The Barbershop Seven: A Barney Thomson omnibus

by Douglas Lindsay

  'Mum got mad, 'cause Ella called me a little fuck,' said Hoagy.

  Miranda Donaldson turned and looked at her grandson, raised the old grandma eyebrow at him and then looked back at Ella.

  'Well,' she said, voice very low and comforting, 'what was your mother thinking? It's not like you were wrong, now, is it, Ella?'

  Barney surveyed the scene of domestic ecstasy, turned away, wandered into the sitting room, parked himself in a big comfy chair and began the long wait for Garrett Carmichael.

  ***

  Bartholomew Ephesian twitched. Took another long drink of Lagavulin. Grip on the glass so tight it was in danger of breaking. Head full of the kind of bloody, dark thoughts that always came to him when things were not going according to plan.

  Jacobs had passed onto him Ruth Harrison's reluctance to share the required information, as well as the unexpected intervention of the Barbershop Duet. He hadn't known Barney would be trouble the instant he'd arrived but any able-bodied man, when none was required, was liable to be a problem. That Igor had stood up for Ruth Harrison was a complete shock to him but that was because he expected little of Igor. What he did not need at this stage, however, were two more people to be dealt with.

  Then there was the matter of the amateurish set-up at the George Hotel, leading to the incarceration of Tony Angelotti. He was incensed by the fact that Gainsborough had thought he could deal with any problem himself but much more concerned that there were Italians on the island. Ephesian did not doubt for one second where they had come from and who had sent them. And there was one of them at large, which meant that the necessary phone calls would be made and the one who was currently locked up in the tiny cell behind the police station would be out before Gainsborough had had time to write his stupid name in crayon across the top of the arrest report form.

  There was also the matter of inducting his son into the brotherhood, something else which was getting him more agitated. As was the arrival of the corpulent Ping Phat.

  'I can't trust Randolph to commit the murder,' said Ephesian suddenly, addressing the other problem that was aggravating him. 'I can barely trust him to go to the toilet when he needs to.'

  'Don't worry,' said the voice behind him. 'I'll take care of it.'

  Ephesian knew he could trust Jacobs with everything and when he was unable to achieve an objective, such as that afternoon at the house of Ruth Harrison, Ephesian would never blame him.

  'Good,' said Ephesian. 'And perhaps it would be appropriate to take care of Randolph at the same time. He knows too much.'

  'Yes, sir' said Jacobs.

  Ephesian turned round, away from the dusk and the dying of the day over the islands to the west.

  'Ping Phat,' he said, beginning to rattle off the list of problems, 'the item in the possession of Ruth Harrison, the two bloody barbers and the Italians. We can hardly just kill them all, however convenient it would be. I don't like mess,' he concluded.

  'Yes, sir,' said Jacobs.

  Ephesian drained his glass, held it out for Jacobs to take from him and refill with three fresh ice cubes.

  'Tonight,' he said, 'we need to collect the item from the cathedral. No messing about, you go there, you remove it. We need to get it up here. The Italians will be all over the place. Take care of it.'

  'Yes, sir,' he replied, handing over the refilled glass.

  'Before that, though, you should see Ruth Harrison. Be brutal. Short, swift, vicious. Don't mess around. Thomson is seeing the lawyer tonight, so we need only worry about Igor. Just take him out. I'll have a word with Gainsborough in case anyone gives him a call.'

  'Yes, sir,' said Jacobs, dutifully.

  'We'll need to put the word round about the Italians. It'll almost be worthwhile releasing the one we have, as he'll lead us straight to the other one. It might be all right just to keep an eye on them, we can see how close they're getting. Make a few calls.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  Ephesian took a sip from his third whisky of the late afternoon and held his hands out to the side.

  'Businesslike. We need to be businesslike. The problems are mounting, we need to address them and put them to bed.'

  'Very good, sir.'

  'Ping Phat will need to wait until tomorrow.'

  'Very good, sir.'

  'And the same for the small matter of the murder. Tomorrow night, but you know all about that.'

  The two men stared across the room, wondering how bloody it was all going to become. It was always so much easier when you could take care of things through gentle persuasion. Money talked, of course, but Ephesian never liked to talk with money. A little intimidation was the best option and it was always regrettable when he had to go further.

  Needs must, he thought to himself. The only way to deal with Ping Phat was violence. And a murder had to be committed for the ceremony to take place. They were the necessary acts of bloodshed. The other work could be kept low key but if that wasn't possible then Jacobs would do what he had to.

  'It'll be a pleasure, sir,' said Jacobs.

  Of that, at least, Ephesian was certain. Jacobs may have had the whole Jeeves vibe going but the man was a sadistic, callous bastard. Who could nail a Lagavulin with ice.

  He took another long drink from the well and his head twitched involuntarily as his thoughts turned back to Gainsborough and his clumsy attempts to detain the Italians.

  The Third Constant

  'So, there are three things, not two.'

  Barney forked another piece of chicken in strawberry yogurt with a mythology of thyme, took a sip of a curious Italian white with insinuations of lavender and an aura of Vatican II, and raised the universal eyebrow of curiosity.

  'You see,' she said, finishing off a mouthful of cretaceous beef on a platter of sangfroid, 'the common philosophy is that there are two principles. Right wrong, yin yang, equal opposite, good evil, black white, you know how it is.'

  He nodded. Amateur philosophy. Can't go five minutes in the world without coming across it. Everybody thinks, after all.

  'And your theory is?' he asked. Impaled a piece of broccoli which had been cooked to perfection. (The broccoli had been termed 100% steamed alleviated legume verte.)

  'There's a third thing,' she said.

  'The grey,' suggested Barney.

  'Not exactly,' she said. 'I call it the Garrett.'

  He paused with the fork on its way to his mouth.

  'The Garrett?' he asked.

  'Yeah,' she said. 'The Equal, the Opposite and the Garrett.'

  'You named this thing, whatever it is, after yourself?'

  'Why not?' she said, no hint of shame. 'They all do it. Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Newton's Laws of Physics. What's the difference?'

  'Come on,' said Barney, 'that's totally different.'

  'How?' she said, a little aggrieved. She was used to people happily sucking in her Garrett theory without question because she was the hottest woman in town and most of them weren't listening anyway. Barney was forlorn and stuck somewhere down a pit of gloom and just wasn't buying into the allure of Garrett Carmichael which fascinated most of the men on the island.

  'Einstein,' he said, 'was a guy with an enormous moustache who came up with a theory of relativity. He just said, you know, this is my theory, what d'you think? Everybody else said, well that sounds like a good theory and started talking about it, and other people said, yeah that is a good theory I like that, whose is it, and the first people said, it's Einstein's, so it became known as Einstein's theory.'

  She looked at him as if he was talking in strange tongues.

  'Same for Newton,' he continued, ignoring the strange tongues look. 'It wasn't like either of them named some thing after themselves. Newton didn't call the apple Newton.'

  'A newton is an amount of force,' she said, with a bit of a duh-huh look about her.

  'Aye, but it wasn't flippin' Newton who named it that. It was scientists later on.'

  'Well, Einstein then,' she said. 'E=mc2, what ab
out that?'

  'You think the E in E=mc2 means Einstein?'

  'Of course it does,' she said sharply, heading swiftly onto the defensive.

  'Einstein=mc2? You think Einstein's theory of relativity was about him personally. That he was equal to mc2? What d'you think mc2 actually is? Muscle times colon squared? Mince times cheese squared? What exactly is it you've always thought the guy was made of?'

  'Are you finished?'

  He lanced a piece of chicken and nodded. There was a feisty spark to the conversation but not in a Katharine Hepburn/Cary Grant kind of a way, where you knew they were going to get together at the end of the movie. This was edgier and meaner, genuine annoyance behind the acerbity.

  'The equation is not about Einstein himself,' she said. 'Einstein, as a term, refers to a unit of energy or something. Just because I'm not a physics expert doesn't make me a total idiot.'

  Barney stared at his plate. Not entirely trusting himself to look at her, although it wasn't as if he was laughing.

  Women. Had this been a guy in the shop he would have let him away with anything. Einstein, Newton, whatever. He would have let him say that the moon made a massively elliptical orbit of the earth and at times was further away than Mars. But he couldn't sit here and let Garrett Carmichael away with it.

  'E,' he said, 'means energy. M is mass, c represents the speed of light in a vacuum.'

  A passing waiter, on his way to another table carrying two plates of customised pork fillets in a clingfilm of four cheeses, caught Garrett's eye and nodded.

  'He's right,' said the waiter. '2.997925 x 108 metres per second.'

  Barney gave him a glance, thinking that that hadn't really helped. Garrett looked straight through him. The waiter moved on. She turned back to Barney, a little put out. There was one of the fundamental building blocks of her life laid bare. Like finding out about Santa or the tooth fairy.

  'I'm still calling it the Garrett,' she said.

  'Very well,' replied Barney. 'I mean, I'm not saying you can't, because it's not like there aren't examples of guys who have done that. Although, usually people who name things after themselves are like weird dictators and stuff. Pol Pot named a cooking implement after himself for example.'

  She was hurt. He smiled at his own joke, but it wasn't that kind of discussion.

  'Thanks,' she said.

  'So what is it?' he asked casually, in order to move on.

  'What d'you mean?' she asked, although she knew. She felt like the entire evening's conversation was drawing to a close, even though they still had caramelised profiteroles with a sea cow of raspberry custard to come.

  'The Garrett,' said Barney. 'What is it? The thing that is neither equal nor opposite?'

  'Well I'm not telling you now.'

  'Come on,' he said, although he knew they were well past the point when she would be prepared to discuss anything.

  She had moved on to that place where words were no longer needed. Barney shrugged, took another drink, and wondered whether the evening would ever recover.

  ***

  Jacobs knocked on the door of Ruth Harrison's house. Had not been at all concerned about dealing with Igor, yet had been happy enough to see him walking on Shore Street, having left the Harrison house a few minutes earlier. She had hoped he might stay the night but things had taken an uncomfortable turn after his condolences had turned from the sympathetic to the erotic, and the new widow and the deaf mute hunchback had made love very passionately. Once the dust had settled and all the required clothing had been put back in place, the atmosphere had been a little uneasy and Igor had excused himself to go and get a nice cup of tea, ignoring the inference that Ruth was incapable of making one.

  That the door opened at all was a surprise to Jacobs. He had expected that she would look to see who was waiting and then pretend to be either out or dead. And having opened the door he expected her to be intimidated and wary.

  'Mr Jacobs,' she said, instead, 'come in, come in, quickly,' and she stood back to let him enter.

  Jacobs walked cautiously into the house. All the lights were on, and he felt very warm in his overcoat and scarf. She closed the door behind her and stared at him, standing at the foot of the stairs.

  Suddenly he realised why she wasn't as fearful as he'd been expecting. She was not alone in the house, as he had presumed she would be. The barber must still be here.

  Jacobs glanced at the stairs, his mind whirring into action. That presented a whole new set of problems. He believed, wrongly, that Barney Thomson was of much greater metal than Igor. Believed, correctly, however, that there would be far more notice paid if something should happen to the new barber than if it happened to his hunchbacked sidekick. You know, if Batman ever got killed, complete uproar. But Robin? Who'd care?

  'Listen,' said Ruth, indicating the landing above.

  'Imagine you have protection, do you, Mrs Harrison?' he said coldly.

  'What?' she asked.

  Above them, footfalls padded back and forth, a few in one direction, a pause, then the same number back. Another pause, and then once more into the routine. A few steps, pause, a few steps, pause.

  'What is he doing?' asked Jacobs.

  He was a prosaic man. As with his employer, he liked things straightforward, everything laid out in front of him, so that problems could be seen and dealt with.

  'I don't know,' said Ruth, 'that's the thing that's scaring me.'

  She hesitated, staring at him as if she was looking for Jacobs to protect her, rather than being in need of protection from him.

  'Before,' she continued, 'he was just going to the toilet. Now, Jesus, I don't know! It's driving me insane. God, what is he doing? He's been at it since just after Igor left.'

  The sentence trailed off at the end, as the possibilities dawned on her. Jonah had been restlessly padding back and forth since Igor left. He knew! He knew what she and Igor had just done.

  'Have you spoken to him?' asked Jacobs, flexing his fingers, frustrated at her curious behaviour.

  'No!' she said, and she took a step back, so that she was pressed up against the front door. 'I can't do that. I don't know if he can speak anyway, you know. I haven't heard him.'

  Jacobs studied her. Her face was drawn and pale, she looked far more intimidated and frightened than before.

  'I thought you said Igor had left?' said Jacobs, questioning in his mind the fact that he'd seen Igor ten minutes previously.

  'Igor did leave,' she protested.

  'So it's the barber upstairs? He can talk, can't he?'

  'What?' said Ruth, still not attuned to the fact that Jacobs had no idea what was going on.

  'I'll go and have a word,' said Jacobs with much irritation.

  She looked at him wide-eyed, but said nothing. More fool you, she thought, and her only concern was that something would happen to him up there and he'd never come back down. Then she would once more be left alone, at the mercy of her dead husband.

  Jacobs turned and ran up the stairs. No messing, straight in for the fight, hackles raised, ready for action. He stopped at the top of the stairs, looked around. The barber must be hiding.

  And then, in his two second pause, he heard it. He heard them. The slow pads of the footfalls on the carpet. He listened to them go up to the bathroom door, pause and then turn back to the door of Jonah's office. He stood there for a full minute, as the feet minced forlornly back and forth. The pragmatist in him studied the floor, wondering what was making the noise, although he did not venture forward. Hairs stood on the back of his neck.

  He turned and walked slowly back down the stairs. Ruth remained where he had left her, back pressed against the door.

  'What is that?' asked Jacobs. 'Some pathetic trick you've got set up to make me think there's someone else in the house?' He knew it wasn't that but he needed a rational explanation.

  'It's Jonah,' she said. 'He's haunting me.'

  Jacobs stared coldly at her. A large part of him wanted to deny what she
had said but he knew she was telling the truth. The ugly sensation which had crawled all over his body told him so. He had been standing listening to the spirit of Jonah Harrison.

  Bartholomew Ephesian wasn't going to believe any of that.

  'Where's the hand, Mrs Harrison?' he asked.

  She appeared surprised that he would change the subject.

  'The hand?' she said.

  'We need it back. It's not yours to keep.'

  'Someone's stolen it,' she said, as if Jacobs ought to have known that already.

  'What do you mean?'

  Jacobs could feel the anger rise inside him, the anger which he always managed to channel. You had to use anger well or it worked against you. This was his strength. He had the temper and the passion but he knew how to use it.

  'It's gone. I found it this morning in the freezer. Well, I didn't know Jonah kept anything like that. I panicked a bit...'

  She stopped and listened as there was a temporary pause in the noise from above, and then inevitably it started again, one slow padding footstep after another.

  'I hid it at the bottom of the garden. Beside the roses. After you came earlier, I took Igor and that barber out to show them. It was gone. No idea where it went.'

  'Is there any way they could have got to it before you showed it to them?'

  Ruth Harrison tried but she wasn't really capable of any kind of clear or concise thought.

  'I suppose,' she said.

  Jacobs wondered if there was any point in pressing her further. However, he had been given enough of an idea to draw the conclusion that the hand was now in the possession of one of the barber shop employees. He moved towards the door.

  'Whose hand is it anyway?' asked Ruth, realising he was about to leave and not wanting him to.

  'I'm leaving now,' he said. 'Could you stand away from the door, please?'

  She moved slowly.

  'Don't go,' she said. 'Please, you can't leave me with that.'

  Jacobs turned and stared back up the stairs at the gentle, horrible pad of Jonah Harrison's footsteps, felt a shiver curse its way down his spine, and then he gave her another look of cold contempt, pulled open the door and walked out into the night.