The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series) (38 page)

‘Right,’ said Mulholland, turning to the demented and tortured few. ‘We should be getting on. We need to get as far as we can before nightfall.’

They looked at him with little enthusiasm. Even Brother Steven, the philosopher-bard, had no emotion. Nothing to say, despite the quote from John Wilkes Booth nestling neatly in his subconscious.

‘Where’s the camping stuff you talked about, Brother?’ Mulholland said to the Abbot. But the Abbot stared mournfully at the floor; if he heard the words he ignored them, for there were others who could answer the question. His time for speech had passed.

‘A bit all over the place,’ said Steven. ‘There’s some of it in Herman’s room on the second floor, and some of it in the cellar. With Brother Ezekiel and Brother Solomon.’

‘Right.’

Mulholland looked at the floor. How were they going to do this? All seven of them trooping around the monastery, dragging the poor bastard of an Abbot along with them? It could take hours.

And so he took the decision to split the group; and there would be more blood shed.

‘Look, we need to get on. We sort out what’s where, and we go and get the stuff.’ He hesitated, looked around the room. Unknowingly decided who would play on, and whose part in the match was coming to an end. ‘Right, the Sergeant and I will go to the basement. Edward, Raphael and Martin can go to Herman’s room, and Steven can stay here and look after the Abbot.’ He knew as he was saying it that he and Proudfoot should split up; but given what had happened to Sheep Dip, would that make any difference anyway? Barney Thomson, or whoever it was, was no respecter of the police. And besides, there was no way he was letting her out of his sight. Not now.

‘You happy?’ he said, and regretted the word the second it was out of his mouth. The monks nodded and raised their tired, worried, pathetic bodies from the cold wooden benches. All except the Abbot, who stayed where he was, wallowing in his pain.

‘No more than ten minutes, if you can, all right, you three?’

Edward nodded. Raphael and Martin trooped along behind. Mulholland thought about saying something to the Abbot, but there were no words.

‘Look after the bloke,’ he said to Steven.

Steven blinked.

***

‘This is a bad day, Brother.’

No reply. When you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, your car breaks down on the way to work and your team gets knocked out of Europe by some mob from Latvia that evening, that’s a bad day. This? There wasn’t a word for it.

So thought the Abbot, and he did not answer Brother Steven. Steven drummed his fingers. Watched the Abbot. A lamentable figure in brown. Head down, drowning in the vomit of his own self-pity.

‘Heard a rumour,’ said Steven. A small smile came to his face. The Abbot did not look up. This time the words did not even register. He had no need for conversation. Steven drummed his fingers.

‘Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues,’ he said in a low voice; the smile stayed there, then was suddenly gone. The eyes clouded over. The Abbot did not respond. The fingers stopped.

‘Not interested in rumours, Brother? You should listen to them sometimes.’

Slowly the Abbot raised his head. At the tone of voice, more than the words. The words hadn’t registered.

‘Brother?’ he said. He had never had much time for Brother Steven.

‘I was saying that I’d heard a rumour,’ said Steven.

‘A rumour?’

‘Yes. Like a curse from the gods.’

‘The gods, Brother?’ said the Abbot. ‘I thought we only had one. Although I have my doubts about Him now, as well.’

‘Oh, there are lots of gods, Brother Abbot. Whispering gods. Whispering rumours.’

The Abbot looked into the depths of Steven’s eyes, but saw nothing there. He might have done at one time but, like Brother Satan before him, he had lost the ability to see the true hearts of men.

‘And what is this rumour of which you speak?’

The smile returned to Steven’s face. He lifted a finger, moved it in time with his talk.

‘They’re saying that all this, all this murder, is about revenge.’

‘Revenge? Revenge for what?’

Steven paused. For effect, but it was lost on his audience. Too confused to be impressed.

‘Two Tree Hill,’ he said. Awaited the response.

The Abbot shook his head. ‘Two Tree Hill? What do you mean?’

‘Two Tree Hill, Brother Abbot. Where the late Brother Cafferty was disgraced and expelled from the Holy Order of the Monks of St John. Condemned forever to walk the streets of normal men, condemned forever to be apart from the God whom he loved.’

The Abbot was even more confused. Tried desperately to think of Two Tree Hill, and it returned beneath a hazy fudge.

‘The small hill at the foot of Ben Hope,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Steven.

The Abbot waited for something more, but Steven glared through narrowed eyes.

‘I don’t understand, Brother,’ the Abbot said.

‘Not just any hill, Brother Abbot,’ said Steven, spitting the name. ‘The last hill of all. A very Calvary of the north, where a man might meet his destiny.’

The Abbot stared at him, his eyes widening. Trying to recollect the last time they had been there; but it had been so long ago. Slowly it returned, however, and the memory came back through the mist. An ugly incident, a man alone, cast from their midst. A ruined man.

The Abbot’s head still shook; he looked at Steven in wonder and confusion.

‘You are saying that Brother Cafferty is back amongst us, and is taking his revenge? That is absurd. Cafferty is dead. He lived an unhappy life in Edinburgh with a woman he never loved and a son who came to noth…’

Realisation dawned. He noticed the eyes at last. The similarities. Because, for all the time that it had been, he could still see Cafferty’s face; the anguish and the dismay. And in the eyes of Brother Steven, he saw Brother Cafferty. Steven’s father.

The Abbot’s mouth dropped. ‘But, Brother. You cannot be serious.’

Steven stood up, slowly drawing the knife from within his cloak. Prodded the end of the blade with his finger, drawing blood.

‘I can be serious, Brother, and I am. You ruined his life. It is time for my father to be avenged.’

‘You killed them all? You, Brother? You killed gentle Saturday and Morgan? Ash and Herman, Adolphus and Ezekiel. Gentle Brother Satan. Brother Festus?’

‘Oh, not Festus,’ said Steven, glad of the chance to interrupt, impressive though that list sounded to him. ‘I had nothing to do with Festus.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I can’t be sure, but I think God took care of Festus. The man was a pervert, after all. Don’t tell me he never regaled you with one of his three-breasted, cocaine-snorting fantasies? God hates that stuff.’

‘But, Brother?’ said the Abbot, and his voice was filled with wonder and incredulity. Slowly he raised himself from the bench, the better to accept the knife which awaited him. For he knew he was to die.

‘This does not make sense, my son,’ said the Abbot.

Steven’s teeth ground together; he took a step forward.

‘Don’t you call me that, you bloody bastard. You must have been there. You were part of it. He was unjustly punished by a collective of bigots. His objections were more than merited but as a result of them you expelled him from the abbey. The man was never the same.’

The Abbot spread his hands. Looked like he was appealing to a referee.

‘But, Brother, it was nothing. No one cared about it. Your father made a mistake. If he’d accepted it, it would have been forgotten ten seconds later. But instead, he confronted the Abbot Gracelands from Burncleuth Abbey. He punched the man, for goodness’ sake. Punched him, Brother. It was an abomination. We had no choice.’

Steven shook his head. Stood poised with the knife. His anger with the Abbot had gone. The speech he’d had prepared for years no longer seemed worthy; or relevant. They were all going to die, and now it was nearly over. They deserved what had come to them, each and every one.

‘Choice? White shall not neutralise black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so: life’s business being just the terrible choice.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Brother,’ snapped the Abbot, ‘will you stop quoting all that nonsense! Can you not say something for yourself for once? I simply cannot believe this.’

The handle of the knife twitched in Steven’s fingers. Another victim in his sights, but he could not be long about it, for the police would be returning soon; and he had business to take care of with the good Brother Abbot after he had killed him.

‘It’s just how you see it, Brother, isn’t it? It’s all just words. It’s like the Bible, it’s like the Apocrypha; it’s like any words that anyone has ever written or said. We think them, we write them, we say them, but they’re nothing. It’s deeds that matter, Brother Abbot, deeds are the thing. Words aren’t cheap, they’re nothing. Deeds are where that whole psychic thing pokes its dysfunctional head out of the womb, kicks off the umbilical cord of avarice and jealousy, and starts to breathe the good clean air of truth.’

The Abbot looked from Steven to the knife he held in his hand.

‘For God’s sake, Brother, there you go again. If you’re so full of contempt for words, why do you come out with so much bollocks?’ The Abbot had truly lost himself. ‘This is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You’ve committed nearly thirty murders because of a lie, because that’s what your father must have told you. A lie!’

‘It was not!’

‘Brother, dear Brother, it bloody was. I was there. Right was seen to be done. Your father had no leg to stand on. He lost his temper for nothing. It was a tragic overreaction, and one which merited admonishment.’

‘Hah!’ barked Steven. He had heard all this before. From his father, Brother Cafferty. ‘I know what it was all about. It was the politics of the abbey at the time. There was a power struggle and there were some of you just looking for a way to get rid of Cafferty. I know it to be true!’

Brother Steven was becoming ever more forceful; especially since he was now not so sure. Enough people had said it now; maybe his father had made a mistake after all. Maybe he shouldn’t just have killed twenty-six of them. Maybe this great rash of murder and death had just been a pointless waste of time. Great fun, but a waste of time.

However, the Abbot hesitated. It was all coming back. Brother Steven was right. That was exactly why they’d had Cafferty expelled from the abbey. Politics. The man had been too much of a liberal. Hadn’t approved of hairshirts; hadn’t liked self-flagellation; hadn’t approved of sandpapering your testicles to cleanse the mind. Of course, those Caffertyisms had come into vogue over the years, but the time hadn’t been right. He’d had to be silenced.

Steven saw the hesitation, saw the look in his eyes. So he did not hesitate. The knife was thrust forward; the Abbot had every intention of receiving it, and within seconds he lay bleeding on the floor, close to the death which would inevitably follow.

Steven stood over the body; the smile came to his face as the adrenaline pumped wildly through his veins and he got the massive rush that came with murder. He watched the eyes of the Abbot close and he knew him to be dead.

But he still held the knife in his hands, and he bent over the Abbot and lifted the sleeve of his cloak out of the way. And then once more his knife pierced the skin; cooling blood was drawn, and the Abbot’s tortured soul could do nothing but watch.