The Barbershop Seven: A Barney Thomson omnibus

by Douglas Lindsay

Webster and Winters had gone off to hit the bar, leaving Dillinger on her own. Staring into the depths of the fire, recently puffed up, the wood augmented, by Hertha Berlin; out of whose sight the finger would be kept.

  Barney saw his chance; his prey was on her own. The mood may have gone, but still there were points to be scored, opportunities not to be missed. And so he pounced like a wildcat on the slow-moving mouse of Dillinger's distress.

  He mooched over, the smooth-talking bastard in his element. Wondering how he could turn the finger thing to his advantage. Wondering how he could put all his experience of bodies and dismemberment to good use. Wondering what he could possibly say to sound mature and sensible, aloof yet concerned, nonchalant yet sensitive to the situation.

  He sat down across from her and followed her gaze into the fire. At first she didn't appear to notice him. Quite distracted. Running through each of the group, trying to work out which one of them could have done the finger thing; as well as the small matter of whose finger it might have been. She drew the obvious conclusion that it had been removed from one of the past weeks' murder victims in Glasgow, and that this new serial killer who haunted the city was indeed one of their own.

  'Bit of a bastard,' said the eloquent voice next to her.

  It took a few seconds to filter through. Eventually she turned, saw Barney Thomson; the one of her group she knew the least, the one of her group of whom, if he was who he said, she should be most afraid. Except for Morty Goldman, of course. They made films about people like Morty Goldman.

  'Sorry?' she said. Didn't smile at him. Thinking about the poem. Feast my eyes on your delicious body. She was sure it was Barney who'd written it. It had been embarrassing at the time, but what exactly had he meant by it? And now here he was, sitting next to her like an obedient puppy.

  She couldn't see any danger in his face, she had to admit that. With all the others, particularly the real lunatics like Goldman and Winters, it was obvious and it was out there. In the eyes, the curl of the lips, the general demeanour. Not in Barney Thomson. He looked like a barber.

  'Bit of a bastard,' he repeated, unable to think of anything else.

  'What is?' she said. Furrowed brow as she examined him. Having started to convince herself that this man was the killer, now she could see the gormless look of him, with only the remotest hint of Sean Connery remaining.

  'Eh,' said Barney, hesitating. 'The, eh, situation, you know. A bastard. The finger and all that.'

  'I know,' she said. 'Any ideas?'

  A wee tester to gauge the reaction.

  'On what?' said Barney. Hoping she had gone off at a tangent, and was asking if he had any ideas who wrote The Poem. Or maybe, if he had any ideas as to how the two of them could spend the night together.

  'How the finger got into Arnie's present,' said Dillinger.

  'Oh, aye,' said Barney. The finger.

  So there was a serial killer among them, he thought. Bugger it. There was always a serial killer; I'm in the mood for love.

  'Someone's just having a wee joke,' he said. 'Pretty funny, really, when you think about it,' he added, smiling.

  How could he get off the subject and on to more interesting matters such as sleeping arrangements and the hasty removal of women's underwear?

  'You think it's funny?' she asked. Perhaps there was something of the serial killer about him after all. 'It was a real finger, Barney. Someone, somewhere, is missing it.'

  'Aye, but they'll have another nine. I mean, how many d'you need?'

  Smooth. Very smooth. She looked at him in a particular way.

  'I'm glad you think this is amusing, Mr Thomson,' she said.

  Mr Thomson! An arrow in Barney's heart, and he could feel the pain as sure as if the metal point had just plunged into his chest.

  'No, no,' he said quickly. 'I didn't mean it like that, you know. Honest I didn't. I just meant...' God, I don't know. I just meant that I'm a total Muppet. I've forgotten how to relate to women, and I'm a bag of nerves. 'I don't know what I meant.'

  He looked into the fire and she looked into his eyes. Could see the hopelessness there and could not associate the callousness of the words with the pusillanimity in the face. She didn't know what took hold of her, or what it was that so dissipated the suspicions of a minute earlier; but she gently touched his hand and squeezed his fingers.

  'I understand,' she said.

  Zing! Barney looked up at her. At last, suddenly, getting what he'd wanted, despite himself. Zing! I'm in the mood for love! And a million cheesy-listening songs broke out in Barney's head. I'm Errol Flynn, he thought. I'm Casanova. I'm Cyrano de Bergerac without the noggin. I'm John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons. I'm Joey in Friends. I'm alive! I'm Frankenstein's monster without the chip on his shoulder. I'm Peter Boyle. I'm Boris Karloff. I'm Robert de Niro.

  Yet, despite the general goofiness of his thoughts, his face displayed nothing, as was ever his way. Still too early to get carried away. And the look he returned to her was as sad as the one she gave him; and he responded to her touch.

  Something made Dillinger turn her head; and there in the doorway to the lounge, wiping his hands free of chalk on a dry rag, was Arnie Medlock. Eyes piercing, a look that could kill.

  Her heart fluttered but she did not remove her hand from Barney's. Their eyes engaged for a while, then Medlock turned his back and was gone. Dillinger stared after him, briefly caught the eye of Socrates McCartney, who watched the action suspiciously from a corner afar, then looked back into the fire.

  The flames hissed and crunched, and the fire slowly growled and emitted small noises as wood slipped and logs diminished.

  Barney's eyes were lost within it, and he had not even noticed the attentions of Arnie Medlock. Dillinger stared into the fire and felt quite lost. And did not know that she would never see Arnie Medlock again.

  Be Thou My Battle-Shield, Sword For The Fight

  It was raining hard. Hard like wet stone and hard like a slug from a .45. The river was rising faster than a lump on a bashed skull and it seemed like it'd been raining for a million years. And in some ways, for Jade Weapon, it had been.

  There's only one thing to do when it's raining, and raining hard, that's what Jade Weapon had always thought. Get hold of a man, shag the life out of him, and leave him dead in the gutter, 'cause that's where all men belong. So she grabbed the Turkish agent, tore down his pants and rammed his throbbing wet love-stick into her sopping engorged sex-hole.

  Proudfoot trampled through the wet undergrowth that ran beside the road, dripping branches brushing against her face, the rain teeming down through the trees on top of her. Imagining what Jade Weapon would do in these circumstances; and knowing full well that Jade would grab Mulholland, wildly thrash about in a sexual frenzy for ten or fifteen seconds, then strangle him with her thighs.

  Mulholland marched ahead, head down, no particular destination in mind. They had just passed the petrol station and found it long since closed, as this year's serial killer had known they would. And they had trudged along the road ever since, now almost four miles from where they had been fishing; and where they had found Proudfoot's car refusing to start, her radio refusing to work. It hadn't seemed such a long walk for Mulholland in the bright morning, especially given the few miles he'd hitched on the back of a tractor. Had seemed nothing at all for Proudfoot in her car.

  Not sure if anything lay along this road before the mansion where Proudfoot's prey was spending her weekend. Vague memories of a house and a church, but neither of them was sure. And so they plodded on, aimlessly through sodden grass, with no plan and without any idea or care for their direction. A fine metaphor for both their lives.

  Someone knew where they were, however. And he lay ahead and waited, his business already taken care of.

  'Bloody hell, Mulholland,' said Proudfoot eventually, deciding it was time to be at least part Jade Weapon. 'Maybe we should just go back and wait at the car. One of these rare bastards who keep driving by and completely igno
ring us is bound to stop some time.'

  He stopped and turned, let her make up the few yards.

  'It's bloody miles,' he said. Not angry, not frustrated. Face a blank look of determination; a determination to not care. 'We'll get there, and if you blow your cover with this lassie you're trailing, who gives a shit? You're quitting the force anyway, aren't you?'

  She lifted her shoulders. The rain ran off her hair and down her forehead, cascading off the end of her nose. A steady stream of water. She was wearing his jacket, which had long since given up the ghost and was leaking water like the ill-fated 1970's prototype PG Tips overcoat.

  'Look at you,' she said. 'Standing there in a jumper. You'll catch your death, for fuck's sake. And I'm not much better in this thing. We shouldn't have even started to walk in the first place. Let's just turn back and go and wait in the motor. It's miles to the house.'

  He stared through the rain. She looked gorgeous. Cold face, water streaming all over it – vulnerable, beautiful, gorgeous. And somehow unattainable with it, despite their affections of earlier. And if she was vulnerable, was he the one to protect her?

  Catch his death? Might be an idea. He could get ill with respiratory problems, be really cool for a few days like Val Kilmer in Tombstone, and then die. There was a way to go.

  Didn't say a word. Just turned back and kept going the way he had been. Proudfoot considered turning away, but did not deliberate long. She couldn't lose him now. And so off she went, head down, charging after him. They could go together to that bloodied police station in the sky, in apathy; cold and wet and hypothermic.

  'You're being an Advert Man, you know,' she said, drawing up alongside him.

  Head down, he didn't even bother to lift it. Overcome once more by misery, melancholy and grumpiness.

  'What?'

  'An Advert Man. You know what men are always like in adverts. Stupid. Can't put the toaster on, can't work out how to get stains off the carpet. Can't put their underwear on the right way round. That's what you're like just now. Pig-headedly, blindly, ridiculously, stupidly heading to some place that's bloody miles away, even though you know it's wrong.' Laughing as she said it. Had given in to the rain and the possibility of dying as a result of wet clothes. Started banging her hand against the side of her head and saying 'daaaaaawwhhh'.

  Mulholland shook his head and trudged on. Ignoring her, although a smile came to his face for the first time since they'd left the riverbank.

  'And you'd be the Advert Woman, I suppose? Smooth, intelligent, cool as fuck and worth it?'

  'Too right. Glad you know me so well.'

  Equanimity resumed, Mulholland shivered with the cold. The day was turning to night, the temperature beginning to drop, the rain pelting down. His clothes clung to his skin and he dreamt of a hot drink beside a warm fire.

  'Why do we always end up bloody freezing?' he asked.

  She shivered too, as if being reminded of the cold had increased her sense of it.

  'Must be fate,' she said.

  Mulholland looked up and stopped immediately. Her head down, bent into the wind, she hardly noticed.

  'There's bloody fate,' he said, as the killer's trap opened up before him, large and inviting. They had walked along the given road, and now they would drink in their salvation, and they were in no fit state to see the lair into which they were about to walk.

  She stopped and followed his gaze. They had turned a corner, and there in the distance, some half-mile down a long straight stretch of road, was a house, lights in the windows glowing bright.

  Relief, redemption, they were saved.

  'Think there'll be room at the inn?' asked Proudfoot, as they began the trudge down the road, feet squelching noisily on tarmac.

  'Don't give a shit,' said Mulholland. 'If they don't let us in we'll arrest them. Got my badge in that jacket pocket.'

  'Thought you'd resigned?'

  'I did. But I still have my badge. Thought I'd hang on to it for a year or two.'

  And on they plodded through the rain. Trees at the side of the road thinned out, there was no protection at all, and so the rain thundered with unbroken intensity. A wall of water, spanking down in glorious sovereignty, creating pools and small lakes all over. But on they went regardless. The lights got slowly closer, the shape of the buildings ahead became clearer.

  A large, detached house, late nineteenth century. And the closer they got, the more clearly they could see the spire of the church which lay some few hundred yards behind the house. A classical spire, reaching up into the gloom, atop a large church, hundreds of years old.

  Proudfoot saw it first, Mulholland's eyes rooted to the mud and water, and occasionally the beacon of the lights in front of them.

  'See the church?' asked Proudfoot.

  'Church?' he said without looking up. 'Think you're dreaming.'

  'Could mean that this is a manse. They're bound to ask us in and give us a nice bowl of soup.'

  Mulholland's mouth hung open, breathing hard, swallowing rainwater.

  'Don't give a shit,' he said. 'It can be a minister, a priest or a bloody hockey-mask-wearing psychopath. I'm going in there, I'm sitting down in front of the fire and I'm having a cup of tea. Don't give a shit if it's a manse.'

  'That's the spirit,' she said, plodding after him through the loch.

  ***

  Another ten minutes and they found themselves standing outside the door of the Old Manse. Shoes sodden, clothes clinging to them, still in the belly of the storm.

  'Your shoes are soaking,' she said, looking down at his feet.

  'Aye,' he said. 'Should have kept my waders on.'

  'Aye,' she said. 'Shouldn't have left them behind that tree either. The river'll be up and away with them.'

  'I'd trade them for a cup of tea at the moment.'

  The door opened. A man in his slippered feet stood in the way of the light. C&A slacks, a crew-neck jumper his gran must have knitted for him a long time ago, under which could be seen the edge of his dog collar; a shock of black hair, kind face, blue eyes, white teeth. Young and old at the same time.

  'The Lord bless you!' he said, a look of horror on his face. 'What a night to be out. Come in, come in. You can't be standing out there, whoever you are.'

  Mulholland and Proudfoot dripped into the house and stood in the middle of the hallway, water pouring off them onto the carpet. Hit by a marvellous wave of warmth and the smell of home cooking. Pictures of rivers on the walls, thick patterned carpet, stairs leading up into the heights of the old manse. Low lights and an air of comfort.

  'What has happened to you, in God's name?' asked the vicar. Fussing about, without actually doing anything. 'You're not from around here?'

  'We were fishing,' said Mulholland. 'Car broke down, and there was no one at the petrol station.'

  He could see into the sitting room, where a fire blazed in the hearth. A cup of tea, something – anything – to eat, and a seat beside the fire. Not even thinking of how they were going to get back.

  'At the old river way by?' said the minister, pointing in the direction from which they'd just come. 'That's a fine distance, indeed. You must have been walking for an age.'

  He gazed at them for another few seconds; soaked to the skin, water dripping, shoes creating massive puddles on the floor. Mulholland wondered where the wife was; the creator, he presumed, of the wonderful smells emanating from the kitchen.

  'Look, you can't just stand there, the two of you. You get your shoes off, because if you walk through the house like yon my wife'll have a fit, God bless her. Jings! I'll go up to the bathroom and get a couple of towels and then I'll see about getting you some clothes.'

  And off he went, mincing up the stairs, muttering about the weather and the night and the folly of fishing. They watched him go, then went about removing their shoes and socks without spreading water over a radius of three or four miles.

  'Nice old guy,' said Proudfoot. Wouldn't have been surprised to have been chased from the fro
nt door, minister or not.

  'Recognise him?' asked Mulholland, voice a little lower.

  She looked up the stairs, although he had now disappeared into the bathroom.

  'Don't think so. Should I?'

  'Not sure. Just something about him, about the face. Might have seen him before. Maybe on a case, maybe somewhere else, don't know.'

  'Everyone looks like someone,' said Proudfoot, getting to the root of most appearance-based relationships. 'Or maybe he appeared on one of those docu-soaps on TV. Everybody else has.'

  The minister appeared at the top of the stairs again, clutching a great pile of thick, cushiony towels, behind which he minced back down the stairs. Shoes removed and dumped in a pile on the welcome mat, they watched him come. Wondering what it was that was creating the smell, and hoping they were going to be offered some of it.

  'There you go,' said the minister, handing out towels all round. Light pink for Proudfoot, dark blue for Mulholland. Old-fashioned was the Reverend Rolanoytez.

  'Now you two get in there in front of that fire and get out of those wet things. I'll go and get the kettle on, then I'll find you some dry clothes to wear. If only mother hadn't gone out tonight, she'd be in her element. Still, she's left me with a fine rabbit stew for myself, and I'm sure there'll be enough to go around.'

  'Thanks a lot,' said Mulholland, 'we really appreciate this.'

  'Don't be daft, laddie,' said the minister. 'Don't be daft. The Lord smiles upon us all.' And off he minced towards the kitchen. They watched him go, then dripped their way into the sitting room.

  A warm room in every way. Red carpet; walls lined with books and hung with old paintings; velvet curtains; fire roaring and the dinner table set for one, with a small candle burning. And they immediately began to strip off with no sense of embarrassment that he might walk in on them. They were freezing and this indeed was a Godsend.

  Clothes off and dumped in a heap, and within a minute they were huddled in front of the fire, wrapped in light pink and dark blue, watching the flames and feeling the warmth and life return to their bodies.

  Backs to the door, they didn't see the Reverend Rolanoytez make his way along the hall and back up the stairs. Small mincing steps, until he got to the main bedroom. Flicked the switch and in he went in bright light, hardly giving a thought to the two visitors downstairs. Except he had to find them something to wear, something not too incongruous. The younger ones today, he thought wrongly, they'd want something they liked, regardless of the situation.