The End Of Days Read online

  The End of Days

  by

  Douglas Lindsay

  Published by Blasted Heath, 2011

  copyright 2011 Douglas Lindsay

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

  Douglas Lindsay has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by JT Lindroos

  Photo by Cavin

  Visit Douglas Lindsay at:

  www.blastedheath.com

  ISBN (ePub): 978-1-908688-12-5

  ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-908688-11-8

  Version 2-1-3

  Also by Douglas Lindsay

  Novels

  Lost in Juarez

  Barney Thomson series

  The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson

  The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt

  A Prayer for Barney Thomson

  The King Was In His Counting House

  The Last Fish Supper

  The Haunting of Barney Thomson

  The Final Cut

  Also by Blasted Heath

  Dead Money by Ray Banks

  Phase Four by Gary Carson

  The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson by Douglas Lindsay

  The Man in the Seventh Row by Brian Pendreigh

  All The Young Warriors by Anthony Neil Smith

  Keep informed of new releases by signing up to the Blasted Heath newsletter.

  Tuesday 1st December 2009

  0617hrs London, England

  The Prime Minister stared moodily at the headlines as he shuffled through the collected morning's newspapers. He could barely think at this time in the morning, let alone make decisions. Fortunately, he had Bleacher for that; the highest paid ministerial aide in British political history.

  'Bloody Dubai,' he muttered, tossing the FT petulantly onto the floor. 'I knew it was going to crash. I said that, didn't I?'

  'Yes, Prime Minister,' said Bleacher, who was at that moment red penning the PM's follow-up speech to the Afghan troop announcement, which he would deliver to a hopefully uncritical audience of five year-old children at a primary school in Kent later that morning.

  'I don't get it,' said the PM. 'How can everyone be in debt? I mean, everyone? It doesn't make sense. Who is it that they actually owe all that money to?'

  'Banks. That's who people usually owe money to.'

  'But all the banks are in debt. God, I just don't get economics.'

  Bleacher raised an eyebrow, but didn't look up.

  'And look. They've been going on at me about more troops, more troops. I announce more troops, and what do we get on the front pages? Spanish eggs. Some gumph about marriage, kidnap plots against Man U players, and now this Iranian thing. Holy crap.'

  'They are their own masters, Prime Minister, we know that.'

  The PM grunted. His chin slouched further down towards his chest.

  'Look, how's it going setting up the meeting with Obama in Copenhagen? I don't want any of that scrabbling around the bloody kitchens like we had in New York.'

  Bleacher took a deep breath. He had exhausted every favour he'd had to call in with the Americans while scrabbling around the kitchens of New York.

  'I'm on it,' he said. 'Currently, though, he's due to be there ten days before you, so it might be difficult.'

  'And I suppose he might not make it after that car accident he had in the middle of the night,' said the PM, staring out at a dark and frosty early morning in December.

  'That was Tiger Woods, Sir.'

  The PM abruptly got up and walked to the window. He clasped his hands behind his back and stood, head bowed, looking down on the street below. From where he stood he could see seven police officers. His pose reminded Bleacher of Richard Nixon.

  'Bloody Dubai,' said the PM again. 'I saved the world, saved the markets. The economy had started to turn round. Give it until June and we'd be sitting pretty, don't you think? Take that Etonian idiot and crush him in my iron fist.'

  'Yes, Prime Minister.'

  'Now bloody Dubai. If this sets off another chain reaction. Jesus.'

  He turned round and looked down at Bleacher, who was huddled over a coffee table, frantically turning the sharply worded script into the blandest statement he could find. Five year-old children deserved bland.

  'We need to seize the day. We're fighting back in the polls; now we need to grab that momentum, get the public on my side. What d'you think?'

  Bleacher finally laid the pen down on the table and looked up at the PM. The man looked tired and old; bags under his eyes, sagging jowls, greying teeth, greying hair, his one good eye showing dull and lifeless in the dim light of the small desk lamp.

  'Sure,' said Bleacher. 'What d'you want to do? We could probably get you on I'm A Celebrity.'

  The PM's brow furrowed.

  'Well, the press would ridicule me, but it might play well with the voters. Have you polled that?'

  'Of course,' said Bleacher.

  'And?'

  'Not so great. About on a par with getting a decent haircut.'

  The PM snorted and turned away. Bleacher waited a second, then bent his head again to the speech.

  'Too late for Strictly or X-Factor I suppose,' muttered the PM.

  'Yes. And you can't dance and you can't sing.'

  'Well, I can't bloody well eat insects' testicles, but it didn't stop you polling on I'm A Celebrity.'

  'What d'you think they served for dinner at CHOGM last week?'

  The PM grunted again. His head dropped a little lower. He felt so close. After two years of being buffeted and harangued and held up to the opprobrium of the nation, finally it seemed like he had turned a corner. Perhaps it was just because everyone had become fed up with beating up on the school wimp, perhaps it was just the rollercoaster momentum of politics. Whatever it was, it was time to drive home his advantage. Start to draw ahead in the polls, and have the media talking about the inevitability of his winning the general election.

  Maybe they could even get into a position to call a snap election and surprise everyone.

  'Might as well go for the haircut,' he said decisively. 'Get me the best barber in the country.'

  Bleacher looked up sharply. A good haircut isn't going to turn you into a statesman, he thought.

  'That would be Barney Thomson,' said Bleacher.

  The PM turned sharply. 'Barney Thomson?' he said keenly. 'You mean, the renegade barbershop legend?'

  'Well, I just see him more as a barber.'

  'He did Blair's hair at the last election. And he did the First Minister in Scotland a while back. He has form. Get him down here.'

  Bleacher finally rose from the small, leather-covered settee, clutching the re-written speech in his right hand.

  'Are you sure, Prime Minister? There's one sure thing about that man. Wherever he goes, death, murder, slaughter, blood, horror, mutilation and genocidal abomination are sure to follow.'

  The PM shoved his hands in his pockets and looked sternly at Bleacher.

  'As long as he gives me a good haircut, he can murder whoever the Hell he likes...'

  'Yes, Prime Minister.'

  1107hrs Millport, Scotland

  It was another cold and windy day on the Clyde, and the faded Victorian buildings of the seafront of the town of Millport looked bleak and desperate and sad. The wind rattled the Christmas lights, a few old women huddled along Shore Street, heads bowed to the weather. Seagulls circled above the town, although the days of the fishing fleet working out of the small ha
rbour were long since gone, and now the gulls waited for cast-off fish suppers and the paltry remnants of litter in the streets.

  Contrary to what the Prime Minister had implied, Barney Thomson had never murdered anyone in his life; although it had been his misfortune to come across serial killers with the kind of regularity that most people encounter warts or pigeons or falling leaves in autumn. Had he been a detective or a police psychologist or a Scenes of Crime Officer, then this might have been understandable. Working in the hairdressing business, however, it was at best strange, and at worst, downright devilish.

  It was a quiet day in the barbershop. Igor, Barney's deaf, mute hunchbacked assistant, was sweeping up at the back, although there wasn't actually anything to sweep. Barney was cutting the hair of only his second customer of the day, old Rusty Brown, a man in search of a Juan Manuel Fangio '57 and some early winter conversation.

  'So did you see Strictly?' he said to Barney.

  Igor glanced up from the other side of his brush. He was deaf and yet he heard everything.

  'Don't watch it,' said Barney.

  'Oh, you're an X-Factor man then?' said Rusty, nodding his head and putting his right ear in the most heinous jeopardy.

  'Nope,' said Barney. 'Don't watch that either.'

  Rusty Brown looked a little perplexed.

  'You must be one of these fellas that's only interested in I'm A Celebrity, eh? Can't abide that myself. I mean, I watch it 'cause of all they lassies with big tits, but it's not for me.'

  'Never seen it,' said Barney.

  Rusty just plain turned round in the chair and stared at Barney. Barney Thomson, only by the smallest of margins, avoided stabbing him in the eye with a pair of Mizutani Acro Stellite MZ9543's. (An early Christmas present to himself, and a snip at £540.00).

  'Hang on a second,' said Rusty Brown. 'You mean, you don't watch Strictly, X-Factor or Celebrity? That's the most bizarre thing I've ever heard in my entire puff. Holy Declaration of Arbroath, but what do you do with yourself, laddie?'

  Barney gestured gently for Rusty Brown to turn round, and then continued with the haircut.

  He glanced over at Igor and smiled ruefully; Igor grimaced and made a movement with the brush to imply that he might whack Rusty Brown over the head with it. Although, it wasn't as if Igor didn't wish that Barney did more with his life, especially since Igor had moved in with the widow Carmichael and Barney had lost his drinking buddy to happy domesticity. But Barney was as he was, a man who observed life as it took its toll on others; a man who cut hair, ate dinner, and who sat at a window and watched the waves crash onto the rocks, watched the clouds drift across the hills of Arran.

  'I don't know,' said Barney eventually. 'Just watch life, I suppose.'

  'Ah,' said Rusty Brown, 'David Attenborough. Well, you can't go wrong with him.'

  Igor grumbled in the corner, making a noise that sounded suspiciously like arf. Barney smiled and began to work his special barbershop magic around Rusty Brown's right ear.

  He stopped suddenly, something making him look out of the window. A speck in the distance, coming from the south, appearing over the mainland. The others followed his gaze. They couldn't hear it yet, but they could see that it was a helicopter, heading towards Millport.

  Barney watched, the speck growing larger as the helicopter approached the island. It could have been any old helicopter on any old mission. But he knew it wasn't; he knew it would be for him. They were coming for him.

  He turned and looked at Igor and Igor rolled his eyes.

  'Arf,' said Igor.

  'Yep,' said Barney, 'here we go again.'

  2203hrs London, England

  The old man threw back his seventh whisky of the evening. It irritably burned its way down his throat, then the acid in his stomach angrily cried out at him and screamed up his gut. Someone nearby in the building was playing a Bing Crosby Christmas album, and the mournful strains of I'll be Home For Christmas came drifting along the corridor.

  It had been a bad year for MPs, everyone knew. They had all, to a man and woman, been rumbled, like so many Winnie The Poohs with their hands in Rabbit's honey pot. Yet few had had as bad a time as Sir Leon Worthington-Worthington. Called out for claiming expenses on a second home in Monte Carlo; derided by the media for allowing the taxpayer to foot the bill for a fortnight's skiing in the Alps with his mistress; his wife finding out about his mistress; being made to pay back over £200,000 in erroneous and fanciful expenses, and currently under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office; and Sir Leon knew better than anyone else, that he was guilty as charged. Already forced to give up his seat at the next election, Sir Leon was looking at spending the rest of his life in prison, his good name laid waste, and not to mention the small matter of the butt naked photographs which were due to appear in the News of the World any Sunday soon.

  However, as he faced the ruination of his career and the vilification of the public, media and even his two-faced contemporaries, he was determined that he would not go down alone. He would not stand idly by, while the others let him take the brunt of the criticism, he would not self-flagellate in public while his party leader took the absurd moral high ground.

  And as Bing drifted forlornly into his room, Sir Leon Worthington-Worthington, decrepit old relic of the days of Empire, and the oldest MP in the Commons by some twenty-three years, made his plans to wreak his revenge on those who would not stand by him.

  He opened the drawer of his three hundred year-old mahogany desk and looked down with wicked glee at the eight inch blade which lay unsheathed, waiting to be picked up and plunged into the back of some unsuspecting fool of an MP.

  And Sir Leon Worthington-Worthington knew exactly which MP that would be.

  Wednesday 2nd December 2009

  0857hrs London, England

  The Prime Minister was sitting in his chair, head bowed, the Financial Times in his lap. However, the FT was only there as cover, in case someone should walk in, and he was currently reading Kinky Sex Shock For Pete in the Daily Star, shaking his head and muttering sadly about how he wished he could get that much publicity.

  As he heard the door open he quickly folded the FT and tossed it dismissively onto the floor.

  'Bleacher!' he barked at the two men who had just entered, 'I have to be out of here in fifteen minutes. Where's the ruddy barber?'

  'We've got confirmation, Prime Minister, that the five sailors have been released by Iran,' said Bleacher.

  Barney Thomson stood idly by, looking at the paintings on the wall, and was struck by the large portrait of Margaret Thatcher which hung behind the PM's desk.

  The PM sighed heavily and nodded.

  'Well,' he muttered, lest a positive word ever leave his lips in truth, 'I hope the Foreign Secretary's not going to take all the credit.'

  He glanced harshly at Bleacher, who decided to move the conversation on and indicated the man standing next to him.

  'This is Barney Thomson, Prime Minister. He's agreed to take on your hair.'

  The PM glared round at him, grunted again, and sat back in his chair.

  'I don't actually think you had a choice,' he said to Barney, as Barney approached.

  Barney Thomson stood behind the Prime Minister and looked down at his thick head of hair. From where he was standing, he could see what the Labour backbenchers in the Commons could see; that it was starting to thin, and the cover-up involved some amount of legerdemain.

  'Blair said you won him the last election,' said the PM abruptly. Barney raised an eyebrow. 'Not that you could believe anything he said,' added the PM darkly, then he barked out a laugh.

  Barney glanced at Bleacher who had his head buried in the day's programme.

  'What would you like?' asked Barney, turning back to the head of hair before him. He felt jaded already. Missed the island and the smell of the sea, the cry of the gulls. After his previous trip to London, he would have been happy never to return. Some strange sense of duty had made him answer the Prime Min
ister's call.

  'I want a cut that makes me look wise and aged, yet youthful and in touch with young voters. I want to look sage and statesmanlike. I want to look like a king, but, you know, a king that you'd vote for. I want to be someone the voters can respect, someone they can trust. I want to be a combination of Churchill, Obama, Bob Dylan and Alan Hansen. I want to be all things to all people. I want to stand before the British People, with the finest hair that any man has ever seen, and say boldly to them, "Follow me, and I shall lead you to the new Jerusalem." '

  Barney stood looking down at the PM's hair.

  'Can you do that for me, Mr. Thomson?' asked the PM.

  'Sure,' said Barney. 'Just give me five minutes.'

  1302hrs House of Commons London, England

  Prime Minister's Questions, the highlight of any week in the Commons. There was a time, before the microphones and television cameras were allowed into the building, when people had thought of PMQs as a serious affair, where important questions were asked and answered. The modern era has revealed that generally proceedings start with a rousing exclamation of My cock is bigger than your cock! and very quickly descend into name-calling and handbags at five paces.

  As he sat a few feet across the chamber, the Leader Of the Opposition was troubled. He could tell that there was something different about the Prime Minister, yet he couldn't quite work out what it was. The PM had his usual lugubrious yet smug look on his face; he hadn't plucked his eyebrows, and probably never would again after the Carla Bruni incident; there was just something about him. Suddenly, rather than a sepulchral Scotsman who constantly looked on the verge of telling you that the world was about to end, and that he personally could take all the credit for it, he now had a certain air about him.