He reached over to the phone and dialled. Igor watched him intently, Ruth stared at him, her mouth slightly open, letting in flies. Barney felt bizarrely like a presenter at the Eurovision Song Contest, dialling up Moldova or Serbia & Montenegro to find out how their judges had voted, while the audience waited with breaths stalled.
A couple of rings.
'You're through to Wraithwreckers.com, this is Merlot Tolstoy speaking.'
'Hello,' said Barney, 'my name's Barney Thomson.'
'Mr Thomson,' said Merlot Tolstoy, 'how can we be of help to you today?'
The words spoke of American customer service values, the accent was very soft west of Scotland.
'Can I take from your advert,' said Barney, 'that you're in the business of getting rid of ghosts?'
'You certainly can,' said Merlot Tolstoy. 'We originally called ourselves Ghostbusters but we got sued for $17billion dollars by Columbia Tristar. So we've been through a few names since then, but we kind of like this one. Course, you're our first call in five months.'
'How many of there are you?' asked Barney.
'Only me,' she replied, no hint of embarrassment. 'I like to refer to myself in the plural to suggest a level of conglomeraticy.'
'That doesn't really fit with telling me I'm your first call in five months and that you work alone,' said Barney.
'We're still trying to get me on my customer service course.'
'To teach you how to lie convincingly?'
'Absolutely,' she replied.
'Isn't that a bit of a thing for a minister?' asked Barney.
Merlot Tolstoy giggled.
'You sound like my parishioners in Shettleston, but we always say, well the church has been lying for centuries about all sorts of things, so what are a few wee fibs over the phone?'
'Fair enough,' said Barney.
'So, how can we be of assistance to you today?'
Barney paused, thought of how this was going to sound.
'My friend's husband died on his way to the toilet two days ago. It seems he's trapped for eternity needing to pee and keeps padding back and forth to the bathroom.'
As he spoke, Tolstoy punctuated his words with uh-uh's and yes's and mmm's, and an 'oh yes, urino-poltergeistation.'
'Then yesterday evening my friend inadvertently had sex with another friend of ours who had gone round to comfort her,' continued Barney, and both Igor and Ruth gave him a serious amount of eyebrow.
'Common,' said Tolstoy. 'Very common.'
'So now her husband's spirit isn't just dying to take a piss, he's also super pissed off and seriously haunting her, you know?'
'Yes, we understand,' said Tolstoy. 'We've read about cases like this in Sport on Sunday.' A slight pause, which Barney did not fill as he sensed there was more coming.
'We just have a few questions,' said the Reverend Tolstoy.
'Fire away,' said Barney.
'Has she sold the film rights?'
Barney smiled. It is the new millennium after all.
'Not as far as I'm aware,' he replied.
'Good,' said Tolstoy. 'We need a stipulation in our contract that in the event of a film being made with due regard to the story of the haunting or demonic house possession, that my character can only be played by Uma Thurman, Angelina Jolie or Kate Beckinsale. Any other actress being considered for the part has to be approved by me before the script can be shown to the said actress.'
Barney didn't immediately reply to that one.
'Do we have your friend's agreement?' asked Tolstoy sharply.
'I think you can make that assumption,' said Barney.
'It'll have to be firmer than an assumption,' she said.
'We'll sign the contract.'
'Good. Now, are you the friend?' she asked.
Barney looked at the phone again, shared his slight confusion with the other two.
'I said I was,' he replied.
'Aye, but are you the actual friend who slept with your friend?'
'Ah. No, there are an actual three of us, sitting here right now.'
'Does the house have a history of demonic possession?'
'Not as far as we are aware.'
'Have any brutal acts of malevolence ever taken place in the house?'
'Not that I know of.'
'Was the deceased interested in any way in the occult or any supernatural phenomenon of any description?'
'He was pretty straight, as far as I can tell.'
'Where are you?'
'Millport.'
Slight pause as Merlot Tolstoy checked her watch.
'We can be there in about an hour and a half, depending on the ferry crossings. Give me your number and we'll call when we arrive. You can direct me to the appropriate site of operations.'
Barney gave the number, the Rev Tolstoy mmming constantly.
'We'll need the widow plus four others,' she said crisply.
'Why?' asked Barney, wondering who he was going to rope in for this. Did Ruth Harrison have any real friends?
'We use a 5th century Aramaic exorcism ceremony, which itself evolved from an earlier Babylonian model. Of course, we've adapted it to comply with modern Christian theology but the point is that we require a circle of six. Is that a can-do?'
'No problem,' said Barney, on the basis that if the worst came to the worst, he'd always be able to rope in a couple of the old fellas from the shop, who could come along and stand drooling in the circle with no idea whatsoever about what was happening.
'Cool,' she said. 'We'll see you in around ninety minutes.'
'Cool,' said Barney, as usual going with the flow.
She hung up. Barney turned to the others and shrugged.
'She'll be here in an hour or two, depending on the ferry.'
Ruth dissolved in a pile of relieved mush and reached out to hold Barney's hand.
'Thank you,' she gasped.
'Right,' said Barney, 'we'll need to get you cleaned up and into a change of clothes.'
'I'm not going back to the house,' she said quickly.
'It's all right,' said Barney, keeping hold of her hand and settling her down. 'We'll go round to Igor's place, won't we Igor?'
'Arf,' muttered Igor, frowning.
'You can have a shower and we'll get you some clean clothes.'
He paused to think about whether he wanted to visit Ruth's house and face the spirit of her dead husband on his own, or whether he could just nip along the front and buy her a new outfit from the shop on the corner of Shore and Newton.
'We'll get you a new set of clothes,' he repeated, deferring the decision. 'Finish your tea and we'll get going. Igor, is your place all right or do you need to go home and clean it up before you have a female guest.'
'Arf!' barked Igor.
Barney held up his hand in apology.
'Sorry, my hunchbacked friend,' he said.
'Arf.'
Barney nodded a further apology for casting aspersions on Igor's cleanliness, looked at Ruth, then walked through to the front of the shop to do some thinking about who they were going to get to assist in the exorcising of Jonah Harrison.
Pushing The Blue Sky
Two minutes back in the shop and Barney had two customers. James Randolph, no less, come to have his hair sorted out in the strange hope that it would also help him think more clearly, and another one in the endless line of old fellas who had retired to Millport some time in the previous thirty years.
After an initial wariness between the barber and customer, following their meeting the previous day at the house of Ruth Harrison, Randolph was now just struggling to stay awake. You know that thing which comes with getting your hair cut? The warmth of the shop, the murmur of low noise, the gentle hum of the razor, all on top of a late night and a glass or two too much wine. He didn't stand a chance. Still, he was preoccupied with murder and killing and death and had begun to wonder if there was some way that was used to kill animals which could be applied in some novel way to humans.
; 'Lambs,' he said suddenly, even though he was struggling to keep his eyes open, following on from a brief discussion on the fate of calves. 'How do they kill them?'
'Do they kill lambs?' asked the customer from the bench, a look of concern on his face.
Barney looked at him, then turned back to Randolph.
'Had a customer once,' said Barney, continuing to engage Randolph in conversation, 'a farmer. Here's what they did.'
Randolph caught his eye in the mirror. Barney could tell he was on the verge of falling asleep.
'You know those things you get in DIY stores to dispense Polyfilla and grout and stuff? A long tube, you push a plunger down from the top. It's a spring-loaded one of them. Metal. Pull it back, stick it at the back of the lamb's napper, let it go. The next thing the lamb knows it's snuggling up to some mint sauce.'
Randolph closed his eyes.
'That's why they call them spring lambs,' added Barney.
'They don't do that to lambs, do they?' said the voice from the back. 'They don't kill lambs? Not really?'
Barney and Igor glanced at each other.
'How do you think they get the lamb from the field onto the plate?' asked Barney.
'But lamb,' he said. 'I mean, I never really equated the two.'
'What did you think lamb was? Some sort of processed meat extract, which they just called lamb to give it a name?'
'But lamb! They don't call pig, pig. They don't call cow, cow. So why do they call lamb, lamb? I always thought, well I don't know, that it was something totally different.'
'Some other less cute animal?' suggested Barney.
'Yes.'
Barney stared at Thomas Petersen, gave a look to Igor and then turned back to James Randolph.
'Well,' he said, 'does that answer your questi....' and he stopped when he saw that Randolph's eyes were closed and the man had drifted off to sleep. Barney smiled to himself and lapsed into silence. The customer asleep, he could go about his business without prejudice or interruption. The ideal situation. So he snipped quietly away at an area behind the left ear and wondered why the man had bothered to bring up the subject in the first place.
***
Ten minutes later, James Randolph awoke with a start. He straightened up and looked in the mirror, established his bearings, realised that he'd fallen asleep in the middle of a haircut, then got his head around the fact that the very vivid dream from which he'd just emerged was exactly that. A dream. A dream in which someone had just been murdered.
Barney dabbed at the back of Randolph's jumper with a brush. Randolph rubbed his hands roughly over his face as he hurried through the dream, committing it to memory before it faded.
He started to smile. He had been an observer in the dream, standing outside a lone house on the side of a hill. Dusk, the sea below, the last gulls of the day crying to the departed sun, the sound of the wind bustling around his head. He had looked in through the sitting room window into a house he did not recognise. And there he had watched a killer and his victim, and he had watched the victim die a most singular death.
The smile broadened. Was it a new kind of murder which he had just witnessed? Probably not, but it was interesting and it was different. Different enough, he felt sure, to impress Bartholomew Ephesian for the first time in his life.
Still, he would have to do a little research, and where better to start than the barbershop?
'Everything all right for you, sir?' asked Barney, administering the final brush down.
'What d'you know about stomach acids?' said Randolph suddenly, looking at Barney in the mirror.
Barney recognised that the wheels were turning, that here was a man with a plan. He himself had developed a nose for murderous intent and this was what he was seeing in James Randolph.
'Nothing,' said Barney. 'Nothing at all.'
'There are acids in your stomach?' wittered the concerned customer from the back.
Randolph took in Barney's gaze for another couple of seconds, and then turned away and stared into the mirror. A fine haircut, the hair of a man who was about to mean business for the first time in his life. Get home, a cup of tea, and then he could spend a short while on-line as he established exactly what he needed in order to commit the crime which he had just witnessed in his dream. And then he would be set to execute the murder as laid down by Bartholomew Ephesian.
James Randolph had not, after all, been informed of the change of plans.
***
'Well, that's a lot of money,' said Romeo McGhee, smiling. He looked round at Chardonnay Deluth who was smiling back, her eyes wide with greed. One million pounds. For a piece of bony meat. Easiest money either of them would ever make. McGhee, however, was about to get a lot greedier. 'You guys must be pretty desperate to get a hold of Jonah's hand.'
He flicked his eyebrows at Jacobs, smiled some more.
'You as desperate as you look?' he asked cheekily.
Jacobs had a sudden vision of leaping across the coffee table and pounding McGhee's face. He closed his eyes, composed himself, closed the case and straightened his shoulders.
Ephesian was at home battling his demons. Jacobs had not had to persuade Ephesian to allow him to undertake this particular task on his own. Ephesian's humour and confidence were fragile enough for him to retreat at the first sign of trouble. More regrouping. What he required was for something to go right, yet the closer they got to the culmination of decades of work, the more problems there seemed to be.
Despite his excitement at what lay ahead, Ephesian had begun to think that perhaps they would have to postpone. It didn't have to be this evening and perhaps they had rushed into it following Lawton's discovery. And it would be a wonderful way of pissing off Ping Phat, the fat Chinese bastard having dragged himself onto a plane for the first time in decades.
Jacobs favoured pressing ahead. Did not believe that any of their problems were insurmountable, regardless of the missing Grail. Assumed, wrongly, that whoever had attacked Lawton would appear McGhee-esque from the woodwork to levy some trivial blackmail demand.
'You've seen the money,' said Jacobs indifferently. 'Let me see the hand.'
'Not so fast, bucko,' said McGhee stupidly.
Jacobs' face remained expressionless. This was not unexpected. Even the lowest form of life always thinks it can get more than its due. Chardonnay Deluth, on the other hand, slung him a look of horror. She was about to get her hands on one million pounds.
'Rome!' she ejaculated. 'What's with you?'
'It's cool, babe,' he said, eyes never leaving Jacobs. 'We're still going to get our million. Aren't we, Mr Jacobs? Or should I call you Cream Cracker?'
He laughed at his own joke. Jacobs, who hadn't heard the joke since he was seven or eight, stared deeply into McGhee's core and imagined injecting him with a vial of some flesh-eating virus and watching his body rot and die over the ensuing few weeks.
'What do you want?' Voice hard as marble, dull as dust.
'Rome!' repeated Deluth.
'Well,' said Romeo McGhee, 'I've been thinking.'
'Romeo, don't be a fucking idiot,' she said, leaning towards him, her voice lowered, as if Jacobs wasn't going to hear her.
'What do you want?' asked Jacobs again, ignoring the woman.
'Well,' said McGhee, 'as far as the talk goes around here, you cowboys have a right little brotherhood between you all, with your tasty little clandestine meetings on a Tuesday evening. Donut Jonah was a member of your wee cabal and presumably the frozen hand is all tied up with the same business.'
He paused, asking the question of 'hot or cold' with his eyebrows raised. Jacobs remained impenetrable. McGhee was slightly disarmed by Jacobs inscrutability but managed to keep up his confidence, or at least, the appearance of it.
'So, what I'm thinking is that you'll need someone to take Donut Jonah's place, am I right?'
Jacobs said nothing.
'For fuck's sake, Romeo, don't be an arsehole!' said Deluth.
He waved her d
own with a calm hand.
'You've turned up here with a million quid, exactly as I asked for. No attempt to negotiate me down, no attempt to strong-arm, you just want the hand so that you can get on with whatever you're doing. So I'm thinking, chief-o, that you must be doing something pretty soon. Now I want to be a part of it.'
'Do you?' said Jacobs coldly, speaking at last.
'Aye,' said McGhee, 'I do.'
They held each others' gaze across the coffee table, Deluth simmering on the sidelines.
Jacobs breathed deeply. The urge to leap across the table and tear him to pieces was strong. He glanced at Deluth but she was playing her part in the Mexican stand-off by staring at McGhee.
If he killed McGhee with his bare hands right now, Jacobs thought, would it terrorise Deluth into telling him where the hand was hidden?
Jacobs abruptly stood up, clutching onto the bag.
'I'll need to speak to Mr Ephesian,' he said, then turned and started to walk away.
It would mean returning empty-handed once more to see his boss but he could sense the anger within him about to come bursting brutally to the surface, and it is rare in life for such an explosion of rage to ever achieve anything positive. At least allowing McGhee into their forum would guarantee the hand being there and it wasn't as if they had a queue of decent applicants lined up. And, now that Lawton was in hospital and not showing any signs of waking up, they were looking for two new members of the brotherhood, rather than one.
'You can leave the money,' said McGhee, his voice oozing slime even without trying.
Jacobs stopped but did not turn. Counting to ten.
'No I can't,' he said eventually without turning, then he opened the door into the hall and was gone.
They listened to the front door closing, and then McGhee and Deluth looked at each other. McGhee smiled, suddenly having disappeared several miles up himself.
'Cool, eh?' he said. 'We are so kicking their butts.'
'You,' said Chardonnay Deluth, 'are a complete fucking twat.'
And she walked brusquely to the bathroom to install herself and seethe.
The Barbershop Quartet
'I'm not sure, really. What do you think?'
Barney looked at the back of the customer's head. The man was in his late eighties, weak-jawed, sallow-skinned and irresolutely-eyed; the customer who had been waiting behind Randolph. Had a good head of grey hair on him, however, demanding a straightforward short back and sides.
The Barbershop Seven Page 127