The Long Midnight Of Barney Thomson (5 page)

*

Robert Holdall slumped into his seat with the enthusiasm of one settling into the electric chair. Another press conference. The Chief Superintendent was forcing them on him almost daily. He would have liked to have argued that they were stopping him from doing his job, but he had so little to go on that the only thing that they were getting in the way of was his afternoon tea and sandwich.

He was accompanied as usual by the burly press officer, a woman of quite considerable stature, who exercised an amount of control over the press that no man had ever managed. And as Holdall readied himself to read his prepared statement, she silenced the packed room with a couple of dramatic waves of her right arm. This was a woman who ate large mechanical farm implements for breakfast.

Holdall stared gloomily at the words written down in front of him. God it was short. Of course it was. They had nothing to say to these people. What could he tell them? That they were thinking of arresting everyone in Glasgow who didn't own a car? Of course not. And so he had written down three sentences of total vacuity. A nothing statement, forced on him by a bloody-minded boss. He would liked to have seen him sit there and read out this garbage.

He finished staring at it, looked up at the collected press. Aw shite, he thought, there are even more than usual. Maybe a few up from England. He made the decision quickly and without any prior consideration. To Hell with it, he thought, give them something a bit more solid than this piece of vacuous mince.

He cleared his throat and, pretending to read from the paper in front of him, began in his low, serious press-voice.

'Ladies and gentlemen. I shall be necessarily brief today, which I am sure you will understand when you hear what I have to say.' He paused briefly. Shit. What was he going to say exactly? Cleared his throat again, took a drink from the glass of water at his right hand, then jumped into the blazing inferno, eyes open. 'Late last night, officers from this station came into possession of a valuable piece of evidence, the exact nature of which I am not yet at liberty to divulge. It has given us a very definite direction of inquiry which we are now pursuing with all possible vigour.' Not bad, he thought. Optimistic, but vague. Don't blow it. 'Given the nature of this new information, we are hopeful of a major development in this investigation, some time in the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours.' Christ, what are you saying? You idiot. Shut up, and don't say any more. 'I am afraid that I am unable to disclose any more information at this time, but you can be assured that when these anticipated further developments have taken place, you will be notified in the usual manner.'

He closed his mouth, blinked, looked up. A brief second and the room had erupted in a cacophony of noise. He sat looking like a stuffed fish, while Sgt Mahoney did her best to calm the crowd. Eventually, after some time and with much difficulty, the room had returned to rest, and the Sergeant pointed a yellowed finger to a man with his arm raised, near the front of the crowd.

'Bill Glasson, Evening Post,' he said, a look of surprise upon his face. It was the first time he'd been called at a press conference in fourteen years, and he had no idea what question to ask. He knew they were not going to get anything more out of the guy, but they were obliged to shout at him. It was their job. When the tumult erupted he had been asking what the inspector had had for breakfast that morning, just so he could add to the clamour. A new question was needed, however.

'So,' he said, thinking frantically, 'you say you have some idea who the killer is. Do you know exactly who the killer is?'

Holdall shook his head. What a crap question, he thought. He could have sworn that before, this bloke had been asking him something about breakfast.

'I'm sorry, but I'm not at liberty to discuss any information other than that which I have just given to you.'

When it became obvious that he wasn't going to say any more on the matter, the clamour immediately started up again, and after a minute or two, was quietened down. Enough of this, thought Holdall. What's the point? If I go on with this, I'll just end up saying something even more stupid than I already have done.

He muttered quietly to the sergeant that he would only take one more question, and when she announced this to the crowd, there was an even more extravagant commotion and frantic waving of hands. She selected the most innocent looking one, a young blonde haired woman sitting in the centre of the room.

'Greta Burridge, the Mail.' Greta Burridge swallowed. Third day on the job. She had her question to ask, however. 'So, Chief Inspector Holdall, does this mean that the rumours that you intend to arrest everyone in Glasgow who doesn't own a car are unfounded?'

*

Holdall sat at his desk, his head firmly buried in his hands. He still hadn't come to terms with what an idiot he'd been. Looked at his watch. Another forty minutes, and then he would have a meeting with the Chief Superintendent. He was going to have to explain himself. As always, he couldn't help thinking of the time he'd been dragged to the Headmaster's office when he was fourteen, after exploding a small bomb in the music teacher's sandwich box.

And he hadn't had an explanation for that either.

5

Alas, Poor Nietzsche,

I Knew Him, Bill

The rain streamed against the windows. The old wooden frames rattled in the wind, the curtains blew in the chill draught which forced its way into the room. Ghosts and shadows. Outside, the night was cold and bleak and dark, to match Barney's mood as he sat at the dinner table. He pushed the food around his plate, every so often stabbing randomly at a pea or a piece of meat pie, imagining that it was Wullie or Chris. All the while Agnes looked over his shoulder at the television, engrossed in a particularly awful Australian soap, taped from earlier in the afternoon. The food grew cold on their plates, as Dr. Morrison told Nurse Bartlett that she would never be able to have children, as a result of the barbecue incident at Tom and Diane's engagement party, and Barney gave forth on what he intended to do to take his revenge upon his colleagues.

'I'm going to get they bastards if it's the last thing I do. I mean it.'

'Yes, dear.' Agnes's mind was on other things.

'I mean, who the hell do they think they are, eh?' He stabbed a finger at her. 'I'll tell you. Nobody, that's who they are. They're nobody. And I'm bloody well going to get them.'

'Yes, dear.'

There was a mad glint in Barney's eye. The possibilities were endless, the bounds for doing evil and taking his revenge unfettered, limited only by his imagination; a very tight limit, as it happened. He had been thinking it over since the afternoon's humiliation, and the more he dwelt upon it, the more he liked the idea of murder.

Murder! Why not? They deserved it. You should never humiliate your colleagues in front of the customers. Wasn't that one of the first things they taught you in Barber School? But these young ones today. They never even bothered with any sort of hairdressing education. Five years of high school learning sociology and taking drugs, and they thought they knew everything. They lifted a pair of scissors and started cutting hair as if they were preparing a bowl of breakfast cereal. It just wasn't that simple. It was a skill which needed to be nurtured and cultivated. Like brain surgery, or astrophysics.

The trouble was that they were all bastards, every one of them. Not just Wullie and Chris, but every other cretin who'd ever lifted a pair of scissors in anger. But not for much longer. It was payback time.

'What d'you think? Stabbing? Shooting? Poison even?'

'Yes, dear,' she said, absent-mindedly nodding.

He brightened up. Poison. Brilliant. Agnes was good for bouncing ideas off sometimes. 'Aye, you're right. Poison's the thing. I don't know anything about it, but I'm sure I can find out. I'm sure I can. What d'you think?'

'Yes, dear.'

'Aye, it shouldn't be too difficult.' Murderous plans raced through his mind, a manic smile slowly wandered across his lips. 'One of they slow acting ones, so I can stick it in their coffee during the day, and they won't die until much later.' He rubbed his hands together. 'Brilliant idea. Bloody brilliant.'

There was some illuminated corner of his mind telling him that he wasn't being serious. Not murder. Surely not murder. But it was good to think about it for a while. Thinking about it wasn't the same as doing it.

'Yes, dear,' said Agnes. Was Doreen really a lesbian or was she just pretending she loved Epiphany so she could get close to Dr. Morrison without Blaize becoming suspicious?

Without any further stabs of conscience, Barney tucked into his pie, chips and peas, all the time plotting his wild revenge. It was sad that it had to come to this, he thought, but they had brought it upon themselves. Particularly that bastard Wullie.

Another thought occurred. Perhaps he could poison some of the customers as well. They were asking for it, most of them. He got carried away for a second on a rollercoaster of genocide. Calmed down. He was Barney Thomson, barber, not Barney Pot, deranged dictator. Still, the thought was there, if it ever became necessary. A lot of them deserved it, that was for sure.

His mind began to wander to a grand vision where he was in the shop with two other barbers, neither of whom anyone would go to, while there sat a great queue of people all waiting for him. He would take three quarters of an hour over every haircut, and annoy as many of them as possible. Heaven.

He was reluctantly hauled from his dreams by the telephone. He stopped, a forkful of chips poised on the cusp of his mouth, and looked at Agnes. Her eyes remained glued to the television, oblivious to the clatter of the phone.

'You going to get that, Hen?'

She scowled. 'Can't. Faith and Puberty are about to have it out with Bliss.'

Executing his trademark eye rolling and head shaking routine, he tossed the fork onto the plate and stood up to get the phone, hoping it would be a wrong number.

'What?'

'Hello Barney, it's me.'

He breathed a sigh of relief. It was one of the few people from whom he didn't mind receiving a call, his drinking and dominoes partner, Bill Taylor. This would be a call to arms.

'Oh, hello Bill, how you doing?'

'Not so bad, not so bad. And you?'

'Oh, can't complain, can't complain.'

They discussed trivialities for a few minutes, such as Bill's brother Eric having told his girlfriend Yvonne that he loved Fiona. Finally, however, Bill got to the main item on the agenda.

'Fancy going out for a few pints the night?' he said.

'Oh, I don't know, mate. I need to see my mother. She'd be a bit upset if I didn't go. You know what they're like, eh?'

'Well, how about a couple of pints before you go. I'll meet you down the boozer about half seven, eh?'

'Aye, that shouldn't be too bad. Can't stay too long though.'

'Aye, aye.'

Barney said his goodbyes and trudged back into the sitting room. He tried to ignore the television while he polished off his dinner, then he slumped into the armchair and fell asleep. He dreamt of poison and of long prison sentences and of chain gangs and electric chairs, and then he awoke with a start at just about the time he needed to.

As he left the house, the aftermath of dinner remained where it had been for over an hour, while Chastity and Hope attempted to bundle Mercury into the boot of a car, in what he assumed to be an entirely different soap from the one he'd suffered earlier.

'I'm going to the boozer, then Mum's. All right?'

'Yes, dear.'

'I'll be back about ten.'

'Yes, dear'

He waited for some more reaction, waited in vain, then walked out, slamming the door as he went.

*

'Aye, well that's all very well,' said Bill Taylor, brandishing his pint, 'but who is to categorise depth? Eh? Everyone is capable of depth. Nietzsche said, "Some men consider women to be deep. This is untrue. Women are not even shallow." Well, to me that's a load of mince. Now, I'm no feminist or nothing, but I've got to say, even women can say stuff that's deep too. Most of what they come out with is pants, but it doesn't mean they can't say something intelligent every now and again.'

Barney nodded in agreement. 'I never realised that you were a student of Nietzsche?'

Bill grunted, burying his hand in a bowl of peanuts. 'I wouldn't go that far. Obviously I've studied all the great philosophers, but I'm definitely not a fan of Nietzsche.'

'Me neither. Typical bloody German. Spent his life writing about some kind of master race, then he went off his napper, reverted to childhood, and spent the last ten years of his life in an asylum, playing with Lego and Scalextric, pretending to be a cowboy. To be perfectly honest, they nineteenth century German philosophers get on my tits.'

Barney wondered about himself. Why was it that when he sat over a pint and a game of dominoes in the pub, he could talk pish with the best of them, but when the chips were down, and he really needed to, there was nothing there? Like the guy who could hole a putt from any part of the green, until someone offered him a fiver to do it.

'My friend,' Bill said, his mouth full of peanuts, 'you don't need to tell me about German philosophy. I'm as aware as anybody else of its failings. And let's face it, when it comes down to it, all German philosophy amounts to, is "if in doubt, invade it." Aye, that's it in a nutshell, so it is.'

'Well, well, Bill, I never thought I'd hear you talk like that. Certainly Germany was guilty of horrendous imperialism during the first half of the twentieth century, but that's not necessarily indicative of the past two hundred years.'

Barney executed a swift manoeuvre with a double four and lifted his pint.

'Is it not? That's a load of shite. You can't just dismiss fifty years as not indicative. Especially when it is,' said Bill.

Barney paused to take another sip of beer, studying the state of their game of dominoes. It was turning into a bloody tussle, good natured but life-threatening. He was about to make his next move and expand his thoughts on German imperialism, when he paused briefly to listen to what two young women were saying as they walked past their table.