Barney Thomson and the Face of Death: Bloody Murder, Bad Haircuts and Danish Philosophy [Paperback]

In Scotland, four American students are found with their throats slit, and each has been given a chilling haircut. The FBI arrive, but they are too late to prevent another terrible murder, and into this walks Barney Thomson, looking for a short back and sides and a new hair colour.

He held open the door and allowed the one who was about to take his life to walk unhindered into his home. Almost as if Death himself had arrived, black cape drawn Obi Wan-style down over his head, and had been invited in for a late night snifter.
They sat down on sofas on opposite sides of the coffee table, the Reverend Wilson wincing slightly at the amount of dust which had accumulated in the three and a half years since Mrs Wilson had departed. (He’d told everyone in the village that she’d died, paid MacDuff the undertaker and McLeod the policeman to schtoom, and had conducted a very moving funeral service.)
‘What seems to be the trouble?’ said Wilson, clasping his hands on his thighs and attempting to convey concern. Really he couldn’t care less if this person – or anyone else on the planet, for that matter – got knocked down by a bus.
‘It’s the murder of the four tourists,’ said the killer. ‘I’m really worried.’
‘But there’s no need,’ said Wilson, leaning forward, curiosity mingling with an almost unfeigned concern. He paused, then continued strangely, ‘The mind of the perfect man is a mirror. It does not lean forward or backward in its response to things. It responds to things but conceals nothing of its own. Therefore it is able to deal with things without injury to its reality.’
The killer stared at the vicar. As a young lad his mother had dragged him incessantly to church, and it had fostered within him a hearty disrespect for all these men of God.
‘Look, Bishop,’ the killer said, waving away Wilson’s protestations about the bishop thing, ‘you might think you impress people by quoting Chuang Tzu, but to be perfectly honest with you, Chinese philosophy gets up my butt, you know what I’m saying?’
‘Very well,’ said Wilson, a little irritated. The quote had been completely inappropriate, but he generally found it useful in awkward conversational moments, when his flock were looking for guidance, to recite any old mince that they’d assume came from the Bible. He’d quote the Bible itself, but he hadn’t read it in over fifty years and couldn’t really remember much about it. There were a couple of bits about Jesus which rang a bell, and he was fairly confident about the story of Moses up to the point where he gets stuck in the basket, but after that he was hopeless. ‘What would you like me to do for you?’
‘No, no,’ said the killer, smiling broadly now. ‘You’ve got me wrong, your worshipfulness. I don’t need your help. I’m here to help you.’
Wilson sat back, straightened his shoulders, and looked witheringly across the table. This was not someone who could help him in any way, and if he was about to be asked the question which he presumed he was, his late night guest could get the Hell out of Sodom and leave him in peace.
‘I can’t begin to imagine what that might be,’ said Wilson.
‘That is because you have so little imagination,’ said the killer, who inched forward, then added, ‘To that high Capital, where kingly Death keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, he came!’ quoting the poet Shelley and getting a little overexcited as the words flowed.
‘What?’ said the bish.
‘You’re about to die, old man!’