'Jeez, that's pretty funky. Murder has followed you around'
Barney smiled. Never a truer word...
'I'm Jessica whatshername from Murder She Wrote,' he said.
'Miss Marple,' she added.
'Poirot.'
'Hannibal Lecter.'
He laughed. She smiled with him.
'Cheeky sod. That's a bit different.'
'So how'd you find yourself here?' she asked.
'Came here a lot as a kid. Every year. Forgot about it over time. Then after the First Minister thing, I walked off into the sunset. Thought I'd walk the earth and get in adventures. But you know, that's just the movies. I went from town to town, never got into any adventures. On the one hand I was seeking the quiet life, on the other, it was too damn quiet. Remembered this place, don't know why especially. Came here, it felt like home. Stayed.'
She had almost stopped hearing what he said. Not bored, just letting the sound of his voice sweep over her, blending with the sea and the breeze and the chill of morning. She could listen to him talk for a long time, didn't really matter what he was saying. There had been a time when the name Barney Thomson had scared her. Now, however, the Barney Thomson who sat next to her, talking honestly and softly, was like an old friend.
'You're like a different person,' she said.
'Getting killed will do that to you.'
She smiled. She looked out at the grey sea, the waves chopping against the small islands in the bay. The beach, still showing evidence of the storm. Her eyes wandered back along the promenade, along the front of the town. Drawn further along, until they came to the shop front of the police incident room. A hunched figure in a long black coat, shoulders stooped against the cold, was opening the door and going inside. Frankenstein.
And with that the wistful air was gone, and the vision of Nelly Johnson's front room suddenly seared through her head. Blood.
'What's he like?' said Barney. He too had felt the seismic shift in mood. She knew who he meant.
'Classical grumpy old man. Miserable as hell, misanthropic, moans constantly, complains about everything. I love him.'
Barney laughed, but he wasn't really in the mood for laughing. They were back on to the subject of death and he knew the obvious question was coming.
'So, here you are again, in a small town and people are dying.'
He took a sip of coffee, had to tip the cup almost vertical to get the last of it. He could take another. Maybe, after she'd gone back to work – and who was he fooling with that thought, as she was working now – he'd get another coffee and go for a long walk along the front, round Kames, past the aquarium, keep on going. And what if he didn't stop? Small town island life... he'd end up back where he started.
'You think I'm involved?' he asked.
'Not for a second. I think, however, that there are plenty of people who would think you were involved if they knew you were here.'
'What about Frankenstein?'
She kept her eyes on the door of the police office, as if that might help her see into the mind of the misanthrope.
'He'd jump to the obvious conclusion. He'd want to speak to you. He'd bring you in. But for all the bluster and general haranguing of the planet that he so dedicates his life to, he's a good policeman. He'd know you weren't implicated. He'd be a bad policeman not to talk to you, just as he'd be a bad one to draw the wrong conclusion.'
'Tell him I'm here,' he said quickly.
She looked at Barney for the first time in a while. The serene face, the lines of age, greying hair. Wearing well. Bit of the Sean Connery about him. Not the man she had known. Then she looked out across the bay, back towards oblivion. The investigation of a brutal murder to be continued. Life went on. If not for Nelly Johnson.
She tapped him on the knee and stood up. 'I should get back to the grind. Walk me round.'
Barney didn't rise. Felt the chill of the day for the first time since they'd sat down, but didn't feel like moving just yet.
'I'm just going to sit here for a while,' he said. 'Keanu can take care of the shop. The day can take care of itself.'
Detective Sergeant Proudfoot looked down at Barney. A long gaze between them, she smiled weakly, and then turned and walked off the pier, back past the George. Barney watched for a short while and then turned his head away and looked out to sea.
'I've got nothing to hide,' he said to himself.
If only that had been true.
***
William Deco left the barber shop and headed straight back to his Largs office. Got down to work. Barney Thomson. The name had rung a bell, and when he checked the files, it all came back. Of course the name had rung a bell. Barney Thomson had been the most notorious serial killer of his day, and the day hadn't been that long ago. It was as if the nation had collectively absolved him of all blame for the crimes of which he'd been accused, and in doing so had chosen to forget about him, embarrassed that they had so quickly leapt to the wrong conclusion.
Maybe they'd been right, however. That's what William Deco wondered as he read the back story. Maybe they'd all been right.
And as he read, he decided that the Millport mystery, which had begun with the disappearance of the crew of a small fishing trawler out on the firth, and had picked up with a sudden decapitation, had just become even more interesting. It was time for a special murder edition of the newspaper.
William Deco, Art to his friends, finally had a story to get his teeth into.
Part II
The Fantastic Five Have A Cunning Plan
Murder has come to town, and now fear hangs in the air like the putrid stench of burning cattle flesh. A pall hangs over us all as we wait in terror behind locked doors. The streets are deserted, windows are shuttered, there is not a soul who does not wait with horror, wondering where the executioner's axe might next fall...
'What d'you think?' asked Keanu, looking up from his laptop.
Igor glanced out at the sky, cloudy but still bright. A mother and her two young children walked past, the kids giggling and eating ice cream, the mum doing a funny walk to make them laugh. Old Thomas Peterson rode past on his bike. The waves fluttered in the bay.
'Arf,' said Igor.
Keanu had followed his gaze outside and nodded sombrely.
'Haven't quite caught the mood of the town, eh?' he said sadly.
***
Barney went for his long walk. Didn't even stop in the shop to tell Keanu that he was in charge for the rest of the day. It wasn't like the kid wouldn't be able to work it out for himself. And, if it looked like he might still be out walking when it was getting dark, he could call him and get him to close up. Minimum responsibility.
Instead of walking along the front, he strolled up the hill, down along the back way to the cathedral and then up through the farm, to the highest point. It was cold up there, deserted. Not a day for tourists. He looked all around, low visibility. Cloud and mist had descended. Couldn't see the hills of Argyll that are so glorious on a sunny and clear day. Clutching his jacket close to him, he moved on, walking down the other side of the hill, swinging back round towards the town. But he was still in a mood for walking and thinking, not yet ready to return to the shop.
Three days ago it had been his place of refuge, but now, now that he had been visited there by ghosts and portents, the shop represented a haunted place for him. He wanted to stay away, and so he walked on, wondering what was left for him in this town if he could never shake the feeling. He knew, however, that there was some reckoning which had to be faced, and not until then would he know where his future lay. If he had a future.
At Kames he took another left, round the bay and out towards the aquarium. When he reached the corner at the far end of the bay, however, he turned off the main road, onto the small path which leads out towards Farland Point. A deserted rocky corner, for fishermen and the occasional seal. A perfect view of the nuclear power station just over a mile across the water.
Walking down the muddy pa
th, past fading long autumnal grasses, he heard voices a short distance away, down by the water. Did he want human contact? Maybe, after a couple of hours of relentless solitude, his thoughts naturally getting nowhere, tied up as they were in a morass of old guilts and demons. A fair chance that whoever was down here was going to be one of his regular customers. Familiarity, perhaps that was all that was required.
He stepped off the path, through the grass and past a lone bramble bush. There were four people down by the water, working with a small boat which was tied to a short, disused jetty, sticking out into the sea, all rusted columns and broken wooden planks. Four people and a dog. The MI6 gang, if that's who they really worked for.
As Barney got closer, they turned towards him and stopped what they were doing. The Dog With No Name stopped sniffing around in the grass and approached to say hello.
'Hi there, Mr Thomson,' said Fred, the blond-haired leader of the gang. 'We wondered when you'd get here.'
Barney smiled. 'You knew?'
'We've been watching you,' said Selma. 'You were at the pier, you walked up past the church and the school, up to the highest point, and now you're here. Our paths would eventually cross.'
'Satellite?' said Barney.
Bernard held up a pair of binoculars.
'So, what are you doing?' asked Barney.
Fred turned and looked at the boat which they had tied to the dilapidated jetty. A rowing boat, laden with five barrels.
'We're setting a trap,' said Fred.
Barney almost turned away but decided that he really needed to stand here and find out what was going on. When constantly presenting yourself with the reality of your past, perhaps it was best to break it up with the complete surrealism of the present.
'To catch the killer,' said Deirdre, aware of the sceptical look on Barney's face. 'We haven't decided yet whether to call him the Trawler Fiend or The Incredible Captain Death.'
'The Trawler Fiend?'
'Sure,' said Selma. 'Tonight, after dark, Bernard and the Dog With No Name will pretend to be fishermen. They'll work down here at the boat, until the killer comes along.'
'The Incredible Captain Death,' said Fred.
'Exactly,' said Selma.
'That's insane,' said Barney. 'The guy who killed Nelly Johnson chopped her head off. It was horrible. Why give him this silly nickname? You make him sound like a character out of a kid's TV show. Some mad old fool, goofily searching for his grandfather's treasure. He's a killer'
'Like, that's why he's got Death in his name!' said Bernard.
'Or Fiend,' added Deirdre.
Barney looked quizzically around the gang. Shook his head, shrugged.
'You were telling me your brilliant plan,' he said, deadpan.
'How do we know that you're not The Incredible Captain Death disguised as a mild-mannered barber?' said Deirdre.
The Dog With No Name sat at Barney's feet, looking up, tongue out.
'You do have a bit of a history after all,' said Fred.
'What?' said Barney.
The wind had changed. Colder, coming down from the north, over the island, sneaking up coolly on Millport from behind. The small, barrel-laden boat bobbed against the jetty. The skies had grown darker as Barney had walked, but he had been so absorbed in entangling his mind in knots of remorse and introspection, that he hadn't noticed.
He felt the chill now, however. The wind, the sea, the murky skies.
'Like, we know all about you, friend,' said Bernard. 'The manslaughter, the death, the bodies in your mother's freezer, all those groovy dead monks, Murderer's Anonymous. It's totally whacked, man. Like we're never seen anything like it, have we Dog With No Name?'
The dog barked.
Barney was aware of the beating of his heart, but it didn't crash and thrash and threaten to burst through his chest. He could feel it slow down, settle into a declining rhythm, as if it might be eventually going to stop. And as it slowed down, it seemed to rise in his chest. A slow ascent up his throat. Not leaping into his mouth, just slowly working its way out, so that it would soon lie dead on the floor.
His past wasn't just coming back to haunt him; the past was three hundred thousand orcs at the gates of Helm's Deep, and Barney was alone on the walls.
Fred clapped him on the shoulder.
'Don't be alarmed, Barney old buddy, we're MI6. We know all kinds of shit.'
'Sure we do,' said Bernard. 'What we don't know is, like, where's the best place on this island to get a fried banana burger with mayonnaise and chocolate sauce?'
The dog barked again, wagging its tail with gastronomic excitement.
'There are no secrets,' said Fred, his hand still squeezing Barney's shoulder, 'only certain things that we don't yet know about each other. We were checking you out last night, with our trawler in the mist ruse. That was all a scam. We're full of them. Hey, maybe if you don't get killed on this gig, you might want to think about coming to work for us.'
Barney's heart had begun to speed up again, had begun the slow crawl back into position. There are no secrets, only certain things that we don't yet know about each other... How many times had he heard that one in the shop? Well, essentially, none, but that level of absurd tangential gobbledygook was commonplace.
'I'm going to go,' he said slowly. 'Still got a lot of walking to do. Thinking.'
Fred let go of his shoulder and took a step back.
'Sure, friend,' he said, 'but you don't need to worry. We won't tell anyone, we can keep a secret.'
'Yep'
'Sure.'
'Like, totally.'
Barney looked at them all and then turned slowly and walked back through the long grass, back up onto the path. He still had a long way to go, and the journey would take him much further than the ten and a half mile walk around the island. When he was a few yards away, he stopped and looked back at Bernard.
'Try the Ritz. They might make you your burger.'
'Like, thanks, pal!'
Up The Graveyard
Proudfoot didn't go straight back to the police incident room either, although she didn't go for as long a walk as Barney Thomson. Almost at the door, and then she had a sudden vision of her chat with Frankenstein and having to explain where she'd been and to whom she'd been talking. She didn't need that.
She turned abruptly and walked back along the front and up the hill. Working on something in between a whim and a hunch. A whunch. She thought of the word as she passed the farm. A whunch. Made her smile. She could use it to Frankenstein and it would be something else to cover up her absence. Particularly when her whunch came to nought and she was returning to the station empty handed.
She reached the graveyard and turned in through the gate. Stopped for a second to look back down the hill; the island of Little Cumbrae, the sea and the mainland, Arran and Bute. It was beautiful, the starkest of contrasts to what she had had to endure that morning in Nelly Johnson's front room.
She thought of the photograph she'd seen of Bill Johnson. Bill on a boat, about to cast off from one of the endless small jetties which dotted the coast of the island, and which no one ever used any more. Except MI6. Bill grimacing at the camera. Trying to smile? Annoyed at the photographer for taking the picture? Had there been a story about the late Bill Johnson, that was what she was wondering.
As it happened, the story of Bill was brief and insignificant. A minor part in the diamond smuggling ring, then his place in the operation, such as it was, gratuitously grabbed by Nelly upon his death from heart failure the previous April.
Proudfoot walked along the main path of the cemetery, looking up and down neat rows of headstones, the simple, unadorned remembrances of the dead typical of the people. Nothing elaborate, no one trying to outdo the next grave along. Austere, minimal, honest.
She took her time, glancing along the lines, reading the epitaphs on some of the end-of-the-row headstones. Margaret Patterson, Born 1856, Died 1893. Much missed mother of seven. At the bottom end of the cemetery, nea
r the far fence, there was a man standing by one of the gravestones. From the overalls and heavy yellow coat she knew that it would be the gravekeeper, or a council worker with some similar designation, rather than a family member visiting a Dead Relative.
She wandered slowly over in his direction, past Mary Martin, a dear friend and mother, and David McTaggart, much beloved son and father. She came round the last row of stones and immediately saw what was keeping him standing still, staring.
He was a few feet back from a grave, so as not to be standing over the body. Assuming it was in there. The headstone was a plain granite rectangle. On the ground beside it there were some weathered and beaten flowers, which had been sitting forlornly in the same vase for six months. Stabbed into the ground in front of the grave was a simple wooden cross, on top of which a chicken had been impaled. Whether the chicken had still been alive when it had been skewered onto the top spike of the cross, it was impossible to tell. Either way, the chicken had not died with a smile on its face. Across the engraving on the headstone, words had been splashed in red paint: Reap the Bitter Wind.
Nelly's killer had been intent on doing a thorough job.
Proudfoot approached and stood beside him, looking down at the grave of Bill Johnson. The words, Here lies William Johnson, No Longer Alive, But Never Dead, had not been completely obscured by the paint. The guy didn't seem to have noticed Proudfoot's approach, yet he showed no sign of surprise at her arrival.
'Do you think it's paint or blood?' he asked, his voice deadpan.
'It's not blood,' she said quietly.
'How d'you know?' he asked, finally giving her a glance, and then he made another little noise and nodded. 'The policewoman. You've seen blood before.'
'Too often,' she said. 'You're the gravedigger?'
'Oh, you can't say that. Not allowed to use the word grave.'
'No?'
'It implies that the worker himself might be grave in some way. You know, sombre and unsmiling. Some of us Cemetery Earth Reallocation Employees are quite cheerful. I mean, obviously not me, I'm as miserable as shite, me, but that's what the directive said. The union held out for it, you know. It was a big thing. There was a paragraph in the Herald.'
The Barbershop Seven: A Barney Thomson omnibus Page 148
