The Barbershop Seven (118 page)

To cut a long story off before it becomes gargantuan, he had no idea what a George Clooney
Batman & Robin
looked like. But not that it really mattered, as there were just plain not that many things he could do with JLM's hair in any case.

'So,' said JLM, catching Weirdlove's eye in the mirror, 'the speech is done?'

'Yes, sir, it is,' said Weirdlove, 'and I think William's done a good job. Kept it short, as you requested, and a few jokes in at the start at the expense of the Tories. Lovely one about Westminster which might have the Prime Minister twitching in his pants...'

'Champion.'

'There are going to be a few journos there, so you'll have some questions to answer.'

'You got a prep folder?' asked JLM.

'Yes, sir. I've kept it brief. They're mostly likely to ask about Honeyfoot and Filiben. If you think they've been murdered...'

'How the dazzling fuck should I know?'

'Exactly, sir,' said Weirdlove. 'What you're going to do about replacing Filiben, until we know exactly what's happened to her.'

JLM looked troubled at having to give some thought to an executive matter.

'Who's her deputy?' he asked.

'MacPherson,' said Weirdlove.

'Don't know him,' said JLM. 'I think we should probably transfer the responsibility to the Minister for Enterprise, don't you? Enterprise, Education, makes sense to loop them together.'

Weirdlove nodded, making a note on his clipboard. His lips twitched. Barney fluttered away around the fringes of JLM's hair, making it marginally more bouffant. The Amazing Mr X stared at the door and waited.

'Do you want me to patch the call through to Ms Wanderlip for you, sir?' asked Weirdlove.

JLM looked troubled, made a show of studying his watch and thinking. Shook his head; Barney saw it coming, and diverted the mousse massage just in time.

'Just not enough minutes in the day,' he said. 'I'll call her later. If we have to announce it to the press before she knows about it, I'm sure she'll understand.'

'Absolutely, sir,' said Weirdlove.

'Lovely,' said JLM. 'Anything else?'

Weirdlove drew a deep breath, studied his notes.

'Just one other thing, sir,' he said. 'The Herald's picked up on a story about a suspected Rwandan war criminal living in Glasgow. Looks like they're going to try and make something of it. Might get a little sticky.'

'What did he do?' asked JLM.

Weirdlove studied his notes. His face contorted slightly as he reread the details.

'He's accused of helping to take injured Tutsis to a hospital, to the point where it was horrendously overcrowded. About three thousand people in a hospital for a few hundred.'

'And that's a crime?'

'Then he set fire to the hospital and burned them alive. His men macheted to death anyone who tried to escape.'

There was a pause. Barney swallowed and glanced at Weirdlove. JLM lowered his eyes, while the picture of what had happened unavoidably came to mind. Even The Amazing Mr X looked up.

'Jesus,' said JLM. Then he shook his head. 'Where is Rwanda anyway?' he asked, regaining normal transmission.

'Central Africa, sir,' said Weirdlove. 'East of the Congo.'

'Africa?' said JLM. 'God, you live and learn, don't you? All this time I'd been hearing about Rwandan war crimes, I thought it was one of the Baltic states or something. So it didn't happen in the Second World War?'

'No,' said Weirdlove, slowly. '1994.'

'Christ,' said JLM, 'nobody's going to give a shit then. Just leave me to it, I'll say all the right things. We done?'

Weirdlove looked back at his notes. Reread over the story of the Rwandan war criminal. Wanted to say something else, but knew the tone in JLM's voice. He could leave it for another day.

'Yes, sir,' he said.

'Excellent,' said JLM, 'lovely. Barn? You done?'

JLM admired his new hair, which was barely different, in the mirror. Barney, who wanted to stick the scissors into the back of his head, nodded and laid down his tools.

'Clear,' he said.

'Champion,' said JLM, standing up. 'Absolutely lovely. Come on, team.'

And, as he marched to the door, The Amazing Mr X leapt up to dive out the door in front of him, checking the outer office for terrorists, spies, hoodlums and journalists.

Uh-oh...

––––––––

T
he Rev Blake was dressed in civvies: fuck-me boots, blue jeans and a thin, maroon crushed velvet top. She wasn't wearing any underwear, either, but Barney Thomson had yet to notice. She had her glass of white wine, Barney had a bottle of Miller. (Barney Thomson never used to drink American beers at home. Now here he was; he'd be at the Coors Lite next.) She was on the sofa, he was sat opposite on a large comfy chair. Another woman back at his place, a minister at that, and it seemed no more or no less surreal to him than the rest of the previous few days.

'You just have to watch what she's saying, that's all,' said Alison Blake, forcing a discussion about Rebecca Blackadder that Barney didn't want to have. 'She's a bit of a loose canon.'

'Aye, whatever,' he said. 'Don't really want to talk about her.'

'I understand,' said Blake. 'I realise it must be difficult for you. You've been unconscious a long time.'

Barney eyed her suspiciously, took a swallow of beer, set the bottle down on the small table at the side of his chair.

'Unconscious, eh?' he said. 'What story are you going to tell me, then?'

Blake leant forward, and the shifting position of the v-neck and the movement of the top against her chest, gave Barney the first inclination of the no-underwear thing. Tried not to think about it.

'The truth,' she said earnestly. 'You can trust me.' Was on the point of invoking God, but thought the better of it. He would either believe her or not; God wouldn't come into it.

'All right,' said Barney. 'Tell me what you know.'

She rested her forearms on her knees. Held her glass in both hands between her legs.

'You were chasing a man called Leyman Blizzard across a moorland in the Borders,' she said, crisply. Tell it quickly and convincingly. Be honest about the face. The same rules applied as when teaching the word of God to sceptics.

Barney nodded. Leyman Blizzard. The name did more than ring a bell. Blizzard, the old bugger. Had murdered Katie Dillinger in the church.

'Go on,' he said.

'You fell off a ledge, smacked your head on a rock. You were found the following morning, having been out on a cold, wet night. Comatose. Another half hour and you would've been dead.'

'All right,' said Barney, 'sounds plausible so far.'

'You were in hospital for over two years. It was a big thing at first, because of your past. Barney Thomson caught and in a coma, all that kind of stuff. Headlines in the newspapers for a while. Strathclyde Police launched an inquiry, then at some stage Blizzard handed himself over and told his story. There was, to be frank, a bit of revisionism done on your life, and you were more or less exonerated for your past crimes.'

'That's what Rebecca said.'

'At least she got something right,' said Blake, caustically. 'Big news one day, might as well be dead in a ditch the next. Having handed himself in, Leyman Blizzard obviously changed his mind, and he managed to escape. So, he was that month's celebrity psychopath. Centrefold in Playloony. The whole nine yards.'

Barney nodded. Long term unconsciousness was a bit more credible as an explanation.

'How did I get to be here, though?' he asked.

More credible perhaps, but he doubted whether anyone in this situation would be able to convince him of the veracity of any explanation.

'You were just languishing in a hospital. The serial barber that time forgot. Happens to everyone that's famous for five minutes. Your wife divorced you...'

'My wife?' he said, and another large part of his life came moseying back in on a lame horse.

'There was an obscure question to parliament about you one day, from some obscure MSP. Disagreement about whether or not to turn off the life support. Jesse got interested. He may look like this absurdly egotistical narcissist, but there's a decent man in there somewhere. Got interested in your story, got you moved to a private medical facility. The Father and I, well, we've been saying our prayers for you. I know what I look and sound like sometimes, but I do have faith. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.'

That'll be the Bible then, thought Barney.

'It can make a difference,' she continued, talking through his thoughts, 'and with you, well it did. Last week you started showing signs of improvement. Sudden indications of brain activity. And, well, JLM decided to have you moved to our apartments. We were waiting for you to wake up. Here you are.'

Barney stared at the floor, the thin carpet, cold and clinical. Another day, another story. Only difference being that this time it wasn't in the realms of scientific fantasy.

He sat back in his chair, stretched out, pressed his hands against his face. Left them there. Just wanted everyone to leave him alone. Had been interested the night before when Blackadder had told her story, but now he didn't want anyone's concern, didn't want to hear any more stories. Left alone in a dark room for several days, and he'd probably come up with the answer himself.

He jumped at her touch; her soft fingers against the back of his hand. Felt the gentle whisper of her breath and then her lips against his forehead. A delicate kiss, lingered over only briefly and then she knelt down on the floor.

'You don't believe me,' she said.

Barney took his hands away from his face, opened his eyes, but didn't look at her. Stared at the ceiling. Swallowed.

'Don't know what to believe,' he said.

She ran her fingers down the side of his face, a tender touch, let her hand linger beside his lips. After a few seconds, he found himself kissing her fingers.

'You can put your faith in me, Barney,' she said. 'Put your faith in the Lord. He will show you the way, I promise. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.'

He turned and looked down at her, her pale face a few inches away in the dim light of the evening room. He felt like crying, he felt like breaking down into a billion separate molecules, or melting into a hundred gallons of water, so that he could just wash away.

Her hand was still against his face; she lifted her eyes, her mouth, she lifted her head close to his, he could smell the scented soap with which she'd washed half an hour earlier. Her lips met his, soft and gentle, and he gave into them and melted into a hundred gallons of water so that he was washed away.

Well, for God's sake, let's not get carried away. They snogged and then she led him off to the bedroom, where the lad Barney gave as good as he got.

––––––––

T
wo o'clock in the morning, JLM was lying in bed reading one of his press scrapbooks. He'd been keeping them since he'd made his first speech to the Scottish Labour Party Conference in Perth as a teenager, thirty years previously. His favourite ones were from just before he became First Minister, when the press were in the business of talking him up; which contrasted markedly with their attitude since he'd become First Minister, when they'd done everything to drag him down.

So that was what he was reading now as he lay alone in bed with his nightly cup of diet hot chocolate. An article entitled
Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Man To Save Scotland
. There were several on the same theme, as all the Scottish broadsheets had rallied to his cause following the ignominious departure of his predecessor.

It made comforting late night reading after a stressful day. Bloody Ayrshire, he'd thought, as he generally couldn't be bothered heading any further west than Livingston. No end of mindless questions from the buggering minions during the day, a good speech wasted on the suits of the Chambers of Commerce, and then a grilling from some bloody awful Herald journalist – a man who he'd ensure would never again darken the press room door when JLM was in attendance – about the Rwandan thing, a subject he just wouldn't let go. So reading his own press from a while ago was the equivalent of the warm cup of chocolate at his bedside. Solace at the end of a lousy day.

Tomorrow, however, he hoped for better things. There was a G8 conference coming up in Toronto, and he was determined to be there. As far as he could tell, he had as much right as the bloody PM, and just because the PM had rebuffed the suggestion when he had run it by him, did not mean that there wouldn't be other ways to try and force the issue. So he would be having a meeting with a representative from the Canadian government. That, and Herr Vogts would be arriving from Germany for some serious work on how to bypass Westminster on the introduction of the Euro.

He was just rereading the paragraph about his unusual breadth of vision, when he heard a bit of a stramash downstairs. Raised voices, thumping footsteps, and he looked at the clock. Minnie was away for a few days, attending a conference on women's issues in The Hague. Piece of bloody nonsense, JLM had thought, but it got her out of his hair for a while, and allowed her to feel that she was making a contribution to the world. Besides, it didn't do him any harm to be seen to have an effective wife.

He was still contemplating why she would be back this early, when the door to his bedroom was thrown open and Winona Wanderlip careered into the room. She looked wild and exciting, her hair tossed to the skies, much of it defying the fundamental laws of physics. Her beige summer jacket was pulled to one side, as if someone had made an ineffectual grab at her arm and she had been in too much haste to sort it out. Mouth wide and pouting, heart pumping like a piston, adrenaline coursing through her body at a rate of a hundred and seventy-three pints a minute, she stood in the centre of the bedroom.

Behind her, a bit beleaguered and looking a wee bitty embarrassed, came The Amazing Mr X, who came and stood next to her, although not so close that she could've had a swing at his testicles.