The Barbershop Seven: A Barney Thomson omnibus

by Douglas Lindsay

  'That's funny,' said the killer.

  'How come?' said Wellingborough, turning to face his nemesis.

  'Because that's what I've been thinking about you.'

  'What?'

  Wellingborough looked at his murderer. A moment's recognition. The dawn of realisation. He saw the knife coming up out of the corner of his eye, but in no way was he expecting it, and so it went, the sharpened blade, into his back and into his kidneys and through the viscera, so that the point emerged at the other side, breaking the skin of his stomach.

  Wellingborough's mouth opened, his eyes were wide, his pupils dilated; a hoarse query escaped his throat, followed by a grunt as the knife was thrust deeper into his body cavity and upwards beneath his chest. 'Why?' his final word, that great philosopher's question; and then he collapsed and the killer chose to leave the knife where it was, and among the flashing images that raced through Wellingborough's brain as his life soaked away was the first picture he had of the killer wearing gloves and thinking it was odd as the weather was so mild for December. And men don't wear gloves anyway. Not really.

  The killer stood over the body until the spasms had stopped, and the last breath had been taken. A quick glance up the road in both directions, and then he disappeared into the bushes, so that by the time the body was discovered late on that December night, there would be neither sign nor trace of the perpetrator of the crime.

  ***

  He felt the touch of the sheep in the dark. The cold fleece, damp with water and blood, brushed against his face, then swung back into him after he'd pushed it away. He stumbled away from it, tripping over something soft. He steadied himself against a pew. The wind stopped suddenly. He lifted his head; tried to hold his breath, though his chest screamed to pant. The roar from the broken windows was instantly stilled, and now in the quiet he could hear clearly the low prayer from the broken lips of the clergyman, and the shuffling coming ever closer from behind.

  Couldn't bring himself to turn, even though he knew in this darkness he would see nothing anyway. A prayer for his soul, that was what he heard; then he became aware of the echo of the words, and the low voice behind accompanying the shuffling. Whatever it was behind him, whatever demon crept up in preparation for laying its hand on his back, it was mimicking the prayer of the minister. Repeating the words, the voice cruel and mocking, a callous burlesque. A prayer for the soul of Barney Thomson, for not only would he die, he would be condemned to an eternity in Hell.

  Barney screamed in impotent terror.

  And, as ever, he awoke in the night, sheathed in sweat, clutching the blankets, dragged howling from his nightmare before the true nature of the evil could reveal itself.

  Back At The Con

  'You ever consider Jelly Babies, mate?'

  Barney Thomson had considered many things; Jelly Babies not being one of them. He shook his head and snipped a couple of unnecessary hairs from just behind the right ear.

  'How d'you mean?' he asked.

  The bloke submitting to Barney's scissors lifted his hands beneath the cape; making it look, to someone with an eye for that kind of thing, as if he had a pair of massive erections.

  'Jelly Babies,' he said. 'I mean, think about it. Is that not just the strangest thing. Jelly Babies. You know, they're always there. You eat them when you're a bairn, you grow out of them, and then you don't think about it when you grow up.'

  'Aye,' said Barney, 'you're right. You don't.'

  'Well, think about it now, Big Man, that's all I'm saying. Jelly Babies. Consider the concept. They are asking you to eat babies. Is that not just a bit strange? You're eating babies. Every bit of them. The eyes, the nose, the arms, the intestines. You know, folk go on about cannibals as if they're weird, but there are millions of school weans out there eating babies every day. Maybe the body parts aren't too well defined,'n' all, but a baby's a baby. They're asking us to eat babies. You just couldn't introduce something new like that nowadays. They only get away with it 'cause they're an institution. Like mince and tatties, only sweeter.'

  Barney stood back and admired his handiwork. His first Jimmy Stewart in nearly a year, only his third haircut in his second day back on the job, and clearly the old magic was still there. Just about finished this one, and he hadn't lost it. Not at all. A firm hand, a steady eye, that was all that was required.

  Unlike some...

  He glanced over at the work being done on the shop's other chair. Leyman Blizzard was doing his best, but this was a haircut from Satan's own factory; the sort of haircut that two months with a bulldozer, three metric tonnes of cement and a brothel full of politicians couldn't hope to salvage. There had been a time when he would have looked askance upon such tawdry work, when he would have cast aside the conventions of honourable workmanship and denounced the haircut to anyone who would listen. But that was then. Barney had gained a sense of perspective. He was working on a rainy day in a small shop, on the outskirts of an old city on the west coast of an unfulfilled country, on the edge of a divided continent, at the heart of an insignificantly small planet, in an inconsequential solar system, at the bottom end of a meagre galaxy, downtown in the great Gotham City of the universe. Who cared if he, or anyone else, gave a bad haircut?

  He nodded at the mince and tatties remark, then stood back from the final snip. His work here was complete. He could send the man packing with a haircut answering to every Euclidean assumption, and turn his attention to the solitary chap in the queue. Although, as it happened, Leyman Blizzard came to the end of his magnum opus in malfeasance just before Barney, and he assumed he would take the next customer.

  'That's you, mate,' said Barney, 'all done.' Not before time, he thought. Jelly Babies had been the end of it, but what had gone before had ranged far and wide and touched upon almost every topic in the Barbershop Handbook.

  The man looked in the mirror, somewhat surprised. There was yet much in his repertoire which required airing, not least the bare bones of his thesis on Lysenkoism and its applicability to ghetto culture. All his mates had heard it and they'd all told him to shut up the minute he opened his mouth, but barbers had no option but to listen. But he was happy enough with the results, so he rose from his chair as the cape was withdrawn, handed over the required money, stuck a cheeky wee fifty pence into Barney's hand, and was gone; murmuring as he went strange thoughts on the demise of Spangles.

  Just ahead of him went Leyman Blizzard's customer, the Hair of Horrors upon his shattered head, all sorts of condemnation and humiliation awaiting him, his haircut set to be the concubine to reprobation.

  Barney pursed his lips. He and the old man looked at one another, each with a common understanding of the other's abilities. And Blizzard realised he'd made a good decision.

  'You take the next customer, son,' he said.

  'You sure?' asked Barney. 'You were done first, boss.'

  'Naw, naw, on you go, on you go,' he said, and the customer, his heart singing with triumphant relief, stepped up to Barney's chair. A young man, due to go on a surprise last-minute date with the object of his affections, and desperate not to look like a complete idiot.

  Barney did the thing with the cape and the towel at the back of the neck, and could feel The Force returning to him. Just like the good old days. Except nowadays he could make a reasonable job of cutting hair. He was back. He was refreshed. This was his Elvis NBC Special. He ought to have been dressed in black and surrounded by babes.

  'What'll it be, son?' he asked.

  The lad looked at him, considered again what he was about to do.

  'I want to look like Elvis,' he said.

  A sign.

  'Thin Elvis,' said Barney, 'I assume from the fact that you're thin?' Sharp as a button.

  'Aye,' said the lad. 'Thin Elvis. Like he looked in Girls, Girls, Girls. Make me look like that.'

  Barney had never seen Girls, Girls, Girls, but he could cope. And so he set to work with his scissors, a comb, some shampoo, a hairdryer, a Euro-size can of mo
usse, two litres of olive oil, half a kilo of fettuccine and a certain degree of panache.

  Leyman Blizzard sat and watched; didn't say much at first. The lad said nothing, being altogether too nervous. He had heard tell that Wee Jean McBean, a girl of moist reputation, would forego any sort of lovemaking preliminaries – dinner, dancing, presents, desperate pleading – for an Elvis look-alike. If this haircut went well, he was in there and he knew it.

  'What did you think of the haircut I just did, son?' asked Leyman Blizzard after a while.

  Barney glanced over at his new boss, remembering to stop cutting hair as he did so, something he wouldn't always have done in the past. He considered his answer and thought of this: there are two kinds of time in life. There's a time for candour, and then there's a time for bollocks. This, thought Barney, was most definitely, with bright, spanking knobs on, a hundred-piece orchestra playing Ode to Joy, and a herald of exultant angels singing hosannas upon high, a time for bollocks.

  'It was brilliant. A fine piece of barbery. Hirsutology from the top drawer. A haircut of stunning eloquence. Pure magic.'

  Leyman Blizzard rubbed his hand across his beard and nodded.

  'Thought it was a load of shite myself,' he said.

  'Oh.'

  'Can't cut hair to pee my pants,' said Blizzard, and the young lad looked at him out of the corner of his eye, thanking some higher force that he'd been saved. 'Not since a long time passed. You might just be the man to save this shop, son. That was a good job you just did there. A Jimmy Stewart. I can just about manage one of them myself these days, but not much else.'

  'What happened?' asked Barney, although he knew the answer. It happened to them all. Eventually the steadiness disappeared, the hand–eye co-ordination was lost, and even the most basic aspects of barbery became a trial.

  'Just the usual, son,' said Blizzard. 'Just the same shite that happens to every bastard when they get old. I've been doing this job for near on fifty year. Now I'm washed up. I'm finished. You know who I am? I'm Muhammad Ali when he fought Larry Holmes. I'm George Best when he played for Hibs. I'm Sinatra when he did the Duets albums.'

  'Jim Baxter when he went back to Rangers,' said the lad.

  'Aye, that's me all right. At a dead end. I'm Arnold Palmer; I'm Sugar Ray Leonard; I'm Burt Reynolds.'

  'Steve Archibald when he signed for Barcelona,' said the lad.

  'That was at the peak of his career,' said Blizzard.

  'Aye, but he was still shite.'

  'Fair point. Anyway, I'm all of those people, all of them. I've got about three regular customers left and one of them's so short-sighted the daft bastard can't see what a mess I'm making of his head. I don't know you from Adam, son. I just know your name, and you might be that bloody murdering eejit who disappeared up in the Highlands, 'cause they say he could cut a mean hair or two, I don't know, but you look to me like a hell of a barber. I'll up your wages if I can, and help you out with the Jimmy Stewarts, and I'll leave the rest to you. You're the boss. How about it?'

  Barney looked over at Leyman Blizzard. The expression on his face betrayed his astonishment. How many years in Henderson's had he searched in vain for such recognition? How many times in the distant past at that shop had he completed some masterpiece, only to see his work ignored, his genius disregarded, so that eventually his confidence had gone and he had become the bitter pursuivant of mediocrity? And now, after just three haircuts, there was a man willing to reward him for doing a good job. It was as if he had found the father figure he had been missing all these years.

  'I'd like that very much, Mr Blizzard,' he said. 'That'd be brilliant.'

  'Stoatir,' said the old man. 'And you can call me Leyman.'

  They exchanged a glance. A special bond had been created. It was if he were Skywalker to Leyman Blizzard's Yoda. That is, if Yoda had been absolutely shite at cutting hair.

  'Here,' said the lad, having found his tongue with the denunciation of Steve Archibald, 'is your name Barney Thomson?'

  Barney nodded, now flowing smoothly through the Elvis Girls, Girls, Girls.

  'Aye, it is,' he said.

  'Bit of a coincidence that. I mean, you being a barber 'n' all?'

  Barney Thomson looked down at the lad and took a moment. He turned to Leyman Blizzard, looked around the small barber's shop which had become his new home – the two chairs, the small bench, yesterday's newspapers and five-month-old Sunday Post supplements, and no concessions to Christmas but for the picture of a former Spice Girl, naked but for a discreetly placed bit of tinsel, on the cover of the Mirror – had a glance out of the large windows of the shopfront at the miserable December rain sweeping in off the Clyde, then looked once more at his customer. A shiver eased its way down his spine. All this time stranded in some sort of pointless emasculation, thinking that his only real choice was to hand himself in and face the vicious music of public scorn, when it had proved the simplest thing in the world to walk back into the old ways. The simplest thing in the world. He was back doing what he always loved; he had the same name; he had changed in all sorts of ways, but still he was the same man; and yet he might as well have been someone completely different.

  'Not really,' he said. 'Actually I'm the real Barney Thomson.'

  The lad caught his eye in the mirror to see if he was being serious, then smiled.

  'Aye, right,' he said, 'I bet you say that to all the birds.'

  A Name Of Kings

  Jade Weapon opened fire with her submachine-gun, riddling the bathroom door with holes and pumping the Russian agent, cowering behind, full of hot lead.

  'Come on, Malcolm. Do you really want to be in there all day?'

  'I want to be in here for the rest of my life. Why don't you just leave me alone? I want to get some sleep.'

  'Your mum and dad are really worried. You don't want to do that to them, do you?'

  'I've made your favourite, Malcolm! Mince!'

  'I hate mince!'

  Detective Sergeant Erin Proudfoot turned round to Malcolm Reid's mother and waved at her to keep quiet. Matters were at a delicate stage. At any moment, he could flush his sister's pet hamster, Huey, down the toilet. This was no time to be talking of mince.

  Proudfoot looked at her watch. She had been here for nearly half an hour. Called out to a domestic; could have been anything. Assault; battery; arson; noisy neighbours; murder, even; or it could have been a noxious fourteen-year-old, locked in the bathroom, threatening to flush his sister's only pet down the toilet if he didn't get to go to Big Angus's party that Friday night. Had turned out to be the last on the list.

  It was never like this on Cagney & Lacey, she thought. Well, maybe in one episode.

  What would Jade Weapon, star of the erotic crime thrillers with which she had been filling her spare time at the office, do? Kill someone; sleep with someone else; cause mayhem and damage and be home in time for g&t and three-in-a-bed sex. But Jade Weapon never had to deal with people like this. The mundane, real world.

  'Look, Malcolm, it's not about the hamster. Just let Huey go and then we can talk some more,' she said. Mrs Reid gripped her by the arm as she said it. Can't believe I'm saying this crap, thought Proudfoot.

  'Naw!' he shouted, and there was an edge to his voice. Margaret Reid gasped. She knew the tone. The same tone he'd used just before he'd tipped his sister's maggot collection into a fish-pond.

  'He's getting serious,' she said frantically.

  Proudfoot glanced over her shoulder. Delivered her best Back off or I'll arrest you for being a bloody idiot look.

  Margaret Reid recognised it, for she had in the past been arrested for being a bloody idiot, and backed off.

  'I'm not going anywhere till she says it's all right for me to go to the party. Big Angus gives brilliant parties. She's got one more minute or the hamster gets it. I'm serious.'

  One minute or the hamster gets it. Fuck me, thought Proudfoot. It's come to this. I know what Jade Weapon would do, she thought. She'd boot the door in, kic
k the stupid little bampot's head in, then ram the damned hamster up his backside.

  'Come on, Malcolm. It's not even about Big Angus's party, is it?'

  She could almost see him thinking through the bathroom door.

  'What d'you mean?'

  Fine. So maybe it wasn't about Big Angus's party. It didn't mean she actually had a clue what it was about. But then, not in a million years could she have cared.

  It had been a long year for Erin Proudfoot, since she and Joel Mulholland had set the notorious Barney Thomson free, and had then engaged in the angry hostilities of romance. A bloody case, the mental scars of which had dominated the few months of their desperate, passionate, bitter relationship, when everything from marriage to suicide had been considered.

  Six months now since Mulholland had imploded and disappeared up the west coast somewhere – not a card or a letter – leaving her behind in solitary meltdown. Still she saw her psychiatrist four times a week; still her psychiatrist told the superintendent not to put her anywhere near real criminal activity; and still he lied to her about it, and she imagined she was in better mental health than she was. Occasionally she pondered Mulholland's whereabouts, but she'd made no effort to go after him.

  She knew he'd gone a little – or completely – insane himself. She'd heard tell, but just rumour and gossip around the station. But whatever feeling had been there was now gone.

  And so there had been a couple of flings in the interim, but her scars had brought to her an intensity that her lovers could not handle. Buxton had been one, another of the CID sergeants. A few evenings, then one night, and she'd scratched his back so that the sheets had been soaked with blood; and that had been that. Then there'd been the idiot she'd met outside the Disney shop in the St Enoch's centre. He'd thought he was picking her up, while all the time it had been the other way round. Again he'd been quick to her bed, but when her nails had been unleashed and she'd cried 'Havoc!' and let rip the dogs of war, he'd crumbled and cracked and off he'd gone, tail between his legs to mourn the death of femininity.