The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series)

by Douglas Lindsay

  Mulholland stared through the gloom. Proudfoot was an attractive woman; in this light she was glorious. Delicious, sexy, seductive; all of those things. His ill-humour, his impatience, his rampant apathy, combined to make him want her even more. Right now, in a cold, dark, damp corridor, in a freezing monastery, with a killer on the loose, in the middle of nowhere.

  'No,' he said. No matter what he was feeling, he couldn't mask ill-humour this ill.

  'We've got to look for him. It doesn't matter what his motives were. If he'd intended to be long about it, he would have given some other excuse. Something must have happened to him.'

  'I don't care, Erin,' snapped Mulholland, and he almost spat the name out, and the use of it sent a shiver down her spine, making her take a step back. 'If he wants to be such a bloody fool as to go mincing around the bloody Monastery of Death in the middle of the night, on his own, well, sod him. He deserves to die.'

  Mulholland, candle blazing its way in front, began to move off down the corridor. Proudfoot stood her ground. 'Don't be such a selfish arsehole.'

  He stopped. His shoulders were hunched against the cold. The candle dully illuminated holes and nooks in the walls where spiders lived and where small insects went to die. And the thrown shadows moved with him as he slowly turned around.

  'What did you just say, Sergeant?' he said. Voice on the edge, but she had had enough of it, and was not cowed.

  'You're not the only one stuck in this bloody awful place, you know. You're not the first person who's split up with his wife, you're not the first person who hates his job, you're not the first person to spend a freezing night in a place they could not want to be in less. Get a fucking grip of yourself. And cut the Sergeant crap 'n all, because I'm not letting you get away with this. There's a fellow officer somewhere in this building and he very likely needs our help. Now, come on!'

  Proudfoot marched off in the opposite direction, further into the bowels of the monastery. Towards the chamber where Sheep Dip lay prostrate on the floor; cold stone, briefly warmed by policeman's blood.

  Mulholland breathed deeply. Maybe she was right, but the thought didn't even begin to formulate itself. Nevertheless, with the chill bitter and clutching his coat close around him, he began to walk after her, several paces behind and making no effort to catch up.

  'If we get back to the room and that big bastard is sitting there, you're dead, Sergeant,' he muttered to the darkness between them. And if she heard him, she did not let on.

  ***

  Barney Thomson shook. He had moved on from shivering, and now his whole body vibrated wildly with cold and fear. He had seen so much death, more than in a gaggle of Bond movies, and yet this was worse than all of it.

  He had seen the killer at work, from no more than five yards away. He had seen him strike repeatedly with a knife, carried away in a crazed frenzy of diabolical delight. He had seen him drink from the cup of evil, and eat the meat from the calf of villainy. This was a man who enjoyed his work, who'd been carried away with a brutal felicity. And this was a man whom he knew, whose hair he had cut, whose skin he had pressed his scissors against.

  If only he had let those scissors penetrate that skin.

  What now? Barney thought as he shook. The killer-monk had fled the scene, leaving Barney alone with the corpse of Detective Sergeant Sheep MacPherson. Stabbed at least nine or ten times, when once would have sufficed. Blood had sprayed around, although invisible in the non-light. Barney had fled, footfalls silent in the dark, in the opposite direction.

  All the way back to his hiding place, however, he'd imagined he was being followed; every time he stopped he thought he could hear the sound of movement behind him. A breath, a softly laden shoe, a cloak brushing against a wall; a laugh. So that now, as he sat in the attic with who knew what creatures for company, he was frightened for the first time since he'd come to this place. For the first time in many, many years.

  And he sat against a cold wall, and not a single coherent thought came his way. He could turn himself in in the morning – should he survive until then – and at the same time tell the police who the real killer was. But who was going to believe him? Now that the sergeant lay dead, with a note on his person, inviting him to a meeting with Barney – and threatening death to others if he came accompanied?

  Only when he was two corridors closer to the sanctuary of the loft had Barney thought to return and check Sheep Dip's clothes for the note, but nothing on earth could have made him turn around and head back towards the scene of death and towards the demons which trailed his every move.

  And now he sat and shook, wondering if he should hand himself over to the police. But the storm continued to rage outside, so he still would not get out of this place. He would be kept prisoner in some small room, and then he would be sitting prey for the killer. Or would the police and the monks just take revenge upon him immediately – a kangaroo court – on the assumption that he was the guilty man?

  Barney shook, and went on shaking.

  ***

  They found Sheep Dip's body nearly an hour later. An hour's search, interrupted by a brief return to their room to make sure Sheep Dip wasn't sitting eating chocolate fudge bars, drinking beer and reading the February edition of Blitz!

  Down endless corridors, the storm always evident outside, no matter how deep within the bowels of the monastery they went. When it happened, they became aware that something was wrong before they saw it. As they neared the chamber, Mulholland now in front – irascibility having given way to unease – they slowed down and stared more intently into the gloom. They were about to encounter death; they could feel it. Goose bumps goose-stepped across their bodies, from one to the other.

  'You still back there?' asked Mulholland, needing to hear noise shatter this awful silence.

  'I was going to stop for coffee, but changed my mind,' answered Proudfoot. 'Couldn't decide between an Americano and a latte.'

  'We can get it later. That and some...'

  The joke drifted off into silence as he got his first sight of the body; his slow pace became even slower. Proudfoot emitted an audible gasp as she saw the corpse. Big, ugly, crumpled and, as they got nearer, the bloody swirl around it.

  Detective Sergeant Gordon MacPherson. Sheep Dip. The Dip. The Dipmeister. Diporama. The Big Dipper. The Dipsmeller Pursuivant. General Dipenhower. The Dipster.

  Dead.

  'Shit,' said Mulholland, as they came alongside the body and stood over it. Proudfoot's hand reached up to her mouth; she swallowed. Mulholland bent down and touched the blood on the floor, then on Sheep Dip's mutilated body.

  'Cold,' he said. 'Mind you, of course it's cold in this place, so I can't say how long he's been dead. Could be ten minutes, could be an hour.'

  He stood up and they stared at one another, the shadows jumping a little more vigourously from Proudfoot's trembling hand. Mulholland forgot his anger of an hour earlier; Proudfoot forgot that she'd been intending to be angry with him if something had happened to Sheep Dip.

  'Stabbed?' she asked.

  'Aye. Quite a few times, by the looks of things.'

  'Barney Thomson?'

  Mulholland shook his head and looked off into the shadows. It was strange that they should stand over this mutilated body and not fear for their lives; not fear that the killer might still lurk near by. A sixth sense of some sort; a knowledge that this was not their time.

  'It just doesn't seem right. This is a guy who's been swanning around the Highlands cutting hair on the cheap. We didn't hear one bad thing about him. And the only bad stuff they had to say back home was that he was boring. Doesn't make him a raving nutter.'

  'You want to search him?' said Proudfoot, and Mulholland looked down at the bloody mess.

  'Aye, I should. We'll have to tell the Abbot, but no doubt the minute they find out about this they'll want to whisk the body off to be with God, or something like that.'

  'He's not one of them. We can stop them.'

  Mulholland bent
down and started to wade through the cold blood. 'We can try, Sergeant. But we're stuck here for God knows how long. There's no back-up; there's thirty-odd of them and two of us. They can do pretty much what they like at the moment.'

  Proudfoot turned away and looked around the small chamber where Sheep Dip had drawn his final breath. Her skin crawled again as shadows tripped in some terpsichorean nightmare; and she saw things in corners and movement in holes in the wall; and maybe, after all, she was afraid. Maybe Death was closer than their instincts would allow her to believe.

  Mulholland came up with pieces of paper from the pockets of Sheep Dip's shredded clothes, and carefully he dried them of blood and held them to the light of the candle.

  A list of women's phone numbers – mostly strippers from Thurso, although Mulholland was not to know that; a Visa bill for £161.89 from a lingerie shop in Inverness; a recipe for bread-and-butter pudding; a notebook with general notes about the case, which Mulholland slipped into his pocket; a photograph of a sheep, with the words Mabeline, Spring '96 written on the back; an itemised bill for £21.62 from a grocer in Huntly. All that, and one more thing: a note from Barney Thomson offering to meet Sheep Dip in the chamber in which he now lay dead. Come at midnight, and come alone, or others will die.

  Mulholland stood, still studying it; letting the other pieces of paper fall to the floor. He held his candle close and let Proudfoot read the note.

  They both breathed deeply, then stared around the dark chamber which surrounded them. Felt the chill; not just the chill of night.

  'Right,' said Mulholland eventually. 'From now on you and I stick together. Not even one second, Sergeant, all right?'

  Proudfoot let a silent nod drop into the night.

  'We should go and find the Abbot. And Herman 'n all, he's just about the only guy around here who knows what's going on.'

  Mulholland placed Barney Thomson's note in his pocket and then, leading the way, picked a corridor and, having no idea if it was in the right direction, set off in search of the Abbot's bedchamber. And as they left Sheep Dip's mutilated body, they didn't notice that his gun was missing, because they'd never known that he'd had one in the first place.

  A Hard Snow Falls

  They arrived in twos and threes, but none of them on their own. The rumours had spread through the monastery like an infectious disease; a syphilis of the mind. There had been more murders in the night, of that all these monks were certain; and anyone who wasn't at breakfast was assumed to have been a victim. They each had their theories; on who might be dead, who might be next, and who might be carrying out these crimes against God.

  Brother Mince missed breakfast on the back of a thumping headache, and there were those who assumed the worst. Brother Malcolm was also missing and again presumptions were made – but only by those who had forgotten that Malcolm always missed breakfast. Strangely, however, despite the absence of Herman, no one thought the worst of that. No one imagined for a minute that something could have happened to Herman. He was a bastard, maybe, but also the rock on which the integrity and strength of the monastery had been maintained. Nothing could have happened to Herman because, if it had, then what did that say of the chances for the rest of them?

  And so they gathered in the dining room, two fires blazing to keep the cold at bay. What would once have been a gathering of thirty-two, now reduced to twenty-six. Muted conversations, muted humour; they assumed they were to be addressed by Herman or the Abbot. A few eyebrows raised when Herman was not at the Abbot's side, but still they did not suspect. Assumed that Herman was off doing that Sherlock Holmes/Spanish Inquisition amalgam at which he'd become so proficient.

  There was an exhaled breath of surprise when the legendary Brother Mince arrived, as the rumour of his demise had already quickly spread; and a few heads nodded in self-reproach at the arrival of Brother Malcolm.

  They were all present and seated on benches at the required time, with the Abbot and two of the three police officers standing at the head of the room. It was not the Abbot who spoke, however; he simply passed the authority for the abbey and this situation to Mulholland with a slight nod of the head, then joined the other monks on the benches.

  A low murmur. Had the Abbot relinquished control?

  Mulholland surveyed the worried faces. What was it they expected him to say? He swallowed, he lowered his eyes, he shut out the sound of the wind and the storm; the blizzard as furious as it had been for days.

  'Gentlemen, there's a lot to be covered, and the Abbot thought it best that I speak to you.'

  A few eyes narrowed, and he knew they would be wondering if he'd given the Abbot a choice. Everywhere was the same; the basis of any organisation could be religion, it could be sport, it could be drinking, gambling, sex or backgammon, but when it came down to it, it was all about politics and people looking after themselves and trying to dictate to others.

  'As some of you might have heard, there have been another two murders in the night.' Silence. Two? And a few eyes were thrown shiftily around the room. 'I'm afraid that one of the victims was Brother Herman.' Silence again, stunned this time, for a few seconds, and then the differing reactions around the room. Tears from Brother Sincerity. Mulholland gave them a while, knowing that the next reported victim would not elicit the same reaction. 'And the other was one of my men, Sergeant MacPherson.'

  'The Dipmeister!' came an anguished cry from the back.

  Mulholland nodded. 'Aye, I'm afraid so. Both killed by the same knife as far as we can tell.'

  He let the news settle in, unaware that many of the monks were even more affected by the news of Sheep Dip's death. For if even the police weren't safe...

  'Gentlemen, Sergeant Proudfoot and I are obviously up from Glasgow, but we didn't set out up here to investigate these crimes. We knew nothing of them until Saturday evening. We were in Durness on the trail of a man who is wanted in Glasgow in connection with several deaths last winter and spring. We now have little doubt that by some bizarre coincidence...' No such thing as coincidence in police work, thought Proudfoot; no such thing as coincidence in religion, thought the Abbot; I wonder if I can get Herman's thirteenth-century Italian lithograph collection, thought Adolphus. '...the man we sought was hiding here at this abbey under the name of Brother Jacob.'

  Definite gasps this time, coupled with a few cries of 'I knew yon bastard was a serial killer.'

  'His name is Barney Thomson and, although we had our doubts that he was the monastery killer even when we discovered he was here, it now looks as though there is little doubt that he is the man we seek. As far as we know there have been no sightings of him in the last thirty-six hours, but clearly he is still at large somewhere within the monastery.' Brother Steven stared at the floor and wondered whether or not to keep his own counsel. 'With the weather the way it is, he's not going to be going anywhere. Therefore, we all need to be extremely vigilant. Already six of your number and one of ours have died, and we have to do everything in our power to make sure those numbers do not rise.'

  He paused and looked around the small pond of worried faces. Poor bastards, he thought, then the thought was gone. If they were going to be so stupid as to live in a place like this, shit was going to happen. But then, the shit that was happening here was a product of the outside world.

  'So, from now on, gentlemen, we go everywhere in twos. You pair off before you leave this room and, after that, you never let your partner out of your sight until this weather clears and we get some relief. And I don't care if there are some things which you'd prefer to do in private. You don't let your partner out of your sight until we have been evacuated from this place and the threat of Barney Thomson has been removed.'

  He looked around the room again, from face to face. Trying to convince them. Not even sure that twos would be enough. Maybe they would have to stick together in twenty-sixes.

  'Hey, it's that whole murder thing,' said Brother Steven from within the midst of the monks. 'The Cat and the Canary, And Then Th
ere Were None, all that jazz. Picked off one by one. Kinda freaky, but exciting in a strange way. But you know, about all this stick-together stuff. What are we supposed to do once darkness comes and sleep takes us, Chief Inspector? Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep," the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, the death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, blame of hurt minds, great nature's second course.'

  'Aye, what he said,' said Brother Edward, nodding vigorously.

  Mulholland took a deep breath. Fixed Brother Steven with his best shut up and stop talking pish look. 'Very good, Brother, keep talking like that and you might bore the guy out of hiding.'

  Steven smiled ruefully, then retreated behind the cloak.

  'I reiterate,' said Mulholland, wondering if anyone in the Highlands had words of their own, 'we do nothing alone. Not pray, not eat, not shit, not change clothes, not jerk off, if that's what you lot do to relieve tension. None of that stuff alone. Limpets, gentlemen, be limpets to each other. And if we can cut down the number of rooms we visit and places we go in the monastery, we do it. Those of you who sleep in rooms at the other end from this hall, when we're done, go and get your things and move them to a room within the vicinity. We don't stray, gentlemen, and it's very important that you all obey this rule. Furthermore, if any of you have had any contact with Barney Thomson or Brother Jacob or whatever you want to call him, then please come forward. No matter how trivial, no matter any of it, if you've got something to say, please say it. Co-operation is the only way we're going to protect ourselves and hopefully catch the bloke in a place like this.'

  He stopped and looked around the room once more. He wondered how many more of them would die before the blizzard relented. Did not doubt that he would survive himself, however. A life this miserable was bound to continue for a long time.

  'That's it. You can go now, but not too far. I don't want to order everyone to spend most of the day in here, but that might be for the best. So, can I suggest that if there's something you want, go and get it now and then spend the rest of the day in this room. Now, are there any questions?'