The Barbershop Seven (116 page)

She stopped again. Her voice had dropped lower and lower as she talked, and Barney imagined that she shouldn't be telling him any of this. For whatever reason, she was on his side. Although, then again, she'd admitted the night before that she was there at the behest of Weirdlove, and Barney had already come to realise that you couldn't trust Weirdlove any further than you could drive a Ferrari with liquid edible underwear in the petrol tank.

'So, where do I come into it?' he asked. 'Am I the result of a cross between a cow and a toilet seat, or something?'

'No,' she said, 'although there are some of them in the government.'

Again she stopped. Barney followed some unknown green vegetable around his plate, forked it with the last of his haggis, then took a long swallow of beer, draining his third and last bottle of the night, popped the last of his chips, and looked up at her.

'I'm going to go home now,' he said, 'or what passes for home. You want to tell me anything before I go?'

He didn't want to go home. He wanted to stay there all night, talking to her. But there was something in-built, making him back off.

'Your brain was kept in a jar for the past two and a half years,' she said, matter-of-factly.

William Matthews, 19, happened to be walking past their table at the time, and nearly dropped the five drinks he was carrying. In fact, he'd heard the words as 'your brain was kept in a bar', which sounded like a pretty cool place for your brain to be kept for that length of time.

'That explains a lot,' said Barney. 'Is it still in the jar?' he asked, which would explain even more.

'No,' she said, with a smile, 'I'm afraid it's definitely inside your head.'

'But it's been crossed with a sheep's brain? That would explain the woolly thinking.'

'Let me finish,' she said, suddenly extending her hand across the table and touching his. This had to be difficult for him, and he wouldn't be the first man to hide behind lousy jokes. Look at Jim Davidson. 'There's a laboratory near the coast, you know the type of thing. Looks harmless on the outside, bit of a run down farm. Don't even have any noticeable security, because they don't want to draw attention to it. They've been doing experiments in RCD since not long after the war.'

'RCD?' said Barney. 'That'll be what? Really Crap Doctors? Designer doctors, the government's answer to the GP shortage. You bring them out, they fuck up your health, then they get locked away in storage for the night. Coming soon, designer nurses, designer train drivers, designer ministers and designer advertising consultants. There's already five of them to every normal human being in the country, but they've persuaded the government that they need more.'

'Barney,' she said, softly, and this time she held a gentle finger up to his mouth; touched his lips. He shivered. He stopped talking. She held her finger against him longer than was necessary, held his gaze at the same time. Finally lowered her hand, and wrapped her fingers around his.

'This is pretty fucking weird, Barney, it's all right to be freaked.'

'Good,' he said, 'because I'm freaked.'

'Rapid Cell Development. They don't just clone the sheep or the mouse or the tsetse fly or whatever, they grow it to adulthood at an incredibly accelerated rate.'

'Why?' said Barney, interjecting where she had not intended to stop talking.

'Christ knows,' she said, shaking her head. 'Because they can? Because no one's done it before? Who knows what their reasons are? But there are always going to be people who'll pay for that kind of technology, so they're pushing it big. Have been for years.'

'So they took my brain...?' said Barney, and that very brain wasn't really computing any of this. It was as if they were talking about someone else.

'They took cells from it, and they grew you. This body you're in, they grew in less than two years.'

He stared, he gazed, he gaped, he wondered, he marvelled, he doubted, he mistrusted. His mouth was slightly open. He reached for the bottle, put it to his lips, forgetting it was empty.

'I'll get you another,' she said.

'No, go on,' he said quickly.

'The one thing they can't do yet, is develop the brain at the pace of the body. So, when your body had reached the adult state they were looking for, they removed the brain, and transplanted your original brain.'

'Which had been kept in a jar,' he said.

'Yeah,' she said.

'I'm sceptical here,' he said. 'I mean, I realise I'm messed up, 'n' all, but what you're saying, that has got to be bullshit.'

'You'd like to think so,' she said. 'But if it was, you wouldn't be here.'

He leant forward, then he sat back. He glanced round at the other customers. He tapped his fork on his empty plate. Scraped it around, dug up the few morsels that were left.

'Bollocks,' he said, finally. 'I mean, why me? Why not do it with George Harrison or Jimmy Stewart or some scientist or other. Why me? Why Barney Thomson? What did I ever do?'

'Availability,' she said. 'First law of construction, whether it's buildings or people. You can only work with the materials available to you. They have a guy on the inside at St Andrews University. That's where your brain was being stored.'

'In a jar,' said Barney, with melancholy.

'Yeah,' she said. 'Really, you don't have to keep going on about the jar. There's not that much difference between a jar and anyone's head. You were a trial, not a lot more than that. Then Jesse found out about you, knew that you were this renowned barber guy, and fancied having you as his personal hairdresser. Parker did the rest. They kind of switched you on a couple of days ago.'

Barney spun the beer bottle around so that it toppled and rolled along the table. He grabbed it just before it fell, then repeated it. Switched him on.

'I'm losing credulity here,' he said. 'I'm not sure, but I have memories of being this murderer kind of guy.'

'That's what everyone thought,' said Blackadder. 'But after you died, a government inquiry was established to examine your life. More or less exonerated you of everything you'd been accused of in the past. Two minutes after that, you weren't news anymore. The press forget in seconds, and the public trundle along in their wake. So, now you're just like this new guy. A new life, a new body, new everything.'

'Still miserable as fuck,' he said with contemplation, reading the label on the bottle, trying to grasp at normality.

She squeezed his fingers, her hand never having left his.

'We'll see what we can do about that,' she said.

Barney engaged her eyes and automatically lifted the empty bottle to his lips to cover his vague discomfort with the close attentions of a woman.

Did it sound plausible? Of course it didn't. But then, just because you don't comprehend something, doesn't mean that it can't happen. It wasn't like he understood the physics behind nuclear fission, wind, the evolution of planets or why women have more orgasms, but it didn't mean they weren't all true.

He took the bottle away from his face because he realised he looked like an idiot. Tore his eyes away from hers, looked at the floor of the bar and contemplated that it would, at least, explain why his very existence seemed to be such an anachronism.

Nuthin' Much

––––––––

A
similar scene to the one that had unfolded with the strange disappearance of Melanie Honeyfoot, re-enacted itself in the Scottish Executive the following day when Peggy Filiben failed to materialise for work. She'd had a six-thirty with a journalist from the Mail on Sunday – she'd always enjoyed giving the press total access, but doing it spectacularly early in the morning, especially on a Saturday – so when Mike Holgrum was present at her office, and she wasn't, the alarm had been raised. Peggy Filiben never missed an opportunity to talk to the press.

So the media had it even before building security or the police, and Holgrum jumped with both feet at the coincidence of two cabinet ministers going missing in the same week. Before alerting anyone to his suspicions, he had established the last person to see Filiben at the parliament and how she'd travelled home from work, he'd spoken to the bus driver who'd dropped her off, and he had visited the scene and discovered blood on the pavement, not that far from the bus stop. He'd stopped short of breaking into her house, then he'd finally informed the police of his enquiries, two minutes before he'd informed everyone else.

The day flew by in a torrent of media speculation and frantic police investigation. And at the end of it, the authorities had nothing more than the sighting of Peggy Filiben alighting from a bus, never to be seen again. They had confirmation that the blood on the pavement was indeed hers, and that was just about that. The members of the cabinet had been forced to reveal that they'd been in session, what with that being the last time that any of them had seen her alive. None of them, however, gave voice to the possibility that there might have been a connection between the meeting and Filiben's disappearance. That would just have been too implausible and frightening to think about.

The bus driver had vaguely remembered the blue car, but that was about as far as it went. 'All look the same, don't they?' he'd said.

And it just so happened that the driver of the Hyundi was as surprised as everyone else that Peggy Filiben had disappeared. The plan had been for her body to be found, squished to a pulp, on the pavement. So, there was something suspicious going on. Above and beyond the fact that members of the cabinet were getting murdered.

And so the fifteen officers that had been put onto the task of locating Melanie Honeyfoot were multiplied five-fold, the press screamed murder, there were cries of serial killer to be heard in the corridors of the parliament, and there were more than a few people in Holyrood looking over their shoulders and wondering who was going to be next.

––––––––

M
onday morning, the weekend having slipped quietly by. The Sunday papers had questioned the disappearance of the two Cabinet ministers right enough, but it hadn't managed to get quite as many column inches as the beginning of the latest
Pop Idol
series. Already there were complaints of bias about the lack of Scots selected for the televised stages; and the uproar had pushed the mystery of the disappearing cabinet women definitively onto the inside pages.

Politicians had to learn their place in this personality driven age; the trouble being that most of them still thought that they dined at the top table of public interest. And if the press weren't all that concerned about the spectacularly attractive Filiben, they were unlikely to be too bothered if any of the rest of them disappeared. (Apart from those cabinet ministers who'd played football for Rangers and Scotland, and who were a little bit cheeky.)

***

W
ally McLaven had been allowed to cherry pick his deputy minister at the office of Tourism, Culture & Sport. Patsy Morningirl was a lovely girl, with a bit of a gorgeous-but-thick-as-mince look about her. Whenever there was any comment in the press to be made about Tourism, Culture or Sport, Wally himself would be there, cheeky and cheery as ever, with a ready smile, quip, and saucy hand up the skirt of the nearest female journalist. The male journos loved him because he'd played football, the female journos loved him because there was always the chance they'd get to shag the man who'd scored three goals for Scotland in World Cup Finals. So, the fact that his deputy was a complete and utter eejit meant little, as her existence in the Executive was almost totally nugatory. Even the press weren't that interested in her Amsterdam-hooker looks, because they had Peggy Filiben to gawp at.

To cut more quickly to the point, Patsy Morningirl was there because Wally McLaven had banged her a few times, she'd threatened to tell his wife, and he'd got her the position. Although he had also attached the caveat that if he was going to have her around on a regular basis, then he would be allowed to continue banging her. Patsy had agreed.

So, when Winona Wanderlip strode past McLaven's secretary – who attempted to stop Wanderlip charging in uninvited, but thought, who cares and gave up – and marched into his office, it was to find Morningirl flat out on top of Wally's desk, pants to the wind, skirt at her waist, and Wally with his breeks at his ankles, pumping away like a ferret.

'Oh, for God's sake,' said Wanderlip, 'can you two just try not doing that for like two minutes?'

They looked at her. They kept at it. Wally was in fine form, and Patsy was almost enjoying herself.

'Hi, Winnie,' said Patsy, 'he's all yours in a few seconds.'

'Won't be long,' said Wally.

'Should I wait outside?' said Wanderlip.

'No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, noooooooo!' said McLaven. Then he collapsed in a temporary heap on top of Morningirl.

He lay there, panting heavily. She lay under him, moderately content with her lot and looked to the side. Half-smiled at Wanderlip, in a 'we're all women together' kind of a way.

'Terrible about Peggy,' said Morningirl.

'Yes,' said Wanderlip.

'Lovely girl, too.'

'Yes,' said Wanderlip, wondering how long Wally would need to recover. The first time she had interrupted them having sex, she'd been embarrassed. But now, on what was possibly the twentieth occasion, it had dropped to zero on the Mortification Scale.

Morningirl sighed heavily.

'Still,' she said, perking up, 'if Peggy's dead it'll make me the best looking bird in the government. I might get a bit more coverage.'

'Very forward thinking of you, Patsy,' said Wanderlip.

'And I'm telling you,' said Morningirl, 'if anyone offers me money to pose in my Adam Ants, I'll drop the old skirt in seconds.'

'Lovely,' said Wanderlip. 'Wally, have your dylithium crystals been recharged enough for you to have a conversation at all?'

Wally exhaled a long breath, turned and gave her a cheeky wee grin.

'I know you're desperate to see, 'n' all, Winnie, but could you turn your back a minute?' he said.

Wanderlip tutted loudly, turned and looked at the photographs on the wall of McLaven's office. There were approximately fifteen photos of Wally's footballing heroics, mostly scoring goals for Scotland. There was a good one, however, of a spectacular dive he'd made in the last minute to get a penalty against Celtic. (There wasn't a photo of him blootering the penalty three miles over the bar, however.)