Barney Thomson & The Westminster Christmas Massacre - Episode 12

by Douglas Lindsay - 10:39 on 17 December 2009

The story so far: The Prime Minister is in Copenhagen for the Climate Change Conference, intent on playing the part of The Man Who Saved Planet Earth. He has tried on a variety of costumes, but highly paid aide, Bleacher, has so far persuaded him not to pull on a pair of large red underpants over his grey suit. However, as the PM closes in on a deal to rescue Planet Earth, his plans have been thrown into disarray by the killer Trelawny, who has murdered all seventeen Members of Parliament who have accompanied the PM on the trip to Copenhagen. Meanwhile, unorthodox barbershop enfant terrible, Barney Thomson, remains in police custody.

0613hrs London, England

Barney Thomson was sitting uncomfortably on a hard chair. His shoulders were hunched, his legs closed together, his arms clasped between them. He was cold, shivering. A long night on a hard bed with one blanket - and a jaggedyarsed blanket at that - and then summarily dragged out of his cell and stuck in a cold, empty room. A room with nothing but a single hard wooden chair under a solitary light bulb.

The door opened and crack MI5 interrogator Three Beards entered and stood in front of Barney. Barney stared at her shoes. Couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye. He was miserable.

‘Have you heard the news?’ asked Three Beards.

Barney had had no contact with anyone for over twelve hours. His was solitary confinement extra. Solitary confinement plus. Super-sized solitary confinement. This made Steve McQueen’s solitary confinement look like a dawdle. Of course, Steve McQueen got to use a motorbike outside when he was doing solitary confinement, so it’s a surprise he even wanted to escape.

‘Look at me, Mr Thomson,’ she said. Her voice had lost the cheery camaraderie of the previous day, now dripping with acid.

Barney finally raised his eyes and looked at her. Three Beards was trained to read deceit, hostility and fear. She could see nothing in Barney. His eyes were dead, and behind those dead eyes Barney had shut down. He no longer thought of home; the people he missed, the views across the water. The sea, the mountains of Arran, the mournful cry of the gulls.

Perhaps he was due this misery, this final clawing, bitter crushing of the spirit. For years, everywhere he had been, death and slaughter and heartache had followed in his wake. Did he not now deserve this, to be removed from society, the very essence of his id crushed and broken?

‘Between the hours of 11pm last night and 2am this morning, Central European Time, seventeen members of the British parliament were brutally murdered in Copenhagen. Denmark.’

Barney held her gaze. Her words could not have meant less to him if she had told him the name of the winner of X-Factor or who was getting murdered on Eastenders or who Katie or Pete were going to be sleeping with this Christmas. Barney’s face was blank.

‘Some people,’ continued Three Beards, expertly hiding the fact that Barney Thomson completely disconcerted her, ‘might think that the fact that murders have been committed while you are in custody, actually proves your innocence. Others might suggest that all it proves is that you have an equally accomplished accomplice.’

Barney looked through her. He felt frozen to the bone. The cold, the pain was not just physical. He was aware of a black cancerous ball in the middle of his brain, sucking the life from him.

‘Which is it, Barney Thomson?’ she said, without a flicker, although Three Beards was feeling strangely discombobulated.

At last Barney found the words for this woman who had cracked the most evil terrorists that had been thrown at Britain in the previous eight years.

‘Fuck you,’ said Barney. ‘And your dog.’

0917hrs   Copenhagen, Denmark

The Prime Minister was eating breakfast. It was his third breakfast of the day so far, this one featuring pancakes and bacon and maple syrup. The Downing Street collective were holding an emergency war cabinet meeting, to discuss the latest series of murders. In the corner a television was playing, an excitable Danish reporter standing outside the PM’s hotel, talking at a hundred miles an hour.

‘What d’you suppose he’s saying?’ said the PM darkly. They had been watching CNN for the previous half hour in vain, but they hadn’t progressed from Tiger Woods; which was obviously still more of a story than the destruction of the UK government.

‘Prime Minister,’ said Bleacher, ‘what do you think they’re saying? The entire government is in the process of being wiped out.’

Blaine, the Cabinet Secretary, twitched as the faces of some of the dead came on the screen, then he turned to the PM. Lucy the Diary Secretary, sipped coffee and waited to tell the PM how the morning had been re-organised around his new press conferences.

‘You need to get back to London, Sir,’ said Blaine. ‘As quickly as possible.’

The PM blustered and humphed, and a piece of pancake flew out of his month and looped across the room in a perfect parabola, landing on Lucy’s shoulder. There was an awkward moment while everyone in the room waited to see what Lucy would do, but she defused the situation by pretending that the PM hadn’t gobbed on her blouse.

‘Never!’ barked the PM. ‘Aye,’ he continued, ‘here’s the rub. It’s the bloody Americans. I’m here, saving the world, and they don’t like it, do they? They wanted their man to be the one who saves humanity, they wanted to be the ones getting all the glory. Well, they’re not. I was here first, I was...’

‘Actually, President Obama was here last week, sir,’ said Blaine.

‘I was here first,’ continued the PM, ‘I’m the ideas man, I’m the one putting my hairy Scottish backside on the line to save the world. I am not going to stand aside while those burger-eating invasion monkeys threaten to undermine my government and my masterplan to save all humanity.’

‘You’re speaking to the press in twenty-one minutes,’ said Lucy, who had used the PM’s mini-speech to quickly brush the globule of Prime Ministerial gob from her shoulder.

The PM glared darkly at her and then switched his look to Bleacher.

‘And what am I supposed to say? I have my vision, and I will not be distracted from that, but the bloody press are only going to want to talk about these murders.’

‘Yes, Prime Minister, they are! And you’re going to have to talk to them about it whether you like it or not.’

‘Am not!’ yelled the PM. ‘I will have my day, I will not be distracted from My Purpose. I did not come to this blighted European capital to leave with my tail between my legs because of a few murders. In the grand design, the great scheme, what are seventeen puny lives set against the destiny of the human race?’

As it happened, the authorities in the puny European capital were quite delighted about the dramatic goings-on surrounding the British delegation. It helped detract from the complete disaster of the climate change negotiations, which were going the same way as the Amazonian rainforest, the white tiger and the Antarctic ice shelf.

‘Very well, Prime Minister,’ said Bleacher. ‘You can counter every question about the killer Trelawny with a comment about the future of mankind.’

‘Thank you,’ said the PM derisively, ‘I appreciate you giving me your permission.’

Blaine buried his head in a document listing all the MPs who could potentially fill the two cabinet posts which had become available; Lucy, meanwhile, sat and waited to be excused, so that she could wash her hands, as she could still feel the insidious wet of the PM’s spit on her finger. 

1014hrs    A Plane    Over the North Sea

DCI Frankenstein and DS Hewitt were flying to Copenhagen to speak to the local police about the latest series of fantastical murders. They had bought most of the food available on the plane and were tucking into their second breakfast.

‘Like, so,’ said Hewitt, ‘where does this leave us with Barney Thomson? You speak to Three Beards?’

‘Yes,’ said Frankenstein. ‘Insomuch as anyone ever has a conversation with the woman. You’re standing there talking to her, and you know that you’re the investigating officer, you know that you’re not actually guilty of anything yourself, but by God, you just can’t help but feel that she’s accusing you of something.’

‘Like, wow, I’ve got to meet this chick,’ said Hewitt.

Frankenstein gave him a sideways glance, then continued talking through a mouthful of some sort of egg. ‘Surprise, surprise, she thinks Barney’s guilty and has an accomplice.’

‘But Trelawny’s been fingered in Denmark and at Westminster. Barney obviously isn’t Trelawny.’

‘She thinks it’s too obvious...’

Hewitt nodded sagely. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘One of them.’

‘There’s one good thing about her, though,’ said Frankenstein. ‘Apparently they’re going to get her onto the panel when Blair goes up in front of the Iraq inquiry. I’d like to see his God protect him then.’

Hewitt nodded and took a large bite out of something that might, at one time, have been a sausage.

1312hrs   London, England

Barney Thomson sat huddled in a corner. He’d had no communication with anyone since Three Beards had been in to see him seven hours previously. The light had been turned off, he’d had no food, nothing to drink. He hadn’t been allowed to go to the toilet, and so had had to use a corner of the room.

His human rights were being infringed. What he needed was for some campaigning soul to turn up and speak on his defence, to take his case to the courts, to at least get him held captive in decent conditions. And the fact was that he had now been held for five days without being charged.

Everyone seemed so convinced about his guilt, however - despite Trelawny - that no one seemed willing to speak on his part.

Barney huddled in his misery.

There was a knock at the door, but Barney did not even lift his head. Why would anyone be knocking?

The door opened and a shaft of light scythed into the room. A wee woman poked her face round the door, but seemed reluctant to actually enter.

‘Mr Thomson,’ she said, her voice much softer than that of the acerbic and acidic Three Beards. ‘There’s someone here to see you. Someone from Liberty, to see if you’re being treated all right. I do hope you’ll have nice things to say about the accommodation today, we do like to pride ourselves.’

Barney still didn’t look up. His fingers had gone white with the cold, he had become used to the smell of his toilet corner, his brain had shut down.

‘Who is it?’ he asked.

The woman at the door, No Beards some called her, coughed gently, and said, ‘It’s Shami Chakrabarti, Mr Thomson.’

Barney disappeared further into his reserve. If only it had been Igor. He remembered Igor.

‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll pass.’

2313hrs EST   Off The Coast of Maine, USA

With the now-ended interregnum in murder, death and slaughter, and while Barney had been held captive and the Prime Minister and Bleacher had assumed his guilt, the British invasion force had hovered off the American coast, pretending to be in a state of disrepair, waiting for further orders. The military had used the opportunity to strengthen the force, and now there were seven ships, over a thousand troops, two Polaris submarines and seven attack helicopters in this advanced party.

All they were waiting for was the order to attack; and as the PM huffed and puffed in Copenhagen, Denmark, and saw an American plot everywhere he looked, his finger hovered over the phone, ready to make the call.

To be continued: Friday 18th December 2009

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