'He's mute,' said Barney caustically, 'how could he have mentioned it?'
Barney stopped at a depiction of a Tuscan hillside, with naked women lying in amongst the trees.
'You got anything for me?' asked Grogan.
Barney shook his head, an edge to the smile.
'I told you I wasn't doing that. Do your own investigation, Chief Inspector, I'm not working for you.'
'Very public spirited of you,' said Grogan.
He looked at the same painting as Barney. Was struck by the resemblance of one of the women to his late Uncle Arthur.
'Anyway,' he said, turning. He stopped. Barney Thomson was gone.
He looked around. The gaggle of old women were still in the next room, and there were a couple of Spanish tourists. Grogan shrugged and moved on to the next painting. Had another three minutes before his craving for a cigarette would drive him outside.
Barney Thomson walked quickly down the stairs, wondering who else was following him, and curious as to why his deaf-mute hunchbacked assistant was being approached by MI6.
1614hrs
The Prime Minister was having the easy day he had hoped for. Sure he was promising everything that anyone asked him for, and by default was admitting that many of his policies were rubbish, but he was relaxed and smiling again after the brutalisation of the day before. Williams and Thackeray, his advisors, groaned every time their man promised something new, but they knew that this kind of thing was inevitable this late into the campaign. Igor, Barney Thomson's assistant, had followed the PM around, dispensing advice as and when it was asked for, and wondering if what he'd been told by Dane Bledsoe the previous day had been true, and if it would be possible for him, Igor the deaf-mute hunchback, to become the next Prime Minister.
The leader of the opposition had taken the advice of his senior advisor and had dropped Iraq as a topic of discussion, yet had been curious as to how the PM had managed to wriggle off the hook.
Barney Thomson had walked around London, enjoying the mix of the free and the ridiculously expensive. He was currently combining the two, sitting in Hyde Park, enjoying the sun, and eating a smoked bacon, olive and melon sandwich on sun-roasted peanut bread, a snip at nine ninety-nine.
And, as the campaign continued on its slow, dreary way in London, the man who had murdered the PM's previous barber with a chicken, thus starting off the interesting sideline to the election which had yet to make it into the newspapers, boarded a plane in Washington DC, which would bring him back to London. He had taken the small wooden box which he'd stolen from Ramone MacGregor. He had shown it to the head of the CIA, who had in turn shown it to the President of the United States. Now he was bringing the box back to London, along with his instructions passed down from the leader of the free world. And, bizarre though it might have seemed to people in Britain had anyone known about it, the result of the General Election, and the future of the country, lay within that small box. That would have been something for the Express and the Mail to get their pants in a twist about.
Travelling in first class, with no one beside him, the killer opened his briefcase, looked at the wooden box one more time, and then took out the photographs and profile of the next person he had to murder in the continuing covert manipulation of the British General Election.
Saturday 30th April 2005
0814hrs
The current leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, who was still going to be in post a week from now, or at least until he resigned, slumped down heavily into his seat, his back turned to the room, looking out on a decent morning in London. The weather was brightening up but not, it appeared, his chances in the election. Saturday morning, five days before the vote, and he hadn't made a single front page headline. The tabloids had all gone for celebrity tittle-tattle, and not one of the papers mentioned the war. After the vitriol the day before, the story had suddenly died a death. A few of them took a stab at the PM in varying ways, but it was a mishmash with no co-ordination. For something to have an effect, it needed to be a bold front, newspaper after newspaper singing the same tune. Like the day before. Yet, he'd had the Prime Minister on the ropes and now he was back on the beach, lying on his towel, soaking up the sun. Or, at the very least, lying on a sunbed.
'We've made a total mess of it, a total mess. He was squirming around like a half-squashed bug, and now he's lapping it up again, larging it with that twat of a chancellor. What a balls up, what a total balls up.'
He turned and looked around the room. Not only was no one listening to anything he was saying, there wasn't actually anyone in the room.
'Oh,' he muttered, feeling rather stupid, although there was no one there to enjoy his embarrassment.
'I'm just going to have to roll my sleeves up and do this thing myself,' he muttered, referring to the fact that he was after a cup of coffee. He stopped, raised his eyes to the ceiling. 'That's pretty good,' he thought, 'I might just use that.'
1114hrs
The Health Secretary commanded the attention of the press corps as he always did, with his fearsome Scottish accent and his bluff manner, which suggested that he was even more on the point of thumping someone in the face than the Deputy Prime Minister.
'So are you accusing the Tories of lying?' asked an innocent little bystander from one of the more mundane daily nationals. Not so much cowed by the Health Secretary, as bored of having to wipe Scottish spit out his eye. The Hattersley-esque ogre with the Shrek accent thundered away about yet another trivial point of order.
'I'm not saying they're lying,' he barked. 'I'm saying they're telling the truth, as far as they know it. The problem is that their sums don't add up...' The press mouthed the words 'sums don't add up' in time with the Health Secretary, being anywhere between the ninety-ninth and three thousandth time they'd heard them in the past month. '...so even though they think they're being honest, they're not. So they're not actually lying, they're just stupid. Now I don't seek to label anyone here, but the effects of Conservative NHS policies would be to kill thousands and thousands of patients. Through their stupidity, they're practically murderers.'
'Practically murderers?' piped up someone from the Guardian and the Health Secretary glowered at him, then nodded.
'You're right,' he snapped, 'not practically. They are murderers. Killers. They're the Khmer Rouge of British politics, and although they seem like normal men in grey suits, they are in fact cold-blooded assassins whose health policies would lead to the possibility of them being called before the International Court on charges of genocide...'
*
The Prime Minister hit the off button on the TV and turned to his advisors, a huge smile on his face. It was his turn for a day off, more or less, and he was enjoying seeing some of the others take the flak. He could always depend on the Health Secretary to put in a robust performance.
'Cracking stuff,' he said. 'Think I'll have another cup of tea.'
'Caffeine,' said Thackeray, his ace strategist. 'Good idea, Prime Minister. Tablets I have. You want one, no?'
The PM's fake smile edged out a little further towards the ears.
'No thanks, never know when you're going to have to give a sample of your pee. You have one though.'
Williams and Barney Thomson gave each other a glance. Urine sample?
'One, yes, have I will,' said Thackeray, whose appearance was more and more becoming like that of Gollum, with great bulging eyes and skin the colour of half-cooked nan bread.
'I love the Health Secretary,' said the PM, calling him by his title because he couldn't actually remember his name. 'So brutally ethnic, you know. Very Celtic, always looks like he's on the verge of charging over Hadrian's Wall and invading England.' He paused and stared at a small area of patterned carpet, as he imagined the Health Secretary in a kilt, tackle to the wind and brandishing a claymore, leaping over the wall into Englandshire and mightily smiting northerners. 'That might actually be a job for him in the next parliament,' he said quietly.
'What might?'
asked Williams, and the PM slowly returned to reality and waved away the thought.
A silence descended upon the room, no one really sure what to say now that the TV had been switched off and there didn't seem to be anything else to talk about.
'What's happened to the Defence Secretary, Dan Dan?' asked the PM suddenly. 'Haven't heard a peep out of him since this whole thing started.'
'You banned him from talking to the media because everyone hates him, Sir,' said Williams.
'Oh,' said the PM, who once again lapsed into silence.
'Banned him you did,' said Thackeray from behind the couch. 'Yes.'
'Apparently Chelsea might win the league today,' said the PM suddenly. 'That's who I support, isn't it?'
1203hrs
Ramone MacGregor's killer had paced the room most of the night, had gone out for a walk around the streets of London early in the morning before the city had got going for the day, and had been back in his room for five hours, walking back and forth across the narrow area of red carpet. One more murder to be taken care of, by a method of his own choosing, and then, as the campaign wound its way down to the final few days and hours, he had to make the utmost use of the small wooden box. For all that the outcome of the General Election seemed like a foregone conclusion, for all that opinion poll after opinion poll gave the Labour party a significant lead, the simple fact of the matter was that the PM was going to be forced to resign before Thursday 5th May, and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. By then he would have been replaced, possibly by Igor, the deaf-mute hunchbacked barber's assistant, and possibly by someone else. It didn't really matter. The real power in London had long ago been yielded across the Atlantic. Long, long ago.
1456hrs
A slow afternoon in London. Sunny day, football fixtures about to start, nothing much to do for a campaign team who were bored and in need of a challenge. This was becoming more and more a campaign by the numbers. For the moment they just had to wait and see what the Sundays would come up with. The last hurrah of the heavyweights before polling day, and if any of them had anything up their sleeve, now would be the time for them to produce it.
Barney Thomson had taken to cutting a little hair in his spare time, as he had so much of it. He had already done Thackeray, which had been a tricky business given how much the man's head had been twitching, but they had both escaped without serious injury; now he had moved onto Williams, who had been sceptical at first that Barney would be able to do anything other than cut his hair like the PM's, but had now accepted that his head was in the hands of a hirsutological genius.
'So,' said Williams, who had fallen into the usual customer trap of drivel-talking, 'what are you going to do after it's all over?'
'You make it sound like a war,' said Barney, smiling.
'Oh, it is,' said Williams. 'In a democracy, election campaigns are the new wars.'
'Really?' said Barney. 'So, in a democracy, what is war then? The new ketchup?'
Everything had to be the new something these days. It couldn't just be what it was. And if by some miracle it was what it was, then it had to be the new what it was, as in, black is the new black.
'Mayonnaise is the new ketchup,' said Williams sprightly.
'So what's the new mayonnaise?' asked Barney.
'Sweet American mustard,' replied Williams. 'So what are you going to do when it's all over?'
Barney snipped at a foppish piece of hair dangling on the right hand side. There was no equivalent piece on the left hand side, pointing to one of three things: Williams had an odd taste in haircuts; his last cut had been done by one of the lower invertebrates; his hair grew in mysterious ways. Barney cut it off, evened the sides, and negated the discussion, which no one was having in any case.
'Igor and I are going to go back to our little shop in Millport, we're going to do the odd haircut, and we're going to sit and look out the window at the sea and the sun and the gulls and the waves and the rain. Aren't we, Igor?'
Igor swept laboriously at the floor, making sure he caught every little piece of hair which had been sent flying from the jerking head of Thackeray.
'Arf,' he muttered.
Barney stopped cutting and turned and looked at him. Igor gave him a quick, seemingly guilty glance, and then bent once more to his task. Wonder what's going on with him, thought Barney, then he turned back to his cut.
'What about you?' he asked, although he didn't care.
'Likely go back to the marketing business,' said Williams. 'Used to be fantastic in kitchenware items.'
'Very exciting,' said Barney.
'I did this great series on apple corers for Asda once. It was a blast.'
'I'm sure,' said Barney. And he closed his mind and thought, don't tell me about it, don't tell me about it, don't tell me about it.
'Let me tell you about it,' said Williams, and before Barney could act, Williams was off on a long story about kitchenware and its place in the home of tomorrow.
1745hrs
The killer walked down the stairs of the hotel – he never trusted elevators – turned the corner into the lobby and approached the doorman.
'Can you call me a cab, please,' he said.
'Certainly, Sir.'
'You can put it on the room, right?' he said.
The doorman nodded.
'Of course, Mr...?'
'Roosevelt,' said the man, 'Mr Roosevelt.'
'Just a moment, Sir.'
And Roosevelt stood just inside the door and waited as the doorman got him a cab, as he didn't like to stand around in the sun. The cab was called, he walked outside and got into the back seat.
'Downing Street,' he muttered, and the cab driver turned to look at him, wondering if he might be someone.
'American?' asked the cabbie, as they drove off into traffic.
Roosevelt stared out of the window at the passing pedestrians, already dressed for summer at the first sign of the sun. The British were so weird.
'You must be one of those rare people who watches American movies and TV shows in this country,' he said, laying on the sarcasm.
'Cheers, mate,' said the cabbie. 'Yeah, I guess I am. Never been anything better than Twin Peaks, that's what I always say. The distilled essence of American small town life,' he added.
'How would you know?' asked Roosevelt sharply.
'Well, I'll tell you...'
'Just stop talking,' said Roosevelt. 'You're a dick. So, shut up and don't say another word.' He caught the cabbie's eye in the mirror, recognised that he had won.
Half an hour later, after the driver had exacted his revenge by leading him on a fine tour of the streets of London, Roosevelt was dropped at the end of Downing Street, and the cab puttered away into the late Saturday afternoon traffic. He watched it go, made a mental note of the number and a further mental note to have the car destroyed at some point in the next few days, then he approached the two policemen at the end of the road.
'Afternoon, Sir,' said one of them politely. PC Docherty recognised an American tourist a mile off.
'I have an appointment to see Mr Williams, the Prime Minister's assistant,' said Roosevelt.
The policeman nodded.
'I wasn't told to expect you, Sir, if you could just wait until I call that in.'
'Certainly.'
Roosevelt turned away and stared up and down the road, while Docherty called the office and the other officer kept his eye on Roosevelt.
'Thank you for waiting, Sir,' said Docherty. 'Can I just check your briefcase before you go in?'
'No problem,' said Roosevelt, not doubting for one second that there was any chance that they would discover his murder weapon.
Docherty opened the lid and looked at the meagre contents of the briefcase. A copy of The Da Vinci Code; a four cheese sandwich with rocket, sun-baked tomatoes and yogurt; a magnifying glass. That was all. Docherty took each item out, tipped the briefcase up and down to check for hidden compartments, and then ran the whole thing through a
scanner. Clean.
'Welcome to Downing Street, Sir,' he said.
Roosevelt smiled, accepted the briefcase back and walked quickly through the barrier. No weapons to be found in his briefcase right enough, but then, this was the man who two weeks earlier had murdered someone with a chicken.
Jason V Roosevelt walked quickly up the short street, nodded to the policeman at the door of number 10, and then walked inside.
Sunday 1st May 2005
0712hrs
The final Sunday of the campaign, an early start. The Prime Minister looked over the Sunday papers, scanning quickly for any new bombshells on Iraq, checking each for the voting recommendation to their readers. His advisor Dan Williams had already done this, of course, and given him all the relevant information, but the PM liked to have a quick check himself. He rubbed his forehead as he read the Observer. It had come out on his side, but was still damning in places all the same. He bit into some toast, flicked the crumbs off the top of the paper. Williams sat on the other side of the office, going over details of the day ahead. He, along with everyone else in the country, was looking forward to the following weekend, his first chance to relax in months.
The door opened and Barney Thomson, barber, walked in, accompanied by Igor, barber's assistant. The Gang of Four, as they had become known amongst the jealous not-so-elite who had been pushed to the side, who were advising the PM on his every move, were all in attendance. Except that there were only three of them. Thackeray had not been seen since the night before. However, given that his caffeine-overloaded behaviour had become so odd, everyone was glad to see him taking some time out, and assumed he'd finally collapsed in a great heap somewhere. Any feelings of grievance that Williams had at the usurper Barney Thomson, were now a little assuaged by his triumph over Thackeray.
The PM looked up from the Observer then pushed it to the side, as Barney entered.
'Come in,' he said, a statement mostly negated by the fact that they were already both in and helping themselves to tea and croissants. 'You seen the papers?'
Barney glanced at the pile strewn around the floor and shook his head.
The Wormwood Code Page 10