“Call the police,” croaked Omally. “Call the police.”
“Oh, it’s role playing, is it? What do you want me to be, a nurse?”
“It’s not role playing and it’s not a joke. There’s something in your bathroom. Someone. All shrivelled up and dead. It’s horrible. I think it might be your husband.”
Mrs Bryant fainted.
“He’s out cold, sarge,” said the second policeman, lifting Pooley’s head, then letting it fall back with a dreadful clunk onto the kitchen floor.
“Stubborn fellow, isn’t he?” said the face. “Now why do you think he would be that stubborn?”
Policemen two and three stood and shrugged. Policeman two was still holding the teapot. “I suppose he won’t be wanting the cup of tea now,” he said.
“Just answer the question, lad.”
“We don’t know, sarge.”
“Because he’s protecting someone, isn’t he? Someone he cares about. Someone he does not want to get a similar hammering.”
“Oh yeah.” The second and the third policemen nodded.
“So what do we have on known associates?”
Policeman two rooted out his regulation police notebook and flicked through the pages. “Just the one,” he said. “John Vincent Omally of number seven Mafeking Avenue.”
“Well then, I suggest we all go off to the pub for a drink.”
“Why, sarge?”
“Because Omally is an Irish name, isn’t it? And Irishmen are all drunken bastards, aren’t they? So we won’t expect Mr Omally to get home until after the pubs close, will we?”
“Surely that is a somewhat racist remark, isn’t it, sarge?”
“Not if it’s said by an Irishman.”
“But you’re not Irish, sarge.”
“No, lad. I’m a policeman.”
Several police cars slewed to a halt before Mrs Bryant’s front door. Sirens a-screaming, blue lights a-flash. In the kitchen Mrs Bryant pushed Omally towards the door.
“Just go,” she told him. “Leave all this to me.”
“I can’t leave you like this.”
“You must, John.”
“Then call me. No, I’ll call you, I’m not on the phone. Look, I’m so sorry about this. I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything, just go.”
Mrs Bryant kissed him and John Omally went.
He managed to leap onto a 65 bus at the traffic lights and dropped down onto one of the big back seats. He closed his eyes for a moment but a terrible image filled his inner vision. A twisted, shrivelled thing that had once been a man, slouched over the bathroom toilet. John caught his breath and opened his eyes.
“Ah,” said the bus conductor. “I remember you, you got off this morning without paying.”
John paid up a double fare. It was home for him and bed. This day had been a wrong ’un from the beginning. He should have been a wise man like Jim Pooley, who was probably now sleeping the sleep of the innocent.
“This day is done,” said John Omally.
But it wasn’t.
Oh no, no, it wasn’t.
8
John stepped down from the 65, crossed over the Ealing Road and stood on the corner outside Norman’s paper shop. It was nearly eleven o’clock. Last orders time. He could make it to the Swan for a swift one.
“No,” said John. “I’m going home to the safety of my bed.”
He turned up his tweedy collar, thrust his hands into the pockets of his similarly tweedy trousers, and trudged off down Albany Road and into Mafeking Avenue.
And he was just putting his key into the lock when he heard it.
A click, a thud and a cry of pain.
Omally spun round.
A groan.
Omally glanced towards the dustbins.
A bloody hand waved feebly.
Omally leapt over to the dustbins and flung them aside. “Pooley,” he gasped. “Jim, what’s happened to you?”
“Get us inside. Quickly.”
Omally struggled to raise his friend. He dragged Jim’s arm about his shoulder and hauled the rest of him with it.
“Bolt the door,” groaned Jim. “Stick some chairs against it.”
“What’s happened to you? Who did it? I’ll paste them.”
“Policemen, John.”
Omally helped Jim into the kitchen. It bore an uncanny resemblance to Pooley’s the same un- emptied pedal bin and everything. “Sit down,” said John. “Carefully now.”
“Just bar the front door.”
“Leave it to me.” Omally left the kitchen, dragged a heavy armchair from the front room and rammed it up against the door before returning to his wounded friend. He ran cold water onto a dishcloth and bathed Jim’s head with it. “Why did they beat you up? What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. They wanted the book.”
Omally stared at Jim. He knew his closest friend would never turn him in to the police.
“What makes you think they’re coming here?” he asked.
“They had your name in a notebook as my known associate. I pretended I was unconscious. I heard them say they were going for a drink and they’d come back here after closing time.”
Omally dabbed at Pooley with the dishcloth, and Jim responded with winces and groans.
“You took a terrible pounding,” said Omally. “You’ve two black eyes now. Any bones broken, do you think?”
“Most if not all.”
“Big lads, were they?”
“Very big.”
“Then we’ll have to get out. This isn’t a fortress.”
“Where will we go? Oh, ouch.”
“Sorry. I don’t know, somewhere safe. Somewhere the police won’t come looking.”
John looked at Jim. Jim looked at John. “Professor Slocombe’s,” they said.
That both John and Jim should have named one man with less than a moment’s thought might appear strange to anyone who lives beyond the sacred boundaries of the Brentford Triangle. But for those who dwell within this world-famous geomantic configuration (formed by the Great West Road, the Grand Union Canal and the River Thames), there could be no other choice.
John and Jim had known the Professor for more years than they had known each other. He was Brentford’s patriarch, exotic, enigmatic, yet part of the vital stuff from which the borough was composed.
Once, long ago, he
