The Barbershop Seven: A Barney Thomson omnibus

by Douglas Lindsay

  He shuffled over in bed, lay on his left side and stared out of the window. Eyes wide open when he should have been asleep. Having been Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, he'd now progressed to being Bill Murray in Lost In Translation. And wasn't his entire life, he pondered, an extended version of Groundhog Day? From one barbershop to the next, one series of murders after another.

  'I'm Bill flippin' Murray,' he muttered into the orange darkness. 'How sad is that?'

  And he wondered if he could go down and make himself a cup of tea and whether it was worth invoking the wrath of Miranda Donaldson, for although there hadn't been a specific Thou Shalt Not Make Cups Of Tea In The Dead Of Night commandment, he wouldn't be surprised to find her standing erect in the kitchen clutching a rolling pin and ready to blatt him soundly over the head.

  He lay like that for a few minutes and then turned onto his back once more.

  'Johnny Depp,' he said to the empty sky. 'Why couldn't I have been Johnny Depp?'

  ***

  Normally the cathedral door would be locked at this time of night. It certainly had been earlier, when Jacobs had had to use Ephesian's spare keys to gain entry. However Father Roosevelt had realised that on a night such as this, the penultimate day before the world changed forever, the Cathedral of the Isles was likely to be in demand. There were only a few people in the world who realised the significance of this place – although the number would be astronomically high by Thursday morning – but the number was enough, all the same, for there to be a potential stream of visitors. And so Roosevelt had decided to leave the door open for the night to allow anyone who thought there might still be something to find here, entry to the nave. That the thing for which they all searched had already been removed, was known only to him, Lawton, Ephesian and Jacobs. And, of course, to the man who had bludgeoned Lawton to unconsciousness using Archie Gemmill.

  There was a window high up on the wall of the chancel, behind which was a small room, part of the college buildings, formerly the infirmary in the Canon's house. Here it was that Andrew Roosevelt had set himself up for the night, perched on an uncomfortable wooden seat, accompanied by two flasks of coffee and a packet of Jaffa cakes, to spy from behind a thin curtain on whoever might come to visit.

  For years he had watched tourists and worshipers at the cathedral, wondering whether they were there simply to marvel at the intricacies of the interior or whether they knew more than they appeared to. That while they gazed with the interest of a tourist, that in truth they searched for the clue which might lead them to the Grail. Tonight, however, he could at last relax and watch with curiosity rather than anxiety.

  Slowly and silently he unscrewed the lid of the first flask and poured some more coffee into the small white mug – the one he'd received a few years previously from a Maryhill rabbi, the words Have A Kosher Christmas! written in pink around the rim – and then he leaned forward and peered round the edge of the curtain.

  Tony Angelotti had been in the cathedral for just under half an hour. He still had the strange feeling of some level of intelligence about him after his earlier discussion with an even bigger idiot than himself, but it was beginning to wear off as he minced around the nave and chancel.

  He stopped just below the pulpit and looked up at the scene of the stricken Christ, post-crucifixion and in need of Nurofen Extra Strength Nails in The Hands. He stared for a few seconds, then turned round and looked at the rest of the small space, then he held his hands out before him, shaking his head, in a how the fuck am I supposed to work this shit out gesture.

  Roosevelt smiled. He had spent the previous half hour wanting to toy with the man, calling out hot or cold depending on how close he'd come to the font. It had reminded him of the time a few years earlier when one seemingly innocuous and very corpulent American tourist had started intimately studying the carvings of the gospel saints. Growing worried, Roosevelt had then called out to the man from his hiding place, warning him off.

  The man had then turned and begun a conversation with the empty cathedral, thinking that he had been talking to God Himself, a part Roosevelt had rather enjoyed playing. Telling the man he had to lose three hundred pounds by that Christmas or he was going to have a heart attack and die had probably been a little unnecessary and self indulgent, but Roosevelt liked to think that he had saved his life.

  This time, what with the general seriousness and enormity of the occasion, Roosevelt chose to say nothing, but sipped silently on his coffee and munched on his fourth Jaffa cake of the evening.

  'Fucking piss,' said Tony shaking his head. 'Fucking Scotland.'

  ***

  Luigi had blended seamlessly into Millport life, part of the furniture. He had needed somewhere to hide out for a few hours, to spend the night undercover, before he would emerge the following day, find Tony, which would be like finding a cockroach in Thailand, and then go about his business of finishing off the matter which had brought them to this Godforsaken island in the first place.

  'You'll be having another glass of wine before you go to bed,' said the old woman, more as a statement of fact than a question.

  'Thank you, Nella,' said Luigi. 'You are a kind and beautiful woman.'

  The old woman shook her head at the compliment but she was smiling all the same. Her friend looked up from her knitting and tutted silently but she was still feeling good from the fact that Luigi had told her how graceful and elegant she was just a few minutes earlier, so she parked the petty jealousy to one side and smiled at Luigi as he glanced round at her.

  'I am a lucky man tonight,' he schmoozed. 'And to think I could have been stuck in Rome.'

  ***

  Igor lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Two women in one day. How often did that happen to him, he wondered, at around the same time that Barney was considering his personal transmogrification into Bill Murray. Well, actually this was the third time this year, but hey, that's not so many compared to some other deaf mute hunchbacks.

  Gently Ferguson snuggled her chin closer into the soft fat of Igor's upper arm and sleepily caressed the hairs on his chest.

  'Thank you,' she said drowsily, 'I needed that.'

  Igor looked down at her and kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled of apple shampoo and he breathed in the smell of it for a few seconds before resting back on the pillow and looking up once more at the ceiling.

  'Arf,' he said softly, and she burrowed her face even further into the cushion of his arm.

  ***

  Augustus Lawton still lay in the pool of his own blood, the merest breath of life about him, destined to lie in a vegetative state for some years to come. Sometimes the penalties of greed can be harsh, and sometimes you don't get the chance to learn your lesson.

  ***

  The other woman whose company Igor had had the pleasure of that day, was still sitting on her kitchen floor, back pressed against a cabinet full of cleaning fluids, eyes permanently pointed upwards, as if she could see the noise upstairs through the floors and the walls.

  Ruth Harrison was terrified.

  The Monstrous Mind Of The Psephalopod

  It all becomes too much. You break down, fall to pieces, return to a collection of millions of individual cells, almost as though they are completely unrelated to one another. All sensory perception closes down, it's as if you are no longer a sentient being. You barely exist on any level, the world is drawn into you so that there is nothing else, nothing outside the confines of the tiny space into which you have withdrawn. You try to bring your body into the space, and although it doesn't have a chance of fitting, you draw it in as tightly as you can. Everything is minimised, as if someone is shooting at you and you are reducing the target to the least possible area. There are no guns aiming at you, no bullets coming your way, but it feels like there are. You need to be in control and the only thing of which you are certain is that you're not. When you realise that you have control over nothing, that events and people and situations are dictating your life and not the other w
ay round, the only thing you can do is withdraw as far as possible, retreat to the place where nothing and no one dictates to you. And if that place is so small, it is a dark, untouchable point in the pit of your guts, your body wrapped tightly around it and all mental functions shut off, then that is where you go.

  However, there's always an out, there's always a recovery. Strength of character. You don't retreat to that place to give up. You retreat to convalesce. You break down, let all the molecules disperse, and then gradually they come back together. You're at the bottom of the dark ocean, then suddenly you're shooting up through the depths towards the light. But there are no bends to be had, you never come up too fast. You have retreated to where you are in control, so no one can drag you from the place before you want to leave. And then, when you return, you are ready. Ready to acknowledge what you control and ready to address those things which still lie outwith your power. Maybe the reaction looks odd, maybe to others you are peculiar and unbalanced, but it serves you well. It's one of the things which makes you a stronger person than so many of those who would mark you down as unbalanced.

  Ephesian took another sip of sparkling water. 2:35am. No time for alcohol this. There was too much to be sorted out. He had retreated, he had regrouped. Jacobs didn't understand, not really, despite having had a life of dealing with his employer. When you hide away in the tiniest, darkest place you can find, you don't do it to seek reassurance from others. The hours Jacobs had spent believing he'd been talking Ephesian out from his hiding place had been completely ineffective. Jacobs could have been saying anything. His words had been meaningless, Ephesian had heard none of them. Destruction and recovery had come from within, as had always been the case.

  'We'll need to use the money in the morning,' said Ephesian. 'Lawton is a spineless toad, McGhee just as unimaginative. He holds what he does and all the ignorant little runt can think to demand is money.'

  'He doesn't know what he holds,' said Jacobs.

  Ephesian grunted.

  'It wouldn't make any difference. An idiot holding the riches of the world is still an idiot.'

  'But Lawton knows the power of what he has,' said Jacobs. 'He might well not be so easily dealt with.'

  Ephesian nodded, took another sip.

  'Yet he is as shallow. That's why we need the money. Of promises he may well be mistrustful, but a suitcase full of money, enough money to take him anywhere he wants to go, he will not be so foolish as to turn his back on that.'

  Jacobs did not reply. He stood with his hands behind his back, following Ephesian's gaze out to the west and the dark night. Ephesian belched softly, the back of his hand at his mouth.

  'I can speak to Anthony in the morning,' Ephesian continued. 'It may well be that with him also, all I will have to do is to show him some money. I will certainly dispense with the initiation. He need know nothing about what he is participating in.'

  'And the matter of his dealings with the Italians?' said Jacobs.

  Ephesian did not reply. He did not think that his son would be openly working against him. He would have been used as some kind of unwitting pawn. However, it meant little, and he was confident that the Italians would know nothing of the nature of the ceremony which would take place that evening at midnight. The secret that had been guarded all these centuries remained just that. The Catholic Church were here to stick their noses into the situation because they knew they would not like what came out of it. However, even they did not have any conception of the magnitude of what was going to happen. And so, as part of his controlling process, Ephesian was convinced that the Italians just needed to be watched for the time being. Or, at least, the one at the hotel could be watched; the other, now acting discreetly, needed to be found.

  'We just have to give Ping Phat his head,' said Ephesian, after a short gap. 'He cannot usurp us at this stage, there is too much knowledge he does not have. If he must become involved, if he must be some sort of observer to the ceremony, then perhaps it would be pragmatic of us to accept what must be. At least that way we can keep an eye on him.' He waved his glass.

  'You should get some sleep,' said Jacobs.

  Ephesian didn't turn. He glanced at his watch without taking in the time. He did feel tired but he wasn't yet ready for sleep.

  'There will be ample time for that,' he said vacantly.

  Jacobs recognised the tone. Their discussion was over. His boss might not feel the need to lie down but he himself needed a few hours before the rigours of the day ahead. Ephesian might have been able to work his mind around to a positive state but all Jacobs could see were problems and obstacles.

  He turned and walked silently from the room. Ephesian did not even notice him go.

  ***

  Barney's mind rambled on. Three o'clock in the morning, he'd been in bed for almost four hours and not once had he even come close to getting to sleep. Eyes wide open, head full of the banal and the mundane, mixed with the occasional matter of weight.

  At the end of It's A Wonderful Life, how come everyone is so full of smiles? If the bank investigator bloke was about to arrest Jimmy Stewart for fraud or embezzlement or whatever it was, surely just because everyone in the town shows up and says, 'Here, we'll pay back all the money you think he stole,' doesn't mean he wasn't guilty. Okay, we know he wasn't guilty, but surely there still has to be a trial? You can't let a guy off completely just because everyone thinks he's nice. And then in that final scene, in amongst all the cheerful, weepy people, there's old, miserable-as-shite Mr Potter. Why's he looking so chipper? Because he's got the flippin' $8000, that's why. You don't see him handing it back, do you? And what has his journey been in movie terms? After decades of misanthropy and money-grabbing, he turns into this jovial old buffoon, 50% smile, 50% heart of flippin' gold. How did that happen? Because Jimmy Stewart met an angel? Or maybe there was a parallel story with old man Potter, removed from the final cut, where he met Lucifer and was shown how even more wonderful the town would have been without him in it and it cheered him up to think that he'd ruined at least a few lives.

  Barney, shut up! he thought. Get some sleep. Count sheep. Think of how to describe cricket to an American. Calculate all the prime numbers under one million. List the world's airlines. Think of a cellar full of cockroaches and count them.

  They say cockroaches would survive a nuclear attack. Urban myth? It's accepted fact but how do they know? Maybe the cockroaches survived Hiroshima or on all those ex-beautiful islands in the middle of the Pacific. Maybe that was part of the tests; they took a variety of lifeforms – cockroaches, locusts, white tigers, dodos, snow leopards, a couple of Mormons – bombed the stuffing out of them and then bimbled back across to the island a few minutes after the mushroom cloud had cleared. It's all right, Chip, you can wear a protective suit if you want but you probably won't need to. Of all the animals and bugs on the island the only ones to survive were the cockroaches, albeit they'd all been converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Or maybe it'd been mentioned in a Disney film once and out of that the urban legend had grown. Maybe the cockroaches will just get squished with the rest of us.

  Finally Barney poured his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He walked to the window and looked out to the dark sea and away to the east. The first hint of dawn was beginning to make an appearance on the horizon, another early morning about to kick off in another small town.

  He felt the slight lift that he always got when he was up with the dawn of the day. His mind meandered through the Far Side cartoon of The African Dawn, the animals sitting around drinking coffee, took a swing through Calvin & Hobbes and the beautiful clean canvas of their final snowy day, and then juddered to a halt at the reality of a life built on walking aimlessly from place to place, of relationships made and squandered, and of another day when he knew that life's beauty – no matter how many old men talked about the simple pleasures of the sound of the fizz when opening a bottle of tonic or the feel of sea spray on your face or the excitement in
a child's eyes when discovering something that as an adult you've taken for granted for decades – would only briefly touch him, before being banished by the general darkness of the suffocating gloom that he could not seem to shake.

  He sat down in the large comfy chair by the window, the high ledge partially restricting his view of the sea, and for the first time in over four hours his eyes felt heavy and he was finally able to close them with intent.

  Augustinian Predestination

  'And would you like fries with that, sir?' said Barney.

  Well, that wasn't what he actually said but sometimes he felt like saying it. The fast food counter that is a barbershop.

  'Tapered or square at the back?' asked Barney.

  The man in the hot seat, old Seth Bagan, brought the universal frown of inquisition into play.

  'How d'you mean that?' he asked.

  'A taper,' said Barney patiently, 'is where the hair at the back is shaved to a gradual end. A square cut is where the hair is all the same length at the back and cut in a straight line at the bottom.'

  'Oh,' said Bagan, who had somehow managed to get to the age of one hundred and ninety-three without ever finding this out.

  'Isn't a tapir an odd-toed, South American ungulate with a flexible proboscis?' said the other old fella, parked on the bench behind them.

  'Well I don't know,' said Bagan, 'I thought that was a sloth.'

  'The sloth's an edentate,' said Barney.

  'Eden Tate? Was that the guy who was married to Sharon Tate?' said one of the old men.

  'You're thinking about Roman Polanski,' said the other one.

  'The Romans,' said Bagan, 'they knew a thing or two.'

  'Arf!' said Igor forcefully, getting a bit fed up with it all.

  'You're thinking of alfresco,' said the guy on the bench. 'The Romans loved that style of wallpapering.'