The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series)

by Douglas Lindsay

  'It was not!'

  'Brother, dear Brother, it bloody was. I was there. Right was seen to be done. Your father had no leg to stand on. He lost his temper for nothing. It was a tragic overreaction, and one which merited admonishment.'

  'Hah!' barked Steven. He had heard all this before. From his father, Brother Cafferty. 'I know what it was all about. It was the politics of the abbey at the time. There was a power struggle and there were some of you just looking for a way to get rid of Cafferty. I know it to be true!'

  Brother Steven was becoming ever more forceful; especially since he was now not so sure. Enough people had said it now; maybe his father had made a mistake after all. Maybe he shouldn't just have killed twenty-six of them. Maybe this great rash of murder and death had just been a pointless waste of time. Great fun, but a waste of time.

  However, the Abbot hesitated. It was all coming back. Brother Steven was right. That was exactly why they'd had Cafferty expelled from the abbey. Politics. The man had been too much of a liberal. Hadn't approved of hairshirts; hadn't liked self-flagellation; hadn't approved of sandpapering your testicles to cleanse the mind. Of course, those Caffertyisms had come into vogue over the years, but the time hadn't been right. He'd had to be silenced.

  Steven saw the hesitation, saw the look in his eyes. So he did not hesitate. The knife was thrust forward; the Abbot had every intention of receiving it, and within seconds he lay bleeding on the floor, close to the death which would inevitably follow.

  Steven stood over the body; the smile came to his face as the adrenaline pumped wildly through his veins and he got the massive rush that came with murder. He watched the eyes of the Abbot close and he knew him to be dead.

  But he still held the knife in his hands, and he bent over the Abbot and lifted the sleeve of his cloak out of the way. And then once more his knife pierced the skin; cooling blood was drawn, and the Abbot's tortured soul could do nothing but watch.

  For Steven was not finished with his body.

  Carnival Of Death

  If the truth be told, Barney Thomson was going a little mad. Not stark raving, never see the sense of day, screaming loony mad, but a gentle slide into insanity which could still be arrested. But soon. It would have to be soon.

  He had woken early from the happiest of dreams – there he was again, back behind his chair, his magical fingers creating a magnificent Bill Clinton (Post-Monica), the very latest in millennium proto-chic, with mercurial panache, engaged in idle discussion of the origin of the Turin Shroud – Experts have now decided that it was first worn by one of the Bay City Rollers on a tour of Italy in 1975, he was saying – while a queue of placid customers waited upon his golden hands – to crash frighteningly into the world of living nightmare.

  More death, more murder, more bloodshed, more stained floors. If he ever got his job back washing the stone, it was going to be Hell. And so finally, all those months after casually handling pound after pound of frozen human meat, he was being toppled over the edge. Not over some vertiginous cliff, where the bottom was a long way away but reached quickly nevertheless. This would be a slow slide down a grassy bank. But there was still manure at the bottom, no mistake.

  Barney was mad. He spent the morning in his dismal haunts, looking through holes, watching what was going on. Eyes wide, yet stumbling into pillars and walls in the dark. He hadn't viewed the full carnival of death, but he'd seen much of it. A bit like the Bible, he'd thought at one point. There was a lot of it, but you didn't have to read it all to get the picture.

  At some other point he'd drifted off into a waking dream. Stood six feet away from a wall, imagined there'd been a customer sitting in front of him facing an imaginary mirror, and his hands had automatically worked the thin air, the pretend scissors clicking in the dark. Giving a Harry Houdini. Smooth yet ruffled, elegant yet rakish.

  For ten minutes he'd stood like this, lost in this nether world. Such was the state of his mind after this latest catalogue of death. Murders of biblical proportions. Murders of which the God Formerly Known as Yahweh would have been proud. Barney was mad.

  He didn't know what it was that had dragged him from the trance, but he'd escaped it. Had gone about his business, sometimes focused, sometimes lost.

  Until the strange incident of Brother Steven and the Abbot.

  He lay on the floor above the great hall. Watched through a hole as Brother Steven stabbed the Abbot, Brother Copernicus, through the stomach. Could not hear what was being said, their voices low and muffled, but he saw everything. The repeated stabbing; and then, as the Abbot lay dead and bloodied on the floor, Steven lifted the Abbot's sleeve and firmly and swiftly severed his left hand from the wrist and left it lying on the table.

  This was new. Barney squinted into the hole, trying to look a little more closely. Until now there had been no mutilation. This reminded him of his mother. And then Brother Steven lifted the right sleeve of the Abbot, and swiftly, precisely, neatly sawed the hand from the wrist, then placed it on the table beside the left. It was a bloody mess, Steven himself covered in it.

  He's not going to be able to pretend now, thought Barney. And as he wondered what Steven's next move would be, Steven began to drag the body of the Abbot from the hall, bloody stumps and bloody stomach wrapped in the confines of the thick brown cloak, so as not to leave a trail of blood.

  Barney looked down in wonder. Two hands removed in under a minute; could his mother have been so efficient? And he didn't move. Not for a second did he think that Steven might have been aware of his presence – and he was right – and so he looked with awe on these two hands which lay on the table.

  Slowly the eyes and mind of Barney Thomson began to work in tandem. The hands began to take shape. The fingers; the hair; the thumbs; the nails; the wrinkles and the moles; the blood and the shredded skin where the knife had brutally cut them apart from the body. Not such a clean cut on closer inspection.

  A pair of hands. They lay silent. As hands do. Particularly when they are both left hands. Funny that, thought Barney.

  Bloody hell!

  He pressed his eyes closer to the floor, a millimetre closer to the hole, looked with greater concentration at the detached appendages. Two left hands! They were two sodding, no questions asked, absolutely thumped in the bollocks left hands. And he'd seen them cut from the arms of the Abbot. No wonder the old man had never shown his right hand in public. It had been the wrong way round. And he'd had everyone thinking he'd lost it at Arnhem.

  Barney pulled away. Two left hands. How would you tie your shoelaces? Or undo a bra strap? Or hold a golf club? Or give someone a Jack Lemmon? And Barney had a fleeting glimpse of why the Abbot had found himself at the Holy Order of the Monks of St John. But he was not interested in that, and his thoughts moved swiftly on.

  Not so swift, however. This was Barney Thomson, not Sherlock Holmes. And so he waited and watched, knowing that the others would soon return.

  A few minutes later he could more clearly hear their voices, as they had no need for the low tones of the conspirator. He heard their footsteps before they were in his line of vision; then the footsteps stopped. He imagined them staring at the table; heard the muted exclamation from the woman. Then Mulholland came into view, and he stood over the table and stared at the severed hands. Stared for a minute or two. Didn't speak. The other three monks returned and stopped in the doorway. Sensed immediately that something was wrong, although Barney could not see the looks on their faces.

  'Two left hands,' said Mulholland.

  'Do you think they might still be alive?' Barney heard the woman ask; could see Mulholland shake his head.

  'No, no I don't.'

  Mulholland turned, took in the presence of the other three, then looked back at the human refuse on the table.

  'Why, then?' said the woman. 'Why not just leave the bodies?'

  He shook his head again. 'Don't know. Christ.'

  From where he lay, tense, bemused, slightly odd, Barney could hear the deep br
eath exhaled.

  'So what are we saying?' Barney heard Proudfoot say. Almost a minute later, the silence absolute. Although somewhere in the monastery, Brother Steven must have been dragging the body of the Abbot noisily along a stone cold floor.

  'What are we saying, Sergeant? We're saying that this fuck-up, this Barney Thomson, came in here the second we all left – which means he was watching us, listening to everything we were saying – came in here, killed the Abbot and Brother Steven, and for some reason best known to his own warped head, cut the left hands off each of them and left them as a calling card. That's what we're saying, Sergeant. Just the sort of thing his mother, or he himself, did last spring.'

  Barney watched. Incredulous. Of course they were going to think it was him, but he still hadn't been expecting it. His meagre thought processes finally caught up with those of Brother Steven. A brilliant frame-up. He must have known all along about the Abbot's disability. His weirdness. The Amazing Double Left-Handed Boy, he might have been called at the circus. And somehow Steven had known all about it. And for the frame-up to work, Steven must also be confident that Edward, Martin and Raphael did not know.

  It wasn't me! he wanted to shout through the hole, but he didn't. So he lay, surrounded by the dark, unaware of anything going on around him. And if this happened to be the room where Steven decided to hide the body of the Abbot, he would come across Barney and Barney would never be aware; not until the knife sliced into his back. Barney was beginning to take another roll down the hill of temporary madness. He watched Proudfoot come and stand beside Mulholland; they looked at the hands.

  'What about someone else being loose in the monastery?' she said.

  Mulholland continued the head-shaking, which had become a permanent feature.

  'Don't think so. If it wasn't Thomson, I thought it might be one of this lot. But this proves it. These two idiots are dead, and those three stuck together.'

  'Maybe it's all three,' said Proudfoot, but at last the words were lost to Barney as the voice was lowered; and neither did Mulholland's negative reply reach up to him.

  Anyway, he had lost concentration. He was imagining cutting hair with two left hands. It would be tricky, obviously, but once you'd got used to it, maybe it would be all right. In fact, he thought, sliding deeper into the fantasy, seeing himself behind the chair, two left hands working away, maybe it would make him even better. It would certainly be distinctive. Something else to help draw the crowds to his shop, on top of his awesome abilities.

  Barney was lost, oblivious to the dark room around him and to the scene of gruesome murder below. Deep in his fantasy, the contented smile forming around his face. Imagination could never be said to be as good as the real thing, but it might as well be up there. When it felt real, it was real.

  That was what the mad Barney thought.

  And so wrapped up was he in the phantasmagoria of his delusion that he did not hear the door partially open behind him; he did not see the shaft of light which poked its way into the darkened room; he did not hear the laboured breaths of Brother Steven, nor the faint whooshing sound of Brother Copernicus's body being dragged along the floor; he saw nothing and he heard nothing, while his mind wandered off and he could smell and feel and breathe the inside of a barber's shop.

  Barney was a little bit mad.

  Barney Thomson Must Die

  'What now?'

  Mulholland looked at her. Too shell-shocked by all this death to make a sarcastic comment. What now? Nothing had changed. They were about to leave and get to safety as quickly as possible. However now, for the first time, he felt the spectre of death lurking behind him. He hadn't come here to die, and no matter how miserable he was, he certainly didn't want to. But at last the import of what was going on here, all this carnage, was beginning to hit him.

  Strange, that; there could be so much death but he hadn't thought for a second that it had been going to affect him. Suddenly, standing over two left hands on a bloody table, he realised that he and Proudfoot were on the menu, just the same as everyone else. And there were only three of them left. He shivered. Sensed the weight of foreboding which made him want to turn and look behind; not only that, it made him want eyes on every side of his head.

  'What now? Now, to quote no end of movies, we get the fuck out of Dodge, Sergeant. Saddle up the horses, get these three cowboys to get their backsides in gear and let's get going.'

  ***

  Barney Thomson watched from above, but he was no longer paying attention as Mulholland and Proudfoot moved away from his line of vision and started distributing orders to the three lamentable surviving monks. Instead, his fingers twitched in time with his waking dream.

  And all the time, unlike Mulholland, he did not feel the spectre of Death at his shoulder; even though, in his case, Death was right there, in the flesh, manoeuvring the corpse of Brother Copernicus into the little-used store room. Death quietly closed the door, then continued to pull the body farther into the room. He did not light a candle and did not try to open the shutters. Death, as a rule, was not afraid of the dark. Tough bastard, Death, no mistake.

  Had Barney just been dreaming, he might have heard by now. But this hallucination went beyond that. He was sliding down that hill; madness beckoned, in all its glorious uncertainty. Everything could be as you wanted it to be in madness. You wanted to spend your life working in a barber's shop, never killing anyone and never being suspected of mass murder? No problem, you could be there any time you liked, and you could stay forever. And at the end of your day, you didn't have to go home to your own wife, you could go home to any woman you wanted; and before this fantasy had run its course, Barney would go home to Barbara, the most attractive sister-in-law on the planet; and he wouldn't have to construct a place for his brother, because in this perfect dream-world his brother wouldn't exist.

  Barney closed his eyes, but sleep was a long way off. Why sleep, when you could have everything you wanted? And all the while Death went about his business behind, opening a cupboard door and moving the leaden, de-handed body of the Abbot inside. He closed the door; there was a quiet murmur of a hinge, but no more. Barney would have heard it in other circumstances.

  Brother Steven made sure the door was closed properly, although it would be some time before anyone would go looking there. The adrenaline rush had slowed, and now he had that wonderful post-stabbing afterglow to which he'd become addicted.

  His eyes had become accustomed to the light.

  He noticed Barney.

  A body on the floor, and not of my doing, he thought. And he looked at it with some curiosity. Too dark to see who it was, and so he took a tentative few steps towards it, bending low to better identify the suspect.

  'Well, help m'boab!' he said upon realisation; for it was inevitable. If you are going to spend your life reciting the words of others, eventually you will quote Paw Broon. 'Barney Thomson; the great killer himself.'

  The words were spoken quietly, but not so quietly that Barney should not have heard. But Barney was mad – for the moment. And so Death approached, then knelt down and looked at the face of Barney Thomson from no more than a few inches. The eyes were shut, the breathing even and regular.

  Brother Steven fingered the knife which had once more been stashed inside the confines of his great cloak. This could be the easiest of the lot. One sweep of the arm and the knife would be embedded in Barney's back.

  He was fascinated. Brother Jacob. Seemingly mild-mannered and innocent. And yet, the talk had been about nothing else between the monks since they'd learned of his true identity. The Great Glasgow Serial Killer, they were calling him. Brother Jacob; couldn't hurt a fly.

  Brother Steven had sometimes wondered if his own exploits would be remembered. Once all this became known, would people talk about it for generations? Sometimes these things captured the imagination of the press and public and sometimes they didn't. Jack the Ripper, the great example. Five victims. Good medical work, stacks of blood, a city held in t
he grip of terror, a whole bunch of movies and an episode of Star Trek; but small potatoes in the serial killer game. There had been others who had done much more for their art, but who'd only received a tenth of the infamy. There had just been something about Jack the Ripper.

  So how would it be with him? Would he get the kind of acclaim now being enjoyed by Barney Thomson? What had they said? Seven or eight deaths? He had now done that fourfold. Of the two, he was much the greater headcase. Of these two princes of the serial killer game, he was the man who should be king.

  He hadn't started out thinking like this. He had initially, of course, intended to frame Brother Jacob. But that had been back then, when his plans had been small. Somewhere along the way, when the blood and the excitement had begun to infest his mind, he'd become consumed with the immensity of the whole. Of what he was achieving. And now he thought of something for the first time; only now, when Barney Thomson lay in front of him, did all the threads come together to make a Balaclava of unease.

  When this was out, when all these great events at the Abbey of the Holy Order of the Monks of St John became known, when the magnificent revenge for Two Tree Hill had been revealed and popularised and turned into a Hollywood movie with Anthony Hopkins and Sean Connery, would they not all think that Barney Thomson was the killer? How, in fact, would Two Tree Hill become known at all? The press and public, those ravenous fools, feasting on mistrust and misconception, would think it a continuation of Thomson's Glasgow rampage. Would the truth ever come out?

  Barney's eyes remained closed; his face lay still above the hole to the world beneath. He had moved on to a Madonna 'Like a Prayer', just a really weird haircut to give to a bloke, but in his mind his hands wove their magic and the drier blew hot air like breath from a sun-kissed Mediterranean island.