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Barney Thomson & The Westminster Christmas Massacre - Episode 10by Douglas Lindsay - 11:31 on 15 December 2009The story so far: Great Britain and The United States of America stand on the brink of war. However, like a human being about to have a diminutive bug land on his forearm, the United States hasn’t even noticed yet, and when it does, it will squish the diminutive bug with one unnecessarily hefty whack. Meanwhile, Barney Thomson - Prime Ministerial confidant, mythological barbershop legend, and murder suspect - is running through the streets of London, trying to avoid capture. As the story begins, two officers have just drawn their weapons and Barney’s life hangs by a thread...
2136hrs Friday London, England
Barney was ten yards away from the corner of the alley, his legs flying, his brain unengaged. He had no idea why he was running. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and if he’d stopped to think about it, would he care if he was stopped, arrested, charged, found guilty and sent to prison? If people really thought he was the man responsible for the deaths of so many money-grabbing and duplicitous MPs, would he not be regarded as a hero in any case?
Yet he ran.
The police officers raised their guns, and they did not call out, they did not offer Barney Thomson, radical haircutting maverick, the chance to surrender.
There are two kinds of arms-wielding police officers. There are the kind that can shoot an unarmed civilian on a Tube train from five yards and not miss. Then there are the kind that learn to shoot by watching the A-Team. They can destroy a barn door from fifty paces, but they can’t actually hit anyone, and blood is never spilled.
Fortunately for Barney, his potential assailants came from the latter category.
Even so, as he ran round the corner, with bullets pinging around his head, in his insane and pointless attempt to get away, he ran straight in to another three officers heading in his direction.
That was that; and for the first time in his life, Barney Thomson, poster child of the new millennium barbershop renegade movement, was nicked.
The weekend London, England
It was a quiet weekend in London, England. The murders of the MPs had stopped. And while in general the public were disappointed, it did allow them to concentrate fully on the sensational, and considerably more momentous, conclusion to the X-Factor. With a suspect in a police cell, and the murders seemingly at an end, the PM was persuaded, for the time being at least, that there was no immediate need to invade the United States; until such time as it was established that Barney had been receiving his instructions from the CIA.
The invasion force of around five hundred men remained on board the three frigates off the coast of Maine. The Royal Navy reported to the US coast guard that they were unable to move on, as two of the boats had broken down and repairs would be some time in arriving. The United States were so used to things going wrong with British military equipment, they were happy to believe it.
The newspapers were generally kind to the PM. The expenses bunfight was back on the front pages, but as the PM himself hadn’t claimed for any chocolate bars or repairs to his castle on Tayside, for the most part he was excused the opprobrium of the nation, and of the nation’s media.
Life in London continued as normal, as the talks in Copenhagen limped on, and the world waited for the roof to fall in.
2341hrs Kandahar Airport, Afghanistan
‘You mean, you people sleep like this every night?’ said the PM.
‘Yes, Sir,’ said Staff Sergeant McCulloch.
‘And you say that you don’t each have your own personal hairdresser?’
‘No, sir.’
The PM shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise. You know, the defence budget is something like a million billion pounds or something...’
‘Forty-two billion,’ said Bleacher, who was just about to jump on a helicopter to fly to the Intercontinental, Karachi.
‘So, gosh, I just don’t know what that money goes on,’ said the PM. ‘Let me talk to some people, and I’ll get you, you know, at the very least, some good hair.’
‘Thank you, Prime Minister,’ said Staff Sergeant McCulloch. ‘That would be very important for the morale of the men.’
0245hrs Monday Morning Somewhere in England, England
Barney Thomson had been taken to a secret location, where he was being questioned by the security services. They were taking his guilt as already established, in the usual way, and had skipped even trying to extract a confession. Instead they were concentrating on trying to find out for whom Barney Thomson was working. Moscow? Beijing? Pyong Yang? Washington? Tel Aviv? Tehran? Brussels? Paris? Berlin? Millport?
Who could possibly want to see the British government in turmoil? Apart from all those other countries in the world, sick to the teeth of Britain sticking their nose into other peoples’ business and acting like a world leader, when the only things that Britain actually leads the world in are banking debt, tardiness in coming out of recession, youth unemployment, pregnant eight year-olds and overpaid footballers.
Barney had been snapped awake at two-fifteen, hustled along a short corridor, and was now sitting in a bland, bald room, across the table from a short woman with more facial hair than was generally considered appropriate. Her colleagues knew her as Three Beards. There had been some embarrassment when she’d found out, but for the most part they had generally graduated to using it to her face and she hadn’t objected.
‘My name’s Barney Thomson and I cut hair,’ said Barney. For the eleventh time. He felt vaguely ridiculous, as if he should have an official Barber Classification Number to accompany the job description.
‘And is it true that you came to London in order to murder MPs, destabilize the government and help install a regime friendly to a hostile overseas power?’
‘I came to London because the PM’s people came and got me. I don’t think I had....’
‘Apparently you had inside help,’ said Three Beards.
Barney found himself staring at her face, although he was trying not to.
‘What do you want me to say?’ said Barney.
‘Just tell us the truth, and then you can go home,’ she said coldly.
Barney looked quizzically at her.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? You think I killed twenty people! You’re never letting me go home, regardless of who I’m supposed to be working for.’
‘Well, OK, that’s a good point,’ said Three Beards. ‘You’re not going home. Ever. So I’ll re-phrase the offer. Tell us who you’re working for and I won’t inflict excruciating pain upon you. I won’t take a nutcracker and squeeze your testicles until they burst. I won’t drill into your teeth. I won’t hold your head under water until you’re taking water into your lungs. I won’t run electric current through you until you can feel your insides fry. I won’t inject you with the AIDS virus. I won’t keep you awake for the next seventeen weeks. I won’t crush your hands and your feet, individually and painstakingly snapping each and every bone so that your body cries out in agony and terror.’
She had lingered over every word, each horror delivered excruciatingly, each torture lovingly described.
‘Washington,’ said Barney. ‘It was definitely Washington.’
1127hrs Monday London, England
The PM was enjoying a breakfast of double fried banana burger. It was his third breakfast of the morning. One fewer than usual. Sometimes he ran off the effects of four breakfasts by jogging for ten minutes, but not very often. He was chuckling his way through the papers when there was a knock at the door and Bleacher came into the room. The PM looked up, still smiling.
‘Did you see this?’ he barked. ‘Not only was the idiot claiming for chocolate bars, he claimed for a foot massage. He’s handing me this on a plate. This is going to be so easy.’
‘We have some definite intel, sir,’ said Bleacher, standing before the PM, his voice low.
The PM finally noticed that Bleacher was looking sombre and that it was time to switch on the serious Prime Ministerial face.
‘On the killings and the foreign power behind them?’
‘Yes, Prime Minister. Barney Thomson has finally cracked under intense questioning.’
The PM shook his head. ‘God, that is, I don’t know, like totally devastating. Barney Thomson. Who would have thought? Who’s he working for?’
Bleacher reluctantly let out a long sigh.
‘It’s as you suspected, Prime Minister.’
‘Washington?’
‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ said Bleacher.
The PM’s jaw dropped. Which happened a lot in any case, but in this instance was indicative of his surprise.
‘Oh. My. God,’ he said.
The two men stared into an indistinct spot in space-time, taking in this information and all that it implied for the future of Great Britain, and by extension - as Great Britain leads the world in so many different ways - the very future of humankind. Finally the PM snapped out of the trance and stared curiously at Bleacher.
‘But Barney Thomson is only here because you and I decided to bring him in to cut my hair. How could he be working for the Americans?’
Bleacher nodded. Naturally he had thought of this point himself, and had been agonising over it for some time before bringing it to the Prime Minister. Only once he’d felt sure that he had established how the whole horrible process had begun, had he decided to bring this new information to the PM.
‘I believe that the Americans are using a mind control device,’ he said.
The PM shuddered.
‘Holy Declaration of Arbroath!’ he said. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I don’t have proof yet, Prime Minister, but I don’t see any other explanation.’
The PM took a massive bite of banana burger and stared back into the indistinct point in space-time, as he thought of all the possible connotations of this insidious and dangerous notion.
‘So maybe,’ he said, ‘it’s the Americans that are planting the idea for us to invade Maine, luring us into a trap, which they’ll then use as an excuse to attack Britain before declaring us the 51st state.’
‘They already think of us as the 51st state, Prime Minister,’ said Bleacher, then he paused. The PM stared into Bleacher’s eyes.
‘Sir,’ said Bleacher, ‘They see us as a potential penal colony.’
The PM looked grimly at the carpet. Having felt for a few days like everything was coming together, suddenly he had no idea of what was happening, not even sure if he could trust his own thoughts.
‘Maybe I should confound them and invade Scotland.’
‘Maybe, Prime Minister,’ said Bleacher.
To be continued: Wednesday 16th December 2009
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