They looked at Eason as he entered and all recognised him as being a marketing executive, which he hadn't had the air of up until now. For the previous few days he'd looked more like a wildebeest at a predators convention.
'Come in,' said the Count. 'You've met Dane. You know Oliver,' he said, indicating the Shadow Chancellor.
Eason smiled at the man, stopped himself winking.
'Love the cooking show,' he said, because he'd never heard of or seen this guy before and couldn't think of anything else to say. The Shadow Chancellor smiled, was about to speak, but his sentence was cut off in its infancy by his boss.
'What have you got for us today?' asked the Count. 'We need something extraordinary, yet solid. Something to back up the leaked Attorney General memo. That thing's good, but not what we were hoping for.'
'Sure, sure,' said Eason. 'I've got it. You listening?'
The two politicians nodded. Dane Bledsoe raised the universal eyebrow of scepticism. Doubted that Eason could come up with a marketing slogan to sell World Cup tickets in Rio if Brazil were in the final.
Eason held his hands up in banner formation.
'We Wouldn't Have Invaded Iraq; We Would Have Caressed It Into Democracy.'
He looked at the three men, waiting for some reaction. Bledsoe knew it was complete mince, of course, and obviously unusable. The Shadow Chancellor knew he couldn't have an opinion until he'd heard his leader's opinion. The Count sat and stared at Eason, all the time running the words over in his head, imagining how it would look in print, and the picture they would have behind the words. Finally he clapped his hands together and broke out into a huge smile.
'I love it,' he said. 'I'm not saying we'll use it,' he added, and the Shadow Chancellor immediately relaxed, 'but it's a quality slogan. Stay with me today on the campaign trail. Dane will fill you in on anything you need to know. Might spark some more ideas.'
The Count rose to his feet, Eason and Bledsoe exchanged a glance. The Shadow Chancellor switched off and once more began to dream about the time when this election would all be over and he could start to mount his challenge to become the next leader of the party.
1305hrs
The PM was having a nightmare. He was Ronaldo and this was the 1998 World Cup final. He had taken his rallying cry of 'Education, Education, Education!' out into the world, and the world had replied with its rallying cry of ,'Iraq, Iraq, Iraq!' Given a grilling at the press conference, he had been forced to rely on the flippin' Chancellor to bail him out, which was disastrous. He was more honour bound than ever now to hand the reigns over to the man when it came to it, and the "it" now didn't seem so far away. He was lying back in a chair, a few minute's respite between vitriol meals, having instructed his personal barber to give him a head massage. That had been a little more close contact than Barney Thomson might have wanted with any man, yet the PM had looked so completely bereft of spirit that Barney had actually found himself feeling sorry for him.
'I mean,' the PM was saying, words burbling forth as they would all day, defensive words – if the Italian team in the 1994 World Cup final had had to defend a war in Iraq, they would have done it like this – words delivered consistently on the back foot, 'what was I supposed to do? It wasn't like George would've held back on the invasion anyway. I couldn't have stopped him. I just thought, well if it's going to happen anyway, we might as well join in, lend a hand. It would've been even messier without us. In fact, if they'd let us do more...'
'I agreed to the head massage thing,' said Barney, 'but it doesn't mean I have to listen to the war justification speech, even one that's more honest than normal,' said Barney.
'Yes, yes,' said the PM, 'I just feel that I must be absolutely firm on this point, so that the hardworking, decent, honest people of England and of Britain, realise that...'
'Prime Minister!' Barney barked sharply.
The PM opened his eyes, closed them again, settled back down. Mouth shut, he thought to himself. Still had to meet the public, still had Question Time on the BBC later. The day might have been going badly, but it was going to get much worse before it got better. He had to take the ten minute timeout.
'I know,' he started again, talking the instant he stopped concentrating on not talking, 'that I coerced the Attorney General, that I lied to the party, parliament and the people. I know I forced MI6 to hand-pick and twist intelligence, I know I paid Hutton fourteen million pounds of government money to denounce the BBC and exonerate us, but what else could I do? You try working with the hand of history on your shoulder, Barn. Barn? Barney?'
He looked round. Barney had gone, walking out on another fine example of his monologuing. The PM glanced at the clock, realised that he would have to be going soon anyway, then closed his eyes and rested his head back against the chair. Suddenly the door burst open, and Thackeray careered into the room, bouncing off the walls.
'Late you are, Prime Minister,' he said. 'Come you must!'
1317hrs
Igor, Barney Thomson's deaf-mute hunchbacked assistant, was eating lunch at a small sandwich place not far from Whitehall. A seventeen pound bottle of mineral water, and a cream cheese bagel with blue grapes, red oranges, Senegalese capers and lettuce. He had pitched up with Barney, clutching his broom, for the PM's latest haircut, only to discover that the man had wanted a massage of the hair rather than a cut, and Barney had allowed him to go and find something to eat.
He leant forward, his hump seeming to hang over his head as he did so, and took another bite of bagel, the cream cheese squishing out the side. Mopped at his lips with a napkin, took a drink of water. The seat opposite him was pulled out and a man sat down quickly at his table. He laid out his own sandwich - a lettuce, cabbage and rocket on rye crispbread - and took a drink from his glass of thirty-four pound sparkling water.
'You must be Igor,' said Dane Bledsoe, who had snuck away from Tory Party HQ for a short while.
Igor gave him the once over, did not like the cut of his sleek, public relations jib one little bit, and nodded.
'Arf,' he muttered.
Bledsoe smiled.
'I take it I can trust you to be discreet?' he said, then he smiled again. 'Obviously you're not going to say anything to anyone, but I'm trusting you not to write it down either.'
Igor took a bite of bagel, kept his dark brown eyes locked on the man. Wasn't going to commit himself to anything.
'I work for the government,' said Bledsoe. 'MI6 to be precise.' He glanced over his shoulder to see if there might be any men with raincoats and sunglasses listening in. 'We believe that the Prime Minister is going to resign before the general election takes place next Thursday.'
Igor raised an eyebrow.
'And he's not just going to resign as party leader, he'll resign from the House altogether.'
He let the words sink in. Igor said nothing, took another bite of bagel. Regretted, a little, not going for the smoked salmon option.
'We can arrange it for you to take his place as the Labour candidate for Sedgefield, and then to become leader of the party.'
Igor raised another eyebrow.
'When Labour wins the General Election, Igor,' said Bledsoe, the man who may or may not have been from MI6, 'you'll be Prime Minister.'
Igor raised his third eyebrow. Dane Bledsoe stared intently across the table at him. Igor did not let his gaze waver.
'Well?' said Bledsoe. 'What d'you say?'
Igor thought about it, thought about the absurdity of the proposal, considered everything he knew about election law and whether any of what Bledsoe had just said was even remotely possible, which he was pretty sure it wouldn't be. But then, MI6 had their ways.
'Arf,' he said eventually.
2211hrs
It had been a long day, the PM's worst on the campaign trail by a long, long margin. He was exhausted and beaten. He had no idea that someone from MI6, if they were who they said they were, had tapped Igor to replace him, claiming that he was about to resign, but they weren't that far
from the truth. He sat alone in his study, nursing a slow glass of single malt, staring morosely at a pile of papers on GP's waiting lists which Williams had given to him after the battering he'd received on Question Time. He was bruised, bloody and sore. To paraphrase Nietzsche, as he often did: 'The thought of resignation is a great source of comfort: with it a calm passage is to be made across many a bad night.'
He muttered the words softly to himself, sat back in the chair and closed his eyes.
The other players in the strange little saga all busied themselves with whatever part they had to play, big or small. The main source of comfort to them all, however, was that there was only one week left and it would all be over...
Friday 29th April 2005
0812hrs
The PM sat still for his morning haircut, watching the breakfast news on the TV. Felt a little more relaxed after the horror of the day before. Had woken up at just after five feeling much calmer, as if knowing that the hot coals he was going to have to tread upon this day would be more temperate. Or, at least, he was going to get to wear boots as he trod on them.
The newspaper headlines were full of the Iraq war, and it wasn't as if any of them were saying what a great move it had been. Express, Mail, Telegraph, Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, a great panoply of outrage. And yet, watching the news, it was apparent that the tempest had already passed. For the previous few days the storm clouds had gathered and a hurricane had threatened to sweep through his campaign, then yesterday it had arrived with all its great force, winds and rain seeming to tear the roof off his election battle and his premiership; yet now suddenly it had blown itself out, in an instant, overnight. The papers may have been full of it, but it was typical of why newspapers were becoming more and more outdated. They were already behind the curve of the new calm. It was almost as if everybody else involved in the election campaign, including the opposition, had suddenly thought, wait a minute, if we keep this up the Conservatives might get in. Let's start talking about something else.
So today he was going to have to discuss the GP waiting list crisis, which was tricky in itself, but there would be no cries of liar, liar, pants on fire, and at least it wasn't a resigning matter.
'I can feel the winds of change, Barney,' he said quietly.
Barney Thomson bouffed the top of the Prime Minister's head, following instructions to make his hair as big as possible to exaggerate the difference between him and the leader of the opposition.
'That's just the hairspray, Prime Minister,' said Barney.
The PM didn't hear him. Too busy thinking over the day ahead, another day when he and the Chancellor would ride around the country like Butch and Sundance. The day before notwithstanding, it was all going well.
0821hrs
Over at Conservative Party HQ the leader of the opposition was standing at his office window, looking down on a London which was slowly beginning to warm up to spring. He was tucking into a strawberry jam doughnut, his back turned on his two new main advisors, Dane Bledsoe and Tony Eason.
'It's going well,' said the Count. 'He had an awful day yesterday and today's only going to get worse.'
'We need to move on from Iraq,' said Bledsoe.
The Count turned.
'What? We've got him on the flippin' ropes. He's squirming like, God, I don't know, a worm. He's all over the place.'
Eason bit into his third doughnut of the morning. Didn't have an opinion. The Count may have thought of him as his advisor, but he wasn't about to start giving anybody advice.
'Tony, what d'you think?'
Eason caught the look from Bledsoe, stared at the carpet
'I think you should try the blueberry,' he said, holding up the doughnut.
The Count stared at the two of them, his mind in flux.
'You're so damned sage sometimes,' he said, although neither of them knew to whom he was talking. 'I need to go poo-poo,' he muttered, and walked quickly from the office.
They watched him go, then Bledsoe sat down in the boss's chair and started looking through the small collection of papers which lay on the desk. Eason walked over to the side table and helped himself to another doughnut.
'So what have you come up with, Sergeant,' said Bledsoe from behind the desk. Appropriate that he should be sitting in the boss's seat, as he was definitely going to be in charge of the conversation.
Eason was hugely intimidated by him and so would use his usual defence mechanism. That of the overweight buffoon, the man who ate all the pies.
'Think I prefer the Danish to the doughnuts,' he said, without looking at him. 'At least, that's what I'm going to put in my report.'
'Look at me, Sergeant,' said Bledsoe, and Eason reluctantly caught his eye over a sugar-frosted topping. 'You came here to investigate the murder of the PM's last barber. What have you found?'
Eason stuffed an entire doughnut into his mouth, giving him an excuse not to say anything for a while. Unusually for him he dabbed at his cheeks with a napkin, taking all the sugar off.
'I've been pleased to discover,' he said through the food, 'that political campaigns involve a lot of bakery products on the go. And I have to go.'
He walked to the door. Bledsoe sneered and looked witheringly at his back. Eason turned at the door and smiled through the middle of the doughnut.
'The Conservative Party,' he said, 'For All Day Minty Freshness!' then he quickly left the room and closed the door behind him, feeling like he'd been put through the mincer.
1143hrs
Barney Thomson had been given the day off. The PM was out and about on the Battle Bus, touring the country, smiling at people who didn't want to be smiled at, making excuses for mistakes, promising to do things differently from the way he'd done them for the last eight years, promising anything in fact, to get an easy ride and another couple of votes. Igor, however, had asked if it was all right if he tagged along, and the PM had readily agreed, pleased for the chance to pitch for the deaf-mute hunchbacked vote.
So Barney had decided to do London for the day. Only one week left before he could go home, and he could look out over streets where hardly anyone walked, and he could listen to the mournful cry of the gulls and waves splashing up onto the rocks. He'd eaten second breakfast in a small café, drunk a cup of coffee and spent fifty quid on mineral water, and now he had meandered amongst the tourists up to Trafalgar Square and found his way into the National Gallery. Intending to do the Portrait Gallery next, if he'd not had enough of looking at paintings.
He was on the third floor looking at 16th century Italian religious works, you know the ones with the baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary, accompanied by hundreds of huge breasted naked lesbians. He remembered that that was what Wullie used to talk about in the old shop. Seemed so long ago, and suddenly he was taken by one of those moments when the past rushed over him, and he was engulfed by a shiver. He stood looking at a nativity painting, a scene bedecked with naked angels, and he was overwhelmed with melancholy. He shivered again, tried to break the thought and the feeling. It wasn't as if he'd been happy in those days.
'You have to admire the vision of the artist,' said a voice next to him.
Barney didn't turn. The path to the past had been snapped, which was no bad thing.
'How d'you mean that?' he said. He had been saved from his own gloom perhaps, but he didn't necessarily want to get drawn into a discussion on some perverse Italian, who saw naked women everywhere.
'It's great how there are so many naked women and no naked men. You have to admire that.'
Barney turned. His mood dropped a little further, he rolled his eyes.
'Detective,' he said. 'Nice to see that you appreciate art on your day off, and that you don't conform to the coffee-drinking, cigarette-smoking, alcoholic stereotype of your kind.'
'Sod off,' said Detective Chief Inspector Grogan. 'I'm here to see you.'
'Ah,' said Barney. 'How did you know I'd be here?'
'We've had you followed since the day you arriv
ed in London,' said Grogan.
Barney nodded. He was working for the Prime Minister after all. It sort of made sense and wouldn't have been too hard to do either.
'Course, we're not the only ones following you, but we're not sure who the others are.'
Barney glanced over his shoulder. Had had no idea that he was so popular. Wondered if the group of old women up on a day trip from Bath, currently admiring a painting where the artist had had the vision to include as many naked men as women, were after him.
'I must be popular,' said Barney.
'Not as popular as your little hunchbacked guy,' said Grogan.
Barney gave him a quick look and then moved on to the next painting. It was more of a battle scene than an actual nativity painting, but there were still three naked women to every soldier. Assumed that Grogan was referring to the fact that Igor rarely went a night without attracting some woman or other back to his bed.
'He's a good looking guy,' said Barney.
'I'm not talking about the women,' said Grogan, unable to keep the edge of jealousy and bitterness from his voice.
'What then?' asked Barney, feeling disloyal even having the conversation.
'There's a character called Dane Bledsoe working for the leader of the opposition. Shadowy, if you know what I mean.'
'He's one of your lot?'
'No,' snapped Grogan, 'he's not. He's a spy. Says he's MI6, but he could be working for anyone.'
'Should you be telling me that the guy works for MI6?' said Barney. 'I mean, if the guy does work for MI6, then I probably ought not to know that.'
'He tapped up your friend yesterday at lunch, when you were giving your boss a lovely head massage.'
Barney gave Grogan a swift glance. God, they really do have me followed, he thought.
'What d'you mean, tapped up?' he asked.
'Not sure. We were wondering if the little fella had mentioned it.'
Barney moved on, walking through into the next small room, which seemed to have more of a landscape feel to it. Grogan walked beside him, still pretending to give a stuff about art.
The Wormwood Code Page 9
