The Barbershop Seven

by Douglas Lindsay

  If he had to guess he would've gone for Veron Veron because the man had almost been invisible. They had all come to see him at some point, they'd all put in their tuppence ha'penny's worth. Who he was, where he had come from, who was behind the murders, why Napoleon invaded Russia when he did, why the Everley Brothers fell out over a bag of doughnuts live on stage in 1974. An endless series of pronouncements and opinions masquerading as facts.

  All except Veron Veron, the joker in the pack.

  The door opened. No Willing and Able here.

  Barney turned, resigned. Here we go. Could hear himself being told he was in a Truman Show situation. His whole existence was a set-up for the television audience. Maybe the murders were all being committed for TV too. Just a bit of fun. Would it be all that far removed from what actually happened these days?

  Father Michael closed the door and stepped into the room. Makes sense, thought Barney. The messenger returns with more news from the front.

  'Mr Thomson,' said Father Michael. The same trepidation as before. As if he'd been called before God to account for his actions.

  'Michael,' said Barney. 'What have you got for me today?'

  Michael walked further into the room, round the conference table, came and stood beside Barney at the window. He looked out over the joyless grey skies of Edinburgh.

  'The weather has changed,' said Michael.

  Barney turned and followed the priest's gaze out over the city. To the west the clouds were darker still, worse yet to come.

  'You've been standing outside all day to think of that one,' said Barney, caustically. 'Why am I here?' he added, voice cold.

  It was a Thursday night and he had better things to do. Like sit in a bar getting drunk, or sit at home watching prodigiously awful survival shows on television hosted by former sports stars.

  'The killing is over,' said Michael.

  His eyes turned down, his fingers toyed with each other, tapping lightly against the glass.

  'How can you be so sure?' asked Barney.

  Michael hesitated in reply. He wasn't about to tell Barney the truth, and he was no politician. Lies and prevarication did not come so easily to him.

  'It's over, that's all that's important,' he said. 'There will be no more death, tell that to your police contacts.'

  'I'm sure they'll be delighted,' said Barney.

  'I understand,' said Michael, then further hesitation as he considered his words, 'I know, I realise that they will want to bring someone to justice for these crimes, but tell them. Let them know that at the very least they will not happen again.'

  'Whoop-de-doo and bad-a-bing,' said Barney. 'Only eight down, that's not important. There are a hundred and fifty deaths in Scotland every day, so what are eight more, eh?'

  'That's not what I'm saying,' said Michael.

  'Yes it is,' said Barney. 'And you're right, after all. Life, death, it's all one big bag. Particularly from your point of view when you don't actually think you're dying anyway. So, there were maybe 50,000 deaths in Scotland last year. What's another eight?'

  'Well, yes,' said Father Michael, snapping just a little. Exasperated at Barney's tone. 'You could say that. Especially when some of them deserved to die.'

  'Ah,' said Barney. 'Fine words for a priest.'

  Father Michael closed his eyes, breathed deeply. This wasn't going well, but what had he expected? That Barney Thomson would be as spineless as he himself?

  'Tell me why you're so sure,' said Barney, 'and I might speak to them.'

  'I can't,' said Michael.

  Barney nodded. Another unreliable witness.

  'Fine,' he said, and he turned his back – that's how confident he was – and began to walk around the conference table. Waiting for Michael to say something else, because he would not have called him up here at this time in the evening for something as ineffectual as this. The man knew something, and he wanted to give the police some information, be it the truth or a false trail.

  'Stop,' said Michael on cue, as Barney reached the door.

  Barney turned.

  'I don't want to hear any more crap,' he said.

  'It's Blackadder,' said Michael. 'Dr Blackadder.'

  'That'll be as opposed to Professor Blackadder, or Blackadder the Clown,' said Barney.

  'It's not something to be facetious about,' snapped Michael. 'She's a killer. A cold-blooded killer. She's killed them all.'

  'Blackadder the Killer,' said Barney, holding his arms up in a banner headline. 'Hannibal Blackadder. Buffalo Blackadder. Rebecca Bates. Rebecca Krueger.'

  'My God!' shouted Michael. 'This is no joke! How can you say these things? It pains me to tell you this and you mock me. Mock me! Rebecca is a dear woman. I don't know her well, but she has confessed to me. Don't you understand? I have taken her confession. By telling you this I'm breaking my vows.'

  'That must've been hard for you,' said Barney dryly.

  Michael came forward, leant on the table, palms of his hands flat out.

  'It is, Mr Thomson, it is!' he cried. 'This is the most awful position for me, can't you understand? But I know the killing is over. I thought maybe we could leave it at that. I accept the monstrous nature of her crimes, but I thought by letting the police know that there would be no more killing, perhaps it would be allowed to pass, that my betrayal of her trust would not be revealed.'

  He looked imploringly across the table. The desperate words of a desperate man.

  'What about God?' said Barney.

  'What about him?' said Michael, standing straighter, bit of a wee worried look in his eyes.

  'Aren't you concerned,' said Barney, 'about God? Even if Rebecca didn't know you had betrayed her, even if the police never knew you'd broken your vows, surely God would know?'

  This, as they say in The Broons, put Michael's gas at a peep. Had he been a politician, had he been Jesse Longfellow-Moses or Tony Blair or Gerhard Schröder or George Bush, he would immediately have started spouting shite, smooth and easy like a blowhole on top of a sewerage. But he was a priest; not that he wasn't used to talking shite or anything, but it was all carefully prepared shite. Off the cuff stuff was a totally different matter.

  'God?' said Michael, as if mentioning the name of someone he hadn't thought of before.

  'Your boss,' said Barney.

  'God will forgive me,' said Michael, quickly. 'He will understand.'

  Barney smiled. Not like an agent of the Lord to come up with a cosy answer. All the bloody same.

  'And what about the fact that you're shagging Rebecca?' said Barney. 'How's the big fella going to feel about that?'

  Time stopped. The bell tolled. Father Michael's mouth opened slightly; his tongue edged out onto his bottom lip. The inside of his mouth went dry. Goose bumps broke out over his body; he shivered them away.

  Barney watched with a kind of detached amusement. On the edge looking in, unlike some of his previous adventures, when he'd been stuck in the bloody middle of it all. He couldn't really have cared less. He didn't know for a fact that Michael was sleeping with Blackadder. A kiss at their door at two in the morning wasn't exactly proof. But the reaction he'd just given to the charge was confession enough. Decided to hold back the charge of sleeping with Louise Farrow until a further appropriate moment.

  Michael said nothing. Barney shrugged. Turned his back again, opened the door.

  'It was me,' said Michael, a little more convincingly this time, voice quiet.

  'What?' said Barney.

  'It was me,' he said. 'I murdered those politicians. I've got some things. I can prove it.'

  Barney stayed halfway out the door. Wouldn't have believed anything that Michael told him now. But if he was telling the truth, then it was out of Barney's hands. He wasn't going to absolve the man of his crimes.

  'You must've been interviewed by the police at some point in the last few days,' said Barney.

  Michael nodded.

  'Right then,' said Barney. 'They'll have left you a contact numbe
r. You know what to do.'

  Michael stared silently. Beginning to sweat; hot under the dog collar. Dry tongue emerged again to lick drier lips. His nostrils flared. He swallowed.

  'Did you really do it?' said Barney.

  'Yes,' Michael responded quickly.

  'Nice of you to try and stiff Rebecca then,' said Barney. 'Very Christian.'

  Michael said nothing. Barney turned away, stepped from Conference Room 12, closed the door and walked away along the corridor.

  Bloody religion, he mumbled as he went. He could remember everything about that.

  Fortune Favours The Munificent

  Jesse Longfellow-Moses burst dramatically into the sitting room, waving a blank piece of paper thrillingly in his hand. Classic kid in a sweetie shop expression on his face; that look of innocent excitement with the unbelievably trivial, the look that men never lose, and women never have in the first place. Boy's stuff.

  Minnie was watching some trashy erotic thriller on Channel 5, with a name like Lethal Fatality, Mortal Casualty or Fatal Death, and pretended not to notice him.

  'Champion!' bellowed JLM. 'Absolute bloody champion!'

  She looked away from the cheesy music playing over two naked, soft focus, wrestling bodies, by an open fire in LA in the height of summer.

  'Won the lottery?' she said, half an eyebrow raised. Christ, she thought, there are so many better things I could be doing on a weekday night. So many more interesting people to be with.

  'Better than that!' he said, standing between her and the television, forcing her to pay attention. 'Better than bloody that!' he repeated, and still the wonderful enthusiasm was in his voice.

  She looked up at him; remembered with little regret the times when she had been amused by his boyish enthusiasms, had even found them attractive. But now? Now she had no time for them. And what man was any different? Shallow, pathetic and weak. That was what made women so much more interesting company.

  'You have my undivided,' she said, as he more or less hadn't given her the choice.

  'You know Larry Bellows?' he said.

  She looked at him in much the way he deserved. Everybody knew Larry Bellows. In fact, the only person in the country who had his head stuck so far up his own backside that he might not know Larry Bellows, was JLM himself.

  'Yes,' she said.

  'Tomorrow night!' said JLM with triumph.

  'How d'you mean that?' asked Minnie. 'Larry Bellows is always on on a Friday night.'

  'No,' said JLM, waving the paper on which he was about to start making notes, as if it contained vital information, 'us. You, me, the cabinet, the team. They want to do us! Isn't it absolutely champion?'

  'What are you talking about?' she said disdainfully. 'How are they going to do us? They set these things up months in advance. Do all sorts of planning.'

  'Not today, Zurg!' he said. 'They've had a cancellation for tomorrow. They were supposed to be doing one of the scabby royals, apparently, but they've thrown their teddy in the corner and pulled the plug. They've been unable to pull forward anyone from the next few weeks, so they're looking for an interesting subject at short notice.'

  The voice was still racing along at the speed of light, the wee kid trying to tell his mum and dad all about the goals he'd scored that afternoon for the Cub football team.

  'National TV,' he said. 'National bollocking TV. The whole of Britain, isn't it bloody champion?'

  'You're kidding me, right?' she said. But she knew he wasn't. JLM loved this stuff. Larry Bellows was an American talk show host contracted to the BBC for a few months to do behind-the-scenes docu-crap that went out live on a Friday evening. It was usually the Royal family or A-list celebs. Christ, thought Minnie, they must really have been struggling for business to stoop to Jesse Longfellow-Moses.

  'This is wonderful,' said JLM. 'A national audience. Millions of people. That show got twenty-one million people when they did Posh & Becks. Twenty-one million! You imagine what it'll be like. We could have twenty-one million people listening to my vision for Scotland and for Europe. And the world, goddammit.' His face suddenly lit up even more. 'The world!' he said. 'BBC Prime, digital whatever, Christ, whatever it is they're doing these days. People all around the world are going to be listening to me. Me! Jesse Longfellow-Moses. One man! One dream! One vision!'

  Minnie smiled. Did the man's conceit know no bounds? Well, of course it didn't, she knew that better than anyone else.

  'It'll be a proud moment in your life,' she said dryly.

  'Proud?' ejaculated JLM. 'It'll be a damn sight more than proud. Bloody magnificent. It'll be my Trafalgar, my Bannockburn, my Waterloo!'

  'Would that be your Wellington's Waterloo or your Napoleon's Waterloo,' she asked.

  'This is our chance for the name Jesse Longfellow-Moses to become synonymous with world statesmanship. Television is the new war, and this is my chance at glory!'

  Minnie nodded. Very impressive. The viewers of the world would be geeked.

  'If television is the new war, what's war then?' she sighed.

  'There's not a person in any land on the planet will not know the name Longfellow-Moses,' he said, ignoring her.

  'War is the new peace,' she said, staring at the floor.

  'I'll be JFK. I'll be Martin Luther King, I'll be Frank Sinatra. Chairman Mao.'

  'War is the new ice cream.'

  'We have to grasp this moment, seize the ruddy day! Carpe diem! Bloody Hell, I shall be magnificent tomorrow night. The world will be wowed by my munificence, my vision, my poetry. God, what an opportunity.'

  'War is the new pink,' she said, then decided she should shut up. Might as well let the man get carried away by the weight of his own bum fluff.

  'Right,' he said, suddenly considering practicalities. 'We have to mobilise the troops. We need to get Weirdlove, start working out who we need, what kind of set-up we're going to have.'

  'Bloody champion,' he added, as he turned and marched from the room, still doing a Neville Chamberlain with the piece of paper.

  Minnie watched him go, had a little flutter that she too was going to be on worldwide television, did not give in to it, at least, not yet, then turned back to the latest shenanigans on the Channel 5 movie. Two women this time, and she settled further down into her seat, for the best two minutes of the evening.

  The Usual Roll Call Of Late Night Visitors

  Barney was safe in his room, channel surfing. Had briefly stopped on the same tripe as Minnie Longfellow-Moses, but on the whole was giving no show more than a minute and a half. On autopilot, zipping through the wonders of digital entertainment. Beach volleyball, stock car racing, Brazilian soap opera, documentary, docu-soap, docu-drama, docu-sport, docu-sex, docu-documentary, game shows, quiz shows, blooper shows, gardening and cooking and makeover and decorating. All utter, utter bollocks.

  As ever, when Barney was sitting alone in his room, there was a knock at the door. He turned, looked at the time, a quarter to eleven, shook his head.

  'Should just leave the bloody door open,' he mumbled, as he got up. 'Or put a sign up. Enter All Ye Who Pass Within A Hundred Yards. Hang Around. Make Yourself At Home. Get On My Tits.'

  He opened the door. It was Tom & Jerry.

  'Hi,' said Solomon, walking straight passed Barney. Kent followed, nodding his greeting with a slight facial movement.

  'Come in,' said Barney. 'Nothing I like more on a Thursday evening than some Loony Tunes.'

  Solomon stopped abruptly so that Kent walked into the back of him.

  'Listen, cowboy,' he said, 'if you're thinking of the two of us as Tom & Jerry, that's as may be, I don't give a shit. But T&J were MGM, not fucking Loony Tunes. You got that?'

  Barney held up his hands in a placatory gesture. He closed the door and leant back against it. Didn't want to walk back into the heart of the room, sit down, get comfortable. Didn't want this to last.

  'Where were you between eight and nine tonight?' said Solomon abruptly. It was late, Solomon had been ca
lled away from a night of potential loving, and he was in no mood for messing around either. Something which Barney sensed, and so he did not even consider artifice of any sort. He wasn't about to start protecting Father Michael. What did he care about any of them?

  'I was in the Assembly building,' he said.

  'Too bloody right you were,' said Solomon. 'Caught by more fucking cameras than Kylie Minogue when she gets her arse out. You want to tell us what you were doing?'

  'I received a note inviting me,' said Barney.

  'Oh, very fucking clever,' said Solomon. 'You didn't want to tell us about it earlier?'

  Barney shrugged. Wasn't going to allow them to put him on the defensive.

  'Didn't know who it was from, what it was about. It could've been anything,' he said. 'I don't have to tell you every time I go for a shit.'

  'Yeah, very nice, cowboy,' said Solomon. 'Can we take it you went to see the religious comedian, Father Michael?'

  Barney nodded. It was inevitable that they'd know who else was there. More cameras than on Kylie Minogue's arse after all.

  'Aye,' he said, but didn't volunteer any more information.

  'Well,' said Solomon, 'you might like to consider that if you'd told us the fuck what was going on, Father Michael might still be alive.'

  Barney's head dropped back against the door. Jesus, another one. And not a politician this time. It was spreading. Had he cared about Father Michael? Not in the least, but if he could've acted differently so that he might still be alive, then that was something to regret.

  'You think I killed him?' asked Barney, raising his head, although the possibility did not bother him in the least.

  'We know you didn't,' said Kent, sticking his wee nose into the conversation for the first time.

  'He jumped from the roof. Enough people saw him before he took the final plummet for us to know it wasn't murder. Note in his own handwriting in his jacket pocket.'

  'Oh,' said Barney. 'What did it say?'

  'What did he tell you?' asked Solomon quickly.

  Barney breathed in. Should he further implicate Blackadder? Why bother? The last thing Michael had said was to implicate himself, and just because Barney hadn't believed a word of it, didn't mean he couldn't share the knowledge as if it might've been true.