The Barbershop Seven: A Barney Thomson omnibus

by Douglas Lindsay

  The house shook.

  In the bathroom, Ruth Harrison watched the gin ripple in her glass. She glanced at the door, waiting for the tyrannosaur. When it didn't appear, she looked back at the mirror and continued her in-depth study of the latest blackhead in the collection.

  In death, Jonah Harrison's bladder held firm and there was a certain serene beauty about his squashed and pudgy cheeks.

  ***

  The other death occurred not on that day, but on a Monday afternoon almost thirty years previously, during the long, hot summer of '76. Water shortages, ice cream wars and grass parched a very pale brown.

  Azarael Corinthian was the kind of man who had been bred for great things, his entire life pointing in one direction, to one great end. A life that involved many secrets and a lot of waiting. And so, naturally, he had rebelled through most of his life and had reached his mid-thirties with none of the required poise and maturity which had been expected of him.

  He had been brought up in Millport and had a robust contempt for the place. Yet even though both of his parents were dead by that summer and he had no other family on the island, something brought him back there every year. Some dedication to duty perhaps, which found its way out, no matter how deeply buried it was in his subconscious.

  That summer he returned to Millport after having spent the better part of seven months in Las Vegas. Too much gambling, although it had surprisingly all but evened itself out over the piece, too many women, too much alcohol, too much junk food, too many nights spent in luxurious hotel rooms with expensive drugs and prostitutes.

  He had come to Millport to dry out and reconnect with his past. Unfortunately his immediate past of cocaine and burgers and cigarettes and vodka had more of a connection. After three days on the island he had decided that he was feeling good enough about himself to take some light exercise. He had started with the time honoured Millport tradition of cycling leisurely around the island, which had been straightforward. However, he had then made the unsound judgement call that he could go for a short run in the afternoon up to the top of the hill at the centre of the island, from where one can look west down over the golf course to the hills of Bute and Arran, and north back up the firth to the mountains of Argyll, and east and south to the mainland.

  He never made it to the top of the hill, instead suffering a severe heart attack on the way up. It was at least twenty minutes before a car passed by to stop for a look at the prone body and by the time he had been taken to the small hospital at the foot of the hill, it had been too late. Azarael Corinthian was dead at the age of thirty-six, and the unhappy world of at least a few other people would be thrown into turmoil.

  Dead Original

  'Think of a new way to commit murder.'

  Everything was new in the room although it had the appearance of senescence. The dark brown leather had been sprayed to give mustiness, the books had been coated in dust. Out of town visitors to the house thought it early Victorian. James Randolph knew better, having seen the house grow stone by stone, but he was impressed with the feel of it. Why build in today's style, which would be outdated in a decade, when you could create a house which looked like it had been part of the landscape for a hundred and fifty years?

  But a new method of murder? That was far more interesting.

  'Define new.' said Randolph. 'A new implement of death or a new way to extinguish life?'

  Bartholomew Ephesian stood with his back to Randolph, looking out over the Clyde. The Isle of Bute was dull and grey across the water, the mountains of Arran mostly shrouded in cloud. The sea was restless and for the moment there wasn't a single boat to be seen. Ephesian glanced at the small clock on the mantleshelf. Quarter to three. Quarter to eleven in Hong Kong, and he wondered how many women Ping Phat would be in bed with at that moment.

  'A new implement means nothing,' he said, making a small gesture with his glass. 'You could kill someone with a candy bar. I'm talking about something much more fundamental, something far more intrinsic to human life. A cardinal death.'

  'You'd need to know medicine,' said Randolph.

  Ephesian turned for the first time in ten minutes, gave Randolph the benefit of his eyebrow, and looked away. Never actually looked Randolph straight in the eye.

  Had Bartholomew Ephesian been born in the 1990s, he would have been taken to a psychologist and would have been quickly diagnosed as having some condition which had recently come into vogue in the United States. However, he'd been born into a wealthy family in the west end of Glasgow just after the second war, and so he'd just been marked down as another gifted but spoiled kid. Couldn't relate to his classmates, got into too many fights, and could multiply one thousand three hundred and forty-one by eight hundred and seventy-six in under a second. However, much more than most, his personality and behavioural patterns had dominated and shaped his life. From his need to self-employment from an early age, to a total inability to relate to the one woman who had ever loved him, his existence had been dominated by a continuing effort to find a space in amongst everyone else in the world.

  'And how would you know it was entirely original?' Randolph added. 'You have access to Scotland Yard files? FBI? Interpol?'

  This time Ephesian didn't turn. Randolph had felt amused by his own question but he found the silence disconcerting. He could see the gulls circling above the water, could hear their doleful cries; the sound of the sea, waves on the shore far below. Intimidation by silence, against the weakness of spirit which allowed one to be thus intimidated; the polarisation between the two men. Ephesian had power, even if, to those in the town, it did not seem to extend much beyond the small bays and the shops along the shorefront of Millport. Randolph was a man who lived in a house by the boatyard, with little else to define him.

  'Yes,' said Ephesian, looking out to sea, 'as a matter of fact I do.'

  Randolph felt a dryness in his mouth. He should have known better than to try and engage Ephesian in any kind of verbal exchange. A discussion about garden weeds was likely to leave him feeling as if he had a death threat hanging over him.

  'Imagination,' said Ephesian coldly. 'That's what's required.'

  'How long do I have?' Randolph asked quickly. Get it over with, abrupt retreat, and he could be back in the sanctuary of his own garden in five minutes.

  Ephesian turned slowly. He swallowed the remnants of the glass and placed it carefully on the desk.

  'Midnight Wednesday,' he said, looking at a point somewhere to Randolph's right, his eyes falling on a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Merry Men.

  'Two days?' said Randolph, weakly.

  'I'm glad you can count.'

  Ephesian sat down behind the desk and leant forward.

  'You know who, now you have the when. The how is entirely up to you.'

  Randolph didn't reply. Generally this was how conversations with Ephesian were completed, with him in wretched silence.

  'Of course, I'm just toying with you. I'm not actually expecting you to have any imagination whatsoever. There probably is no such thing as a new way to commit murder. Just try and be a little different if you can. Try to surprise me for once, James. And if you can't, a knife in the back.'

  Randolph nodded. Forced the words, 'Yes, sir.'

  Interview over. Ephesian had humoured him for fifteen minutes, but he tired quickly of Randolph and his type. It wasn't as if he had to practice good management of any sort. He wasn't accountable to anyone.

  'I have an appointment,' he said brusquely.

  Randolph didn't hesitate. Stood up, looked into Ephesian's distracted eyes and then walked quickly from the room, closing the door behind him. Ephesian stared at the door, tried to let the muscles in his back relax, then he let his head fall forward and placed his face into his hands.

  It was almost over.

  The Last Barber

  Barney Thomson, barber, stopped outside the door of the shop. He turned and looked out over Millport bay, at the view he would have for the next few year
s of his working life should he choose to become the owner of the establishment he was about to visit.

  The shop looked out on a three–foot-high white sea wall across the road. To the right was a tiny harbour and a short pier; to the left, the main road around the island running along the front of the town, along to Kames Bay and the old Victorian houses, before disappearing around the far corner. In the bay, seventy yards out, there were a couple of small islands. A few boats rustled in the agitated water. Half a mile out to sea was the green bulk of the island of Lesser Cumbrae. Across the sea to the left, the shore of the mainland and the portentous grey buildings of Hunterston B nuclear power station. To the right, past the edge of the town and the old George Hotel which stood at the end of the pier, Barney could see the cloud-shrouded hills of Arran.

  He turned and let his eyes wander along the front of the town. There were a few people abroad, well wrapped against the cold, but not many. The town had the feel of an out-of-season English seaside resort in miniature, cold and grey, and Barney wondered if, in these days of cheap flights to Europe, it ever lost that feel, even in July and August. Did anyone come to Millport on holiday anymore, as he had done for so many years?

  There was nothing depressing about it for him, however. He loved this place, and if anywhere felt like home to him now, it was here, even though he hadn't stood on this seafront for almost twenty years.

  He turned. He opened the door to the shop and walked in to a light tinkle of the bell. The bell will be the first thing to go, he thought, as he closed the door behind him, and looked around the familiar surroundings of a barbershop that could've been in any small town in the world. Three seats, large wall of mirrors, a bench along the opposite wall, walls in need of a paint.

  The middle chair was occupied, the other two pushed in against the counter. The one nearest the window had obviously not been used in a couple of decades; the seat at the far end was beside the sink.

  Barney was surprised to see the barber was a young man of about twenty. His customer was an old fellow, who was slumped in his chair, noisily sucking up slobber. At the back of the shop there was another man in a white coat, a broom in his hand, deliberately sweeping up, taking great care with every stroke. With his gnarled features and his hunchback it was hard to guess his age, but Barney could tell that whoever he was, whatever he did, he wasn't a barber.

  The barber and the hunchback looked round. The old bloke festered in his own armpits, slurped at a line of saliva on his chin and subsided further into his seat.

  'Hi,' said Barney.

  'Dude!' said the young guy, in that totally assured way of the young to imitate American culture in a west of Scotland accent with complete confidence.

  'Barney Thomson,' said Barney, his accent broadening.

  'Totally,' said the barber. He laid down the scissors and extended his hand. 'Tony Ephesian. People call me 2Tone.'

  Of course they did.

  'This cat is Igor,' said 2Tone, indicating the hunchback.

  Barney looked quizzically at him. Igor the Hunchback. A face from the past? It had been a few years, another time, another dark episode in his life. But Barney's life had been strange, and he wasn't sure if he really did recognise him. And how was it that Igor had come to this place? The same Igor, or was there a great hunchbacked collective, liberally dispersed through the barbershops of Scotland?

  Barney nodded and said, 'Igor.'

  Igor glared at him, said something incoherent that sounded like 'Arf', then went back to sweeping up. Barney glanced at the clean floor and wondered what it was exactly that he was sweeping. Maybe he spent his entire day brushing at the same spot, like some deranged obsessive.

  'Igor's like this, you know, totally mute kinda guy, you know? That means he can't speak,' said 2Tone. 'And he's like completely deaf as well, which is cool, 'cause it means you can like talk about him and stuff and he doesn't hear.'

  Barney nodded, unable to take his eyes off the brush. Maybe some years previously Igor had killed someone at that very spot, and was destined forever to spend his days brushing compulsively, chained by guilt and the eternal need for penitence. He shook his head to lose the image.

  'I'm just gonna finish off Mr Watson's Ben Affleck cut, Dude, then we can talk. You just want to like, look around and I'll come hang in a minute?'

  'Aye,' said Barney, and 2Tone went back about his business, snipping carefully around the ageing napper of Mr Watson.

  Mr Watson dribbled some more onto his chin, 2Tone ducked into his next manoeuvre and Igor swept slowly, glancing occasionally up at Barney with great suspicion, as if expecting him to suddenly grab a flaming torch, round up a mob of angry villagers and chase him off into the woods.

  Barney stared at the three strange inhabitants of the shop, took another look around the limited surroundings, which presented nothing of any greater interest on second inspection, then walked behind 2Tone to the back of the shop. Igor stopped sweeping, looking distrustfully at Barney as he stepped across his work site. Barney opened the door at the back and stuck his head round. A small kitchen, brightly decorated, window onto a short stretch of garden. Nothing much else to see, he turned and walked back past Igor and stood at the front window of the shop, looking across the road and the sea wall, out across the water.

  He shivered, wondering at how odd it was that somewhere he had not visited in so long could be so familiar. It was as if he had never been away.

  The door to the shop opened. Barney turned, hauled from the stupor of his melancholic reflections. 2Tone ushered Mr Watson from the shop and the old man doddered out into the cold, barely able to stand up straight.

  'Hang loose, Mr Watson,' said 2Tone, closing the door. Igor glanced up, muttered something under his breath, and started sweeping around the chair at the paltry clippings from Mr Watson's Ben Affleck.

  2Tone came and stood beside Barney and then, much to Barney's consternation, he put his arm around his shoulders.

  'You know what I like?' said 2Tone, and Barney glanced at him uncomfortably.

  'Not yet,' he said.

  'I like that really dudey sound a spoon makes when you're stirring a cup of hot chocolate, you know? It's got a much richer tone to it than when you're stirring tea or coffee.'

  Barney stared out to sea. Hot chocolate?

  'So, Dude,' said 2Tone, 'what d'you think of the whole setuparooni? Like totally cool, or what?'

  'This is your shop?' asked Barney.

  'Like, yeah, totally,' said 2Tone, then he sniggered in an irritating manner. 'You know, it was like my dad who bought it for me and everything, you know? I saw that movie Barbershop. Did you see it? I totally dug that film and I thought, wow, like, you know, what an awesome thing, to own a barbershop. To like cut hair, isn't it totally awesome? I thought, wow, I'm just going to be like totally humbled by that as an experience. Cutting hair, you know, like wow.'

  He smiled at Barney, nodding sagely, his arm still around him in lifelong fraternal barbershop camaraderie.

  'So why are you selling?' asked Barney.

  'It's a load of shite,' said 2Tone. 'It totally bums me out. I hate cutting hair, man. How do you, like, do it all day?'

  Barney smiled.

  'My dad owns most of the shops along here, but he's totally pissed at me about this, so he just wants to sell it. It's like, you know, fair enough. An eye for an eye and all that.'

  'That's not really an eye for an eye,' said Barney.

  'Yeah, cool,' said 2Tone. 'You going to buy it, man?'

  Barney nudged at his arm until he took it from his shoulders, then 2Tone took a step back, folded his arms and smiled at Barney as if they were all in it together.

  'Aye,' said Barney.

  'Dude!' said 2Tone smiling and nodding his head. 'So, like you know, I know there's like paperwork and stuff to be totally done, but like, I am so outta here man. You don't mind taking over?'

  Barney stared at him for a second, not entirely getting his meaning until 2Tone started putting on
his jacket.

  'You mean, right now, don't you?' said Barney.

  'Are you cool with that?'

  Barney looked at the shop, laughed ruefully. Why not? He glanced at Igor, wondering if he would be taking such immediate leave as 2Tone but knowing he wouldn't.

  'Sure,' said Barney.

  'Awesome,' said 2Tone. 'My dad'll be along in a minute. Wants to have a word with you. I'm gone. See you around, Dude.' Then 2Tone glanced at Igor and turned back to Barney, his voice lowered only slightly. 'Be nice to the wee fella, you know. He's got a hunchback.'

  Igor looked up, shook his head, and returned to his sweeping.

  'I'm guessing he'll stay with the shop,' said Barney.

  'Part of the furniture,' said 2Tone. 'Apparently he's been working here since like the '20s or something, you know. I think he like fled from a village in Bavaria, some shit like that, though not before the villagers cut his tongue out. Totally shocking, you know. The madness of intolerance.'

  Igor didn't look up this time, but he could tell they were talking about him and he knew that it would be complete nonsense.

  'Dude,' said 2Tone, holding out his knuckles so that Barney could do a thing.

  '2Tone,' said Barney, declining the knuckle knock.

  'Solid,' said 2Tone, making it look like the clenched fist knuckle gesture had been just that.

  And then 2Tone was gone. Barney watched him go, glanced up at the bell as it tinkled for what was destined to be the last time, then looked round at Igor.

  Igor looked up from a dustpan and brush, his stooped position exacerbating the hunch. The two men stared at one another for a short while, a look that was enough to indicate there would be far more respect between them than had existed between Igor and 2Tone. Barney nodded, Igor did a thing with his head. Then Barney turned and pointed at the bell over the door, looked back at Igor and dragged his finger across his neck.