The Face Of Death (Barney Thomson) (7 page)

'Bugger me sideways with a kettle,' Strathcaln added, still taken aback by the whole thing.

There was a knock at the door. Not the police, thought McLeod. Who else are we going to have join the fray?

'Come in!' he shouted, and immediately confident footsteps strode across the hall carpet.

Theodore Wolf's ugly mug appeared at the door of the sitting room. He stopped for a second, then immediately charged into the midst of the crowd, looking from one bystander to another, before checking out the corpse. He stood over Wilson's body for a few seconds, then turned to McLeod.

'This man's dead,' he said.

'Good spot,' said McLeod.

'Arf!' said Igor.

'It's going to be really tough to shift those stains,' said Wolf. 'What you need is New Improved Domestic Stain-Be-Gone. Just spray it on, and the stain is gone!'

They all stared at him. There's a time for marketing – although no one is really sure exactly when that is – and there's a time for marketing men to keep their mouths shut.

'Bad timing?' said Wolf.

'Why are you here?' countered McLeod.

'Thought I might sell the preacher some advice on how to improve the size of his throng, if you know what I'm saying.'

McLeod breathed deeply then turned to Strathcaln.

'And may I ask what you are doing here, Earl Strathcaln?'

'Had an appointment with his eminence here on a rather delicate matter.'

'Well,' said McLeod, 'he's dead, so you might just like to take your leave.'

'What were you doing letting us in, you bloody fool?' said Strathcaln. 'My wife could have been traumatised.'

Soo Yin was checking out the stiff with a detached interest. More traumatised, if the truth be known, by the sight of her husband in the buff. Which was fair enough.

'Back-up hasn't arrived yet,' said McLeod. 'They'll be here in a minute, so if you'd all just like to go, I can make sure the crime scene doesn't get contaminated.'

Once again there were footsteps outside, as more visitors came to call (just to recap, in case anyone is getting confused, currently present were Barney Thomson, renegade barbershop legend, Luke McGowan, regular barbershop practitioner, Igor, barber's assistant, Theodore Wolf, annoying marketing chap, Earl Strathcaln, landed gentry, Soo Yin Strathcaln, catalogue girl, Detective Sergeant McLeod, the officer in charge, gradually losing control of the situation, and the very late Reverend Wilson, who was due to become a little pungent if not seen to with greater haste than was currently being employed).

The sitting room door was once again pushed open, and in walked Legal Attachés Crow and Cameron. They stopped and surveyed the unusually heavily populated scene.

'Crow,' said Crow.

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

'Arf!' said Igor.

'Aye, aye,' said McLeod, expecting a rebuke. 'There's a weird set of circumstances here. These people were just leaving.'

'That's all right,' said Crow. 'The murderer is in this room, so we can sort it out while we're all here.'

'Cool!' said Theodore Wolf. 'Just like Poirot or Scooby Doo or some shit like that.'

Barney raised an eyebrow, his heart beating a little faster. Nothing to say that these comedians wouldn't have discovered his identity and were drawing their own conclusions.

'In this room?' said McLeod. 'Holy shit.'

McGowan stared at the floor; Igor's hunch arched a little further; Strathcaln looked around the room suspiciously; Soo Yin bit her bottom lip; Wolf wondered if he might be able to advise the soon-to-be defendant on how to act in court.

'I'm making a bit of an assumption that the fella who killed the preacher here is the same one took out the students,' said Crow, and then noticing the drawing on the wall he added, 'but that seems to point to it, and it's hard to imagine a backwoods kinda place like this having more than one killer hanging around. We'll do the DNA shit and check it out.'

'So what's the story then?' said Strathcaln, not one for beating about the bush, not unless there was a live animal hiding inside it. 'Come on, man.'

Crow walked to the window, where he could better observe the group. Yep, he thought, this is a bit like Poirot, or one of those detective guys. And what the Hell, nothing wrong with a bit of showboating in front of the provincials. Cameron was uncritically letting him away with it, as she kept herself between the door and the suspect.

'Last Friday was a misty day round these parts, right?' said Crow, not looking for an answer. Had already checked his facts. 'Couldn't see further 'n' about three feet. So, when the four students fellas went to get their hair cutting, not many folk saw them about town. Too damn thick with fog. So they all went to McGowan's here.'

'I never gave those cuts!' protested McGowan.

'Sure you didn't,' said Crow. 'You're shit, but you're not that shit. Thing is, you were somewhere else on Friday morning, at a time when you'd normally be working in the shop. Got a call that morning, didn't you?'

'No, I didn't,' he said robustly. Wolf was impressed with his outright denial of the facts when directly accused.

'Damn right you did, friend,' said Crow. 'You got a call from the Earl's wife here, following which you went round to see her.'

McGowan looked outraged. The Earl turned to his wife.

'Soo?'

She was a bit bug-eyed, but she had the strength of mind not to deny it.

'Good God!' barked Strathcaln. 'Have you been having an affair?'

She didn't answer. McGowan looked a little sheepish, as the truth was being revealed in front of a few more people than he would ideally have chosen.

'No affair, Your Bigness,' said Crow. 'He's been paying the chick for sex.'

'God!' shouted Strathcaln in an enormous ejaculation.

'And I'm telling you buddy, he's not the only one,' Crow added.

Strathcaln looked at her, his face bulging red.

McGowan started to explode in vehement denial, but, well, you know, when faced with the truth, sometimes it's difficult to be too intense in your own defence. 'Bastard,' was all that ended up coming out.

'So you left the haircutting duties to Igor here,' said Crow, 'and it was this little fella who gave the four students their terrible cuts.'

'Arf,' said Igor. He wanted to proclaim his defence. He'd had no formal training; McGowan occasionally threw him in at the deep end with very little warning; the students had asked for bad hair.

Barney shook his head. Shocking behaviour to put the hair of innocent customers at risk like that. This was all passing him by, however, and he wished he'd just turned and taken the opportunity to walk away. Whoever was going to be pinned down as the murderer, it wasn't him. He might as well already be on his way to Inverness.

'So Igor killed the students?' said McLeod.

'Arf!'

'Nah,' said Crow, 'too simple. His part just explains the haircuts. To find the killer you have to go back to the night before, when they spent the evening in the bar of the Highland Inn. They talked to a variety of people. Ad man here, with all his bullshit, the barbers, that bar guy who keeps telling everybody he drinks his own urine. Hell, a lot of others as well. And on top of all that, one of the students spoke to her ladyship here, or whatever she's called. The Thai catalogue chick. Are we cool?'

He looked at Soo Yin, who coolly glanced at him and then lowered her eyes.

'So what?' boomed Strathcaln, getting a bit lost by the whole thing. 'They talked to everyone. Social little bastards, that's what I called them.'

'Thing was,' said Crow, 'that they found something out about your little mail order princess here, didn't they?'

Strachcaln was stopped in his boots. He knew what was coming, it being the very reason he had come to see the vicar in the first place. Barney looked on, thinking that here was confirmation of his suspicions. Funny sometimes, how things fall into place.

'I'm lost,' said McLeod.

'The princess here,' said Crow, 'is more of a prince, you know what I'm saying?'

He smiled. McLeod swallowed and looked at her. It wasn't like he was some provincial clown who didn't know such things happened, he'd just never thought. Soo Yin was pretty damn hot after all.

Luke McGowan, however, was about to be sick.

'What?' he croaked.

Strachcaln was silent, having discovered the truth a few weeks previously.

'I've had the operation!' squealed Soo Yin, threatening to throw a tantrum.

'Your girlfriend here,' said Crow to McGowan, 'is a katoey. She was born a man, and at some stage she's had the old snipperoo, you get me? We went down to the Thai consulate today, checked out a few things about her. Bit of a past as well, eh, princess?'

The breath caught in McGowan's throat. Things like this didn't happen in Strathpeffer. He was going to be the laughing stock of the entire town. Already, Theodore Wolf was laughing.

'Very good, Agent Crow,' said Strathcaln, 'but it doesn't make her a murderer.'

'Come on,' said Crow, 'one of the students picked her for what she was. They'd been in Bangkok recently, they knew the score. She was scared they'd let her secret out. Hell, maybe they threatened to blackmail her. So she killed 'em. You want to take her in, Sergeant, get the samples. You know they're going to match.'

'Soo Yin?' said Strathcaln, turning to his wife.

Discovering that your wife is a prostitute and a murderer at the same time is always going to be something of a shock. Good thing he already knew she'd been a man.

'It's preposterous,' she said, looking around for some implement or other that she could use to murder everyone in the room.

'What about the vicar?' said McLeod.

'Hell, who knows?' said Crow. 'Catalogue Girl here probably had some reason or other for wanting rid of him.'

'Stop calling me that!' she snapped at Crow. 'He refused to pay me. Twice! He deserved everything he got.'

'Soo!' said Strathcaln, beginning to be a bit devastated, to be honest.

Soo Yin had already checked out the door, and the impediment of Agent Cameron. Acting quickly, she grabbed the nearest implement to hand – a large brass sculpture of Sandy Lyle winning the '88 Masters, and very handy for bashing people over the head – and swung viciously before her as she headed for the door.

Cameron ducked and expertly caught Soo Yin with a punch to the guts, a brutal blow which brought her to her knees, and she collapsed on the floor with a grunting eruption of breath, dropping Sandy Lyle in the process. Cameron stood over her, while the rest of the audience looked on in horror/amusement/revulsion/curiosity, dependent on their point of view.

'I'm finished in this town,' said McGowan wretchedly.

Strathcaln stared down at his wife. Today he'd hoped to clear his conscience about the sex change with the Reverend Wilson. No wonder Soo Yin had been so against coming to see him.

'There's more to it, James,' she said desperately, looking up at him. 'Much more.'

Such as how a wee woman like her had managed to murder four strapping students, and how she'd got hold of Igor's scissors.

He hesitated, but he did not care to know what the rest of the story might be. His was the real disgrace, not McGowan, not anyone else who might have slept with his wife. He reached inside his pocket where he kept the, until now, pointless little handgun that he carried everywhere with him. Crow and Cameron both saw the movement, but they hadn't been expecting it. Not here. With one smooth movement, as if he had been waiting all his life for this moment, he brought out the gun, shot Soo Yin with one perfectly aimed bullet in the forehead, then turned it on himself and blasted off the back of his head before anyone could make a move to stop him.

The blood from Strathcaln's head exploded over the room, catching the jackets of both Igor and Theodore Wolf, then his body collapsed in a great thudding heap against the sofa.

Soo Yin lay dead on the floor, face upturned, dead eyes open; the eyes that had once looked upon the world as a man.

The others had all taken a step back at the explosive end to this little drama of revelation, and immediately Crow felt regret at creating the artificial scene which had allowed Strathcaln to murder his wife before they'd had the chance to gather all the facts.

'Arf,' said Igor, a fitting epitaph.

And man, that's all she wrote.

––––––––

T
he police arrived in force almost immediately afterwards, thirty strong, but the drama was over. Barney hung around in the throng of people for a while, one of many, waiting for his chance to get out of Dodge. He was briefly interviewed by a constable from Dingwall, and then he was released to the masses.

As he was walking slowly from the house he came across Legal Attaché Lara Cameron, standing by the door. One last chat, one last aimless dance around the issue of vague attraction.

'You off?' she said, as he was walking by.

'Aye,' said Barney, stopping.

'Where to?'

Barney looked up at the cold, grey afternoon.

'Don't know,' he said. 'Inverness probably.'

'What'll you do?'

'Not sure,' he replied. 'But sometimes you just have to bite the antelope on the arse.'

'Right,' she said.

They looked at each other one last time until Barney nodded and walked on down the garden path, feeling her eyes on the back of his head. Then he was into the small crowd of spectators, policemen and vehicles out on the road and was lost from view.

And off he walked along the road, his bag slung over his shoulder. As itinerant as Theodore Wolf, but with a lot less money.

*

L
ater that afternoon, Damien Crow returned to the Touchstone Maze. The dark had long arrived, and he was moving from stone to stone with a large torch when he finally came across what he was looking for.

In the thirteenth stone starting from the centre of the circle, a folded granite gneiss, there was a hole, a few inches across, which ran through the side of the rock. And deep inside the hole, pushed up against the stone so that only the most exacting of searches could have uncovered it, he found a small piece of paper, folded into a tight ball.