The Wormwood Code (14 page)

The door opened and Barney Thomson, barber, walked in, accompanied by Igor, barber's assistant. The Gang of Four, as they had become known amongst the jealous not-so-elite who had been pushed to the side, who were advising the PM on his every move, were all in attendance. Except that there were only three of them. Thackeray had not been seen since the night before. However, given that his caffeine-overloaded behaviour had become so odd, everyone was glad to see him taking some time out, and assumed he'd finally collapsed in a great heap somewhere. Any feelings of grievance that Williams had at the usurper Barney Thomson, were now a little assuaged by his triumph over Thackeray.

The PM looked up from the Observer then pushed it to the side, as Barney entered.

'Come in,' he said, a statement mostly negated by the fact that they were already both in and helping themselves to tea and croissants. 'You seen the papers?'

Barney glanced at the pile strewn around the floor and shook his head.

'The last Sunday,' he said, 'they must be going for it.'

The PM snorted and gestured at the pile on the floor.

'Blinkin' Sunday Times, after all I've done for those people. Vote Tory! Are they kidding me? What the hell do they want to say that for? I'm livid. Fucking Murdoch. I hate the fact...I hate the fact...' and then finally he gave up on the sentence, unable to bring himself to say it.

'You hate the fact that he's got more power in this country than you have,' said Barney, finishing it for him. 'I know. I hate the fact that he's got more power than me, but what can you do?'

'You're not Prime Minister,' sulked the PM bitterly.

'And neither will you be much longer,' thought Igor, who knew things that the others didn't, although all that crossed his lips was a soft 'arf'.

'And they've got a leaked Foreign Office memo from well before the war started. We're going to get screwed by that stuff one day. Totally screwed.'

'We're not,' said Barney, taking a bite into the freshest, tastiest croissant he'd had in years. 'Wow,' he said, momentarily breaking the conversation, 'this is the tastiest croissant I've ever had. Very fresh.'

'Arf,' said Igor enthusiastically, having just made the same discovery.

'What d'you mean,
we're
not?' said the PM.

'It's your baby,' said Barney. 'Everyone holds you accountable.
We're
not,
you
are. Even your number two, your new best friend the Chancellor, isn't tarred with the same brush. Just you. However, you're not going to be accountable this week, not yet. It'll be like Nixon winning the election five months after the Watergate break-in.'

The PM sighed heavily, glanced at the rabidly and obviously anti-Labour Express, threw it onto the pile, and turned round to Williams.

'What d'you think, Dan Dan?' he asked.

Williams leant forward, knowing it was time for a little ego massage.

'You'll be fine, Sir. You did the right thing, and in time, as Iraq stabilises, the people will realise that. He had to be gotten rid of, Sir, and that's all that matters.'

'So invade Zimbabwe then,' said Barney. 'D'oh, no oil! Why bother? North Korea then. Wait, too tricky. China? No, we'd get massacred. Syria? Mmm, there's a thought.'

The PM groaned and turned his back on Williams's ego rubdown.

'How long d'you think I have?' he said to Barney.

'Arf,' replied Igor, who knew that moves were afoot to replace him before polling day.

'Depends on the size of your majority, I suppose,' said Barney, 'and the ups and downs of party in-fighting. Look, you'll probably be able to stick it out for as long as you feel like. These things trickle out in dribs and drabs, and people get used to it. This leaked memo from the Foreign Office. It admitted that there was no case for war, that the case was going to have to be manufactured, and that you were only going to support the invasion because your mate George wanted to do it. Yet you've rebutted it this morning with a press release saying that it doesn't tell us anything new. And neither does it. Everyone already knows that stuff. We all heard the evidence at the Hutton inquiry. Except Hutton of course. We all know we went to war so you could suck up to your mate. Everyone thinks you're a liar, which is your own fault, but they still vote for you anyway. I've been telling you all week. Sit it out, then next term invade somewhere else, and you'll be able to put Iraq behind you.'

'Arf,' added Igor.

The PM stared at Barney. His anger had been growing with every word, an anger born of hearing unpleasant truths. There was a knock at the door and a short man in need of a haircut entered, just in time to break the tension. They all looked at him, wondering why he was there. The PM vaguely recognised him, one of the Downing Street staff with whom he rarely had any business. The man bent down next to Williams, whispered something in his ear, then straightened up, waiting for a reply. Williams' eyes opened wide and he stared at an indistinct space in the air. Colour seemed to go from his face as he sat, then he looked at the messenger.

'Make sure you speak to DCI Grogan or Chief Super MacDonald.'

The man nodded, then turned and quickly left the office. Barney bit into the last of the croissant, although there was no way he wasn't having another one. Igor stared at Williams, waiting for the news. He assumed it was going to be bad, which was all the more exciting. The PM gave Williams a raised eyebrow, wondering what could possibly have gone wrong now. Wondered if someone had leaked the memo he'd written to George where he'd admitted that invading Iraq was completely unlawful, but would be cracking fun and great for business.

'Yes?' he finally said to Williams, impatience growing.

'It's Thackeray, Sir,' said Williams. 'They've found him in a broom cupboard downstairs.'

'Oh, God,' said the PM. 'He didn't fall asleep having sex with a vacuum cleaner did he?'

Barney gave the PM the benefit of his raised eyebrow.

'No, Sir,' said Williams. 'He's been murdered.'

Igor perked up. Barney sank. Murder, murder, wherever he went.

'Murdered?' said the PM. 'You mean, dead? He's dead?'

'Yes, Sir,' said Williams.

'The same m.o.?' asked the PM. 'You know, the chicken?'

Williams shook his head. This, perhaps, was the most terrifyingly complicated part of the whole thing.

'He'd been killed by a copy of
The Da Vinci Code
.'

Igor smiled wickedly. Barney was at least reasonably impressed.

'Oh,' said the PM, 'that sounds intriguing. What d'you think it means?'

––––––––

1003hrs

D
etective Chief Inspector Grogan had taken over a small room at Number 10 Downing Street, to use for interviewing employees and various hangers-on – or "suspects" as he liked to call them. Once again his men and women had been shepherded in through the back door, the whole thing being kept as much under wraps as possible. The murder of one of the Prime Minister's principal advisors was going to be explosive news, and the government machine had immediately moved smoothly into place, ensuring that the public did not get to hear about it.

The PM had excused himself from Grogan's investigation, an appearance on Breakfast With Frost to be negotiated. Not that he considered being interviewed by Frost the most challenging thing on the planet.

There was a knock at the door of the small office and Dan Williams poked his head round. Eleventh person to be seen in the last hour. Grogan had a way of identifying quickly whether someone was going to be of any use, and getting rid of them if he thought they weren't.

'Sit down,' said Grogan. Williams walked forward, took his place in his seat by the desk. Grogan was perched on the edge of the desk, smoking furiously. The open window and stiffish early summer breeze were the only things saving the room from being instantly declared not safe for human habitation.

'You were friends with the deceased, or just colleagues?' asked Grogan quickly. Had already been given the necessary details on Williams's background.

'Colleagues,' said Williams. 'Rivals, to be honest.'

Grogan raised the old eyebrow.

'Enough to want to kill him?'

Williams laughed and snapped his fingers at Grogan.

'Sharp,' he said. 'Might have thought about it before, to be honest, but he was falling to pieces anyway. Couldn't stand the pace of the campaign. I was leaving him for dead.'

'I admire your candour,' said Grogan. 'Now you're going to tell me if you know of anyone else who might've wanted him dead.'

Williams shrugged, took his gaze away from Grogan and stared at the floor.

'Not that I can say. He was an amazing suck-up to the PM, but that's not actually a capital offence in its own right.'

'Did the PM like that?' asked Grogan.

'Not sure,' Williams replied. 'It's not like I ever did it. I hope you're not thinking that the PM might have killed him.'

'Of course not,' said Grogan, and Williams relaxed a little. 'If he'd wanted the man dead he'd have got the RAF to drop a bomb on him.'

'Steady!'

'Who was the visitor you had yesterday afternoon?' said Grogan quickly.

Williams looked a little discomfited, and then nodded slowly.

'Yes, yes,' he said. 'American guy from the embassy, name of Roosevelt. You'll have seen he was checked in. Observing our campaign, that kind of thing. Very low level, a few basic, uninteresting questions.'

'You met him before?'

Williams shook his head. Glanced at his watch. Things to do while the PM was out.

'Would you be surprised to hear that the US Embassy has no one working here called Roosevelt.'

The look on Williams's face showed that he was surprised right enough.

'So, who was the guy?' asked Grogan.

'US Embassy,' said Williams, a little confused.

'I just told you he wasn't,' said Grogan. 'How was the meeting set up?'

'Through the normal channels. I think. I'll need to check.'

'I already checked,' said Grogan. 'I pegged this guy as my main suspect in the first five minutes of the investigation. You see Thackeray at all after Roosevelt left the building?'

Williams thought about it, eventually shook his head.

'The man had a room at the Hilton, checked out last night. This is who we're looking for, Mr Williams. You are going to have to remember everything you can about him, right down to the length of his individual nose hairs. Sit down,' he went on, a nugatory statement as Williams already was, 'and start thinking.'

––––––––

1415hrs

R
oosevelt lay on the bed, hands behind his back, in his new hotel room, watching 24-hour news. Very confident that his latest escapade wasn't going to be mentioned, but he could enjoy watching the calm of the campaign – which was, of course, very, very calm – while knowing the tumult that would be going on beneath it all. At least at Number 10, if not at the HQ of the opposition. The small wooden box, which was going to prove so decisive in this election, sat beside him on the bed. He had taken another chance or two to look at it, knowing that soon it would be out of his hands and he would never see it again. The end was almost upon them, and it now mostly rested on his colleague inside Tory Party HQ, Dane Bledsoe, supposed crack PR man, to choose the timing and the individuals involved.

––––––––

1501hrs

B
arney Thomson and Igor, his assistant, sat and observed as the world passed by. They were on the grass by the Mall, watching the tourists walk up and down, a camera over every shoulder.

'It's awful, Igor,' said Barney, taking a sip of a bottle of mineral water which had set him back nearly three hundred pounds. 'I'm Jessica Whatshername in
Murder She Wrote
. I'm Miss Marple. I'm flippin' Poirot. All I need to do is turn up somewhere and somebody gets murdered.'

'Arf,' said Igor.

'Good point,' said Barney. It was true. Ramone MacGregor had been murdered before Barney had got here; in fact, he would never have been brought down, but for the hairdresser's death. He had been brought into an already murderous situation. 'Even so, it's depressing. I just want to go back to Millport and be bored. I want to get up in the morning and stroll along the front to get my rolls. I want to have five customers a day, and go out for a walk in the evening and eat fish and chips and listen to the waves. That's all.' He thought about the promenade at Millport, the smell of the grass when it's freshly cut, the smell of the water, the stony beach which once was sandy when he'd been young. 'I want to be bored,' he said, his voice low. 'That's all.'

Igor nodded. That was what he himself had wanted for a long time, after years of being chased out of towns by angry villagers with torches, but he had been in Millport longer than Barney. He didn't want the simple, boring life anymore. He had grand plans and grand visions. He wanted to have another meeting with the man who had told him that he, Igor, the deaf-mute hunchbacked barber's assistant, could well be about to become Prime Minister.

'Arf,' he said, and Barney nodded, picking the arf up all the wrong way.

0714hrs

B
ank holiday Monday. A slow start to the day, the Prime Ministerial team leafing through the papers, extracting opinion polls, pieces that they could use in their favour, articles that they knew they would have to rebut.

'Anywhere between three and eleven points ahead,' said Dan Williams, glancing up from the notes he'd been hurriedly making. Not too long out of bed, refreshed and sharp. After the murder of his colleague, Thackeray, the PM had ordered Williams to get some sleep; almost as if he thought Thackeray might have been killed because he hadn't been to bed since the campaign began.

The Prime Minister nodded, although the information had only partially penetrated.

'You ever wonder why we call them bank holidays?' said the PM.

'Because all the banks are on holiday,' said Williams prosaically.

Barney Thomson glanced over the top of the Independent.

'Arf,' said Igor, Barney's deaf-mute, hunchbacked assistant.