleared by this evening.'
'Listen,' said Mulholland sharply, 'this is police business. I need that car to be fixed as soon as possible.'
'Don't you go spouting your fancy police business talk at me, sonny. And just where d'you think you're going to be going with no snowplough on the roads? Tell me that, laddie? He sows hurry and reaps indigestion. Robert Louis Stevenson. Mark those words, laddie.'
'I'm not going to get indigestion if you get a move on and fix the sodding Land Rover.'
The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series) Page 14
