The Barbershop Seven: A Barney Thomson omnibus

by Douglas Lindsay

'Wasn't Al Fresco the guy who won the F1 World Championship five times in the 50s?'

  'Fangio,' said Barney, despite his own determination not to be sucked back into the general level of absurdity, 'that was Fangio.'

  'Fangs!' said one of the old guys, 'don't sloths have fangs?'

  'No!' Igor wanted to scream, 'they're flippin' edentates! That means they don't have any flippin' teeth! No incisors, no molars, no pre-molars, and definitely no flippin' fangs!' However, it came out as, 'Arf!'

  'You said that already,' said one of the old guys.

  'So, Igor,' said Barney to change the subject, 'Ruth was all right last night?'

  He hadn't really wanted to ask the question in front of the customers but he'd needed to say something before the conversation disappeared up any more blissfully stupid tangents.

  Igor guiltily looked at Barney, mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like arf, then lowered his head and started sweeping up, even though no hair had yet fallen on this day.

  'Igor?' said Barney.

  Igor swept.

  'Igor?' he repeated.

  Igor swept, this time turning his back on Barney, his brushstrokes growing a little fiercer.

  ''Scuse me a minute,' said Barney to the old guy about to be the beneficiary of a splendid A River Runs Through It.

  'No problem,' said Bagan. Then he added, as Barney laid down the scissors and walked to the rear of the shop, 'You probably want to ask him about Gently Ferguson.'

  Barney looked at the old guy, then caught Igor's guilty eye and gestured to the back room. Igor threw old man Bagan a zinger of a look and then followed Barney into the rear of the shop. He left the door open, only for Barney to close it.

  The two men stood staring at each other, Barney waiting for an explanation.

  'Arf,' mumbled Igor eventually.

  'I left you to look after her,' said Barney. 'I thought you two had, I don't know, a thing or something. I thought you were going to stay the night. What happened?'

  Igor looked Barney in the eye but couldn't hold the gaze. He stared at the floor.

  'Who's Gently Ferguson?' asked Barney. 'If you had another date last night, why didn't you say?'

  'Arf,' muttered Igor.

  'That's not good enough,' scolded Barney. 'The woman was scared and she's got those two cowboys after her. You should've stayed.'

  Igor looked up again. Held his hands out in an Italian gesture of self-explanation.

  Barney studied him, trying to work it out. There is one sure thing, he suddenly realised, that will drive a man and woman apart before their time.

  'You slept with her,' he said, not even asking the question. 'You slept with Ruth and after that things got awkward and you left.'

  Igor looked uncomfortable and then dropped his gaze again.

  'Igor!' said Barney. 'For crying out loud, man, the woman needed someone. Jings, her husband died the day before.'

  Igor's head plummeted another few inches.

  'Igor, I know you've got that whole silent but sensitive thing going on that women love, but you've got to control the old pecker, mate. Restraint is what marks the man, my hunchbacked friend. She needed you and you completely abused that. And then you left her alone with the ghost of her dead husband and easy prey to those goons from the big fella at the top of the hill.'

  Barney shook his head. Igor mumbled apologetically.

  'And who's this Gently Ferguson comedienne?'

  The deaf mute was silent.

  'You shag her 'n' all?' asked Barney.

  Igor looked up, answered with a seriously guilty face and then stared out the window at the grey morning.

  'Igor!' said Barney. 'You are something else. I mean, I'm impressed, and given that you'd already left Ruth's place, I don't suppose it matters, but you've got to screw the nut, chief, you know what I'm saying?'

  Igor nodded. Barney stared at him for a while, then turned and followed Igor's apologetic gaze out of the window.

  'Right,' said Barney, 'I take it you're going to be uncomfortable going round there again this morning?'

  'Arf,' said Igor.

  'Okay, here's what we're going to do. We'll stick the Closed sign on the door, I'll finish off the two old geezers, then I'll go round there and see how she's doing. You can stay here and, I don't know, just try not to sleep with any women or anything.'

  'Arf.'

  'Good.'

  ***

  The black BMW pulled into the short driveway. The green posts were a testament to the gate that had once stood at the entrance, but it had come off its hinges several years previously and Augustus Lawton had not been someone who ever did much about the small jobs around his house.

  Jacobs parked the car by the front door, got out and walked round to open the door for Ephesian. Ephesian was still doing mental exercises to keep his thoughts positive and took half a minute to be aware that they had stopped.

  He got out, Jacobs closed the door, then Ephesian stood back and let his man ring the doorbell. Jacobs was holding a case containing exactly one million pounds in clean, crisp fifty pound notes. Ephesian had stood and stared at the contents, taking in the smell, for almost an hour that morning.

  'You'll let me do the talking, sir,' said Jacobs deferentially.

  Ephesian was aware of the vague feeling of discomfort in his stomach. Nerves. Stupid nerves. They just needed to get in there, get hold of the Grail and leave Lawton to his money. As long as he went nowhere until after the ceremony that evening.

  Jacobs rang the bell again. Ephesian looked at his watch. Jacobs turned away and looked down the short hill to the little of the sea which was visible in between the sides of buildings. The day had dawned with one of those strange flat calms that you know are never going to last. Not off the west coast of Scotland.

  'No wind,' said Jacobs.

  Ephesian didn't hear him. He was aware that Jacobs had spoken but the words had not penetrated.

  Without looking to his employer for permission, Jacobs tried the handle and then, finding it locked, he fished out the large set of keys, identified the couple for Lawton's house and opened the door. He walked in quickly and silently, Ephesian following with hesitation, that part of his brain which dictated to him that he himself should never break the rules, holding him back from entering with the confidence of Jacobs.

  The house was a shambles but they both knew that the house was always a shambles. This was not as a result of a random trashing of the property. The dining room was just off the entrance hall, so there was no extended period of searching for the man. Within ten seconds of walking in, Jacobs was standing over Lawton's body, the head bashed bloody, puffy and swollen around the face.

  Ephesian entered the room slowly in Jacobs' wake, stopped suddenly on seeing what was before them, stared at it for a few seconds, then turned quickly away from the blood. Not for a second did he feel anything for Lawton. No compassion. That the man had been attacked was entirely of secondary importance. The thing which mattered was that the Grail was obviously gone and very possibly the other item which would have been kept in Lawton's freezer.

  'Fuck,' Ephesian muttered, standing in the doorway to the dining room, his back turned to the mess on the carpet.

  Jacobs bent down, quickly and closely examined the body.

  'He's not dead, sir,' he said. 'We should get the ambulance up here, maybe they'll be able to revive him. He might be able to tell us who did this. You go back out to the car, sir. There's no need for you to be here. I'll see if the item in the freezer is still there, and search for the Grail. Then I'll call Gainsborough and let him sort out the rest.'

  Ephesian didn't move. Jacobs waited for a few seconds and then walked quickly through to the kitchen. Ephesian listened to his footsteps, as he felt the first vultures of uncertainty begin to pick at the fragile confidence and self-assurance which he'd built up through the long night.

  When, in the bleak silence, he heard the tiny fizz of the freezer door opening, he walked back to the f
ront door, then down the driveway and back out onto the road for the walk back up the hill to his house. He didn't want to sit in a car waiting to find out just how bad it had all become. He needed to be at home, surrounded by everything that was familiar.

  Inside the house Jacobs was rummaging through the freezer, and he finally found what he was looking for, hidden under the rubble of Iceland goods.

  He hauled out the small package, studied it for a few seconds then laid it down on the kitchen table. Then he looked around the room, eyes quickly taking everything in.

  Was it likely that the Grail might still be here? He had to assume that Lawton had been attacked for the Grail but it didn't mean that he hadn't already hidden it and that his assailant had been unable to find it in the house.

  He made his decision. The Grail would not be here. He took one last look at the kitchen, walked around each room of the house making a quick search in case there was anything else obvious about which he needed to know, took a last look at the body of Augustus Lawton, placed an abrupt call to Constable Gainsborough, and then walked quickly out of the building.

  As he closed the front door behind him, and a slight breeze was blown through the house, the mugs in the small wooden stand beside the kettle gently swayed. Two plain shiny purple cups, a blue mug from Lapland, a Best Dad In The World, a Glasgow Rangers, a contraband Calvin & Hobbes and, resting silently on the counter beside the stand, an odd-shaped Wallace & Gromit, a small chip out of the rim.

  Wraithwreckers

  Barney first knocked, waited and then tried again. No answer. Knocked again, waited a short while and then stood back and studied the house. Looked over his shoulder, wondering if any of the neighbours were watching him although not really being bothered if they were, and then he opened the gate to the right of the house and walked into the back garden.

  He thought he saw a movement in a window across the back wall. Perhaps he was being watched from up there.

  Knocked at the back door, left it only a few seconds and then round the back of the house and looked in the kitchen window. Immediately he saw her sitting on the floor, back up against a unit, eyes wide and fearful, staring back out at him. He went around to the back door again, tried the handle then knocked.

  'Ruth!' he called out. 'It's Mr Thomson. The barber.'

  Nothing. Barney felt in tune with the woman inside. She was clearly terrified and there was likely no one on the planet who could've turned up at this point and been gladly welcomed.

  'I'm here to help you, Ruth,' he said, pitching his voice at just the right level, between sympathy and audible volume.

  He stood back and looked at the door.

  'Complete empathy with the female mind, Barney,' he muttered.

  There is no female mind, wrote Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1898. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

  Well, what had she been smoking?

  'You don't need to be scared, Ruth,' he said, raising his voice. 'If you can still hear your husband, come with me and I'll take you away from it. And don't worry about Ephesian's men. They won't do you any harm while you're with me.' Pause, time to play the sensitive man card. 'I know about Igor and I know he let you down. You'll be safe with me. You don't even have to let me in, just come out and we can go to a café somewhere.'

  Another pause. Needed to see her face to know if he was making any progress. For all he knew she could be paralysed in some trance-like state of fear.

  'I know about the insincerity of men, Ruth,' he began again. 'Men are vile inconstant toads, wrote Lady Montagu, and she was right. Igor took advantage of you but he's that kind of man. He's Julio Iglesias, he's Don Juan. Women love him and he can't help himself.'

  Pause, let that all sink in a bit. Igor is Don Juan, he repeated to himself, and he smiled.

  'And the goons from up the hill, they're nothing, Ruth. Whatever their game is, they're not getting past me. Really.'

  Another pause.

  'And I'm sure there's something we can do about your husband.' A further hiatus in his smooth talk, while he considered what that might be. 'We could get the house exorcised.' Hesitated again, while he thought about what he'd just said. Get the house exorcised, Barney? What the fuck is the matter with you? 'One of the ministers on the island or we could get someone in from outside.'

  He leant against the door frame. How long before he broke the door down? Looked at his watch, glanced up quickly as he caught another movement in the window above the garden wall. Stared up for a few seconds then turned back to the door.

  'Or maybe there's like a Ghostbusters type of thing up in Glasgow. There's all sorts now. We'll look in Yellow Pa...'

  The lock clicked, the door opened slowly. Ruth Harrison appeared, staring wildly at Barney. Her face, her posture, everything about her bore the mark of someone who had spent a night haunted by terror. Her face was a grisly pale grey, lined and wan and tired, the face of a woman at least twenty years older than the one Barney had seen the day before. Her hair was as dishevelled as her clothes. Barney grimaced when he noticed the large damp stain around her crotch where she had peed in the middle of the night. Her spirit had been laid waste.

  'Jesus,' he said.

  She caught his eye for the briefest of seconds and then stared at his chest. She seemed barely to be breathing. Barney stepped forward, across the threshold of the kitchen and put his arms round her. At first she flinched although she did not pull away, and then gradually, as Barney held onto her, she relaxed into it and slowly she lifted her arms and put them around him.

  Barney said nothing for a while and in the silence the noise came to him. He had been aware of it as soon as the door had opened but the sight of the decrepit woman before him had distracted his mind from the sound. But now he heard it.

  Coming from upstairs. A constant pad and shuffle. Feet walking and in turn being dragged across the floor. A horrible sound, designed almost to crawl under your skin, to bleed into your consciousness. And accompanying the noise, barely audible in amongst the gentle padding and scraping, a much lower and more sinister sound. An evil and malicious laugh.

  Barney was aware of the hairs on his neck and then he was gripped by a sudden shiver. Ruth pulled away from him, feeling the shudder in his body, the scared eyes looking up at him.

  'An exorcist?' she said, her voice tiny and frail.

  'Let's get you out of here,' said Barney, and he reached behind her, took the key from inside, pulled the door over and locked it.

  And just before the door closed he heard another, louder explosion of laughter, as if Jonah Harrison could see everything that was happening in the kitchen, could see into the head of his terrified widow and into the head of Barney Thomson.

  ***

  'It'll have to be a woman,' said Ruth Harrison, frowning across the top of her cup of tea.

  Barney raised an eyebrow at her but nodded. There were few enough of these people in the Yellow Pages without them having to be so prescriptive as to need to choose their sex, but he understood Ruth's resentment and distrust of men. Even though she was currently putting her trust in one.

  He looked once more at the small advert, the only one listed under Exorcists.

  GOD

  Troubled by ghouls, spectres, poltergeists, mischievous spirits, apparitions or other unexplained phenomena? Call the Lord God Almighty on 0816 666 666, and watch evil spirits disappear.

  GOD – FOR ALL YOUR EXORCISM REQUIREMENTS

  Tel./Fax: 0816 666 666

  Catering For The Religions Of The World!

  'He may be a divine, omnipotent all-powerful being,' said Barney shaking his head, 'but He's male nevertheless.'

  'Who is?' asked Ruth.

  Igor looked up from where he was sheepishly and unnecessarily washing the scissors. How many divine, omnipotent, all-powerful beings are there, for crying out loud? he wanted to ask bitterly. Igor was feeling a little sore at being made the scapegoat for Ruth's long and terrifying ordeal.

&n
bsp; 'Doesn't matter,' said Barney.

  He stared at Igor for no particular reason as he tried to think of what other categories an exorcist might come under. Ghostbusters, he thought. He hummed as he thumbed. Reached the page, nothing.

  He turned quickly to the section on churches and read through the full list to see if any of them mentioned exorcism in their entries. Again, nothing. There were a few desperate cries for a decent sized congregation, including one church which stated that it showed MTV and served beer and peanuts throughout the service, but a complete lack of exorcism services. He looked up at Ruth, who was watching him intently, her lips poised at the rim of her mug.

  'How are you getting on?' she asked.

  'Struggling to find a specialist,' answered Barney.

  She slurped noisily at her tea. Igor gave her a scything look.

  Maybe, thought Barney, they'll have done that thing where they put the words ghost and busters into a thesaurus and come up with something completely different, yet the same.

  He started thinking of names and flicking through the book. Spectrerupturers. Spookbursters. Spiritbreakers. (There was indeed an entry under Spiritbreakers but it turned out just to be an advert for the Labour government.) Phantomthrashers. Phantasmsmashers. Apparitionbashers.

  He closed the book and looked at Ruth and Igor, who were both staring at him. She's depending on you, Barney, he thought, you need to come up with the goods. Of course, all the woman needed to do was go along to one of the local ministers on the island. But they were all men.

  'Arf!' said Igor suddenly, eyes wide.

  Barney stared at him and for some reason that neither of them could explain, immediately understood what he had just said.

  Wraithwreckers!

  Barney turned quickly through the pages to the W's, and there, as if by some sort of divine intervention, was the small advert, the only listing in the section headed Wraithwreckers.

  www.wraithwreckers.com

  Lose all those annoying

  ghosts today!

  Call the Reverend Merlot Tolstoy!

  Tel.: 09988 888 8888

  'Merlot?' said Barney, looking up. 'That sound like a woman's name?'