He dabbed his lips with a napkin, eyed the last piece of toast like a velociraptor eyeing up Sam Neill, then pounced on it like an unfettered tyrannosaur swooping on the baby lamb that was a lumbering diplodocus, armed with butter and strawberry jam.
***
There was a bit of an uncomfortable atmosphere in the room. Winona Wanderlip had come to see JLM, hoping to get him on his own, but they were together in his inner office with Parker Weirdlove, and the inevitable Amazing Mr X.
'There are only two of us left,' said Wanderlip, stating the blindingly obvious.
JLM, however, displayed the fact that he had been thinking about his grand vision for the world, by answering, 'Two of whom?'
'The cabinet!' she barked, turning round from the window, where she had been looking out, chewing endlessly on what was left of the nail on her left-hand ring finger.
JLM and Weirdlove exchanged a glance between boys, of the 'here goes the premenstrual woman again.'
'There's Eaglehawk and McPherson,' he said. 'And we'll sort out the other appointments over the weekend, won't we Parker? Either promote the deputies, or find someone else if the deputy is only window dressing, like Patsy whatshername. Don't worry, Winnie, I won't land it all on your plate.'
'Exactly, sir,' said Weirdlove.
'Jesus,' said Wanderlip, 'is it just of no concern to you that all these good people are gone, probably murdered? The Executive is in complete disarray. Christ, there's this monumental shambles.'
'Winnie, Winnie, Winnie,' said JLM, and she could've swung for him, 'there's only a shambles in government when people perceive there to be a shambles. Let's face it, there are only two ministers in the Executive that anybody in the public could pick out of a line-up. You and me. We're both still here, aren't we? I mean, really, politicians don't actually do any work, do they? It's the Civil Service that does the work. How many Civil Servants have been killed, Parker?'
'None,' said Weirdlove, as they moved easily into their Sir Humphrey routine. Wanderlip seethed.
'So has the work of the Executive been affected at all?' said JLM, smoothly.
'Not at all, sir,' said Weirdlove. 'Of course, that might be because the Executive doesn't actually do anything.'
'Whatever,' said JLM, engaging Wanderlip in the eye, and being so condescending he was kicking condescension on the arse, 'all politicians are here for are to make decisions and appear on television. The fact is, and I think I can say this because we're among friends here, none of that lot ever got to make any decisions because I wouldn't let them, and any time the networks want someone to appear on the TV, it's either me or you and your premenstrual routine.'
'Jesus,' she muttered.
JLM let the smirk drift casually from his face, let the look of superiority slide from Weirdlove's oozy visage, which took a little longer, let the near explosion of rage from Wanderlip die down.
'There's about to be a new dawn in Scotland, Winnie,' he said, and Weirdlove raised an eye at him.
'What d'you mean?' she asked.
'You can either be with us, or bow out of government, it'll be up to you,' said JLM.
'What are you talking about?' she asked with greater insistence. 'A new dawn?'
JLM did something fiddley with his hand, as if he was Gandalf or something.
'All things will be revealed in good time,' he said mystically. 'I do think, however, that the slaughter is over.'
The words fell softly from his lips. Wanderlip felt the hairs rise suddenly on the back of her neck and press against the collar of her maroon blouse. She glanced at The Amazing Mr X, but the big fella was staring out the window, away off in one of his dream worlds. She looked at Weirdlove, and the look he returned was as impenetrable as ever; and for some reason, the phrase 'the eyes of a killer' popped into her head. She shivered, turned back to JLM, who was half-smiling at her in that vacuous way of his.
She played his words back in her head. Were they just the empty hopes of a politician, hollow words meant to put her at ease? Or was there something more sinister? Was Longfellow-Moses armed with some prior knowledge? That was what she had felt, but even then, ten, fifteen seconds later, the moment was gone and the statement seemed innocent once more.
'You know something?' she asked.
JLM laughed that big, booming laugh of his. Of course, thought Wanderlip, nothing to make you laugh like all your political colleagues getting murdered.
'I'm a political animal!' he said, the voice loud on the tail of the laugh. 'You have to admit, Winnie, I'm this thing. I'm Jesse Longfellow-Moses. I'm not just the First Minister of the Scottish Executive, I'm a major player on the European stage. Schröder, Berlusconi, Blair, they've begun to look to me for wisdom and leadership.'
JLM had looked away from Wanderlip and was staring at some indistinct point on the ceiling as he spoke, and God knows what he was seeing there. Wanderlip and Weirdlove exchanged a look, but JLM's ADC remained inscrutable.
'Jesus,' he continued, 'I even had Lord bloody Robertson on the phone to me yesterday.' It had actually been Lord Roberston's private secretary, telling JLM that George was getting his hair done for the foreseeable future. 'Next week I'm off to Italy and Switzerland, and I'll be popping into Berlin on the way back. That's the position we're at, Winnie. I can just pop in to see these people. I'm a player, Winnie, a player. I'm at the top table, no question. Even Bush wants to meet me, but I'm putting him off, you know. No rush, eh? And the Pope, he's another one, but I'll tread lightly there, you know. Don't want to piss off one half of Glasgow at this stage. Leave it a while. I said to the lad, Pope, 'sorry mate, but you'll just have to wait.''
He was meandering spectacularly, as he was prone to do when he became carried away with his own august majesty. He suddenly snapped out of it, as he came down from his cloud. Looked at Winnie, and she could see that the flicker of madness was still there.
'What was I saying?' he said.
'You lost me,' she said, caustically.
'Yes, yes, champion,' he said. 'I'm a political animal, I know things, feel them in my gut. It's why I'm here and why you're just the Minister for Enterprise. Christ, Winnie, people don't even know what you mean by that. Anyway, I know you're not of my calibre, but I hope I can make you understand. I'm a political predator. I feel things, I know what's happening, even if I don't know all the facts. Do I know who's been killing off the cabinet? No, absolutely not,' he said, and she noticed the slight unconscious movement of the eyes as he said it, 'but do I genuinely believe deep down in my bollocks that these killings are over? Yes, I do. You have my word,' he added with finality and a certain triumph, his eyes once more firmly engaging hers.
Wanderlip studied his face for a few seconds as he stared at her intently. She looked at Weirdlove. She nodded her head. The hairs on the back of her neck had long since calmed down, during JLM's coronation speech, but the feeling of disquiet was still there; the room still stank of the atmosphere of unease which had pervaded since his seemingly glib statement about knowing that it was all over.
Head still nodding like a plastic dog in the back of a car, lips pursed, she walked slowly past them, opened the door and passed through into the outer office, closing the door behind her.
She let out a great sigh, then engaged the eyes of the single member of JLM's team who happened to be sitting in the office at that point.
'You the barber?' she asked.
Barney Thomson nodded.
'Suppose so,' he said, 'but if you wanted to tell me different, I'd probably be prepared to believe you.'
She closed her eyes briefly at another man speaking in riddles, then walked slowly from the office, not looking at the mural as she went.
Thrown To The Sharks
'What about Wanderlip?'
James Eaglehawk looked up at the shark which was swimming overhead. He shivered. How thick was this glass, he wondered. How many million gallons of water were behind it? The pressures must be enormous. Day after day, week after week, months drift
ing into years. How often did they check these things? His mind rambled on. These places were always making cutbacks, weren't they? There's not an institution on the planet not making cutbacks. Did they put the proper manpower in place to check for cracks in the infrastructure of the tank? A systematic regime of inspections? Wasn't it inevitable that at some stage the glass would crack, the tunnel underneath the tank would fill up with water, and the people who happened to be under the aquarium at the time would either be drowned, or be eaten by the bloody great sharks that were swimming overhead? He could tell they were looking at him; one shark in particular. It cast a brazen glance at him every time it passed by. It was circling, just waiting for the first fissure to appear in the infrastructure of the glass, the first chink in the armour. Then, fucking voom! it'd be down like a shot, eating Eaglehawk for breakfast.
He shivered again, could almost hear the sound of his bones crunching as the shark bit massively into his midriff, could imagine the shark enjoying the meringue of braised guinea fowl which he'd eaten the previous night, could see the look in the shark's eye as it champed his testicles. Human testicles were probably a delicacy for these things.
'What you having today, Sharky?' one would say to another. Eaglehawk thought of sharks as speaking with Australian accents.
'Me, mate? I got lucky, cobber, I've got some human 'nads for my supper.'
'Fabulous, mate. You got any to spare?'
'Come on, mate, there's only two of them and they're pretty fuckin' tiny.'
'What?' he said, dragging his eyes away from the shark who was going to kill him, back to Conrad Vogts.
Vogts smiled.
'You're imagining the shark eating your testicles?' he said.
No one, and especially not a politician, likes to know that someone can read their innermost fears. Even the slightest hint that the façade has been breached, and you're in trouble. Good thing, then, that Vogts was an ally...
'No, no,' Eaglehawk said, completely turning his back on the shark, although he could still feel its eyes burrowing into him. 'I was just imagining swimming with them in the Caribbean or somewhere. That must be so cool.'
'Indeed,' said Vogts, seeing through the lie. And Eaglehawk knew he could see the lie, just as Vogts knew that Eaglehawk knew. Eaglehawk didn't know, however, that Vogts knew that he knew, so we can bring this thing to an end.
'What about Wanderlip?' Vogts repeated. 'Where do you see her fitting into all of this?'
A figure of authority approached them in an all-in-one. Short, bobbed blonde hair, fairly attractive.
'Gentlemen,' she said, 'could you step back onto the conveyor, please?'
Eaglehawk shot her a glance, nearly gave her a 'do you know who I am' speech. Or, more to the point, 'do you know who I'm about to be?'
'Certainly, certainly,' said Vogts, 'we only got off so that you would come and speak to us. You are very beautiful.'
'I can tell you're not Scottish,' she said, as the two men followed her instruction.
'I'm from Koblenz,' said Vogts, as he started to move away from her. 'A beautiful city on the Rhein. You must come and see it one day. We could take a cruise together. Drink wine by moonlight, watch the clouds through castle parapets, make love all night beneath the stars.'
She ostentatiously glanced down at his lunchbox and smiled.
'All night, eh? What drugs are you taking?'
'Just the opiate of your beauty,' said Vogts with a smile.
'Aye, I'm never done travelling to continental Europe,' she said, turning away as the conveyor belt began to take Vogts and Eaglehawk around a corner. But she had a wee smile on her face, no question. And the young lad coming along the belt who had heard the exchange, saw her smile and thought that he might have a go himself, if she was that easy.
'Hey, Hen,' he said, as he passed her by, and she turned to him, still smiling. 'I'm fi' Glasgow. Fancy coming doon the Clyde wi' me for a shag?'
The smile died on her face, just as the retort died on her lips when she saw the two children with their parents coming behind the lad who'd had a go. She turned away, the delight of the flirtatious moment gone, and went about her business.
Vogts turned back to Eaglehawk, still smiling. Eaglehawk had ignored the exchange, and was keeping a close eye on the shark, which he was sure was following him now that he was on the move. Was there some way the shark could get out of the tank? Maybe there wasn't a lid on it, because they assumed that the sharks couldn't climb over the sides. This bastard could, though.
'Talking of beautiful women,' said Vogts, 'what about Wanderlip?'
Eaglehawk attempted to return to the present. Shook off the presence of the shark, tried to think about Winona Wanderlip.
'She'll have to go,' said Eaglehawk in a low voice, casting glances around at the other visitors. There was no one within a few yards, however, and in any case everyone else was there to look at the fish, rather than for reasons of political intrigue. Vogts was also there to look at the fish, which was why he'd dragged Eaglehawk out to North Queensferry.
'Of all the cabinet ministers that could have been murdered, Melanie aside,' continued Eaglehawk, 'she's the one we needed taken out first. This psychopath is doing us a favour, no question, but we could've done with the loony bastard getting rid of Winnie first of all.'
'Unless,' said Vogts, and his tone made Eaglehawk forget the sharks just for a few seconds, 'she is behind it all.'
'Why?' said Eaglehawk, even though he was not at all disposed to support her in any way. 'The only person between her and the position of First Minister is Jesse. Why get rid of people who might've supported her?'
Vogts raised his eyebrows.
'Go figure, as our American friends might say,' he said. 'Women are strange creatures, and let us not pretend to ever know their thoughts. Politics is the social equivalent of a woman; no one ever knows what their political opponent, or even their political ally, is thinking. And so, a woman in politics, my God, is the most explosive of combinations. If ever there was an eruption waiting to happen, it is such a woman, and your colleague, Winnie, most certainly fits the bill.'
Eaglehawk nodded.
'Too right,' he said.
'So,' said Vogts, 'what are you going to do with her?'
Eaglehawk turned away from Vogts. Immediately found himself staring at the shark. Shuddered, turned back to Vogts, the fear still crawling over his body.
'Throw her to the bloody sharks,' said Eaglehawk, and he held Vogts's gaze for a second, then dropped his eyes. 'Let's get out of here,' he said, 'this place gives me the creeps.'
And off he charged, in search of the great outdoors.
Doubt That The Stars Are Fire
The First Minister and his entourage were in a barber's emporium in the shopping mall in Perth. JLM had done the rounds, given his soapbox speech to an enthusiastic crowd of Japanese and American tourists who'd thought he was an actor doing a Winston Churchill impersonation for their benefit, gladhanded a few bemused passers-by who'd thought that maybe he was someone off River City or Chewin' The Fat, and finally had hit upon the idea of visiting a barber's shop, commandeering one of the chairs and getting Barney to publicly perform on his hair.
Barney had no problem with this, except for the obvious point, that there was very, very little he could actually do to JLM's hair.
There were four chairs set up, a busy little establishment, three barbers working away as JLM held court, the junior barber turfed aside to sit and read the paper while Barney applied a blunt razor to the back of JLM's scalp.
'You can't underestimate the importance of a quality men's hairstylist,' said JLM, approximately his fifteenth platitude since arriving in the shop.
As with the fourteen previous examples of banality, the other three barbers completely ignored him. There was the usual strained atmosphere that pervades any establishment during the visit of an unwanted dignitary. The commonplace conversational topics, from St Johnstone's footballing travails, to whether Rangers and Ce
ltic should head off and join the English Premiership or a more appropriate league like the Small-Minded Sectarian Self-Possessed Filled With Mediocre Foreign Talent And Shite At Football Conference, and from the Fatty Arbuckle theory on why it takes four men to insert a light bulb up someone's arse, to lengthy discussions on naturalistic fallacy and the error of defining good in empirical terms, were cast aside, to be replaced by discomfort and reticence.
One of the barbers had asked Barney what the Hell he intended to do to JLM's hair, given the shortness of it, and Barney had replied absolutely bugger all, it's all about fooling the customer and making them think they're having good done to them. After which the barbers had viewed Barney with a little less animosity, realising that he was being dragged around in JLM's absurd wake, rather than being a driving force behind the man's delusions.
So, the shop went about its business, as JLM pronounced on a variety of vacuous points; the perfect politician.
'They say that getting your hair cut by another man is only one step up from chimps picking fleas out of each other's hair,' said JLM. 'But they're wrong!'
One of the customers almost asked who 'they' were, because he'd never heard anyone say that before, but decided that silence was the better part of curiosity. He was in the middle of having a rather dubious Russell Crowe, Gladiator visited upon him. The other two customers currently being attended to were being given respectively an Oliver Reed, Gladiator, and a Third Tiger From The Left, Gladiator. (The shop was doing a special Gladiator weekend. To tie in with the whole thing, Barney had decided he was giving JLM an Unnamed Baldy Man In The Coliseum Crowd, Gladiator.)
The Amazing Mr X stood at the door, looking up and down the shopping mall, the people once more decked out for cold weather, the young ladies, who two days before had been baring substantial amounts of flesh, now totally covered up in polyunsaturated clothes of various descriptions. X was disappointed.
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