The Barbershop Seven

by Douglas Lindsay

  'Time to die, Dickless,' said Jade Weapon.

  'Don't mind if I finish,' said Bond. Jeremy Bond.

  'Didn't even know you'd started,' said Jade Weapon, as she closed her thighs firmly around the weak ribs of the agent, and squeezed the little breath out of him that was required. Done and dusted in ten seconds.

  Men are so weak, she thought, as she sat astride her fifteen-litre Harley Davidson, fired off a volley of bullets from the side-mounted machineguns, just in case there happened to be any men watching from the nearby forest, then tore off across the hills and mountains to where her boat waited at the other end of the island.

  ***

  'God, I wish I could be like Jade Weapon,' muttered Erin Proudfoot quietly. Cool, smooth, fit, quick-thinking, testicle-crushingly confident, horny as hell and breasts like a behemoth.

  She leaned back in her chair as she read. Feet perched on the desk. Tea break. The report on the four missing teddy bears in Byres Road could wait. As could the phone call to the woman who thought her husband had been abducted by the Federation of Alien Presbyterian Churches. And both of those were ahead of the student locked in the basement of the QM Union, reputedly transmogrifying into an insect.

  The noise of the station went on around her, but no one spoke to her these days, not unless she spoke to them first. A bit of a mad glint in her eye, that's what they all thought, and so they tended to be wary of her. Even Detective Sergeant Ferguson had retreated from the sexual innuendo that he had once permanently employed.

  If I were Jade Weapon, she thought, I'd take care of guys like Ferguson.

  'Busy as ever?'

  Proudfoot kept staring at the book. She stopped reading, but her eyes didn't leave the page. A voice from the not-so-distant past, but it might as well have been twenty years ago for all that it mattered. Still, for all the lack of feeling to which she aspired, for all that she would be as cool and unemotional as Jade Weapon, her heart immediately started thumping voraciously, her throat went into a dry panic, and ants began crawling up and down her spine.

  She looked up at him eventually, hoping her face did not betray her emotions. He hadn't changed, but what had she been expecting? Massive weight loss? Eyes like black holes? Hollow cheeks? Bela Lugosi?

  It had been six months since they'd seen each other. The last time had been another passionate night, when they'd talked as much as made love, when his intensity had been overwhelming, when she had thought he might kill her; yet in the morning his eyes had been dead, and she'd known there was something in his head that wouldn't be communicated.

  They had escaped with their lives from an infamy of adventure, they had thrown everything of themselves at each other for a few months, and he had been the first to burn out. Just another sad little love story. The momentum of it, the speed with which it had all happened, the fear and the loathing, had carried them through, but once the emotions had been spent and at last a day had dawned cold and grey and hopeless, Mulholland had forced them to accept the reality of what had gone before.

  'Not much to do,' she said eventually, after some endless eternity of a stare.

  'Don't trust you with anything, eh?'

  'No, no, it's not that,' she said, 'just don't have much on at the moment.'

  'You don't have to lie, Sergeant. I know what it's like. I've been getting the same treatment up the coast. If some Councillor's wife's cat goes missing and they want to stick a chief inspector on it to try to impress the bastard, I'm the man. Otherwise, I get nothing. There are prepubescent constables getting more to do than me. I'm still supposed to be a detective chief inspector, but I'm getting the biggest load of shite that's ever been handed down.'

  'You can't have,' she said.

  'Why?'

  'Because I've been getting that. You're right. I'm not busy. I've got plenty to do, but it's all alien abduction and teddy bears, and spending half my life following some stupid blond-haired bimbo who may, or may not, have killed her boyfriend five months ago. It's driving me nuts. Course, they think I'm nuts anyway.'

  Mulholland laughed. Had sympathy for her; as well as all the other feelings packed neatly in his baggage.

  'I had to investigate a sighting of Elvis,' he said.

  'Robbing banks?'

  'No, no, he was sweeping up leaves in Tarbet. The tax people read about it in the local paper and asked us to chase the guy. Thought that if he'd been domiciled in Britain for the last twenty-three years they'd be able to make a killing.'

  Proudfoot smiled. Beat her teddy bears case, although only just. Her heart had settled, she had an unexpected feeling of relief. Some part of her, she was realising, had been afraid that Mulholland would be getting on with his life with no trouble at all, that she would have suffered scars that never touched him.

  'And did you get him?'

  'Oh aye, aye, I got him easy enough. I mean, the guy sweeps the streets every day. How hard is it to find someone like that?'

  'And?'

  'Oh, it was Elvis all right. No question. Got him to do a couple of verses of Long Lonely Highway to prove it. The big guy hasn't lost it. Still got a voice like an angel. Brought a tear to my eye.'

  'Is he still a fat bastard?'

  'No, no, he's thin. And blond. And he's hardly aged, in fact. Looks as if he's about thirty or so. But it's Elvis all right. Who else is going to know all the words to Long Lonely Highway?'

  'You sure? By the end, Elvis couldn't remember the words to his own name, never mind his songs. Used to hold bits of paper.'

  'Aye, but he was fine after he got out of rehab in the early eighties, he said. Hasn't looked back.'

  'And now he can sweep roads with the best of them.'

  'That's the King,' he said.

  'We're talking shite,' she said.

  Mulholland nodded.

  'I hated you, you bastard,' she continued. He continued to nod. That sounded about right.

  'You want to expand on that?'

  He turned at the sudden clap on his back. Was greeted by a jolly face, not yet sodden with drink, a fresh moustache still struggling to come to terms with the rabid pink skin.

  Detective Sergeant Ferguson, a smile charging untethered to all parts of his face.

  'Boss!' he said. 'Magic to see you, Big Man. They let you out of the loony bin up by?'

  'For a limited period only,' said Mulholland, smiling the best that he could these days.

  'Brilliant. Good to see you back anyway. You haven't missed much, mate. The usual shite, you know. Stabbings like you wouldn't believe. All that crap. Barney Thomson's back doing the business. Good on the lad, that's what I say. And this place hasn't changed much. The usual sad lot, eh, Erin? Some of us have been doing a bit of shagging lately, of course. You know how it is, eh, boss? You two going to start up hostilities again, are you?'

  No answer. Go on, Ferguson, thought Mulholland. Step in faeces and walk it through the house.

  'Aye, well,' said Ferguson, 'whatever. You all right for a pint the night, mate? Tell you about the seven Chinky birds I shagged at the weekend?'

  'Love to, Sergeant, but I can't. Got work to do, I'm afraid. They didn't call me back to listen to your crap, high on the agenda though it is.'

  'Aye, right, boss. See you about, then. Maybe get together later in the week, eh?'

  'Aye,' said Mulholland. Why not? No harm in listening to one man's sexual ravings over a couple of pints for an hour or two. No harm in anything when your mind is so screwed up you require brain surgery.

  'Brilliant. See you around, then, eh? Presume you're up for the Barney Thomson business?'

  'See you later, Sergeant.'

  'Aye, right,' said Ferguson, tapping his nose. 'No problem. Need to know, and all that. No bother, mate.'

  And off he went, to spread a little gossip. As you do.

  They turned back to one another. The name was out there, but they could both ignore it for a little while longer.

  'You were saying?' he said.

  'I thought you
were a total bastard,' she said.

  'But not any more, then?'

  She stared at him for a while and he stared back. When you're dead inside you can stare out the toughest situations: emotional, physical, violent, they're all within your capabilities. When you're dead inside, you can stare out Lecter.

  She'd rehearsed this many times, while never thinking she would get the chance to say it. So, of course, when it came out it sounded nothing like she'd intended.

  'Why do I have to explain it? That last night, God, I don't know. We talked about a lot of stuff. We were even going to run off to the Bahamas to get married at one point. Then up you get in the morning, without a bloody word, and walk into the station and get a transfer. Just like that. What a penis. God, I just used to lie awake at night and wish you were dead. I dreamed up at least fifty disgusting ways for you to die. My therapist even recommended I get a dummy and stick pins in it.'

  'What kind of therapy was that exactly?'

  'The right kind.'

  'And did it work?'

  'Don't know. Did you feel any of the pins going in?'

  'All of them,' he said.

  'Good. Anyway, it didn't do me any good, although it helped a bit after I'd put the doll through a mincer, mixed it up with some Kennomeat and fed it to my neighbour's dog.'

  'I definitely remember feeling that.'

  'Well, after that I calmed down a little. I suppose I realised that none of it was your fault. We were both buggered after what happened. Maybe you just had more guts than me to walk away from it. So then I just didn't want to think about you at all. I thought it would be best if I never had anything to do with you again. A total blank, you know. Pretend you didn't exist.'

  'That work?'

  She shook her head.

  'For a while, but I couldn't stop thinking about you, not when I was trying to be in denial. So then I decided that I should just accept it all for what happened, that life goes on, and if I ever saw you again, then so be it. And here we are, and I'm totally cool about it. Don't really feel anything, except I'm sort of pleased to see you. But not that pleased.'

  'Very mature,' said Mulholland, presuming that she was far more perturbed by his arrival that she would have him believe.

  'Thanks.'

  'I'm still at the hating you stage,' he said.

  'You hate me?' she said, sitting up. Feelings aroused. 'What kind of arsehole are you? You were the one who left. You were the tube who talked about pitching up at a beach in the Caribbean one minute and who buggered off for the rest of his life the next. Why the fuck should you hate me?'

  He looked down at her. Had talked this moment through his head many times as well. Yet in none of his rehearsals had he admitted to hating her, so he didn't know what to say next.

  'Don't know,' he said.

  Proudfoot shrugged. Let go of a long sigh and settled back in her chair.

  'Maybe I do still hate you after all,' she said.

  'Nice to see you back, sir,' said a passing sergeant, whose name Mulholland didn't remember. A tall woman, hair a different colour from that which he remembered. He nodded and smiled and didn't risk saying anything because the name was gone.

  'Eileen Montgomery,' said Proudfoot softly.

  'I knew that,' he said. 'Married to Ron, the airport guy.'

  Brilliant, she thought. In possession of all the facts, just a few seconds too late. Just like they'd been in the monastery.

  'So what are you going to do about it?' she asked.

  'What? Eileen?'

  'The fact that you still hate me.'

  'Oh.'

  There always comes a time. No matter how much fat you chew, or how long you take to pick the last of the flesh from the carcass of the chicken or however long you worry over the decaying tissue of the dead horse or plunder the carrion of prevarication, eventually you have to get down to business.

  'You know what they say when you fall off a horse,' he said.

  Proudfoot stared at him, and slowly smiled.

  'You think you're going to ride me again, do you?'

  He raised his eyes. Face went a little red.

  'We're going back to look for Barney Thomson. Or rather, we're going to find the latest killer who every eejit, including our haemorrhoidal chief superintendent, thinks is Barney Thomson, but who bloody well obviously isn't.'

  She looked at him and a million things went through her mind. She had been complaining for months about the pointless crap she'd been given to do, but did she really want anything harder on her plate? Did she really want some rabid serial killer to chase? And why on earth, when she'd been spending her working life on routine observation work that would dim the wits of the dimmest idiot, would they thrust her into the middle of the biggest investigation of the year? Why, if not to be part of Joel Mulholland's therapy?

  She took her eyes off him and looked back to the book which she had never put down. Obviously Jade Weapon was not going to make it to the other side of Jamaica without being apprehended by at least seven or eight assailants.

  Fantasy, fantasy. Much more intriguing and involving than real life. And so the next words in her head were not her own and they were not Mulholland's. They belonged to Weapon. Jade Weapon.

  'Listen, fuckface,' said Jade Weapon to the swarthy Italian, who had suddenly leaped onto the back of her motorcycle, 'fuck me or fuck off, but don't fuck with my aerodynamics.'

  Down Among The Dead Men

  'Nice enough guy, you know.'

  There followed a long silence. A clock ticked. A plane passed by overhead, some 33,000 feet above Milngarvie, the low white noise vaguely penetrating the new but single-glazed windows. Somewhere outside, the posthumous, souped-up version of Guitar Man thumped loudly from an open car window. A bird sang. Somewhere a woman screeched as she dragged a shaving system she'd seen advertised on the television down her leg, taking an inch-long gash from just above her ankle. The refrigerator hummed.

  Proudfoot tapped the end of a nail on the Formica tabletop. Mission Impossible. Felt a twitch in her fingers sitting next to Mulholland again. Out of the blue her life had turned upside down; and what was going to happen when they found Barney Thomson, or when they found the real killer, or when Mulholland failed and McMenemy yanked him from the case? Would he vanish back up the coast, having tossed her world and her neatly wrapped emotions to the wind? Bloody men, she thought, and felt sleepy.

  Mulholland hadn't taken his eyes off Allan Watson. Spaceman to his mates. 'Call me Spaceman,' he'd said to Mulholland when he'd arrived.

  'Spaceman,' he said. 'About ten minutes ago now, I asked you to tell me everything you knew about Jason Ballater. Is that it? Nice enough guy? The bloke was thirty-three, you've known him since nursery school, you're shagging his sister and, it would appear, his wife, and the sum total of your knowledge of the bloke is that he was a nice enough guy. Don't you think you could elaborate a little, or are we going to have to break it down into idiot-proof, tsetse-fly-bollock-sized, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire-type questions?'

  'Don't know.'

  'Don't know. That's it?'

  'I shagged his mum 'n' all. That any good to you?'

  Proudfoot took another glance at him to see if there was any possible reason why all these women might be interested in him, and when it was not obviously apparent she looked back at the table. Pink, with a disconcerting brown pattern running through it.

  It was hot in the kitchen, the result of the heating up full, coupled with the still mild temperatures for the time of year. She could feel her eyes getting heavy. Here she was, having wanted to be put on a real crime for the last few months, and now she couldn't even be bothered looking at the suspect. Or whatever he was. Couldn't stop herself from looking at the investigating officer, however.

  'His mum?' said Mulholland. 'We've just been talking to his mum. You slept with her?'

  Spaceman barked out an apologetic laugh; did a short bit of hand movement. But his movements were languid; it was hot and sopo
rific, and he was even more tired than Proudfoot. Had had a late night at the Montrose. Office Christmas revelry; all sorts of women in front of whom to make an idiot of himself.

  'Aye, aye, I know what youse are thinking. She's a right bogmonster, I know that. But you see, it was years ago, and it was different then. She was all right, you know. Tits still in about the right place, not so many wrinkles. It was one of they rites of passage things, you know. Like you get in the films.'

  'Rite of passage?' said Mulholland. You can go away for six months, it can seem like years, but nothing changes. People still talk the biggest load of utter bollocks.

  'Aye, you know. Rite of passage. It was one of they hot summer days. I comes round to see wee Jason, forgetting that he'd gone off fishing with his dad. I was about sixteen, I think. Agnes asks us in, and you know how it is. I was rampant, you'll know that yourself, mate. We all are at that age.' Proudfoot squinted out of the corner of her eye at Mulholland; he ignored her. 'Agnes was wearing just about nothing, seeing as it was so hot, you know. She bent over, I got a swatch of her boobs, she sees me looking, the next thing you know we're doing the bare bum boogie on the kitchen floor. Magic, by the way.'

  Mulholland rested his face against his hand, so that his cheek squidged up and his left eye almost closed. My God! He'd forgotten what it was like to interview people.

  'She taught me everything there is to know. It was brilliant, so it was. What to put in where. What holes are for what, all that stuff. 'Cause, you know, women have got about seven or eight holes down there. There's all sorts of stuff going on that men just don't know about.'

  Mulholland gave in to it. Why not? It wasn't as if he was going to tell them anything that would be of any use. He turned to Proudfoot, who had allowed herself to smile.

  'Seven or eight? That right?' he asked.

  'Double that,' she said.

  'See!' said Spaceman. 'See! No matter how many times you get stuck in down there, there's always something else hidden behind some big floppy pink flap that you—'