Barney ran to his left, down a small alleyway, his feet clipping frantically off the damp ground.
The officers were only doing their job. They had been told that Barney was a prime suspect in the Westminster slaughter escapades.
They both stopped, they let Barney run. Then, with Barney not more than fifty or sixty yards away, they raised their guns and took aim.
Barney was ten yards away from the corner of the alley, his legs flying, his brain unengaged. He had no idea why he was running. He hadn't done anything wrong, and if he'd stopped to think about it, would he care if he was stopped, arrested, charged, found guilty and sent to prison? If people really thought he was the man responsible for the deaths of so many money-grabbing and duplicitous MPs, would he not be regarded as a hero in any case?
Yet he ran.
The police officers did not call out, they did not offer Barney Thomson, radical haircutting maverick, the chance to surrender.
There are two kinds of arms-wielding police officers. There are the kind that can shoot an unarmed civilian on a Tube train from five yards and not miss. Then there are the kind that learn to shoot by watching the A-Team. They can destroy a barn door from fifty paces, but they can't actually hit anyone, and blood is never spilled.
Fortunately for Barney, his potential assailants came from the latter category.
Even so, as he ran round the corner, with bullets pinging around his head, in his insane and pointless attempt to get away, he ran straight in to another three officers heading in his direction.
That was that; and for the first time in his life, Barney Thomson, poster child of the new millennium barbershop renegade movement, was nicked.
The Weekend
London, England
It was a quiet weekend in London, England. The murders of the MPs had stopped. And while in general the public were disappointed, it did allow them to concentrate fully on the sensational, and considerably more momentous, conclusion to the X-Factor. With a suspect in a police cell, and the murders seemingly at an end, the PM was persuaded, for the time being at least, that there was no immediate need to invade the United States; until such time as it was established that Barney had been receiving his instructions from the CIA.
The invasion force of around five hundred men remained on board the three frigates off the coast of Maine. The Royal Navy reported to the US coast guard that they were unable to move on, as two of the boats had broken down and repairs would be some time in arriving. The United States were so used to things going wrong with British military equipment, they were happy to believe it.
The newspapers were generally kind to the PM. The expenses bunfight was back on the front pages, but as the PM himself hadn't claimed for any chocolate bars or repairs to his castle on Tayside, for the most part he was excused the opprobrium of the nation, and of the nation's media.
Life in London continued as normal, as the talks in Copenhagen limped on, and the world waited for the roof to fall in.
Monday 14th December 2009
2341hrs AFT Kandahar Airport, Afghanistan
'You mean, you people sleep like this every night?' said the PM.
'Yes, Sir,' said Staff Sergeant McCulloch.
'And you say that you don't each have your own personal hairdresser?'
'No, Sir.'
The PM shook his head. 'I'm sorry, I didn't realise. You know, the defence budget is something like a million billion pounds or something...'
'Forty-two billion,' said Bleacher, who was just about to jump on a helicopter to fly to the Intercontinental, Karachi.
'So, jings, I just don't know what that money goes on,' said the PM. 'Let me talk to some people, and I'll get you, you know, at the very least, some good hair.'
'Thank you, Prime Minister,' said Staff Sergeant McCulloch. 'That would be very important for the morale of the men.'
Tuesday 15th December 2009
0245hrs Morning Somewhere in England, England
Barney Thomson had been taken to a secret location, where he was being questioned by the security services. They were taking his guilt as already established, in the usual way, and had skipped even trying to extract a confession. Instead they were concentrating on trying to find out for whom Barney Thomson was working. Moscow? Beijing? Pyong Yang? Washington? Tel Aviv? Tehran? Brussels? Paris? Berlin? Millport?
Who could possibly want to see the British government in turmoil? Apart from all those other countries in the world, sick to the teeth of Britain sticking their nose into other peoples' business and acting like a world leader, when the only things that Britain actually leads the world in are banking debt, tardiness in coming out of recession, youth unemployment and overpaid footballers.
Barney had been snapped awake at two-fifteen, hustled along a short corridor, and was now sitting in a bland, bald room, across the table from a short woman with more facial hair than was generally considered appropriate. Her colleagues knew her as Three Beards. There had been some embarrassment when she'd found out, but for the most part they had generally graduated to using it to her face and she hadn't objected.
'My name's Barney Thomson and I cut hair,' said Barney. For the eleventh time. He felt vaguely ridiculous, as if he should have an official Barber Classification Number to accompany the job description.
'And is it true that you came to London in order to murder MPs, destabilize the government and help install a regime friendly to a hostile overseas power?'
'I came to London because the PM's people came and got me. I don't think I had....'
'Apparently you had inside help,' said Three Beards.
Barney found himself staring at her face, although he was trying not to.
'What do you want me to say?' said Barney.
'Just tell us the truth, and then you can go home,' she said coldly.
Barney looked quizzically at her.
'What's that supposed to mean? You think I killed over twenty people! You're never letting me go home, regardless of who I'm supposed to be working for.'
'Well, OK, that's a good point,' said Three Beards. 'You're not going home. Ever. So I'll re-phrase the offer. Tell us who you're working for and I won't inflict excruciating pain upon you. I won't take a nutcracker and squeeze your testicles until they burst. I won't drill into your teeth. I won't hold your head in the sink until you're taking water into your lungs. I won't run electric current through you until you feel your insides fry. I won't inject you with the AIDS virus. I won't keep you awake for the next seventeen weeks. I won't crush your hands and your feet, individually and painstakingly snapping each and every bone so that your body cries out in agony and terror.'
She had lingered over every word, each horror delivered excruciatingly, each torture lovingly described.
'Washington,' said Barney. 'It was definitely Washington.'
1127hrs London, England
The PM was enjoying a breakfast of double fried banana burger. It was his third breakfast of the morning. One fewer than usual. Sometimes he ran off the effects of four breakfasts by jogging for ten minutes, but not very often. He was chuckling his way through the papers when there was a knock at the door and Bleacher came into the room. The PM looked up, still smiling.
'Did you see this?' he barked. 'Not only was the idiot claiming for chocolate bars, he claimed for a foot massage. He's handing me this on a plate. This is going to be so easy.'
'We have some definite intel, sir,' said Bleacher, standing before the PM, his voice low.
The PM finally noticed that Bleacher was looking sombre and that it was time to switch on the serious Prime Ministerial face.
'On the killings and the foreign power behind them?'
'Yes, Prime Minister. Barney Thomson has finally cracked under intense questioning.'
The PM shook his head. 'God, that is, I don't know, like totally devastating. Barney Thomson. Who would have thought? Who's he working for?'
Bleacher reluctantly let out a long sigh.
'It's as you
suspected, Prime Minister.'
'Washington?'
'Yes, Prime Minister,' said Bleacher.
The PM's jaw dropped. Which happened a lot in any case, but in this instance was indicative of his surprise.
'Oh. My. God,' he said.
The two men stared into an indistinct spot in space-time, taking in this information and all that it implied for the future of Great Britain, and by extension - as Great Britain leads the world in so many different ways - the very future of humankind. Finally the PM snapped out of the trance and stared curiously at Bleacher.
'But Barney Thomson is only here because you and I decided to bring him in to cut my hair. How could he be working for the Americans?'
Bleacher nodded. Naturally he had thought of this point himself, and had been agonising over it for some time before bringing it to the Prime Minister. Only once he'd felt sure that he had established how the whole horrible process had begun, had he decided to bring this new information to the PM.
'I believe that the Americans are using a mind control device,' he said.
The PM shuddered.
'Holy Declaration of Arbroath!' he said. 'Are you serious?'
'I don't have proof yet, Prime Minister, but I don't see any other explanation.'
The PM took a massive bite of banana burger and stared back into the indistinct point in space-time, as he thought of all the possible connotations of this insidious and dangerous notion.
'So maybe,' he said, 'it's the Americans that are planting the idea for us to invade Maine, luring us into a trap, which they'll then use as an excuse to attack Britain before declaring us the 51st state.'
'They already think of us as the 51st state, Prime Minister,' said Bleacher, then he paused. The PM stared into Bleacher's eyes.
'Sir,' said Bleacher, 'they see us as a potential penal colony.'
The PM looked grimly at the carpet. Having felt for a few days like everything was coming together, suddenly he had no idea of what was happening, not even sure if he could trust his own thoughts.
'Maybe I should confound them and invade Scotland.'
'Maybe, Prime Minister,' said Bleacher.
Wednesday 16th December 2009
0913hrs London, England
It had been six days since the last murder in what the press were calling the Westminster Christmas Massacre - usually on page 35 or so, after 34 pages of X-Factor - and the longer the murder remission continued, and the longer Barney Thomson remained in police custody, the greater Barney's guilt appeared.
All the time, the real killer, Utterson, lay low.
'What do you call a collective of MPs?' said Detective Sergeant Hewitt. 'I mean, what's that expression...?'
'The collective noun,' said Frankenstein, taking a large bite out of his morning roll 'n sausage.
'Yeah, like yeah,' said Hewitt. 'What's the collective noun for, like a bunch of MPs?'
'Not sure,' said Frankenstein. 'There are so many options. A plamph of MPs?'
'A scrotum of MPs,' suggested Hewitt.
'A leper colony of MPs.'
'A testicular growth of MPs.'
Frankenstein looked at Hewitt through a hole in his roll.
'A leach of MPs,' he said, in order to get away from the general gonadal area.
Hewitt laughed. 'Like, yeah, like a leach. That, you know, that kind of makes sense. I've got one. A vasectomy of MPs. You know, they're cut off from society.'
'Needs some work,' said Frankenstein, and the two of them fell into a silence born of feeding frenzy.
Resurfacing from his second fried egg roll a short while later, wiping the edges of his mouth with his tie, DS Hewitt bizarrely threw a conversation about the investigation into the air.
'Do you really think Barney Thomson's guilty, Chief Inspector? I mean, you've dealt with him before. What d'you reckon?'
'I'm sceptical,' said Frankenstein. 'I kind of fingered him in the first place, but you know, I was just pulling his chain. Didn't really think he was guilty. The stuff that goes on around him is unbelievably weird, and to be honest it creeps me out. But he's no killer.'
Hewitt nodded and took a bite out of his third fried egg roll.
'Like, this is a great sandwich,' he said. 'I love breakfast.'
'Me too,' said Frankenstein, cramming the last of his roll into his mouth.
'So, are you going to try to get him sprung? I hear he's been getting questioned by that Three Beards woman who works for MI5.'
'Nah,' said Frankenstein. 'He's probably better out of harm's way. Then, if there's another murder, we know that he's not the man.'
Hewitt bit massively into his third roll and a large splodge of yellow glooped out and dribbled down his chin onto his shirt.
'Or, like, he's not working alone,' said Hewitt.
Frankenstein nodded but couldn't speak, his mouth now attached to a cup of coffee.
1312hrs London, England
Three Beards, the most vicious interrogator that MI5 had ever known, trained in the most vile and unpleasant prisons of Moscow, Washington and Beijing, was taking advantage of having mercurial hairdressing maverick, Barney Thomson, in her custody, and had stopped by his cell for a haircut. She knew that Barney was not generally well practiced in the haircutting of women, but that his talent would see him past that minor difficulty.
'Tooth drilling I learned from watching Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man,' she said, as Barney expertly crafted her hair into a Meryl Streep Mama Mia.
'Interesting,' said Barney. 'I would have thought that maybe you'd have been given a more hands-on training regime.'
'Hell, no,' said Three Beards, who was relaxing into her subject, 'Larry did such a great job with that. And I mean, where are you going to go wrong with drilling someone's teeth? It's not like you can hurt someone too much, is it? You never find yourself saying, oops, sorry mate, did I catch a nerve? Sometimes you have to fish around a bit, but generally it's not too long before you stumble across, well, a raw nerve. And if you do take longer than you'd intended, it just helps to build tension and stress. It's a bit magical, really.'
'Magical?' said Barney. 'Drilling into someone's mouth, blood spraying all over the place and loud screams rending the air?'
Three Beards seemed to consider this for a moment, then nodded.
'Well, you know, if you're in my line of work.'
'I suppose,' said Barney. 'I can see where you're coming from. Michael Palin seemed to be enjoying himself in Brazil.'
'Oh, yes! My inspiration. Now that was magical.'
Silence fell upon them, and Barney weaved his own magic, transforming Three Beards into Meryl Streep, with all the barbetorial flair, panache and verve at his fingertips.
'Don't think you're out of the woods yet,' she said, conversationally. 'You still need to cough up who your American contacts are. And don't go making stuff up, because we'll know. We're MI5. We know stuff.'
Barney snipped cavalierly around the top of the hair, creating the harassed, devil-may-care look of the Meryl Streep.
'If you really think I'm guilty of murdering twenty-odd people and working with the Americans to overthrow the government, why are you letting me anywhere near you with a pair of scissors? Isn't that a bit dangerous? I could have these buried in your neck in a fraction of a second.'
Three Beards raised an eyebrow at him in the mirror.
'Barney, my friend,' she said. 'You may be this top drawer murderer, you may have skills of which the average serial killer can only dream, but I... I am Three Beards, daughter of One Beard, ruler of the House of Beard these past ten years, and I could take you any day of the week.'
Barney stopped snipping for a second, while he engaged her eyes in the mirror.
'Go on,' she said, 'try me.'
Barney smiled at last and resumed the cut.
'Not today,' he said. 'Not today.'
'And besides,' said Three Beards, her voice returning to the chumminess of a few seconds earlier, 'there's something about you, yo
u know. That Hannibal Lecter thing. You're a nutjob, but a nutjob that one can trust. That's what I'm thinking.'
Barney went about his business with a small nod.
'You can put that on my gravestone,' he said.
'Barney,' she said, 'the likes of you don't get a gravestone. You get dissected down to the smallest piece, and your brain ends up in a jar.'
For some reason that he could not explain, Barney felt a strange uneasy feeling creeping up his back.
2101hrs CET Copenhagen, Denmark
The Prime Minister was standing at the window of his hotel, small glass of rum in his hand, practicing his speech for the end of the week. Prime Ministerial aide, Bleacher, was sitting behind, red penning the speech at the PM's direction.
'Britain leads the world in so many things,' said the PM, 'so many times in the past we have shaped history and created a bright future. Once more the world stands on the precipice of disaster, and Britain stands once more above you all, waiting to lead you to the safe pastures of freedom. Follow our lead and the world will survive. Turn your backs on Great Britain, the cradle of modern civilisation, and ye shall be damned!'
Bleacher had stopped scribbling.
'Maybe you want to throw something in there about how you have been told by God what to do?' he said dryly.
The PM clicked his fingers and turned.
'Nice,' he said. 'I like it. Bit of a Moses vibe. Get me the Bible and I'll see if I can crib anything. Or something about the end of days, maybe. Yes. Yes…'
Thursday 17th December 2009
0159hrs CET Copenhagen, Denmark
Political scientists estimate that at any given moment, an average of 3.27 MPs are having sex with their secretary. Contrary to popular belief, this rises to 5.13 during PMQs.
The End Of Days Page 7