'This man, Utterson,' said Bleacher, ignoring the PM's painful grasp at humour. 'He said that he was from our office. Number 10's office.'
The PM stopped abruptly. Had he been on The West Wing, the cameraman would have bumped into his back.
'What?' barked the PM. He looked at Blaine. 'What does that mean?'
'I don't know the name,' said Blaine.
The PM stared him down for a second then looked sharply at Lucy, the Diary Secretary.
'Lucy?' he said.
'I've checked, Prime Minister. There's never been anyone of that name working in Number 10's office, and there hasn't even been anyone of that name visit Number 10 since Rear Admiral Utterson in 1903.'
The PM stared darkly along the corridor, then looked grimly around the band of four.
'I take it the police are doing what they can with this?' he said brandishing the picture.
'Yes, Prime Minister,' said Bleacher.
The PM nodded, then turned and marched onwards along the corridor, his band of accomplices in his wake.
0937hrs London, England
The applause of a hundred and seventy-five business leaders (whatever that actually is) echoing in his ears, the Prime Minister walked from the podium, shaking a couple of hands as he went. He had just given his preposterous vision on how Britain as a country wasn't going to go bankrupt, even though it clearly already had, and people had applauded anyway, because they thought they should. His hair had looked great, and the audience had pretended to be swept along in the frenzy of Prime Ministerial enthusiasm.
He swept through the lobby of the hotel, mopping his brow for all the world like he was Elvis leaving the stage in Vegas, and hopped into the waiting black Jag, gesturing for Barney to join him and Bleacher as he went.
Barney felt like someone's new puppy, being dragged around from tree to tree, park to field, at his master's whim.
The doors were slammed shut and the cars moved off into the London traffic.
'Sir,' said Bleacher, 'can I remind you that you need to write a letter of condolence to the families of the Lords who were murdered last week?'
'Oh, I can do that in a couple of years,' said the PM, 'that should be fine. Listen, I thought that was terrific. Bleacher?'
'Yes, Prime Minister,' said Bleacher, 'very positive reception.'
'Cracking,' said the PM. 'Barney? How did you feel it went?'
Barney Thomson stared out of the window as the London morning passed slowly by. People huddled against the rain, the shop windows desperately lit and crying out for Christmas. Nobody wishes it would be Christmas every day, thought Barney, except children under twelve and retail outlets.
He turned back to the PM, the tiredness of the morning on his face. He'd only been back twelve hours and already he was ready to leave.
'I need to go, Prime Minister,' he said. 'I've had enough.'
'But you can't,' said the PM. He wasn't surprised, he could see it in Barney's eyes, knew it had been coming. 'You can't. Look at me, just look at me. I'm Robert Bloody Redford here, thanks to you. Did you see that bit in the Mirror this morning? A columnist said I was one of the sexiest men in Britain.'
'That's the one newspaper that wants to see you re-elected,' said Barney. 'They'll be saying you're charismatic next, and the closer we get to the election they might even imply that you speak the truth every time you open your mouth.'
The PM gritted his teeth and leant forward, then he noticed the sharp look from Bleacher and eased back in his seat.
'I know what you're trying to do,' he said. 'But you can't go, not with this murder enquiry taking place.'
'I'm not a suspect,' said Barney.
'You're always a suspect,' said Bleacher coldly.
Barney looked at him, then turned away and stared out of the window. He wondered what would have happened if he hadn't come back from Scotland. Would the police have arrived to bring him in? Can you be sentenced to life cutting the Prime Minister's hair?
'So, Barney,' said the PM, 'tell me. What were those two police officers talking to you about in the Sherlock Holmes on Friday night?'
Barney did not look round, but he felt the pernicious hand of evil crawl up his spine, and began to wonder if he would ever be allowed out of London again.
1456hrs London, England
Detective Sergeant Hewitt was one of many looking through tapes from CCTV of everyone entering and leaving the Palace of Westminster over the two days in the previous week when the murders had taken place. Hours of footage from over 350 cameras surrounding the building. Hewitt was on the second line, being passed material that the officer making an earlier scan had thought worthy of another look.
Hewitt had yet to pass anything on for a third scan.
Frankenstein appeared at his shoulder, looking like a man who would quite happily kill someone, if it got him off the murder inquiry.
'How's it looking?' he said, although he already knew the answer. Hewitt would not have been quiet if there had been something to say.
'This is, like, really cool,' said Hewitt, pointing at the grey pictures. 'You keep seeing these people that are like really famous and stuff. It's totally awesome.'
'What sort of people?' said Frankenstein, then immediately felt stupid for asking.
'Like MPs and stuff. You know, ones that are on the TV and that. It's, like, totally cool.'
'So there are CCTV images of MPs walking out of the Houses of Parliament? Holy crap, hold the front page.'
'Like, I know, but it's coolio. Come on, Chief Inspector, we spend our lives dealing with nobodies. Nobodies killing other nobodies and that kind of stuff. But this, this is awesome. Hey, imagine how cool it would be if someone got murdered on X-Factor or Britain's Got Talent.'
'I don't doubt that, in the holy name of ratings, one day it will come to that. You haven't found anything pertinent to this particular investigation by any chance?'
'Nothing. He's a pretty weird looking guy, this Utterson. Distinctive. You think he actually looked like that, or do you suppose the secretary who talked to him had been at the happy juice?'
'Oh, I'm sure the latter. They're all on the flippin' happy juice in this place.'
Frankenstein clapped Hewitt on the shoulder.
'Keep at it, Sergeant Hewitt,' he said, then moved on to the next monitor, and the next young police officer impressed by seeing Kenneth Clarke on CCTV.
Late that night, London, England
Late that night, the killer Utterson once more appeared. But this time, he did not concern himself with the Houses of Parliament. Too late for that. So he went in search of apartments where he knew he would find an MP or two, men and women sleeping soundly, safe in the knowledge that the following day would dawn bright and crisp and even, and they would once more be able to board the daily gravy train to Expensesville.
Except, by the following day, those one or two MPs would be dead...
Tuesday 8th December 2009
0814hrs London, England
The first call of the day to DCI Frankenstein's office had come at 0641hrs. Frankenstein had not long arrived and had just lifted the opening coffee of the day to his lips. He didn't actually care that another MP had been found murdered, but was aware of the generally adverse affects that this would have on his day.
By 0814hrs, things were looking slightly worse for the greater MP collective of Westminster. Of the six hundred and forty-nine surviving MPs at the start of the day, seven had been found murdered in their beds, contact had been established with six hundred and twenty-five of the others to make sure they weren't dead, which left seventeen still unaccounted for.
Frankenstein's office was in a state of frantic bedlam. Frankenstein himself had had a moment of frantic running around. Or two. But as the body count had increased, and he had realised that the number of places he needed to be had already gone far over the limit of the number of places he could be, he'd gradually relaxed and settled into a state of phlegmatic resignation. There were only so m
any desperate and angry phone calls he could receive from his superiors, and now one was blending in to another.
'Another one's alive!' shouted a voice from the other side of the frenzied open plan office, and the police clerks who were keeping a track on the movements of all the MPs - like the women who controlled the board showing the movement of German planes in Fighter Command during WWII - got hold of the woman's name and moved her into position.
Frankenstein sat back and finally took his first sip of coffee of the day. It was his fourth cup, the other three going cold without so much as a drop crossing his lips. DS Hewitt approached his desk.
'Hey, like guess what?' said Hewitt.
Frankenstein looked up at Hewitt with a raised eyebrow, wondering what was coming. Hey, like guess what, they found another one with his entrails cut out, would have been an odd way to put it.
'The Mail are doing this great Bing Crosby Christmas CD offer. It's like, all these amazing Christmas songs for free if you buy, like some, you know, some sort of thing that middle-aged people buy, like a hot water bottle or something. It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas and all that stuff. Those songs are like totally awesome.'
Frankenstein looked curiously at the newspaper in Hewitt's hands, the picture of Bing in his Christmas hat with which we're all so familiar.
'Wow,' said Frankenstein, voice completely flat, 'a Bing Crosby Christmas offer. That's extraordinary. It's amazing how all those songs, even though we've heard them eight million times, still sound so fresh.'
'Well...' said Hewitt, and then he noticed the look on Frankenstein's face and laid the paper down on the desk.
'You want me to focus on the murder enquiry?'
'Actually, for the moment, I want you to focus on finding out just how many murder enquiries there actually are. Then you can focus on finding out who's doing it; and then, if there's still time, you can subscribe to the amazing Bing Crosby offer.'
'Another one's pegged it!' came the cry from across the room. 'Penis cut off and shoved down his throat!'
Someone cheered and then pretended he hadn't. Frankenstein groaned and the abacus for the tally of the dead was increased by one.
*
By the time the tally had been completed, and all six hundred and forty-nine MPs had been accounted for, dead or alive, it was known that eleven had been murdered in their beds. Or thereabouts. The other six hundred and thirty-eight had been gathered in the Houses of Parliament, awaiting instruction from Scotland Yard.
Police officers were investigating the murder spree at various locations across the city. The media were in frenzy. The conspiracy theorists were on fire.
1003hrs London, England
The Prime Minister was in his office in Westminster, standing at the window, looking down on the Thames. There were five people in the room behind him. Bleacher, his chief aide, Blaine, the Cabinet Secretary, Lucy, his Diary Secretary, the Chief Whip and, for reasons that none of the others could understand, Barney Thomson, barbershop genocide legend.
'I agree with the Chief Whip,' said the Cabinet Secretary. 'This has gone beyond revenge; it's gone beyond an individual's psychotic bloodlust. This is a coup attempt, Prime Minister!'
'Coup attempt,' repeated the Chief Whip.
'Bleacher?' said the PM.
The PM's head was low. These should have been the defining days of his leadership, when he would turn the polls around, start to become the Prime Minister that everyone had expected him to be, the leader that everyone wanted. He had hammered the Leader of the Opposition in the Commons, he was preparing to lead the world on climate change at the conference in Copenhagen, and he had fantastic hair, delivered direct to his doorstep by ace crimper, Barney Thomson.
'They're right. You have to introduce martial law,' said Bleacher.
The PM turned quickly, face thunderous.
'And how will that look?' he barked.
'How will it look when you've been usurped as Prime Minister, Prime Minister?' said Blaine. 'The country is run by parliament, and members of that parliament are being individually murdered at an astonishing rate. No one man could possibly have done what happened last night. This is an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of a sovereign state, and under these circumstances there is only one option left open to you.'
'Martial law,' said Bleacher again.
The PM looked around the room, the hair on his head going greyer by the second.
'Lucy?' he said. 'What do you think?'
'You've got a meeting with the Ambassador from the Maldives at eleven-thirty, Sir,' she said.
'Cancel it,' said Bleacher.
'Cancel it,' repeated the Chief Whip.
The PM nodded at Lucy, who scribbled in the diary, then he turned his dull eyes on Barney.
'Barney Thomson,' he said. 'You're our resident psychotic killer expert. What d'you think?'
Barney had been sitting with his head bowed, eyes rooted to the floor. He didn't care about the parliamentary murder and mayhem, but there was no doubting the uncomfortable feel of being in the midst of it all.
'At times like this,' said Barney, 'I like to ask myself, what would George Bush do?'
He looked seriously into the PM's eyes as he said it, and the PM leant back against the frame of the window.
'Well,' said the PM, taking the question seriously, 'George would have invaded the country with the highest proportion of psychotic serial killers, and therefore the one most likely to be behind the psychotic serial killer coup attempt.'
'Exactly,' said Barney, 'which would have been awkward for him, as that would have meant invading himself. You, on the other hand, don't have that problem.'
Bleacher gave Barney a look of contempt. The Cabinet Secretary and the Chief Whip were staring at the carpet, unimpressed that the PM was even bothering to consult someone such as Barney Thomson on the matter. Lucy was quickly writing, invade America into the diary. For Thursday, just after 11.
'So,' said the PM, 'you think I should invade the United States of America?'
Barney nodded. 'Who else is going to come up with the idea of using a serial killer to overthrow a government? It's pure CIA.'
'This is absurd,' barked Blaine.
The PM snorted and pointed at Barney. 'Let's hear him out,' he said.
Bleacher stared out of the window at the grey morning, wishing that he was in charge, so that he could dismiss everyone else in the room.
'If you introduce martial law,' said Barney, making it up as he went along, 'the public, the British People that you're so keen to impress, are going to hate you. If they themselves were under attack perhaps, if Britain was under attack... But it's MPs, for crying out loud. MPs. No one cares. There'd be uproar if you impinged on ordinary peoples' lives because MPs are getting murdered.'
The PM grumbled. Bleacher was looking at the ceiling.
'However, if you invade America, you'll look decisive, they'd likely retaliate, putting mainland Britain in a war situation, which would allow you to pull a Churchill, which would be great for your image. We'd be the underdog, of course, and people love that. It's a win-win, win-win situation.'
'Except we'd get flattened!' barked Blaine.
'Flattened,' chorused the Chief Whip.
'And, of course,' said Barney, 'you'd get Obama back for making you look so pathetic in New York a few weeks ago.'
The PM looked at his watch.
'Crap,' he muttered. 'I need to go and speak to the press. Barney, how's my hair look?'
'Like a million bucks,' said Barney.
'Excellent. Right, Blaine, I need you to speak to the military chiefs. I want options on launching an attack against the US mainland on my desk by seven this evening.'
The PM made a clicking sound with his lips, snapped his fingers and walked quickly from the room, shouting, 'Walk with me!' as he went.
Only Lucy the Diary Secretary immediately followed. Bleacher, Blaine and the Chief Whip stayed to eyeball Barney, like a host
of deranged Chelsea or Manchester United players surrounding a referee after he's had the outrageous temerity to award a foul against them.
'Where the Hell did that come from?' snapped Bleacher.
'Just made it up,' said Barney.
'It's preposterous!' yelled Blaine.
'Preposterous,' barked the Chief Whip.
Bleacher eyed Barney even more disdainfully.
'Or else, it's very, very cunning. Just who are you working for, Mr. Thomson?'
Barney looked at him, eyebrow raised.
'The Chinese?' accused Blaine.
'The Russians?' said Bleacher.
'The Russians?' repeated the Chief Whip.
Barney looked grimly at them for a few seconds, and then he smiled ruefully and got to his feet.
'Come on,' he said, 'you heard the man. He wants us to walk with him.'
He smiled at them, and then walked quickly from the room in the PM's wake.
Afternoon, London, England
That afternoon the media were in ferment; the police were in ferment; the Houses of Parliament were in ferment. The British People weren't really that bothered.
Anonymous government sources let it be known that the feeling within Whitehall was that this was not the work of a single deranged, blood sucking psychotic madman, but that it was quite possibly a coup attempt organised by a malign foreign power. The names of the dead MPs and the gory details of their murders were all over the internet, photographs included. Lists had been drawn up of who people thought might be next; or who they wanted to be next. Sky News were running a poll on the potential favourites. The list of the already-dead was being dissected by the police and pundits alike, to try to establish a link between them all, but in general everyone was in agreement. The link was that they worked in positions of authority at Westminster, and that was enough.
The End Of Days Page 4