The End Of Days

by Douglas Lindsay

  The PM was sitting in front of a mirror, studying his hair. Barney Thomson was behind him, his left wrist still handcuffed to Three Beards. Dotted around the room were Blaine, Lucy and Prime Ministerial über-aide, Bleacher. Everyone looked at everyone else in silence for a few moments.

  'Barney,' said Frankenstein, eventually, 'you look terrible.'

  In return, Barney looked right through Frankenstein and Frankenstein felt the chill of the stare crawl up his spine. Finally, after years of horror and accusation and death, Barney had been broken.

  'Are you really going to cut the Prime Minister's hair with one hand cuffed to Three Beards?' asked Frankenstein, with a lightness of tone.

  Hewitt looked at Three Beards with awe, having never met her before. Suddenly, as he studied her face, it was obvious.

  'Like, you're Three Beards?' said Hewitt. 'How cool is that?'

  'What do you two want?' barked the PM, who was not happy about the interruption to his forthcoming magnificent hairstyle, which he would use to help take over the world.

  'Need to talk about Utterson, Sir,' said Frankenstein.

  The PM snorted.

  'I don't know how many times we have to tell you that we don't know who he is, Chief Inspector. Listen, you, woman, can you remove those blasted cuffs from Thomson? I need for him to have both hands free.'

  Three Beards eyed Barney suspiciously, but she received nothing in reply. Barney was gone. She placed the key in the small lock and released Barney's wrist.

  'Don't even think about going anywhere,' she said to Barney. Barney did not look at her.

  'Ten minutes, Prime Minister,' said Lucy the Diary Secretary.

  The PM barked in response.

  'Right,' he said. 'Thomson, I realise things have been a bit rough for you, but you know, if you're going to go around murdering people in their sleep or, at the very least, allying yourself with murderers and villains, well, bad stuff is going to happen to you.'

  The PM looked at Barney in the mirror, but Barney's eyes were lowered. This slightly disconcerted the PM, who continued talking to cover his discomfort.

  'So, we come at last to the great speech of our times. I don't think it's too great an overstatement to say that my entire premiership and indeed, the entire future of mankind, rests on my shoulders this morning. Get it right and the world is saved. Get ignored, and we're doomed. We've come through a lot together, you and I, Barney Thomson, and now I must ask of you one last great sacrifice. Give me hair to meet the moment, hair that will inspire, hair that will make the planet fall in behind me as I lead them to a great and brave new world.'

  Barney picked up a pair of scissors and a comb. The thought did not even occur to him to bury the scissors in the PM's head, if for no other reason than to stop him talking gargantuan amounts of pish.

  'What do you want me to do?' asked Barney.

  'The ultimate speech haircut,' said the PM.

  Barney finally looked him in the eye in the mirror.

  'What would that be?' he asked.

  The PM looked as though he was slightly embarrassed to say it, as if he was trying to get Barney to recognise what he was talking about by telepathy.

  'You know, what's the most famous speech ever given in the history of the world?'

  'Martin Luther?' suggested Hewitt from the back, 'you know, the whole I have a dream thing.'

  'No,' said the PM derisively. 'What would I look like with a Martin Luther?'

  'Like, Kennedy in Berlin?' said Hewitt.

  'Bigger than that,' said the PM. 'Barney did me a Kennedy a couple of weeks ago, and it was a great cut, I'll give you that, but this is bigger than Kennedy in Berlin. This has to be something that travels down through the ages, is still relevant to people two thousand years from now. I have the words, now I just need the hair.'

  'You want,' said Barney, the voice still the colour of a grey day in Milton Keynes, 'a Jesus of Nazareth Sermon on the Mount?'

  The PM looked slightly abashed at the obvious comparison he was drawing, but he at least had the courage of his hubris, straightened his shoulders and looked Barney in the eye.

  'Blessed are those who seek to save the planet, Barney Thomson,' said the PM. 'And blessed are those who cut the hair of the great leaders of our times.'

  Without a flicker or a twitch, Barney got to work.

  Behind them, Bleacher, Blaine and Lucy the Diary Secretary all flickered. And all twitched.

  'Prime Minister,' said DCI Frankenstein, 'our investigation has led us to believe that the killer of the seventeen MPs here in Copenhagen, Denmark, the night before last, without doubt came from the party who accompanied you over here from Number 10. We need to account for everyone who travelled with you, stick them all on a plane back to the UK, and question them thoroughly on their return.'

  The PM caught Frankenstein's eye in the mirror.

  'Do what you like, Chief Inspector, as long as it does not interfere with my running of the world.'

  2256hrs GMT London, England

  Back in London and the future of the planet safe for another few months, the Prime Minister stood at his Downing Street window looking down on the snowy pavement. He had allowed himself to be distracted by the opportunity to save Planet Earth, but now that he was back, he had to address the other issue that had occupied him most of December. The attempt by the American authorities to overthrow his government, using the unique ploy of coup d'état by serial killer.

  The British invasion force sat off the coast of Maine, waiting to be unleashed in its full fury. War was at hand, and all it would take was one phone call from him.

  However, he had decided to give it one last weekend before making the momentous decision. One last chance for his people, and his peoples' people, to come up with an alternative hypothesis for the motive behind Utterson's murder spree.

  And as the killer Utterson laid low, and the only man so far accused of the murders, Barney Thomson, lay huddled in a cold cell back in the heart of London, the PM had a late night drink and contemplated the future of the planet that he himself had helped save that morning.

  Saturday 19th December 2009

  0143hrs London, England

  The killer Utterson took a very early morning walk along the corridors of power. His work in the Commons was swift and precise. There were seven MPs working late into the night, and he killed them all in less than half an hour. Short, sharp and brutal. Heads bludgeoned, throats slit; one penis dickutated, another's liver removed. In one wicked case, a left buttock sliced off and then thrust into the victim's face until they'd suffocated. An accomplished array of brutality, as the killer honed his skills on the honourable dismembers of parliament.

  He moved on to the Lords, not expecting to find many of them about at that time of night. Doors were locked, corridors were silent. He flashed his Downing Street pass at the guards as he passed them. Those that did not check, lived. Those who did – and like Greg Lake, saw through his disguise – died swiftly with much blood spilled.

  The killer Utterson had a way about him, somehow managing to never get any blood on his own clothes. It was an accomplished life skill, for which he would have received a Box 1 marking, had anyone ever written a report on his job performance. Which was unlikely.

  From inside a room he heard the strains of Bob Dylan singing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, and he quickly knocked and entered. The killer Utterson did not need to think before he acted.

  'Lord Pip!' cried the killer Utterson with excitement, informally addressing the old Tory who he found sitting behind his desk. In fact, by the standards of the Lords, the old Tory was rather youthful, having lived through no more than fifty-nine winters. Utterson had at last encountered someone who would not lie down.

  Lord Pippinger of Anniesland Cross lowered his head and looked gravely at Utterson. The man looked nothing like the photofit that had been in circulation, yet he had no doubt who it was who had entered his office. And, for the first time since Utterson's killing spree had be
gun, one of his potential victims even recognised him.

  'It's you!' said Pippinger with shock.

  Utterson looked slightly taken aback by the look of recognition on Pippinger's face, and as much by the tone of his voice.

  'Hah!' he barked derisively, but he did not have the conviction of his derision.

  'Don't think you're coming in here with any of your fancy serial killer moves,' said Pippinger. 'You can bugger off. And if you want a fight, I'll ruddy well give you one!'

  This exhortation seemed to lift the spirits of Utterson and he smiled suddenly.

  'So be it!' he cried, and then he leapt up on to the desk for all the world like he was Errol Flynn.

  Utterson pulled his knife, and Pippinger was reminded of his grandfather's words to him as they'd sat in the church, all those years ago.

  He pulls a knife, you pull a broken pint glass; he puts one of your men in the hospital, you put one of his head first down the toilet and drown him in his own pish. That's the Glasgow way.

  Pippinger, who'd unfortunately left his pint glasses at home, pushed back his chair and stood, poised and ready to accept Utterson's attack, in a Kung Fu stance. Utterson leapt, Pippinger kicked out a leg, catching him off balance and in mid-air. Utterson clattered to the side, swinging wildly with the knife as he did so. Yet despite Pippinger's desperation right armed swipe, Utterson managed to catch him on the side of the neck, and the man fell back clutching at the pulsing blood.

  And in an instant, that was that. Utterson regained his footing; the Lord was on his back, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood from the wound in his neck, and suddenly vulnerable to the final thrust of the knife.

  'Very spirited, your worship,' said Utterson standing over him. 'Time to die, now.'

  There was a movement behind him, and Utterson turned in time to see the Lord from across the corridor, who had been disturbed by the racket – that would be Bob Dylan singing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, rather than the attempted murder – making a grand entrance after the fashion of Steven Seagal or Chuck Norris.

  'Ah!' cried Utterson. 'Lord Sim! Come in Harry, you old bugger and join the fun!'

  Lord Harold Sim, Harry to those who knew or were about to murder him, saw the prone Lord on the floor, blood leaking from his neck like money from the RBS, and immediately threw himself into the fray.

  'Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war!' cried Lord Harry, running full pelt with all the fervour and passion of a great figure from Shakespearean tragedy.

  And tragedy was right enough. Utterson brought his knife up and caught him full whack in the chest, the knife slicing brutally through clothes and flesh, imbedding itself in his body, the heart skewered. Lord Harry croaked, looked shocked and was dead within the second.

  Pippinger looked up in horror; Utterson did not keep him waiting, bent to his task, and finished the man off with one more thrust of the dagger.

  Utterson, unusually panting, and with the first beads of sweat on his brow, straightened up and looked down with satisfaction at his latest victims.

  Bob, for his part, had moved on to the execrable I'll Be Home For Christmas, as fitting a serial killer Christmas song as there possibly could be.

  Monday 21st December 2009

  0957hrs London, England

  Barney Thomson was sitting with his back against a wall. There was a new kind of torture being inflicted upon him this wintry Monday morning. Easy-listening Christmas classics were being piped into his cell, and not Bing Crosby level easy listening classics, but the much more insidious Brooke Benton and Bill Pinkey and Rosemary Clooney. Waterboarding seemed preferable.

  The door opened and he lifted his head for the first time in almost seven hours. Presumed it would be the evil Three Beards, or perhaps DCI Frankenstein; instead, it was Bleacher, the PM's personal aide; a man who made Alistair Campbell look like a vicious, two-faced, back-stabbing political thug.

  Bleacher switched on the single bare light bulb and closed the door. As Barney had not been given a toilet, the room did not smell too great, but Bleacher acted like he did not notice. He looked down at Barney without contempt, without judgement.

  Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – the writer of which has spent the last sixty-three years in Federal prison for this blatant crime against the Yuletide period – blared miserably through the speakers.

  'Why don't you just tell them who your contacts are at the American embassy?' said Bleacher, bluntly.

  Barney looked up, his head still low, his eyes narrow.

  'Why don't you just tell them that it was you and your boss who got me down here in the first place?'

  Bleacher snorted, and like his bosses the politicians, completely ignored the logical question.

  'Despite everything in which you're involved, the Prime Minister wants you back full time.'

  On the one hand, Barney was suspected of murdering, or conspiring to murder, something in the region of fifty people; and yet he was not at all surprised that the PM could look past this in order to get someone to give him a decent haircut. Generally Western society has developed in such a way that good hair transcends everything.

  'There were another nine murders on Saturday morning,' said Bleacher, filling the silence. 'It's beginning to look like there's going to have to be an early election. So many by-elections. We're almost at the cut-off point.'

  'I'm amazed you'd think I'd care,' said Barney.

  'Enough crap,' said Bleacher, as if it had been Barney who'd been the one talking it. 'You can wallow in your own filth in this depressing little room with no natural light and no food or water, or you can come back to Downing Street to cut the Prime Minister's hair and act as his advisor as he prepares for war.'

  'What?' said Barney. 'War with whom?'

  'America,' said Bleacher humourlessly. 'It was your idea, if I remember correctly.'

  Barney sighed heavily and dropped his head. Maybe if he went back he could persuade the Prime Minister to re-admit himself to the asylum.

  2034hrs London, England

  The snow continued to swirl outside the windows of Number 10 Downing Street, as the Prime Minister stood looking down on the perfect white of the road below. A few minutes earlier he had hung up the phone after a long call to the commander in charge of the British expeditionary force, sitting off the coast of Maine. He had reluctantly informed the commander that he would wait at least another twenty-four hours before making the decision on whether or not to attack. The commander, fully aware that the invasion was an act of complete and utter political and military folly, was quite happy.

  The door opened and Barney Thomson stepped into the room. The PM, his back turned to the door, could tell that only one man had entered. Barney had been delivered and handed over to the PM's charge.

  'It's like a beautiful white carpet,' said the PM in a statesmanlike way. 'Or a blanket,' he added.

  Barney, having just been driven through the snow, did not feel the need to join the PM at the window. Finally the PM turned, his hands thrust into his pockets.

  'We stand at the precipice, Mr. Thomson,' said the PM. 'We are on the brink of war. I am on the verge of calling an election. These are momentous times, Mr. Thomson. And behold, the X-Factor winner does not have the Christmas Number One. What are we to make of it all, Mr. Thomson? Could it be the End of Days, as prophesised?'

  Barney was silent. He no longer just wanted to go home; he no longer wanted anything. But it had felt good to get a shower and a change of clothes and to get away from musical Christmas abominations.

  Suddenly the PM strode forward, clapped Barney firmly on the shoulder, and said, 'We all live or die by our hair, Mr. Thomson. See you tomorrow morning at 6.30 sharp,' and walked quickly from the room.

  Barney turned and watched him go and so, suddenly, found himself alone in the office of the Prime Minister. He stood in silence for a minute. Then he walked to the window and looked down at the pure and perfect carpeted blanket of white.

  Except
now there were the prints of a pair of size ten and a half shoes striding across the road and through the back entrance into the Foreign and Commonwealth office across the street...

  Nothing perfect ever lasts, thought Barney Thomson.

  And somewhere he could hear the strains of chestnuts roasting on a stupid, toxic open fire.

  Tuesday 22nd December 2009

  0845hrs London, England

  Barney Thomson was sitting in the rear of the Prime Ministerial limousine as it carried him and the PM a short way through London. The PM's principal aide, Bleacher, was also there, scribbling furiously on a note pad. At precisely 0631hrs GMT that morning, Barney had given the PM the kind of haircut they would be talking about on TV shows for the next one hundred and fifty years. A Humphrey Bogart, Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The man looked like a lovable rogue, the perfect vote winner, especially when pitched against the Etonian polish of his opposite number.

  Barney was staring blankly out the window at the dirty snow piled against the side of the road. Beginning to thaw. Another winter when a couple of inches of snow had brought the country to a standstill. The sooner global warming arrived and turned the south of England into Tuscany, the better all round.

  'I suppose you're wondering where we're going?' said the PM to Barney, who had not engaged the PM in conversation all morning.

  Barney looked up. Completely disinterested. Wasn't sure that he would even care if he was being taken back to his prison cell. The PM, sitting with his back to the direction of travel, jerked a thumb behind him. Barney looked up and saw Buckingham Palace looming large through the grim morning.

  'You ever met the Queen, Barney Thomson?' asked the Prime Minister pompously.

  Barney shook his head. But not in reply; just at the general state of insanity that his life had become. If the Pope was also due to be in attendance, he would not have been surprised.