“Place them on the table, Rizla.”
“Yes, Master.” Rizla did as he was bid and departed, bowing to the floor.
“The neophyte Rizla,” Rune explained. “And so to the facts in the case.”
Hovis jostled away a constable and settled into a front-row seat, resigned to the ridiculous. “Go ahead then.”
“Thank you, Inspectre.” Rune leafed through a leather-bound volume until he found the page he sought. “The great gasometer, or gasholder, call it what you will. According to the county records, constructed in eighteen-eighty-five by the West London Coal Gas Company. The surrounding gasworks were demolished in nineteen-sixty-two and the site is now occupied by that bastion of ethnic ‘entertainment’ and mis-spent local government funding, the Arts Centre.”
“Easy on the personal prejudice,” said Hovis. “It is well known that their Board of Directors refused your repeated demands to be made Magus in Residence.”
“Quite so, but be that as it may. The gasometer. A local landmark, used by RAF Northolt during the Hitlerian War as a ground-marker. A symbol of the borough. It is not a gasometer, never has been a gasometer, never will be a gasometer. It is something else entirely.”
There was a murmuring and a mumbling amongst the constables.
“I know that,” said Hovis, “it is no revelation. So what is it, Rune?”
“I will not bore you with the intricacies of my research, the difficulties encountered, the countless hours of fruitful meditation.”
“Good, then do not.”
“Then I will tell you this. It has existed throughout at least eight centuries of recorded history. Local legend speaks of the two kings of Brentford, warlords in the time of King Arthur, one dwelt in a tower of stone and one in a tower of iron, such the old rhyme tells us. I cannot speak for the tower of stone, perhaps it has long become dust, but the tower of iron is here for all to see. It is the gasometer. Possibly it has not always appeared as it does now, but the deception it creates has existed in one form or another down the centuries.”
“Ooooh!” and “ahhhh!” went the constables.
“Go on,” said Inspectre Hovis.
“I quote the words of Samuel Johnson on his trip to the Brentford Bull Fayre: ‘I entered the town of Brentford by the river road, passing beneath the old iron tower, a fortress of great age, which still survives, although weed-grown and hung with ivy, striking in its presence.’ Johnson visited the fayre and actually witnessed a live griffin in a showman’s booth. All this is recorded in his memoirs, for anyone to check.”
“Curious,” said Hovis. “Continue.”
“A record of land charters, granted in fourteen-seventy-two, states that, ‘One Able John Rimmer tills land to the North and West of the iron tower. His land extends to the North Road for Ealing, up against Ye Flying Swan Inn and bordering upon the dell of Chiswick, wherewhich the pasture grounds of our Lord the King abound for twenty leagues.’ I have sought even further back, but it is all the same, the gasometer is old beyond the point of memory. And where memory and the written word become myth and legend still it is there. It has been there for perhaps one thousand years.”
“And now it is a den of thieves,” said Hovis.
“You are dealing with no ordinary thieves,” Rune warned. “I can offer you many quotations to prove that you are dealing with a legacy of evil which has existed for a millennium unrealized.”
The constables shifted uneasily in their seats. This was all beginning to sound distinctly iffy.
“So,” said Hovis, “can you guide us in, that we might beard the evil lion in his den?”
“Of course,” said Rune, “am I not Rune the all-knowing, Rune the cosmic warrior, Rune the …”
“Yes, yes, we all know that.”
“It will be no easy venture,” said Hugo Rune.
“That which is done with ease is done without conviction.”
Rune raised an eyebrow, twisted into a waxed spike. “Please spare me the homilies, I shall require payment for my services.”
“What? I offer to absolve you of your crimes and you demand payment to boot?”
“The reward for the recovery of the gold is one per cent. As an arbiter of justice you must respect my entitlement. Under the circumstances I consider the sum barely sufficient, nevertheless”
“Nevertheless, you will have it over my carcass.”
“Inspectre, you can huff and puff for all you are worth, but without me you will not blow this house down.”
“Then I will call in the SAS.”
Rune closed the book with a resounding thump. “If you no longer require my services, I shall depart. I have stuck to my side of the bargain, our tally is now even. I leave with a clean slate.”
“Hold hard. Rune. Why do you think that we will not be able to enter the gasometer without your help?”
“Because a wall of force surrounds it. It is a powerful force and one that cannot be breached by ordinary means. If you bluster in you will lose men. Death will be the reward of folly.”
The constables shrank in their seats. “Hear him out,” said somebody.
“This is supposed to be the age of reason and logic,” Rune declared, “of advancement, of knowledge. Take what I say to be superstitious nonsense if you please, but you will pay for your lack of foresight. There is an old evil here that cannot be dealt with by any means you understand. It is my territory and not yours, Inspectre. Without me you will not enter the iron tower.” Hovis chewed ruefully upon his lip and tapped his cane upon the floor. The constables were growing restless. “If I lead you in,” Rune continued, “then I demand the reward. If not, then you can do as you please, put me up as public enemy number one if you wish.”
“How do I know that I can trust you?”
“What do you have to lose?”
“All right,” said Hovis. “Then we go in tonight.”
“All right,” said Hugo Rune. “So be it.”
“Hip, hip, hoorah!” went the constables, and then wondered why.
At a little after three Neville had cashed up. Despite the debacle, Ye Flying Swan had done a most profitable lunchtime’s trade. If Croughton’s hands had wandered, Neville had not observed them. Now the part-time barman sat in a lounge chair sipping Scotch and musing upon the peculiarities of the present times. His Open University course in Psychology had gone right out of the window.
What did psychologists know about life? he asked himself. About as much as the legendary late and learned pig, he concluded. Psychology was as history had been to Henry Ford, bunk. The barman sipped his Scotch and thought all the things that drunken men always think. Why wars, why profiteering, why religion, why racial intolerance, it was a lot of whys. Mankind was an enigma, an impalpable mystery and for all the why-are-we-here’s and where-are-we-going’s that had ever been asked, we were no-nearer-to-learning-the-truth.
Neville’s good eye wandered about the confines of his world. The Swan had seen him fine for twenty years. He was barlord, confidant, guru, bouncer, jovial mine host to patrons he neither knew nor understood. He watched them turn from likeable personalities to unlikeable drunks nightly, but he didn’t “know” them. He liked them, perhaps he even loved them, but he didn’t know them. They were basically good people, a little misguided perhaps, but then who wasn’t these days? Who was there to guide them? The words of self-obsessed politicians, media personalities, newspaper magnates and half-mad clerics? Who could reason sensibly when supplied with all the wrong information for all the wrong reasons? Neville sank down in his seat, he was really pissed off.
And this business today? The games? It was evident that the people of Brentford were not to be any part of it. The promised free tickets had yet to materialize. Brentonians didn’t matter, they were nobody. It all took a lot of thinking about. Neville took a pull at his Scotch. Was there any truth in drink? Experience had taught him to doubt that one. Was there any truth in anything? The barman was forced to conclude once more that he just didn’t know. Where had it all gone? Those grand thoughts and dreams of his youth had become trivialized by uneven memory and present-day responsibility, and such it was with all of them. He recalled the high-jinx of Pooley and Omally. He had watched them mellow down, lose their edge, although he still admired them for their freedom.