Bastard, thought Brother Steven. He will steal my thunder, my name, my infamy. This bastard will steal my place in history.
Steven breathed deeply; an angry sneer invaded his face, his lips curled. Suddenly he hated Barney Thomson as much as he had hated all those morons who'd driven his father from the true path of his life. It was bad enough to steal a man's possessions or to steal his wife, perhaps even bad to take his life, but it was nothing to match that of taking his name and his reputation, of stealing the honour of having committed the deeds for which he should be known. From Alexander the Great pretending that it was he who'd conquered the known world, and not his half-brother Maurice, to Milli Vanilli achieving fame on the back of Pavarotti's early studio work, history was replete with those living off the deeds of others.
He, Steven Cafferty, could not allow this to happen. Before he was done, the world would know who he was and what he had achieved. Men would bow before him; presidents would drink from the poisoned chalice of his vision; kings and queens would bow in honour of his accomplishments; God himself would pay homage to him in celebration of his munificence. But, most of all, before he did anything else, before he walked down any other road, before he continued his extraordinary peregrination around the world of revenge, before he sank his teeth into the apple of retribution, Barney Thomson must die.
The knife hovered in the air above Barney's back. Steven's grip was light but steady; he could feel the blood meandering limply through Barney's veins, he could smell and taste it. This death would be sweeter than the murder of Herman, sweeter than the murder of the Abbot.
He could smell it, while Barney did not move. And so the knife began its pungent plunge towards the waiting spine of Barney Thomson.
A Walk In The Hills
They set out on the walk from the Abbey of the Holy Order of the Monks of St John to Durness. Twenty miles across fields and glens and hills of the deepest snow. They had to wade through it at some points; at others they had to plough through drifts nearly five feet high; everywhere the snow was at least two feet deep and the going was painfully slow. Proudfoot was at the back, walking in the cleared paths of the others. This was indeed an incredible journey; of the octopus, lion and snake variety.
Mulholland, Proudfoot, Brother Martin, Brother Raphael and Brother Edward. The monks had discarded their robes, so that this looked like any normal collection of seriously deranged hikers prepared to go out in all weathers. The sort of people who would be best booking mountain rescue in advance.
They would do well to get a third of the way through their journey before nightfall, Brother Raphael having delayed departure further by insisting on praying; in the end, he had only reluctantly left the abbey, being more than prepared to die and meet his maker. God will take care of us, he had said. He's not done much of a job so far, Mulholland had thought.
Martin led the way. He had sat and prayed along with Raphael, not wishing to upset his brother, but that had been for the last time. When he got to civilisation, if he ever reached it, he intended throwing off the shackles of the cloak forever. If he lived through this, the first thing he was going to do was get in touch with one of the tabloids, sell his story – 'I Was Too Cool to Die,' Says Brave Monk Hunk Hero – then go on a world tour, taking large quantities of drugs and alcohol and whatever else there was on the planet to dull, remove or pervert your sensibilities; while at the same time sleeping with everything – woman, man, animal, inflatable or cardboard – he could get his hands on. Strange that only one week earlier he'd had it in mind himself to murder Brother Herman, for the man had been a bully who'd deserved all he'd received. He had thought of using Barney Thomson's scissors, little knowing that that was exactly what Barney had had in mind himself. Stupid that he'd gone to see Barney to threaten him to keep his mouth shut. Ironic.
Funny how life pans out, thought Martin, as he led the way through the snowfields.
Raphael slotted in behind. A man with an unshakeable belief in God. When it had become apparent that the killer's agenda included everyone in the monastery, he had been the only one not afraid. The test of true faith. When Death was near, or an inevitability, were you afraid of what came next, for if you truly believed in the Lord, then you need not be afraid. That was the ultimate test, and one which all of the brothers had failed, even Copernicus, as this demon had laid waste to the complement of the monastery. All except Brother Raphael. The man's faith was unyielding. He faced the prospect of Death with certainty and he knew that should he survive this fantastic ordeal, one day he would return to the abbey to start afresh.
All this, of course, did not mean that he hadn't decided to sell his story to the papers. Any one of them would do; Life and Work if necessary. He could use the money to get the monastery restarted. And as he walked, he made his plans for the future – not knowing that his future consisted of little more than five hours' ploughing through snow. A refurbished monastery, Spartan but comfortable. They would attract tourists, who could come and see life as it had been in simpler times. People fell for that stuff all the time, he thought. A brilliant idea. They'd get all sorts of tourists wanting to go for it. Prince Charles for a start, and then the Americans would come in droves. Women too – they could accept them. They would get all sorts of Scandinavian Uberchicks, like the lassies in Abba, only with sensible hair. They could have mixed saunas, with Gregorian chant playing over the Tannoy; massages; all kinds of things. The investment opportunities were endless; for why couldn't money and religion mix? The Vatican had been doing it for centuries. They could get production companies in to make movies and stuff. They could steal Cadfael from whomsoever had it at that time; they could get The Name of the Rose follow-up; maybe some entirely new monk detective scenario; then, of course, there'd be the Barney Thomson biopic with Billy Connolly; or, if the worst came to the worst, they could always fall back on the Nordic connection and get sleazy low-budget Scandianavian porn flics, with names like Swedish Nympho Nuns Go Sex! and Lesbian Monastery Bitches Get Ugly. And so, the longer he walked, the more Brother Raphael was lured by Mammon, the further he got away from the abbey – in more ways than one.
Brother Edward faced the inevitability of the future. This business had merely confirmed what he'd already known – that the life of a monk was not for him. He would have to return to the real world and deal with the demons which awaited him. If it meant that he had to sleep with hundreds of women, casting them aside like so much chaff to the winds of fate, then so be it. If his life was to be one long inferno of endless sex and bitter retribution from long-distance telephone boxes, then that was how it must be. Perhaps he would even be able to do it for a living. Gigolo Ed, working the holiday resorts in the south of France, escorting the old and infirm to casinos and restaurants, then slipping from their beds while the night remained young and they lay snoring; making off with their jewellery, maybe – although that was another game altogether – then ending up with some young Mediterranean floozy at two o'clock in the morning, knee deep in sangria and pubic hair. It was a black future and it lay heavily upon his shoulders; he knew, however, that there would be no escape.
Mulholland was still in some sort of daze. He would have liked to have been consumed by determination to get them all to safety and to bring Barney Thomson to justice, but he was sapped of enthusiasm to the point of capitulation. He wanted Proudfoot to escape, but no longer cared about the other three. A sense of duty would drive him to protect them, but what did he care now? For, as he walked, he surveyed the battlefield of his future, and it was barren and laid waste. His life was Flanders Fields.
Melanie was gone, who knew for how long. Possibly forever, and in his heart he couldn't have cared less whether she returned or not. He tried picturing her in the arms of some bloke from Devon, but the image induced nothing in him. No anger, no jealousy, no pain. And what of the job? What was his future to be in the police after it was revealed that approximately three hundred monks had been murdered under his nose? Dispatched to catch
Barney Thomson, and instead the man had gone on a mass murder spree while Mulholland had slept.
And so his thoughts turned to what else he could have done to ensure the safety of this pathetic band. Should he have kept them all together in the main hall from the minute he'd arrived? Made sure they'd gone to the toilet in sixes and sevens? What else could have kept them safe? Not the twos he had suggested. Even then, he'd repeated his folly that morning with the Abbot and Brother Steven.
He hadn't imagined glory when he'd set out on this investigation; hadn't imagined much of anything. But that it would come to this: in future years this would be taught in police colleges as a perfect example of an investigation gone wrong. How not to handle a murder inquiry. How not to protect the public. How not to chase a serial killer across the country. From now on, whenever an officer made a hash of a case, they'd be said to have done a Mulholland. Hear about Jonesy staking out the wrong house and arresting the Chief Super's daughter? Aye, mate, the daft bastard did a Mulholland.
The monks all thought about women, in their way; and like Mulholland, Proudfoot was dazed. She hadn't encountered this much death since Die Hard II, and while that may have been a seminal piece of film-making, it just hadn't prepared her for two left hands lying on a table, warm blood still oozing. That, and everything which had gone before.
So, as she walked, Proudfoot did not think about the future. Her mind was concentrated on two left hands on a table. And as she watched them, mostly they lay still, but sometimes the fingers twitched; sometimes there was no blood, and sometimes the blood still pulsed from them; sometimes they looked inanimate, almost inhuman, as if they'd never had life, and sometimes they moved around; they walked on fingers, they danced, they cavorted, they fought. It was not the worst that she'd witnessed in these past two days, but it had captured her imagination. Imprisoned it, so that it held her mind captive to the vision. Two amputated hands were all she saw. As she walked, twice her feet slipped into freezing streams, twice she banged her knees on rocks, but nothing fazed her. The walk through the snow was slow and tortuous, but she barely noticed. Proudfoot's mind was on those two left hands. Occasionally she escaped the vision, but only to wonder in a detached way – as if it wasn't her at all – why it was that they held such an entangling grip on her mind, and why Barney Thomson would do something so bizarre; because that was what it was. Everyone who commits murder has their reasons, but why two left hands? Very eccentric behaviour. And so she contemplated the criminal mind, but only briefly, before she was brought back to those two hands on the table. Sometimes still, sometimes animated, sometimes in conversation. 'Here, Billy, give us a hand, mate.' 'You make that so-called "joke" one more time, you moron, and I'll punch your head in.'
In her way, Proudfoot was also going slightly mad; just not as mad as Barney, and with a much greater chance of recovery. She walked at the back; occasionally Mulholland turned to enquire after her well-being and she found the words to answer, and she didn't notice the cold and the snow and the blue skies turning to grey.
***
It was slow going, but they did not stop until darkness was almost upon them; by which time they were a little over a third of the way through their journey. Martin stopped ahead of the others, some fifty yards in front, and waited for them to catch up. He was in a small area of flat ground, the snow some two feet deep. As they approached, they could hear the sound of a small river somewhere underneath, and they all walked with trepidation down the line of Martin's footfalls. The skies were grey, turning darker, and were it not for the brightness of the snow, the light would have completely disappeared.
The four struggled up almost as one, none of them happy. Raphael's fantasies had given way to tiredness and cold; Edward was numb, mentally and physically; Mulholland was numb, trying to retain some semblance of authority; Proudfoot was numb, two hands dead in front of her. They arrived a sorry bunch, and Martin did not waste much time.
'I don't think we should go on much farther in the dark. Who knows where we could end up? If we clear away the snow from around here, it'll probably be flat enough to pitch the tent.' And as he said it, he pulled a spade from his backpack, as if he was pulling a rifle from its holster, and immediately got to work on an area in the middle of the flat ground.
There were two more spades among the party, and these were taken up by Mulholland and Edward. Raphael chose to pray, while Proudfoot thought about two detached hands crawling up her chest and tightening around her neck.
***
Brother Steven watched from close range, lying on the ground – suitably attired in white, becoming one with the snow – behind a hill. Darkness had fallen, the clouds had returned. There was the hint of snow in the air again, the first faltering flakes, but there was no wind and there would be no blizzard. No drifts, no swirling tumult, just another few inches onto the layer of snow already covering the ground.
Steven had benefited from the snow, and now he suffered by it. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. All that stuff. The blizzard had kept the desperate horde from fleeing the abbey in the first place; now it stopped him stealing stealthily across the ground towards the tent and the two figures on watch, huddled around the fire. They had positioned themselves well, chosen their location wisely. It would be difficult for him to make an approach unseen; not until one of them fell asleep.
He could just have shot them, of course, now that he was in possession of Sheep Dip's gun, but that would be his last resort. Guns were so unnecessarily vulgar. To be any fun, he had discovered, the poison being a valuable lesson, murder had to be hands-on. The feel of the victim's blood on your skin, warm and delicious; the sudden relaxation of their muscles at the moment of death; that last breath, so much richer and deeper and fuller than any other. Like a Château Lafite '61.
So the gun would be his final option. If it looked as if the police might make it to Durness, then he would do what he had to do. Otherwise the gun stayed tucked away.
Brother Steven lay and watched and waited. It would have to be that night, for if they set off early enough in the morning they would make Durness before nightfall the next day; but it was not yet midnight and there were many hours of darkness ahead. Steven settled further into the snow, his eyes narrowed, and he waited.
***
It was cold and the two figures huddled close to the fire, although not close together. Erin Proudfoot and Brother Edward. An explosive combination; at least in the eyes of Brother Edward. For now he was a man alone, free of the confines of his cloak and of his vows before God; a man alone with a woman, a possible contender for his first boat trip down the river of mistrust.
Proudfoot stared into the flames, trying to concentrate the warmth of them into her bones; while all the time she thought about two hands dancing on a table, like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Had no thoughts for Brother Edward, despite his assumptions. If she turned away from the flames it was to look around the field of snow in which they sat, but she knew that their position made a surprise attack difficult. Her main concern was staying awake, but at that moment it wasn't a problem. Fred and Gene were making sure of that.
'So, you're in the police, then?' said Edward, breaking the silence. It had taken him nearly an hour to work out his best opening line, and in the usual way the one he'd chosen was the first he'd thought of. Uninspiring, certainly, but better than What's a stunning bit of crumpet like you doing in the police? or If we're quick we could probably get a session in before this Thomson bloke knows what we're up to.
'What?' she said, some thirty seconds later; Edward was beginning to think that he was going to get the same reaction he'd once got from Wee Betty Barstool in first year.
'The police?' he said. 'You're in the police.'
She nodded, still distracted. She could talk and think about Fred and Gene at the same time.
'Aye,' she said. Why was it that every single bloke on the planet who hit on her had to express surprise that she was in the police?
'Right,' he
said. One-word answers, he thought; this might be tricky. Still, he had fried tougher fish. 'Must be hard, you know, a good-looking bit of stuff like yourself. Must be hard sometimes with these criminals, you know.'
'How do you mean?'
'Well, you know, a good-looking bird. It must be hard getting respect from criminals and all that, when they probably just see you as a bit of tottie.'
Fred and Gene briefly vanished and she switched on to ex-Brother Edward. Was strangely fascinated that anyone would try and hit on anyone else at a time like this; before, all too soon, the dancing twins came waltzing back.
'If you're looking for a shag, forget it, creep,' she said, before disappearing once more into the void.
'Oh,' said Edward. She must be gagging for it, he thought.
There was a movement behind and they both turned quickly; instant adrenaline, instant fright. Mulholland emerged from the tent. They relaxed. Proudfoot lost herself once again; Edward accepted defeat.
'Couldn't sleep,' said Mulholland. 'If either of you want to go in, it's all yours.'
Edward waited a decent interval of a few seconds, heard nothing from Proudfoot, then stood up to accept the offer. And so Mulholland took his place at the fire, as Edward disappeared back into the tent. Believing as he went that he would have had her if the idiot hadn't appeared. Would add her to his list in any case; it'd been close enough.
'You all right?' said Mulholland after several minutes of looking at the grey landscape.
She shrugged; he sensed the movement without looking at her.
'Don't know,' she said. 'Can't get the image of those two hands out of my head. Stupid, I suppose.'
The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series) Page 26