The Face Of Death (Barney Thomson) Read Online Free

murders.
    'The weather, I mean,' said McGowan, sensing Barney's confusion. 'Nightmare. What d'you make of that, eh?'
    'Aye,' said Barney, having sudden insight into the lives of all the poor souls whose hair he'd put to the sword over the years, while he droned on about the weather. Not quite a moment of epiphany, because moments of epiphany are made of more than that, but close to it.
    McGowan studied his scissors, while he checked out Barney's hair.
    'What'll it be?' he decided to ask, because he had a strange feeling that Barney might be a man who'd expect more than the straightforward.
    'You got any dye?' asked Barney, his mind already made up.
    McGowan shrugged. Had had some in the cupboard for close on twenty years – men didn't get their hair dyed much in Strathpeffer – and he assumed it'd be all right.
    'What colour you looking for?'
    'A kind of reddy brown would do it,' said Barney, thinking that might not be too far away from his eyebrows and beard. 'A number three at the sides, number six on top,' he added.
    Different enough from the way he was, but not too radical as to draw attention to himself.
    'Should be no problem,' said McGowan. 'Igor, get the dye from the cupboard.'
    'Arf,' grunted Igor, and he laid the broom against the wall and shuffled off to the store room out back.
    'You want me to do the cut first?' asked McGowan.
    A car drove past outside, its silencer busted, roaring noisily through the cold and dark of late afternoon. Barney caught McGowan's eye in the mirror, thinking that even someone who'd never been to a barber in their life wouldn't need to ask that question.
    'Aye,' said Barney, 'cut first, then dye.'
    'Excellent,' said McGowan, and he downed his scissors, lifted the electric razor, blew across the top of it – spitting on it at the same time – and studied Barney's head again.
    'There's something bugging me,' said McGowan, adopting a chatty, conversational tone, and Barney thought, here we go ... 'Something niggling at the back of my mind. A clawing thought, scraping away at my subconscious, a whore to my spirit, digging like the eager talons of suspicion at the scales of my curiosity, piercing the very skin of my self-assurance, a malignant tumour of discontent, scratching with the astringent unguis of angst at the desert of my aplomb. You know what I mean?'
    'Totally,' said Barney.
    'I can never work out,' said McGowan, 'what it is that's going on with cows.'
    Barney half smiled, but really there was no need for what was about to happen. McGowan could just shut up and get on with the cut. But no, he was a barber, therefore he would feel duty-bound to spout endless amounts of utter tripe. It was part of the whole ethos, after all. What makes a barber a barber, rather than just a guy with a pair of scissors?
    'Cows?' asked Barney, playing the game.
    'Aye,' said McGowan, still surveying the scene in front of him, still wondering where to start. 'You get fields and fields of cows, right? Thousands of them all over the country. But where are all the bulls? You don't get fields of them, do you? You just get the odd bull here and there, stuck away in a field, like the embarrassing family member you don't want anyone to know about.'
    He stopped, waiting for Barney to express interest. When none was forthcoming, he continued anyway.
    'So what's the score? Are there really eight million cows born to every bull? Is there some lost Land of the Bulls somewhere, hidden behind a secret doorway? Indiana Jones and the Land of Bulls . There's an idea they should make into a film.'
    'Aye,' said Barney, without much enthusiasm.
    'Or do they have a bovine Slaughter of the Innocents every week, when they round up all the male cattle and strike them down? It's fascinating, don't you think?'
    'Aye,' said Barney, wishing that he'd asked for a 'nothing off the top, nothing off the sides and back', and could already have left.
    Igor shuffled back into the room and placed the bottle of hair dye, approximately the