The Barbershop Seven

by Douglas Lindsay

  'Who does?' asked Jacobs sharply, although he did not believe Roosevelt for a second.

  In his way, Roosevelt was as incompetent at this game as Randolph. These were not criminals who were playing games of murder and assault and theft. They were ordinary people, dragged out of ordinary life by extraordinary circumstances. And they were rubbish at it. He did not respond to the question, and his silence spoke volumes of his guilt.

  Jacobs this time took several strides quickly along the hall, stopping a few feet short of the priest, close enough now so that his own face was in shadow with the lamp behind him, and the worried and tortured features of Roosevelt were clear to him.

  'These are dark times, Father,' said Jacobs harshly, 'and times that are short. We need the Grail, and we will not be stopped by your pusillanimity and faintness of heart.'

  'What you are planning is wrong!' Roosevelt ejaculated.

  'How can you of all people think this is wrong?' snapped Jacobs. 'We have waited two thousand years for this.'

  'It is wrong!' protested Roosevelt again, becoming stronger as Jacobs took another step nearer to him.

  'Who are you working for?' asked Jacobs.

  'No one!'

  'Who are you working for?' he repeated, face curling.

  'I don't need to work for anyone,' replied Roosevelt, discovering some hidden reserves. 'I can see the blasphemy of this act of my own accord. I work for myself, yet I work for the Lord and for Christians everywhere.'

  Jacobs lost control. Took one step forward, grabbed the priest by the white collar and brought his head violently down onto the bridge of his nose. With a muffled gasp, Roosevelt dropped to his knees, hands to his face.

  'I work for the Grand Master and for the Brotherhood,' said Jacobs. 'As should you. You swore an oath. Tell me where I can find the Grail or you will find that you have yet to feel the full force of my God-sent brutality.'

  Roosevelt looked up from his knees, then swayed to the side until he was leaning against the wall. He stared into the blackness of Jacobs' eyes then slowly shook his head.

  'It is not here,' he said. 'I do not lie.'

  'But it was you who dealt with Lawton,' said Jacobs, a statement rather than a question.

  Roosevelt closed his eyes, remembering the feel of Archie Gemmill as he had crunched into Lawton's head. The sound of cracking bone and the guilt of drawing blood in the Lord's name.

  'Yes,' he mumbled.

  'Then where is the Grail?' demanded Jacobs.

  'It is not here,' mumbled Roosevelt, and his head dropped.

  Once more Jacobs could not contain his wrath. He kicked Roosevelt viciously in the face, sending him backwards, his head smacking on the frame of the kitchen door. Then he stepped over him, bent down and picked him up by the collar.

  The priest's face was covered in blood; his head lolled easily to the side. He was unconscious. Jacobs had lost control too quickly. He may have been innately brutal, but he was in his way as unused to doing this as Randolph and Roosevelt were inept in their chosen fields of crime. His sensible and measured intimidation had lasted barely a few seconds before rude violence had taken over.

  He held Roosevelt's head close to him for a second before letting him fall back to the floor, then he straightened up and looked down at the crumpled heap of the bloody cleric.

  'Shit,' he muttered.

  Revive him and try to get more information, or work it out himself without any further recourse to violence?

  He looked at his watch. There was the other matter to take care of, the murder of Garrett Carmichael and the collecting of her blood, which he had correctly decided was no job for James Randolph. That was just as important as finding the Grail. He could take care of that, while he gave thought to the problem of locating the holy chalice.

  He took a last look at the stricken priest and then walked quickly into the kitchen in search of the man's freezer.

  ***

  James Randolph was in bits, in the space of a few minutes having quickly descended into the kind of pointless mush that Ephesian and Jacobs would have expected of him in such trying circumstances. Made to feel awkward by Carmichael, discomfited by her children, embarrassed by the clumsiness and lack of aforethought in his plan, subjugated and demoralised by the presence of Barney Thomson. The man could not have felt more like a child and, although he did not suffer from the complex condition that haunted the behaviour of Bartholomew Ephesian, he wanted nothing more now than to curl up into Ephesian's foetal ball.

  'Eat the sandwich,' said Barney harshly, insomuch as you can utter the words eat the sandwich harshly.

  Randolph looked like he was having to force back tears. All mental functions breaking down. His spirit had been crushed and he genuinely suspected that if he ate the sandwich he would die.

  'I can't,' he sobbed, dropping the sandwich. 'I can't.'

  'James?' said Carmichael. Wondering, incredulously, if Barney hadn't been as far off the mark as she'd first thought.

  'Need to pee, Mummy,' said Ella from the floor.

  'Go to the bathroom, then,' said Carmichael on auto-pilot.

  'Why can't you eat the stupid sandwich?' said Barney.

  He took a step forward as some sort of intimidatory gesture. There would be no violence to follow, however.

  'I'll explode!' ejaculated Randolph loudly. 'I can't, I can't!'

  There was a brief intermission while all the other adults in the room looked at him strangely.

  'I need to pee!'

  'Go to the bathroom!'

  'What are talking about?' said Barney. 'You've already eaten your dinner?'

  'No!'

  'You're Mr Creosote? You don't look like him.'

  'No!'

  'What then?'

  'I need to pee, I need to pee!'

  'Go to the bathroom!'

  'I'm scared!'

  'I'm talking!'

  'Eat the sandwich!'

  'No!'

  'Need to pee, need to pee!'

  'For God's sake!' exploded Garrett Carmichael, and she grabbed Ella by the hand and hauled her rudely from the kitchen. On up the stairs to the bathroom they went, where she was able to gently sidestep Hoagy's question of, 'Has she peed in her pants?'

  The men were alone. Barney waited until the general mother/daughter kerfuffle had died down and then he pulled a seat out at the kitchen table and sat down. Could see the state Randolph was in, recognised that he would be easy to get information out of.

  'Tell me everything while she's out of the room,' he said.

  Randolph nodded, not quite able to look Barney in the eye.

  'The Brotherhood...Mr Ephesian...' he began, stumbling. He had to talk, but felt a horrible, clawing self-loathing for doing so. 'They need to kill Mrs Carmichael.'

  Barney raised an eyebrow. His life was so plagued by murder and death, the fact that he had stumbled upon another sordid little crime in another little town seemed hardly surprising.

  'Why?' was all he said.

  'I don't know,' replied Randolph, head bowed. 'There's something going to happen tonight, some ceremony. With body parts. I'm not sure of all the details, but they need blood. I don't know why it has to be Mrs Carmichael's, but those were the instructions.'

  Barney paused as he listened to a further stramash from upstairs. Then he heard the sound of convoluted and ancient plumbing and realised she had started to run the bath. She had sensibly chosen to withdraw from the absurdity of the discussion.

  'So you were intending to kill her with a cheese sandwich?' ventured Barney. 'And it wasn't poisoned?'

  'No,' he said sorrowfully. 'No poison.'

  'Well, that's something,' said Barney. 'Poison's for girls. You, on the other hand, made an exploding cheese sandwich.'

  Randolph nodded. He began slowly.

  'In the shop this morning,' he said, and drifted off, his eyes wandering around the fallen sandwich. 'In the shop, when I fell asleep, I had a dream. A new way to commit murder.'

  'By
giving someone a lethally explosive cheese sandwich?'

  'The cheese had nothing to do with it,' answered Randolph prosaically, Barney's tone going several miles over his head. 'It's what I put in the sandwich spread.'

  Another pause, which Barney did not push to fill.

  'A blend of enzymes, acids and metal shavings, which would react with the hydrochloric acid in the stomach to generate an explosion.'

  'Excuse me?' said Barney, with some curiosity.

  'I created a potion which would react with the acids in the stomach to create an explosion.'

  'Are you a chemist?' asked Barney, thinking that while he had never actually known a chemist, every single chemist on planet Earth had to be more intelligent than this guy.

  'No,' he said, looking up. 'I dreamt it.'

  'You dreamt all the ingredients of this mixture which would make someone's stomach explode?'

  'Aye.'

  'And did you test it on anything? A mouse or something?'

  'Didn't have time,' he replied.

  Barney stared at Randolph for a while.

  'What?' said Randolph, edgily.

  'Have you done this before? I mean, tried to kill someone?'

  Randolph shook his head.

  Barney held his insipid gaze for another couple of seconds and then suddenly bent down and lifted the cheese sandwich.

  'No!' cried Randolph again, as Barney put it to his mouth and took a large bite.

  'You...what...?' stuttered Randolph.

  Barney swallowed.

  'When is it I'm going to explode exactly?' he asked.

  Randolph began to back away out of the kitchen.

  'Now,' he said. 'It should be instantaneous.'

  They looked at each other for a while. Barney did not explode.

  'You are such an idiot,' he said eventually, and then he reached over the table, took a long swallow from Carmichael's wine glass and then walked quickly past Randolph and out of the kitchen.

  'Rotten cheese sandwich, by the way,' he said, and then he strode up the stairs two steps at a time.

  Poked his head round the door of the bathroom, where Hoagy and Ella were both submerged in bubbles and Garrett Carmichael was sitting bored on the toilet seat.

  'We need to talk,' said Barney.

  'I might know why they want to kill me,' she said quietly.

  Barney leant against the door frame.

  'Who wants to kill you, mum?' said Hoagy.

  'No one,' she replied. 'We can talk when the kids are in bed.'

  'Bad guys or good guys?' asked Ella.

  'The good guys aren't going to want to kill her, are they?' said Hoagy mockingly. 'You're a stupidhead!'

  'Am not!'

  'Stupidhead, stupidhead!'

  The Wash

  'My husband was part of the brotherhood that has existed on this island for nearly a hundred and fifty years. The Prieure de Millport they call themselves.'

  Barney took a sip of wine. Randolph looked on from the corner, eyes as wide as Gollum.

  'I don't know, I suppose it's a secret society like any other, that's what I always thought. They only ever have twelve members at one time, and whenever a member dies, they take an age carefully selecting the replacement.'

  She took a deep breath, drank some wine. Barney sat in silence giving her the space to talk. Upstairs the children bounced around the bedroom.

  'The members have to swear on their lives and the lives of their family that they will never divulge the society's secret. I always used to tease Ian about it. I mean, I didn't really know what he was doing when he went off on a Tuesday evening. Anyway, he was as good as his word, never told me a thing. There was a bit of talk around the village, but not much. Most people have always just left them to it, really.'

  Another pause, another sip of wine, another slight cringe as a great thump came from the bedroom. She glanced aloft and smiled ruefully at Barney.

  'My mother's right, isn't she? I don't need to go to work every day, not really.'

  'You don't have to justify yourself,' said Barney softly.

  She smiled again, took her eyes away from his. Lifted the wine glass, didn't take a sip this time, placed it back on the table.

  'Then Ian found out he had cancer. It didn't take long. I don't know, five months in all. Quite lucky, I suppose. Better than being dragged out for years and years like some people.'

  'When was that?'

  'It started when I was six months pregnant,' she said, and she paused again. Barney was quiet. 'So at least he got to see Ella for a few weeks.'

  'I'm sorry,' he heard himself saying.

  'The last couple of weeks he was pretty out of it. Drugged up, had the occasional moment of clarity. He told me everything a few days before he died. He had about half an hour when he'd just been drugged, he felt a bit better but the side effects hadn't kicked in.'

  She breathed deeply, swallowed, held back the tears. Barney put his hand across the table and she reached out for it, as she transported herself unwillingly back to the small room in the Victoria in Glasgow. Randolph glanced up, then immediately dropped his eyes.

  'It's the Holy Grail,' she said, smiling awkwardly. 'That's what this is all about. The stupid Holy Grail, can you believe it?'

  'The cup?' asked Barney.

  She shook her head.

  'No. Well, yes, partly. The chalice that caught the blood of Christ. Apparently it's hidden in the cathedral.'

  'In Millport?'

  'Go figure,' she said, shrugging her shoulders. 'Has to be somewhere.'

  Barney let out a low whistle.

  'I'm super sceptical about that, if I'm honest.'

  'I know,' she said. 'So was I. Always have been.'

  Barney turned and looked at Randolph.

  'You know about this?' he asked. 'You one of the brothers?'

  Randolph shook his head. Barney turned back to Carmichael.

  'Who else is there?' he asked.

  'I'm not sure. Ian didn't tell me that. There are rumours about the town. I'm pretty sure Jonah was one of them.'

  That was not entirely unexpected, thought Barney, given Ephesian's interest in the widow.

  'Anyway, the chalice is only part of it. There's something else. He told me about the chalice first, by the time he got around to the rest of it, he was becoming garbled. Couldn't tell how much of it was true, by their standards at any rate, and how much was hallucination. It wasn't like I was searching Ephesian or his freak servant out to discuss details.'

  Barney glanced round at Randolph, wondering how much of this he already knew, wondering if he should have ejected him. However, it seemed sensible to retain him on the premises for the time being until he had some idea of what was happening.

  'There've been books about it recently, in the last twenty years or so. I've read them all since Ian died. None of them mention Millport, though. The story of Christ's life and death.'

  Another hesitation, this time because she didn't believe what she was about to say. Barney left her to it. Took a sip of wine, waited to see what was coming. All to the background of the general mayhem upstairs. Two kids and no immediate parental authority. How wars start.

  'You know, it's that thing where Mary Magdalene was Christ's wife. They had children. When Joseph fled to France with the Grail, as the legend goes, he also took Jesus' wife and weans.'

  'Family ticket,' said Barney glibly.

  'Exactly. So, to really shorten two thousand years of history, there were descendants of Jesus back then, and there still are now, two millennia later.'

  'A direct lineage to Christ?'

  'Aye.'

  'Fan-tastic,' said Barney. 'There's no one not going to buy into that when he makes his debut on Parkinson or Letterman.'

  'Well, whatever, but you can see the problem, you can see why it's a secret. Jesus is supposed to be divine, son of God and all that. If it turns out he was an average guy, wife, kids, mortgage, game of darts down the Horseshoe on a Friday night, it punct
ures a whole bunch of religious beliefs, doesn't it? Kind of conforms to my theory of the Garrett, but I expect you don't want to go there.'

  'Let's stick to the facts,' said Barney.

  'Aye, well, that's about it, without a whole bunch of unnecessary details.'

  'So who is it, then? The descendant of Christ. Is he on Millport? Is it Ephesian? Ephesian is the descendant of God? That would explain his attitude.'

  'I don't think it's him, but this is the point. Jesus wasn't the son of God, he was just a guy.'

  Barney turned once again to Randolph, who was watching Carmichael, taking it all in.

  'So, what's happening tonight then?' asked Barney, looking back to Carmichael.

  'Don't know,' she said.

  'Why should they want you dead?'

  'Don't know,' she said.

  'Why should they want your blood?'

  'No idea.'

  'So why did you say you thought they might want you dead?'

  She shrugged.

  'I never thought they knew that Ian had told me what he did, but who knows? I know at least Jacobs, and maybe Ephesian, went to see him in the last few days.' The image of her dying husband came back to her and she paused. Let herself see him lying there for a few seconds, remembered taking her new baby into the hospital to see her father, lying in some strange world that only he inhabited. A dying man and a new baby. Both of them inscrutable, both of them seeing things and understanding things like no one else can.

  'So I don't know,' she said eventually. 'If they know that I know, they might well want me dead.'

  Barney watched her for a while. Studied her, evaluated whether or not she was telling him everything that she could, decided she was. Turned back to Randolph after a short while.

  'You got anything to say?' he asked.

  Randolph didn't even look up. Shook his head.

  'You know none of this?' said Barney.

  'Why would he?' said Carmichael. 'He's nothing to them. Ephesian just throws sticks for James to run after.'

  Randolph continued to stare at the floor. Confidence shattered. Garrett Carmichael was not wrong. He never knew anything worthwhile. And when Ephesian threw a stick, he ran after it.

  'Mummy!' came the cry from upstairs, accompanied by uncontrollable wailing. 'Mummy! Hoagy said I'm a zombie!'