The Face Of Death (Barney Thomson)

by Douglas Lindsay

'The thing I find really odd,' said McGowan, setting the razor going and upping the volume of his voice by an unnecessary margin, 'is when you see two cows shagging, because you do get that sometimes. I mean, do you get male cows? Or is it lesbian cow action? And if they are lesbian cows, what's the point of them humping like that?'

  'Maybe,' said Barney, giving into the inevitable and joining the conversation, 'the farmer fits a prosthetic penis to the dominant one.'

  Igor, once more bending over his brush, gave Barney a swift glance. McGowan nodded, as he careered wildly with the razor around the back of Barney's head, shearing off great galumphing clumps of hair in an entirely random manner.

  'Aye,' he said, 'because there are going to be cows who prefer to dish it out, rather than take it. The whole cow thing fascinates me. It's like a microcosm of human existence in every field.'

  Just a couple of minutes and already the man in overdrive. Talking beautiful bollocks, cutting a swathe through interesting conversation, turning the mundane into the criminally dull. Barney stared into the mirror and recognised his past.

  'Did you know that in Texas they give cows udder lifts and odour implants?' asked McGowan.

  *

  Forty-five minutes later, Barney Thomson walked free from McGowan & Son, Hair Emporium, adorned with a very stiff short back & sides, hair a slightly different colour, and aware as never before of the agonies through which he had put his customers in the golden days. When he'd had customers.

  4

  There Came A Knock At The Door, And It Was Death

  The person who had killed the four students from West Warwick, Rhode Island, was not by nature a psychopathic, serial-killing, skin-ripping-off, psychotically deranged, sociopathic, fifteen-cards-short-of-the-deck, suck-it-and-see, blood-for-the-sake-of-blood kind of soul. With the exception of the murder of a couple of Jehovah's, which the judge had described as 'no more than anyone else would have done under the circumstances', life had been a laid back affair. As a young boy he had been meek and mild, and his personality had never really changed. However, the American students had stumbled across a little secret. As it happened, the truth was already out there, but that didn't mean it should go any further than it already had. The students had been looking to cause trouble, and so they had to die.

  Trouble was, however, that the bittersweet tang of blood had now been tasted, and the thought had occurred that there was no need to let this particular sleeping dog lie. There were plenty more opportunities in the town to sate this new desire. Maybe none of them deserved to die, as such, but what the Hell, puttered playfully away in the killer's head that night, walking out into the bitter cold of a January evening, Death is as Death does, as they used to say in the Middle Ages.

  And so, at 2215hrs, there came a knocking at the door of the Reverend Benjamin Wilson, a vicious old bugger who had ministered to ever-dwindling numbers of these people for some thirty years or so.

  Wilson looked at the digital clock – a gift from God – which hummed quietly away on his bedside table, and shook his head. He removed his reading glasses and laid down his copy of that month's Big-Breasted Lesbian Grannies.

  'For God's sake,' he muttered quietly to himself, cursing the fact that Mrs Wilson was no longer here to answer the late night calls, Mrs Wilson having absconded with a party of passing Dutch motorcycle tourists.

  Draping his M&S dressing gown around his vigorously blue and white striped pyjamas, he clumped down the stairs, along the corridor – the floorboards of the old manse creaking noisily as ever – and up to the front door. The insistent rapping came again, just as he pulled the door open.

  'All right,' said the Rev Wilson tetchily. 'Oh, it's you,' he said with, to be frank, no less irritation, when he saw who was without.

  'Reverend,' said his killer-to-be. 'I was wondering if you had a minute?'

  'It's after ten o'clock,' said the vicar, trying hard not to let the irritation enter his voice, and failing terribly.

  'I know, Reverend,' said the visitor, voice sounding fairly sincere, 'I just, I mean ... I really need ... you know, something's happened, and I really need to talk to someone.'

  The vicar stared at his guest. The visitor returned the stare, imploringly.

  'Please, Reverend, I don't know where else to turn.'

  The Reverend Wilson allowed his face to break out into a concerned smile. His issue of Big-Breasted Lesbian Grannies had arrived fresh from Florida that morning, but it could wait. And besides, if he kicked this person out by the backside, as he was disposed to do, it might get back to the church elders, and then he'd have Wee Aggie 4/12, as he liked to call her – because she seemed to be menstruating four weeks a month, twelve months a year – round here like a horde of Mongol warriors on nandrolone.

  'Very well,' he said, 'of course my door is always open.' But just don't think that I'm offering you a cup of tea or cracking open the packet of Jaffa Cakes I picked up at the petrol station this morning.

  He held the door open and allowed the one who was about to take his life, to walk unhindered into his home. Almost as if Death himself had arrived, black cape drawn Obi Wan-style down over his head, and had been invited in for a late-night snifter.

  They sat down on sofas on opposite sides of the coffee table, the Reverend Wilson wincing slightly at the amount of dust which had accumulated in the three and a half years since Mrs Wilson had departed. (He'd told everyone in the village that she'd died, paid MacDuff the Undertaker and McLeod the policeman to keep schtum, and had conducted a very moving funeral service.)

  'What seems to be the trouble?' said Wilson, clasping his hands on his thighs and attempting to convey concern. Really he couldn't have cared less if this person – or anyone else on the planet, for that matter – got knocked down and crushed by a bus.

  The killer swallowed and stared at the floor. Might as well string it out a little bit longer; piss the old man off and distract him from reading that sleazy porn that everyone said he busied himself with at night. Wilson waited patiently, his thoughts drifting back to Hilda Grace Rubenstein, 69, from Cedar Ridge and Greta-Mae Koslovsky, 33, from Big Falls.

  'It's those four tourists,' said the killer. 'I'm really worried.'

  Wilson looked up, and thought for a second he could detect genuine fear in the eyes of this errant parishioner, who had never attended one of his services.

  'There's no need to worry,' said Wilson, leaning forward, curiosity mingling with an almost unfeigned concern. 'It was an isolated case. That it happened in Blackmuir Wood meant nothing. Don't worry for a second that this tragedy will be visited upon any of the residents of the town.'

  The killer also leaned forward, nodding slowly, wiping a finger beneath the left eye, as if taking away a tear.

  'The mind of the perfect man is a mirror,' said the vicar, strangely. 'It does not lean forward or backward in its response to things. It responds to things but conceals nothing of its own. Therefore it is able to deal with things without injury to its reality.'

  The killer stared at the vicar. As a young lad his mother had dragged him incessantly along to church, at least once a week, sometimes twice or more. And it had fostered within him a hearty disrespect for all these men of God.

  'Look, Bishop,' the killer said, waving away Wilson's protestations about the bishop thing, 'you might think you impress people by quoting Chuang Tzu, but to be perfectly honest with you, Chinese philosophy gets up my arse, you know what I'm saying?'

  'Very well,' said Wilson, a little irritated. The quote had been completely inappropriate, but he generally found it useful in awkward conversational moments when his flock were looking for guidance, to quote any old crap that they'd assume came from the Bible. He'd have quoted the Bible itself, but he hadn't read it in over fifty years and couldn't really remember much about it. There were a couple of bits about Jesus that rang a bell, and he was fairly confident about the story of Moses up to the point where he gets stuck in the basket, but apart from that he was hopeless. 'What
would you like me to do for you?'

  'No, no,' said the killer, smiling broadly. 'You've got me wrong, your worshipfulness. I don't need your help. I'm here to help you.'

  Wilson sat back, straightened his shoulders and looked witheringly across the table. This was not someone who could help him in any way, and if he was about to be asked the question which he presumed he was, his late-night guest could get the Hell out of Sodom and leave him in peace.

  'I can't begin to imagine what that might be,' said Wilson.

  'That is because you have so little imagination,' said the killer, who inched forwarded, then added, 'To that high Capital, where kingly Death keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, he came!' quoting the poet Shelley and getting a little overexcited as the words flowed.

  'What?' said the bish.

  'You're about to die, old man,' said the visitor.

  The Reverend Wilson was still confused. So, in order to swiftly bring this general air of verbal chaos to a conclusion, the killer of the four American tourists rose swiftly, produced a pair of hairdressing scissors – a classic set of Buckmaster Texans, circa 1947 – raised them dramatically aloft in a staged movement, paused briefly to enjoy the look of terror that suddenly manifested itself on the old man of God's face, then leapt at him across the coffee table, a massive powerful leap, so that when the scissors thumped into the vicar's face, they plunged through his eye socket and penetrated deeply into the back of his head.

  A rather strange cry was ejaculated from the pit of his throat, and it sounded not unlike 'ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning', just going to show that all the Bible stuff that he thought he'd forgotten had actually just lain dormant in his subconscious, waiting for his moment of death. Didn't mean he was going to get into Heaven though.

  The killer took another moment as the end of the vicar's strange words dribbled from his twitching bottom lip, looked curiously at the old man, engaging the eye that wasn't beholden to a pair of scissors and then, with another well practised and vicious movement, withdrew the implement of murder and immediately thrust it into the bish's chest. Another noise escaped, this time a scarcely audible grunt, as the air was squeezed from his lungs.

  The killer straightened up, breaths coming quickly with the shock of carrying out the execution and, just as had happened with the murder of the four tourists, hands shaking and heart thumping lustily. For after years of searching, a true vocation had been found.

  The killer looked around the room, and it did not take long to find the perfect canvas for the face of death, drawn in blood.

  5

  Kierkegaard Ate My Hamster

  As late night drifted into the early hours of the morning, there was a strange collective in the bar of the Highland Inn, some time after the Reverend Wilson had been despatched from his grumbling miserable misery of miseries to an even more miserable eternal misery of miseries. There were eight people in the bar, as well as Bobby the Barman, who was looking forward to a late-night snack, the exact nature of which you really, really don't want to know.

  There was Legal Attaché Cameron of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, (Crow having disappeared for the evening on some sidetrack, the nature of which he had kept from his assistant.) Legendary serial killer Barney Thomson. Theodore Wolf, marketing consultant, who was stopping over in Strathpeffer for a few days while he sorted out the Highlands in a manner of differing ways. Alec McGowan, barber, and his strange assistant Igor. Detective Sergeant McLeod of the Northern Constabulary. And finally, Earl Strathcaln, a curious little man who owned large areas of land north of Inverness, a man who had dabbled in politics until a scandal involving another man's bottom had been the death of it, and who now spent his days shooting whatever local wildlife happened to be in season, and being pleasured by the Thai woman he had bought through a catalogue agency three years previously, Soo Yin, who was also submissively in attendance.

  Barney was keen on having an evening alone. Time to mull over his troubles and consider his next step, as his fiscal situation really demanded that he move on the next day, there being no work that he could reasonably consider in the area. However, he had ended up being sucked into a group involving Alec McGowan, Igor, Strathcaln and his wife. Cameron was sitting with McLeod discussing serial killers she'd come across in her time; while McLeod told unspeakable tales of illegal salmon fishing and internecine strife in Contin. Theodore Wolf sat alone at the bar, watching over the others and occasionally trading the verbal equivalent of the contents of a septic tank with Bobby the Barman.

  And in amongst this weird collective, the quintuple murderer sat and chatted, casual and relaxed like any other, hands washed of the blood of the Reverend Wilson, the racing heart that had so pumped with the thrusting of the knife, now settled to a steady beat.

  'It's the whole pleasure-pain thing,' the barber McGowan was saying, coming towards the end of a fifteen-hour diatribe on the equal and opposite Nature of Things. Barney was bored.

  'You mean the principles of felicific calculus,' said Earl Strathcaln, 'where you're talking the dimensions of intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, purity, fecundity and extent?'

  'Aye,' said McGowan, not really having a clue what Strathcaln was talking about, and a little put out at having the thrust of the conversation stolen from him.

  'The thing is,' continued Strathcaln, 'that felicific calculus depends on the concept that a set quantum purport of potency is equivalent to a quantum purport of existence, which rests on a perfidious analogy with spatial measurement, thereby negating the whole utilitarian ethical theory nonsense.'

  The others stared at him, it being the first time he'd spoken in some ten minutes. Even Barney had been more loquacious.

  'Oh,' said McGowan, his gas at a peep.

  'Arf,' growled Igor.

  'Did any of what you just said make any sense whatsoever?' said Barney, attuned as usual to the bullshitter's wavelength.

  Strathcaln gave Barney a snooty look, as Legal Attaché Cameron passed by the table on her way to the bar. Strathcaln thought of many things to say in reply to Barney, but decided the man with badly dyed orange-brown hair wasn't worth the effort.

  Cameron stood at the bar, elbows resting on the counter.

  'Hi,' she said, as Bobby the Barman approached.

  'What can I get you?' asked Bobby, with that little extra enthusiasm in his voice which he reserved for attractive women.

  'I'm Lara Cameron,' she said, 'my family left Scotland in 1643.'

  'I know,' said Bobby, 'you introduced yourself earlier. Three or four times, as a matter of fact.'

  'Oh,' said Cameron. 'Did I say I've got a cousin in Falkirk?'

  'Aye,' said Bobby, 'and that you'd seen Braveheart eighteen times.'

  'Great movie.'

  'What'll it be?' he asked.

  'Neat whisky for the sergeant, and I'll have a Bud.'

  'No problemo,' said Bobby, quickly going about his business.

  A few yards away along the bar, Theodore Wolf leant forward.

  'To work a wonder, God would have her shown, at once, a bud, and yet a full-blown rose,' he said.

  Cameron stared at him. She'd been in the country long enough to know that a lot of the inhabitants were even stranger than she herself.

  'What?' she asked.

  'You mentioned Bud,' said Wolf, moving stealthily along the bar.

  'And?'

  'Robert Herrick, seventeenth century poet,' said Wolf.

  'I don't think they had Budweiser in those days, friend,' said Cameron.

  Wolf smiled.

  'I tried to think of a quote involving Budweiser, but the only one I could come up with was Bud-weis-er,' he said, croaking out the word. 'Bud-weis-er,' he croaked again, smiling.

  Cameron also smiled. She was a cheerful sort, really, but she could spot a marketing man a mile off – although, who couldn't? – and she had no time for them. Not since she'd bought a Metz, thinking it was going to have some sort of kick to it.
/>   'How about “piss off, fella, or I'll stick a bottle of Budweiser up your ass?”' she said.

  Wolf smiled. Being a marketing man, he did not know failure.

  'That Florence Nightingale, was it?' he said.

  Bobby put the drinks on the bar. Cameron shook her head, decided she wasn't going to engage Wolf any further, lifted the drinks and turned back towards McLeod. Wolf and Bobby the Barman watched her go, the movement of her legs and buttocks emphasised by her clinging black skirt.

  'What d'you make of that?' said Wolf.

  'Apart from the family leaving Scotland thing,' said Bobby, 'which, to be frank, is getting on my tits, she's a bit of all right. Great feet.'

  'Lovely,' said Wolf, supping from the dregs of his pint of lager, 'me too. Think I might make a serious attempt at it if I can get her away from the policeman.'

  'Good luck,' said Bobby, thinking he had more chance himself, especially now with his great complexion 'n' all.

  And they both continued to stare at her as she sat back down beside McLeod. Passing the other table, she had briefly caught Barney's eye, there had been the slightest of acknowledgements between the two of them, and then Barney had looked away first, perturbed almost at being eyed up by a woman.

  And as she began to regale McLeod with further details of the case of Snickers McGhee and how he'd used a chocolate bar as the instrument of murder in more than three hundred killings, Barney had a question thrown directly at him, which was even more disconcerting than catching the eye of an attractive woman.

  'So, to which camp do you belong?' asked the barber McGowan of Barney. 'Hegel or Kierkegaard?'

  Barney stared briefly at McGowan. There'd been a time when he would've risen to the discussion, even leapt at it like a lemur dancing between the dinosaurs – because lemurs and dinosaurs were big together – but now he had no spirit for the conversation, and the inevitable argument. Not so long ago he would've sat in the pub with his mate Bill Taylor, hunched over a pint of lager and a game of dominoes, discussing the merits of Kierkegaard until they were punted out into the early hours of the morning, stinking of booze and fags. But now the pith of his id had been crushed like dried-up dog faeces squished beneath the foot of a twenty-eight stone woman, eating a fish supper and wearing size fifteen boots.