The Wormwood Code (3 page)

'Someone's dead?' he asked. 'Bloody hell, something else to keep us off the front pages. Who is it now? Probably flippin' Camilla, that would really finish us off.'

'Ramone,' said Williams, his voice breaking as he spoke. He cleared his throat, said 'Ramone' again a little more clearly. Barney nodded. That made sense. He hadn't heard the name of the previous hairdresser, but it was pretty obvious from the PM's napper that he had been getting his hair cut by someone called Ramone for the last few years.

'Arf,' said Igor.

The PM glanced at him, then at Barney.

'You knew Ramone?' he asked. 'You know, you being barbers?'

Barney shook his head, then he looked at Williams and said, 'Cause of death? Timing, suspects, arrests, anything out of the ordinary?'

Williams, Thackeray and the Prime Minister stared at Barney curiously, wondering suddenly if the sense of assurance which the new barber carried came from the fact that he worked for MI6. Or MI5. Or the CIA. The PM looked at Williams and nodded.

'Yes,' he said, 'any of that stuff. I feel it's vitally important at this stage to have all the facts, with fully documented, verifiable evidence to support them.'

'Found in a hotel room, not far from here. He'd been dead a couple of days.'

Williams hesitated. The PM glanced at Barney, as if the barber was in charge and might be able to hurry Williams up a little. He looked at his watch, his curiosity mixing with his desire to get his hair finished before the press conference that morning.

'He'd had his stomach cut open and stuffed with a chicken. The chicken's head had been cut off and thrust down his throat.'

The PM blanched. Thackeray suddenly felt the vomit rise from his stomach, and seeing as he was in the bathroom, he didn't have far to go anyway. He dived for the toilet, as Barney rolled his eyes and looked at Igor.

Same old, same old, thought Barney. This kind of murder was always all show and no tell.

'Arf!' exclaimed Igor.

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1857hrs

T
he day had been spent in mass cover up. It wasn't as if the PM had had anything to do with his barber's grotesque death, for he certainly hadn't, and neither, as far as he knew, had anyone else in his party or organisation, but he couldn't let the story get out. Not at this stage, possibly not ever. And so the right words about national security had been said, Williams had been admonished for relating the story in front of Barney and Igor, and the number of people who knew about it was in the process of being kept to the absolute minimum. Health and crime and squabbles over immigration had seen the day trudge by in the usual two-weeks-to-go banality. Soundbites and counter-soundbites, with nothing new to be said. Big lead in the polls, and it wasn't as if anyone doubted who was going to win.

There was a knock at the study door, and the PM immediately sat down behind his desk, feeling guilty that he'd almost been caught idly staring out the window yet again. Found it so hard to concentrate these days.

The door opened and Thackeray stuck his head round, without actually coming in, just in time to see the PM stumble back into his seat.

'There's a new Pope, Sir,' he said.

'Thank God,' said the PM, without irony. 'One more day of that on the front pages and we can get on with the real business. Some awful Italian, I expect, is it?'

'German,' said Thackeray.

'You're kidding me!' exclaimed the PM. 'I thought that lot all reformed in the 17th Century?'

'16th Century, Sir, and that's a little simplistic.'

The PM shook his head and stared at his desk.

'German,' he said under his breath.

'Sorry about earlier,' said Thackeray. 'In the bathroom.'

The PM looked up and nodded. Seemed to notice Thackeray for the first time, and wondered perhaps if he'd been crying.

'Go home, Hugo,' he said.

'Thank you, Sir,' said Thackeray, and then he stepped away from the office, closed the door and went back to work for another four hours.

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1141hrs

T
he end of another mundane old election day, and another mundane day which had brought murder once more into the life of Barney Thomson. He looked at his watch, took the last sip of his second glass of Chilean chardonnay; full length, yet showing undercurrents of pears, apples, gooseberries and Barbara Windsor. He looked around the bar, noticed that it had thinned out a little since the last time he'd lifted his head from his ruminations and looked across the table at his companion.

'Time to go,' said Barney. 'We have a seven o'clock with our new boss.'

'Arf,' came the reply, and Barney Thomson and Igor rose slowly from their table and headed for the exit.

As they left, there were seven other tables in the establishment occupied. Just under half of them were taken by people who were there to keep an eye on the two newcomers in the city. And, as Barney and Igor stepped out of the wine bar, three men and a woman surreptitiously rose from their seats just a little behind, whilst another man spoke quietly into his watch.

'The barber and the deaf-mute hunchback have left the building,' he said, before relaxing and delving once more into his Californian merlot.

The stalking of Barney and Igor had begun.

0647hrs

T
he Prime Minister was already up, sitting at the side table in his office eating toast and eggs, drinking coffee, even though he knew with every cup that his teeth became more and more stained. (It was on seeing him sitting in just such a position that Thackeray had come up with the execrable idea for the PM/Chancellor breakfast party political broadcast, about which the PM was still kicking himself. He'd already heard rumours that black market copies of the video were selling for $50 a time in the porn shops in Amsterdam. Chirac was said to have literally pissed himself laughing when he'd first seen it and had been giving him dirty phone calls ever since.)

Between every mouthful of toast and egg, he would stop and sigh heavily. Breakfast turned to ash in his mouth. In his head he made a list of the good and the bad of being Prime Minister.

Good: you got to be a world statesman and affect the future of the planet; you got to travel first class; you had your own close protection team; you got to eat lots of nice food; you never had to actually do anything for yourself, not even wipe your own bottom if you didn't want to; you got to beat up on small countries which couldn't stand up to you and your big brother; you got to drive around in flash cars.

Bad: everybody thought you were a complete arsehole; when you ran for re-election you had to visit schools and appear on GMTV, both with Gordon Brown, and sometimes both on the same morning. Then you had to go to flippin' Leeds to meet "Real People" and had to be interviewed by that bastard Paxman for the bloody BBC.

Why?

He thrust another piece of egg into his mouth and stared disconsolately at the array of morning papers which Thackeray had brought in ten minutes previously. The man had wanted to spend half an hour running through them, as if the PM was incapable of reading, but he had dispatched him quickly. He needed to be alone. This morning he had been beaten 7-0 by the Pope in terms of newspaper headlines, but that was to be expected. He had given up on the day for headlines, as soon as the news of the Pontiff's appointment had been made. However, it was for one day only, and on Thursday – after the packed programme he had today – he could expect to be beating the Pope by a similar margin. He looked at the Sun.
From Hitler Youth to Papa Ratzi
.

The true genius of the British journalistic press at work.

*

D
etective Chief Inspector Grogan and Detective Sergeant Eason stared at the dead, unplucked beheaded chicken, which had been found in the gouged-out stomach of the PM's personal hair stylist Ramone. They had been looking at it for most of the night; neither of them had slept in nearly thirty-six hours. Grogan liked to stare at clues for as long as was required, in the belief that eventually the truth would come to him, by epiphany, downright obviousness, or by some other more supernatural means. He never cared where it came from, but it usually came.

'You thinking what I'm thinking?' said Grogan, then laughed at his own little election-related joke.

Eason had been imagining he was James Bond, lying naked in one of those Japanese mountain spas, being pleasured by seven or eight Japanese girl agents, while the snow monkeys looked on.

'I doubt it,' he said.

'Two weeks before the election and the Prime Minister's personal barber gets murdered with a chicken,' said Grogan. 'It's no coincidence.'

Eason looked away from the chicken for the first time in four hours. He stared at Grogan, whose eyes remained locked on the decapitated poultry.

'Sir?' he said.

Grogan answered with a raised eyebrow, without looking at him.

'We've been sitting here all night looking at the last chicken at Sainsbury's,' said Eason, 'and all you've come up with is, it's no coincidence?'

Grogan did not reply.

'Can I go and get breakfast now?' asked Eason.

'Contribute,' said Grogan. 'Then you can go and get breakfast. Or lunch, or dinner, depending on when it is you actually think of something.'

Eason stared at him, not in the least incredulous, because that was what he'd been expecting.

'Look at the chicken,' said Grogan.

Eason stared for another couple of seconds, then turned back and looked at the chicken.

The clock ticked. Eason's stomach rumbled loudly. Grogan clucked his tongue, unconsciously getting inside the mind of a chicken. Outside, the horn of a London bus blared, as a black BMW cut him up on the inside.

'The chicken wasn't acting alone?' ventured Eason.

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0712hrs

'B
ig day today,' said the Prime Minister, catching Barney's eye in the mirror.

Barney was fussing around the Prime Ministerial napper, with nothing to do other than snip at a couple of non-existent hairs, and apply the odd bit of hairspray here and there.

'Paxman?' ventured Barney.

The PM made some unattractive grunt.

'Paxman,' he agreed. 'Course, I'll make mincemeat out of the wanker. What can he say? He'll question me on Iraq, and I just pull the old, I did what I felt was right routine. I own the statement, he can't fault me on it. I'll stop short of pulling George's God stuff, but it's not far off. What can he say?'

'Well,' said Barney, 'he can imply that you only invaded Iraq so that you could support the West's arms and logistics industries, because your government is principally interested in the profit of big business, in whose pocket you belong.'

Barney snipped away, quite unconcerned. His caution of the day before had vanished on the back of one day on the campaign trail. If he got kicked off it, all for the best. He was bored now, after a day in the Big Smoke, and found himself strangely yearning for the quiet solitude and gentle waves of Millport. Of course, there was always the possibility that what had happened to Ramone would happen to him, but then, what did he care? He'd been dead once before with his brain in a jar. After that, nothing seemed particularly intimidating.

The Prime Minister smiled uncomfortably, until he caught sight of his teeth in the mirror, and then he grimaced and looked sternly at Barney.

'I can assure you, and the real people of Britain, that at the end of the day, I want to make it absolutely clear that I have already answered that question, and I believe that the hardworking families of Britain understand this.'

Barney stopped for a second as he looked down on the balding head of the PM, his hair a great swathe on which Ramone had worked his magic, covering up the rampant progression of baldy napperness. A brief insight into the clichéd world of the PM. Barney turned and looked at Williams, who was waiting patiently behind, and then he glanced at Igor.

'Arf,' said Igor, and Barney nodded. The PM caught his eye in the mirror, then looked at himself once more. Perhaps he hadn't been so wise in bringing Barney down to London in the first place. He bared his teeth. He paled at the sight of the dead tooth on the lower jaw, then let his lips close over, like a fridge door closing on stale cheese.

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1141hrs

T
hey were on their way to Leeds to meet real people. A stage-managed meeting with real people, but a meeting all the same. The PM was edgy, the GMTV/school gate part of the day out of the way, but with a real people situation lying imminently on the horizon. Barney and Igor had been brought along for the ride, and were sitting at a four-man table on the train, staring out the window as another dull English spring day passed them by. Williams and Thackeray were fussing about, as were Winsome and Gail, the PR girls. There were a few others in the entourage, a screaming bunch of journalists, and then there were a couple of other foreign bodies on the train. Men who were there to ask questions, but who were not from the press.

Barney and Igor were just about to get down to a telepathic discussion on whether it might be time for an early lunch, when the two empty seats beside them suddenly became occupied. Igor looked suspiciously at the two newcomers, Barney gave them the universal eyebrow of curiosity.

'Hello,' said Barney. 'Polis?'

Eason nodded. Grogan flicked open a badge.

'Grogan and Eason, Scotland Yard,' he said.

'Thought you people were supposed to be keeping this thing ultra hush-hush?' said Barney. 'Walking up and down a train full of journalists, doesn't seem to be the best way to be incognito.'

'We've got cover as AP,' said Eason. 'The press don't suspect a thing.'

'Seriously,' said Grogan, 'if you're a journalist looking for the PM's smoking gun, you're not going to imagine that his hairdresser got murdered with a chicken.'

Barney smiled.

'Good point,' he said. 'So what d'you want to ask us? My friend can lip-read, but you might not understand him. I'll translate where required.'