The Face Of Death (Barney Thomson) Read Online Free PDF Page B

yet a full-blown rose,' he said.
    Cameron stared at him. She'd been in the country long enough to know that a lot of the inhabitants were even stranger than she herself.
    'What?' she asked.
    'You mentioned Bud,' said Wolf, moving stealthily along the bar.
    'And?'
    'Robert Herrick, seventeenth century poet,' said Wolf.
    'I don't think they had Budweiser in those days, friend,' said Cameron.
    Wolf smiled.
    'I tried to think of a quote involving Budweiser, but the only one I could come up with was Bud-weis-er,' he said, croaking out the word. 'Bud-weis-er,' he croaked again, smiling.
    Cameron also smiled. She was a cheerful sort, really, but she could spot a marketing man a mile off – although, who couldn't? – and she had no time for them. Not since she'd bought a Metz, thinking it was going to have some sort of kick to it.
    'How about “piss off, fella, or I'll stick a bottle of Budweiser up your ass?”' she said.
    Wolf smiled. Being a marketing man, he did not know failure.
    'That Florence Nightingale, was it?' he said.
    Bobby put the drinks on the bar. Cameron shook her head, decided she wasn't going to engage Wolf any further, lifted the drinks and turned back towards McLeod. Wolf and Bobby the Barman watched her go, the movement of her legs and buttocks emphasised by her clinging black skirt.
    'What d'you make of that?' said Wolf.
    'Apart from the family leaving Scotland thing,' said Bobby, 'which, to be frank, is getting on my tits, she's a bit of all right. Great feet.'
    'Lovely,' said Wolf, supping from the dregs of his pint of lager, 'me too. Think I might make a serious attempt at it if I can get her away from the policeman.'
    'Good luck,' said Bobby, thinking he had more chance himself, especially now with his great complexion 'n' all.
    And they both continued to stare at her as she sat back down beside McLeod. Passing the other table, she had briefly caught Barney's eye, there had been the slightest of acknowledgements between the two of them, and then Barney had looked away first, perturbed almost at being eyed up by a woman.
    And as she began to regale McLeod with further details of the case of Snickers McGhee and how he'd used a chocolate bar as the instrument of murder in more than three hundred killings, Barney had a question thrown directly at him, which was even more disconcerting than catching the eye of an attractive woman.
    'So, to which camp do you belong?' asked the barber McGowan of Barney. 'Hegel or Kierkegaard?'
    Barney stared briefly at McGowan. There'd been a time when he would've risen to the discussion, even leapt at it like a lemur dancing between the dinosaurs – because lemurs and dinosaurs were big together – but now he had no spirit for the conversation, and the inevitable argument. Not so long ago he would've sat in the pub with his mate Bill Taylor, hunched over a pint of lager and a game of dominoes, discussing the merits of Kierkegaard until they were punted out into the early hours of the morning, stinking of booze and fags. But now the pith of his id had been crushed like dried-up dog faeces squished beneath the foot of a twenty-eight stone woman, eating a fish supper and wearing size fifteen boots.
    'Kierkegaard was a wank,' he said solemnly, and he looked at the small clock behind the bar. Almost twelve-thirty. He'd sat in this company long enough.
    'Humph,' said McGowan, staring at his beer. As it happened he also considered Kierkegaard to be a bit of a wank, but then he usually liked to arrive at that conclusion after several hours of considered argument.
    'Arf,' said Igor. Had he been able to say something other than arf , he would have articulated the opinion that Kierkegaard had been right to proclaim the perspicuity of God and man, and the unaccountability of the correlation between the two. He would also have pointed out that, as Heidegger stated, man is an evanescent being, aware, through the opalescence of his animus, of the certitude of his own death, and therefore,