He opened the door to his apartment, and immediately smelled the light scent in the air even before he saw her standing at the window, looking out at the cold, grey day and the Victorian rooftops. He closed the door behind him. She didn't turn. He walked over and stood beside her looking out at the day.
They stood like that for a while, watching the formless grey clouds drifting at different speeds, minutely changing the shade of the sky with every passing minute. Eventually one of their hands found the other, and their fingers entwined. He felt the warmth of her touch; she squeezed his hand tightly, then relaxed.
'You go to the meeting this morning?' said Rebecca Blackadder eventually.
He nodded. She felt the movement.
'It's disgusting,' she continued. 'I know, I'm not at all surprised, but if ever there was a time for the man to show the least compassion.'
'He appears quite lost in his own little world,' said Barney.
'Michael was a good man,' she said, almost cutting Barney off. 'And they'll use this to neatly brush it all under the carpet.'
'You don't think he killed them?' asked Barney.
'Of course he bloody didn't,' she snapped. Her fingers tensed, but her hand stayed in his. 'Christ, you've seen what he's like, what Weirdlove is like. I wouldn't be surprised if they planted that note on Michael, planted the evidence on him. Jesus, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd pushed him off the top of the bloody building.'
Barney let the words go, let the anger fizzle out and die in the cold, grey afternoon. She sniffed. She wiped her nose and her eyes; but she never removed her hand from his.
'He confessed to me,' said Barney quietly. 'I saw him yesterday evening, before he died.'
She swallowed, bit her bottom lip. Breathed heavily.
'Did you believe him?'
'No,' said Barney quickly, and that was the truth. His words had most definitely had the ring of deceit. He was covering for someone, but he couldn't imagine for a second that it would've been Longfellow-Moses or Parker Weirdlove. 'He was trying to hide someone, but it wasn't JLM.'
She didn't reply. For the first time Barney turned and looked at her, and her face was cold and sad and drained. She was genuinely saddened by Michael's death; genuinely shocked that JLM should go ahead with his broadcast to the nation at a time like this. Nothing like Alison Blake's vague interest, bordering on amusement, that JLM should be so full of himself that nothing would stop his fifteen minutes of TV fame.
'You knew about Michael and Farrow?' she said slowly, her eyes diverting slightly to look at him.
Oh, yes, thought Barney. Him and Farrow, him and you, no end of malarkey. Doubt you're going to own up to your own little affair, though, are you? While all the time you implicate others. You're all the same, all jostling for position in the innocent corner, while pushing everyone else towards the guilty corner. It wasn't me guv, but see that bastard over there, up to her eyeballs in motives!
'Yeah,' said Barney. 'She seemed pretty quiet today. Didn't speak to her though, didn't see anyone speaking to her.'
'He loved her,' said Blackadder, her voice even smaller than before. 'He would've done anything for her. He hated the fact that they couldn't be out in the open about it. A relationship spent skulking about in the middle of the night.'
Barney turned and looked at her again. The one definite sighting he knew of Michael skulking about in the middle of the night, had been from Blackadder's room to Farrow's. She wasn't volunteering that little bit of information.
'Why are you here?' asked Barney suddenly, and she turned at his tone of voice.
Her eyes were pale blue and sad.
'I was lonely,' she said. 'I wanted to see you before I left.'
Barney swallowed. From one woman to another. But while Alison Blake had that raw sexuality about her, there was nothing behind the front. The passion was strangely passionless; the warmth was cold.
Blackadder was beautiful and vulnerable, greater depth, infinite warmth. And very possibly a liar, which made her all the more interesting, all the more inviting, all the more enticing, bewitching and impossible.
Barney moved slightly, drew her hand closer to his body, bent his head and kissed her softly on the lips. His other hand came up and touched her hair, brought her head in closer to his, and then their arms were around each other and they were enshrouded in an impassioned clinch.
Nice one for the big fella Barney, as Wally McLaven would've said, had he not had his throat slit.
All The World Is Queer Save Thee And Me, And Even Thou Art A Little Queer
Barney was flowing, zipping his way through three hours of haircuts, and the odd bit of styling for the womenfolk. In less time than it would take for a politician to mention himself in an interview, he had bestowed the following haircuts: to Veron Veron, a really rather wonderful 'Elton John, Diana'; a fuck-me bob for Patsy Morningirl; a 'Bonfire of the Vanities' for Darius Grey; a short back & sides for Parker Weirdlove, in and out in a minute and a half; a James Bond for James Eaglehawk; and a 'Findus Feelin' Great ad', for the Reverend Blake.
He'd had a couple of minutes to himself, looking out at the low grey clouds sweeping across the hill, thinking about Rebecca Blackadder, when the door opened and in stepped The Amazing Mr X. Barney turned, dragged himself back from the oblivion of the romantic abyss, and slipped once more into his barber persona.
'X,' he said. 'Take a seat. What can I do for you?'
The Amazing Mr X eased himself into the barber's chair, imagined it was still warm from the heavenly Rev Blake, and looked at himself in the mirror.
He had been envisioning the best possible scenarios from the evening's events. If he played his cards right, if everything went well, it could be that he'd become a celebrity undercover bodyguard. Maybe he'd even get his own TV slot, talking about bodyguard issues. Or he could be the host of a game show such as Big Bodyguard or Who Wants To Be A Bodyguard? or The Weakest Bodyguard. Or maybe he'd get spotted by some Hollywood babe, Sharon Stone or Halle Berry or one of that mob, and the command would go out for him to move to Beverly Hills. He had vowed to protect JLM with his life; but he did not suffer from the same delusions about the First Minister's place in the world. JLM was small fry, The Amazing Mr X was a big bodyguard, in more ways than one. He should be standing shoulder to shoulder, neck to neck, with the other behemoths at the Oscars and film world premiers. The Scottish Parliament, and the world of politics in general, was small potatoes. He should be out there with the big guns of the world of entertainment, where status, celebrity and power actually stood for something. That was where he belonged, that was his destiny, and this was his chance.
'What d'you think?' said X, willing to hand the reins over to the professional.
'You've got a good head of hair on you, X,' said Barney, giving his hair the once over; and deciding that when you're talking to a guy who, no matter how ridiculous he is, could rip your head off with his thumbs, it was best to butter them up than be perfectly honest. (The Amazing Mr X actually had a bit of an Elliot Gould, which is nothing if not a disaster. Look at, well, Elliot Gould.) 'I can pretty much give you what you want.'
'Legend,' said X, nodding, imagining no end of outrageous scenarios that were going to come from his fantastic hair. 'You know,' he continued, 'I want to look like a '70s porno star. That's a great look.'
Barney took a small step away from X and checked out his hair again.
'You're in the right zone, X,' he said. 'You might have to work on the 'tache and sideboards a bit though.'
The Amazing Mr X stroked his face and nodded.
'Yeah,' he said. 'I was thinking maybe one of those clean shaven '70s porno guys,' he said.
Barney looked at him, not entirely sure how to continue the conversation. Shut up, you fucking loony was obviously called for, but would have been just a little ill-judged. Probably best, in fact, to not continue the conversation at all, but to just get on with it and make him look like John Holmes et al.
And so, liftin
g a brush, a can of mousse, some sun-dried tomatoes and a bottle of balsamic vinegar, Barney got to work.
***
The final entrant to the Barney Thomson hairfest was Minnie Longfellow-Moses. She arrived late, not that Barney was in the least bit concerned, marched in, somehow managed to invest the act of sitting in the chair with complete dominion, and engaged Barney's eyes in the mirror.
'I'll have a Roosevelt, please,' she said.
'Teddy, Franklin or Eleanor?' said Barney, with a certain acerbity, as he'd been instinctively annoyed by the brusqueness of her manner.
She raised an eyebrow at him, but didn't turn around.
'Watch it, Bud,' was all she said.
Barney smiled.
'Eleanor Roosevelt it is, then,' he said, and lifted up the chainsaw and comb to get on with the job.
Minnie watched him for a few moments, curious about getting to meet this man at last. She'd also read Barney Thomson: Urban Legend, but was not, however, entirely acquainted with the explanation of how someone who'd been dead for two and a half years came to be styling her hair.
She softened a little. (After initially thinking the TV thing an absurdity, MLM had seen the possibilities of it and had, as a consequence, gone into Lady Macbeth mode; becoming, in the process, as blinded as her husband to the fact that very few people would be watching; and those who were, would be doing so solely for the viewing experience of Patsy Morningirl's breasts and Winona Wanderlip's nipples.) Barney could feel the immediate alleviation of the atmosphere in the room and he caught her eye once more in the mirror.
'Who's doing your hair?' she said, a wee bit of a smile suddenly cropping up, to accompany the softer hue.
'No one,' he replied.
'It's perfect, is it?' she said. Feeling mischievous all of a sudden, as if Barney might be a good bloke with whom to flirt. She had heard tell, after all, that he'd given the Reverend Blake a good old seeing to.
'Two things,' said Barney, while he continued smoothly with the cut. 'Firstly, my hair's not great, but it's not so bad that it needs cutting for some ridiculous TV show. And second, I'm not going to be around for the TV show anyway, so it doesn't matter.'
'Oh, Barney,' she said, looking at him with mock disapproval. 'How could you miss it?'
Barney began to prep some nuclear fission fuelled curling tongs, which he'd had specially flown in from Kazakhstan. He gestured at her with a comb.
'You want to know how I can miss it?' he said. 'Because your husband is the most horribly ignorant, self-serving egotist I've ever met in my life.'
He felt like he was going out on a limb, unaware that Minnie had even more contempt for JLM than he himself.
'You haven't known many politicians then,' she said.
'And I don't want to,' said Barney. 'I'm leaving first thing in the morning, but before that I'm going to sit tonight and watch Jesse preen himself, and the rest of you suck up to his backside.'
Minnie Longfellow-Moses smiled again. Watched Barney at work for a short time, his hands flying backwards and forwards across the breadth of her hair, performing the work of a necromancer, for she had not the quality of hair necessary for an Eleanor Roosevelt.
'You don't like him, then?' she said, deciding to rejoin the flirtatious skirmish; not that Barney saw it remotely as flirtatious. He saw it more as 'trying hard not to slag off the boss too much to his wife, but wanting to stick a size twelve into him at the same time'.
'Look,' he said, 'I know he's your husband 'n' all, but if you're going to ask, I'm going to tell you. I wouldn't fart on him if he needed his hair blow-dried.'
'I should certainly hope not,' she said.
'Maybe he's no better or worse than other politicians in the same circumstances, but he's the only one I've ever met, and I think he's shameful.'
'Well,' she said, 'I can see how you might think that. Why don't you come on the show and say that?'
'Go on live TV and denounce the First Minister?'
'Yeah,' she said. 'It might be fun.'
'No it wouldn't,' said Barney. 'All it'd mean would be that I was tonight's thing in the media, everyone having a bit of a laugh. In the papers tomorrow I'd be fitted in between Liz Hurley's latest Botox injection and Posh's current attempt to sell some crap piece of bollocks, masquerading as music. By Sunday, it'll have been forgotten about, because there'll be really crap football results from Saturday to be reported, and Pamela Anderson'll have had another breast implant. The media aren't interested in politics and the people aren't interested. I just don't want to be a part of it, full stop.'
She nodded sagely. She'd been making plans for her own political career, once her husband's had collapsed – an event which she envisioned occurring at some time just after eight-thirty that evening – but she was wise enough to know that Barney spoke the truth. However, she was also conceited enough to think that she would have the force of personality to change the media.
'You've suffered from them in the past,' she said.
'Maybe,' he replied, 'but it's not about that. I'm sick and tired of it, that's all. The people who run this country have been mown down, for God's sake, and the papers are still more interested in the fact that an English lassie refused to eat a live cockroach on Survivor last week. It's pathetic.'
Under the cape, which Barney had thrown on at the outset of the confrontation, she briefly applauded. He shook his head.
'Very moral of you, Mr Thomson,' she said. 'What are you going to do? Go and live on an uninhabited island in the south Pacific?'
'No,' he said, 'but I might go and live in Sweden or somewhere like that, where I won't be able to read any of the papers or understand any of the television.'
'Very brave,' she said. 'When you see something you don't like, run away. If it all appals you so much, then why not try and change it?'
Barney finally stopped his whirlwind dash round her Eleanor Roosevelt bonce, and stood still, brush in one hand, thermonuclear welding device in the other.
'How d'you mean that?' he said.
'Do the media give people all the junk because that's what they want, or do the people want all the junk because that's what the media give them?' she said, then continued talking like a true politician, without giving him the chance to answer. 'You can't blame the media, when all they're doing is meeting demand. If you want to change it, what you have to do is change the mindset of the people. And that's where a good politician comes in.'
Barney nodded. It seemed nicer to do just that rather than say the more honest, 'you've got to be fucking kidding me?' Even JLM had already come to the conclusion that he was in no position to do anything about society, and he was the leading politician in the country.
'And are you backing your husband to do all this?' asked Barney, 'or do you have ambitions of your own.'
Minnie Longfellow-Moses smiled again. Wasn't looking him in the eye. When she did finally make her royal proclamation of political intent, it was going to be to a much grander audience than Barney Thomson.
He watched her for a second, then started back on her 40's Ladies Auxiliary cut, with a touch of Sisters of Sappho for authenticity. Could tell what she was thinking. Another one carried away with the power of it all; and she didn't even have any power. Bloody idiot. That, and she was named after a mouse.
'Well,' she said, 'I'll say this, Barney. I suspect it might just be worth your time turning up at this show tonight. It might not be as dull as you think it's going to be. If you know what I'm saying.'
Barney paused, caught her eye again, recognised the mad glint of the megalomaniac, then powered up the Black & Decker three-in-one, and got on with the haircut in hand.
A woman with her own agenda, he thought. How scary is that? Still, if there was the chance that JLM was going to get his comeuppance, and to be served bloody right for having the nerve to participate in this show in the first place, perhaps it might be worth a visit after all. Didn't mean he couldn't get on the train the next day and head for the hills.
>
Maybe he would go, maybe he wouldn't. In the end, what would it matter?
Showtime
The show was due to start in five. The guests had gathered, nervous and ambitious, in the sitting room of the First Minister's official residence. JLM, MLM, Dr Farrow, Veron Veron, The Amazing Mr X, Parker Weirdlove, the Reverend Blake, Winona Wanderlip, Patsy Morningirl, James Eaglehawk, Darius Grey, and finally the two cabinet makeweights of Hamish Robertson and Alisdair MacPherson, men who were genuine politicians, and therefore of interest to neither the public nor television.
All-American talk show host, Larry Bellows, was still in his dressing room; show producer, Bing Velure, was about to give the participants a final run-through. It'd all been a bit hurried, but he thought he just about had enough to keep the audience interested. There would be Patsy's boobs, and then, well, he'd have to fill up the rest with people talking, but they'd wing it. There was also the thing that Eaglehawk had mentioned, although he wasn't sure that the total political and public humiliation of a politician that no one had heard of was going to make such great TV. Certainly wouldn't be a match for a fine pair of breasts. (And he had already taken the opportunity to verify their quality.)
He looked over the sorry bunch, because that was inevitably how he perceived anyone involved in politics. He was supposed to make forty-five minutes of interesting television out of this lot.
'Right, everyone,' snapped Velure, thinking already that this might be the nadir of his career to date – even worse than the documentary on the proliferation of cheap blue plastic bags in West Africa, narrated by Mel B, in which he'd allowed himself to get involved – 'we've only got a few minutes, so can I have your undivided.'
The gentle babble of conversation died away, to be replaced by the low murmur of nervous rectums.
'I'm looking at a quick run-through of events, so everyone please listen,' he began, and he looked sharply around his audience to make sure they were all paying attention. And they all were, except JLM, who was looking rather smugly out the window, thinking himself too important and too aware of everything that was going to happen, to have to listen to someone as lowly as a TV producer.
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