No one could remember how the drinking started.
Malcolm's pristine coffee table had developed a rash of liquor bottles arranged in a monochromatic rainbow of pure fuck. Sam, book-ended by Jamie and Malcolm, leaned forward to hold the shot glasses steady as Malcolm struggled to pour another round. The bottle was slipping in his hand as though made from the core of a dying star. Finally, last glass brimmed with something vile.
"Steady fucking on!" Jamie protested, noticing that it was his. "I know you said you were gonna kill me but does it have to be with cheap shit excavated from your cabinet?"
Malcolm was horrified. "S'not cheap!" he protested, slurring slightly as he lifted Jamie's glass.
"Shit knows what it's been bunking with in there. Bits of brimstone and Hades' left bollock..." It was overfilled and dribbled over the lip as Jamie took ownership of it. He awkwardly sucked his wrist as torrents threatened to spill into his cuff.
Malcolm watched. "You're acting like an animal. Are you some kind of Vermilingua? No? Then stop licking your fuckin' fingers when you're on my couch!"
"Hey!" Jamie shouted, then turned to Sam, calm as anything. He ran his free hand through his hair, drawing attention to a fresh streak of grey. "This is a decorative flourish that doesn', in any way, resemble an insectivorous mammal."
"Giant Anteater," Tucker corrected, not liking the way the other man leaned toward his P.A..
"You know what your problem is? Too much Discovery Channel. Lion fucking. New king of the Savannah rocks up and tears all the junior ministers to bits."
"Where do you think I ge' my deeper understandin' of the political maelstrom from?"
Sam's head hurt. "Enough. It takes too much energy to filter out your extended metaphors." As Malcolm sank into the couch, she caught a glimpse of his phone sticking up from his inner jacket pocket. She half lunged for it. "Let me see it!" Sam demanded, for the thousandth time in the last hour. If there was a questionable picture of her loose in the world, she wanted to see it before the rest of the plebs. God. Her brother was never going to let her hear the end of this if he found out.
"NO!" they replied in unison. Malcolm buttoned up his jacket to keep her at bay. Much as she wanted his phone, he knew Sam wouldn't wrestle him for it.
"It's going to be in the paper anyway," she mumbled, tilting forward awkwardly as she attempted to pick her glass up.
Both Malcolm and Jamie tried not to watch too intently. They really shouldn't be drinking with her in the first place and a rather large, sensible region in the back of their skulls was thundering protests every time inappropriate thoughts skipped into view. The pair of Scottish drunkards had to remember that Sam wasn't their burd. It was equivalent to having questionable thoughts for a filofax.
"I can hear you," Sam muttered, without looking at them. "Having silent conversations with your eyebrows."
"Fuckin' mad, this one..." Malcolm winked.
"An' it's no' going to be in the papers," Jamie insisted. "Not if the editor wants to keep his proximals attached to his metacarpals."
Malcolm narrowed his eyes. "The fuck you on about?"
"The – thingys," Jamie held his hand up, pointing to his fingers.
"Did you threaten the editor of Times?"
"Might have done."
Malcolm reached over Sam to slap Jamie on the back. "They grow up so fast."
"All right – all right," Sam struggled to keep a hold of her drink while they playfully fought across her. "If you're going to make out – get your own couch."
"Darlin' this is my couch." They disentangled themselves anyway.
"Jamie's right – it is shit," Sam added, setting an empty glass aside.
Malcolm mistook that as a challenge. He got up and picked his way through the assortment of bottles, searching for something better.
"You'll hurt his feelings," Jamie whispered against Sam's ear.
"Impossible," she replied, well aware that Tucker was listening. He was like Nixon's tape recorder, always tuned to incriminate. "Haven't you seen the spread? He is a man without feeling. A demon masquerading as a spin doctor. The Walking Dead of Westminster."
"That was my favourite," Jamie lifted his freshly empty glass in Tucker's direction. "Nice photo too. One of yours?"
"This'll put some hair on your cock," Malcolm filled the shot glass with an unknown substance.
Sam feigned revolt. "Urgh – is this why you two drink alone? No – don't give me that. Yeah – that one – that'll do. Careful!"
Tucker nearly tipped over himself. He wasn't ready to admit it but the ground did seem to be wobbling on its own. "Re-fucking-lax," he waved the hands off. "The Leaning Tower of Pisa has more of a tilt and you don' see anyone panicking about that."
"It's a national stone monument," Jamie pointed out. "If it goes to fuck there'll be a shitting great pile of marble dust but you-" he gestured drunkenly at Malcolm, who wasn't fairing much better, "who knows what'll spew forth from your corpse. Could be Pandora but with more fuck and no goddamn hope. You might be one of those Russian doll things – giving birth to a dozen, smaller, scarier versions of yourself."
"Commonly called, 'children'," Sam pointed out. Tiny Tuckers? She wasn't sure that was a good thing.
"I'm pretty certain there's an act in parliament preventing that."
"Oh – Christ..." Malcolm was interrupted by his phone. "Miller's appeared on TV wearing antlers."
"As in..." Jamie did his best to impersonate a reindeer.
"No, a couple of fucking rhino horns lashed to his forehead – yeah – antlers. He looks like a computer generated queer float at Dia de los Muertos." He flicked on the TV which obediently presented them with the full horror of a festive Miller. "I've gotta go shout at him for a bit – ram those branches through is ears and out his rectum. I'm going through a bit of a Shelley phase. Think I might turn him into a lost chapter where things get very creative in a nasty, violent sort of way."
A vision of a rampaging, drunk scot wielding Christmas accessories made Sam latch onto his sleeve in panic. She yanked him back to the couch. Tucker landed awkwardly, with his hand on her shoulder and hers – well hers slid down the inside of his thigh. Sam hadn't noticed. Tucker wasn't breathing.
Tense seconds passed. Jamie was confused, eyebrows nearly at his ears.
"Oh my god – is that the -" Sam swiped Tucker's forgotten phone from the floor and retreated. "That's a terrible photo of me!"
"NO!" They both shouted, launching themselves in her direction in pursuit of the phone.
It was too fucking late.
Glen was doing his rounds of the office when he noticed the alarming silhouette of the minister. "Should – should you still be wearing those?" he asked carefully, leaning around the door.
Dan Miller was behind his desk, staring at the opposing blank wall. "I was instructed to be festive. I am festive."
His advisor frowned. "I'm not entirely sure Malcolm was serious about the – well, put it this way. He says a lot of things that require translation into reality."
Silence.
Glen hovered to see if the vacuous carbon unit masquerading as a minister did anything else. Nope. That was it for today. Maybe Ollie was right and he really was grown in a lab. He was just a thin sheen of human flesh looking that'd be more useful made into one of Tucker's briefcases.
Ollie was watching the evening news with a pained expression half-hidden behind his glasses. "It's made CNN..." He muttered, as Glen wandered in with a cup of tea.
Glen flinched at the screen. "He looks even worse in high definition."
"It's colour-correct. All the American channels do it. They live in an alternate version of reality where the world is viewed solely through Instagram filters. Any word from Malcolm? He must have seen this by now."
"Maybe he's dead."
"Did you wish really really hard?" Ollie changed the channel and found another, larger version of Miller's ridiculous head. "Scary as he is, politics without Malcolm is the gates of hell without the gates."
"You're right there. A healthy air of fear stops things like this happening." He pointed in the direction of the screen. "Malcolm hates Miller. He's the voodoo doll that won't scream." Malcolm and/or Jaime should have made an appearance by now. "This quiet is disconcerting. There's something not right without the mofos of spin stalking the halls."
Mofos? Ollie mouthed. "Don't use words like that, Glen. It's just – wrong. What are you doing here anyway, don't you have a wall to lovingly plaster?"
"The tea's better here."
"Is that the – only – quality to recommend DoSAC?"
"Yes." Glen took another tepid look at the screen. "The only time that international news should be aware of our politicians is if we're declaring war on them."
Ollie was shaking his head. "Cabinet ministers can't declare war. It's not the 1700's when all you needed was a flag and open patch of ground. You couldn't even get Miller to conquer the Christmas lights at Townhall!"
"That wasn't my fault! They were sore about Nicola cutting down that tree for the new bus shelter."
"Tree-gate. The newspapers drew a wonderful likeness of you."
"As a pine-cone – growing out the side of Nicola's tree suggesting that I'm one of her reproductive organs. I'm not even bald."
"It's the closest you'll get to appearing in a porno."
"Am I interrupting?" Terry hovered at the door, holding her mobile aloft. Ollie suspected that her arm was actually welded into that position. She noticed the TV. "Oh dear – that's not going to play well. It makes him look quite pale – don't you think?"
"That's his natural colouring. Off-white. It happens to things which don't have a pulse." Ollie nodded at the phone.
"It's Tucker."
"What did he say?"
"Nothing really," Terry replied. "It's – he sent a photo of a hat. Like, a Sherlock Holmes hat. I don't understand." She turned it so they could see.
"It's a deer stalker, Terry." Glen set his tea down.
"The Fawcetts of politics. Spin doctors missing in action. The earlier disappearance of Senior Press Secretary, Jamie McDonald has spread to his well-feared mentor, Malcolm Tucker. Often referred to as, 'The Heart of Darkness', speculation is rife that all is not well within the opposition. In their absence, the minister of the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship was seen earlier this evening wearing-"
"Enough!" Tucker snapped the lid closed on the laptop. "The fucking cheek to suggest we're a father and son team. I must have had you when I was swimming up a fallopian tube. Stop laughing or get ou' of my house. Where's Sam?"
"You sen' her fer biscuits."
"I can't believe she's locked us in." Tucker folded his arms crossly. He was a prisoner in his own house. The decision had been made to save the world from the wrath of two inebriated spin doctors panting for a fight. It was utterly imperative that they didn't do anything to sabotage their side project of surviving the Goolding inquiry. Basically, she was spoiling all his fun.
"Are you sure this is what Malcolm meant?" Glen muttered, half a step behind Ollie. They were en-route to Dan Miller's office intent on giving him a right talking to.
"The follow up txt was pretty clear unless he wants us to actually hunt deer."
"What are you going to say?"
"I don't know – what does Malcolm normally say? A load of inexplicable, difficult to follow, expletive-laden, extended analogies. We'll just – swear at him a bit and leave."
Glen didn't look so sure. Dan Miller was essentially a species of brick wall.
Even worse – he wasn't in his office.
"Oh fuck!" Ollie hit the door and then held his hand protectively to his chest as it throbbed. "He's gone."
"Well that's good, isn't it? When Malcolm asks us what happened we'll simply tell him that the minister wasn't here."
"Are you mad, Glen? If we don't find Miller and shout at him, Tucker's going to find us and – and shout at us, or turn us into a pie – or whatever it does when his minions fail. Do you want to be pie?"
"No but he's gone. There's not a lot we can do about that, unless you want to follow him home. Ollie? Ollie... Ollie no."