The Wormwood Code (9 page)

There were those amongst Her Majesty's Opposition in London who would be preparing to go to the press in the very near future, but they needed the box as proof. Without the box, without the damning, incredible evidence within, there would be no point. They would be dismissed as hoaxers, and if the claims were seen to come from the opposition itself, then the damage would be huge and the "Real Alternative" LibDems would likely form the next opposition. If the truth was to be revealed, and the result of the seemingly one-sided General Election was to be swung at the last minute, the box had to be in the hands of the right people. But, at the moment, those people were the Central Intelligence Agency.

And so, in the middle of the night, with the country sleeping and the HQ mostly deserted, three men sat in a small room, smoking cigarettes and drinking twelve year-old Islay Peat Bog Single Malt, discussing the if, when, where and who of whether the secret of the box should be revealed, and if it was now time for the hardworking, honest people of Great Britain to learn the truth about which of the three party leaders in the country was truly undead.

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0659hrs

T
he PM was already at breakfast, looking over the morning's newspaper headlines. Lousy press pretty much across the board, almost as if most of the country weren't going to vote for him. He put it down to the media stirring things up, hoping that the polls would get a little closer and the campaign might get a bit more exciting. He looked at the Mail, calling him a liar, and tossed it onto the floor. Wasn't his fault if he was running the country well, that people liked him and that the opposition were a bunch of tubes. He smiled, picked up the Independent. "Enough is Enough - Labour Peer Defects to LibDems." Shook his head, added it to the pile dumped on the floor. Just something else for the media to ask him about this morning, while he was at a successful London school talking about the real issues.

The door opened and Barney Thomson, barber, and Igor, deaf-mute hunchbacked barber's assistant, came into the room. The PM looked up and smiled, although it has to be said that the smile was pretty much etched permanently onto his face now. The wind had changed at some point when he was out meeting real, ordinary, hardworking people, and his face had stuck. Of course, that had been in 1997.

'Barney, Igor, come in, come in. Bacon, pancakes and maple syrup?' he offered. 'There's plenty.'

'Arf,' said Igor, and he sat down and immediately began to tuck in.

Barney had already had breakfast at the hotel, but he wasn't about to turn down bacon, pancakes and maple syrup.

'Thank you, Prime Minister,' he said, taking a seat at the table. He glanced at the papers strewn around the floor, as he helped himself to food. The trouble with bacon, of course, is how quickly it loses heat once it's at the table.

'What is it today?' he asked.

The PM smiled and looked at the ceiling.

'Education, education, education,' he said, and the smile increased a little bit more. 'Giving the press conference from a school this morning. The place used to be rubbish, you know, under the Tories, but thanks to this government's policies it's now a model for all that is good about our system, and illustrative of why a Labour government is the only way forward for Britain and the hardworking, decent honest...'

'You're not on TV, Prime Minister,' said Barney.

'Yes, well, I need the practice.'

'I don't think so.'

'Got the headmaster doing a nice little speech, then me, then...'

'That's forcing him to be a bit partisan, isn't it?' said Barney.

The PM crammed down another piece of cold bacon, the smile racked up a notch or two.

'Not sure what it is this afternoon, usual stuff, you know how it is. Tonight we're going up to Liverpool. You want to come?'

Barney and Igor looked at each other and shrugged.

'Arf.'

'Sure.'

'Dan Dan's written me a great little number for tonight talking about Count Dracula and all his crap. Really, you should see his record on all the main issues, the real issues which affect the hardworking people of middle England. It's incredible that someone like that...'

'Prime Minister,' said Barney. 'Eat your breakfast.'

The Prime Minister nodded, accepting his admonishment. He looked back at the pile of papers, the smile waning slightly, but not going completely.

'Daily Star are talking about flippin' Beckham again,' he muttered.

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1203hrs

D
etective Sergeant Tony Eason, investigating the murder of the Prime Minister's original personal hair stylist, Ramone, was undercover at Conservative Party HQ; his cover was that of Tony Eason, crack London marketing executive, brought in to beef up the opposition's election campaign and to bring some fresh air to the heavy stench of defeat which already seemed to hang, like thick, rancid smog, over the building.

A day into his undercover investigation and he hadn't progressed very far. Yet to come up with any insights into the case, neither had he produced a killer election slogan. He was sitting at his desk, playing around with the words,
education
,
crime
and
poverty
, when the door behind him opened and the leader of the opposition stuck his head round, the smile already stamped to his face. He was accompanied by one of his young PR guys, Dane Bledsoe, the only other man in the building who knew that Eason was not who he was supposed to be. Not that Bledsoe had shared this information with anyone else, being a bit undercover himself.

Eason lifted his head and stopped thinking about lunch. Although he had been playing around with education, crime and poverty, he'd been concentrating more on the words, pizza, lasagne and hot dog.

'You must be the new chap,' said the leader of the opposition, extending his hand. 'Lovely to have you on board.'

Eason stood and accepted his hand, nodded, didn't say anything. Felt stupidly overawed to be meeting someone who he normally only saw on the TV.

'What have you got for us so far?' asked the Prince of the Undead.

'Eh...' began Eason, and he turned and looked down at the endless doodles and notes he'd being making for the past twenty-four hours.

'We're looking for something really punchy and cool. The damned press, you know, they've ripped into my Taking A Stand phrase. Damnable people. Should've expected it, I suppose. Piece of nonsense. We need one of two things. You listening?'

Eason nodded. A little wide-eyed. Wished he was out somewhere arresting a drug dealer.

'We either need a beautiful set of words, something clean and fresh and inspiring, but something which can't be mocked, and something which isn't going to turn out to have been used by one of those dreadful Kims in PyongYang, or by Cary Grant in a romantic comedy in 1943. Or Hitler. Don't come up with anything which was used by Hitler or then we're really screwed. Alternatively, something which really slags off the Prime Minister. Don't care how nasty. He deserves it, and at least it'll get us media attention. You know, something like He Lied Over Iraq, So How Do You Know He's Not A Paedophile, Drug Dealing Rapist?'

'That might be a little harsh, Sir,' said Dane Bledsoe at his side.

'Yes, yes, perhaps. Eason, you have anything worthwhile?'

Eason looked back at his scribbles. Thought he might have got away with it, but the man seemed now to have shut up and was waiting for him to say something. Bledsoe stared at him intently, piling on the pressure.

'Vote Conservative,' he began. Then stopped.

They looked at him, waiting for the rest of the hook.

'That's it?' asked the Dark Lord eventually.

Eason looked back at his scribbles and swallowed.

'We're Not Rubbish,' he suggested.

The Prince of Evil stroked his chin in a vaguely diabolical manner.

'Vote Conservative. We're Not Rubbish,' he said, imagining it on a poster. 'No, don't like it. Have lunch with Dane, let's see if the two of you can't chew the grist and sort the great from the grime.'

'Lunch!' said Eason, perking up. Eating lunch was one of his strong points.

The Lord of Death turned and walked out, leaving the two undercover operatives alone together for the first time.

'Come on,' said Bledsoe, 'I know a little salad bar round the corner.'

He turned and followed The Crypt from the room, leaving Eason mouthing 'salad bar?' incredulously in his wake.

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1213hrs

B
arney was attending to the Prime Minister's hair. Again. Another short TV spot to be filmed for broadcast later in the campaign. Barney was snipping away, Igor standing to the side, poised with a brush, to collect the detritus from the Prime Ministerial napper.

'Education really is so very, very vital,' said the PM, breaking a long silence.

'I'm just cutting your hair,' said Barney.

The PM grumbled and nodded, as much as he could.

'Fed up talking about education, to be perfectly honest. At least we've managed to get away from the environment. That just does my head in, all the time. Green this, green that. For God's sake. Leave it alone, don't stand in the way of economic progress, that's what I say.'

'Arf,' muttered Igor in the background.

'Exactly,' said the PM, picking up the wrong end of the arf.

'You don't think you've got the future of the planet to think about?' said Barney, himself sliding into barber mode, throwing a Devil's advocate question into the middle of a customer's monologue. Wasn't so different from being in any old shop.

'The planet will be fine,' said the PM. 'Look, this is how I see it. There's no blueprint for the planet, is there? There's no specific way it should be, no written down number of species which should be allowed to exist. The face of the planet, the mountains and ice caps and rainforests, the species that live there, are forever changing and evolving. Millions of years ago there were rainforests at the polar caps. Why shouldn't that happen again? Species come and go, it's been happening since time began. There's the slightest bit of change and people start complaining. They complain that our summers are getting warmer! They complain about that! There are different types of insects and animals and marine life, because of that increase in temperature. They complain!'

He stopped monologuing for a second and looked Barney in the eye. Barney kept up with the cut, hoping to be done as quickly as possible.

'The planet will survive us all. Maybe the rainforest won't, maybe a bunch of bugs won't, but other things will. Everything evolves, everything changes, there's nothing we can do about it. So what if some of these current changes are as a result of the actions of man? It's still part of the evolution of the planet. You see what I'm saying?'

Barney nodded. Almost done. Of course, the PM's hair looked exactly the same as before he'd started the cut.

'Think I'll vote for the Green Party,' said Barney, and the PM cast him a barbed smile.

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1237hrs

E
ason was eating four salads, Dane Bledsoe just had the one. Eason was drinking Budweiser, Bledsoe a nine pound fifty bottle of mineral water.

'What sort of work were you doing before?' asked Bledsoe, forking an exciting piece of lettuce.

Bledsoe had almost murdered Eason and his boss DCI Grogan a few days earlier, and knew exactly what sort of work Eason had been doing.

'Oh, you know, standard marketing type stuff,' said Eason vaguely.

'What sorts of lines were you working on?' asked Bledsoe.

Eason nodded and stuffed seven pieces of chicken into his mouth to give himself more time. He looked around the room, knowing that he should be able to say just about anything. First thing that came into his head. A woman walked past, short skirt, low cut top.

'Panty liners,' he said, for some reason.

Bledsoe smiled.

'Cool,' he said. 'Which brand?'

Eason stared at Bledsoe and then looked back at the woman, as if that might help him. He knew nothing about panty liners.

'Tampax,' he said eventually, saying the first brand name which came into his head.

Bledsoe smiled.

'So you also did tampons?'

Eason stopped with the beer bottle halfway to his mouth.

'There's a difference?' he asked.

'I can see why they got a new man such as yourself into the post.'

Eason smiled, feeling very uncomfortable. Beer, he thought, stick with beer. Or food. When he asks if there was anything else, say beer or food.

'Still,' said Bledsoe, 'it's interesting work to be giving a detective sergeant at Scotland Yard. Not enough crime for you to investigate anymore? Labour must be cutting it down almost as much as they make out.'

Eason took a drink and then slowly placed the bottle back down on the table. Only his second day and already rumbled. Although, of course, he had seen the light of recognition in Bledsoe's face the first time he'd seen him the previous day.

'It was you who called us last week?' asked Eason.

Bledsoe nodded.

'Who are you working for?'

Bledsoe smiled and lifted his hands.

'The Leader of the Opposition, who else?'

'No, really?' asked Eason. 'Really?'

Bledsoe skewered a radish and crunched into it.

'MI6,' he said. 'There's a few of us dotted around the campaign.'

'So why the anonymous phone call?' asked Eason.

'You mean, given what you're investigating, you think I was just going to invite you along to Vauxhall Cross?'

Eason thought about that, felt put in his place, yet at the same time, couldn't think of why that would actually have been a problem. Bledsoe leant forward, elbows on the table, a small dash of mayonnaise at the corner of his lips.

'This goes way beyond the murder of the PM's barber, Sergeant. Way beyond. Tread carefully, my friend. There are forces at play here that the likes of you and I could not begin to challenge, or comprehend. These are dark times.'

Eason nodded, mouth slightly open. Wasn't actually one to be particularly impressed with such grandeur of threat. People were just people, no matter who they were.