The Face Of Death (Barney Thomson) (2 page)

The goosebumps had died away, to be replaced by resignation bumps. Forlorn bumps, where his skin, along with the rest of his body, sadly accepted that Barney's place in life was to listen to other men talk an endless stream of drivel; and to consistently find himself in towns with a prodigious murder rate.

'The four Americans?'

'Throats slit,' said Bobby. 'With a pair of scissors.'

Barney nodded. That was hardly a surprise.

'Apparently they'd each been given a bit of a shocker of a haircut before they'd been killed.'

'How d'you mean?' asked Barney. 'Was the style a shocker, even though it'd been well executed by the barber, or was it your actual bad bit of hairdressing?'

Bobby nodded.

'You sound like you know what you're talking about?' he said, eyeing Barney with appreciation.

'Obvious question,' said Barney, shrugging.

'Normal haircuts gone wrong,' said Bobby, and he leant across the bar, drawing Barney into his confidence. 'They're saying that it looked like one guy was supposed to have been given a regulation Sinatra '62 ... you're familiar with it?'

'Aye,' said Barney.

'It was so bad, he looked like Lana Turner,' said Bobby, raising an eyebrow.

'Tragedy,' said Barney. Then he added, 'You seem to be well-informed?'

'I'm a barman,' said Bobby.

And Barney nodded and thought that bartending wasn't so different from barbering or taxi driving or being a priest or a psychologist. You always ended up with more information than you might reasonably be expected to know.

'They're saying that Barney Thomson did it,' said the barman.

Barney nodded. Of course they were.

'Nah,' said Barney, 'he had the Sinatra '62 down pat.'

Bobby the barman nodded.

'You might be right,' he said, sagely. 'Maybe it was one of his accomplices.'

Barney Thomson himself nodded, polished off his pint and wondered just who exactly his accomplices were supposed to be. And the fact that if he had any, the first thing he'd do would be to teach them the Sinatra '62.

––––––––

F
ederal Agents arrived in the Highlands the following day. Legal Attachés Damien Crow and Lara Cameron, the FBI's representatives in London, England, had been granted authority to become involved in the investigation. Well out of their remit, but the horrible nature of the crime and the uproar that it had caused in their homeland – it'd been a slow news day, with even the Broncos' pasting at the hands of the Patriots making the front page of the New York Times – had led the ambassador in London to seek immediate representation to have two of his officers included in the case.

And so they arrived in Strathpeffer at 1015hrs and by the type of strange coincidence that now seemed to be haunting Barney Thomson's life, they booked into the Highland Inn. Crow was tall and thin, his face vaguely reminiscent of Zeppo Marx, his hair shaved brutally close to the scalp, his eyes dark and sombre. Cameron was a massively attractive woman, robustly built, full buttocked and breasted, lips that could suck a basketball through a straw, blonde hair cut in a lovely bob that circled her face, and tremendously erotic feet, if you're into that sort of thing.

When they walked into the hotel reception to check in, each carrying a small bag, Detective Sergeant McLeod behind them, his gaze curiously drawn to Cameron's black and tan DMs, Barney was sitting not ten yards away reading that morning's Scotsman, the headline of which detailed the latest mass murder.
Four Dead As Thomson Switches To Ethnic Cleansing
. Already he had made up his mind that he could not face the thought of stepping out into another cold day, and was going to stay an extra night in the hotel, thereby stretching his budget to the death.

Crow thumped his hand on the bell and a small woman, bereft of composure, hurried out from the inner office and looked at the three new arrivals with a vague air of panic.

'Hello,' she said, her voice a beautiful Highland lilt.

'Damien Crow,' said Crow.

'Lara Cameron,' said Cameron. 'My family left Scotland in 1643.'

'Did they?' said Rhona McAndrew. 'Very nice.'

'I've still got a cousin in Falkirk. You know her?'

McAndrew stared at Cameron for a few seconds, glanced at Sergeant McLeod, then looked back.

'Your office called this morning. You're in adjacent rooms,' she said, ignoring the Falkirk thing. 'If you'd like to sign here, I'll get someone to show you up.'

'That's all right, ma'am,' said Crow, 'we'll find it.'

Their accents had attracted Barney's interest. He looked up from the report in the paper –
Local crimper Luke McGowan, 47, said he was astonished by the shocking haircuts which had been given to the four victims, prior to their murder. 'Barbery as horrifying as this destabilises the very infrastructure of humanity,' he claimed, as he stood in his shop distributing complex cuts such as the Wittgenstein and the Bradley Whitford '97
– and studied Cameron and Crow.

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.

*

C
row 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 of 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.