Barney Thomson & The Westminster Christmas Massacre - Episode 6

by Douglas Lindsay - 10:02 on 08 December 2009

The story so far: Treating the Prime Minister’s hair as a concept rather than as a hairstyle, Barney Thomson has transformed him into a statesman and world leader. So far no one has noticed. Meanwhile the police continue their fruitless search for the killer Trelawny, as the killer Trelawny has gone on another night time murder spree...

0814hrs   London, England

The first call of the day to DCI Frankenstein’s office had come at 0641hrs. Frankenstein had not long arrived and had just lifted the debut coffee of the day to his lips. He didn’t actually care that another MP had been found murdered, but was aware of the generally adverse affects that this would have on his day.

By 0814hrs, things were looking slightly worse for the greater MP collective of Westminster. Of the six hundred and forty-five surviving MPs at the start of the day, seven had been found murdered in their beds, contact had been established with six hundred and twenty-one of the others to make sure they weren’t dead, which left seventeen still unaccounted for.

Frankenstein’s office was in a state of frantic bedlam. Frankenstein himself, had had a moment of frantic running around. Or two. But as the body count had increased, and he had realised that the number of places he needed to be had already gone far over the limit of the number of places he could be, he’d gradually relaxed and settled into a state of phlegmatic resignation. There were only so many desperate and angry phone calls he could receive from his superiors, and now one was blending in to another.

‘Another one’s alive!’ shouted a voice from the other side of the frenzied open plan office, and the police clerks who were keeping a track on the movements of all the MPs - like the women who controlled the board showing the movement of German planes in Fighter Command during WWII - got hold of the woman’s name and moved her into position.

Frankenstein sat back and finally took his first sip of coffee of the day. It was his fourth cup, the other three going cold without so much as a drop crossing his lips. DS Hewitt approached his desk.

‘Hey, like guess what?’ said Hewitt.

Frankenstein looked up at Hewitt with a raised eyebrow, wondering what was coming. Hey, like guess what, they found another one with his entrails cut out, would have been an odd way to put it.

‘The Mail are doing this great Bing Crosby Christmas cd offer. It’s like, all these amazing Christmas songs for free if you buy, like some, you know, some sort of thing that middle-aged people buy, like a hot water bottle or something. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and all that stuff. Those songs are like totally awesome.’

Frankenstein looked curiously at the newspaper in Hewitt’s hands, the picture of Bing in his Christmas hat with which we’re all so familiar.

‘Wow,’ said Frankenstein, voice completely flat, ‘a Bing Crosby Christmas offer. That’s extraordinary. It’s amazing how all those songs, even though we’ve heard them eight million times, still sound so fresh.’

‘Well...,’ said Hewitt, and then he noticed the look on Frankenstein’s face and laid the paper down on the desk.

‘You want me to focus on the murder enquiry?’

‘Actually, for the moment, I want you to focus on finding out just how many murder enquiries there actually are. Then you can focus on finding out who’s doing it; and then, if there’s still time, you can subscribe to the amazing Bing Crosby offer.’

‘Another one’s pegged it!’ came the cry from across the room. ‘Penis cut off and shoved down his throat!’

Someone cheered, and then pretended he hadn’t. Frankenstein groaned, and the abacus for the tally of the dead was increased by one.

By the time the tally had been completed, and all six hundred and forty-five MPs had been accounted for, dead or alive, it was known that eleven had been murdered in their beds. Or thereabouts. The other six hundred and thirty-four had been gathered in the Houses of Parliament, awaiting instruction from Scotland Yard.

Police officers were investigating the murder spree at various locations across the city. The media were in frenzy. The conspiracy theorists were on fire.



1003hrs   London, England

The Prime Minister was in his office in Westminster, standing at the window, looking down on the Thames. There were five people in the room behind him. Bleacher, his chief aide, Blaine, the Cabinet Secretary, Lucy, his Diary Secretary, the Chief Whip and, for reasons that none of the others could understand, Barney Thomson, barbershop genocide legend.

‘I agree with the Chief Whip,’ said the Cabinet Secretary. ‘This has gone beyond revenge, it’s gone beyond an individual’s psychotic bloodlust. This is a coup attempt, Prime Minister!’

‘Coup attempt,’ repeated the Chief Whip.

‘Bleacher?’ said the PM.

The PM’s head was low. These should have been the defining days of his leadership, when he would turn the polls around, start to become the Prime Minister that everyone had expected him to be, the leader that everyone wanted. He had hammered the Leader of the Opposition in the Commons, he was preparing to lead the world on climate change at the conference in Copenhagen, and he had fantastic hair, delivered direct to his doorstep by ace crimper, Barney Thomson.

‘They’re right. You have to introduce martial law,’ said Bleacher.

The PM turned quickly, face thunderous.

‘And how will that look?’ he barked.

‘How will it look when you’ve been usurped as Prime Minister, Prime Minister?’ said Blaine. ‘The country is run by parliament, and members of that parliament are being individually murdered at an astonishing rate. No one man could possibly have done what happened last night. This is an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of a sovereign state, and under these circumstances there is only one option left open to you.’

‘Martial law,’ said Bleacher again.

The PM looked around the room, the hair on his head going greyer by the second.

‘Lucy?’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

‘You’ve got a meeting with the Ambassador from the Maldives at eleven-thirty, sir,’ she said.

‘Cancel it,’ said Bleacher.

‘Cancel it,’ repeated the Chief Whip.

The PM nodded at Lucy, who scribbled in the diary, then he turned his dull eyes on Barney.

‘Barney Thomson,’ he said. ‘You’re our resident psychotic killer expert. What d’you think?’

Barney had been sitting with his head bowed, eyes rooted to the floor. He didn’t care about the parliamentary murder and mayhem, but there was no doubting the uncomfortable feel of being in the midst of it all.

‘At times like this,’ said Barney, ‘I like to ask myself, what would George Bush do?’

He looked seriously into the PM’s eyes as he said it, and the PM leant back against the frame of the window.

‘Well,’ said the PM, taking the question seriously, ‘George would have invaded the country with the highest proportion of psychotic serial killers, and therefore the one most likely to be behind the psychotic serial killer coup attempt.’

‘Exactly,’ said Barney, ‘which would have been awkward for him, as that would have meant invading himself. You, on the other hand, don’t have that problem.’

Bleacher gave Barney a look of contempt. The Cabinet Secretary and the Chief Whip were staring at the carpet, unimpressed that the PM was even bothering to consult someone such as Barney Thomson on the matter. Lucy was quickly writing, invade America into the diary. For Thursday, just after 11.

‘So,’ said the PM, ‘you think I should invade the United States of America?’

Barney nodded. ‘Who else is going to come up with the idea of using a serial killer to overthrow a government? It’s pure CIA.’

‘This is absurd,’ barked Blaine.

The PM snorted and pointed at Barney. ‘Let’s hear him out,’ he said.

Bleacher stared out of the window at the grey morning and wished that he was in charge, so that he could dismiss everyone else in the room.

‘If you introduce marital law,’ said Barney, making it up as he went along, ‘the public, the British People that you’re so keen to impress, are going to hate you. If they themselves were under attack perhaps, if Britain was under attack... But it’s MPs, for crying out loud. MPs. No one cares. There’d be uproar if you impinged on ordinary peoples’ lives because MPs are getting murdered.’

The PM grumbled, Bleacher was looking at the ceiling.

‘However, if you invade America, you’ll look decisive, they’d likely retaliate, putting mainland Britain in a war situation, which would allow you to pull a Churchill, which would be great for your image. We’d be the underdog, of course, and people love that. It’s a win, win, win, win situation.’

‘Except we’d get flattened!’ barked Blaine.

‘Flattened,’ chorused the  Chief Whip.

‘And, of course,’ said Barney, ‘you’d get Obama back for making you look so pathetic in New York a few weeks ago.’

The PM looked at his watch.

‘Crap,’ he muttered. ‘I need to go and speak to the press. Barney, how’s my hair look?’

‘Like a million bucks,’ said Barney, drily.

‘Excellent. Right, Blaine, I need you to speak to the military chiefs. I want options on launching an attack against the US mainland on my desk by seven this evening.’

The PM made a clicking sound with his lips, snapped his fingers, and walked quickly from the room, shouting, ‘Walk with me!’ as he went.

Only Lucy the Diary Secretary immediately followed. Bleacher, Blaine and the Chief Whip stayed to eyeball Barney, like a host of deranged Chelsea or Manchester United players surrounding a referee after he’s had the outrageous temerity to award a foul against them.

‘Where the Hell did that come from?’ snapped Bleacher.

‘Just made it up,’ said Barney.

‘It’s preposterous!’ yelled Blaine.

‘Preposterous,’ barked the Chief Whip.

Bleacher eyed Barney even more disdainfully.

‘Or else, it’s very, very cunning. Just who are you working for, Mr Thomson?’

Barney looked at him, eyebrow raised.

‘The Chinese?’ accused Blaine.

‘The Russians?’ said Bleacher.

‘The Russians?’ repeated the Chief Whip.

Barney looked grimly at them for a few seconds, and then he smiled ruefully and got to his feet.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you heard the man. He wants us to walk with him.’

He smiled at them, and then walked quickly from the room in the PM’s wake.



Afternoon   London, England

That afternoon the media were in ferment; the police were in ferment; the Houses of Parliament were in ferment. The British People weren’t really that bothered.

Anonymous government sources let it be known that the feeling within Whitehall was that this was not the work of a single deranged, blood sucking psychotic madman, but that it was quite possibly a coup attempt organised by a malign foreign power. The media also managed to find out that someone at the Ministry of Defence was putting together a paper on the possibility of landing British troops on the coast of Maine, in a hostile action against the United States. The names of the dead MPs and the gory details of their murders was all over the internet, photographs included. Lists had been drawn up of who people thought might be next; or who they wanted to be next. Sky News were running a poll on who the favourites were. The list of the already dead was being dissected by the police and pundits alike, to try to establish a link between them all, but in general everyone was in agreement. The link was that they worked in positions of authority at Westminster, and that was enough.

However, in the pubs and clubs, on the streets and in the cafés, in homes and in train stations, the British People had other things to talk about. A frivolous people with frivolous concerns. Pete and Katie; Katie’s breasts; the upcoming grand final of X-Factor; Ratgate; Katie’s new book; Champion’s League qualifiers; how easy it was going to be for England in the World Cup; Tiger Woods and a cast of thousands... And should their minds stray from the frivolous, it would likely be to climate change or other people who’d been murdered and who were more interesting than a bunch of MPs of whom most people hadn’t even heard.



DCI Frankenstein sat in his desk in the midst of a frenetic, electrically charged office, a hundred frenetic officers running around him. He was no longer the man in charge of the investigation; that authority had already gone to higher powers. However, given that all those above him had only joined the police after failing an audition for the Muppets, he knew he was the most likely to come up with a solution to this most peculiar mystery.

The papers from that morning lay scattered at various points around the station, pointing to just how seriously everyone was taking this attack on the corridors of British power.

Jordan Love Child Shock, said the Daily Star. And despite himself, Frankenstein leant forward to take a closer look.

The Members of Parliament were in good hands...

To be continued: Wednesday 9th December 2009

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