The Wormwood Code (2 page)

The door to the shop opened and two men walked in. Barney and Igor looked at them. Barney did not immediately lower his feet. They were dressed in black suits, wore stupid sunglasses, the like of which are never needed on the west coast of Scotland in the height of summer, never mind on an afternoon in April that had clouded over, and had both recently seen the inside of a barber shop. These men were not here for a haircut and Barney's heart immediately sank. Couldn't life just leave him alone for a few months?

'Barney Thomson?' said one of them, looking straight at him and ignoring Igor.

'I'm Barney Thomson!' said Igor from behind, standing as tall as he could, although the words pretty much came out as 'Arf!'

Barney finally lowered his feet and stood, smiling at Igor and shaking his head.

'Yeah,' he said to the bloke who had spoken, 'what d'you want?'

'You're needed in London,' said the man.

Barney stared at him, then at his companion. He slumped back down into the seat, his face deadpan, shoulders sagging.

'Go on,' he said.

'The Prime Minister needs you to work his hair for the last two-and-a-half weeks of the campaign,' said the man. Voice steady and firm, no argument accepted.

Barney looked at Igor and then back at the FBI, or whoever they were.

'And if I don't?' he said.

'Three words,' said the other man. 'Guan Tanamo Bay.'

Sounded well hard. Barney would have shivered in his boots; if he'd been wearing boots. As it was, he was bored.

'If you're doing the syllable thing,' he said pedantically, 'it really ought to be five words. Guan Tan A Mo Bay. Hmm, doesn't really work, but three words would be something along the lines of Bug Ger Off.'

The man twitched. Outside, the ominous form of a black Audi with dark mirror windows pulled up outside the shop.

'It's time,' said the first man.

Barney looked at the car, and then turned to Igor. He shrugged. He felt entirely phlegmatic and relaxed. In this quiet place, who would even notice he was gone for two weeks?

'Come on, Igor,' he said. 'You're coming too.'

Igor smirked and grabbed his broom. The two agents of whichever government department they belonged to looked at each other, wondering if they should make a move, but as Barney picked up his jacket, turned off the lights and pushed past them to the door, Igor in his wake, they stood aside and let them go. There was space enough for all of them in the Audi, and space enough in the small private jet waiting at Abbotsinch.

Igor stopped and looked at the two men as he came to the door. He stared for a full ten seconds, as Barney opened the back door of the car.

'Arf,' said Igor eventually, and then followed his boss outside.

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2310hrs

L
ondon, late at night, the city under cloud. The end of another hard day's campaigning, the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition and the leader of the real alternative all endlessly flicking between news channels, thinking about the following day's strategy and hair and teeth and make-up and hair and teeth and hair.

However, there was one person who wasn't thinking about hair, even though he had thought about hair every day for the previous seventeen years of his life. One person who would never think about hair again.

Ramone, the hairdresser, sat alone in an armchair in a small hotel room. The TV played before him, the tail end of whatever was on BBC2 that night, although no one, even the people in charge of BBC2, knew. He was naked except for a pair of socks and a New England Patriots woollen hat. And quite pale. Very, very pale. Deathly pale.

0712hrs

T
he PM was laughing with a mixture of curiosity and delight, the first time that either of his aides had seen him genuinely laugh in several weeks. Williams and Thackeray glanced at each other, not entirely sure what the PM found so funny.

'Rotted Brain of Maniac Killer?' said their boss through the smile. 'Good on the Daily Star.'

Thackeray waited a second, until the laughter had died down a little more and he could catch the PM's eye.

'It's not about the leader of the opposition, Sir,' he said.

The PM stopped laughing instantly, straightened up and looked across the desk at the front page.

'Oh.'

'It's not really very funny, Prime Minister. It's the serial killer who was allowed out of prison a year before he committed multiple murder.'

'No, no, of course not, not at all funny,' he said. 'It's important and vital that we take every conceivable step against crime and the causes of crime and the fear of crime, that valuable resources are not wasted, and that...'

'You're not on television, Sir,' said Williams, 'you don't need to grandstand.'

'No, no. No.'

The PM stood up, turned his back and looked out of the window, down onto the grey wet pavement below. His heart immediately sank with the thought of the day ahead. Health, health, health. That was all they ever had to talk about. And crime. He couldn't wait until the election was over and he could get back to talking about big issues, the kind of things that would help cement his place in history. No one ever got remembered because waiting lists were low or because they had introduced prostrate cancer screening for over-50s. Settling the Northern Ireland issue, creating democracies across the Middle East, bringing China and the west closer together, extending British influence across the republics of the former Soviet Union, bringing Britain further into the heart of the European Union and subtly easing Germany and France away from the centre of power. Those were the big issues, the issues which would see him remembered for the rest of history. Not NHS funding and MRSA and consultants fees.

He wanted to place a call to George right now and discuss the plans to invade Iran.

'Any of them mention my teeth?' he asked.

Williams rolled his eyes. Thackeray glanced at the front pages, although he knew there was nothing there to see.

'You only get personally headlined in the Telegraph, in connection with the pensions issue.'

'Pensions,' the PM said, muttering darkly. He turned and looked from one of his men to the other. 'Suppose the serial killer made more front pages than I did?'

Thackeray nodded.

'That's what grabs the news, isn't it? That's why George has got the right idea, sending his troops in all over the place. Murder, death and fear, that's what people want to read about. Maybe I'd get more press if I sent all those troops back to Ireland.'

'No!' said Thackeray and Williams together.

'I suppose,' said the PM. 'Peace in our time, and all that. Any chance of a doughnut?'

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0856hrs

T
he cleaner knocked on the door again. The 'Do Not Disturb' sign had been up for three days now, the room had been paid for until the end of May and yet she had a bad feeling. She'd been getting the shivers every time she walked past the room, and even though she had been told by management that it was none of her business, and that the sign meant what it said, the strange mixture of curiosity and fear had taken hold of her imagination. It ran in the family, down through the women in her mother's side. Some sort of psychic ability, which most of them had tried to ignore in recent generations. But she couldn't deny that it was there, she couldn't deny the feelings of unease which she felt each time she passed a place of sadness or despair. And she had a feeling about this bedroom.

She knocked again, and then finally, her hands shaking, looking nervously up and down the corridor, she took the key from her pocket and put it in the lock. She tentatively opened the door and stuck her head round to look into the room.

A small room, large double bed taking up most of the space. TV in the corner, playing one of those awful makeover shows;
Changing Rooms In The Toilet
or
Newsnight In The Garden
. An armchair positioned in front of the TV, its back turned to the door. She could just see the top of a blue woollen hat, and a pale hand resting on the arm of the chair. She swallowed, knew already that the person was dead.

'Hello?' she said nervously. 'Hello. Are you all right?'

The corpse of Ramone MacGregor was silent.

The cleaner, Juniper Lopez, had all the symptoms of near panic – racing heart, dry mouth, cold sweat, shivers, shakes, the hairs on her head standing to attention, everything – yet felt herself more and more drawn into the room. She had no thought of turning round and getting help, even though she now knew she had seen enough to alert hotel management.

'Mr?' she asked, stepping slowly forwards. She swallowed again, but her mouth and throat were dry, harsh.

Deep breath, doing everything to conquer the fear which gripped her, a fear so much greater than any of the myriad phobias which plagued her life. Spiders, flying, confined spaces, crowds, open spaces, chips served with pasta. She edged nearer to the chair, moving away to the side, pressed against the bed, as far away as she could. Stopped again, another deep breath, steeled herself, closed her eyes, and then she walked quickly round, turned about a yard in front of the chair. She hesitated, and then finally she opened her eyes and looked down at the body of Ramone MacGregor.

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0859hrs

B
arney Thomson trudged along the road, hands thrust deep in his pockets, head bowed to the grey morning drizzle. Igor walked beside him, Donkey to Barney's Shrek. They were on their way for their first meeting with the Prime Minister. No big deal. Politically perhaps he was the most important person Barney had ever met, but that was like saying that someone was the most important maker of jelly that he'd ever met. Who cared?

Barney turned his head sharply at the sound of a scream, a distant sound, yet one so full of terror and fear, so piercing and ominous and loud, he stared up the length of the street for half a minute, as the noise from almost two blocks away filled the dull morning air. Igor gazed at him quizzically, following his look. He heard nothing, yet he felt the sense of fear and horror and dread. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the terrible noise abruptly ended, and the city seemed to return to normal. The cars, the motorbikes, the chatter of pedestrians. Barney stood still for another few minutes, his head slightly cocked to the side, listening, as if he expected something else to happen. Yet London was as it is, and by the time he looked at his watch and realised that he was going to be late for his first meeting with the Prime Minister, he had trouble remembering exactly what had been so blood-curdling about the scream in the first place, and whether or not that was what he'd actually heard.

'We should get going,' said Barney.

'Arf,' said Igor.

And with that, Barney Thomson, barber, and Igor, barber's assistant, turned and walked on through the crowd, Igor clutching his broom as they went.

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0923hrs

B
arney snipped away at the very ends of the hair. Nothing worth taking off. He could've got his razor out and scalped the man, but that hadn't been asked for. It was more of a styling job, which to be honest, wasn't entirely his thing, but he wasn't going to come all this way, to be in the employment of one of the country's top 10,000 most important people, not to do what he was told.

They were in the Prime Minister's bathroom, a small affair just off the main office. It had been redecorated under Major, an expensive job given out to the highest bidder, and was consequently still in excellent condition. Williams and Thackeray, the eternal duo, stood at the back, hoping to engage the PM during the course of the cut; however he was off on another of his tangents. Igor also lurked at the back, a slightly uncomfortable presence for the others, waiting with his broom for a bit of mess to clear up.

'I know all about you,' said the PM, catching Barney's eye in the mirror.

Barney nodded.

'I know all about you too,' he replied. Didn't everybody?

The PM smiled. Always nice to have that kind of acknowledgement.

'I feel like I have the hand of history on my head,' said the PM.

'You sound like an idiot,' said Barney. Actually, he never said that one, he just thought it. Didn't quite yet have the measure of the man enough to know whether he could get away with that sort of comment. This was the man, after all, who dropped bombs on innocent civilians at the drop of an American hat.

'You have lived through the most extraordinary of times,' said the PM, making Barney sound like he was in his early hundreds and could remember the Boer War.

Barney snipped at a rogue lengthy hair, which Ramone must have missed before his unfortunate end, then continued on his more mundane way around the back of the head. There was a sound at the door, and Janine the secretary appeared, looking very pale, to whisper something in Williams' ear. Williams listened, swallowed, nodded and ushered her away from the bathroom. The PM had witnessed the short scene in the mirror and raised his eyebrows at Williams. The PM was experienced enough to know that you didn't turn round mid-haircut. That had happened to him once before, and he'd had to fake a heart problem in order to get out of the public eye until he could get it repaired.

'What's the score, Dan Dan?' he asked.

Williams looked pale himself. There was a lot of blood being drained out of faces, and it was a good thing that none of it was leaking onto the carpet. Barney glanced in the mirror, saw the look in Williams' eyes and stopped the cut. Here was something, he thought. He recognised the look. Death had come to call. It followed him everywhere, as sure as thunder followed lightning, as sure as a headache followed a night of grape and grain.

Williams looked at the PM, who turned round, now that Barney had stopped the cut. Williams couldn't say it straight away, glanced at Thackeray, ended up looking at Barney, as he seemed the one with the most authority in the room.

'Who's dead?' asked Barney.

Williams swallowed. The PM looked at Barney, then back to Williams.