“I slipped out to bury a crate of Old Snakebelly,” moaned Omally, “on the allotment.”
Pooley scratched his head. “Looks like you’d better give yourself up then. We might go down to the Chiswick nick and steal back your wheelbarrow, or set fire to it or something.”
Omally shook his head. “Police stations are bad places to break into, this is well known.”
“I have no other suggestions,” said Jim. “I can only counsel caution and the maintaining of the now legendary low profile.”
“We might simply make a clean breast of it,” said John.
“We?” said Pooley. “Where do you get this ‘we’ from? It was your wheelbarrow.”
“I mean we might tell the police about what we saw; it might start an investigation into what is going on in the Mission.”
“I don’t think the Professor would appreciate that, it might interfere with his plans. Also the police might claim conspiracy because we didn’t come forward earlier.”
Up at the bar Norman, who had quietly been reading a copy of the Brentford Mercury, said suddenly, “Now there’s a thing.”
“What’s that,” asked Neville.
Norman prodded at his paper. “Wheelbarrow clue in double slaying.”
“I was just talking about that to Pooley,” said Neville, gesturing towards Jim’s table.
But naught, however, remained to signal that either Jim Pooley or John Omally had ever been there, naught but for two half-consumed pints of Large going warm upon the table and a saloon-bar door which swung quietly to and fro upon its hinge.
Norman’s shop was closed for the half day and a few copies of the midweek Mercury still remained in the wire rack to the front door. Jim took one of these and rattled the letterbox in a perfect impression of a man dropping pennies into it. He and Omally thumbed through the pages.
“Here it is,” said Jim, “‘Wheelbarrow Clue in Double Slaying. Chiswick Police leading an investigation into the matter of the two bodies found on the foreshore upon the fall of the Thames last week believe that they now have a lead regarding the owner of the wheelbarrow discovered at the scene of the crime. Detective Inspector Cyril Barker said in an exclusive interview with the Brentford Mercury that he expected to make an early arrest’.”
“Is that it?” Omally asked.
“Yes, I can’t see the Mercury’s ace reporter getting the journalist of the year award for it.”
“But there isn’t a photograph of the wheelbarrow?”
“No, either the reporter had no film in his Brownie or the police didn’t think it necessary.”
“But ‘early arrest’, what do you think that means?”
The words were drowned by the scream of a police-car siren. Driven at high speed, the car came through the red lights at the bottom of Ealing Road, roared past them and screeched to a standstill a hundred yards further on, outside the Flying Swan. A plainclothes detective and three burly constables leapt from the vehicle and swept into the saloon bar.
The two men did not wait to see what might happen. They looked at each other, dropped the newspaper and fled.
There are many pleasures to be had in camping out. The old nights under canvas, the wind in your hair and fresh air in your lungs. An opportunity to get away from it all and commune with nature. Days in sylvan glades watching the sunshine dancing between the leaves and dazzling the eyes. Birdsong swelling at dawn to fill the ears. In harmony with the Arcadian Spirits of olden Earth. At night a time for reverie about the crackling campfire, the sweet smell of mossy peat and pine needles. Ah yes, that is the life.
Omally awoke with a start, something was pressing firmly into his throat and stopping his breath. “Ow, ooh, get off, get off.” These imprecations were directed towards Jim Pooley, whose oversized boot had come snugly to rest beneath Omally’s chin. “Will you get off I say?”
Pooley jerked himself awake. “Where am I?” he groaned.
“Where you have been for the last two days, in my bloody allotment shed.”
Pooley groaned anew. “I was having such a beautiful dream. I can’t go on here,” he moaned, “I can’t live out my days a fugitive in an allotment shed, I wish Archroy had never rebuilt it. You must give yourself up, John, claim diminished responsibility, I will gladly back you up on that.”
Omally was not listening, he was peeling a potato. Before him a monstrous heap of such peelings spoke most fluently of the restricted diet upon which the two were at present subsisting. “It is spud for breakfast,” said he.
Pooley made an obscene noise and clutched at his rumbling stomach. “We will die from spud poisoning,” he whimpered. “It is all right for you blokes from across the water, but we Brits need more than just plain spud to survive on.”
“Spud is full of vitamins,” said Omally.
“Full of maggots more like.”
“The spud is the friend of man.”
“I should much prefer an egg.”
“Eggs too have their strong points, but naught can in any way equal for vitamins, carbohydrates or pure nutritional value God’s chosen food, the spud.”
Pooley made a nasty face. “Even a sprout I would prefer.”
“Careful there,” said Omally, “I will have none of that language here.”
“Sorry,” said Pooley, “it just slipped out.” He patted at his pockets in the hope that a cigarette he had overlooked throughout all of his previous bouts of pocket-patting might have made a miraculous appearance. “I have no fags again,” he said.
“You’ve got your pipe,” said Omally, “and you know where the peelings are, there are some particularly choice ones near the bottom.”
Pooley made another tragic sound. “We eat them, we smoke them, we sleep on them, about the only thing we don’t do is talk to them.”
Omally chuckled. “I do,” he said, “these lads are not as dumb as they may look.” He manoeuvred the grimy frying-pan on to the little brick stove he had constructed. “Bar-b-que Spud,” he announced, lighting the fire. “Today, fritters lightly fried in their own juices, turned but once and seasoned with…”
“Seasoned with?”
“Tiny golden flakes…of spud!”
“I can’t go on,” said Pooley, raising his voice to a new pitch of misery. “Two days here wondering who will get us first, the police or that maniac in the Mission. I can’t go on, it is all too much.”
“Your fritters are almost done,” said Omally, “and this morning I have a little treat to go with them.”
“Spudburgers?” queried Pooley. “Or is it Kentucky fried spud, or spud chop suey?”