The Brentford Triangle

by Robert Rankin

  Neville viewed the diminutive figure with the lime-green coiffure. ‘I cannot give out change,’ he said maliciously. ‘You will have to buy a drink.’

  ‘OK then, a half of shandy and plenty of two-bobs in the change, the Captain awaits.’

  Neville drew off a mere trickle of ale into the glass and topped it up from the drips tray. ‘We’ve no lemonade,’ he sneered.

  ‘No sweat,’ said Nick.

  Neville noticed, as he passed the flat half-pint across the gleaming bar top, that the boy’s right forefinger drummed out a continual tattoo upon an imaginary neutron bomb release button. Accepting the pound note, he rang up ‘No Sale’ and scooped out a fistful of pennies and halfpennies and a ten-bob piece. ‘Sorry I can’t let you have more than a couple of florins,’ he told the bouncing boy, ‘we are a little down on silver this morning.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘No sweat.’ He was well acquainted with the old adage about a prophet being without honour in his own land, and he made a mental note that he would always in future take his perks in silver before settling in for a lunchtime’s cosmic warfare. Without further ado he pocketed his ten-bob piece, swept up his pennies, pushed his half-pint pointedly aside and jogged back to the humming machine.

  Pooley and Omally entered the Flying Swan. ‘God save all here,’ said the Irishman, as more bitowing rent the air, ‘and a pox upon the Nipponese and all their hellish works.’

  Raffles Rathbone heard not a word of this; he was hunched low, aiding the Captain in his bid to defeat Earth’s attackers. His face was contorted into the kind of expression which made Joseph Carey Merrick such a big attraction in the Victorian side-shows. His right forefinger twitched in a localized St Vitus’ Dance and his body quivered as if charged with static electricity.

  Neville ground his teeth, loosening yet another expensive filling, and tore his eyes away from the loathsome spectacle and towards his approaching patrons. ‘What is your pleasure, gentlemen?’ he asked.

  Pooley hoisted himself on to his favourite stool. ‘Two pints of your very best, bar lord,’ he said. ‘My companion is in the chair.’

  Making much of his practised wrist action, Neville drew off two pints of the very very best. He eyed Omally with only the merest suspicion as the Irishman paid up without a fuss, guessing accurately that it was some debt of honour. His eyebrows were raised somewhat, however, to the shabby and mud-bespattered appearance of

  the two drinkers. He thought to detect something slightly amiss. ‘I think to detect something slightly amiss,’ he observed.

  John drew deeply upon his pint. ‘You find me a puzzled man,’ said he with some sincerity.

  Pooley nodded, ‘I also am puzzled,’ he said tapping his chest.

  The part-time barman stood silently a moment, hoping for a little elaboration, but when it became apparent that none was to be forthcoming he picked up a pint glass and began to polish it.

  ‘You have had no luck yet with the disablement of that horror?’ said Omally, gesturing over his shoulder towards the video machine.

  Neville accelerated his polishing. ‘None whatever,’ he snarled. ‘I have tried the hot soup through the vent, the bent washer in the slot, assault with a deadly weapon. I have tried simply to cut the lead but the thing is welded into the wall.’

  ‘Why not pull its fuse at the mains box?’ Pooley asked.

  Neville laughed hollowly. ‘My first thought. Our friends from the brewery have thought of that. I have pulled every fuse in the place, but it still runs. It works off some separate power supply which doesn’t even register on the electric meter. It cannot be switched off. Night and day it runs. I can hear it in my room, humming and humming. I swear that if something is not done soon I will tender my resignation, if only to save my sanity.’

  ‘Steady on,’ said Jim.

  ‘Look at it!’ Neville commanded. ‘It is an obscenity, an abomination, an insult!’ He placed one hand over his heart and the other palm downward upon the bar-top. ‘Once,’ said he, ‘once, if you will recall, one could sit in this pub enjoying the converse of good friends well met. Once, in a corner booth, meditate upon such matters as took your fancy. Little, you will remember, and correct me if I am wrong or sinking into melancholy, little broke the harmony of the place but for the whisper of the feathered flight. Once . . . ‘

  ‘Enough, enough,’ said Jim. ‘Hold hard now, you are bringing a lump to my throat which is causing some interference to my drinking.’

  ‘I am not a man to panic,’ said Neville, which all knew to be a blatant lie. ‘But this thing is wearing down my resistance. I cannot take much more, I can tell you.’

  Omally noted well the desperation upon the barman’s face and felt sure that there was the definite possibility of financial advancement in it. ‘You need to play a shrewd game with those mechanical lads,’ he said, when he thought the time was right. ‘A firm hand is all they understand.’

  Neville’s eyes strayed towards the jukebox, which had not uttered a sound these ten years, since Omally had applied a firm hand to its workings. It seemed a thing of little menace now compared with the video machine, but Neville could vividly recall the agonies he had gone through at the time. ‘You feel that you might meet with such a challenge?’ he asked in an even voice.

  ‘Child’s play,’ said Omally, which made Pooley choke upon his ale.

  ‘Good show.’ Neville smiled bravely and pulled two more pints. These are on the house,’ he said.

  Old Pete, whose hearing was as acute as his right arm sound, overheard the last remark. ‘Good morning, John, Jim,’ he said, rising upon his stick. ‘A fine day is it not?’

  ‘It started poorly,’ said Omally, ‘but it is beginning to perk up. Cheers.’

  ‘Been to the allotment then?’ the ancient enquired, placing his empty glass upon the counter and indicating the mud-besmerched condition of the two secret golfers.

  ‘Weeding,’ said John, making motions with an ethereal shovel. ‘Spring up overnight, those lads.’

  Old Pete nodded sagely. ‘It is strange,’ said he, ‘what things spring up upon an allotment patch overnight. Take my humble plot for instance. You’ll never guess what I found on it the other day.’

  Pooley, who had a kind of intuition regarding these things, kept silent.

  ‘Golf tee,’ said Old Pete in a harsh stage whisper.

  ‘Large rum over here,’ said Omally, rattling Pete’s glass upon the bar.

  ‘How unexpected,’ said the wily old bastard. ‘Bless you boys, bless you.’

  Omally drank a moment in silence. ‘Now tell me, Pete,’ said he, when the ancient had taken several sips upon his freeman’s, ‘how spins the world for you at the present hour?’

  Old Pete grunted noncommittally. ‘It is a case of mustn’t grumble, I suppose.’

  ‘No news then? Nothing out of the ordinary or untoward on the go?’

  ‘Not that I can think of, did you have anything in mind?’

  ‘No, nothing.’ Omally made a breezy gesture. ‘It is just, well, to be frank, Pete, it is well known that little, if anything, going on in the Borough ever slips by you, as your present drink will bear testimony to. I just thought that you might have some little snippet of interest up your four-buttoned sleeve.’

  ‘You couldn’t be a little more specific?’ said Pete, draining his glass. ‘So much happens hereabouts, as you know, to keep one’s finger upon the pulse is a thirsty business.’

  Omally looked towards Pooley, who shrugged. ‘Same again please, Neville,’ said John to the part-time barman, who had been hovering near at hand, ears waggling.

  ‘All the way round?’

  ‘All the way.’

  The honours were done and to Neville’s disgust Old Pete drew his benefactors away to the side-table, beneath which his dog Chips lay feigning slumber. The three men seated themselves. ‘Would I be right hi assuming that you have something on your mind, Omally?’ the ancient asked.

  ‘It is but a trivial matter,’ Oma
lly lied, ‘hardly worth wasting your valuable time with, but I must confess that it causes me some perplexity.’

  ‘Ask on then, John, you are two drinks to credit and I am by no means a hard man to deal with.’

  ‘Then I shall get straight to the point. Have you seen a suspicious-looking character skulking around, on, or near the sacred soil of our allotments?’

  Old Pete nodded. ‘Of course I have,’ he answered, ‘both there and elsewhere.’

  ‘Wearing a grey coverall suit, sallow complexion, high cheek-bones?’

  ‘Looks like a young Jack Palance?’

  ‘The very same.’ ‘I have seen several.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Pooley, ‘more than one?’

  ‘At least four. Take my warning, they have the mark of officialdom upon them. I saw one last week down by the cut, one yesterday on the corner of the Ealing Road, and there is one drinking this very minute in the far corner over by the gents’ bog.’

  ‘What?’ Omally’s head spun in the direction of the gents’. There in the darkened corner stood a sinister figure in a grey coverall suit. His features were blurry in the dun light, but it was almost certainly the same individual that he and Pooley had spied out on the allotment not half an hour earlier. As Omally watched, the figure turned his back upon them and strode through the door into the gents’.

  ‘All right, Pete,’ said Omally, turning to the ancient. ‘Who is he?’

  Old Pete shrugged. ‘There you have me, I’m afraid. When first I saw them I took them for Council workers. They had some kind of instruments mounted on a tripod and appeared to be marking the ground. But I never got close enough to question them. They slipped away into side roads or off down alleyways upon my approach. This is the nearest that I have so far come to one of them.’

  ‘But you are sure that there are more than one?’ Pooley asked.

  ‘I have seen as many as three of them together at one time. As like as the proverbial peas in a pod. Suspicious, I call it.’

  ‘I shall go and question him.’ Omally rose from his chair.

  ‘Best wait till he comes out,’ Jim suggested. ‘It is hardly sporting to corner a man in the bog.’

  ‘Do it now while you have him cornered,’ said Old Pete. They are a sly crowd. I never saw that fellow enter the Swan and I was the first man in.’

  ‘That settles it,’ said John, drawing up his cuffs. ‘I shall have it out with him.’ Without further word he crossed the bar and pushed open the door to the gents’.

  It closed gently behind him and a long minute passed. Pooley looked up at the Guinness clock and watched the second hand sweeping the dial. ‘Do you think he’s all right?’ he whispered.

  Old Pete nodded. ‘Omally knows how to handle himself, it is well known that he is a Grand Master in the deadly fighting arts of Dimac.’

  ‘It is much spoken of, certainly,’ said Jim with some deliberation. As the second hand passed the twelve for the third time Pooley gripped the table and pulled himself to his feet. ‘Something is wrong,’ he said.

  ‘He said he was going to have it out with the fellow, don’t be so hasty, give him another minute.’

  ‘I don’t know, you say you never saw him come in, maybe he has several of his chums in there. I don’t like the feel of this.’

  Old Pete’s dog Chips, who had not liked the feel of this from the word go, retreated silently between the legs of his ancient master. Jim was across the carpet and through the bog doorway in a matter of seconds.

  Once inside he froze in his tracks, his breath hung in his lungs, uncertain of which way it had been travelling, and his eyes bulged unpleasantly in their sockets. Before him stood John Omally, perspiration running freely down his face in grimy streaks. His tie hung over his shoulder college scarf fashion, and he swayed to and fro upon his heels.

  Omally stared at Pooley and Pooley stared at Omally. ‘Did he come out?’ Omally’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

  Pooley shook his head.

  ‘Then he must still be here then.’

  Pooley nodded.

  ‘But he’s not.’

  Pooley was uncertain whether to shake or nod over this. ‘There’s a terrible smell of creosote in here,’ he said.

  Omally pushed past him and lurched back into the bar leaving Pooley staring about the tiled walls. Above him was an air vent a mere six inches across. The one window was heavily bolted from the inside and the two cubicle doors stood open, exposing twin confessionals, each as empty as the proverbial vessel, but making no noise whatever. There was no conceivable mode of escape, but by the single door which led directly into the bar.

  Pooley gave his head a final shake, turned slowly upon his heel and numbly followed Omally back into the saloon.

  6

  As the Memorial Library clock struck one in the distance, Norman finished topping up the battered Woodbine machine outside his corner shop. He locked the crumbling dispenser of coffin nails and pocketed Pooley’s two washers, which had made their usual weekly appearance in the cash tray amongst the legitimate coin of the realm.

  Norman re-entered his shop and bolted the door behind him, turning the OPEN sign to CLOSED. As he crossed the mottled linoleum he whistled softly to himself; sadly, as he had not yet retrieved his wayward teeth, the air sounded a little obscure. For some reason Norman had never quite got the hang of humming, so he contented himself with a bit of unmelodic finger-popping and what he described as ‘a touch of the old Fred and Gingers’ as he vanished away through the door behind the counter, and left his shop to gather dust for another Wednesday afternoon.

  Norman’s kitchenette served him as the traditional shopkeeper’s lair, equipped with its obligatory bar-fire and gas-ring. But there, apart from these necessary appliances, all similarities ended. There was much of the alchemist’s den about Norman’s kitchenette. It was workroom, laboratory, research establishment, testing station and storage place for his somewhat excessive surplus stock of Danish glossies.

  At present, the hellishly crowded retreat was base camp and ground control for Norman’s latest and most ambitious project to date. Even had some NASA boffin cast his knowledgeable eye over the curious array of electronic hocus-pocus which now filled the tiny room, it was unlikely that he would have fathomed any purpose behind it all. The walls were lined with computer banks bristling with ancient radio valves and constructed from Sun Ray wireless sets and commandeered seed boxes. The floor was a veritable snake house of cables. The overall effect was one to set Heath Robinson spinning gaily in his grave.

  Norman spat dangerously on his palms and rubbed them together. He picked his way carefully across the floor until he reached a great switchboard, of a type once favoured by Baron von Frankenstein. As Norman squared up before it, however, he had no intention of mouthing the now legendary words, ‘We belong dead’, but instead lisped a quick ‘Here she goes’ before doing the business.

  With a violent flash and a sparkler fizz, the grotesque apparatus sprang, or, more accurately, lurched, into life. Lights twinkled upon the consoles and valves glowed dimly orange. Little pops and crackles, suggestive of constant electrical malfunction, broke out here and there, accompanied by a thin blue mist and an acrid smell which was music to Norman’s nostrils.

  The shopkeeper lowered himself on to an odd-legged kitchen chair before his master console and began to unwrap his tiny brown paper parcel. Peeling back the cotton-wool wadding, he exposed an exquisite little piece of circuitry, which he lifted carefully with a pair of philatelist’s tweezers and examined through an oversized magnifying glass. It was beautiful, perfect in every degree, the product of craftsmanship and skill well beyond the perception of most folk. Norman whistled through his gums.

  ‘Superbs,’ he said. ‘Superbs.’

  He slotted the tiny thing into a polished housing upon the console and it slipped in with a pleasurable click. The last tiny piece in a large and very complicated jigsaw.

  Norman clapped his hands together and rocked back and
forwards upon his chair. It was all complete, all ready and waiting for a trial run. He had but to select two suitable areas of land and then, if all his calculations were correct . . . Norman’s hand hovered over the console and it trembled not a little. His calculations surely were correct, weren’t they?

  Norman took down a clipboard and began to make ticks against a long and intricate list, which had been built up over many months, scribbled in variously coloured inks. As his Biro travelled down the paper Norman’s memory travelled with it through those long, long months of speculation, theory, planning and plotting, of begging, borrowing, and building. The sleepless nights, the trepidation and the doubts. Most of all the doubts. What if it all came to nothing, what if it didn’t work? He had damn near bankrupted himself over this one. What if the entire concept was a nonsense?

  Norman sucked upon the end of his Biro. No, it couldn’t be wrong; old Albert E had discontinued his researches on it back in Nineteen hundred and twenty-seven but the essential elements were still sound, it had to be correct. Just because Einstein had bottled out at the last moment didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.

  Norman ticked off the final item on the list. It was all there, all present and correct, all shipshape and Bristol fashion, all just waiting for the off. He had but to choose two areas of land suitable for the test.

  His hand did a little more hovering; he, like certain sportsmen in the vicinity, had no wish to draw attention to his project before its completion. Caution was the byword. The two tracts of land, one local and one in the area of the object he sought, would have to be unoccupied at the present time.

  The latter was no problem. Norman boldly punched in the coordinates he knew so well, thirty degrees longitude, thirty degrees latitude and the minutiae of minutes. But as to a local site, this presented some difficulties. It was his aim to conduct the final experiment during the hours of darkness, when there would be few folk about to interfere. But for now, a little test run?