The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.

That Whole Life Thing
     

    ‘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,