The Wormwood Code (5 page)

Barney nodded.

'Can't really argue with that one,' he said, 'however I think you're being a bit limited in your evaluation of motive. There are a whole host of motives out there. Revenge, money, blackmail, bad haircut on a previous client, hundreds of things.'

'We have been doing some work,' said Grogan. 'We've narrowed it down.'

'Ah,' said Barney. 'Good job. Are you Starsky and Hutch or Batman and Robin?' he added, showing his age and cultural reference points.

'We want you to work for us,' said Grogan, ignoring the sarcasm.

Barney took another two quick bites of toast and bacon, finishing off the slice. Downed some tea.

'Our man on the inside,' said Eason, finally adding something to the conversation, as a squirt of ketchup dribbled down his chin.

'No,' said Barney.

'What?' said Grogan sharply.

'No,' said Barney. 'Did that in Scotland, I hated it, I'm not doing it.'

He dabbed his mouth with a napkin, pushed his chair back and stood up.

'Gentlemen,' he said, 'I'm late for the Prime Minister. Have a nice investigation.'

He smiled and nodded and walked quickly away from the table. Grogan and Eason watched him go, Eason taking a gigantic mouthful of sandwich, squirting mayonnaise up his face.

'Despite the fact that he's a sarcastic pain in the arse,' said Grogan, 'I quite like the guy.'

Eason nodded. 'What was all that Juan, Julio crap all about?' he asked, through the food. 'You don't give a shit about that stuff.'

Grogan took another sip of coffee, glanced at Eason over the top of the cup and tapped the side of his nose.

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0821hrs

B
arney walked into the PM's office over an hour and a half late. He stopped, he looked at the PM, he was about to apologise for being a little behind the curve and then, before he could say anything, he noticed the Prime Minister's hair.

'D'oh!' said Barney.

––––––––

1301hrs

1
.01pm in London, 8.01am in Virginia. A grey morning on the other side of the Atlantic, and the killer of Ramone had not slept well. For years he'd been crossing the Atlantic for various reasons, and he still couldn't get used to the jet lag. It was stupid, it was only five hours, and yet his sleeping patterns were always completely knocked to hell by it. He had spent the night watching reality TV, slowly going demented, as he'd learned about
Cops Who Steal
,
Thieves Who Arrest
,
Bored Housewives Who Can't Cook
,
Judges Who Can't Judge
,
Undercover Agents Who Can't Act
,
Actors Who Can't Go Undercover
, and
Government Officials Who Can't Govern
. That last show had lasted seven or eight hours and was part three of four hundred and fifty.

Hadn't even tried going to bed, had eaten breakfast at just after six, and now walked quickly in through the gates of CIA HQ in Langley. Showed his pass to four different guards, walked along a series of increasingly bland corridors, and turned into the small office on the fourth floor. The single man working in the office had been alerted to his impending arrival, and duly had his head down working through a short document on Balkan drug smuggling operations when the man walked into the office. Ramone's killer pulled out the seat across the desk and sat down. Prepared to wait.

'You haven't made the news,' said the man behind the desk.

'The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!' came the reply.

Carmichael, the guy in the office, looked up, shaking his head.

'You're such a friggin' asshole,' he said.

'Macbeth,' said the killer.

'You're still an asshole. I don't even know who that is,' said Carmichael. 'Tell me what you got?'

The killer laid down his briefcase on the desk and quickly pulled out the file which had been given to him by his agent deep in the bowels of the British party of opposition.

'It's coming together,' he said, and he laid four photographs out on the desk for Carmichael to see.

Carmichael leaned forward, looked at each of them slowly in turn, then finally looked up. A long look into the other's eyes, a slow tap of the finger on the desk.

'They're good but you could've e-mailed them,' he said. 'You're not a delivery boy.'

'I know,' he said. 'But I couldn't e-mail this.'

And he reached inside the bag, took out a wooden box and pushed it across the desk. Carmichael kept his eyes on the man, then reached out, pulled the box towards him and slowly lifted the lid.

––––––––

2009hrs

S
ome days things happen, and some days they don't. Barney had had a long slow day, after being woken slightly later than intended. He'd taken twenty minutes to repair the damage inflicted on the PM's hair by Igor, and had had trouble stopping himself laughing throughout. Decent job done and the PM had dispatched Barney and Igor for the day, their services not required until the following morning. Igor had gone off to do London, and Barney had sat drinking coffee, had foolishly gone to see
Constantine
at the cinema and had mooched through Hyde Park and St James' and around Whitehall, waiting for something to happen. And it didn't, because it wasn't that sort of a day. And the three different groups who were following them had had to split up to keep an eye on them both, and they too had had a quiet day. And so, at just before ten past eight in the evening, Barney finally retreated to his room and collapsed in a melancholic heap, wondering how bad he and Igor would have to make things on the PM's head for them to be sent permanently back to Millport.

0917hrs

T
he Prime Ministerial helicopter rose quickly away from London, leaving behind the morning streets, and the national newspapers with polls showing Labour's continuing four to eight point lead. The PM was in a relaxed mood, confident about the day ahead. Halfway through the campaign, and as long as no disaster reared its head in the following thirteen days, a sound victory in the making. And, with any luck, the opposition would be left in such disarray, and the Lib Dems would make enough gains against them, that the other side of the House would be split even more for the next four years and Labour would already be set up for another comfortable victory in 2009. Four years and carte blanche to do whatever the hell they liked, happy in the knowledge that the next victory was already in the bag. Any difficulties in that time, of course, would come from within.

Joining him in the back of the helicopter were Williams and Thackeray, his principal aides, at least for the length of this campaign, Winsome and Gail his PR girls, and Barney Thomson his hairdresser. Barney was there to deal with any hirsutological emergencies which might inadvertently affect the PM's napper, what with him having to disembark from a helicopter to make a speech at the seaside. There was no space in the helicopter, however, for Barney's deaf-mute hunchbacked assistant Igor, who was being taken to Dover by car.

Williams and Thackeray were conspiring together as usual, desperately covering up the fact that they couldn't stand each other. Gail, the PR girl, was sitting with her eyes closed, absolutely petrified. Winsome, her assistant, was sitting next to the PM, looking over his shoulder at the holiday brochure he was reading, the two of them occasionally commenting to each other on various hotels and destinations.

Barney was sitting on the other side of the PM and, if he was honest, was struggling a little against fear himself. First time in a helicopter.

'You going on holiday?' he said eventually, hoping that a pointless conversation would take his mind off the thought that at any moment the helicopter could suddenly blow up into a ball of flame, or start spinning out of control towards a fiery demise.

The PM shook his head, the brochure open on a page on Tunisia.

'You wonder sometimes, don't you?' he said. 'I mean, the ordinary, hardworking people must wonder too, obviously. Obviously, everything one wonders, is in relation to the real people of middle Britain and what they wonder.'

'Pardon?' said Barney.

'I'm a decent man. I think the British people realise that and know that, even if they don't actually vote for me or agree with everything I say. I'm honest, above all else, and people respect me for that.'

Mad, thought Barney, completely mad.

'But look at today, look at what we're doing. I'm flying to the south coast to make a speech on immigration, the others are talking about red tape in the police and discrimination against women. Honourable things, but not the stuff of history. It's the tittle-tattle of politics. I think now, eight years on, the real ordinary, commonplace, regular, decaffeinated people of Great Britain, I believe, have come to expect more of their Prime Minister. Strategic issues, not micro-management. There are more important issues out there than women.' A pause. 'No offence, Winsome, you understand,' he added with a smile. Winsome smiled back, although there was hidden malice within.

'So you want to go on holiday?' said Barney.

'Not at all,' said the PM. 'It's not about that. Consider President Bush, George I mean, and his programme of invasions. He's got his next four years, and when we win our next term, we'll be freed up to back him all the way, help him out in the UN and make mincemeat out of the French and Germans.'

'And that programme would be?' said Barney.

'Oh, you know,' said the PM, 'the usual suspects. It's not like they're not preparing the ground. Dan Dan, what was the order again?'

Williams broke off from his conflab with Thackeray.

'They're going to do Syria and Iran together in a kind of Buy One Get One Free deal with the UN. Then, when the world's at its most distracted with that, they're going to take care of North Korea, and then next on the list are Laos and Belarus. After that there'll be time and budget considerations, but there are obviously a few more ex-Soviet states to deal with, although the CIA are doing a great job of sorting them out already, and then there's a host of African republics.'

'It's a world of opportunity!' Thackeray chipped in, and the PM laughed.

'And you're looking to see if Thomson's do any package deals to Iran, as a cheaper way to send the Army in?' said Barney.

Winsome laughed until the PM gave her a swift look.

'To be honest, and I think the people of Britain would respect this, all these places we're looking to take over, or rather, I should say, restore democratic governments to, are the most awful countries to spend time in. Iran, Syria, Laos. I mean, frankly, sometimes the sums just don't add up and realistically speaking Middle England would respect a bottom up anti-top down approach to these things, that we'd aim to draw a line at the end of the day, and the ordinary people have to understand this and I think they do.'

Barney looked out of the window on a green part of England he had never looked down upon before, no idea where he was, no idea, he had to admit, even what county they were flying over.

'I didn't understand a word of that,' he said, turning back to the Prime Minister.

The PM sighed. He closed the holiday brochure and rested his head back against the seat. Maybe he should close his eyes for ten minutes and be super-fresh for when they arrived in Dover.

'I just think, you know, that it would be really nice sometime to restore democracy to a country that was nice to visit on holiday.'

––––––––

1200hrs

D
etective Sergeant Eason hung up the phone and looked around the station room. DCI Grogan was nowhere to be seen; his office door open, his room empty. Probably outside taking a smoke. Eason rose quickly from the desk. Three days in and finally they'd been given something they could act on. And even better, he got to go and grab Grogan and take him away from something he was doing, rather than the other way around. Eason polished off the brie and black grape on honey, rye and strawberry yogurt bread sandwich, and nodded to Constable Mockingbird at the door.

'Grogan come this way?' he asked, barely slowing to hear the answer.

'Seven minutes ago,' said Mockingbird, an attractive girl in her early 20s. Eason smiled, winked and snapped his fingers at her.

'Topperooni,' he said and left the office to Mockingbird's smile.

'Topperooni,' he muttered to himself as he walked past the guard down the stairs on his way out of the building. 'You sound like an idiot.' One day he was going to walk past Mockingbird, say something smooth and natural, follow it up with an invitation to dinner, and have the best evening of his life.

Grogan was in the carpark, leaning against his Rover 75 (spare parts difficult to come by). He always took his fag breaks in threes, lingering over each one, smoking them all the way down to the filter. He was coming to the end of his second.

'Got a call,' said Eason, walking towards him. 'Anonymous,' he added. 'We need to go.'

Grogan sucked the last of the blood out of his smoke and tossed it to the ground, coughing mildly.

'Anonymous phone call?' he said with scorn. 'There are no three words more guaranteed to get me excited. Come on, Sergeant.'

'Said they were from Tory party central office, and that they had information on the barber murder. We're meeting them in the Sherlock Holmes. Now.'

Grogan groaned and shook his head.

'You're kidding me,' he said. 'The Sherlock fucking Holmes.' He opened the driver's door and got in, as Eason climbed in the passenger side. 'I mean, let's pick a place where no one's going to see us. The most popular sodding tourist and civil servant dive in London.'

'You just don't like it because they serve Strongbow,' said Eason.

'Exactly,' muttered Grogan. 'Next time...'

He reversed out of his space and put the car into second.

'...I told you to find somewhere around here with Thatcher's Dry, didn't I?'

––––––––

1217hrs

T
he person who had put the call through to Eason was waiting in the Sherlock Holmes at just after quarter past twelve as promised, drinking a half of Strongbow and eating a packet of Blue Cheese and Italian Chive,
Limited Edition
Chips. Sitting to the left of the bar watching the early lunchtime news on TV. Blair in Dover, various sides of the argument on immigration and what it did and didn't mean for Britain. He watched Eason and Grogan enter the room and walk to the bar. They leant there casually, an elbow apiece, waiting to be approached. From where he was sitting he could hear every word of the short, stilted conversation.