The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series) (5 page)

‘Jings oh,’ she said. ‘Not a moment’s peace in two weeks.’

She pressed stand-by. The television blinked and fizzed to the dead grey screen. It was another twenty minutes before the start of
Patagonia Heights
; however, as with all the other shows to which she was addicted, the magic had evaporated from what had previously been an ecstatic forty-three minutes.

She opened the door to a man in his late thirties, a woman a little younger. Police. Written all over them. The latest in a long line. The man held forward his badge.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Mulholland. This is Detective Sergeant Proudfoot. Mrs Thomson?’

Agnes Thomson nodded. Had long since tired of telling these people where to go. Understood that the only way to get rid of them quickly was to co-operate. The quicker they realised she knew nothing of her husband’s whereabouts, the quicker they moved on.

‘Come in,’ she said, voice weary. Her life had changed in ways she had not imagined. Not in her worst nightmares.

Proudfoot and Mulholland followed her into the flat, through the small hall into the lounge, a room smelling of a warm and dusty television. She sat down, indicated the sofa. They looked around the room as they took their seats. An untidy room; dust on the tables, a collection of cups and plates beside Agnes’s seat. The seat from which she sat and watched soap after pointless soap.
Catastrophe Road
blending into
Bougainvillea Plateau
blending into
Penile Emergency Ward 8
.

Proudfoot felt the instant depression. Rarely failed to be depressed when she visited someone else’s house in the course of her duties. She’d read the reports, believed that Agnes Thomson knew nothing of her husband’s murderous activities or his present location. This was a duty call.

Mulholland recognised a life in tatters. Was not to know that this had been an empty life even before Agnes Thomson had discovered that her husband butchered human flesh.

‘I realise you’ve spoken to many of my colleagues, Mrs Thomson,’ said Mulholland. ‘We’re new to the case, we have to go over everything again, see if there’s been something missed.’

Agnes smiled. A rare moment of insight. ‘Can’t find him, eh? Kicked that muppet Woods off the case? Not surprised. Yon eejit couldn’t find shite in a sewer.’

Mulholland stared at the carpet, Proudfoot tried not to laugh. Woods in a nutshell.

‘Could you tell us about the last time you saw your husband?’ asked Mulholland. Didn’t look her in the eye. Picturing Woods up to his thighs in water, wearing industrial gloves and a gas mask, searching for elusive faeces.

She had answered the question many times, the words a well-practised monotone. Just refused to tell it to the newspapers, and finally they had given up camping on her doorstep.

‘That Tuesday morning. About eight o’clock. I was eating breakfast, watching the telly. It was the final episode of
Calamity Bay
, you know. I’d taped it from the night before, ‘cause I was watching
Only The Young Die Young
.’

‘Oh, aye, I saw that episode,’ said Proudfoot. ‘The one where Curaçao had the sex change operation so she could impregnate Gobnat.’

Agnes nodded. Didn’t smile in recognition.

‘Barney?’ said Mulholland, trying to reclaim the conversation.

Proudfoot shook her head. ‘No, Barney wanted to marry New Orleans, but she was engaged to Flipper.’

A pause. Pursed lips. A raised eyebrow.

‘Oh,’ said Proudfoot.

‘Your husband, Mrs Thomson?’

Agnes didn’t need to think.

‘We didn’t say much at breakfast,’ she said. ‘In fact, we didn’t say anything at breakfast. Never did. Didn’t talk much, that was just us.’

Go and see the wife again
, M had told him.
Woods might have missed something
.

Mulholland nodded. There was nothing to miss. Wondered if the rest of the investigation would mirror this moment. Asking questions already asked, receiving well-trodden answers. A pointless round, an unbroken circle. At some stage he would be kicked off the carousel and some other poor bastard would be put in charge. That was how these things went. Thomson might have just disappeared, never to be heard from again.

‘There was nothing different that morning? No casual comment, he didn’t pack a bag? Eat a little more than usual, wear different clothes? Anything?’

‘Tell you he was going to Bermuda and that he’d never see you again?’ added Proudfoot. Drew a look from Mulholland.

Agnes shook her head. The same old questions, put in the same old way. The futile circle.

A thought occurred. She put her fingers to her mouth, stared at the ceiling. A vague light came to her eye.

‘You know, now that I finally think about it, I think he might’ve said something about whether he needed a visa for to go to the Seychelles. Aye, I think it was that.’

Proudfoot and Mulholland leant forward, curious. It couldn’t be this easy.

‘The Seychelles?’ said Mulholland. ‘Are you sure?’

Agnes looked a little unsure, then said, ‘I think so. Maybe it was Saltcoats.’

A pause.

‘You’re taking the piss,’ said Mulholland.

‘You are a detective.’

Mulholland kept the expletive in check.

‘This is a serious business, Mrs Thomson. Very serious. Your husband stands accused—’

‘Look, I know fine well what he stands accused of, all right? It’s my life, not yours. But I know nothing about it, nothing about where he is now. I’ve told fifty of you. Would you just please leave me alone?’

They sat and stared at one another. There were other questions to be asked, but Mulholland knew there was little point. And of all the people who would’ve suffered through the previous two weeks of hysterical press speculation, Agnes Thomson would have suffered more than anyone. The husband disappears, the wife is left behind to face the music.

‘Look, why d’you not just accept it? Barney left the shop that morning to get a sandwich. He comes back, sees your lot all over the place like a blinking rash, ‘cause you’d charged in like you were rounding up the flipping Mafia, and for whatever reason, he legs it. I know how it looks, but if you want my opinion, I doubt he ran because he’d murdered anybody. My Barney was too stupid for that. Too bloody stupid.’

Mulholland sat back, looked at the floor. You were told so many lies in the job; along the way you developed an instinct for the truth. How well the instinct developed led to how good a copper you were. He liked to think he could always tell. Truth or lies.

Agnes Thomson was telling the truth. They were wasting their time.

‘So, you haven’t heard from Barney since he disappeared?’ he asked. Had to.

Agnes drew her breath, shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I haven’t.’ If they’d never made the effort to speak when they lived together, why should they now that they didn’t?

‘You’ll let us know if you hear from him?’

She shrugged. The interview was over, she stared at the blank television screen. Almost time to lose herself again. ‘Might,’ she said. ‘Might not.’

Mulholland and Proudfoot stood up. That was about as much as they could expect. Why should she tell them anything?

She looked up at them. The eyes said it all, and the two police officers turned away and saw themselves to the door. When they had gone, she sat alone, staring at the television. Her hand rested beside the remote control, but it was a long time before she pressed the button.

***

‘What d’you think?’

Mulholland shrugged. ‘We were wasting our time. And from the absence of the press, I think that that lot obviously realised it a lot more quickly than we did.’

They walked on down the stairs in silence. Holdall and MacPherson must have walked these stairs, thought Proudfoot. A shiver scuttled down her back, even in this broad light of day. She tried to think of something else, but kept seeing MacPherson’s face. Could feel him.

‘Inverness?’ she asked, as they emerged into a bleak Glasgow afternoon.

‘Not now. Tomorrow morning. We can visit the barber’s shop now, check it out. The Death Shop From Hell, or whatever it is the
Record’
s calling it. Tick another wasted interview off our list.’

Mulholland looked away up the street, along the line of cold, grey tenements. This was all there was to police work. Trawling around depressing streets, speaking to pointless, disinterested people with nothing to say and nothing to give you other than disrespect.

‘Brilliant,’ he muttered under his breath, as he got into the car.

‘Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.’

Words hung in the cold air, then disappeared in the mist which evaporated before the Abbot. The monks, slightly over thirty in number, watched the hard dirt bounce on the lid of Brother Saturday’s coffin before settling with a cold finality. Three deep around the grave they stood, heads bowed in solemn prayer and sorrow; all but one.

Edward; Ash; Matthew; Jerusalem; Joshua; Pondlife; Ezekiel; Mince; Festus; and so on around the grave they stood. Lost in sadness, unaware that many more of them would die, and that Festus’s upcoming gargoyle in the head would be but one death among a great legion of others.

It had been nearly eleven years since they lost one of their number to that fell sergeant, Death. Mammon, the evil succubus of fornication, and the lure of a comfortable life had taken their toll in that time; but not Death. Not since Brother Alexander had fallen from the escarpment around the third floor of the abbey.

The Abbot opened his eyes from one last silent prayer, and then, head low, began the short walk back down the hill to the shelter and slender warmth of the monastery. Two steps behind, an ecclesiastical refugee from the Secret Service, Brother Herman, brown hood drawn up around his head, sunken eyes watching the Abbot’s back, long white face. Hooked nose, the beak of some deranged bird of prey, Brother Herman suspected everyone. Whoever it was who had plunged the knife into the neck of Brother Saturday, who had held it there while Saturday had wriggled and squirmed away his final seconds, who had watched the blood flow along the corridor and down the weeping steps, must not now be allowed access to the Abbot.

None shall pass, thought Brother Herman. None shall pass.

As their feet crunched into the frosted snow, the remainder of the assembly stared into the grave. Thoughts of death and murder and God and resurrection and everlasting life. A test of Faith; at a time like this, how many of them truly believed? The snow-covered hills rose around them, reaching to a blue sky, pale in the anaemic light of dawn. And over the hills, in the middle distance, the bitter sea washed upon a barren winter shore.

One by one they paid their last respects and headed off slowly back to the austere grey building that was their home. Breakfast awaited. Two remained behind, burdened with shovelling the hardened dirt over Saturday’s coffin. Pale brown wood, soon to be home to God’s final act of desecration upon the human body.

They stood with spades at the ready, waiting for the others to return to the monastery before beginning their task; the last kick of the ball in the football match of Saturday’s life. The younger man, his face unfolded, thoughts elsewhere. His lips betrayed a knowing smile; an acceptance of fate – what would be done, was done. Tonsured head, hair a little long at the back. Could do with a cut, thought the other man. Older. Face creased with worry, full head of hair, greying with years.