Pooley and Omally took their morning coffee in the forward salon. The style was essentially eclectic. A hint of Post-Modernism here, a touch of rococo there, several boxes of video cassettes just behind the door. A pair of blown glass vases, signed by Count Otto Boda himself, adorned a chromium table of the high-tech persuasion. An antique paisley swathed a gaudy sun-lounger, three china ducks flew nowhere.
Omally stuck his feet up on the Le Corbusier chaise and Pooley leant upon the Memphis-style cocktail cabinet dunking a breakfast biscuit.
“Well,” said Jim when he finally tired of the sight of his partner’s inane grin. “Good night, was it?”
Omally’s smile resembled that of the legendary Gwynplaine. “Propriety forbids a disclosure of details,” he said as he dandled his demi-tasse, “but it was magic.”
“I’m so glad.”
The two drank on in silence, Omally mentally replaying selected highlights and Pooley glowering with evident envy. When he could stand no more of that Jim said, “We got four, they must be five-pounders easily.”
Omally raised his eyebrows and smiled his winning smile. “Well now, Neville will take one for the Saturday sarnies and another for his freezer, I have no doubt.”
“Wally Woods will take the other two then.”
Omally frowned — briefly, for the effort vexed him. Wally Woods, Brentford’s foremost purveyor of wet fish, was a cold and slippery little customer. “No,” said John. “We’ll do them off in Ealing, at the King’s Head or the Fly’s Home.”
“As you please.”
Omally finished his coffee and refilled his cup from the snazzy-looking percolator. “How are the accounts shaping up?” he asked, in a tone of casual enquiry.
Jim raised an eyebrow of his own. He was well aware that the Irishman had logged within his curly head the dismal sum of their current assets. “If this business was legitimate,” he sighed, “we would be in for a tax rebate.”
Omally shook his head. “Sometimes I think that we slave away so hard in our attempts to avoid honest toil that we shall work ourselves into an early grave through the effort.”
“You are not suggesting we …” Pooley spoke the dreaded words in a whisper, “get a job!”
Omally winked. “Not a bit of it. We are free men, are we not? And is freedom not the most valuable possession a man can own?”
“Well…” said Jim. A sudden image of Jennifer Naylor’s Porsche unaccountably filled his mind. “Well…”
“Of course it is,” Omally went on. “We live life to the full and do you know why we do it?” Pooley thought that he did, but suspected he would not get the opportunity to say so. “We do it for the crack,” said Omally, confirming Jim’s suspicion.
“Ah!” said that man, “the crack, that lad.”
“That lad indeed and,” said John, who was evidently in loquacious spirits, “I will tell you something more.”
“I have no doubt of it.”
“At ten o’clock, Jim, you will walk into Bob the bookies.”
“I always do.”
“But today will be different.”
“It always is.”
“Because today you will place a bet which on the face of it will appear so ludicrous that he of the golden gonads will rock to and fro upon his chair doubled up with laughter.”
“He always does,” said Jim.
“You will ask him what odds he will give you,” John continued, “and between the tears of mirth he will say something like ten thousand to one, possibly even more if he is feeling particularly rash.”
Jim scratched at his head. “Ten thousand to one?” he queried.
“At the very least, you will bet ten pounds, and pay the tax.”
“Ten pounds?” Pooley clutched at his heart. “All at once? Ten pounds?”
Omally nodded, “I myself will wade in with a oncer.”
“A oncer?”
“Certainly, to show that I have the courage of my convictions. Ex unque leonem, as the French will have it.” Here he pulled from his pocket the said groat note, which by its appearance was evidently a thing of great sentimental value, and presented it to Pooley.
“Gosh!” said Jim. “All this and money too.”
“No idle braggart, I.”
“Perish the thought. But do tell me, John, exactly what shall I be betting on?”
“You will be betting on a sure thing.”
“Ah,” said Jim, without conviction, “one of those lads.”
“One of those very lads. Straight from the horse’s mouth this very morning. A little bird whispered it into my ear and I do likewise into yours.”
“You seem to hold considerable sway with the animal kingdom.”
“It is a sure thing.”
“At ten thousand to one?”
“Would you care now that I whisper?”
“What have I to lose, saving the nine pounds?”
Omally leant forwards and poured a stream of whispered words into Pooley’s left ear. Jim stood there unblinking. A piece of chewing gum upon his instep attracted the attentions of an ant.
“Ah,” said Jim at length, when Omally had run dry of words.
“Ah,” said John, nodding enthusiastically.
“No,” said Jim. “The word is no.”
“The word is yes, Jim, the word is yes.”
“No, no, no!” Pooley shook his head in time to his “nos”. “Never, and again no.”
John put his arm about his best friend’s shoulders. “Believe in me,” he said. “Would I steer you on to a wrong’n?” Jim chewed upon his lip in hesitation, and as the old saying goes, “he who hesitates is banjoed”. “Then you’ll do it, Jim?”
“Why not?” Pooley sighed pathetically. “I will be the laughing stock of Brentford, the butt of all ribaldry in the Swan for months to come, a veritable byword for buffoonery, what do I have to lose?”
“But think what we might do with our winnings.”
“You cannot be serious, John, you are telling me that…”
Omally clapped a hand across his partner’s mouth. “Not even here,” he said, pressing a free finger to his lips. “Walls have ears.” Jim shrugged and sighed simultaneously. “Now then,” John continued brightly, “I suggest you bung a couple of free-rangers into the old non-stick and have a bit of brekky. We have a busy day ahead and I’ve a couple of phone calls to make.”
Shaking his head in dismay, Pooley dug eggs and sausages from the fridge. The bangers were Walls. They didn’t have any ears.
6
At shortly after nine: Norman returned from his paper-round whistling a tuneless melody which may or may not have been “Dali’s car”. Just before he reached his shop, however, he discovered to his chagrin that he still had a single copy of the Brentford Mercury in his bag. Being uncertain as to whether he had posted one to Neville when he first set out upon his round he popped it through the Swan’s letterbox. Just to be on the safe side.
The part-time barman, who was still recovering from not only his undeserved nasal larruping but also the trauma of discovering the first ever copy of the Mercury to arrive on his doormat, looked up in horror at the arrival of the second and quickly reached for his dog-eared copy of Krafft Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis.
At shortly after nine-fifteen: Inspectre Hovis strode into Brentford police station. He awoke the snoozing duty officer with a summary blow to the skull from his silver-topped cane, identified himself and poured forth a torrent of instructions, demands, directives, exactions, mandates, impositions, requisitions and ultimatums. Pausing only to draw breath and savour the bewildered sergeant’s look of horror, he asked, “Are you receiving me?”
“Loud and clear, sir, loud and clear.” Sergeant Gotting’s head bobbed up and down between his blue serge shoulders. He was only the second man in Brentford to encounter the great detective, but he was the second to really truly hate his guts.