This, after all, was what happened to him. Wherever he went, whenever he arrived in a town, some time, sooner or later, people started dying. As the grey light of early morning began to slither over the town, Barney went downstairs to the kitchen and, thankful that he had a gas hob, boiled a small pot of water to make himself his first cup, of what was to be a long day.
Early Morning Town Blues
Barney walked slowly around to the shop, meeting a lot of stoicism along the way. Storms happen. Everyone he met seemed to be all right; no one knew of anyone who had been hurt. People had got up and were already getting on with it. Damage was being assessed, lists written out, phone calls made.
He arrived to find Keanu and Igor standing across the road from the shop, looking up at the roof. The rain had eased but was still a steady downpour. Keanu was in long shorts and a Chicago Bears hoodie under an umbrella. Igor, like Barney, hidden under a thick rain jacket. All around shop owners from along the front were making the same assessment.
'Arf,' said Igor ruefully as Barney came alongside.
Barney put his hands on Igor's shoulders. He would have phoned him earlier, but the lines were down, his mobile's battery was flat...and Igor couldn't answer the phone anyway.
'Garrett and the kids all right?' he asked.
Igor smiled and nodded, asking the same question about Barney with his eyebrows.
'I'm cool,' said Barney. 'Keanu?'
'Immense,' he said. 'Totally immense.'
Barney smiled. 'What's the damage?' he asked.
Barney had had a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, two slices of toast done under the grill, no major damage to his house.
'Well,' said Keanu, pointing at what Barney had seen from far along the road, 'the window's cracked. Doubt it would survive a couple of drunk guys stumbling against it, but it's holding firm for the moment. A few tiles off the roof, but it's not a show stopper, and I don't believe it's our responsibility anyway.'
'Arf.'
'Fair comment. The back garden's a bit of a mess. That small Douglas fir in the back corner snapped like a...yeah, well, I'm not going to say it. It's broken. That's about it. Nobody's talking about deaths around the town. However, the big newsflash, the Bitter Wind was lost. Every last scrap of that haunted vessel, like washed out to sea.'
Barney and Igor looked at each other. Keanu stared idly up the road.
'Almost as if the storm just came up to get rid of it. Kind of creepy.'
He smiled. He had meant it jokingly, but the thought had already crept into the bones of Barney Thomson and his able sidekick, Igor.
'It's amazing, isn't it?' said Keanu, waving an arm along the road at the bustle of activity.
'The power of nature?' said Barney.
'Human spirit,' said Keanu. 'We, you know, like, in the west, we live this pampered existence. Blame culture, everything done for us, celebrity-driven society, everyone wants to be on TV, no one wants to lay bricks or paint walls. We're the most sheltered, extravagant, pampered society ever in the history of mankind. Yet, when the chips are down, when the wind blows and slates come in through the windows, we don't fall apart. We knuckle down, we work together, backs to the wall and we keep going until it's fixed and back to the way it's supposed to be. Then we have a latté and watch Celebrity Dump My Boyfriend!'
An old guy had stopped to listen to Keanu's exhortations on behalf of mankind.
'Apart from the looters,' he added as postscript.
'There were looters?' said Keanu.
'Well, you know, not here, in Millport. But generally, in life, when bad stuff happens, while I concede that a majority of people bend their backs and get on with it, there are also those who seek to exploit the situation. To take advantage of the weak. To steal.'
Keanu shrugged. Barney nodded. Igor looked suspiciously along the road.
'And then,' said the old guy, 'there are also those kinds of guys who would, for example, murder their wife, bury her body in the back garden, and then say to the police, well she just stepped outside when the storm was at its peak to bring her pants in off the line. Never saw her again. Terrible tragedy.'
He giggled. The other three gave him a sideways glance. Then the old guy chewed some air and looked quizzically at Barney.
'So are you just going to stand around out here all day, or is there any chance of a haircut?'
The three men from the barbershop looked at each other, although of course the decision was all Barney's.
'Sure,' he said. 'We're open for business.'
'Fine,' said the old fella, 'I'll have my usual George Peppard Breakfast At Tiffany's.'
And off he strode across the road. They watched him go and then started walking slowly after him.
Barney got a sense of her first, before noticing the woman leaning against the door frame in the next shop along. The police incident room. She was standing in the rain in a long brown overcoat, her hair uncovered and soaking. She'd been watching Barney since he'd arrived outside the shop, and only now as he neared his door did he notice her.
He stopped, still staring at the ground, visited by another feeling of unease, another ghost walking across his grave. He lifted his head, stared at her. The look of curiosity on her face, the water dripping from her nose. He pulled the hood away from his eyes and it fell back, so that his head was immediately soaked.
'Hi,' she said simply. Giving herself time. Trying to remember why she knew the face. Although the dark period from which she knew Barney Thomson was one which she had ignored, challenged, fought off and finally faced a thousand times in therapy. She twitched inside as the memory of it tried to squeeze itself to the surface.
Barney stared at her, struggling with his own memories. There was enough in his life which he had tried to forget, but faces rarely left him. A policewoman.
'Barney Thomson,' she said slowly, her head shaking. 'Jesus, I thought you were dead. You're dead, aren't you?'
Barney held his hands out at his sides.
'I think I tried,' he said, and both of them knew that he hadn't meant suicide.
She glanced round at the shop, then looked back at him.
'Still cutting hair,' she said.
'Sgt Proudfoot,' said Barney, and she nodded. 'It's been a while,' he added, still surprised and not entirely sure what to say.
She smiled weakly, they stared at each other. Standing in the pouring rain, the moment seemed almost romantic, yet there had never been any love between them. What they had shared had been a couple of stressful and bloody encounters with serial killers. There was no way that Barney was about to say that they should get out of the rain and for Proudfoot to respond that she hadn't noticed it was still raining. None of that rubbish.
'Come on, Big Man,' came a voice from within the shop, 'quit hitting on the police skirt and get in here and cut my hair!'
She smiled again, and Barney shrugged.
'I'll come in for a chat later,' she said, although even as she said it she was thinking that maybe she would delegate the barber shop to someone else.
'Sure,' said Barney, thinking that maybe he would close the shop down for a couple of weeks and go to the Dominican Republic on holiday.
Not that they didn't want to talk to each other. It was their common past they did not want to face. A last look, and then he turned and walked into the shop, closing the door on the torrential rain.
Proudfoot watched him go, and then looked back along the road at the beginning of the day, as the town went about in the pouring rain, putting itself back on its feet. She had listened to Keanu from across the road, heard his cry on behalf of the human spirit. However, she was a policewoman, it had been many years since she'd been able to have the view of humanity that he had championed.
Footsteps beside her, and then she was confronted by DCI Frankenstein, who had minced along from the George Hotel, where he had just enjoyed a full Scottish and enough toast to build another wall at the border. He felt fat, still had crumbs on his left cheek.
/> 'Sergeant,' he said, standing next to her under a dark blue and gold umbrella which he'd picked up while doing duty at the G8 in Gleneagles, 'what are you doing standing out here in the pishing rain?'
'Just, I don't know,' she shuffled. 'Getting wet, I guess.'
'Why?' he asked, and then waved a hand to tell her that he wasn't interested in her answer, and turned into the small office which they had arranged the day before.
Erin Proudfoot looked out over the busy sea and felt the rain as it finally worked its way through her four layers of clothing to touch her cold, pale skin. Barney Thomson was back in her life, and the nightmare which had woken her in the middle of the night, to the thunder of wind and the breaking of glass, had now been explained.
Rats
'They say a rat can last longer without water than a camel.'
Barney Thomson and Keanu MacPherson were both cutting hair, which was rare for November. In fact, it was the first time since just after three o'clock on the afternoon of the fourteenth of October that they'd had two customers in the shop at the same time. It had been a relatively busy morning, as if the people had decided that they had to face adversity with good hair.
Barney caught the eye of the old fella whose hair he was cutting. An Arnold Palmer Troon '67.
'That's a load of pish,' said the other old guy under the scissors in the next door chair. A Dean Martin Slumped In His Dinner. 'Where'd you hear that?'
'Read it on the back of a Penguin,' said Arnold Palmer. Dean Martin scoffed. 'You know, I mean a biscuit wrapper, not a bird. Although I was in Antarctica once right enough.'
'Away and shite,' said Dean Martin, 'you've never even been to Aberdeen. When were you in Antarctica?'
'There used to be rainforest in Antarctica,' Keanu chipped in.
'Aye,' said Arnold Palmer, 'the rainforest is disappearing from everywhere. Soon there'll be none left in the Amazon.'
'I expect you were in the Amazon 'n' all,' muttered Dean Martin.
'Only when I worked as cinematographer on the motion picture event Medicine Man,' replied Arnold with a chuckle. 'Sir Sean personally requested that I get involved.'
Barney smiled. Dean Martin choked on his Fisherman's Friend.
'Wasn't Medicine Man the one with Dustin Hoffman as an old Indian geezer?' ventured Keanu.
'You're thinking of Little Big Man,' said Barney.
'Aye,' said Dean Martin, 'the one about Custer.'
'Custard!' barked Arnold Palmer. 'The guy's name was Custard. That's where the dessert comes from.'
'Arf!'
'You don't half talk some amount of pish,' said Dean Martin, but Arnold Palmer had glazed over, the look of an old man reminiscing about the good old days.
'Jings,' he said, 'I used to make a rare old custard, you know, way back, years ago before I had my colostomy bag fitted. Haven't felt much like cooking since then.'
The four other men in the shop stopped for a second, unwelcome thoughts having been conjured up in their heads, and then they slowly went about their business. The discussion, which had never really attained any great intellectual heights, was over.
***
Next door things were getting rough. The room which had been more than big enough the day before, was now jumping with officers, a minibus load having just turned up from Glasgow. DCI Frankenstein hadn't been prepared, even though he'd known they were coming. He'd left the office the evening before thinking that he needed to sort things out for their arrival, but then hadn't managed to get around to any of it.
The eight policemen from Glasgow, along with the two from Largs from the day before and Constable Gainsborough, were hanging out in the incident room, eating doughnuts and drinking coffee. Some talk of the missing trawler, mostly the discussion centring around the forthcoming Old Firm game. Celtic already fifteen points ahead in the league, Rangers wilting, restless natives. Both teams still in Europe, for the first time since 1972.
The door to the rear opened and Frankenstein and Proudfoot emerged. A couple of the guys wondered if they'd been having sex, though only the ones who didn't know either of them. The crowd quietened down, Proudfoot folded her arms and looked at the floor. Frankenstein rested against a desk and looked around his squad. Seven men, four women. He nodded.
'Welcome to Millport,' he said.
A few of them mumbled back, most of them presumed he was being sardonic.
'It's a sleepy dump,' he said, 'I've been here a night and I don't want to stay much longer. We need results quickly or I'm going to fester into a big bag of rotting flesh, and if that happens I'm taking you lot down with me. So we need to get out there and find out what happened to this stupid boat. Today. Capiche?'
There was an odd mutter. Proudfoot looked up.
'Did you just say capiche?' said someone from the back.
Someone else giggled. Frankenstein rolled his eyes and silently lamented that things weren't how they used to be.
'We have four main areas of enquiry,' said Frankenstein. 'Sgt Proudfoot is going to go through it, split you into teams.'
He looked at Proudfoot. He looked back at the crowd.
'Right,' he said, 'I'm going for a coffee. Someone's got to do some thinking.'
The crowd parted as he headed towards the door, a couple of them catching his eye, most of them staring at the floor. He shuffled out the room, closed the door behind, stood out on the street for a second breathing in the morning sea air. Might have enjoyed it if he'd ever allowed himself that sort of positive thought, and then walked slowly away to his right, along towards the pier. Or, more specifically, the Ritz Café. Thinking that he might have a bacon roll along with his coffee. Or maybe sausage.
The room turned back restlessly to Proudfoot. Now that the investigation was afoot, they were keen to get on with it. Preferable to be out there, rather than stuck in a small room, no room to breathe or think.
'OK,' she said, 'let's crack on. For those of you who don't already know, we lost the trawler in the storm last night. It'd been due to be moved up to Glasgow this morning. Fate, divine providence, call it what you will, it's gone. So, firstly, and this might be a complete wild goose chase, but two of you will go out on the police boat and see if you can find anything from the trawler floating out at sea.'
'Police boat?' said Gainsborough.
'You don't have a police boat?' she said. 'You live on an island and you don't have a boat?'
'Cutbacks,' muttered someone else from within the crowd, and Gainsborough nodded.
'Of course,' she said. 'Constable, can you source another boat? Thank you. Second, we continue the house to house. Constable Gainsborough will take overall charge of that as he knows what areas we covered yesterday. Thirdly, we need to look more specifically into the lives of the three trawlermen. There has to be some explanation as to why those men went missing from their trawler in the middle of a calm night, as opposed to anyone else. Lastly, I need someone to leave the island and start tracing back the movements of the trawler before it reached Kilchattan Bay. And I don't just mean on this last voyage, I mean its last six months. A year if needs be. Keep going until you find something. We have the log here, you don't have to go swimming for it.'
She stopped and looked around the crowd. They were engaged. It was an interesting case to get their teeth into.
'Good,' she said. 'Let's, you know, get out there and get on with it.'
As the words passed her lips, she winced slightly. She'd always wanted a really good catchphrase for that moment, but everything seemed so derivative. She'd tried, 'Hey, let's not fuck up today,' for a while, but it hadn't exactly been a crowd pleaser. 'Be big, be bold, let's win one for the good guys!' had just been laughed at, and 'Forget heroics, forget subtlety, forget flamboyance, let's just put the ball in the back of the net with no fancy stuff,' had been too long-winded.
And so, with another thought of regret at the inadequacy of 'get out there and get on with it,' Sgt Proudfoot went about the business of splitting up her team and d
elegating responsibility.
Bruce Willis
Not long after two-fifteen in the afternoon. The shop was quiet, no customers. Igor had gone off for the afternoon, brought into service as husband and father-to-be to collect the gently vomiting Ella Carmichael from school. Barney and Keanu had sat in silence for a while, occasionally breaking into sporadic bouts of curiosity about life and the day, before Barney had offered Keanu the chance to head out into the afternoon to do a little bit of investigative journalism himself. Search around, see what he could find out about the missing trawlermen.
Barney was on his own. The day outside was cold, the shop was warm. He had been sitting in the middle chair looking out at the day, then the quiet of the afternoon and the warmth of the shop had begun to insinuate itself into his lazy bones, and slowly he'd drifted off into a comfortable afternoon snooze.
Two-seventeen. The door to the shop opened and Barney was brought suddenly from his slumber, his head snapping up to the side. So instant it looked like he'd been sat poised, waiting for the next customer.
He stared at the man for a second. A young guy, mid-twenties maybe, head mostly obscured by a great mass of brown hair and beard, which made it slightly harder to tell his age. Barney still had that peculiar sensation of being drawn suddenly from deep sleep, not entirely sure where he was, not entirely sure what was going to come next. Vague look of confusion.
'Haircut?' asked the guy.
Barney shook his head, the cobwebs washed away. Sudden, instant clarity and the benefit of twenty minutes' power sleep. He practically leapt out of his chair.
'Of course,' he said. He smiled. 'You, eh, look like you could do with it.'
The guy laughed, a lovely gentle sound. He removed his jacket and sat down in the warm chair that Barney had just vacated.
'Toasty,' he said.
Barney flung the cape around the lad, with a glance outside at the day through the broken window pane. The glazier booked for the following morning. The afternoon still dull grey, the colour of his dreams.
The Barbershop Seven Page 143