'Mr. Thomson,' said the leading inquisitor, Jack Nicholson, MP for some part of Scotland or other, 'can you tell us what you knew and when you knew it?'
There was an audible gasp around the auditorium.
Barney Thomson paused for a long time. He was aware that the television cameras were closing in on him, that millions were watching.
'Just about half past ten,' said Barney.
'And is it true that the first time you visited the Prime Minister, you entered through the front door? Isn't that a bit odd?'
Barney paused again, although this time he had nothing to say.
'There are multi-millionaire media supremos who are forced to enter through the back door. Why do you think you were gauged important enough to enter through the front door?'
Barney looked around the committee. He had, during the course of his appointment as personal barber to three different Prime Ministers, cut the hair of six of them. Seven of them had had to repay wrongly-claimed expenses three years previously. Four of them were having affairs with other MPs. At any other given time they would be representative of a collective who were held up to public opprobrium. Yet, for some strange reason, whenever they got on television as part of one of these infernal committees, they acted as though they were the arbiters of decency and honesty in the country. Them, and every newspaper in the land, even the ones who had been caught with their pants down so often in the previous couple of years.
'I believe,' said Barney slowly, 'most people will agree that the key fact, the key evidence that is here before us, is that hair is the most important aspect in the day-to-day life of almost everyone in the Western World. Apart from Jeremy Clarkson, obviously.'
The two women on the committee nodded vigorously.
'If I may just turn to another matter, Mr. Thomson,' said Nicholson. 'Were you aware when you took on the employment with the current Prime Minister that there were plans afoot to create a new zombie army intent on taking over the world and recreating the British Empire?'
Barney shook his head.
'If you had known then what you know now, would your decision to take the employment have been any different?'
Barney paused again. Eventually he leaned forward and decided to tell it to the committee like he saw it.
'Go fuck yourself,' he said.
Nicholson nodded seriously.
'You think this committee should go and fuck ourselves?'
'Yes,' said Barney. 'The committee. MPs. Police. Media. Journalists. Newspapers. The people who buy newspapers and believe what they read. All of you. You can all go and fuck yourselves.'
There was a pause. This wasn't the kind of language that one usually got on TV in the afternoon. Unless one watched the music channels or ITV.
'Up the arse,' he added.
A Plane, Somewhere Over The Sahara
The Prime Minister was returning to the UK, travelling on EasyFly, as he was tiptoeing on eggshells around public opinion and didn't want to be seen to be flying business class on an airline that wasn't utterly shit.
'How's it looking?' he asked Logan, his principal advisor.
Logan was just off the phone to the Prime Minister's office at Number 10, where they had been polling on whether the public considered it likely that the PM was still going to be in a job come the weekend.
Logan nodded his head.
'Not too bad,' he said. 'Could be worse. Could be worse.'
The PM visibly relaxed.
'OK. Tell me the numbers.'
Logan nodded again.
'The pollsters asked the question: Do you think it is likely that the Prime Minister will still be in his position by the weekend?'
'Yes, yes... What are the numbers?'
'Em...' said Logan. He pursed his lips as if trying to get his head around them. 'Seven percent,' he began, 'and I think that's a significantly high number, don't know.'
He looked up from the folder he was holding. The PM indicated for him to continue.
'A further fifteen percent.... didn't realise that you were the Prime Minister.'
The PM humphed loudly. 'Still thought it was Blair?'
'Thatcher.'
'Ah. Well, nothing we can do about that. So, what about the other seventy-eight percent?'
'Seventy-seven percent,' said Logan,' seventy-seven percent,' he repeated, 'think you'll be gone by the weekend. So, ah... one percent of those questioned believed you'll still be in power by Sunday morning.'
The PM seemed to grow pale before him.
'What was the poll sample? A hundred? Less?'
Logan checked the numbers again.
'I asked for extensive polling, so they polled, eh... just over three hundred thousand people in a broad spectrum of constituencies.'
'Three hundred thousand?' said the PM, slightly shocked. 'One percent.... so that's three thousand people.'
'I believe they rounded up,' said Logan.
The PM straightened his shoulders and got to his feet.
'All right, all right,' he said. 'All right. We need to be calm. We all know the British People don't really know what they're talking about, and that most of them aren't really competent to vote... how about party MPs? They were polled too?'
'We asked them all,' said Logan, 'and only three of them were prepared to go on the record.'
'Three.'
'Yes. And they all said you were fucked.'
The PM nodded.
'Completely fucked?' he asked.
Logan nodded, and then glanced over his shoulder at the Defence Secretary, who was sitting down at the other end of the plane, surrounded by sycophantic cock-sucking civil servants.
'Prime Minister,' he said, his voice low.
The PM bent low, his ear close to Logan's mouth.
'I believe that we might have a conspirator in our midst. Someone who seeks to bring you down from within.'
The PM backed away from him and looked surprised.
'You don't mean....'
Logan nodded.
'The barber?' said the PM.
Later That Day, Africa
The elite zombie fighting force were on the march, turning the map pink on behalf of the Queen. They had side-stepped South Africa for the time being, as it was a bit too large and the military commanders wanted to expand the size of the living dead force before taking on the Dutch, or whoever else was going to get involved.
Lesotho was next, as the 1st Regiment of the Living Dead swept all before them, eating human flesh as they went, devouring individuals when they felt like it, or turning the victims into new additions to the troop.
The world hadn't yet noticed. There were other problems in Africa, there were other stories in the news. Lesotho was the top of no one's list. By the end of the day, however, it had become part of the British empire. Queen Victoria, who had spent most of the 20th century turning in her grave, could at last begin to relax.
Westminster, London, England
The Barney Thomson inquisition was still taking place. Originally due to last an hour, it had dragged on and on and on, not helped by an interruption when one of the committee had covered his own face in foam and asked Barney to give him a quick shave.
'Can I ask you one last time?' said Jack Nicholson. 'Your name crops up repeatedly. It appears that Prime Minister after Prime Minister demands your attention, it appears they can barely make a decision without first asking you. Isn't it then true, and this will be my final question before passing over to my fellow panelists, isn't it true that all the bad shit that's happened in the past ten years – the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the banking collapse, the recession, the MPs' expenses scandal, Scotland being shite at football, Andy Murray and Tim Henman failing to win Wimbledon, child obesity, rising crime and unemployment, house repossessions, the use of the phrase it's my bad, the pensions crisis, Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan – all of it can be blamed on you? It's all your fault?'
Barney stared into the eyes of his inquisitor. It had been a while sinc
e he'd been blamed for everything. It was nice to be back.
'Yep,' he said. 'It's my bad.'
A Prison Cell Somewhere in London, England
Barney Thomson had not slept much. After being released from the hell of the Select Committee interrogation – which had been of the classic Westminster dead sheep savaging variety – he'd had a few hours lying on a bench in a police cell without a blanket. Usually it was warm in the cells regardless of the time of year, but budget cuts had forced the police to turn the heating off between the hours of 10pm and 8am.
Barney was cloaked in gloom, that thick, black cancerous ball sitting in the middle of his head, leaving him unable to think clearly, feel anything, without it being weighed down and crushed.
If I lie here long enough, he thought, perhaps I can become one with the bed. With the cell. Maybe I can go quietly and wonderfully insane, and then they can leave me in a cell forever. In this cell. In a cell with padded walls. Do they really have cells with padded walls, or is that just in films? Maybe they used to have them but don't anymore, in case you're infringing someone's human rights; by providing them with padded walls you're implying that they need padded walls, and therefore must be a complete nutjob.
This wasn't real. He knew it wasn't. Life was crazy and absurd and preposterous, but no one created zombie armies. Even at the height of the Cold War it's unlikely that any mad Russian scientist ever thought, lets create zombies and crush the West! It didn't make sense. But if it wasn't real, why couldn't he escape? That was all he wanted.
His mind limped on, never quite drifting off to sleep, never quite latching on to a sensible and reasonable thought.
*
His redemption, such as it was, was to come at the hands of the most gorgeous, sensuous and delicious serial killer ever to take up arms in the United Kingdom. Harlequin Sweetlips killed again when Barney was still incarcerated, and so even the Metropolitan Police Force were able to work out that Barney hadn't done it.
So far there had only been one song written about Harlequin Sweetlips. James Blunt's You're Beautiful. Fortunately for James, and sadly for the rest of us, he had never seen her again after that first romantic glance across a crowded place, and had therefore lived to write the stupid song.
The man accompanying Harlequin Sweetlips at the time, had died that very evening, bludgeoned to death with a glass bottle of tomato ketchup. Sweetlips had then filled the ketchup bottle up with her lover's blood, used snake venom to get it to congeal, and had put it back on the shelf at the nearest Tesco Metro. The further adventures of the bottle of ketchup are not recorded, although some commentators believe it was the cause of an additional seventeen deaths.
Weirdly none of that made it into the song.
Similarly none of it was of help to Barney Thomson. What did help him was that at just after 6am that morning, Sweetlips put the final junior Defence Minister to the sword. Literally, as a football commentator might say. She slept with him first. He was quite an elderly chap, but had employed the use of a sex aid he'd found advertised at the back of an off-the-shelf magazine – the All-New Pump-Spurter – and so had been able to keep Sweetlips reasonably happy for an hour or so, and then she had reached beneath the bed, pulled out the ancient Japanese sword and driven it into his guts. She had then risen from the bed and sliced off his head.
A solid job. It was her third murder, she'd enjoyed herself. The bonus for Barney, of course, was that he was once again off the hook.
Like he cared.
10 Downing Street, London, England
Barney was back in position, standing behind the Prime Minster. His mood had not changed. He wasn't sure that he would even call it a mood. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, was rather jumpy. Certainly the zombie invasion of southern Africa was going well. They had set up a Risk board in his office, and slowly he was turning the bottom of Africa pink, starting to move northwards. Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe had all fallen to the zombie horde, and the force was increasing in size all the time.
It would not be long before Great Britain was once against the pre-eminent power in the entire world – particularly since the USA was just about to default on their debt, fall into civil war, split apart into their constituent states, and create absolute hell for CONCACAF World Cup qualification. However, with every passing day, it seemed more and more certain that the PM was going to be forced to defend himself against a putsch from within. Europe, gay marriage, the limp-wristed economic recovery; they were all beginning to take their toll.
Britain was going to rule the world, and he'd be sitting on the back bloody benches.
'I need a dynamic cut, Mr. Thomson,' said the PM. 'Something bold. Really bold. Make me look like... a cross between Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch and Sundance.'
'A fitting analogy,' said Pryce from the back. 'Coming out with all guns blazing.'
The PM smiled.
'And getting blasted to fuck,' said Barney. 'That'll work.'
The smile disappeared from the PM's face.
'All right, then, smart arse, what would you do? And don't give me any shit about spending more money. There is no more money. We're practically bankrupt. Robert Peston just hasn't realised it yet.'
Barney started snipping away at the back of his head, although not so much work was required. The PM already looked like a 1970s movie star with an 1890s haircut.
'You could start by being honest,' said Barney.
The PM looked sharply at him in the mirror.
'Are you taking the piss?' he barked.
The House of Commons London, England
The House was in uproar; the Leader of the Opposition was in full flow. The Speaker shouted and cajoled and warned and bellowed, as usual taking the side of Labour over the Coalition. Eventually he managed to quiet the animals and the LOTO was able to continue.
He paused. He owned the silence. He looked around the House and then turned to face the PM.
'All I ask is that the Prime Minister acknowledge the two things everyone else in the House already acknowledges. One, that my cock is three times the size of his cock...'
The house erupted. Many of the those present had at one time or the other been completely fucked by a party leader, so were in a solid position to judge, '... and that my dad could have kicked the shit out of his dad.'
That Evening, Somewhere in London, England
DCI Frankenstein, the police officer in charge of the investigation into the murder of the three junior defence ministers, found Barney Thomson alone at a table, a pint of cider gradually warming up in front of him. He placed his own pint down and sat opposite. There was a low hubbub of conversation, accompanying the three televisions dotted around the establishment, all showing ex-footballers on Sky talking up that night's guaranteed thrill-fest between Fulham and Sunderland.
'You look miserable as shite,' said Frankenstein.
Barney nodded.
'Thought you might have perked up a bit after getting released.'
Barney raised an eyebrow.
'Released from what?' he said.
'That there, what you just said,' said Frankenstein, 'sounds like you're getting into some sort of existential shit, so I'm not going to go there. Got something to tell you.'
Barney gave him an eyebrow.
'Remember our old friend Harlequin Sweetlips?'
Barney had thought that nothing could break through his misery. He was wrong. The name stabbed fear into his stomach. He had encountered Harlequin Sweetlips before. He had killed Harlequin Sweetlips. And yet he had known she wasn't dead.
He shook his head. He didn't want to hear the rest. He lifted the drink that had been sitting half-drunk and untouched in front of him for more than twenty minutes and drained it. Placing the glass back on the table he said, 'I'll take something stronger, if you're buying.'
Frankenstein smiled ruefully and got to his feet.
Barney Thomson stared at the floor. There was an unfettered army of zombies on the march, b
ut they would be nothing compared to Harlequin Sweetlips.
10 Downing Street, London England
'Think I can keep dodging the bullets for another few months,' said the PM.
The four men were sitting around a table which showed a large map of the world. None of them had said anything for over ten minutes. They had been viewing the pink parts of the map, as if willing them to expand.
After the zombies had taken over, crack teams of military scientists would move in to control the living dead – using the technology and techniques developed over six months of testing, and perfected in Swindon – following which crack teams of diplomats would move in to organize cocktail parties and British-themed events to show the local population who was in charge.
The Prime Minister looked casually at the other three men in the room. The three most senior men in government. The Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and the Barber. When you're conquering the world using an army of the living dead, hair is important. Of course, Barney Thomson had his work cut out doing anything for the Foreign Secretary.
They were all drinking port and smoking cigars.
'You're not so much dodging the bullets,' said Barney. 'You've just developed a thick enough skin to not notice that they're all hitting you on the arse.'
'Be that as it may, if I can make it through into early summer, then government'll shut down for a couple of months and I'll be all right until well into September. Soon enough everyone will be talking about the next election, and there'll be nobody else feasible to lead the party.'
'Nixon resigned in August,' said Barney.
The PM took a long, slow drink of port, then puffed imperiously on his cigar.
'The point I would make is this...' he began.
'It's weird, isn't it?' said Barney. 'Government just shuts down for August. Six weeks and you lot do bugger all. Yet the country doesn't shut down, it keeps chugging along quite happily. I'm not saying it's not a shit country – because it is – but it's just not any more shit in August because there's no government. So here's an idea. Why don't you try doing away with yourselves for twelve months of the year and seeing how everyone gets on?'
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