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Barney Thomson & The Westminster Christmas Massacre - Episode 11by Douglas Lindsay - 10:35 on 16 December 2009The story so far: Barney Thomson, renegade barbershop legend, is under arrest on suspicion of having murdered a bunch of MPs, although most people have lost count of exactly how many. In order to avoid being tortured, Barney has confessed to the killings, and has implicated Washington as being behind the mass murder spree, in an attempt to destabilise the British government. However, he never quite made it clear whether he meant Denzel Washington, Hollywood heartthrob, or Washington DC and its political core. Meanwhile the Prime Minister is in confusion. Not for any particular reason, it’s just his normal state.
0913hrs London, England
It had been six days since the last murder in what the press were calling the Westminster Christmas Massacre - usually on page 35 or so, after 34 pages of X-Factor - and the longer the murder remission continued, and the longer Barney Thomson remained in police custody, the greater Barney’s guilt appeared.
All the time, the real killer, Trelawny, lay low.
‘What do you call a collective of MPs?’ said Detective Sergeant Hewitt. ‘I mean, what’s that expression...?’
‘The collective noun,’ said Frankenstein, taking a large bite out of his morning roll ‘n sausage.
‘Yeah, like yeah,’ said Hewitt. ‘What’s the collective noun for, like a bunch of MPs?’
‘Not sure,’ said Frankenstein. ‘There are so many options. A plamph of MPs?’
‘A scrotum of MPs,’ suggested Hewitt.
‘A leper colony of MPs.’
‘A testicular growth of MPs.’
Frankenstein looked at Hewitt through a hole in his roll.
‘A leach of MPs,’ he said, in order to get away from the general gonadal area.
Hewitt laughed. ‘Like, yeah, like a leach. That, you know, that kind of makes sense. I’ve got one. A vasectomy of MPs. You know, they’re cut off from society.’
‘Needs some work,’ said Frankenstein, and the two of them fell into a silence born of feeding frenzy.
Resurfacing from his second fried egg roll a short while later, wiping the edges of his mouth with his tie, DS Hewitt bizarrely threw a conversation about the investigation into the air.
‘Do you really think Barney Thomson’s guilty, Chief Inspector? I mean, you’ve dealt with him before. What d’you reckon?’
‘I’m sceptical,’ said Frankenstein. ‘I kind of fingered him in the first place, but you know, I was just pulling his chain. Didn’t really think he was guilty. The stuff that goes on around him is unbelievably weird, and to be honest it creeps me out. But he’s no killer.’
Hewitt nodded and took a bite out of his third fried egg roll.
‘Like, this is a great sandwich,’ he said. ‘I love breakfast.’
‘Me too,’ said Frankenstein, cramming the last of his roll into his mouth.
‘So, are you going to try to get him sprung? I hear he’s been getting questioned by that Three Beards woman who works for MI5.’
‘Nah,’ said Frankenstein. ‘He’s probably better out of harm’s way. Then, if there’s another murder, we know that he’s not the man.’
Hewitt bit massively into his third roll and a large splodge of yellow glooped out and dribbled down his chin onto his shirt.
‘Or, like, he’s not working alone,’ said Hewitt.
Frankenstein nodded but couldn’t speak, his mouth now attached to a cup of coffee.
1312hrs London, England
Three Beards, the most vicious interrogator that MI5 had ever known, trained in the most vile and unpleasant prisons of Moscow, Washington and Beijing, was taking advantage of having mercurial hairdressing maverick, Barney Thomson, in her custody, and had stopped by his cell for a haircut. She knew that Barney was not generally well practiced in the haircutting of women, but that his talent would see him past that minor difficulty.
‘Tooth drilling I learned from watching Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man,’ she said, as Barney expertly crafted her hair into a Meryl Street Mama Mia.
‘Interesting,’ said Barney. ‘I would have thought that maybe you’d have been given a more hands-on training regime.’
‘Hell, no,’ said Three Beards, who was relaxing into her subject, ‘Larry did such a great job with that. And I mean, where are you going to go wrong with drilling someone’s teeth? It’s not like you can hurt someone too much, is it? You never find yourself say, oops, sorry mate, did I catch a nerve? Sometimes you have to fish around a bit, but generally it’s not too long before you stumble across, well, a raw nerve. And if you do take longer than you’d intended, it just helps to build tension and stress. It’s a bit magical, really.’
‘Magical?’ said Barney. ‘Drilling into someone’s mouth, blood spraying all over the place and loud screams rending the air?’
Three Beards seemed to consider this for a moment, then nodded.
‘Well, you know, if you’re in my line of work.’
‘I suppose,’ said Barney. ‘I can see where you’re coming from. Michael Palin seemed to be enjoying himself in Brazil.’
‘Oh, yes! My inspiration. Now that was magical.’
Silence feel upon them, and Barney weaved his own magic, transforming Three Beards into Meryl Streep, with all the barbetorial flair, panache and verve at his fingertips.
‘Don’t think you’re out of the woods yet,’ she said, conversationally. ‘You still need to cough up who your American contacts are. And don’t go making stuff up, because we’ll know. We’re MI5. We know stuff.’
Barney snipped cavalierly around the top of the hair, creating the harassed, devil-may-care look of the Meryl Streep.
‘If you really think I’m guilty of murdering twenty people and working with the Americans to overthrow the government, why are you letting me anywhere near you with a pair of scissors? Isn’t that a bit dangerous? I could have these buried in your neck in a fraction of a second.’
Three Beards raised an eyebrow at him in the mirror.
‘Barney, my friend,’ she said. ‘You may be this top drawer murderer, you may have skills of which the average serial killer can only dream, but I... I am Three Beards, daughter of One Beard, ruler of the House of Beard these past ten years, and I could take you any day of the week.’
Barney stopped snipping for a second, while he engaged her eyes in the mirror.
‘Go on, she said, ‘try me.’
Barney smiled at last, and resumed the cut.
‘Not today,’ he said. ‘Not today.’
‘And besides,’ said Three Beards, her voice returning to the chumminess of a few seconds earlier, ‘there’s something about you, you know. That Hannibal Lectar thing. You’re a nutjob, but a nutjob that one can trust. That’s what I’m thinking.’
Barney went about his business with a small nod.
‘You can put that on my gravestone,’ he said.
‘Barney,’ she said, ‘the likes of you don’t get a gravestone. You get dissected down to the smallest piece, and your brain ends up in a jar.’
For some reason, that he could not explain, Barney felt a strange uneasy feeling creeping up his back.
2101hrs Copenhagen, Denmark
The Prime Minister was standing at the window of his hotel, small glass of rum in his hand, practicing his speech for the following day. Prime Ministerial aide, Bleacher, was sitting behind, red penning the speech at the PM’s direction.
‘Britain leads the world in so many things,’ said the PM, ‘so many times in the past we have shaped history, and created a bright future. Once more the world stands on the precipice of disaster, and Britain stands once more above you all, waiting to lead you to the safe pastures of freedom. Follow our lead and the world will survive. Turn your backs on Great Britain, the cradle of modern civilisation, and ye shall be damned!’
Bleacher had stopped scribbling.
‘Maybe you want to throw something in there about how you have been told by God what to do?’ he said drily.
The PM clicked his fingers and turned.
‘Nice,’ he said. ‘I like it. Bit of a Moses vibe. Get me the Bible and I’ll see if I can crib anything.’
0159hrs Copenhagen, Denmark
Political scientists estimate that at any given moment, an average of 3.27 MPs are having sex with their secretary. Contrary to popular belief, this rises to 5.13 during PMQs.
Along with the usual Downing Street travelling entourage of one hundred and seventy-nine essential personnel, the British delegation to Copenhagen included seventeen MPs and all their staff. When you lead the world, you have to be heavy handed or else people won’t respect you.
Unfortunately for the seventeen MPs, the killer Trelawny had also made the trip. And in the middle of the night he did the rounds of the three hotels at which they were staying. One by one he picked them off; except in the case of the two closeted female members for the south-east, who he managed to get at the same time in the same bed.
Finally, at one minute before two in the morning, he arrived at the room of the honourable member for some part of Lanarkshire, the boundary of which even the honourable member himself was unclear.
Trelawny let himself into the room, and stood still in the dark for a moment, barely breathing, listening to the sound of sex in the night. Trelawny smiled and flicked the light switch.
The MP for some part of Lanarkshire, his secretary currently impaled on top of him, looked over at the figure at the door. The secretary rolled her eyes, being well used to people walking in on her while she had sex with an MP. The honourable member let out a long, tired sigh.
‘What?’ he said.
Assuming that Barney Thomson was the killer, and knowing that Barney was in custody, all the MPs had assumed they were safe. None saw the killer Trelawny coming, even when he was standing right in front of them.
‘Mr Muir,’ said Trelawny, ‘I’m from the Prime Minister’s office.’
‘Who else would come at this time of the night?’ said the MP.
‘Well, you would, Donald,’ said the secretary with a wink, and the MP smiled grimly.
‘The PM is concerned about the latest round of expenses claims that went round,’ said Trelawny. ‘He specifically asked that party members didn’t make any spurious claims.’
The MP spread his hands to the side in a referee! gesture, finally removing them from his secretary’s breasts.
‘What?’ he said again.
Trelawny took a step closer. Now, at last, the happy couple saw something in his eyes, and the secretary self-consciously placed her arm across her breasts.
‘Thirty-seven pence for a packet of crisps,’ said Trelawny, drily, ‘which, in its way, is as bad as the claim of three thousand pounds for a rabbit hutch which you made in July.’
The MP smiled uneasily. He’d hoped the rabbit hutch claim would slip through unnoticed under the cover of house improvements.
Trelawny took a step closer.
‘It’s still nothing to do with the PM,’ said the MP boldly, ‘so you can sod off.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Trelawny.
Then, in one beautifully choreographed movement, he drew the sword from inside his long coat, swished it through the air with the flourish of Aragorn, and in one flowing movement sliced off the head of the honourable member for some part of Lanarkshire. Bloody spurted and the decapitated head lopped onto the bed, bounced once and fell heavily on the floor.
Trelawny had stopped the movement of the sword before it had also taken out the secretary, who was now in the uncomfortable position of having sex with the wrong kind of stiff.
Trelawny wiped the blade on the sheets, then slipped the sword back into his coat.
‘Good evening, ma’am,’ he said, nodding at the secretary, and with that, his night’s work was done.
Another seventeen MPs in the bag.
As Trelawny left the room, the secretary was aware of being left strangely unfulfilled.
To be continued: Thursday 17th December 2009
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