The Barbershop Seven (121 page)

'What question?' exclaimed JLM, exasperated.

'Did you have any other affairs?'

'I answered that at the press conference four months ago,' JLM snapped.

'I think that's debatable,' said Shaw, as much as a wee aside to his audience, 'but why not answer it again here and now?'

'Can I ask you a question?' said JLM, with command, attempting to gain control of proceedings.

Parker Weirdlove was standing behind him, shaking his head. The whole thing was inevitable, and if JLM hadn't been so keen to get his face on every newspaper front page, every magazine cover, every TV show, even every radio broadcast, a thinking idiot's Victoria Beckham, then he wouldn't constantly walk into these giant cow pats.

'Well,' retorted Shaw, 'you can, after you've answered mine. Are the Scottish people going to find out that you've had more than one affair, First Minister?'

'My question,' announced JLM, with solemnity and spunk, 'is why are you so concerned with tittle-tattle and gossip? I think you might find your listeners would much rather hear about our policies for the Health Service and the modernisation of the rail network.'

'Indeed, First Minister,' said Shaw, and from beneath the desktop he produced a barrage of that day's newspapers. Weirdlove groaned. JLM bristled. The Amazing Mr X just wanted to grab a microphone and start singing. 'That's very interesting, because yesterday your Health Minister, Malcolm Malcolm III of the Clan Malcolm, issued new government guidelines for the financing of the NHS in Scotland, and not one of today's papers picked up the story. Instead we've got
First Minister Hides From Rwandan Question
;
True Cost of JLM's Euro-Jolly
;
JLM Blunders Again
;
Hookergate Refuses To Die Despite JLM's Machinations; Good Hair, Shame About The Policies
;
Wanderlip Bites JLM On The Cock
, and
Longfellow-Moses Parted My Red Sea And Walked Right In, Claims £200/Day Whore
.'

JLM hurrumphed.

'Your ministers can issue all the guidelines they like, First Minister, but if the people don't trust the taste of the ice cream, they're not going to be interested in the cone. Are there any more affairs, from your past or present, that the public have not so far been told about? Yes or no?'

JLM breathed deeply. Looked up to catch Weirdlove's eye, but he was standing out of sight. Enough of a hesitation, couldn't be seen to linger over it.

'What I think your listeners will be more concerned with is the fact that there is this clear mistrust of the First Minister. I was elected by the people...'

'Less than forty percent of them,' barked Shaw.

'Let me finish. Last May, I was duly elected by a majority of the voters in this country. I have a mandate, directly traceable to the people of Scotland, and I think those people will be getting extremely fed up with your line of questioning.'

'Perhaps,' said Shaw. 'But all you have to do is answer the one simple question, First Minister, and we'll move on. Have you betrayed your wife with more than one woman? Yes or no?'

'There you go again,' said JLM, laughing in a pompous manner, thinking that he had the moral high ground...

And on and on they went, fifteen minutes with the interviewer never moving on to a second question, and JLM never answering the first. JLM thought he performed very well; imagined that the listeners were outraged on his behalf; he'd taken the superior position, treating Shaw with just the right mixture of contempt, acerbity, sarcasm, brio, panache and élan. He'd ground Shaw into the dust, and Shaw had ended up looking ridiculous. A masterful performance.

Then there was the other point of view. Of one thousand, three hundred and forty-one e-mails sent to the BBC, only one criticised Shaw. The Scotsman the following day led with
JLM 'Admits' Affairs Through Equivocal Denial
. The Sun went further:
JLM Shagged Loadsa Birds
. The Press & Journal went off on a slightly different tack:
North-East Man Finds Stone In Peach
.

So, while JLM left the studio, head up and feeling good about himself, Parker Weirdlove knew that he'd just witnessed another PR catastrophe. Or then again, he wondered, as he walked in the wake of a slightly limping JLM and The Amazing Mr X, perhaps he'd known what he'd been doing all along. By extending the discussion on his extramarital affairs, when he himself might be sure there were none to be uncovered, he had allowed Shaw to squander the opportunity to ask him about the Rwandan issue, the Cabinet murders, the cock-up over health care for the elderly, Hookergate, the absurd joint bid with the Faroes for World Cup 2014 and the rumour that Winona Wanderlip had bitten him on the old meat and two veg.

Maybe he wasn't as stupid as he looked.

***

W
ally McLaven humphed his way down the stairs. It'd only been a couple of years since his playing days had drawn to an injury-hit climax down at Ayr, but already the fitness was gone, and the weight had piled on around his middle. And as he humphed, he mumbled disparaging words against JLM and all who sailed in him. Dragging a man away from a sensational dream. Bloody idiot.

He searched along corridors and down paths. Committee rooms were always a mystery to him. He was actually on three of the parliament's committees, but had only ever attended one of them; a fact which wasn't going to change just because they were now in new premises.

Eventually he stumbled across Conference Room 6F by accident, knocked, waited, no answer, and so he pushed open the door and entered.

He stopped. Felt the strangeness in the room. The blinds were drawn against the morning sun, and the room was in half-light. Occasional shafts of sunlight swept through the air, illuminating the dust. McLaven knew that JLM wasn't going to be here, and in that instant he realised that as he'd walked down he'd heard a radio playing, with JLM being interviewed live. Funny how some things don't compute, when your mind is elsewhere.

'Close the door,' said a voice. A woman.

Soft and low and, well, delicious. Wally McLaven smiled and nodded to himself. So that was it. These things always fell into place faster than you imagined they would. He'd been summoned down here to perform.

He recognised the voice, couldn't quite place it. Couldn't see who'd spoken, but he closed the door behind him and walked into the room. Heard the footsteps, turned to his left. She was walking towards him, having been standing in a dark corner. Not dressed in the least provocatively, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. There wasn't a bit of clothing on the planet that Wally McLaven couldn't have disengaged in under three seconds.

'Oh,' he said, which wasn't much of a greeting, but if he'd had a vote, he wouldn't have cast it for the woman who was walking towards him. Not that she was unattractive, but there was something about her. Still, he was here now, he hadn't had sex so far that day, and Patsy was in Inverness doing some ridiculous tourist thing. Any old magazine in the dentist's waiting room. 'Hi, babe,' he said, imagining a good recovery.

'Glad you could come,' she said, the voice oozing sex.

'Give us a few minutes, Hen,' said McLaven, laughing. 'Different class.'

'You up for it?' she asked.

'Oh, aye,' said McLaven. 'You must've heard all about me, eh?'

'I certainly have,' she said, as she came up beside him.

She smiled, glossed red lips a little parted. White teeth, a mouth that you could spend years on. Wally started to schmooze in a faintly ridiculous manner, being a man who believed all his own press.

'You've come to the right man, darlin',' he said, accompanying the words with his usual cheeky grin.

She put her hands on his neck, a gloriously gentle touch, soft fingers caressing his skin down either side, sending goose bumps all the way down his back and arms. He shivered. He closed his eyes. He felt her warmth and her cool sophistication at the same time. This was going to be wonderful. He waited.

She head-butted him with immaculate precision, busting his nose open. He groaned, stumbled back. He opened his eyes in time to see the swift movement of the knife taken from somewhere at her back, two-handed, up over her head and then brought swiftly down into his forehead. And buried.

Wally stared up at her, his body hovered in suspended disbelief at the evil which had just been inflicted upon it, then he fell forwards. His killer jumped smoothly to one side, and the corpse of Wally McLaven plunged down onto the carpet and crumpled into an uncomfortable heap.

She stood over him for a few seconds, walked to the door, opened it a cautious inch to check the way was clear, and then stepped out into the light of the corridor on a late summer's midmorning.

***

S
he hovered a while in the vicinity, still feeling the thrill of the kill. Waiting to see if anyone would come along to clear up the mess. Ten minutes, before an uncertain pusillanimity got the better of her and she left the area and placed an anonymous phone call to building security to get them to check out Conference Room 6F. It took her quarter of an hour persuading them that such a conference room actually existed, and by the time they got there, a further thirty minutes later, the body of Wally McLaven had already been moved on, leaving nothing but a few bloodstains on the carpet.

To be fair to Wally's killer, as Wally himself might've said, she was a little confused when she heard.

––––––––

T
he word spread quickly through the parliament. Wally McLaven had been added to the list of Honeyfoot and Filiben. Missing, leaving but a meagre trail of blood. The cabinet of ten was now down to a cabinet of seven. Winona Wanderlip heard the news while she was sitting as part of the Further Education Committee, which was debating an increase in student grants, even though there was absolutely zero public funding to sustain such an increase.

Wanderlip broke down in tears, in the moment of Wally's death finally realising that she'd loved him. Or maybe had just loved the idea of him, so different had he been to the man who had left her at the alter.

She'd recovered her composure quickly, had not left the committee room, had blown her nose, wiped away the tears, had started to programme her mind to forget all about Wally McLaven, had begun to nibble again at the non-existent nail on her left ring finger, and had directed the committee back the way of business.

However, no matter how much they talked of other matters, her mind kept returning to the fact that another of her supporters was gone, there would be another space for JLM to plug with his own man. And strangely, despite what had gone before, it never occurred to her for a second that she was about to have Tourism, Sport & Culture dumped in her lap, so confident was she that JLM would give in to her threat of the previous night. And you know, such was the constant reminder of the lingering pain in his knob, she was right.

***

J
LM heard the news in his car, travelling back for an annoying appearance before the Cultural Affairs Committee. Another bloody waste of time. His thoughts were far more focused on the imminent arrival that afternoon of Herr Vogts, who was due to spend three days, mostly with Weirdlove, establishing a base position for Scotland's entry into Europe, a position that would be impenetrable. This was to be followed by his meeting with an official from the Canadian government, to discuss an invite for JLM to the next G8.

He had to be reminded of who Wally McLaven had actually been, as he'd only met him a few times in the past year. Was surprised to find that he was a Labour member, as he'd generally considered his pointless good-natured bonhomie to be in complete alignment with the Liberal Democrats. 'At least it gets me out of having to appear before that bloody committee,' he'd muttered.

He had returned to his office, where he was now standing at the window, vaguely wondering why it was that members of his cabinet were slowly disappearing, one by one. Still half expected McLaven to show up, after having been pumping some idiot secretary in an obscure part of the building. Honeyfoot was a loose cannon, of whom he'd had a very low opinion, and he would not have been at all surprised to discover she'd buggered off to the Caribbean on a whim, with some muscled half-wit she'd met in a bar. But Peggy Filiben. She was too honest and too committed.

'I need spiritual guidance,' he said suddenly, turning round to face his entourage.

Veron Veron froze dramatically, mid-sequin; the lady doctors looked up from their laptops; Barney Thomson rolled his eyes, shook the paper, and went back to reading about the panic that was being wrought throughout the parliament by the latest proposed boundary changes; Parker Weirdlove raised a bit of an eyebrow; The Amazing Mr X loaded up his Kalashnikov. Which left the two people in question.

The Rev Blake looked over the top of Jude; Father Michael was once again engrossed in the Sermon on the Mount.

'Reverend, Father,' said JLM, 'the inner room.'

On the other side of his office from the en suite, there was a smaller office which had so far been little used, because he was spending so much time in the bathroom having his hair attended to.

'You really ought to release a statement to the press, sir,' said Weirdlove. 'They're baying.'

'I thought you were writing that?' said JLM tetchily.

'I've done it,' said Weirdlove, with equal tetchiness, 'but I do think they might be looking for a personal appearance of some description.'

'Bloody shag,' muttered JLM, as Blake and Michael waited in divine expectation.

'And you should call an emergency cabinet meeting,' said Weirdlove.

'Oh, for crying out loud,' said JLM.

And with that he marched into his inner office, followed by his two religious advisors, while Parker Weirdlove lifted the phone and went about organising the emergency cabinet meeting and press conference which he felt the First Minister should attend.

JLM appeared at the door.

'How are you getting on with the, you know, space thing?' he said.