'Murder!' barked The Amazing Mr X. 'Murder!' he repeated, in case anyone had missed it.
If Weirdlove had had a gun, he would've shot The Amazing Mr X where he stood. But then, murdering someone live on television to cover up a murder you committed several years previously lacks a certain purpose.
'Go on then, '70s porno guy,' said Bellows, 'you're the man in the know.'
'She and Parker were at university together in the early '80s. They murdered another student and buried his body in the moors above East Kilbride.'
'Cool!' said Bellows. 'And how come you're in on the secret?'
'X!' barked Weirdlove again.
'Pillow talk!' exclaimed The Amazing Mr X, as he looked at Parker Weirdlove, and by heck, but it felt wonderful to get it out at last. Suddenly he was running naked down a mountainside in summer, the wind whistling through his cheeks, the freedom to do or say as he felt.
Bellows looked from X to Weirdlove and back.
'Hell, a couple of queers!' he quipped. 'This is fan-tastic.'
Wanderlip gave Weirdlove another look of hopelessness and pain, then slumped back into the seat from which she had risen just two minutes earlier to claim her rightful place at the head of the Scottish Executive.
'Anybody else?' said Bellows, enthusiastically, looking around the room.
Well, there was a fair bit of agitation going on, several people wanting to get things off their chest; albeit some of it being fairly minor, such as Alisdair MacPherson's desire to admit to a fondness for Barry Manilow.
Just as the show seemed to be sagging a little, and Bellows was thinking that he might have to rejoin the fray and start working the crowd again, the door opened and in walked another two bit-part actors to join the crowd scene.
Bellows swivelled round as the pair of comedians walked onto the set. The camera followed the look of the crowd, and so the viewing public got their first sight of Detective Chief Inspector Solomon and Detective Sergeant Kent.
'Who the Hell are you guys?' said Bellows, beginning to wonder if this might all be some mad set-up to which he wasn't party.
'DCI Solomon,' said Solomon, holding forward his badge. 'And yes, I'm wise as fuck. This is Sergeant Kent. We're here to make an arrest.'
The crowd had pretty much given up gasping. They were all gasped out. (For the moment.) And most of them were too locked into their own private hell to be concerned about who was going to be arrested.
Barney Thomson raised another eyebrow. Well, actually, it was the same eyebrow as the one he'd raised previously, he just raised it again. Most of this stuff was just passing him by. So he thought.
'Cool,' said Bellows, as Mandy passed him another note. Bellows scanned it quickly, gave the camera a knowing look, then turned back to Tom & Jerry.
'Hey, Federal Agent type guys,' said Bellows, 'I've been informed that you might like to check out the barber's pockets. Don't know what the Hell that's all about, but it sounds out-standing.'
Barney stared at him, took a quick check around the room to see who was looking at him. As it turned out, everyone was now looking at him, glad suddenly to have someone else on whom to focus. He made a move to check his pockets, but was stopped by a bark from Solomon.
'Hold it, Buster!' he snapped. 'You might want to let us do that.'
Barney breathed out and held his hands above his head, thinking that there wasn't really likely to be anything of much interest in his pockets anyway. The odd coin, couple of bits of chewing gum, his I.D. card.
Solomon and Kent stepped forward. Kent stood in front of Barney, ensuring that he didn't suddenly dash off to Belgrade or somewhere. Solomon put his hands in Barney's jacket pockets and started rifling. Didn't take long.
A scowl crossed his face, then he came up with a small, clear freezer bag. He held the bag up to look at its contents, then let Kent have a look, then Barney, then anyone else who was interested, then, with a thespian flair for the dramatic, he turned and showed it to the camera, so that the watching audience of millions got a good swatch as well.
'A-mazing!' enthused Larry Bellows.
'C-double-O-L cool,' said Bing Velure off-camera.
'It ain't mine,' said Barney, with undue extemporaneousness.
'Big surprise,' said Solomon. 'There ain't too many guys carry one of their toes around in their jacket pocket.'
Barney took another look at the toe, became even more aware of all the eyes that were resting on him. Bugger murder and infidelity and whatever else had just been revealed, suddenly all these politicians had something else to distract the audience from their indiscretions, and they were all refocusing.
'You want to explain yourself, cowboy?' said Solomon.
Barney shrugged.
'Can't,' he said.
'I could be mistaken,' said Solomon, 'but I think this might be the toe of Nelly Stratton.'
The audience, right enough, weren't yet through gasping, and so they gasped again. Barney raised that eyebrow; if he wasn't careful he was going to be a victim of Repetitive Eyebrow Strain.
'You want to explain that?' said Barney.
'We found Mrs Stratton's body this morning, following evidence left by Father Michael,' said Solomon. Then he turned to the camera to wring maximum melodrama from the situation. 'She'd had one of her toes removed.'
Huge gasp from the crowd. Huge.
'Un-believable!' crowed Larry Bellows.
'What are you saying?' said Barney.
'Barney Thomson,' said Solomon, solemnly, with one eye on the camera, 'I am placing you under arrest for the murder of Nelly Stratton, and seven other members of the Scottish Executive cabinet. You have the right...'
'Whoa!' said Barney, although he wasn't entirely sure where that came from.
'What?' said Solomon.
'Well,' said Barney slowly, 'you know, I'm not really sure that I care all that much, but you don't think that this might be a plant? Why on earth would I come to a thing like this with a toe in my pocket?'
'Because you want to get caught,' one of the crowd barked, and a few others nodded and said 'yeah' in low voices.
'That's insane,' said Barney.
'Hey,' said Larry Bellows, and before he said anything else, everyone pretty much knew that it wasn't going to help, 'you're insane!'
'Look,' said Solomon, 'do you even know what you've been doing the past few days? You're this weird thing, you don't even know where you've come from. Maybe you've been programmed to do this, and you don't realise.'
Barney was staring at Solomon. He tore his eyes away, turned to Rebecca Blackadder, who was still cuddled up to MLM and not looking like detaching any time soon. She did manage to give Barney a bit of an encouraging look, but accompanied it with a wee shrug of the shoulders to indicate she couldn't really help him out.
'I'm pretty sure I'll have alibis,' said Barney.
'We'll see about that,' said Solomon.
Barney lowered his eyes and stared at the floor. Madness. It was madness. But then, was the suggestion madness or was the madness his? Of course he hadn't killed anyone, hadn't ripped any toes off. But then, when somewhere in the region of fifty years had been lost to him, how could he say for sure that the odd hour here and there had not also been lost?
'Cuff him, Sergeant,' said Solomon, and Kent moved forward, showing his best side to the camera, and wondering if he could manage to get a word in. No need for Solomon to get all the glory.
The audience stared at Barney, trying to decide if it was cool or scary that a serial killer had cut their hair that afternoon.
'Full circle,' said Rebecca, looking at him and nodding. 'What goes around comes around.'
Barney shook his head, finally managed a wry smile. What the Hell. He'd felt like he'd been in prison for the past week anyway, what difference would it make? Whatever had gone before in his life, it seemed that by rights he shouldn't even be here. So, if someone wanted to frame him for murder, then maybe he should just let them.
Maybe that was it. Maybe that was why he'
d been introduced into this absurd collective. To bring a former suspected serial killer into their midst, so that when people were murdered, he would be a convenient fall guy, set up with the most crudely planted evidence.
As a theory it had potential, but nothing in Scottish politics is ever thought out with that amount of forward planning, and the thought barely had time to gestate before it was proven wrong.
Kent was just about to clip the handcuffs shut on him, when Bing Velure excitedly yelped from the edge of the set.
'Hey fellas!' he said. 'Check this out!'
The crowd turned and looked at a monitor sitting on a table just off set. Larry Bellows was thinking that this whole thing was getting ridiculously out of his hands, with even Velure having more of a say than was he, so he said, 'Yeah, good people, take a look at this!' in an overly-excited voice, even though he had no idea what was coming.
'We taped this earlier,' said Velure, in a bit of a gush. 'One of the technicians editing for highlights just picked it up.'
The camera closed in on the monitor, the audience leaned forward in their seats. It was video replay of Darius Grey declaring his good intentions for the elderly, and he himself smiled as he watched his own performance. There were a few glances around the room as the crowd wondered why they were being forced to watch this again; but not for long.
'Look, look, look!' said Velure, aroused to almost carnal levels.
And there, behind the earnest figure of Darius Grey, was a woman's hand taking a small clear freezer bag containing Nelly Stratton's toe, out of her own pocket and slipping it into the pocket of Barney Thomson.
Soap Opera 4
The crowd turned, gasping. Again. There you are, but that's how it was. Finally, after all the revelations of the previous twenty minutes, the big Truth, the truth that had dwarfed them all, the one that had spread fear around the government and disinterest around the media, had also been revealed.
And so, the Reverend Alison Blake rose to her feet, moving away from the crowd as she did so, a look of madness springing to her face, her nostrils flaring in the wind.
'Hah!' she barked, 'I was wondering how long it would take you sad fuckers to catch up with me.'
Solomon and Kent said nothing. The crowd watched agog, those close to her backing off.
'You're the minister, right?' said Bellows, it being at least seven minutes since he'd engaged her in conversation, and needing his memory refreshed.
'Check the brains on that eejit!' she said. 'Stupid American bastard.'
'Hey!' said Bellows, but then he couldn't think of anything else to say to seriously object, because he was a stupid American bastard.
'Alison?' said JLM, looking a bit concerned.
'I had to do it, Jesse,' she said. 'I had to murder all those idiots in the cabinet.'
Larry Bellows turned to the camera, demanding that he be given some air time. Velure made the switch.
'So, what, like members of the cabinet have been getting murdered as well?' said Bellows.
Velure indicated the switch back to the Rev Blake, if that was the low level of insight that the host was going to bring to the occasion.
'Hey!' said Larry Bellows, off shot, but everyone was focused on Alison Blake.
'Alison,' said JLM, 'how could you? Why?'
Pleading with her, as if he'd actually cared about them.
'They needed culling,' said Blake. Her voice had settled down, and she was staring into the pit of madness as she looked at the audience.
'Can't argue with that,' said James T Eaglehawk, as a wee aside, settled firmly now in a complete humph as he was, and wondering if this latest item of news would somehow help him get into the seat of power.
'What harm had they done you?' said Rebecca Blackadder. Bitterness in her voice, because it was Blake's crimes that had indirectly led to Michael's death.
'Not me!' said Blake, eyes wide and loony. 'They were harming Jesse. Don't you see? That's why we're all here. We're here for Jesse. We wouldn't have jobs, we wouldn't exist if it wasn't for him. It's all about Jesse.'
'So you two are like banging?' said Bellows, directing his question at JLM, because frankly Blake was freaking him out a little too much.
JLM looked a little guilty but said nothing. This was all going so gloriously over the top that he was bizarrely beginning to think that maybe he could get out of it with his career still intact. Unaware of just how incontrovertible was the proof of his implication in the murder of Veronica Walters.
'Yes,' said Blake, 'but it's not just about that. It's about power. It's about respect. It's about love and decency and honesty and looking up to your superiors.' Frankly, she was beginning to sound like a Peugeot advert. 'Wally McLaven knew about Jesse and me and was going to blackmail him. He had to go. He had to be stopped.'
JLM nodded, without thinking. McLaven had been a sneaky little shit in politics, just as he'd been on the football field. The smiling assassin. Hadn't necessarily deserved to die, but the blackmail thing had been coming and would have needed to be dealt with.
'What about Honeyfoot?' said Eaglehawk, hoping that it would incriminate JLM even more.
'She was undermining him,' sneered Blake.
'I didn't ask you to do it,' said JLM weakly, aiming it more at the cameras and the policemen.
Suddenly, he and Eaglehawk were using Blake as a pawn, Eaglehawk trying to suck her into a close association with the First Minister, JLM trying to distance himself. Of course, Eaglehawk was playing her like Kasparov, while JLM was playing her like Mr Magoo.
'You didn't have to, Jesse,' said Blake.
'What about Filiben?' said Eaglehawk, egging her on.
'She was going to challenge Jesse's leadership. A turncoat and a traitor. Bloody Judas, masquerading as a serious politician.'
'And Stratton?' said Eaglehawk, intending to go through every one and make it as bad for JLM as possible.
'She was sabotaging him in the parliament,' said Blake. JLM groaned.
'Spiderman?' said Eaglehawk, loving every minute, and the fact that the longer it went on, the more that was revealed, the more chance there was of people totally ignoring what had been disclosed about him. JLM was miles in the shit, Wanderlip was a murderess and Darius Grey was still in nappies. There might be a way back yet.
'Looked at me funny once,' said Blake.
'Oh. McIntyre?' asked Eaglehawk, with a little more hesitation.
'Owed me a fiver,' said Blake.
'Right,' said Eaglehawk. 'Benderhook?'
'Never used to hold the doors open,' said Blake quickly.
Farrow, Wanderlip and Blackadder nodded in agreement, despite themselves.
'And Malcolm Malcolm III of the Clan Malcolm?' said Eaglehawk, realising that they were drifting well away from the agenda of incriminating JLM by this stage.
'Used to wear Disney waistcoats to committee,' said Blake, and looked contemptuously around the room.
'Just got yourself a law suit there,' said JLM resignedly, realising that this wasn't going great for him.
'What about me?' said Wanderlip, a little indignant, rising from the ashes of her own shattered career. Of all of the cabinet, she thought she'd been the only one actually capable of mounting a serious challenge to Jesse. 'How come I wasn't killed?'
Blake spat out a laugh.
'Winnie,' she said, 'you were beneath contempt. Pillow talk! I knew all about your pathetic little secret from university. Murdering you would've been too easy. I was just waiting for you to make your stupid little move, and then I was going to nail you up on the cross and watch you squirm.'
'Soo-perb!' said Larry Bellows very loudly, trying to attract attention to himself.
'So,' said Blackadder, 'Michael was clearing up after you? God, he was such a fool to have loved you.'
'He didn't love her!' exclaimed Farrow.
'Yes he did,' said Blake, 'but it wasn't him who was clearing up after me.'
'Who was it then?' said Blackadder, getting the ques
tion in just before a few of the others.
The Rev Blake only sneered at her. The others looked around the room, waiting to see if anyone was going to own up to the strange deed. And, sure enough, it was that kind of evening...
'It was me,' said a surprising voice from behind. Everyone turned once more, gasps of astonishment now coming at a frightening rate. Patsy Morningirl, standing with her legs spread wide and her hands on her hips, stared defiantly at the crowd.
'Patsy!' exclaimed JLM.
'What?' said Blake, because she was suddenly a bit lost.
'This is like having sex with eight women at the same time!' ejaculated Bellows. 'Coo-el!' By this time, however, no one was even noticing when he spoke.
'I know,' said Morningirl, 'you all think I'm this airhead bimbo. Well, you're wrong.'
'You're a stupid airhead bimbo,' said Wanderlip, huffily.
'You're a moronic cretinous twat-brained breast-implanted fuckhead, who's so stupid you aspire to being an airhead bimbo!' said Blake with some joyous venom.
'Can she, like, say fuckhead on TV?' said Bellows off camera.
'I'm none of those things,' said Morningirl. 'I'm......'
She paused. The world waited. Then she put her hands up to her neck, and began to pick away at the skin. A line began to appear around her neck, the audience began to squirm. And then, with a sudden dramatic movement, she pulled the skin away from her neck and then up over her face and head, her hair coming away too, as she pulled off the latex mask under which she had been existing during daylight hours for the past year and a half. In an instant Patsy Morningirl was gone, and a fifty year-old man, a touch of the James Woods about him, was staring back at the crowd. And the crowd was definitely staring at him.
Most of them had no idea who he was. Rebecca Blackadder knew, however. Her mouth dropped open, and tears immediately came to her eyes.
'Daddy?' she gasped.
'Yes, Rebecca dear,' said Dr Herman Blackadder, stepping forward, removing his outer shell of clothing, including the fantastic fake breasts, to reveal a small man with a slight hunchback, in a tuxedo. He looked with a mixture of hope, concern and humility at his daughter. 'It's me,' he said. 'I'm back.'
The Barbershop Seven: A Barney Thomson omnibus Page 110
