The Barbershop Seven: A Barney Thomson omnibus

by Douglas Lindsay

  Many people, since the mid-nineteenth century, had wondered why a small church on an inconsequential island in the Clyde had been designated a cathedral. The answer was known only to the members of the Prieure. These men only ever numbered twelve at one time. Only upon death would they be replaced and an outsider would be invited to take the rigorous tests which would allow them to take the part of the recently deceased.

  Ephesian heard footsteps on the steep stone stairs leading down to the chamber. As usual he felt an awkward discomfort at the sudden interruption of the peace but he knew that it would be Jacobs come to intrude on his glorious thoughts.

  Ephesian lifted himself out of the chair at the head of the table, the chair that was not intended for him. He may have been Grand Master of the Prieure but that seat was for another and he didn't want to let Jacobs find him there. Straightened his jacket, leant on the table and surveyed the intricate stonework around the room. The table and chairs and one small cabinet were the only objects of furniture placed in the room but the floor and the walls and the ceiling had each been beautifully created by the most gifted of stonemasons, every square inch replete with an eccentric mix of pagan and early Christian symbolism. The house above may have been modern but the chamber beneath had been here for the same length of time as the cathedral. Had the room been known of, it would have been one of the most fascinating tourist sites in Scotland. But now only eleven men alive knew that it even existed. Even Ping Phat, the man who had put so much money behind the organisation in recent years, had no knowledge of this room.

  Jacobs emerged from the last corner of the winding one hundred and twenty-six step stairwell.

  'Yes?' said Ephesian, looking up.

  'Sir,' said Jacobs. 'You were going to place one last call to each of the other members of the party.'

  Ephesian nodded.

  'You're right,' he said. He looked at his watch. Early afternoon on the day before the world would forever change.

  'And there is the matter of replacing Jonah,' said Jacobs.

  It wasn't just the business of retrieving what Jonah Harrison had kept in the bottom drawer of his freezer. The Prieure had to have the full twelve members. On average, in Ephesian's time, one of the twelve would die every three or four years, and it had yet to be a huge problem finding someone of the right calibre on the island to take their place. However, there had never before been a rush to find a replacement. Everything in its time and eventually they would sort the wheat from the chaff and their man would be found. Sometimes it would take weeks, sometimes it would take months, but they always knew they'd get the right man to satisfy their requirements.

  Now, however, they had a little over 24 hours. There would be no way to educate him in the ways of the society, there would be no way of testing him to establish his credibility as a keeper of the faith. The difference this time was that the man in question need only keep the secret until tomorrow evening. After that there wasn't a person in the whole world who would not learn the truth.

  'We have two options,' said Ephesian, 'neither of which fills me with pleasure or confidence, but given the circumstances...'

  Jacobs nodded, accepting that the Grand Master of the Priory was about to take his counsel, as he did on most matters.

  'Firstly, Mr Randolph, who would clearly not be one to rely upon under normal circumstances but whom I think we can trust given the truncated timeframe.'

  Jacobs pursed his lips.

  'The only other, I'm afraid,' Ephesian continued, 'is my son, Anthony. I realise that we are some decades short of being able to have implicit faith in his abilities in this respect but again I believe circumstances render the main objections to his candidature irrelevant.'

  Jacobs nodded. Anthony Ephesian, 2Tone to everyone he could get to say it, was amongst the most unlikely candidates in the town. However, Ephesian was right about the situation and he was right about there being no other plausible alternatives. He was wrong, Jacobs thought, to even consider that idiot Randolph.

  'It must be Anthony,' said Jacobs sombrely.

  Ephesian nodded. He was expecting Randolph back any minute from his latest errand but it did not mean that he had to introduce him into the fold.

  'Very good, Jacobs,' said Ephesian. 'I will have a preliminary talk with the boy tonight.'

  'And now,' said Jacobs, 'it is time for you to place the calls to the brothers, to ensure that everyone is ready.'

  Ephesian looked Jacobs in the chin, Jacobs held the slightly-off gaze, turned slowly, and then began to mince back up the stairs to the library.

  Flowers In The Window

  Luigi and Tony stood inside the Cathedral of the Isles, which stands hidden in the trees up the hill behind the town of Millport. Designed by William Butterfield, an architect more famous for Keeble College, Oxford and All Saints, Margaret Street, London, in the mid-19th century, the building is small, seating barely a hundred people, but is joined by college buildings to increase the overall effect of the structure. The nave of the cathedral is only forty feet by twenty feet but the one hundred and twenty-three foot steeple and tall pointed roofs make it seem much larger than it actually is. Kind of a Tardis in reverse.

  While the nave is comparatively plain, the chancel and sanctuary are lush with colour and detail, with brightly coloured tiles and rich stained glass windows. Originally it had been very dull but early on in the 1860s the vicar at the time had managed to get the church, which was yet to be elevated to the status of cathedral, a place on the hit BBC series, Changing Churches. The famed designer of his day, Lawrence Llewelyn McGlumpha, duly arrived and used constructional polychrome on the floors and walls, as well as extensive stencil work on the beams, pillars and the exquisitely painted ceiling, which depicted the great variety of wild flowers that were found on the island. Of course, he went eight million pounds over budget.

  'St. Peter's pisses all over this,' said Tony lightly.

  Luigi raised an eyebrow at him then turned away and started to walk around the interior, running his hand along panels of wood, touching candlesticks. There would be something here, some basic piece of simplistic art, from which they would be able to derive the clue. Nothing the Episcopalians ever did was very complicated. That no one had ever found it before was because they hadn't known where to look. There were so many other sites in Europe where people had been searching in vain for years. No one other than those idiots at the Prieure de Millport had known to look here, until the previous week when Cardinal Salvatori had been given a sign. Or, more precisely, had been given a tip-off from one of his agents who had intercepted a telephone call between Ping Phat and Bartholomew Ephesian. Such had been the excitement of the situation for Ping Phat, he had neglected to take the usual security precautions; Ephesian, at the time, seething with anger at Lawton for divulging the information, had been too off-guard, too incandescent with rage to think properly. They had openly discussed something on an insecure line that should not have been discussed and the subject of the conversation had been passed up the chain of command.

  'Look at this, it's so stinkin' small,' grumbled Tony. 'Don't these people realise that size matters?' He giggled.

  'You're so stupid you're a bug, you know that?' said Luigi. 'In fact, you're not a bug, you're an amoeba. You've got one cell, and you know what, it's not a brain cell. It's a stinkin' faecal cell. You're a single cell stupid shit, that's you.'

  'Hey, well how many cells do you need? And what's with all this flower crap going on? It's a church, for crying out loud, not a garden centre.'

  'The flower symbolism around this stinkin' cathedral is nothin' to do with stinkin' flowers and all to do with religious rites and the holiest of holies that we're going to find here. There ain't nothing ever done in the name of religion, my stupid amigo, that don't mean something other than what it looks like it's supposed to mean. You understand that or were there too many words in the sentence for you?'

  'You know your trouble, Luigi?' began Tony, before he was halted by
footsteps entering the cathedral behind them. The door to the college buildings, leading off from the chancel, closed and Father Andrew Roosevelt, Episcopal priest of the Cathedral of the Isles, stood before them. He smiled and walked forward, hands clasped together. His heart was still beating strongly, having just come from the administration room of the college, where he had taken a phone call from Ephesian. He hadn't been expecting everything to happen so fast but suddenly it was all going to fall into place. If he was honest with himself, he hadn't been expecting it to happen at all, never mind quickly. Now, suddenly, he was faced with being part of the most unique moment in history. His mouth was dry; his hands were clammy. He was scared.

  'Good afternoon,' he said, trying to keep the uncertainty from his voice. 'You are visiting?'

  Tony raised an eyebrow, all diplomacy foreign to him. Thinking, as always on these occasions, that he was looking at the enemy. Luigi stepped forward, smiling broadly.

  'My brother and I are in Scotland for a few days. My parents, they met here just after the war. We were born in Glasgow but we moved back to Italy in the sixties. We are visiting some of the places they used to take us as small children. Largs, Millport, you know, the Clyde coast. We loved it. Did we not, Tony?'

  Tony, being a single cell stupid shit, was about to get into a discussion on their respective parentage when, strangely for him, the penny dropped with a surprising clunk and he turned smiling to the priest.

  'I love everything about Scotland,' he said. 'The weather, the ice cream, the football.'

  'Yes,' said Father Roosevelt, 'well the ice cream I believe we got from you. You are clearly lying about the football, despite Celtic's defeat of Inter Milan in the European Cup Final of 1967...'

  One stinkin' game and they're still talking about it, thought Tony. And Luigi.

  '...and the weather, well, the levels of your diplomacy are legion and multi-layered. You know, last year there were over three hundred and fifty-seven different types of dreich weather recorded on the west coast of Scotland.'

  'But the ice cream!' said Tony, concentrating on something that he'd said right.

  'The cathedral,' said Luigi, looking to get Tony away from the subject of ice cream before he started talking about his favourite flavours. 'It is very impressive for such a small building, no?'

  Roosevelt nodded, turned and looked round at the small area of the nave and chancel.

  'Yes,' he said, head still going. 'The Cathedral's founder was the 6th Earl of Glasgow. Got quite carried away with the religious controversies of the day, bless him, and fortunately for all of us, I think, he was determined to revive the Episcopalian movement in Scotland. He commissioned William Butterfield to design the church and the adjoining college buildings.'

  Let's talk about all the times Italian teams have knocked Scottish teams out of Europe, thought Tony. Let's talk about Juventus beating Rangers 4-1 at Ibrox in 1995. Let's talk about Celtic getting knocked out of the first round of the European Cup by Juve 1981. Let's talk about Dundee losing 5-1 to AC Milan in the 1963 European Cup semi-final. Or Dundee United losing 3-0 to Juve, or Hearts losing 4-0 to Inter, or Hibs getting spanked 6-0 by Roma.

  'In 1876 it became the seat of the Bishop of The Isles and thus the church was elevated to the status of Cathedral of The Isles. It's a most fascinating history.'

  Roosevelt smiled but he could tell he had sufficiently bored them that they wouldn't be asking any more questions.

  The authorised version, thought Luigi, and he joined the priest in a bout of vigorous nodding. It wasn't the real reason this cathedral had been built and given such a special place in the church but he knew Roosevelt was not about to divulge that information.

  'Thank you, Father,' said Luigi, 'you are right, this is a fascinating place. It is fine if we take a look around?'

  Roosevelt smiled but for the first time thought he detected something in Luigi's eyes. The thrill of his conversation with Ephesian having died away, he now felt more attuned to his conversation with the two Italians. He smiled again at Luigi while he quickly went back over in his head what they'd said to him. It was odd though, this encounter coming so soon after his conversation with Ephesian. The Lord moved in mysterious ways indeed.

  'Where did you say your parents met?' he asked, hoping not to give away his sudden interest.

  'Scotland,' said Luigi. 'You don't mind if we look around?'

  'Whereabouts, exactly? It's always interesting to me where our Italian friends settled after the war.'

  It may have been intended as an innocent question but it stuck out a mile as an attempted subtle act of interrogation. Immediately everyone knew that everyone else was suspicious and they were all on the defensive. Tony decided to put his extensive knowledge of Scottish football to its fullest use.

  'Albion,' he said. 'Albion Rovers. Lovely place.'

  Luigi, none the wiser, nodded. Father Roosevelt clasped his hands together and smiled.

  'You are welcome to look around,' he said abruptly. 'There is much here that is beautiful. I have some business to which I must attend, I do hope you can excuse me.'

  'Of course,' said Luigi. 'We have already taken up enough of your time.'

  'Good day,' said Roosevelt.

  Luigi nodded. Tony said, 'Your Grace,' because he was used to talking to men of the cloth like that. Luigi gave him a kick and Father Andrew Roosevelt turned and walked slowly away from the chancel and back into the college buildings.

  Tony waited until he was gone and then said, 'Albion Rovers, eh? Check it out. Who's a single cell stupid shit now?'

  'Yeah, well, let's not get carried away with your stinkin' genius and help me find something peculiar.'

  Tony shrugged, sniffed, clutched at his groin and then began a not particularly close examination of the winged bull of St Luke, carved into the font.

  ***

  Bartholomew Ephesian placed the red phone back in the cradle, then stood and looked out of the window. The nine calls had been made; the brotherhood had been alerted. The time had been set, the location was ready, as it had been for over a century, and now it was just a matter of waiting. This week there would be no Tuesday meeting; the Priory would meet on Wednesday, and under much more auspicious circumstances. He took out a small notepad and scribbled down the few things that needed taking care of before midnight the following evening.

  James Randolph needed to recover the necessary item from Jonah Harrison's freezer; he himself had to speak to his boy and give him an induction into the ways of the brotherhood; there was the small matter of taking the appropriate artefact from amongst the decorative whims of the inside of the cathedral; and he and Jacobs had to come up with some means of dealing with Ping Phat upon his arrival. That would not be the least of his problems.

  There was a knock at the door and Jacobs entered. Ephesian did not turn, his gaze staying where it was, locked on the grey waters of the firth, the hills of Arran as ever shrouded in mist and clouds.

  'Mr Randolph is here,' said Jacobs. Ephesian nodded. That was one of the items off the list.

  'Send him in,' he said coldly. It would be nice to be able to get rid of Randolph now but he needed him for his last piece of dirty work the following evening. And once he had completed the small task which he'd been set, then it would probably be time for him to be dispatched in a small car accident.

  If only he himself had not been so discomfited by the sight of flowing blood. Red, red is the rose...

  Jacobs retreated and a short time later James Randolph appeared. Had Ephesian turned to look at him he would have noticed that he was even more pale and nervous than normal, he would have recognised the agitated working of the hands, fingers locking and unlocking in a constant movement.

  'You have it?' he asked coldly.

  Randolph swallowed. His stomach was cramped with fear. Ephesian turned finally and looked at him, knew immediately from his posture that things had not gone according to plan. His eyes stared at a book on a shelf just to Randolph's ri
ght.

  'What happened?' he asked.

  Randolph still couldn't speak. Throat so dry he could've been stuck in a desert for forty days and forty nights.

  'James,' said Ephesian, 'talk to me. If there's a problem, I'm sure it's not your fault.'

  Randolph swallowed. His throat hurt.

  Ephesian rose quickly from his seat. Wasn't yet annoyed, just wanted to get on with it. Peculiarly for him he was aware of Randolph's anxiety, as usually the feelings of others went quite over his head. He went to the drinks cabinet, poured out a glass of Bunnahabhain, handed it to Randolph. Randolph swallowed it quickly, enjoyed the ache of the flavour against his throat, coughed suddenly, wiped away a little spillage on his chin.

  'Speak to me,' said Ephesian.

  'It wasn't there,' said Randolph quickly, unable to look Ephesian in the eye.

  Ephesian breathed heavily, stared at the rug and then turned away and went to the window. Looked down on the firth, eyes wide, watched a small sailing boat battling with the winds in the middle of the channel.

  It wasn't there. Randolph was an idiot but he wasn't that much of an idiot. Either Jonah hadn't kept it where he'd said he did or else Ruth Harrison had already found it and moved it.

  Jonah Harrison, despite the gambling and the insane credit card debt about which Ephesian well knew, had been a trustworthy man. A sad loss to the fellowship, particularly now with the fruits of their labours about to be harvested. He'd trusted Harrison completely. So if it had been moved, there was only one explanation. He turned back to Randolph, could see immediately that the man had relaxed.

  'The wife must have found it but we know she hasn't gone to the police. Might have been better if she had. Go round there, speak to her, find out what she's done with it.'