The Barbershop Seven

by Douglas Lindsay

  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 There 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?'

  'Why is he doing it?' edged a voice from the front. Brother Martin. A man who had had words with Brother Jacob, but had not seen him in two days.

  'To be honest, we don't know,' said Mulholland. 'And frankly, I don't think it matters. There doesn't appear to be any pattern to his victims, and so we can only surmise that he's after everyone. No one is safe. No one can afford to be complacent. I know that's not an answer, but until we've made further investigations, that's all there is. We'll be speaking to all of you during the day, just in case there's something that one of you might know which you don't realise is relevant. Anything else?'

  They all had questions, but none of them asked. Maybe it was God whom they should be asking questions of at this time. It was He who appeared to have deserted them all.

  Mulholland removed himself from the firing line and sat at a lone table, where he was joined by Proudfoot. Slowly a murmur grew among the thrall, and quickly rose to its low zenith; and so the monks began the jealous practice of pairing themselves off and deciding how best to spend their time until the blizzard cleared or Barney Thomson was caught. And many of them searched their souls and wondered if they would ever be able to sleep safe there again, even if the monster was caught; and whether they would ever be able to trust in God again, and whether this would be the end of the abbey as they knew it.

  And in the midst of them all, one man knew all the answers. He had made many decisions in the night; he knew that none would walk free from this place, and that this house of God would be left as a graveyard of Hell. A necropolis to his revenge; a mausoleum to the injustices of the self-righteous against the honour of a simple man; a cemetery to all that was bad in this House of God and the perfidious nature of this band of Judas men.

  Frankenstein

  Mulholland and Proudfoot stood at a first-floor window and looked out across the glen, as far as they could see. About twenty yards. The snow had temporarily given in to the day, but the air was still thick with low cloud and the promise of more. The landscape was white, the shapes of trees evident but hazy, and the sky merged with the ground with nothing defined against anything else. The wind screamed past the walls of the abbey, but in the direction they were facing, so that all that came in through the open shutters was the cold of day.

  'Maybe one of us should have made a break for it this morning,' said Proudfoot. 'Taken Brother David and tried to get to Durness.'

  Mulholland considered the wind and the snow, the landscape before them. Not a chance. He had already given it much thought, but they had barely made it to the abbey in the first place; even Sheep Dip, for all the Northern hard-man stuff, had been suffering at the end. There had now been a much heavier snowfall, the winds were heavier, the blizzard more violent, and if this temporary respite was to become more than that, how were they to know?

  'No point. And what if one of us had made it to Durness? It's hard to imagine that the roads west or south are open.'

  'We could have come back from Durness with some of the townsfolk.'

  'What, you mean like in a Frankenstein movie? An angry horde of villagers charging towards the castle, torches in hand?'

  'Something like that.'

  'The torches would have blown out in this weather,' he said and Proudfoot smiled.

  The sound of the wind died for a second and they saw their first movement for ten minutes as a snowflake danced down past them. The herald of much to come; and though they didn't know it, and although it made little difference, the snowstorm which now beckoned was worse than the one which had moved on across Sutherland to Caithness.

  'It's beautiful,' said Proudfoot, into the hush. 'I've seen pictures of snow like this, but not in real life. It's wonderful. If you take away the seven murders and the serial killer, this could almost be romantic.'

  'Seen pictures? So you read something other than Blitz!, then? National Geographic or a Thomson's Winter Sun catalogue?'

  Proudfoot laughed. 'Right the first time, actually. How To Stop Your Man's Cock Shrinking in the Snow, I think the article was called.'

  'Right. I think I read that one. Load of mince. There were much better snow scenes in Why Gretchen Schumacher Loves To Do It With Strudel In A Ski Lift.'

  Proudfoot laughed again. For a moment she could forget where she was and what was happening. This was indeed romantic, looking at this obscured landscape, the latest object of her affections beside her and in a good humour for the first time since they'd got drunk in Durness.

  'I preferred the one where she was demonstrating how to achieve fifty orgasms a second with a choc-ice on your nipples in Lake Tahoe in January.'

  'You see, I don't know if you're joking now.'

  'Well, I am, but so are they. They're just taking the piss.'

  'Oh.'

  Leaning on the window, out into the cold, their arms touched; although neither of them gave in to it or lea
ned closer to the other.

  They had had a long day of pointless questioning. Wherever Barney Thomson was hiding within the old building, he was doing it well. Not one of the twenty-six had had anything to say that could have helped them. Plenty of them had suggestions about places he could have been, but there were so many of them that they were hardly worth knowing about. Another idea – to launch a search party, to spread out through the monastery in groups of four until they'd flushed him out – had been rejected by Mulholland. These were not twenty-six policemen he had, they were twenty-six frightened monks, and for all that he had thought Barney Thomson weak and insipid, the way he'd been going through the angelic horde, Mulholland would have put his money on Thomson against four of the monks any day.

  The two of them had had a look around the monastery, but it was so large, the halls and corridors so labyrinthine, that there was hardly a chance of stumbling across him. It needed more than the two of them, but a search party was not an option. Sending a messenger out into the cold was not an option. Calling in the army was not an option. He had a mobile phone with him, but it couldn't reach from one side of the kitchen to the other in this weather. They were stranded, there was no way they could get help, and they were sitting ducks to the most notorious killer in Scottish history; they could do nothing but wait.

  These thoughts once more intruded upon him, and the moment was snapped. That first flake of snow was belatedly joined by another, and then they started to come with greater frequency. The noise of the wind returned, and Proudfoot felt the chill and became aware of Mulholland's distance once more. The walls going up, as they ever did with the man.

  'Come on,' he said, 'we should get back downstairs. Find out how many more of them he's got in the last half-hour.'

  'So what, we just sit and wait?' asked Proudfoot.

  He shrugged, leading the way to the door. 'I know it's crap, but if you've got a better idea I'll take it. If we stick together as much as possible, I think we should be all right. I don't doubt the guy could take out more than one of these guys at once, but so far he hasn't. No one goes alone. And hopefully, this weather will clear in the next day or so and we can head west. Get back to some sort of civilisation.'

  'And what if it doesn't clear?' she said, as they headed back down a cold, dark corridor towards the main hall. 'What then?'

  Mulholland walked in front, his candle lit. We're done for, he thought, and Barney Thomson will find a way to pick us off one by one.

  'It'll clear, Sergeant,' was all he said. 'That's what weather does.'

  ***

  The evil Barney Thomson sat in the attic. He had ventured out briefly during the day and had pilfered a few more blankets, so that he was now almost warm for the first time since he'd effected his disappearance. He'd been aware at one point of someone coming up into the attic, searching for him presumably, but he knew where to hide, and knew that unless ten men with searchlights came up, he could easily avoid detection. Two of them, it sounded like, with nothing but candles. The police probably. His heart had raced, but he'd been in these situations before had Barney Thomson. Getting to be an old hand.

  And so he'd sat quite comfortably most of the day, nothing to think about except his hunger and how he could possibly turn in the monk-killer while at the same time exonerating himself. Had realised the mistake he'd made with the threat to Sheep Dip. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but he'd expected to be able to convince Sheep Dip of his innocence. He hadn't considered the possibility of the big guy getting murdered, leaving the note to be found; which he presumed it had.

  And so, through his own stupidity, there was now evidence linking him with the murders. If he'd been vilified before, it was nothing to what would happen now.

  As usual, Barney was wrong, but he was not to know of that morning's newspaper headlines. The Sun: Barber-Surgeon Innocent, Claims Blair. The Guardian: Thomson A 'Dumb-Ass' But No Killer, Says Clinton. The Times: Barney Thomson, the Alibis Stack Up. The Independent: Thomson 'Asleep' While Murders Took Place. The Express: Thomson Framed by Porn King in Camilla Scandal. The Daily Record: It Was The English! The Mirror: That Guy Couldn't Lace My Boots, Claims Saddam. The Press & Journal: Dons In Nil-Nil Thriller with Forfar: 'We Need Thomson On The Wing,' Says Boss.

  The eddies and currents of public opinion, as dictated by a fevered press ever on the lookout for a new angle.

  Barney knew nothing of this and, indeed, it mattered not at all. The outside world might have been twenty yards away through a thick stone wall; the nearest town might have been only twenty miles across a snowfield; Glasgow might only have been three hundred miles as the crow flew; but none of it mattered. He was trapped in a monastery with twenty-five monks and two police officers who thought him guilty of seven murders; and one other monk who himself was guilty of those murders, and who would presumably be more than willing to take care of Barney if the opportunity arose.

  He listened to the angry noises from his stomach and thought of his fate. It was impossible to imagine an outcome from this that he would welcome. Already he had accepted much. He would never again see Agnes; he would never again see his brother Allan and his delicious wife Barbara; he would never again work in a Glasgow barbershop, cutting hair and talking nonsense; he would never mix with his own folk and simply be one of the crowd.

  But what else? Would he ever walk free from this prison? Would he survive to see another summer and feel warmth on his back? Would he ever again sit in a quiet pub over a game of dominoes and drink a freshly pulled pint of lager?

  If he was to do any of that, if he was to taste anything good, from beer to freedom, he would have to be as determined as he had determined he would be only two nights previously. And here he sat, hungry, scared and broken. The man Mulholland believed could take on four monks and win. How many more murders would there be? How many more crimes would he be falsely accused of, how many more crimes would he have to prove himself innocent of?

  And so he slid unhappily into a world of dreams, and when he awoke he would discover the answer to those questions. And many more. Many, many more.

  The Knight Of The Long Knives

  As far as you knew you had eleven people to take care of. Forget the euphemism. You had eleven people to kill. Eleven monks. And so far you've taken out four of them. The four whose identity you were sure of before you started. Which leaves seven more. The only problem being that you don't know who they are. There are twenty-six monks remaining in the monastery, of whom fifteen could have been at Two Tree Hill twenty-seven years ago. But there are no records of that day in the library, as you had assumed there would be. You know that, because you've checked – and had to kill two librarians because of it. One of them was on your list anyway.

  So, quick quiz question. What do you do?

  Answer: You take them all out.

  That modus operandi which had been working so well has already been thrown out of the window, carried away as you are by the euphoria of murder. Anyway, you have to grow and adapt to situations if you're going to be a serial killer in the modern world. Can't live in the past. It would take an age to gradually work your way round the monastery, knifing all these monks in the throat; and the chances are that eventually your work is going to get the better of you, and you're going to come up against a monk who is not so easily overcome. Or a policeman. It had been a close-run thing the night before with Sergeant Dip. Someone might fight back; and you, the hunter, become the hunted. All that stuff.

  So, it is time to adopt a long-distance scatter policy; yet something prevents you from putting poison in that evening's dinner, and potentially wiping out the entire complement in one go. A need to feel more blood on your hands. So you opt instead for poison in a single carafe of wine; something which you know will be passed around maybe four or five of the brothers. A fair little cache of victims, almost doubling your tally. You can sit it out at the side, take note of who will die in the night from the slow-acting poison, and then deal with the others as yo
u see fit. You might not get to watch the poisoned actually die, but it gives you a thrill just to think about it.

  Curciceam perdicium – a strange-shaped insect of the Bornean rainforest, the blood of which decays into a deadly, slow-acting toxin. Seven to eight hours after ingestion, there begins the hideous seven-stage consequence of the body's reaction. a) The victim breaks into a cold sweat. Nothing too hideous or worrying, but uncomfortable. b) From this gentle opening, the body leaps into convulsions and erratic spasms, lasting for nearly three minutes. c) There follows a period of intense pain, likened to that endured during childbirth, but concentrated in one small area just above the kidneys. d) Then there is the shortness of breath, manifesting itself in a dryness of the lungs and an intense craving to swim naked underwater. e) As the body temperature rises, the mind is besieged by hallucinations of the 'large insects and spiders crawling over your face while your hands are tied' variety. f) The victim has an unstoppable desire to break into the second verse of Fernando, as strange liquids begin to ooze from the head. g) Then finally, as the body convulses, pain shoots through every cell, the victim froths at the mouth and the demons of Hell are unleashed with venomous panache on every sensory perception in his possession. He will see strange visions in the darkness, and there will come a dramatic easing of the pain so that in a moment of epiphany he might imagine that he has found salvation. Then he will die and be deposited in his own private Gehenna.

  Or worse...

  You are not sure how many you can dispose of in one glorious night of hell-bent revenge, but the first will have to be your idiotic partner, then after that as many as possible so that the police, if you don't manage to take care of them, don't become suspicious about your partner being dead.