Barney Poirot's captive audience were looking at him with some expectation. It had been almost ten minutes since Barney had made the PM take the drink, and since then nothing had happened and no one had said anything. They'd thought they'd been giving him some space to marshal his thoughts, but there didn't seem to be a lot of thought marshalling taking place.
'What are we waiting for?' asked Bleacher eventually, his words scything out into the silence.
The PM looked over at Barney, as did the rest of them.
'It's a good point, Mr. Thomson,' said the PM. 'If you have something to say, why don't you say it?'
The PM was looking slightly peculiar, as his latest haircut had stalled halfway through the Joseph Stalin. Barney looked at him, not entirely sure how to respond. Thing was, he didn't actually have anything to say. It was as if Poirot had gathered together all the suspects on a case for which he had not the faintest idea what was going on. Barney was going on the smallest of hunches.
'Just,' said Barney, 'you know, getting my thoughts together. Give me another couple of minutes.'
'Oh, for crying out loud,' snapped Blaine, 'this is preposterous. I'm leaving.'
He got up and tried the door, which was when he remembered that the door had been locked from the outside. He breathed heavily and turned to look at Barney.
'Can I leave, please, Mr. Thomson?'
'Not yet,' said Barney. 'You'd better sit down.'
Bleacher looked angrily around the room. The PM, running a finger inside his shirt collar, gestured for him to sit down.
'You've got another couple of minutes, Mr. Thomson,' said the PM. Barney nodded, and looked at the floor. 'I'm beginning to need to go to the bathroom myself,' muttered the PM. 'Getting a bit hot in here.'
The others looked at the floor or stared at Barney and shivered. It was cold outside; the heating was not up very high.
The clock ticked on the mantle-shelf. Everyone stared disconsolately at the floor, feeling rather sad and depressed and gloomy. Somewhere in the distance they could hear the sound of a bus. The clock seemed to get louder, the only other sound in the room the somewhat laboured breathing of the PM.
'We are going to need to come to some sort of decision before this deadline, Prime Minister,' said Bleacher eventually.
Abruptly the PM rose to his feet and walked to the door, pulling the handle like a petulant child, even though he knew the door was locked.
'I need to get out now, Mr. Thomson.'
He banged on the door, and then turned and looked rather desperately around the room, his eyes falling on the phone.
'Call someone, Bleacher, for God's sake, get us out of here.'
'Are you all right, Prime Minister?' asked Bleacher, rising to his feet.
He looked at Barney, who shook his head and indicated with his eyes for Bleacher to sit down again. Bleacher hesitated.
'The phone!' barked the PM, and then suddenly he seemed to yelp loudly and fell to his knees.
'Prime Minister!' shouted Blaine, getting to his feet.
'Back off!' shouted Barney. 'Everyone back off!'
Everyone did, but at the same time they all got warily to their feet, taking a couple of steps away from the PM.
'Barney?' said Frankenstein. 'Enlighten us.'
'Wait and see,' said Barney. 'I've been guessing up to this point.'
The PM was curled in a ball on the floor, moaning loudly, his head jerking in a peculiar manner.
'Prime Minister?' said Blaine, worried and suddenly a little bit frightened.
The PM slammed his hand against the floor, repeatedly, his groans becoming louder and more agonised. The other men stood and watched, engrossed, aghast, backing off as much as possible.
Finally, the groaning stopped; the PM remained on his knees, his head down, breathing heavily, his forehead resting against the floor.
On the mantle-shelf the clock ticked. A bus passed in the distance. A plane soared overhead. Somewhere a woman unwrapped a noisy bar of chocolate.
Slowly the PM raised his head and looked maliciously at the others. His brow was beaded with sweat, his breathing was thick and heavy, his eyes were dull grey. And his face; his face had completely changed. Gone was the gormless unattractiveness, to be replaced by a rakish Jude Law look, but a diabolical and monstrous Jude Law, hell-bent on murder, destruction and cataclysmic mayhem.
The killer Utterson had arrived.
'Aw, crap,' said Frankenstein. He looked at Barney. 'You knew this was going to happen?'
Barney did a thing with his hands. 'Wasn't sure. Just a hunch.'
'Prime Minister?' said Blaine with desperation.
'And you thought it would be a good idea to lock us in a room with a demonic serial killer who makes Hannibal Lecter look like one of the Wombles? What were you thinking?'
Hewitt was staring at Utterson intently, a strange smile on his face.
'That is like the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. I mean, how cool is that? It's like, I don't know, that old double act thing. What was it? Flannigan and Allen?'
'Jekyll and Hyde,' said Frankenstein. 'You really are a child genius.'
The killer Utterson got to his feet, looking around the room with a sly and cunning grin.
'Gentlemen,' he said. 'Nice to have you all here.'
'What, you know, what's going on, Prime Minister?' asked Blaine uncertainly. 'You are still Prime Minister?'
Utterson cackled. 'Hah!' he barked.
'He was given a bottle of rum when he was in Trinidad,' said Barney. 'At the end of November at CHOGM. Every time he had a drink of it, he turned into this. The Americans must have used someone to pass it to him.'
'Oh, wonderful, Sherlock,' said Utterson, sarcastically. 'I ought to just have finished you off when I had the opportunity.'
Blaine felt as if he'd been given a vicious punch in the stomach. Bleacher was staring at the floor, desperately trying to think of what this did to the forthcoming destruction of the country by nuclear weapon. Frankenstein was looking around the room, wondering how exactly they were going to deal with the issue of being locked in a room with a crazed madman. Hewitt had the look of the easily amused on his face. He'd come to terms with the fact that they were all going to die anyway, so this was a bit of a bonus.
Barney Thomson kept a close eye on Utterson and hoped that it would not be long before the key turned in the lock.
'This is like choosing the first sweet from the box,' said Utterson, smiling.
'You cut that out!' barked Frankenstein. 'No more murder, sunshine.' Then finally he remembered to say what he ought to have said the minute he'd encountered Utterson in the first place. 'You're under arrest. Put your ha—'
In a magnificent burst of action, Utterson leapt across the room, landing just in front of Blaine. His fingers jabbed out, skewering Blaine in the eyes, instantly blinding him, and then in one swift and expert movement, he put his hands around Blaine's neck and snapped it in a second. Dropping the dead weight of his head, he leapt up onto the desk and turned and faced the room.
'And then there were four,' he said, winking roguishly.
'He was an idiot anyway,' said Bleacher sharply.
'You're next!' exclaimed Utterson with glee.
'Your plan's going well,' said Frankenstein, glancing at Barney.
Strangely, Barney found a smile from somewhere. Utterson looked around the room, deciding whether or not Bleacher would indeed be his next victim.
'The key's going to turn now,' said Barney, with some strange confidence.
The room stopped; even the clock on the mantle-shelf seemed to take a breath. And then the key turned in the lock.
'Holy cow!' said Hewitt. 'The cavalry. This is awesome.'
The door opened and Lucy the Diary Secretary appeared. Immediately her eyes fell on Blaine and Utterson and her hand went to her mouth. She swallowed and looked at Barney in panic.
'It's all right,' said Barney.
'Where's the Prime Mini
ster?' she asked desperately.
'Doesn't matter,' said Barney. 'Is he here?'
'Yes.'
'Good. Show him in, then get out and lock the door again. And call the police and every security guard you can get hold of.'
Utterson looked disparagingly at Barney, then to the door, wondering who was going to appear. They all waited, and as Lucy eased herself out of the room, in walked Elmer T Elmer Jnr III, the United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James. He stopped in the doorway, looking with a raised eyebrow at the crazed Utterson and the dead Blaine. The door closed decisively behind him, the key turned in the lock.
Everyone looked at everyone else. The clock, in rather dull and monotonous fashion, continued to do the ticking thing. Somewhere a woman opened up another box of Quality Street, and outside a taxi skidded into a wall, squashing a small dog.
'Thought you ought to see exactly what it was you'd created,' said Barney.
Elmer Elmer snorted derisively.
'Like, whatever,' he said. 'You people are so stupid. How are you doing, Prime Minister? How d'you like the new skin we provided for you?'
'Don't call me that!' snapped Utterson. 'Change in procedure,' he barked. 'You're next!'
As he made a move towards Elmer Elmer, the American quickly drew a gun from inside his coat, and Utterson hesitated.
'Go ahead, punk,' he said. 'You Brits are so soft, with your bad teeth and your litter and your shoddy banking practices. You want to know why we're able to crush you in our iron fists? You want to know why we've been able to play you like fools? You want to know why we hold utter dominion over you? You want to know how we were able to set this whole thing up right from the start? You want to know how it is that we're going to take over the world while you're just a bunch of pussies? I'll tell you. Because we carry guns, and you bunch of sad sacks are still using knives.'
He looked proudly around the room of British fools, a duplicitous and deceitful grin on his face.
'Gentlemen, we are back, we're going to rule the world, and you lot can start making sneakers for the American market for two bucks an hour. Welcome to the new dominion.'
Utterson twitched, his head jerking to the side twice in quick succession.
'I think I'm just going to leave you to it,' said Elmer Elmer, and he turned to aim his gun at the lock. And as he did so, the key turned and Lucy the Diary Secretary very, very tentatively opened the door. She swallowed when she saw the gun, but looked slightly happier to see that Barney was still alive.
'Can I come in?' she said.
Behind her they could hear the sound of footsteps running quickly towards the office. Elmer Elmer slyly slipped the gun back inside his jacket. Utterson's head was twitching uncontrollably.
'You're all right,' said Barney to Lucy. 'Come in.'
She entered slowly, the footsteps behind pounding closer all the time. Looking warily around her, she walked over to the television. She turned it on and flicked to the BBC news channel. And there they were - the six men, the Diary Secretary and the corpse - being broadcast live on television.
'You're on TV,' said Lucy, hesitatingly. She turned and looked at Elmer Elmer, the look on her face confirming the fact that everything he'd said had been broadcast around the world. BBC. Al Jazeera. The Shopping Channel. Even the US-government-controlled CNN and Fox had been caught off guard and were accidentally broadcasting live.
Elmer Elmer couldn't stop himself. He looked shocked and guilty. His mouth dropped open, and his perfect white American teeth suddenly looked grey and worn and false.
'We're on TV?' said Hewitt. 'How cool is that? Like, did we sign a contract for this? This is the weirdest day in my life. Ever!' Then he turned to Frankenstein and hit him playfully in the stomach. 'We're on reality TV, dude. Get us. This is like totally awesome!'
The pounding feet arrived in the room, a force of thirty police officers. Frankenstein pointed at the uncontrollable twitch of Utterson, and said, 'Him.' Then he looked at Elmer Elmer and noticed that he was about to exit stage left and added, 'And you can get him 'n all.'
As Utterson was engulfed by six officers, Elmer Elmer broke into a run, but he was quickly rugby tackled and brought crashing to the ground.
The plot had been uncovered. The truth had been revealed live on television. The American government were, at that very moment, standing down their troops and easing back from Defcon 1. The other nuclear nations, who had been twitching excitedly with their fingers on the trigger, also realised that the game was up, and that Christmas would be allowed to pass without wholesale nuclear holocaust.
And so, in an instant, the crisis had passed, Santa could continue his sleigh ride around the world, and Barney Thomson, renegade barbershop legend, had saved the world.
Again.
Friday December 25th 2009
0132hrs London, England
Barney Thomson was standing by the window, looking down on Downing Street, still in the Prime Minister's office where earlier the drama had unfolded. A damp, very early Christmas morning.
He was tired and wondering if there was any way he'd be able to get back to Millport to have Christmas lunch with Igor and Garrett.
The afternoon and evening had passed in a flurry of police activity. The killer Utterson had painfully reassumed his natural state; whereupon he had been led away by the police, later resigning his position as Prime Minister from the inside of a cell. The Deputy Prime Minister had returned from her home in the shires to assume command of the mop-up operation. The British troops had started to withdraw from Maine – although the new Prime Minister had flirted briefly with the idea of leaving them there and waiting to see if anyone noticed. A cabinet reshuffle was underway, the business of government was back in holiday swing, the goose had been cooked and served and eaten and the dishes cleared away.
DCI Frankenstein and DS Hewitt, who were now unexpectedly looking at the possibility of being able to spend Christmas with their families, appeared in the office and joined Barney at the window, looking down on to the street of power.
They stood in silence for a while, enjoying the quiet of Christmas morning. DS Hewitt, however, was not one for contemplative hush.
'Did I say that that was like the weirdest thing I've ever been through in, like, my entire life?' he said.
'Several times,' said Frankenstein and Barney Thomson together.
'Like, cool,' said Hewitt, and then for some reason clapped the two men on the back.
'Like, you know the only thing that's missing?' he said.
Frankenstein and Barney turned and looked at him questioningly.
'This is like, you know, some sort of Christmas story, and there hasn't been a mince pie in sight. Let's go to the canteen. They're on me.'
Frankenstein nodded phlegmatically. 'Sure,' he said. 'Come on, Barney Thomson. You saved the flippin' world. It's the least you deserve.'
Barney pursed his lips and followed them from the office.
'Any chance you could helicopter me back to Millport before lunch?' he asked.
DCI Frankenstein nodded again and rubbed his hands against the winter chill.
'Sure,' he said. 'We're the police. We can do anything.'
And off they walked, The Man Who Saved The World and two other blokes, for an early morning snack of mince pies and a stiff glass of mulled wine.
'Like,' said Hewitt, 'after being on TV, I've been waiting all night for Simon Cowell to call, but the dude must be busy.'
***
About the author
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