The Barbershop Seven: A Barney Thomson omnibus

by Douglas Lindsay

  Old McGuire sat and stared at his reflection, trying to decide if the small mole on his chin was cancerous. He was, however, unnerved by the silence. He needed noise, even if it was just the sound of his own voice complaining about something.

  'Think I might have early onset Alzheimer's,' he said, to break the melancholic tranquillity.

  A pause. Igor did not turn. He had felt the vibrations, but did not need the conversation.

  'Early onset?' said Ginger Rogers suddenly. 'You're ninety-one!'

  'And the way my muscles are going I think I've got motor neurone coming on. And did you see that shite on the telly last night?'

  ***

  DCI Frankenstein and Dr Trio Semester were attending the latest crime scene. Ward Bracken, relatively recent arrival to the town – at least in comparison with all the old fellas who'd been there since being sent home from Gallipoli with shell shock – and his decapitated head.

  Frankenstein was standing at the window, looking out over the town and the sea. Had spent so much of the previous few days doing just this. Wondered if that was all the town's people did. If that was all anyone who lived by the sea did. You looked at it long enough, and eventually you felt like you had to go out on it. And then you became beholden to it and then you died. Did anyone live happily by the sea? Did it not always lead you on to wanting something you couldn't truly have?

  'That you getting sucked in by the grey mass of moving water?' said Semester, approaching and following his gaze out past Little Cumbrae. 'You're not going to get all nautical on us and start quoting Coleridge, are you?'

  'How does anyone ever get anything done here?' he said. 'It's like watching Armageddon.'

  Semester glanced at him, curiously.

  'You think the end of the world is going to be an ever-changing, yet ever-constant landscape, the same year after year after year?'

  'I meant the movie with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.'

  'Ah... Then I still don't get you.'

  'You know, you've seen it ten times before. It's an OK movie, not the best, but OK. You're flicking through the channels, searching for something to watch for ten minutes before you go to bed, boom, you come across Armageddon with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck. You think, this'll do for my ten minutes, and then you see Steve Buscemi and he makes you laugh, and you think, shit, I'd forgotten he was in it, he's pretty funny, and then wham, the next thing you know, it's an hour and a half later and you're still sitting there. Is the film any different from the previous fifty occasions you've seen it? No. But can you stop yourself looking? Not a chance.'

  Semester smiled. He had picked up on the allusion after the first sentence, but had been quite happy to listen to Frankenstein unnecessarily explain himself in full.

  'Aye,' he said eventually, 'I see what you mean. Like Casablanca.'

  'Totally different,' said Frankenstein. 'Casablanca is acknowledged as one of the greatest films of all time. Of course you get sucked in by it when you stumble across it on the TV. But Armageddon. No one's putting that on their all-time list. If someone says to you, what's your favourite all-time movie, you don't even think about it. And yet, can you put it off? No way.'

  Semester looked at a small cargo vessel, far out in the Clyde, the other side of Little Cumbrae, heading north and about to be obscured by the island.

  'You want to hear about our headless friend here?' asked Semester, thinking that he might as well drag things back to the present, aware perhaps that he too could be sucked in to endlessly looking at the sea.

  'Tell me about Stan Koppen first,' said Frankenstein.

  He knew that Semester had worked through the night, and that he had already been on his way back down to the island when the news had come through of the discovery of a yet another two-day-old corpse.

  'Well, to be honest, it would be telling you the same thing. A clean cut, both times. The woman as well. Same weapon each time, cut by the same hand. It wasn't a completely straight blade, so we're looking at a large axe head.'

  'Definitely an axe?'

  'Well, it wasn't a cucumber.'

  Frankenstein snorted. 'How large an axe? Will you be able to pin it down? A brand?'

  'What can I say? It wasn't small, not the type your Mr Average might have in his shed because he bought it once when it was on offer in B&Q. Something bigger.'

  'Prints, identifying marks of any sort?'

  'He entered by whatever means your guys will have established, he wore gloves, he chopped their heads off, he left. From what I hear, it doesn't look like he even had any blood on his shoes.'

  'And this guy was definitely first of the three murders on the island?' said Frankenstein.

  Semester nodded, walked over and gently kicked the leg.

  'Feel that,' he said glibly. 'Stiff as a board. If I could get erections that stiff these days the wife would be a lot happier.'

  'Nice,' said Frankenstein.

  'This guy,' said Semester, 'during the storm some time. I'll try to pin that down a bit further, but don't get too excited waiting. Then Nelly Johnson the following night and Stan Koppen not long after. Could be the killer left old Nelly's house and went straight round to Stan's.'

  Frankenstein walked past him, heading for the door. Time to get on with establishing some sort of mundane line of inquiry, time to get away from the decapitated heads.

  'Let me know if you get anything else,' he threw over his shoulder.

  'Sure,' said Semester, 'you let me know if there's anyone left alive on the island by the weekend.'

  Frankenstein hesitated, smiled and then walked quickly out of the small house. As soon as he had stepped onto the short path he saw them, charging in through the front gate with unbridled enthusiasm.

  'Jeepers, Detective Frankenstein,' said Selma, 'we heard there'd been another beheading.'

  'Like, totally,' said Bernard. 'It's the Trawler Fiend again!'

  'The Incredible Captain Death!' ejaculated Fred, pushing for his favourite serial killer appellation of the moment.

  The gang of four and the dog stopped. Frankenstein looked around them all, not in the mood for their youthful enthusiasm. Not that he would have been able to imagine a time when he would ever have been in a mood for it.

  'Just like the security services,' he said. 'Turn up after everyone else has done all the work.'

  'We were looking for clues down at the boatyard,' said Fred.

  'It was creepy!' said Bernard.

  'Why do you people have to shout everything you say?' asked Frankenstein. 'Jesus, on you go. The pathologist is still in there. You'll like him, he performs his work to a laugh track.'

  'Gee, thanks, Chief Inspector,' said Deirdre.

  'You sure were a help,' said Fred, 'we're just going to go into the house and look for clues!'

  Frankenstein waved a desultory hand as he opened the gate. Maybe, he was thinking, it was time to check with MI6 again, just to make sure.

  On A Pale Afternoon

  Barney sat in a small room, on a chair at a desk, looking at a blank wall. There was a police constable standing by the door. A clock on the wall, the second hand ticking silently round. Occasionally he would turn and look at it, but only because it was there. He wasn't interested in the time.

  He wasn't thinking about the future. No thoughts of where this might take him, the prison in which he might end up. He had wandered long and restlessly, and had never really known what it would take to allow him to settle. Now, maybe, this was it. His reckoning. Face up to the past, answer the questions, and then finally he might be able to find peace. Albeit, peace from inside a prison cell.

  His list of crimes:

  1. Manslaughter. Accidentally stabbing his boss Wullie Henderson in the chest with a pair of scissors.

  2. Failing to report the crime. Rather than calling the police and confessing all, he'd bundled the body into the back of his car and taken it round to his mum's.

  3. Failing to report his mother's crimes. On discovering that his mother h
ad been a rabid serial killer, with a freezer stacked full of butchered bodies, he'd taken them all to a rubbish dump, rather than call the police. Or Channel 4. Such a pity that it had all happened before the current trend for reality TV.

  4. More manslaughter. Accidentally killed his work colleague Chris by knocking him over with a broom. Probably more seriously, he had then set up Chris's flat to make it look like he had been the serial killer, rather than Barney's mum. As part of this nefarious plan, he had turfed Chris's body into a loch.

  5. Another touch of manslaughter. While wrestling with Brother Steven – the Monastery Murderer – he had inadvertently shot the guy in the stomach. The fact that there had been two police officers in attendance who had witnessed this and then sent him on his way notwithstanding, it was still a charge that he would need to answer in court.

  And that was more or less that. There had been other adventures, he had had the misfortune to stumble across murderers, weirdoes, crackpots and deranged psychopaths at every turn, but that had been his fate. Of the events that he could control or really would have to answer for, the list was short and several years in the past.

  Crimes, however, always stuck around for a long time. And there was the possibility of him having to answer to no end of deeds for which he was not responsible.

  Everything in life has a momentum. Sport, romance, relationships, family, business, travel, politics. Things stagnate, things build up speed, life goes on. Once something has a certain impetus behind it, then sometimes there can be no stopping it.

  The door opened, footsteps. Barney looked up as the two chairs were pulled away from the desk opposite him. Frankenstein and Proudfoot. They sat down. They looked across at Barney.

  Everyone stared at everyone else. The clock turned silently. Barney found himself looking up at it. Just because it was there.

  'Constable,' said Frankenstein, 'you can leave us now. Note it down that I asked you to.'

  The constable at the door, PC Harrington – who had been staring at the floor, bored and disinterested, thinking about Scarlett Johansson, working on the principle that since anything in life is possible, anything, there must be some way for him to meet her, and in a situation where she wasn't going to think that he was weird – snapped out of his torpor and looked at Frankenstein. He'd heard his voice, but the words hadn't gone in. Frankenstein wasn't familiar with Constable Harrington, therefore there was a little confusion.

  'You want to stick to your post, Constable?' he said.

  'What? Sir? Yes, I should stick to my post.'

  'I'd like you to leave.'

  'You want me to leave?'

  'Jesus Christ, how hard is this? Constable, get out. Go and arrest someone.'

  Constable Harrington finally got the hint, opened the door and stepped out into the corridor, not entirely sure what had just happened. And no nearer to meeting Scarlett Johansson.

  The door closed. Frankenstein watched it for a second, then turned to Barney.

  'The way I see it,' he said, 'we've got you on manslaughter, perverting the course of justice and obstruction. Probably a lot more besides, and that's just based on the things that we know are true. Then there are all the rumours and your possible involvement with no end of other murders. The fact that everywhere you go, people get killed. It's piling up.'

  He paused. Stared across at Barney. Barney met his eye. Proudfoot looked at the table.

  'How do you see it stacking up for you so far?' said Frankenstein.

  Barney raised an eyebrow. Glanced at Proudfoot, looked back at the DCI.

  'You think I'm going to confess to everything, with no lawyer contact and after you've sent the constable out?' said Barney. 'Is this where you leap up, grab my head and bang it off the table?'

  Proudfoot smiled.

  'Piss off,' said Frankenstein. 'You've been watching too much TV.'

  Barney shrugged. Felt a little stupid about the remark. Frankenstein shook his head.

  'I had you down for more intelligence than that,' he said.

  'What do you want me to think so far?' said Barney. 'No phone call, no lawyer, no real reason to arrest me right now at this minute other than the fact that the press are all over me, and yet you bring me in.'

  'I haven't arrested you,' said Frankenstein.

  'So I can go?'

  Frankenstein looked at Proudfoot, turned back to Barney. Held his hands out in a conciliatory gesture.

  'Sure,' he said. 'If that's what you want to do.'

  Barney stared ahead. His eyes met Frankenstein's, but they weren't looking at him. They were staring into dead space. Not even calculating the odds. Barney wasn't going anywhere and it seemed that everyone in the room knew it.

  'But you don't, do you?' said Frankenstein, confirming Barney's thought. 'You've been on the run long enough. There's not many people happy who constantly wander. It's human nature to have somewhere to call home, even if it seems dull. We need dull in our lives, we need that monotonous constant, somewhere to go back to. To slow down or to pick back up, depending what the rest of our lives bring. But you, you don't have it, do you? You wander from place to place and you never find peace. Because that's what home is. Peace. And you don't have any.'

  Proudfoot quickly glanced sideways at her boss. He liked to come across as thick-skinned, brusque. But he didn't just know Scooby Doo.

  'I thought maybe it was Millport,' said Barney, aware that Frankenstein's one minute appreciation of the human spirit was luring him into conversation. Proudfoot may have had increasing regard for her DCI, but to Barney it was all a game. Given, however, that he had every intention of owning up to any genuine charges which were thrown his way, and that he didn't actually care whether or not that was done in front of a lawyer, it didn't seem to matter.

  'What happened?'

  Barney made a small gesture with his hands.

  'The crew of a trawler went missing, an old woman got her head sliced off...'

  'And so your ever decreasing circle went on...'

  'So it seems.'

  'Why Millport?' he asked quickly.

  Barney wondered if Frankenstein thought that he was playing his prisoner, if he was going to walk out of there and say to his sergeant, 'That guy was putty. Putty!' However, he wasn't bothered by it, wasn't amused by it either. Things would pan out the way they were going to and at some point he would come out the other side. The only question was where that was going to be.

  'Holidays forty years ago. Happy days. Saw the barbershop for sale in a Glasgow paper, came back to look, it felt like home.'

  'Peace.'

  'Peace.'

  Frankenstein placed his hands on the table in a sudden gesture of finality. He leant forward, a panther poised to leap on his prey, although in this case it was a panther poised to walk out and leave his prey to it.

  'Mr Thomson, I'll be honest. I haven't the faintest idea what to make of you. Or your weird life. Or the fact that you used to be dead, yet here you are and you appear to be who you say you are. And do I think you're responsible for the spate of deaths on the little island over there? Not for a second. You might be, I'm not ruling anything out, but if I was to put money on it, it wouldn't be you. Of course, the sad fact of this investigation so far is that I wouldn't even know where to begin placing my money. No real clues, no suspects. Apart from you. Which is why you're here. The press are all over you, they'd be all over me until I brought you in, as was my Superintendent this morning, demanding to know why you were still at large. So, that's why you're here. To protect you from yourself, or more accurately, to protect you from your reputation, deserved or otherwise. You've not been arrested, I'm not about to charge you with anything. I sense, however, that you might want to have a chat about your past. So, I'm going to leave you to talk to my sergeant, who I believe you know from your previous days of actual crime. She's going to tell me everything you tell her. We'll hold you here for a day or two, in the hope that...well, God knows. That we find the killer in the meantime? T
hat the media forget about you? This is sticking plaster police work, I admit it. Seat of my pants. And I know, I know, I'm monologuing. I'm leaving, you two have a chat. I can't promise you that we won't charge you in connection with any of the previous stuff you did, and I can't promise you that we'll ever find you your peace that you've been searching for.'

  He stood up, his words having been delivered at machine gun pace. He looked down at Proudfoot.

  'Sergeant,' he said, and then he was gone, the door closed firmly behind him.

  Barney looked across the desk at Proudfoot, who produced a notepad from her pocket and laid it on the desk.

  'Where are we exactly?' asked Barney.

  'Saltcoats,' said Proudfoot.

  Barney smiled and nodded. Had never been to Saltcoats in all his years of holidays on the Clyde. Passed through it on the train, had looked out at the people and the cold beaches.

  'No tape recorder?' he said.

  'Really, Barney,' she said, 'this is so informal it's not happening. We don't want to get into charging you with all that crap from before if we can help it. You were dead, it's a shame we can't just leave it at that. So, no tape recorder. We'd get hung if we did that. Just a chat, a few notes, you tell me what you feel like telling me.'

  Barney sat back, let out a sigh. Time to tell his story to a sympathetic audience. Trusted her completely, wasn't even too bothered if it turned out that he was wrong to do that. Looked round behind him to check if he'd missed the large two-way mirror that you always get in the movies.

  'This is Saltcoats,' said Proudfoot, reading his mind.

  He smiled. Looked into her eyes, read the genuine smile that was returned there. Old friends, it seemed, however odd that might have been.

  'I worked in a shop,' he said suddenly, the story finally getting the chance to burst forth, 'me and two young guys. I was Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt. They were Bill and Ted...'

  Bladestone

  Frankenstein sighed heavily. Turned away from the sea, the view that was beginning to bewitch him. He didn't like getting bewitched by anything. Usually it was women. Occasionally a TV series. But the sea? He needed to get back up to Glasgow, where maybe he could content himself with occasional glances at the river.