Mulholland's shoulder leaned a little more heavily against the door frame.
'Have you a bet with Mr Strachan that you can keep me talking until the middle of next week?'
'Well, if you don't want to know where Barney Thomson was going after he left me, that's your business.'
That certainly made a change, he thought. A forwarding address.
'All right, Mrs Strachan. I presume you're Mrs Strachan. Where was Barney Thomson going after he left you?'
'Well,' she said, but got no further. Her attention was grabbed by the pounding footsteps of a large man thumping along the creaking wooden corridor towards them.
'Chief Inspector!' said Sheep Dip, voice loud, giving no due attention to the lateness of the hour.
'Sergeant Dip,' said Mulholland. 'Just in time.'
'I think you should come downstairs, sir. There's someone you should talk to.'
Mulholland stared at the sergeant, then at Mrs Strachan. Finally, irrevocably, with the damning impact of a fifty-tonne bomb on a brothel, the evening's fun was over. Time to sober up. Time to start taking everything seriously. Time to descend once more into the sodden, miserable, plagued mood which had burdened him for the previous few days.
'Barney Thomson, by any chance, come to give himself up?'
'No, sir, it's a monk.'
Mulholland let out a long sigh. 'Why would it be anyone else?' Then, looking at his watch, he added, 'At half past one in the morning?'
'There's murder, sir. Serious murder. Murder to make the Barney Thomson business look like Hiroshima.'
'I think that came out wrong, Sergeant. Can't the local plods deal with it?'
'In this weather, sir? There's probably not another policeman for fifty mile.'
Mulholland closed his eyes. That was life for you, wasn't it? No matter how bad it was; no matter what troughs of depression and despair it had dragged you through; no matter what fetid sewer it had dumped you into naked; no matter how shitey, miserable, pish, crap, fucking rubbish, shabby, squalid, abject, lamentable and pitiable it got; no matter how much putrid mince it vomited onto your plate; no matter how much manure was heaped onto your bed before you'd even got up in the morning.... it could always get worse.
With his eyes closed, the wine started to take hold. A bottle and a half? Hadn't he used to be able to take about three bottles of the stuff and do everything the way it was meant to be done? Now he felt himself falling down some black tunnel, speed increasing, stomach beginning to churn. Lost himself in it for a while, then suddenly opened his eyes and looked up. No idea how long he'd been away. Sheep Dip stared at him. Proudfoot had appeared at his shoulder. Mary Strachan was gone.
Mulholland stared down the corridor, waved an unsteady hand.
'Where is she?' he said.
Sheep Dip shrugged. 'Said something about how if you had more important matters than Barney Thomson, then she'd be getting to her bed, you know. I told her just to go.'
Mulholland stared at him for a while, then turned and gave Proudfoot a glance. He was drunk. On a bottle and a half of wine. Just how much of an idiot was he? Slowly, elegantly, balletically, he leaned back against the wall, his knees folded, and he slid down onto the floor.
Cold Meat Pie
'Doesn't it feel like we're in The Lord of the Rings? Setting out on some great journey into the heart of darkness.'
The wilderness of snow stretched before them. Brother David strode ahead into the clawing cold of early morning, Sheep Dip at his side. Mulholland and Proudfoot minced along a few yards behind. The skies were grey but bright, the wind bitter, the snow fresh. No other sign of life. No deer, no birds, no sheep, no cattle. Every other creature was hidden away from the worst ravages of winter, yet unaware of the long wait for spring which lay ahead. There had been more snow in the night, so that the roads were once again blocked, forcing them to go the whole way on foot.
'See yourself as Aragon, do you? Or one of those wee pasty blokes with hairy feet?'
Mulholland sniffed, could feel the damp to the bones of his feet, every chill blast of wind cutting through him.
'Don't think so. I'm the guy whose wife just left, he's screwed up, wants to give someone a doing, and the last thing he needs is a bunch of prepubescent, psychopathic monks who can't look after themselves.'
'Oh,' said Proudfoot. They walked on. 'I don't remember that character,' she said after a while.
They trudged on through the snow, and on and on into the white of morning. Gradually Mulholland and Proudfoot dropped farther behind. Gradually they lost their bearings, so that they appeared to be in the middle of some great white mass; the hills and troughs become indistinct shapes, the horizon merged with the sky. The two figures up ahead got farther and farther away; Proudfoot put her foot through a thin pocket of snow into a knee-deep stream, then Mulholland did the same, not long after.
Relief – temporary relief – came at lunch-time. They saw the two distant figures ahead come to a halt and begin to clear snow from some rocks. And so the next twenty minutes only took them ten, as the thought alone of warm soup and cups of coffee gave them added energy.
But they were cold, cold like cold beer, when they caught the others. Sheep Dip was sitting on a rock, a plastic sheet spread out beneath him, a sandwich drifting between hand and mouth. Brother David stood a few yards away, ear to the hills, surveying the weather. Perhaps he was expecting a lost tribe of Apache to appear along a hilltop.
Mulholland and Proudfoot struggled soggily up to them, then settled against the rocks. Breathing hard, breaths in unison, the sound of a car exhaust rasping on a cold morning. Proudfoot was thinking of a bath, sinking slowly into the warm water, letting it inch up her skin. Mulholland was thinking of Melanie, presuming she was somewhere warm, presuming she was much happier than he; and so he pictured himself bursting into the bedroom, finding her with another man, lifting the baseball bat he always carried with him in violent fantasies, then crashing it down repeatedly into the head of the cuckolder. Hot blood sailing through the air in strange parabolas. That was the warmth he felt.
'We shouldn't spend too long in this place,' said Brother David, eye to the sky, as if in receipt of some divine guidance. 'The storm is returning. It'll be snowing again before it gets dark.'
'Zippity-fucking-doodah,' said Mulholland. 'We could do with some more snow. I was worried that this lot was going to melt.'
'Oh no,' said Brother David, 'we'll be lucky if these snows melt before the spring. Brother Malcolm says it reminds him of the winter of '38.'
Mulholland accepted a sandwich from Sheep Dip. 'Oh, aye,' he said, 'remind me. What happened in the winter '38?'
David looked at Mulholland in the way he'd always used to look at policemen before he'd been captured by the monastery.
'It snowed a lot,' he said. 'What did you think? That this reminded Malcolm of '38 because Dundee are struggling against relegation?'
Sheep Dip barked out a laugh, then devoured the rest of his fifth sandwich. Feeling pleased with himself for getting the hotel to double the number of packed lunches which Mulholland had ordered for the day.
He saw the chief inspector as the classical Lowlands nihilist, hell-bent on introspection and the denial of substance; so self-involved as to be disappearing up his own backside and, as a consequence, having absolutely no appetite – for food, for fighting crime, or for life. He liked him nevertheless, although he was yet to establish why. Perhaps the man's inner angst appealed to some submerged anguish of his own. Either that or he just felt sorry for him.
'Apparently it was a winter like no other,' said Brother David. 'The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off in solstitio brumali, the very dead of Winter.'
'Enough, already!' said Mulholland. Sounding like a schmuck. David continued regardless.
'Many of the monks were to die that year,' he said.
'Not unlike this year, then,' said Mulholland, and immediately regretted it. Foul mood, and he ought to
have been keeping his mouth shut.
'What'd they die of?' asked Proudfoot, trying to extinguish the previous remark. The endless sensitivity of the Glasgow police.
'Cold,' said David. 'Cold and starvation. The monastery was cut off for over six months. The winter went on and on and on. They say,' he said, then looked nervously around him, 'that in order to survive, the monks who were left had to feast upon the flesh of the deceased.'
The wind whipped snow from the top of a rock, so that it looked like sand blowing in the desert. 'I shouldn't really be telling you that,' he added as an afterthought.
'They ate them?' said Mulholland, pausing before he took another bite of his gammon sandwich. He stared at the meat, then let his hand drop away. 'You're making that up, right?'
David took another nervous glance over his shoulder, but this was too good an opportunity to miss. It was not often that they got the chance to talk to people from outwith the monastery walls. And virtually never a woman.
Proudfoot, thought Brother David, would be worth breaking your vows for. So he lowered his voice, and it seemed to mix with the low drone of the wind and the silence of the snow. The others had to stretch forward to hear him.
'It was a terrible winter, indeed. For months and months the blizzard blew, and the monastery had no contact with the outside world. Ten monks set out for help at various times during that long dark night of winter, set out to bring relief to the monastery, but none of them ever returned. When spring finally arrived and the animals and birds returned, the snow melted and the flowers came, they found nine bodies, all within five miles of the monastery walls. Their features had been preserved by the cold, the terror and torture of death still etched on their faces.'
'What about the tenth?' asked Sheep Dip, biting into an apple. He loved this kind of story.
'Oh,' said David, 'that'll have been Brother Dorian. He made it to safety, all right. It was just that he fell into the bad ways in Durness, and by the time he'd sobered up and was able to tell anyone what was going on, it was the middle of summer.'
'Ah.'
'So the rest of the monks were stranded,' said David, continuing the narrative, the unfortunate case of Brother Dorian having been dealt with. 'As the weeks went by they gradually worked their way through the provisions of food and firewood. Too quickly at first, but soon they realised that this was to be a winter like no other; a winter where men would become kings, kings would become gods, and gods would become the frozen umbilical cords of unfettered life-blood...'
'Stop talking rubbish and get on with the story,' said Mulholland. 'I want to know whether or not I can finish this sandwich.'
'It was on Christmas Day, that Day of Days, that grand testament to man's great fortune and the wonders of God, that the first of the monks was to die in the monastery. Thereafter, it is told, they died at regular intervals. By the beginning of March, including those who had gone in search of help, half the complement of the monastery were dead. There was barely enough food for one man to survive there a week, there was no heat, there was nothing. And so those who remained were faced with a difficult choice.'
'Go to that great refrigerator in the sky,' said Sheep Dip, 'or make chops out of their colleagues.'
'Exactly,' said David, with unexpected relish. The furtive glances over his shoulder had given way to eager excitement. 'They were in a quandary, for these were men of God, don't forget. The arguments raged day and night. Men with strength for little else found themselves in calamitous debate into the small hours of the morning. This was more than life or death; this was everything about the nature of existence, the eulogy of actuality against the precipice of faith and, above it all, the great question of flesh as the body of Christ.'
'Of course,' said Proudfoot. 'Communion and all that. The eating Christ's flesh thing.'
'Exactly the argument the Cannibalists used. Debate was furious, and soon internecine war had erupted. The monastery was in chaos. The factions split apart, with the Humanists guarding the bodies of the dead, while the Cannibalists made daring raids in the middle of the night to try and retrieve some frozen flesh. It was a bitter and bloody struggle. Even within the factions themselves there was bitter fighting. A brother was stabbed over an argument about which was the best way to cook the arms. It was awful.'
'Bloody hell,' said Proudfoot. 'What happened?'
David paused, staring into the snow. A shudder tripped through his body at the thought of it. 'I think they decided they were better grilled than boiled,' he said eventually. 'But then, what isn't?' he added, somewhat glibly, given the circumstances.
'Not the arms, you idiot,' snapped Mulholland, who had given up waiting for a conclusion and was chewing his gammon sandwich. David turned and looked wistfully across the barren snowfields, white upon white, stretching for many, many miles.
'No one knows. All things must pass, after all, and eventually the blizzard went. Most of the Humanists were dead, from cold or starvation; most of the Cannibalists survived. It could have been a triumph of will over providence, or it could have been that they tucked into a few of the dear departed brothers. That part of the story was never recorded.'
'I suppose sixty years is a bit too long for any of these characters to still be about?' said Mulholland.
'Oh no,' said David, unthinking. 'There are three. Brother Frederick, Brother Malcolm and Brother Mince.'
'Brother Mince?' said Proudfoot.
'Yes. I believe it's a nickname dating from around that time. No one knows how he came by it.'
'Right, then,' said Mulholland, as the snow began to fall with greater ferocity, the edge of a new blizzard beginning to encroach. 'Even if we can't find your killer, we might just arrest those three.'
David's eyes went big and wide, his cheeks a little paler. The phrase help m'boab forced itself into his head. What had he done?
'Oh dear,' he said. 'Oh dear. I didn't mean that. I mean...'
'Come on,' said Sheep Dip. 'This snow's closing in again. We should be going. Still got a few miles, haven't we?'
Mulholland looked at the rest of his first sandwich. Proudfoot stared at the barely touched cup of tea. The snow cascaded around them and the wind once again began to bite into their skin through their meagre clothing. And the phrase help m'boab also forced its way into their heads.
***
The Abbot awaited them, Brother Herman at his side. A bleak day was this in the annals of the abbey. The outside forces of the law come to investigate murder. And now that they were there, there could be little doubt that the story would spread around the country; appear in newspapers, be discussed on talk shows, become part of a promotional campaign on the back of cereal packets. The floodgates would open. The press would arrive, across mountain and glen, and the peace of the monastery would be lost forever.
This day could be the end of the monastery as they knew it. Already dark, already well into evening; perhaps the sun would never shine upon them again. What could save them now but the Will of God? And God's Will had not been in their favour these last few days.
If the snow kept up for long enough, the press would be unable to get near, and maybe they would have become bored with this story by the time the weather had cleared. But that thought made the Abbot think of the winter of '38, which depressed him even more. Perish the thought that the police ever found out about that.
Mulholland, Proudfoot and Sheep Dip were ushered in before them. Warmed by soup, drunk on the heady wine of the relief of journey's end, the safety of indoors and the comparative warmth within those great stone walls.
'Welcome,' said the Abbot, the voice that of the classical man of sorrows.
Mulholland stepped ahead of the others. 'Chief Inspector Mulholland, Sergeants Proudfoot and MacPherson.'
The Abbot shook his head. 'I never realised you would arrive in such numbers.'
'Numbers?' said Mulholland. 'With what's been happening here, if it hadn't been for the weather, there would have been a hundred of us. As the
re will be when the snow clears.'
The Abbot shook his head again, staring mournfully at the desk behind which his authority languished.
'Perhaps then we should be thankful for the gift of bad weather. I trust your journey was not too harrowing.'
'Could've walked another twenty miles,' said Mulholland.
'It's absolutely Biblical out there,' said the Dip. And indeed they could hear the storm continuing outside, intensifying with every hour. 'If it hadn't been for Brother David, we'd never have made it.'
If it hadn't been for Brother David, thought Mulholland, we would never have had to come here in the first place.
'A fine man,' said the Abbot, but his voice trailed away. So what if he was a fine man? Could he be that much longer immune to the assassin's knife, or scissors, or comb? Was he not destined to go the same way as the rest of them?
Time for business. Mulholland wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible, but the thought of walking back through the storm he'd just endured filled him with the sort of anticipation he got from visiting Olivier & Sons, dentistry with a smile, for all your cavity needs. He was there until a Land Rover or helicopter could get through.
'There have been three murders?' he asked.
Murder, bloody murder, everywhere he went. He could remember a time when he went nearly four years without investigating a murder. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
'Five,' said the Abbot without raising his head.
'Five?'
'Yes. We found the body of Brother Ash this morning. Head smashed in. And Brother Festus we found in the abbey, impaled through the top of the head with the nose of a gargoyle.'
'God!' said Proudfoot at the back. The Abbot stared at the floor, not even bothering to raise the eyebrow which that exclamation would normally have deserved. God indeed.
'So why didn't you contact us before?'
The Abbot looked up quickly. An awkward question. What could he say to that? The monastery, and everyone in it, was already in enough trouble. How could he say that they'd wanted to treat it as just a little local difficulty?
The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series) Page 18
