'Said that he'd committed these murders,' said Barney.
Solomon nodded.
'Right enough,' he said, 'that's what he wrote in his note. Confessed to it all. Did you believe him?'
Barney shrugged.
'No reason not to,' he said.
'Very well,' said Solomon. 'Told us where to find the bodies of the victims. We've already unearthed Malcolm and that Benderhook clown. Others'll take a bit longer. Bottom of the sea, most of them, apparently. Anyway, we've checked out his place, there's no end of incriminating evidence.'
'He say why he did it?' asked Barney, a little curious at last. Very surprised to hear that Father Michael actually had proof of his own guilt.
Solomon raised an eyebrow. Kent took advantage of the gap in conversation.
'God told him,' he said.
'Ah,' said Barney. 'What better reason could he give?'
'It's bullshit,' said Solomon.
'You think he's covering for someone?' asked Barney.
'As sure as a horse's knackers, he's covering for someone,' said Solomon.
'Nah,' said Kent, 'you can read all sorts of things into it, but I reckon he did it. We're clear.'
Solomon slung him a sideways glance, looked back at Barney.
'Maybe,' said Solomon, 'maybe not. Who the fuck knows? We'll have to do a bit more investigation, despite what Clark Kent here thinks.'
'God, here we go with the Clark Kent jokes again,' muttered Kent.
'Did he say anything else?' said Solomon. 'Why did he call you up there in the first place?'
Barney held his gaze. Look 'em straight in the eye and they'll never know you're lying.
'Maybe he felt the need to confess before killing himself,' he said.
'Why not do it to a priest, then?' retorted Solomon. 'Barbers used to taking confessions, are they?'
'All the time,' said Barney quickly. Then he relaxed, took the edge from the conversation. 'Look, I don't know. Maybe he felt embarrassed about going to a priest. Maybe he wanted to confess but didn't want to be judged.'
'You'd think God would judge him,' said Solomon flatly.
'Not if God told him to commit the murders in the first place,' Kent chipped in.
Solomon grumbled and moved towards the door. Barney stepped out of the way.
'Expect you'll have to answer a few questions to the investigating team tomorrow,' said Solomon. 'It could be all over, or it could be still out there, waiting to come back and grab us by the shorts. We'll see. In the meantime, you shouldn't have to employ too much guile to ask the others about him, see what they come up with. Blackadder and Farrow in particular, seeing as they were both shagging the bloke.'
They stood at the door, waiting to see if Barney would volunteer anything further. They could've waited all night. Solomon turned, walked out into the hall, Kent at his heals.
'He didn't mention Blackadder at all when you saw him, did he?' said Solomon, stopping, casting one last significant look his way. 'You know, he implicated her a couple of days ago. Maybe he's covering for her.'
Barney shook his head, betrayed nothing. If there was more information to be discovered about Dr Blackadder, he would take care of it himself.
'Nothing,' he said.
Solomon nodded. Kent nodded. Solomon turned away and walked off down the corridor, Kent in his wake. Barney closed the door, stood inside looking at the confines of his prison, then began wandering around the room turning off the electrical appliances.
***
He was garbed in rich blue Chinese style pyjamas, about to get into bed, teeth cleaned and face shinier than a pair of scissors, when there was another knock at the door.
He looked at the bed, warm and inviting, the sheets calling to him, much in the way that they do, then he turned and trudged through the apartment, mumbling, 'Pain in the arse,' as he went. Opened the door to find Parker Weirdlove.
'What?' said Barney.
'We need to talk,' said Weirdlove, and he pushed past Barney and stormed into the room.
Barney turned, left the door open, wondered about smacking Weirdlove on the mouth, but decided that electric blue pj's designed by Veron Veron were not a fitting outfit for getting into a fight.
'What?' he said again.
'Close the door,' barked Weirdlove, who was back in full blown arse-kicking mode.
'You were just leaving,' said Barney, not following his instruction.
Weirdlove thought about getting into a heated discussion, but decided that he couldn't have a serious argument with a man in electric blue pj's.
'You've heard of Larry Bellows,' said Weirdlove, as a matter of fact.
'No,' said Barney.
'Talk show host,' said Weirdlove. 'Cutting edge. American. Great hair. He does behind-the-scenes stuff with A-list celebs and royals. Charles and Camilla, Posh and Becks, McCartney and Heather, the Blairs, you know, the usual suspects. They're doing JLM tomorrow night.'
'So,' said Barney, 'where does he fit into the A-list celebs and royals categories exactly?'
Weirdlove gave him an 'I'm not answering that' look.
'We're doing the show, that's it. Not just Jesse and Minnie, but all his staff, X, me, the docs, you, the lot of us,' he said.
'But not Michael,' said Barney, dryly.
Weirdlove hesitated.
'You heard about that, eh? Well, the timing's not great, the guy could've been instantly the best known priest in Scotland.'
'You don't think it's at all questionable,' said Barney, 'to be doing a documentary like this when one of JLM's team has just been revealed as the man who murdered most of the cabinet? Aren't questions going to be asked about JLM?'
'No they bloody are not!' barked Weirdlove, taking a step towards him. 'The man is above reproach, and don't even bloody think about starting that kind of talk. You got that?'
'Yes, kimosabe,' said Barney with mock salute. 'Now, tell me why you felt you had to inform me of this at eleven-thirty at night, then get the fuck out of my face.'
Weirdlove breathed deeply and noisily, nostrils flaring. Like a bull. Or a dolphin.
'As I said, everyone close to the First Minister will be involved. He wants to present a united team. All of us, his family, the cabinet.'
'The cabinet?' said Barney, much in the tone that anyone would've used.
'We will be working strenuously tomorrow to fill the vacant positions. This is our chance to show that, despite these setbacks, Scotland still has a fully functional, working government.'
'Ah,' said Barney. 'You were fair farting around filling the vacancies before, but now that television has hoved into view, you'd better get on with it.'
'The First Minister wants to make sure that everyone is looking at their best. We're talking close to twenty people, so you've got a busy day ahead of you. You got that?'
Barney nodded. In his short space of time here, he had seen no signs of any panic or rushed action, not with any government difficulties and certainly not with the general slaughter and mayhem that was taking place. But, by Christ! here comes television, and it was all hands to the pump.
'Yes, boss,' said Barney. 'You intending to draft in outside help?'
'No, we bloody well are not,' said Weirdlove. 'You're it. JLM has kindly allowed you to work out of his private en suite. When we have a full list of participating names in the morning, we'll draw up an appointments list and you'll have to stick to it. No slippage or you're in trouble.'
Weirdlove walked to the door, stopped as he got to Barney, stood virtually nose to nose, so that Barney could smell the stegosaurus of beef which Weirdlove had eaten for dinner.
'Fuck up, and you're out of here,' said Weirdlove.
Another lingering look of suspicion bordering on animosity, then he walked quickly past Barney and along the corridor, the very way that Solomon and Kent had departed a short time previously.
Barney closed the door, turned off the light, stood in the quiet darkness of his sitting room for a short while, then wal
ked wearily back towards the glorious welcoming arms of his bed.
***
He lay there for an hour, head buzzing. Staring at the pictures the shadows cast on the ceiling. Thinking about Father Michael. Thinking about the cabinet ministers who had slowly been whittled away.
What value is a life? Because the press weren't interested, was the implication that the dead were not important? There were still mothers and fathers having to bury their children. There were children whose mothers and fathers would not be coming home for dinner. There would be husbands and wives left distraught. Because the press barely thought them worthy of mention, because most people in Scotland probably didn't even know that there was a Minister for Justice or a Minister for Parliamentary Business, did not mean that those lives were any less important than the lives of the rich and famous who adorned the cover and inside twenty pages of every tabloid when they died.
This was no time to go charging into the full glare of trashazoid docu-soap. If they wanted to show Scotland was fully functional, they should have replaced the cabinet members as they fell; they should have shown a united front, Jesse Longfellow-Moses should actually turn up in parliament every now and again; they should act like a government, not a one-man collective intent on following his own whim and ignoring the advice of everyone else.
But JLM was so far embedded into his own personal planet, so swept up in the glory of public appearances and media attention that the timing was not important to him. Bugger disrespect, bugger the families of those who had died, bugger their friends: he was going to go on live television, and he was going to tell the world that it didn't matter that their mother or father or daughter or son or husband or wife or friend had been killed, and that it had made no difference to the smooth running of the country. In fact, if anything, it had improved it.
And after an hour Barney had finally reached the conclusion that the following day would be his last working for Jesse Longfellow-Moses. Maybe he owed his very existence to JLM; without him he might still be the guy who'd been found on Leith docks, with no past and no future, but he'd had enough of him, and enough of the rest of them. Except Rebecca Blackadder. But then, there was likely nothing he could do about that.
Tomorrow would be the end. He'd do the frantic day's worth of hairdressing that was required, might even enjoy it, and then he'd be on his way.
He turned over, closed his eyes, and eventually, through the uncertain thoughts that nuzzled away inside his head, sleep came to him.
Bing Velociraptor
They were each called to a ten o'clock the following morning. All the team, all the cabinet. Weirdlove had been up all night assembling the replacements for those who had been murdered. He'd had a brief discussion with JLM about it, but it wasn't as if the First Minister had actually heard of most of the MSPs who were left in the chamber, so Weirdlove had more or less been given the green light to formulate the next government. There was no need at this stage for him to have to stoop to the level of appointing deputy ministers, as they wouldn't be appearing in the TV special; he just needed to have the full cabinet in place.
So, a nip and a tuck here, the odd curious little placement there, a few late night or early morning phone calls, a bit of arm twisting, and Weirdlove had his team. JLM was obviously remaining as First Minister, although there would be the odd call for him to stand down from some of the newspapers once it emerged that it had been one of his crew who was responsible for the cabinet slaughter. However, none of the eight main Scottish dailies actually saw fit to change their front pages late on the Thursday when the story of Father Michael had emerged, none of the editors could be bothered writing a new editorial, so it wasn't as if there was too much condemnation. So, the papers all still went to press with the following headlines: Daily Record – 'I Shagged Survivor Babe' Claims Rangers Ace; The Herald – Bush 'Forgets' Hawaii Part of US, Nukes Honolulu; The Sun – Blair To Be Next 'God'; Aberdeen Press & Journal – P&J Prevents Turnip Price Hitting Heights; The Scotsman – Israel 'Very Naughty' For Killing 1million Palestinians, Says Bush; Daily Mail – Massive Oil Deposits Discovered In Zimbabwe, US Sends Troops To Oust Mugabe; The Express – Blair Suspends Commons In 'Logical' Next Step; The Mirror – Big Brother's Malky To Take It Up The Arse In Live TV First Shocker!
After sifting through the possible candidates for cabinet positions, Weirdlove decided that there was not even the remotest possibility of finding the five people in the parliament that they needed who could so much as read and write, never mind actually string a coherent sentence together on Newsnight. So he took the decision to abolish three departments. Justice was an easy one, because most people didn't even know there was a Department of Justice, and if they had known it existed, they wouldn't actually have known what it did. Tourism, Culture & Sport was easily shelved, because tourism, culture and sport were things which pretty much took care of themselves in life and would almost benefit from a lack of government interference. Then there was Rural Affairs & the Environment; well, bugger it, the environment was going to pot anyway and there was nothing a wee country like Scotland could do about it, and while there might be a few people who were put out about the removal of rural affairs from the government's agenda, they wouldn't be Labour voters anyway, so they could whistle Dixie.
So, JLM remained as First Minister. In a display of his own quirky sense of humour, Weirdlove promoted Patsy Morningirl to be Deputy First Minister. (She had been reluctant until Weirdlove told her she'd get to go on BBC Breakfast and Top of the Pops and the like.) Alisdair MacPherson had already been promoted into Education, where Weirdlove was confident he would do bugger all for the next three years. Eaglehawk and Hamish Robertson were already in place in Finance and Parliamentary Business respectively, and he couldn't really touch Winnie without having his eyeballs clawed out. So the only other new appointment was the wunderkind of the party, Darius Grey, into the bloody mire of Health, where he was confident that the enthusiastic young socialist would be sucked dry of political zeal to the point where he probably wouldn't even bother standing at the next election. Weirdlove often thought that there was nothing like taking the bright spark of political fervour, and then dousing it under the weight of red tape, bureaucracy, intransigence and unreasonable public expectation, to the point that the political zealot was sucked into the system and became everything he had set out to change.
So the line-up for the big special on BBC1 at 8pm was Jesse Longfellow-Moses, Minnie Longfellow-Moses, The Amazing Mr X, Parker Weirdlove, Barney Thomson, Dr Louise Farrow, the Rev Blake, Veron Veron, James Eaglehawk, Patsy Morningirl, Alisdair MacPherson, Winona Wanderlip, Darius Grey and Hamish Robertson. A magnificent band of cowboys to lead Scotland forward, to show its best face on live television, beamed around the world. Scotland the brave! Or, Scotland the fucking shambolic, whichever came out first.
Rebecca Blackadder had not turned up for the meeting. She'd had an angry confrontation with Parker Weirdlove at four o'clock in the morning, when she had told him how absurd and tasteless she thought the show was, given the news about Michael. The show must go on, Weirdlove had parroted. Blackadder had told him not to be so bloody stupid. Weirdlove had told her that she could leave JLM's employ any time she felt like it, and she'd said she'd be out by the Friday afternoon. Everyone was happy.
Weirdlove had had a similar conversation with Farrow, but in the end she had capitulated and agreed to the show. Dressed in black. Which was how she was attired as she sat waiting for Jesse Longfellow-Moses to arrive at the meeting.
None of the others seemed to have any particular thoughts on Father Michael.
***
'Right,' said Weirdlove, looking around the ranks of the assembled cabinet and JLM's team. 'The First Minister will be along shortly. He's going to say a few words, then we'll hand you over to Bing here,' and he indicated a man dressed in black, wearing preposterously stylish shades, from beneath which emerged thin and neatly carved sideboards. Bing Velure nodded and cocked a cool hand the w
ay of the docu-saps. (Bing Velure wasn't his real name.)
'I don't think I need to emphasise to you all,' Weirdlove continued, 'the ball-breaking importance of tonight's show. The country is in grave need of reassurance. We present a united front, we stand behind Mr Longfellow-Moses as one. Some of you might be mourning the loss of Father Michael, but be that as it may, the guy is dead, his crimes are history. Today is a new day, today we start moving forward. A new cabinet in place, new ideas for the future, we stand behind the First Minister.'
The door opened and Jesse Longfellow-Moses walked assuredly into the room, wearing a Sunday grey suit, with a rather dashing purple handkerchief poking its nose above the jacket pocket. Veron Veron sizzled with quiet pride.
JLM stood before his collective audience, nodding and waiting for the tumult of genuflection to die down; which actually didn't take very long, what with it never even getting going 'n all.
'Thank you, thank you,' he said, thinking he was Sinatra playing Vegas, 'thank you for coming here today, and for giving your Friday over to this wonderful television broadcast.'
He looked around the crowd, smiling wholesomely. There were a couple of faces he didn't recognise, which he rightly took to be the new cabinet members; although he couldn't actually be sure that they hadn't already been in cabinet and he'd never noticed them.
'I don't need to tell you the importance of tonight's event,' he continued. 'The world will be watching. This is our chance to achieve greatness. To become a player, a respected voice of reason in a world gone mad. The world as one; hundreds of millions around the globe will tune in tonight to see democracy at work. Tonight we speak to the oppressed and the downtrodden. We speak to the free world as well as to the enslaved, and we speak with one voice. Scotland is great, Scotland can lead the way, the world can follow, follow Scotland, and every country on the planet can be led by our example, can do the things that we do, breathe the beautiful fresh air of freedom that we breathe, drink from the burbling waters of hope from which we drink! We shall show the world that we are kings, and the world will look up to us and fall at our feet in recognition of our majesty! The opportunity is there, if only we can reach out and grab it with both hands! We must take this chance, we must! Are you with me?'
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