And so he prolonged the death; allowed him to wake, allowed him to know his killer, allowed him to breathe desperately through the strangulation, for an extended five minutes, his arms wafting ineffectually at his side. And then, cruelly, he finished him off with ten seconds of biting hatred, the rope cutting Joseph's frail old neck, and he died with no knowledge of why. Discovered that in heaven televisions could have wheels if you wanted them to.
Brother Solomon and Brother Ezekiel. Prone to nipping down to the cellars after dinner and sharing another bottle or two of the monastery wine between them. They knew fine well that they shouldn't, not with the notorious Barney Thomson on the loose – Thomson Innocent Of Everything Except Boyd Own Goal, said that day's Evening Times – but they liked their wine and there was a good red down there that Brother Luke just never seemed to bring to dinner. Either they were fatalistic, thinking that they would die anyway so they might as well die drunk, or they were thinking that it wouldn't happen to them.
The great door to the cellar closed over them, and on a night such as this it locked them into their doom. The door was closed, the walls were thick; no one could hear their screams. In this intense cold that was all that it took and, notwithstanding their attempts at shared bodily warmth, they would not see the break of day.
Brother Mince and Brother Joshua. Walking with trepidation down a long, dark stairwell; wall on one side, vertiginous drop on the other. Constantly in fear of an encounter with Barney Thomson, cloven hoofs and jaggedy-arsed tail and all. And so, when the real killer approached them, they did not recognise him for who he was. They bid a pleasant evening greeting and, for their pains, were both sent tumbling to their deaths. Despite the efforts of his flailing arms, Mince's head smacked into the stone floor. Brother Joshua landed on top of Mince, and his fall was broken. Along with his neck.
The library was set on fire, the door was locked, and again the natural soundproofing of the rooms would mask the screams of Brothers Adolphus, David and James. Men who would die believing they were being punished by God, as shortly before their deaths they would be gathered around the library's illicit collection of nineteenth-century Vatican retro-porn; the pages of which were well fingered and, indeed, stained in one particular case, the result of an embarrassing incident involving Brother Edward after a particularly hard day of repentance and three carafes of wine.
For Brothers Luke, Malcolm and Narcissus, he adopted a slightly different approach. In fact he was carried away with the essence of what he was doing. He stumbled across them while they were in the midst of panic, Brother Sledge dying painfully in front of them from the slow-acting poison. They asked the Demon Brother for help, and for a brief second or two the killer played the part. Then, suddenly, he was caught up in the hedonistic pleasure of seeing the poison at work; his nostrils flared, his cheeks ballooned; and then it was as if some higher force took over and he lost control. The knife was in his hands, his body buzzed, and he swished and swung through the air, this way and that, slashing wildly at the three desperate monks around him, until all lay dead. It was like walking on air; a dance in the clouds. A rush that no amount of drugs could mimic.
Brothers Sincerity and Goodfellow were caught in a certain position. Fear and cold had brought them together to share solace and warmth. They lay in bed, their naked bodies pressed against one another; at first trembling with nerves and trepidation and cold, but finally relaxing into one another so that at last, after years of undisclosed yearning, they had their first kiss. Long and warm and moist.
Fatally, they both thought the other had locked the door.
It did not open silently, but the quiet movement of heavy wood was swallowed up by the roar of the storm; in any case they were oblivious, lost in the ecstasy of love.
The killer was pleasantly surprised. Two at once. Something suitable. Something good enough to match the heinous crime they were committing as he watched. Something simple.
He carried thick duct tape, a prerequisite to the travel kit of every serial killer. He had intended to use it on these two individually, and hadn't thought he would be so lucky as to find them in such a clinch. Had to be quick. Quietly extended the tape, then, with the swift movement that had led to his sobriquet of Cheetah at school, he passed the tape under the neck of Brother Sincerity – on the bottom, the submissive partner – then up and around the neck of Brother Goodfellow, so that by the time their panic had set in, they were already bound at the neck.
The next few seconds were a frantic thrash of arms and legs and various other appendages, but Sincerity and Goodfellow had been surprised and were instantly confused; they were naked; they had erections. No man is in a fit state to fight when he has an erection. Soon they were bound; bound but not gagged.
If they wanted to kiss, they could kiss, he thought. They watched him as he went about his business of binding their frantic limbs. They knew who he was, and this he didn't mind, for they would not live to tell.
Tape around their nostrils, so they must breathe through their frenzied mouths, raging against the inevitable. Then he forced their heads together, mouth against mouth, and bound them tightly with tape.
He satisfied himself that virtually the only breaths they could take were from the empty sacs of the other's lungs, then he politely excused himself, and went about his business. There might have been a gap there, enough to let in a fraction of the air they needed, enough to extend their lives by an extra minute or two, and he smiled at that gently extended torture as he closed the door behind him, staring wildly up the corridor, wondering with whom he should next deal.
Before they departed, before they squeezed their final, inadequate breaths, Brother Sincerity managed to croak his dying words from the recesses of his throat, and from the very well of his being.
'I love you, Goodfellow,' he tried to say; and Goodfellow sensed and felt the words, rather than heard them. And so he himself summoned one last monumental effort to produce his own stated memorial, the words dragged from some pit of desperation.
'Bugger that,' he tried to say. 'Can you not undo this sodding tape?'
And Brother Sincerity felt and sensed the words, rather than heard them, and no more fevered breaths did he attempt to take, and soon his lungs were filled with used air, then he slipped into unconsciousness, and then he died. And he would join the rest of the monks, his Colleagues of the Damned, in their eternity of Hell for all his unforgiven sins.
Goodfellow had more fight, but he could not break free, could not get enough air; and soon he too was dead and plummeting into the abyss of purgatorial infinity.
***
The night had worn away. The killer was in a fever, his blood rushing, the heady ecstasy of genocide causing his heart to pound. But he was tired also, and maybe it was time to leave the others until morning. He was bound to enjoy it more if he was awake. He could spend a leisurely couple of hours pottering around the monastery, picking off monks as he went. They'd hardly notice, until they were all dead.
It was like eating a box of chocolates, however, and he couldn't immediately put them down. Another couple, that was what he thought, and then he could put the knife and the duct tape and the matches, which had been his weapons, away for the time being. A few hours to recuperate, and then he could start his work again in the morning. It was not as if he would forget to finish them off.
Brother Frederick and Brother Satan shared a room. An odd combination, but they seemed to get on well. He knew that neither had been involved in Two Tree Hill. Satan wouldn't have been here then, and Frederick had already been too old for that kind of business. A studious man, a learned man of books, and always had been.
However, both had to die. He tried to push the door open, but it was locked. At least these two had a little more sense than those idiots Goodfellow and Sincerity, he thought. He knocked lightly on the door, and waited in vain for a reply. Too quiet, or were they awake inside and quivering in fear? He knocked a little harder.
'Who is it?' came
the strained voice from within. Brother Satan. Now if ever someone did not live up to his name, thought the killer. (He was not to know, or care, of the dark secrets which Satan held. A dark past – many lives were on his hands, such misery had he caused. This was not just any Brother Satan.)
'It is I,' said the killer.
'Oh, Brother, is there a problem?' asked Satan.
Just open the door!
'I am afraid, Brother. Brother Joseph has disappeared. I awoke from a troubled sleep and he was gone.'
A hesitation on the other side, then the killer smiled as he heard the bolt drawn back, and then the great door was slowly opened. A head poked round.
'Come in. Quickly, Brother, one never knows who is without.'
The killer walked into the bedroom shared by Frederick and Satan. A small candle flickered, almost burned out, on Frederick's bedside table. The old man looked at the killer and nodded. It was obvious that neither of these men had slept.
'You say Brother Joseph has disappeared?' said Satan.
'Indeed,' said the killer, and he looked Satan in the eye.
In times gone past Satan would have been able to read the killer like a religious pamphlet. Piece of cake. One look at the guy and he would have picked him for a murdering scumbag, then he would have recruited him for his own bedevilled flock. But the years of repentance and honest living had ruined the man's instinct. It would be only too late that he realised his fate.
The killer wondered. He had charged into the room without any aforethought. How to take care of Satan and Frederick? Obviously it had to be Satan first, for even if Frederick watched, there would be nothing he could do about it.
'We agreed that we would only leave the room to answer the Lord's call, and even then we would wake the other to accompany us. But I awoke more than an hour ago and Joseph was not there. I have awaited his return since then, but he has not appeared.'
And as he was speaking, he edged a little closer, so that he was well within striking distance. He was tired, and had had enough of exotic elaboration. He would strike with his knife and be done with Brother Satan; then he could murder Frederick as he struggled from his bed and made his pathetic attempt at a getaway.
And then it suddenly hit Brother Satan. Joseph's room was nowhere near. Why come all this way down the corridor when there were nearer rooms? And all the old evil came malevolently back to him, and he knew. These evil deeds within the monastery were not the work of Brother Jacob – the desperate Barney Thomson – they were the work of this man before him. And he knew instantly that it was not he who had killed Brother Festus, and he knew instantly why he was doing it and, of all of them, he was the only one who understood.
And the knife stuck Brother Satan at that moment of Awakening and pierced his Adam's apple, and plunged through the neck, and came ripping out, so that Satan collapsed to the ground, body in spasm, arms waving futilely in the air, as he desperately strained for a final breath and tried to claw back the powers he had foregone. And failed.
Brother Satan lay dead. The killer turned to Brother Frederick. Frederick had not moved.
'Why?' asked the old voice, for he knew it was time to die, and since he'd expected to be killed eighty-three years previously in the trenches of Passchendaele, this was no great trauma. He'd had much longer than many of his friends.
'Two Tree Hill,' said the killer, walking slowly forward.
Frederick raised his head and looked curiously at the man. And even in that pale light, his last candle beginning to fade and die, he could see it. The resemblance in the eyes.
'You must be Cafferty's son,' he said.
'Yes,' said the killer, standing over him.
'And all of this is to wreak revenge for what happened that day?'
'Yes.' The knife was raised high, ready to sweep down into the soft flesh of one more victim.
Frederick shook his head. 'That has got to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my entire life,' he said.
And the knife plunged from on high into Frederick's forehead, and cleaved the skull, and scythed through human brain. Like cutting into an apple crumble which had been left in the oven so long the top had gone hard and crusty.
Good Day Sunshine
Some sort of daylight began to penetrate the room; a shaft fell across Mulholland's face. He was deep in a dream, two victims to his assassin's knife lying at his feet, a third refusing to die, so that he was repeatedly stabbing at the head, and was finally reduced to sawing through the neck; and only then, as the eyes of his victim stopped rolling, did he begin to stir to the stream of white light.
He opened his eyes, had that immediate feeling of relief that the dream had been just that. But the ugly feeling would stay with him, until it was overwhelmed and surpassed by the much uglier feelings to come.
A few seconds adjusting to the day – where he was, why he was there, what had gone before – then he was up on his elbows and looking around the room. Still in darkness, still asleep, Proudfoot lay on the other side. He watched her for a while, made sure he could see her breathing, then laid his head back on the pillow. Looked at his watch; they had been asleep for eight hours. At least they had woken from it, and the fact that no one had come knocking in the night to tell of some new victim was another bonus. Perhaps, he wondered, wandering off into the realms of fantasy, Barney Thomson had decided to take his chances with the snow and had fled the monastery.
The thought of anyone going out into the storm made him listen for the wind, and for the first time he realised there was silence. No wind, no storm blowing, no creaks and groans from the old building.
He braced himself for the cold, then eased out of bed and away from the protective warmth of a hundred blankets. Stood at the window, undid the catch and pushed the shutters open. Had the same thought for the twentieth time about why they were so insane as not to have glass in the monastery when they had the stained windows in the abbey church, but nothing up here made any sense.
The shutters swung back, creaking to a halt before they banged against the walls, and the early morning lay before him. Blue, blue skies and snow stretching to a blue horizon. No wind; the day crisp and cold and clear and blue, the sort of day that makes winter worthwhile.
He felt it to his feet. Relief, pleasure, some prehistoric feeling within still generating excitement at such a day. Maybe they would be able to get out, he thought. Troop across the snow, like some gigantic, brio-laden von Trapp family, until they got to Durness, where the snowploughs would have cleared a road to the south and he could get the rest of the monks to safety.
He wondered how long the storm had been over and if Barney Thomson had indeed made his freedom run. He looked over the fields of snow and considered that even he would be able to track someone across this.
They had only been at the monastery for two nights, but already it felt like a month. Entrapment would do that to you. Minutes like hours, hours like days, and so on. Now they had the chance to escape and they would have to take it before the blizzard returned. The snow might have been thick on the ground, but Brother David, or one of the other inmates, would be confident of the way back. He could taste the steak in his mouth at the Cape Wrath Hotel; ignored the fact that there would be a million years of work to be done, and that he would be castigated to Hell for what had already happened – the death of Sheep Dip.
No time to stand around – they had to grab this opportunity while they had it.
'Hey, Proudfoot,' he said, turning round, and there was a moan and mild stirring from the bed. 'Proudfoot, wake up!'
There was the Standard Morning Delay of about ten seconds, and then her head was lifted from the pillow and she squinted into the sunlight, which had worked its way around to where she lay.
'Come on,' he said. 'The weather's cleared. We should get going.'
'What?' was all she could manage.
'The weather. It's cleared. We should be getting a move on.'
She turned over, dropped her forehead to the
pillow; shook her head to try to clear the gunge. Woken from some elaborate dream of Freudian construction, involving shoes, cornflakes, Mulholland and her mother.
'Right,' she said eventually. 'Right. Can I wash first?'
'Good idea. You look like the Borg Queen.'
'Thanks.'
He turned and looked back out of the window. Breathed in the air, like drinking ice, and felt his nightmare attacked and the torture of the last few days taken from him. Everything was clean and white and fresh. A new start. A blank page on which to write a new, and maybe final, chapter in the search for Barney Thomson; and maybe a new chapter in this bloodied life of his.
He began to think abstractly about snow; the good and the bad of it. Terrible while you were closed in and you never knew when it would stop; glorious when the worst was over. Nowhere in the world looked bad with a covering of snow.
Proudfoot stood at his side and looked over the white-out scene. They were transfixed for several minutes, while their bodies edged closer together. Snow and silence. The long summer of a cold winter's day.
'We shouldn't stand here too long,' said Mulholland eventually, making no effort to move.
'Aye,' she said.
'Must get these guys out of here and back to Durness or Tongue. We can sort the mess out from there. How many are there again?'
'About twenty-six or so. Twenty-seven if we count Barney Thomson.'
'Oh aye, right. We'll just see him safely back to civilisation, then give him, say, ten minutes' start, then we can chase him again.'
'Aye, that's what I was thinking. Maybe give him a car as well.'
'A car? I thought a helicopter.'
The aimless conversation drifted into silence, and they were once more consumed by the landscape. Proudfoot was not long consumed, however.
The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series) Page 23
