The Barbershop Seven (144 page)

'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 question 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.'

'God!' she said, as she rose to her feet. MLM still clutched her hand. 'But we thought you died in a train crash in the Andes in 1981, just after the Royal Wedding?'

Herman Blackadder tried to smile, but he was hurtin', hurtin' bad. He'd been watching his children for months now, but had spoken only to Michael. He'd taken at face value his son's assertion that Rebecca was deeply troubled and that meeting her father might tip her over the edge. However, like everyone else attached to the political world, Michael had had his own agenda. Fully cognisant of the details of Rebecca's affair with Minnie, he'd been trying to drive them apart; which explained his implication of her in the murders, an attempt to have her locked up and torn away from her lover. (Although, his thinking that prison was the best place to send a woman to get her away from lesbian sex, was probably a little out of focus.)

In time Herman Blackadder had realised that Michael was the troubled one of the pair, from his absurd marriage to Farrow, to his planetary infatuation with Blake.

'I'm deeply sorry, my sweet angel, I truly am,' said Blackadder. 'But it was all an MI6 plot. I spent twelve years in a Bolivian prison. Since then I've been working in a secret government research centre. There's not a day gone by when I haven't thought about you.'

'A secret government research centre!' she cried.

'Yes,' he said. 'We've been investigating reanimating dead life forms. In the last couple of years we've progressed onto human beings. We've kept bodies in stasis after they've been declared technically brain dead, and we've been able to bring them back, sometimes years later.'

'Oh my God!' exclaimed Rebecca, and automatically she looked at Barney.

Barney rolled his eyes.

'Yes, Mr Thomson,' said Herman Blackadder. 'You were one of our experiments, our most successful to date, in fact. I had you introduced into the First Minister's inner circle, to give me another excuse to get close to my family. I was so beginning to tire of this sordid Morningirl business.'

'Yeah, yeah,' said Barney.

'It's true! Everything that you've heard before has been a lie!'

'Don't care,' said Barney. And you know, he didn't.

'Daddy!' exclaimed Rebecca again, just because she was still in shock. Her old man looked at her with pity.

'I'm sorry, Rebecca, I should've spoken to you earlier, I know,' he said, 'but Michael counselled against it. When I realised the full horror of his infatuation with the Rev Blake, I started looking into her activities. I knew what she was up to, even before she started. I followed her around, clearing up after her, hoping that it would never come out, because I knew Michael would get sucked into the whole thing. And as it was, he found out in any case and could not handle it all.'

'He was a pathetic fool!' said Blake, a little put out that Morningirl had pulled off her mask and was massively stealing her limelight. For God's sake, she was the mass murderer here, the attention should be on HER!

'Excuse me,' said DCI Solomon to Blackadder, 'but you didn't think of informing the police at any stage?'

Herman Blackadder breathed deeply and shook his head.

'I truly am sorry, Detective Chief Inspector,' he said.

Solomon nodded. He liked it when people addressed him using his full title.

'That's fine, sir. Cuff her, Kent,' he said to DS Kent.

And then, live on television, in front of a viewing public that had reach the heights of 17million, DCI Solomon moved forward and placed the Rev Blake under arrest. The Kabinet Killer had been caught.

'And you know what?' said Solomon turning and looking at the crowd, who were all a little shell-shocked by now, 'we only came here to arrest Wanderlip for biting Longfellow-Moses on the knob.'

And so they arrested Winona Wanderlip as well, cuffing her with that extra set which DS Kent always carried about with him.

'We close in fifteen,' said Mandy suddenly, and the camera swung back round onto Bellows, who affixed the cheesy grin to his face and straightened his shoulders.

'Gee, folks,' he said, 'that was one helluva show. Totally unscripted, because you just couldn't write that stuff. Tree-mendous. See you next week on Larry Bellows Live! when we'll be meeting another couple who pass for celebrity in this country. Goodnight and God bless!'

The credits rolled, Velure exhorted the company to wave to the camera, which only the politicians did, and then the picture turned to black and it was all over.

There were a few in attendance who had it in mind to make a quick dash for it, but as soon as the show was finished, another couple of police officers – who'd ostensibly been there as security – charged onto the set and arrested JLM and Parker Weirdlove. And you couldn't say that they didn't have it coming.

In the end the police took everybody from the show, including Larry Bellows, into custody, just to save time, before releasing the appropriately innocent.

Champion, as Jesse Longfellow-Moses might have said, had he not been arrested with his political career in tatters at the end of the evening.

For The Lips Of A Strange Woman Drop As An Honeycomb, And Her Mouth Is Smoother Than Oil; But Her End Is Bitter As Wormwood, Sharp As A Two-Edged Sword. Her Feet Go Down To Death; Her Steps Take Hold On Hell

Barney Thomson sat in his room. Late Friday night, watching extended highlights of that evening's edition of the Larry Bellows show. It made good viewing, and he was pleased to see that he had been almost entirely excluded from the show. The toe thing got a mention, of course, but more as the device by which Blake had finally been trapped, rather than of any interest into whose pocket she'd secreted the digit.

For once the news headlines were actually paying attention to the drama surrounding the Scottish Executive, albeit the confession of the Kabinet Killer barely warranted a mention. Colour pictures of Jesse Longfellow-Moses and James T Eaglehawk in the buff were all the news, as well as the tales of lesbian and homosexual sex, and the variety of arrests that had taken place in the wake of the show.

Larry Bellows' agents were already in negotiation with the US networks, Bing Velure was already on a plane to New York.

Barney hit the off switch, lifted his beer and walked to the window of his apartment. He looked out at the courtyard, and the steady stream of drizzle that fell in front of the lights. He no longer had the desperate compunction to get away the next day, but he wasn't going to hang around much longer in any case. Someone, some time would be voted into the position of First Minister, he presumed, and it was unlikely that they would want the personal entourage with which JLM had encumbered himself. He would give it a day or two's thought, and then he would be on his way.

He put the bottle to his mouth, tipped the cold liquid down his throat. This seemed normal, somehow. Cast adrift from society. No friends, nowhere in particular to go. Just wandering alone, looking for something as much as he was looking for nothing.

There was a knock at the door and Barney dropped his eyes and stared down at the wet cobbles, three floors beneath him. One last visitor to cast a shadow before he turned out the lights.

'It's open,' he called.

The door opened and closed again, soft footsteps crossed the carpet, the woman came and stood beside him. She breathed softly. He knew who it was without turning. Had known, in fact, that she would come and join him at some stage.

They stood and watched the rain falling from the Gods as if to wash away the stains that had blighted the Scottish capital that evening. Barney waited. She became lost in the restricted view, the cobbles shining under the street lights.

'I'm sorry,' she said, eventually. 'I should've told you about Minnie.'

'That's all right,' said Barney.

'No,' she said, 'it's not. It's just, people judged me. Michael judged me. He would've done anything to split Minnie and me up.'

'Yeah,' said Barney. 'Anyway, I don't think we were meant to happen. I don't think I'm meant to happen with anyone.'

'Don't say that,' she said, looking at him for the first time, although he never moved his eyes from the street below.

'Well,' he said, 'it's not self-pity or anything. I don't know, I just don't feel right. In this body. In this head.'

She said nothing. She looked back out at the cleansing of the night.

'Do you believe my father?' she said.

Barney smiled again, had another drink. It had just been another explanation thrown into the mix, right at the end of the show. Like a chef suddenly remembering to add bay leaves to the bolognaise ten seconds before dishing up. It seemed no more or no less relevant than any of the accounts which had preceded it. Brain transplant, coma, hypnosis, rapid cell development, reanimation, zombification, the undead, alien virus, cartoon character brought to life by ancient curse; they could go on forever. Did it matter? He was here now, and that was all that seemed important. He didn't care what had gone before, he just had the present to sort out, a future to decide what to do with. His life was like a field covered in snow; a fresh, clean canvas, waiting to be, well, fucked up probably.

'Sounds spot on, doesn't it?' he said, caustically

'God, I don't know. I'm sorry, I'd really like to be able to help you.'

'Maybe you're Dr Who,' she added, after a short silence.

Barney smiled. 'Christ, I hope not,' he said. 'Seven lives, I'll be around for bloody ages.'

'I should have told you about Minnie,' she said again, interrupting the mild outbreak of good humour.

'You said that already,' said Barney.

'Yes,' she said.

And they lurched once more into silence, and eventually their hands found each other and they stood together looking out into the wet of a cold autumn night in Edinburgh.

***

T
he Prime Minister flicked off the television, stood up and looked out of the window onto Downing Street. He'd been in power for seven years now, and not once in all that time of rough-riding over others and no end of Machiavellian schemes, had any of his plans come off with such wonderful panache as this one.

He'd been in favour of Scottish devolution from the start, he'd backed it, he'd pushed it, he'd prodded it into place. And right from the off, it had been a complete disaster. The only possible way to get out of the whole thing without he himself looking like a turkey, was for it to completely self-implode. It had been going that way anyway, but a little helping hand had been all it had needed to push it over the edge. All right, they now owed the bloody BBC a thing or two, but that would be an easy enough favour to cancel out. What he had just watched, for the third time, had been more than worth it. And a particular delight seeing the Chancellor's little patsy, Wanderlip, get her comeuppance.

'It went well,' he said to the visitor, who was slouched on a sofa, bottle of beer in his hand. 'You did an excellent job.'

'Thank you, Prime Minister,' said the man.

'I owe you much,' said the Prime Minister.

'Nah,' said the man. 'I enjoyed it. Another German beer and a fine pair of women to snuggle down with for the night, and we'll be even.'

The Prime Minister turned and smiled. If only all the slime he dealt with in politics were as easy to satisfy.

'Certainly, Conrad,' he said. 'Did you have any specific women in mind?

––––––––

D
espite allowing his hair to grow back into a piecey Tom Cruise (Time Magazine cover),
Jesse Longfellow-Moses
was sentenced to twenty years in prison for the murder of Veronica Walters. Two months later he was declared delusionally insane, and received a frontal lobotomy. The doctor also mistakenly removed his penis.