The Face Of Death (Barney Thomson)

by Douglas Lindsay

  Four Americans had been murdered, now there were two more Americans newly arrived in town, reeking of authority, looking as if they were about to embark on some police action or other. The connection was obvious, and the first thing they would be told when they'd stepped off the plane was that the man they were looking for was Barney Thomson.

  He was still staring at them as they took their keys from Mrs McAndrew, then turned and headed towards the stairs. As they walked past him, Crow was looking at the stag's head above the staircase as it dourly surveyed the room – although of course it was dour, it'd been shot. Cameron, however, caught Barney's eye. Strangely for Barney, he recognised the attractiveness of her. Perhaps it was that which stopped him drawing his eyes away from her, but they held each other's gaze as she walked by not more than ten feet away.

  She stopped as Crow passed under the gloomy stag. Barney felt a small flutter in his stomach, but after all that he had been through in the previous year, really this was no big thing. Only a woman, and why should he get nervous about that? Apart from the fact that she was a policewoman with the obvious potential to arrest him and send him to prison for the rest of his life.

  'Hi,' she said. 'Beautiful country.'

  'Thanks,' said Barney. And he kind of smiled, but it very probably came across wrong.

  'My family left here in 1643,' she said. 'My name's Cameron.'

  'Right,' said Barney. 'They lived in Strathpeffer?'

  She laughed at herself, and Barney tried not to stare at her lips.

  'No, just Scotland, you know. My cousin still lives in Falkirk. Do you know her?'

  'Em,' said Barney, thinking the obvious but not wanting to say it, 'I, eh, you know ... Never been to Falkirk,' he ejaculated eventually.

  'That's a shame,' she said. They stared at each other, and neither had anything else to say. Barney was trying desperately to think of something, but the conversation that came to mind was on the subject of the latest hairdressing techniques coming out of Kilmarnock. And so eventually she smiled and nodded and turned and followed Legal Attaché Damien Crow under the dead stag and on up the stairs.

  Barney watched the space where she'd been for a few seconds then looked back at the paper. Profile Of Man Who Holds Scotland In Grip Of Fear, was the headline above an article about himself, and he stared at it curiously, still thinking about Attaché Cameron.

  'She fancies you,' said a voice to his right.

  He looked over. There was a guy in a suit reading the Daily Telegraph.

  'What?' said Barney.

  'Hi,' said the man. 'Here's my card.' And he stretched forward and handed Barney his calling card. Theodore Wolf, Marketing Consultant. Barney stared at it, until he realised he was supposed to take it from him, took it and quickly put it in his pocket.

  'That's nice,' said Barney.

  'No, seriously,' said Wolf. 'She was into your pants big style. I'd watch her friend, mind you, 'cause he looked like a serial killer.'

  Barney nodded. Wolf stared more closely at him.

  'Why,' said Wolf, 'as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric; I am justly killed with my own treachery.'

  'What?' said Barney.

  'Hamlet.'

  Barney looked blankly at him. Why couldn't people just not talk shite? How difficult is it to not talk shite?

  'It may well be,' said Barney, deciding to take him to task, 'but it is relevant in even the remotest way to what we were talking about?'

  'Not really,' said Wolf, after a pause. He was used to people being intimidated and thinking him deep when he quoted Shakespeare,

  'Well, shut up, then,' said Barney. 'You ever met a serial killer anyway?'

  Wolf laughed, a laugh which died on his lips when he saw the look in Barney's eyes. Being a marketing consultant, he conceptualised several things to say, but strangely thought the better of all of them. So he slowly lifted the paper in order that Barney was obscured, buried his head and tried to concentrate on the story of Geri Halliwell's breast reduction.

  And when Wolf glanced nervously round the paper a few seconds later, to check to see if the man with the weird glint in his eyes was about to draw a chainsaw out of his back pocket and noisily cleave his head off, Barney was gone.

  *

  Crow drove the 4x4 up the forest track, round the top and down into the centre of the wood to where the four bodies had been discovered next to the Touchstone Maze. He stepped out of the vehicle with Cameron and McLeod and into the cold early afternoon. The pale sun was already heading towards the mountains in the west faster than a Louisiana dog into a lizard pit, and the temperature was falling to somewhere just below zero – where it was pretty much destined to remain until sometime in the middle of August.

  There was one other police car there. The area had been sealed off and was being attended by two officers. Along the north-west boundary of the clearing where the concentric stone circles had been built, was a stone wall bordering farmland, with a view out over the town, Ben Wyvis rising behind. The rest of the clearing was surrounded by forest.

  The three of them stood together looking up at the mountain and then at their immediate surroundings. The labyrinth was not large, most of the stones no more than four or five feet high. There were eighty-one of them, lain in five concentric circles, leading to the vortex at the centre.

  Perhaps not so much a vortex, more just a bit of space.

  'How long's it been here?' said Crow, assuming several thousand years and no end of conspiracy theories about aliens as to its construction.

  'A few years,' said McLeod.

  'Right.'

  'It was based on an ancient labyrinth design of prehistoric origin. The earliest records of labyrinths in Scotland are from Pictish and Celtic rock carvings.'

  'Right,' said Crow.

  'The stones were taken from around Scotland, you know, you've got all sorts here. Like the stones from the Outer Hebrides which were formed around three billion years ago. That's, like, a really long time.'

  'Yep,' said Crow, trying to think of a way to extricate himself from the conversation.

  'Then there's the youngest Highland rock which was formed in the Jurassic. There's metamorphosed limestone, mica schist with granite pegmatite veins, there's granodiorites with layering, possibly caused by fractioned crystallisation or dissolution of country rock ...'

  He looked at Crow who was showing him the palm of his hand.

  'You're boring me.'

  'Oh,' said McLeod. 'All right.'

  'Good,' said Crow, his thoughts already moving on. He'd been in Britain for eight months and was still coming to terms with the fact that not everything in the country was two thousand years old. Just the rail network and the attitude to foreigners.

  He walked through the stones, running his fingers across them as he passed by, leaving the job of finding out about the project to Cameron, who was reading the information boards at the head of the labyrinth.

  He worked his way round until he reached the stone which had been marked up with the ghoulish face. He bent down and studied it more closely, then turned and walked back towards McLeod.

  'Know of any specific connection between the circle and the victims?' he asked. They were beside an area that had been further cordoned off, and was guarded by two officers.

  McLeod shrugged.

  'They're right next to each other,' he said.

  'Not what I meant, cowboy. Why here?' he asked, pointing into the woods.

  'No connection,' said McLeod. 'He took the four guys up into the wood, no idea how he managed to get them to go, then he cut their hair and slit their throats. Very nasty.'

  'Did he do the haircutting up here or someplace else?'

  They were now standing in front of Constables Garvie and McIntosh, two men who looked very cold, despite their large and thick jackets.

  'Someplace else, we think,' said McLeod.

  'Aye,' said Garvie, who was a confident man, 'there's been a thorough search of the area and there's no trace o
f any hair clippings.'

  'Barber in town?' asked Crow.

  'Luke McGowan,' said McLeod. 'All over the papers this morning giving his opinion on the haircuts. We questioned him yesterday just before the papers did. Says none of the victims had been to see him, so we have to go with that.'

  'Unless he's the murderer,' said Crow.

  'Nah,' said McLeod, shaking his head. 'Luke's been in the town since he was born. Everyone knows him. Never slit a throat in his life, not even unintentionally. Given his share of shit haircuts, I'll admit, but he's not been too bad since the doc started him on Valium.'

  'They allowed to do that?'

  'For day to day stuff, aye,' answered McLeod. 'Not if they're in competition.'

  Crow nodded, deciding to reserve judgement on Luke McGowan. He knew well not to write anyone out of an investigation, and it was ever the way of Federal agents to turn up in small towns throughout the States and be told who could and who couldn't have committed any given crime; just as it was equally the way for them to prove local law enforcement wrong. The case of Fingers Spaghetti and the murder of Little Boy Fettuccini in the town of Plattsburgh in upstate New York, using only one slice of cherry pie, had been enough to prove that hypothesis. That they were now in Scotland instead of America, did not mean things were going to be any different.

  'He's got an assistant, of course,' said McLeod, continuing, 'but Igor's never hurt anyone.'

  Crow looked up, a curious smile coming to his lips.

  'He's got an assistant called Igor? You're shitting me, right?'

  'He's always there if you want to go and talk to him,' said McLeod, shrugging. Garvie and McIntosh smiled. 'Not that he says much.'

  Crow looked suspiciously at them then turned away. He hooked the strip of yellow and black tape above his head and walked into the crime scene to study the ground which had been well trodden beneath the trees. Cameron approached them, having read the full story of the stone circle, and having already made the decision that it was unrelated to the investigation.

  'Hi,' she said to Garvie and McIntosh. 'Lara Cameron. My family left Scotland in 1643.'

  3

  Arf

  Barney stood outside the barbershop looking up at the sign. McGowan & Son, Hair Emporium. The usual tired red and white pole outside the door, the usual paint slowly peeling off the window frame, the window in need of cleaning, cobwebs in the corner and dust on the sill inside. How did these people expect to attract customers with presentation like this?

  He breathed deeply, his mind wandering. For two months now the newspapers had been running the same photograph of him, a photo which must have been given to them by someone at the old shop. Taken eleven years previously when he'd had a ridiculous '70s perm and had been toying with a moustache, so that he'd looked for all the world like some sort of major porn star. Barney the Bonker; Tonguetastic Thommo; Banging Barn the Bare Bum Boogie Man or Mr Sausage. It'd taken him less than a week to realise how much of an idiot he'd looked, and he'd quickly switched to a more subdued, if equally inappropriate, Tom Cruise. However, the photograph had been taken, the damage done. And he'd always been embarrassed by it, until now when the world thought he looked like this idiot with curly hair.

  Still, he thought, it could happen that someone would get hold of a more recent picture, it would get splashed everywhere, and his detection would be inevitable. It was time to equalise before they scored, and get a new look; some style or colour he'd never had before, so that there'd be no photographic evidence to follow him around.

  He pushed open the door to the shop and walked in. There was a man sitting reading the latest bestseller – Women Read 'Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus', Men Read The Sports Pages – slouched back in one of the chairs. Another shorter, younger man, was stopped over a brush so that the curve of the hunch on his back was exaggerated even more.

  With the opening of the door, the hunchback glanced round quickly, then resumed his sweeping. The other man jumped up and put the book down, turning in a flash from slouching, disinterested slob, to smooth-talking barber-type bloke, ready with a cape and a smile.

  'Haircut?' said Barney, depressed by his surroundings. Standard shop lay-out, only two chairs, one of which was obviously permanently vacant. A general dingy feel to the place, the lighting low, and he immediately assumed that it was in order to cover up the more startling of the barber's inadequate cuts.

  Along one wall was a selection of Hollywood photographs, with all the usual suspects. Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Pierce Brosnan, Russell Crowe, Martin Clunes. None of the photographs were the usual head shots of the barbershop, however. They were all casual photographs, the guys smiling and relaxing, as if they were all friends of McGowan and the pictures had been taken while they'd been hanging out together, sinking a few beers.

  'Certainly, sir,' said McGowan, who'd had a slow day, once the news of the freshly shorn murder victims had been in the papers.

  Barney took off his jacket, hung it on a peg which looked not long for the world, and slid cautiously into the chair. On the other side of the hirsutological fence, he was feeling the same things as his old customers had been used to. He caught the hunchback looking at him and nodded uncomfortably.

  'Hello,' said Barney, and the hunchback sort of grunted in reply, so that it sounded like he'd said Arf.

  'Here we go again, eh?' said McGowan, not wanting Barney to dwell in attempted conversation with his less than loquacious assistant.

  Barney caught his eye quickly in the mirror. Assumed he was talking about the murders.

  'The weather, I mean,' said McGowan, sensing Barney's confusion. 'Nightmare. What d'you make of that, eh?'

  'Aye,' said Barney, having sudden insight into the lives of all the poor souls whose hair he'd put to the sword over the years, while he droned on about the weather. Not quite a moment of epiphany, because moments of epiphany are made of more than that, but close to it.

  McGowan studied his scissors, while he checked out Barney's hair.

  'What'll it be?' he decided to ask, because he had a strange feeling that Barney might be a man who'd expect more than the straightforward.

  'You got any dye?' asked Barney, his mind already made up.

  McGowan shrugged. Had had some in the cupboard for close on twenty years – men didn't get their hair dyed much in Strathpeffer – and he assumed it'd be all right.

  'What colour you looking for?'

  'A kind of reddy brown would do it,' said Barney, thinking that might not be too far away from his eyebrows and beard. 'A number three at the sides, number six on top,' he added.

  Different enough from the way he was, but not too radical as to draw attention to himself.

  'Should be no problem,' said McGowan. 'Igor, get the dye from the cupboard.'

  'Arf,' grunted Igor, and he laid the broom against the wall and shuffled off to the store room out back.

  'You want me to do the cut first?' asked McGowan.

  A car drove past outside, its silencer busted, roaring noisily through the cold and dark of late afternoon. Barney caught McGowan's eye in the mirror, thinking that even someone who'd never been to a barber in their life wouldn't need to ask that question.

  'Aye,' said Barney, 'cut first, then dye.'

  'Excellent,' said McGowan, and he downed his scissors, lifted the electric razor, blew across the top of it – spitting on it at the same time – and studied Barney's head again.

  'There's something bugging me,' said McGowan, adopting a chatty, conversational tone, and Barney thought, here we go ... 'Something niggling at the back of my mind. A clawing thought, scraping away at my subconscious, a whore to my spirit, digging like the eager talons of suspicion at the scales of my curiosity, piercing the very skin of my self-assurance, a malignant tumour of discontent, scratching with the astringent unguis of angst at the desert of my aplomb. You know what I mean?'

  'Totally,' said Barney.

  'I can never work out,' said McGowan, 'wh
at it is that's going on with cows.'

  Barney half smiled, but really there was no need for what was about to happen. McGowan could just shut up and get on with the cut. But no, he was a barber, therefore he would feel duty-bound to spout endless amounts of utter tripe. It was part of the whole ethos, after all. What makes a barber a barber, rather than just a guy with a pair of scissors?

  'Cows?' asked Barney, playing the game.

  'Aye,' said McGowan, still surveying the scene in front of him, still wondering where to start. 'You get fields and fields of cows, right? Thousands of them all over the country. But where are all the bulls? You don't get fields of them, do you? You just get the odd bull here and there, stuck away in a field, like the embarrassing family member you don't want anyone to know about.'

  He stopped, waiting for Barney to express interest. When none was forthcoming, he continued anyway.

  'So what's the score? Are there really eight million cows born to every bull? Is there some lost Land of the Bulls somewhere, hidden behind a secret doorway? Indiana Jones and the Land of Bulls. There's an idea they should make into a film.'

  'Aye,' said Barney, without much enthusiasm.

  'Or do they have a bovine Slaughter of the Innocents every week, when they round up all the male cattle and strike them down? It's fascinating, don't you think?'

  'Aye,' said Barney, wishing that he'd asked for a 'nothing off the top, nothing off the sides and back', and could already have left.

  Igor shuffled back into the room and placed the bottle of hair dye, approximately the colour which Barney requested, on the counter beside the inevitable sink.

  'Thanks,' said McGowan.

  'Arf,' grunted Igor.

  Barney looked at the bottle and wondered whether to register a decision to change his mind about the dyeing business. Being British, however, he said nothing.