The Brentford Triangle (15 page)

Neville the part-time barman took up his mail from the mat and thrust it into his dressing-gown pocket. Amongst the bills and circulars were no less than three postcards sporting rooftop views of Brentford, but the barman did not give these even a cursory glance.

He had been up half the night trying to work out a deal with his pagan deity over his ill-considered blood oath, but was still far from certain that the matter would be allowed to rest. It was always a hairy business wheeling and dealing with the Elder Gods of Ancient Earth.

Neville drew the brass bolts and flung the door open to sniff the morning air. It smelt far from promising. He took a deep breath, scratched at his bony ribs, and gave the world a bit of first thing perusal. It had all the makings of a beautiful day but Neville could not find any joy to be had in the twinkling sunlight and precocious bird song.

Like others who had gone before him, Neville the part-time barman was a very worried man. The day he had been dreading had come to pass. All over Brentford, dartsmen were awakening, flexing their sensitive fingers, and preparing themselves for the biggest night of the year. The Swan’s team had been growing surlier by the day. Where was Norman? they asked. Why was he not practising with them? Neville’s excuses had been wearing thinner than the seat of his trousers. If Norman did not turn up for the tournament the consequences did not bear thinking about.

Neville looked thoughtfully up the road towards the corner shop. Perhaps he should just slip along now and smooth the matter over. Throw himself on Norman’s mercy if necessary, promise him anything. Omally had said that the shopkeeper would be present, but was he ever to be trusted?

Neville hovered upon his slippered toes. It would be but the work of a minute. Norman would be numbering up his papers, he could say he just called in for a box of matches, exchange a few niceties, then leave with a casual “Look forward to seeing you tonight.” Something like that.

Neville took a step forward. At that moment, in the distance, a figure appeared from the shop doorway. Neville’s heart rose; it was telepathy surely. The shopkeeper was coming to make his peace. All his troubles were over.

Nicholas Roger Raffles Rathbone hoisted his paperbag into the sunlight. Neville’s heart fell. “Bugger, bugger, bugger,” said the part-time barman, returning to the saloon-bar, and slamming the door behind him.

Parked close to the kerb in a side road opposite to the Swan, and lost for the most part in the shadow of one of the flatblocks, was a long sleek black automobile with high fins. In the front seat of this gleaming motor car sat a man of average height, with a slightly tanned complexion and high cheek-bones. He bore an uncanny resemblance to a young Jack Palance, as did his passenger, who lounged in a rear seat, smoking a green cheroot. The two watched the paperboy as he passed within a few feet of their highly polished front bumper and vanished into one of the flatblocks.

No words passed between these two individuals, but the driver glanced a moment into his rear-view mirror, and his passenger acknowledged the reflected eyes with a knowing nod.

The day passed in an agonizing fashion. Pooley and Omally took their lunchtime’s pleasure in a neutral drinking house at Kew, where they sat huddled in an anonymous corner, speaking in hushed tones, bitterly bewailing the exorbitant prices, and casting suspicious glances at every opening of the saloon-bar door.

Norman closed up his shop at one and busied himself in his kitchenette. What he did there was strictly his own business, and he had no intention of letting anything, no matter how alien, interfere with his afternoon’s work.

In his sewage outlet pipe, Small Dave paced up and down. His hair was combed forward across his forehead and his left hand was thrust into his shirt in a fashion much favoured by a diminutive French dictator of days gone by. As he paced he muttered, and the more he muttered the more apparent it became that he was plotting something which was to cause great ill to any camel owners in Brentford.

At intervals he ceased his frenzied pacing and peered up and down the hideous pipe, as if expecting the arrival of some fellow conspirator. None, however, made an appearance.

Professor Slocombe was not to be found at his desk that afternoon. He had pressing business elsewhere. Whilst the sun shone down upon Brentford and the Brentonians went about whatever business they had, he was conversing earnestly with a pink-eyed man of apparent albino extraction, who had given up such doubtful pleasures to dedicate himself to the search for far greater truths.

Even now, the Professor sat in what was to all appearances a normal Brentford front room, but which was, in fact, situated more than a mile beneath Penge; which I understand is a very nice place, although I have never been there myself.

At a little after three, Neville drew the bolts upon the Swan’s door and retired to his chambers. He had been anaesthetizing himself with scotch since eleven and was now feeling less concerned about what was to happen during the coming evening. He was, however, having a great deal of trouble keeping the world in focus. He falteringly set his alarm clock for five and blissfully fell asleep upon his bed.

At long last the Memorial Library clock struck a meaningful seven-thirty. The Swan was already a-buzz with conversation. Pints were being pulled a-plenty and team members from the half-dozen pubs competing this year were already limbering up upon the row of dartboards arranged along the saloon-bar wall. The closed sign had long been up upon the Star of Bombay Curry Garden, and within the Swan, Gammon, in the unlikely guise of an Eastern swami, engaged Archie Karachi in fervent debate.

In the back room of number seven Mafeking Avenue four men held a council of war.

“The thing must be performed with all expediency,” said Professor Slocombe. “We do not want Norman to miss the match. I have, as the colonials would have it, big bucks riding upon this year’s competition.”

The shopkeeper grinned. “Have no fear, Professor,” said he.

“Omally, do you have your tools?” John patted at the bulging plumber’s bag he had commandeered during the afternoon from a dozing council worker. “Then it is off down the alley and fingers crossed.”

Without further ado, the four men passed out into a small back yard and down a dustbin-crowded alleyway towards the rear of the Star of Bombay Curry Garden.

Norman was but a moment at the lock before the four found themselves within the ghastly kitchenette, their noses assailed by the horrendous odours of stale vindaloo and mouldy madras. Kali’s face peered down from a garish wall-calendar, registering a look of some foreboding at the prospect of what was to be done to the premises of one of her followers.

“A moment please,” said Professor Slocombe. “We must be certain that all is secure.”

Within the Swan, Gammon suddenly interrupted his conversation, excused himself momentarily from Archie’s company, and thrust a handful of change into the Swan’s jukebox. As the thing roared into unstoppable action, Neville, who had taken great pains to arrange for the disabling of that particular piece of pub paraphernalia years before, and had never actually heard it play, marvelled at its sudden return to life. The Professor had left nothing to chance.

“To the wall, John,” said Professor Slocombe.

“Whereabouts?”

“Just there.”

“Fair enough.” Omally swung his seven-pound club hammer and the cold chisel penetrated the gaudy wallpaper. The mouldy plasterwork fell away in great map chunks, and within a minute or two Omally had bared an area of brickwork roughly five feet in height and two in width.

“Better penetrate from the very centre,” the Professor advised. “Take it easy and we will have a little check-about, in case the thing is booby-trapped.” Omally belted the chisel into the brickwork.

Within the Swan the jukebox was belting out a deafening selection of hits from the early sixties. The sounds of demolition were swallowed up by the cacophony.

“Stop!” said the Professor suddenly.

“What is it?” The words came simultaneously from three death-white faces.

“Changing the record, that’s all. You can go on again now.”

Pooley was skulking near to the back door. With every blow to the brickwork his nerve was taking a similar hammering. His hand wavered above the door handle.

“If it goes up, Jim,” said the Professor without looking round, “it will take most of Brentford with it. You have nowhere to run to.”

“I wasn’t running,” said Jim. “Just keeping an eye on the alleyway, that’s all.” He peered over the net curtain into a yard which was a veritable munitions dump of spent curry tins. “And not without cause. John, stop banging.”

“I’m getting nowhere with all these interruptions,” the Irishman complained. “Look, I’ve nearly got this brick out.”

“No, stop, stop!” Pooley ducked down below window level. “There’s one of them out there.”

“Ah,” said Professor Slocombe, “I had the feeling that they would not be very far from the Swan this night.”

The four men held their breath until they could do it no more. “Is he still there?” the Professor asked.

Pooley lifted the corner of the net curtain. “No, he’s gone. Be at it, John, get a move on will you?”

“Perhaps you’d rather do the work yourself, Pooley?” said Omally, proffering his tools.

“I am the lookout,” said Pooley haughtily, “you are the hammerman.”

“Oh, do get a move on,” sighed Norman. “It’s nearly a quarter to eight.”

Omally swung away with a vengeance, raising a fine cloud of brick dust, and dislodging chunks of masonry with every blow. When he had cleared a hole of sufficient size, the Professor stuck his head through and shone about with a small hand torch. “I see no sign of touch plates or sensory activators. Have it down, John.”

Omally did the business. As Gammon’s final selection came to an end and the jukebox switched itself off for another decade, the saboteurs stood before the exposed back plate of the Captain Laser Alien Attack Machine.

Norman opened his tool-box and took out a pair of rubber gloves, which he dusted with talcum powder, and drew over his sensitive digits. Taking up a long slim screwdriver, he teased out the locking screws. As the others crossed their fingers and held their breath, he gently eased away the back plate. The Professor shone his torch in through the crack and nodded. Norman yanked the plate off, exposing the machine’s inner workings.

A great gasp went up from the company. “Holy Mary,” said John Omally, “would you look at all that lot?”

Norman whistled through his teeth. “Magic,” said he. Upon the dashboard of a black Cadillac sedan parked in a nearby side-road a green light began to flash furiously.

The shopkeeper leant forward and stared into the machine’s innards. “It is wonderful,” he said. “Beyond belief.”

“But can you break it up?” Omally demanded.

“Break it up? That would be a crime against God. Look at it, the precision, the design. It is beyond belief, beyond belief.”

“Yes, yes, but can you break it up?”

Norman shook his head, “Given time, I suppose. But look here, the thing must serve at least a dozen functions. Each of these modules has a separate input and output.”

“Let me give it a welt with my hammer.”

“No, no, just a minute.” Norman traced the circuitry with his screwdriver, whistling all the while. “Each module is fed by the main power supply, somewhere deep within the Earth, it appears. This is evidently some sort of communications apparatus. There is a signalling device here, obviously for some sort of guidance control. Here is the basic circuitry which powers the games centre. Here is a gravitational field device to draw down orbiting objects on to a preprogrammed landing site. The whole thing is here, complete tracking, guidance, communication and landing controls. There are various other subsidiary components: outward defence modifications, protecting the frontal circuitry, alarm systems, etcetera.”

The Professor nodded. “Disconnect the guidance, communications, and landing systems, if you please, Norman.”

Norman delved into the works, skilfully removing certain intricate pieces of microcircuitry. “It occurs to me,” he said, “speaking purely as a layman, that as a protective measure we might reverse certain sections merely by changing over their positive and negative terminals.”

Professor Slocombe scratched at his snowy head. “To what end?”

“Well, if this device is guiding the craft in by means of gravitational beams locked into their computer guidance systems, if we were to reverse the polarity, then as they punch in their coordinates on board the ships, the machine will short them out, and possibly destroy the descending craft.”

“Will it work?”

Norman tapped at his nose. “Take it from me, it won’t do them a lot of good. Come to think of it, it might even be possible to cross-link the guidance system with the actual games programme on the video machine. Pot the bastards right out of the sky as they fly in.”

“Can you do it?”

“Can I do it, Professor?” Norman unscrewed a series of terminals and reconnected them accordingly. He also removed a small unobtrusive portion of the contrivance, which appeared of importance only to himself, and secreted it within his toolbox.

“Are you all done?” the Professor asked, when the shopkeeper finally straightened up.

“All done,” said Norman, pulling off his gloves and tossing them into his tool-box. “A piece of cake.”

Professor Slocombe rose upon creaking knees and patted the brick dust from his tweeds. He put a hand upon the shopkeeper’s shoulder and said, “You have done very well, Norman, and we will be for ever in your debt. The night, however, is far from over. In fact it has just begun. Do you think that you might now pull off the double by winning the darts match?”

Norman nodded. He had every intention of pulling off the treble this night. But that was something he was keeping very much to himself.

The Swan was filling at a goodly pace. With seven local teams competing for the cherished shield, business was already becoming brisk. Neville had taken on extra barstaff, but these were of the finger-counting, change-confusing variety, and were already costing him money. The part-time barman was doing all he could, but his good eye wandered forever towards the Swan’s door.

When at quarter past eight it swung open to herald the arrival of Omally, Pooley, Professor Slocombe and Norman, the barman breathed an almighty sigh of relief. Omally thrust his way through the crowd and ordered the drinks. “As promised,” he announced, as the Swan’s team enveloped Norman in their midst with a great cheer.

Neville pulled the pints. “I am grateful, Omally,” said he, “these are on the house.”

“And will be for a year, as soon as the other little matter is taken care of.”

“The machine?”

“You will have to bear with me just a little longer on that one. Whatever occurs tonight you must stand resolute and take no action.”

Neville’s suspicions were immediately aroused. “What is likely to occur?”

Omally held up his grimy hands. “The matter is under the control of Professor Slocombe, a man who, I am sure you will agree, can be trusted without question.”

“If all is as you say, then I will turn a blind eye to that despoiler of my loins who has come skulking with you.” Omally grinned handsomely beneath his whiskers. Neville loaded the drinks on to a tray and Omally bore them away to the Professor’s reserved table.

A bell rang and the darts tournament began. A hired Master of Ceremonies, acting as adjudicator and positive last word, clad in a glittering tuxedo and sporting an eyebrow-pencil moustache, announced the first game.

First on the oché were the teams from the Four Horsemen and the New Inn. Jack Lane, resident landlord at the Four Horsemen these forty-seven long years, struggled from his wheelchair and flung the very first dart of the evening.

“Double top, Four Horsemen away,” announced the adjudicator in a booming voice.

Outside in the street, two figures who closely resembled a pair of young Jack Palances, and who smelt strongly of creosote, were rapidly approaching the Swan. They walked with automaton precision, and their double footfalls echoed along the deserted Ealing Road.

“Double top,” boomed the adjudicator, “New Inn away.”

Pooley and Omally sat in their grandstand seats, sipping their ale. “Your man Jarvis there has a fine overarm swing,” said Omally.

“He is a little too showy for my liking,” Pooley replied. “I will take five to four on the Horsemen if you’re offering it.”

Omally, who had already opened his book and was now accepting bets from all comers, spat on his palm and smacked it down into that of his companion. “We are away then,” said he.

Bitow bitow bitow
went the Captain Laser Alien Attack Machine, suddenly jarring the two men from their appreciation of life’s finer things, and causing them to leap from their chairs. Omally craned his neck above the crowd and peered towards the sinister contrivance. Through the swelling throng he could just make out the distinctive lime-green coiffure of Nicholas Roger Raffles Rathbone.

“It is the young ninny,” said John. “Five to four you have then, I will draw up a page for you.”

Neville was by now moving up and down the bar, taking orders left, right, and centre. The till jangled like a fire alarm, and Croughton the pot-bellied potman was already in a lather.

No-one noticed as two men with high cheekbones and immaculate black suits entered the Swan and lost themselves in the crowds. No-one, that is, but for a single disembodied soul who lightly tapped the Professor upon the shoulder. “All right,” said the old man, without drawing his eyes from the match in play. “Kindly keep me informed.”

The Four Horsemen was faring rather badly. The lads from the New Inn had enlisted the support of one Thomas “Squires” Trelawny, a flightsmaster from Chiswick. “Who brought him in?” asked Pooley. “His name is not on the card.”

“A late entry, I suppose, do I hear a change in the odds?”

“Treacherous to the end, Omally,” said Jim Pooley. “I will not shorten the odds, who is the next man up?”

“Jack’s son, Young Jack.”

Young Jack, who was enjoying his tenth year in retirement, and looked not a day over forty, put his toe to the line and sent his feathered missile upon its unerring course into the treble twenty.

A great cheer went up from the Horsemen’s supporters. “He once got three hundred and one in five darts,” Omally told Jim.

“He is in league with the devil though but.”

“True, that does give him an edge.”

Somehow Young Jack had already managed to score one hundred and eighty-one with three darts, and this pleased the lads from the Four Horsemen no end. To much applause, he concluded his performance by downing a pint of mild in less than four seconds.

“He is wearing very well considering his age,” said Omally.

“You should see the state of his portrait in the attic.”

“I’ll get the round in then,” said Professor Slocombe, rising upon his cane.

“Make sure he doesn’t charge you for mine,” called Omally, who could see a long and happy year ahead, should the weather hold. With no words spoken the crowd parted before the old man, allowing him immediate access to the bar.

Beneath his table Young Jack made a satanic gesture, but he knew he was well outclassed by the great scholar.