Free The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt (Barney Thomson series) by Douglas Lindsay Page B

baring his bum in Beauly, that second can of McEwan’s his undoing. An accident involving a tractor and a low-flying Tornado on the Strathconon road out of Marybank. Heroin with a street value of £23 million seized on a Russian trawler in the Moray Firth.
    A normal day.

The Barber Surgeon’s Hairshirt
     

    Barney felt at home. A pair of scissors in his right hand, a comb in his left, a cut-throat razor at his side. No other tools with which to work. Barbery at its most coarse, unfettered by electric razors or blow-dryers or artificial lights. No cape around the victim to squeeze the neck and protect the virgin body from follicular contamination. Barbery as it must have been practised in olden days, when men were men and the earth was flat. Raw, Stone Age barbery, where every snip of the scissors was done by instinct, where every cut was a potential disaster, every clip a walk along a tightrope of calamity, every hew a cleave into the kernel of the collective human id. Barbery without a safety net. Barbery to put fear into the breast of the bravest knight, to quail the heart of the stoutest king. A duel with the Satan of pre-modernism, where strength became artistry and genius the episcopacy of fate. Total barbery; naked, bloody stripped of artifice.
    ‘Apparently Jesus was a shortarse,’ said Barney, carefree around the left ear. Forgetting where he was, to whom he was talking. Brother Ezekiel raised an eyebrow.
    Barney was revelling in the primitive conditions. In one afternoon he had reeled off a Sean Connery ( Name of the Rose ), a Christian Slater ( Name of the Rose ), an F Murray Abraham ( Name of the Rose ) and a Ron Perlman ( Name of the Rose ); as well as the Abbot’s Brother Cadfael. No cash, no tips, just quiet words of praise and heartfelt thanks for doing the Lord’s work.
    ‘Four foot six, they say. With a hunchback.’
    Brother Ezekiel coughed portentously into the back of his hand.
    ‘You’re forgetting where you are, Brother Jacob.’
    Barney stopped, scissors poised. Thought about it. Said, ‘Oh, shit, aye.’
    Brother Ezekiel closed his eyes in silent prayer for the errant monk. Disparaging the Lord, swearing – you could always tell a new recruit.
    Barney lapsed into silence. He ran the comb through the hair, clicked the scissors. The light from outside was beginning to fade and he was glad of the three candles which flickered on the small shelf. He was supposed to be keeping his head down and his mouth shut. His language wasn’t too bad – not by Glasgow standards – but it was still unnecessarily unsavoury for within the monastery walls.
    He had been doing fine. Head down, only speaking when spoken to. Like any new recruit in any walk of life. Don’t make a noise until you had your feet under the table. However, a couple of hours of barbery had been his undoing. He’d been all right during the Sean Connery and the Abbot’s Cadfael. Finding his feet, getting back into the groove, reacquainting himself with his scissors fingers. However, ten minutes into the Christian Slater, Brother Sledge had made an innocent remark about the weather and Barney had been unleashed, his mouth running ahead of him like a leopard on amphetamines.
    And so, he’d covered all the great topics of the day: the profligacy of that year’s December snow; the situation in Ngorno Karabakh; apparently Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings in a fortnight; fifteen reasons why Beethoven wasn’t as deaf as he liked to make out; six kings of Scotland who were circumcised at the age of fifty; how Sid James nearly beat out Giscard D’Estaing to the French presidency in 1974; why Kennedy only won the US presidency because he kept J Edgar Hoover supplied with edible underwear; Errol Flynn was a woman; apparently Jesus was a shortarse. Barney had been full of it; total, inexorable bollocks. He’d been at the peak of his form, talking the sort of crap of which most guys with fifteen pints in them could only dream.
    The monks