The Barbershop Seven

by Douglas Lindsay

  Barney did the 'Penalty, ref!' gesture and shook his head.

  'What do you want me to say, Leyman? I am Barney Thomson, I can't help it. I am who I am.'

  'There you go with your cod philosophy. Why don't you hand yourself in to the polis, then?'

  'Come on, Leyman, I've tried that. You know I've tried it. They're no' interested. The second lot I went to I even suggested they do a DNA test on me, and the bloke told me to clear off. Said they'd run out of money to do DNA tests 'cause they'd done so many in the past year. What can I do, Leyman? I'm stuffed. And you're stuck with me.'

  Blizzard swallowed the last of his fourteenth and final whisky for the night – a man who knew his limit. He shook his head, reached across the table and gripped Barney by the hand. Barney felt a little self-conscious and hoped no one was looking.

  'You'll be the saviour of my shop, son,' said Blizzard. 'I can't imagine it without you now. I hope you're going to be here for years to come. You're a good pal, 'n' all.'

  He took his hand away as he spoke, allowing Barney to feel more comfortable and appreciate the sentiment. Needed, liked and respected. What more could he really want?

  'Just a couple of bits of advice,' continued Leyman, and Barney was not entirely sure he wanted to hear them. 'First of all, you've got to get yourself a shag, Big Man. There are plenty of women out there, you've got to get stuck in, you know?'

  'Right.'

  'And another thing. Don't know if this is for you, or no'. Might be, might not. We'll see.'

  He did an exaggerated thing with his hand while he paused, indicating maybe, maybe not. Barney leaned forward, although he didn't know why he was that interested. When is advice from drunk men ever even remotely applicable to this planet, never mind the situation to which they are referring? Barney was not to know that this advice would seem strangely relevant, would seem like the perfect foil to the uncertainties over his past and would ultimately plant him firmly, once more, in the nest of vipers.

  He strained to hear above the cheering coming from the dartboard area.

  'I know somebody who knows somebody else,' said Leyman, lifting his eyebrows.

  'Aye?' said Barney, when nothing else was immediately forthcoming.

  Blizzard tapped the side of his nose in an exaggerated manner; winked excessively; nodded his head. And then he slowly collapsed onto the table, so that his face lay in among the whisky swill, his mouth was squashed open and his nose was bent to the right.

  Some other time, then, thought Barney.

  And You Only Live Twice

  Once more back where it all began. Joel Mulholland sat across the desk from Chief Superintendent McMenemy, as the old man read the only folder remaining on his spartan desk. One late December morning, still the weather outside that nothing, grey, mild, humourless weather that pollutes Scotland for much of the year. And Mulholland sat there and watched the old man, with nothing, grey, mild, humourless thoughts on his mind.

  Had no idea why he was there; could not even begin to care; and had already decided that if he didn't like the sound of what he was about to be told, he'd tell McMenemy where he could stick his job, and where he could stick the entire police force. Although, after several hours of thought on what it could be that required his presence in front of the self-styled M of the Strathclyde police, the only explanation he could think of was so that M could tell him that he was not wanted any more.

  That would make sense. He was a wash-out, and he knew it. Couldn't have given a hoot either. He'd got enough money in the bank that he could afford to go to some quiet little village somewhere, settle down, and live a life of trundling nothingness... for up to a fortnight. After that, when he'd run out of cash, who knew what he'd do. Rob banks maybe.

  M raised his head and stared seriously across the old desk at Mulholland. The clock ticked high up on the wall, cars skittered past outside, somewhere a woman bit noisily into a bar of chocolate she'd seen advertised on TV at the weekend. McMenemy's eyes searched Mulholland's face for any sign of spirit, but he could find nothing. He had heard, of course, what he'd been up to. Weekly reports had come back to McMenemy from Murz and Cunningham. He knew the state of Mulholland's mind; and he thought he'd found the perfect way to get him out of it. Expected, as he sat, that Mulholland would know exactly why he was there; and couldn't have been more wrong.

  'It's been a few months, Chief Inspector. How've you been?'

  Mulholland shrugged. How is anybody? Is anyone ever as bad as they say they are, or as good as they think they might be?

  'All right,' he said, trying not to dwell on introspection.

  'Done some work up the west coast,' McMenemy said, half-question, half-remark. He knew everything Mulholland had worked on this past six months, and knew that little of it would have had any meaning or interest. His wife had gone; his life too, and to a place from where it would be very difficult to retrieve.

  'Some,' Mulholland replied. A few cases, one arrest; only surviving up there as a favour from Cunningham to McMenemy, repaying an old debt.

  'How do you feel?' McMenemy asked. 'Ready yet for some real work, or do you think you need a little longer where you are?'

  He knew full well the answer to that question. The soft touch was not working. If he left Mulholland where he was, he would never get his officer back. He was not the best man he'd ever had, but he was a good detective, and there were few enough of them around. He had decided there might only be one way to bring him round. Shock tactics. Put him back in the same situation as before, and see how he reacted. If he failed, and failed to the point where he even lost his life, then what had the police lost as a result? And should he succeed, and they got their man back, then it would have been justified. A bit like M sending James Bond after Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun, thought McMenemy. Bond was washed up, had been brainwashed by the Russians, and might as well have been dead. If he was killed by Scaramanga, then so be it. If he killed the greatest assassin on the planet, then he'd proved that he was back.

  Mulholland is my Bond; and Barney Thomson his Scaramanga, thought M, in one of his more ridiculous thoughts of the previous fifty years.

  Mulholland weighed up his answer to the last question. Did not feel like being honest about it, and decided to hold off from the bitter whims of veracity for a little while longer.

  'Not sure, sir,' he said, while thinking that if he was ordered back to Glasgow now, he was heading to Oban and catching the first boat to some remote island where crime was a thing of the future.

  McMenemy nodded and clasped his hands in front of him. He knew how to read one of his officers, and he could read Joel Mulholland. Maybe this would indeed be to push him too far.

  'You'll have seen the newspapers, heard what's been happening in Glasgow these past couple of nights.'

  Mulholland stared at his boss, trying to think. Besides the blatant act of not caring, there remained the semblance of integrity and the need to at least give some sort of an answer. So he tried to think if he'd heard anything of the news or of anything mentioned at work in the previous few days, but there was nothing there. The way Cunningham had spoken implied that there were things going on that he should know about, but he'd barely ever paid her any attention anyway, and the previous day hadn't been any different.

  McMenemy had waited long enough for an answer. He cleared his throat, opened the drawer at his right hand and took out a remote control for a video and television. He indicated to Mulholland that he should turn around to watch the TV just behind; then fumbled with the buttons to get the whole thing rolling.

  Mulholland turned and watched as the screen jumped to life and the creaky closed circuit video footage rolled. A man stood at the counter of a police station, engaged in muted conversation with the desk sergeant; a policeman whose body language suggested some apathy.

  They watched for a couple of minutes, until the man turned away from the desk and walked out of the police station, the sergeant hardly even noticing where he'd g
one. McMenemy shut the television down and waited for Mulholland to turn and face him, and it was some time before he dragged himself back around from the blank screen.

  What had just gone through his head? Even he did not know. Not even a jumping of his heart when he'd first seen the man, so dead was his mind to everything that had gone before.

  'Recognise him?' asked McMenemy.

  Mulholland breathed deeply. The old man hadn't so much as toyed with his pipe since he'd walked in but he could smell it all the same. It was in the fabric of the room. And when he did eventually decide to go, or was kicked ruthlessly into touch, it'd take years for his successor to rid the place of his smell.

  'Barney Thomson,' he said. 'Good old Barney. What was that all about?'

  'Decided to hand himself in,' said McMenemy.

  'Right. Got him at last,' said Mulholland, wondering why the man couldn't just have walked away and started a new life when he'd had the chance.

  'Not as such,' said McMenemy. 'The desk sergeant let him go, didn't get an address. Apparently he tried to offer himself up to a small station in Partick later the same day, but they're being hush-hush about it. Embarrassed as hell, same as us.'

  Mulholland laughed. Bloody typical. The Glasgow polis at their finest.

  'Looked like Sergeant Mullen, to me. He had his reasons, I suppose,' he said and McMenemy shrugged.

  'These things happen. There hasn't been a crackpot lunatic within a hundred miles of Glasgow who hasn't handed himself over in the last ten months, claiming to be Thomson. There's even been a book. Fifty-Seven Ways to Make the Police Think You're Barney Thomson. Quite funny actually, though I wouldn't say that in public. So, of course, when the real thing turns up, our man was so pissed off about all the other idiots that he let him go. A constable spotted him on the tape a couple of days later. You're about the only man here who's seen him in real life. You can confirm it's him, can you?'

  'Looks like him.'

  'Exactly. And we let him go. If the press ever find out they'll have my testicles on toast, so it's mouths shut. Of course, I've had Mullen's testicles on toast, but there's no way I'm standing for any of that business with my own testicles. Which is all the more likely in view of what's happened this week.'

  Mulholland raised his eyebrows. Here we go again drifted through his head.

  'He's at it again,' said McMenemy. 'There've been another couple of murders in the city. West End as usual. The bloody city's shitting its pants again. I can't believe it. Bloody nightmare. Why me? Why can't the bastard go and plague some other district of Glasgow for once, or Edinburgh, even? There're plenty of people in Edinburgh he could kill.'

  Mulholland smiled. Good old Barney; a fool for anything.

  'What makes you think it's him?' he said. Smiled, but inside he was laughing. They were just back where they'd been the previous year, when every crime, no matter how absurd, was blamed on Barney Thomson.

  'Good God, it has all the hallmarks of the man. He's known to have been in the area for a few days, and all of a sudden there are bloody murders all over the place. It follows the man around, and eventually you have to stop thinking that it's all coincidence. The man is a killer.'

  The smile had not left Mulholland's face. Time to use it.

  'Bollocks,' he said.

  'I beg your pardon.'

  'Bollocks. Barney Thomson never actually murdered anyone in his life. He accidentally killed his work colleagues, and that's the end of it. He's no more of a murderer than you or me, Superintendent. He's nothing. He couldn't hurt a bloody fly, even if he wanted to. Why can't you just leave the man alone?'

  'Chief Inspector!'

  Mulholland shook his head, then relaxed back into his seat. Had said what he had to say. If the old fool wanted his officers to spend their time chasing shadows and ghosts and false reputations, then that was fine by him. As long as he was not one of those officers.

  'Your condition appears to be even worse than I was led to believe, Chief Inspector. Barney Thomson is the most feared criminal of the last hundred years. I had hoped the prospect of going after him once again might get your juices flowing, but I fear I may be wrong. He escaped you once, and if you still had it in you, and it appears that you may not have, I would have thought you would be determined to bring him once more to justice.'

  McMenemy stared deeply into his eyes again, then stood up and turned to look out into the gloom of late morning. The streetlights were on, cars were streaming past on the road outside, pedestrians frittered by, many in fear of the killer who once again stalked the streets.

  He still intended sending Mulholland out on the case; the previous few words more intended as shock tactics.

  Mulholland watched the old man's back. Barney Thomson. Death did seem to follow the man around, but he was no killer. And the man had saved his life, no question about that. If it hadn't been for Barney Thomson, he wouldn't have been sitting there.

  It had seemed like a good thing at the time.

  Not that he was about to tell McMenemy that he had chosen to let Barney go. This past half-year of introspection had given him a strange sense of perspective, but not so strange as to allow him to happily confess to such an indiscretion. On the one hand, it'd been the right thing to do. On the other, there was no chance on Planet Earth that McMenemy would see it that way.

  'For what can I take your silence?' said McMenemy without turning. 'These are troubled times, Chief Inspector. The people of Glasgow are living in terror. Good and honest men cannot walk the streets for fear that they might be struck down by this Satan of the West End. We, the citizens of this great city, stand as one, petrified to the point of dilatoriness, frozen in inertia, waiting for some hero of the hour to come forward and seize the day, to reclaim the city for the common man, from this vampire of justice. Barney Thomson sucks the very lifeblood from us all, Chief Inspector, and we are all haunted by him. He has left this station bereft of qualified officers and I, indeed we all, are desperately in want of one fine man to emerge from the swamp of inactivity, the fen of fecklessness and the quagmire of trepidation to lead us to the New Jerusalem of salvation, where men and women can walk along the avenues of hope, with heads held upon high and in the great and certain knowledge that they will live to see the next day dawn, that they will watch their children grow old, and see their dreams become the corporeality of hope, the very verisimilitude of the redemption of the soul.'

  Mulholland nodded.

  'I think I missed some of that,' he said. 'Could you repeat it?'

  McMenemy turned. Unused to such flippancy when he waxed as the poet of the force. Preferred a little more awe in his officers. Mulholland might just about be too much of a loose cannon. However, he knew that loose cannons are often the only ones capable of hitting the target. Certainly they were in the world of cliché and soundbite which he inhabited.

  'You think this is funny, Chief Inspector?' he said.

  'No,' replied Mulholland. 'No, I don't.'

  'What, then? You're not saying much for yourself.'

  Mulholland hesitated, but the truth bubbled below the surface.

  'Go on, Chief Inspector, might as well spit it out. Say what you're thinking.'

  'Two things,' said Mulholland quickly, and such was his lack of spirit these days that his heart was not even in his mouth as he said it. 'Firstly, Barney Thomson is absolutely, definitely, no questions asked, sure as a fucking dog is a dog and mince is mince, not the killer. Maybe he's back in Glasgow, and maybe he's not, but there's not a malicious bone in his body. He's weak, he's a bit slow, he's nothing special, but he certainly isn't a killer. Just not a chance. Not a chance.'

  McMenemy nodded. 'Very well,' he said. 'You seem quite concerned. Perhaps then you would care to find the real killer, if you so stoutly believe that Thomson is innocent? Anyway, you have something else to say.'

  'You talk the biggest load of shite of anyone I've ever met in the force.'

  McMenemy looked down from his position at the windo
w. He considered this for some time, during which he took his seat once more behind the desk. Not for a second did he take his eyes from Mulholland, who did not retreat from the stare. All sorts of male hormones were flying. This was the stuff of cinema.

  'Of course,' said McMenemy after a while, 'you're right. How'd you think I got to be chief superintendent?'

  'Ah.'

  McMenemy stared at his detective and wondered if he was right to be doing what he was about to do. Instinct was what it was all about, however, and once he'd had it. He'd had it in spades, and that was really why he'd got to where he was. And right now his instinct said to go with Mulholland.

  'Son,' he said, 'you can try and wind me up as much as you like, but you're on the case. And if you refuse, I'll send you back to Sutherland. I hear that monastery's started up again. Right?'

  Mulholland looked across the chasm.

  'Right,' he said.

  Right.

  And Mulholland's eyes sank down to the carpet, and even though he may not in actuality have been heading back to Sutherland and the terrors of the year before, that was where his mind now took him, as it dragged him kicking and screaming back into the miserable past.

  The Reason Why Some People Get Murdered

  Barney wrapped up his fourteenth cut of the day. Leyman Blizzard had just finished his third. It was a dull day down the Clyde, as it was in the centre of Glasgow. Dull but mild. There were a lot of frogs in Greenock, and the spiders were large for the time of year. And the people, generally, unhappy.

  Two Jimmy Stewarts and an Anakin Skywalker for Leyman; he'd botched the latter horrendously, but in doing so had made the lad look much less of an idiot. And four Claudio Reynas, a David Ginola World Cup '98, a double chicken burger with cheese, a Cary Grant (Dyan Cannon retro), a J.R. Ewing, two Frank McGarveys, a lamb biryani, a Cardassian Forehead Transmogrifier, and two Des Lynams for Barney.