“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

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, came a dreadful knocking at Omally’s door.

“Aaaagh! They’re here!” Jim lurched to his feet and began to flap his hands wildly and spin round in small circles, for such was his habit during moments of extreme mental anguish.

“Stop that,” commanded John, halting Pooley’s gyrations by means of a headlock. “It’s the back way out for us.”

“I can’t go on, John. I’m not up to it.”

“Get a grip, man.”

“Get a grip? Look at the state of me.”

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, came that knocking again.

“Run, John. Leave me here.”

“We go together. You won’t need to run.”

“I won’t?”

Omally pushed Jim out through the kitchen door and into the tiny ill-tended yard at the back. The moonlight offered it no favours. Against the kitchen wall, shrouded beneath a tarpaulin Omally had borrowed from Old Pete, stood something.

“Behold the engine of our deliverance,” stage-whispered John, flinging the tarpaulin aside to reveal

“Not Marchantl” groaned Jim.

But Marchant it was.

And Marchant was a bike.

Those who have read the now legendary Flann O’Brien will know all about bicycles. Flann’s theory was that in Ireland, during the days in which he wrote, most men owned a bicycle. And the constant jiggling and joggling on bumpy roads over an extended period of years made certain atoms of bicycle and certain atoms of man intermix, so that the man eventually became part bike and the bike part man. He cited an extreme case of a policeman who was so much bike that he had to lean against something when he stopped walking, to avoid toppling over.

In Omally’s case this did not apply, but a rapport existed between himself and his bicycle which had about it an almost spiritual quality.

Almost.

“Onto the handlebars, Jim,” said John. “We take flight.”

“It never flies now, does it?”

“A figure of speech.”

John helped Jim onto the handlebars, seated himself upon the sprung saddle, placed one foot on a pedal and they all fell sideways.

“Oh no you don’t.” John put his foot down to halt the descent. “Now come on, Marchant, this is an emergency. My good friend Jim is injured and so will I be if you don’t assist us.”

“If the police don’t kill me, this bike of yours will,” moaned Jim.

“If you behave yourself you can spend tomorrow afternoon in the bike shed behind the girl’s secondary school.”

“How dare you!”

“I was talking to my bike.”

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, came sounds of further knocking, followed by a most distinctive CRASH.

“Hi-o, Marchant!”

Out of the backyard and along the narrow alley they flew, Omally forcing down on the pedals and Jim clinging to the handlebars. It was a white-knuckle, grazed-knuckle ride. Happily it wasn’t dustbin day.

Omally swung a hard right at the top. The only way to go was down the short cobbled path and back into Mafeking Avenue.

“Hold on tight,” said John as they shot over the pavement and into the road.

“There, sarge,” came a shout. “On a bike, and that Pooley bloke’s with him.”

“We’re doomed!” cried Jim.

“Oh no we’re not.”

There came sounds of running police feet, car doors opening and slamming shut and an engine beginning to rev. But they were not heard by John and Jim, for they were well away down Moby Dick Terrace and heading for the Memorial Park. As they swept past, the ever-alert Omally made a mental note to add the John Omally Millennial Bowling Green to his list.

“Have we lost them, John?” cried Jim.

John skidded to a halt, which is not altogether a good thing to do when you have someone riding on the handlebars.

“Oooooooooh!” went Jim as he sailed forward through the air. “Aaaagh!” he continued, as he struck the road.

“Sorry,” said John, wheeling alongside the tragic figure. “But I think we’ve lost them, yes.”

SCREECH, came the sound of screeching tyres.

“Or perhaps not. Quick, Jim, up and away.”

“I’m dying,” Jim complained.

“Come on, hurry.”

“Oh, my giddy aunt.” Jim dragged himself to his feet and perched once more on the handlebars. Omally put his best foot forward and away they went again.

Inside the police car, three policemen laughed with glee. They do that sometimes. Usually when they’re about to perform something really sadistic on a suspect in an interrogation. And while they’re doing it. And afterwards, if it comes to that. In the pub. Of course, American policemen do it better. Especially those in the southern states, good ol’ boys with names like Joe-Bob. Really manic laughers, those lads.