“Never,” said Jim.

“Jim, you will do this, or the next time you see Suzy there will only be certain pieces you recognize. Now, in case you are thinking of pulling any strokes on us, let me introduce you to this.” Fred opened a drawer and took out a small black electronic item. He extended its aerial and pressed a tiny red button.

Pain exploded in Jim’s head. He sank to his knees and screamed.

Fred touched the button again. Pooley looked up, fear and hatred in his eyes.

“Have a little feel of your right temple, Jim.”

Pooley felt with a shaking hand.

“Feel that little lump?”

Pooley nodded.

“An implant, a tracking transmitter. We put it in you during your stay at the Cottage Hospital. We know exactly where you are at any time. And if you’re not where you’re supposed to be at midnight, we will be terribly upset. Derek and Clive will be waiting outside in the car with your girlfriend. Be a good boy and you can have her back unharmed. Play me false and I’ll know.” Fred touched the button and Jim collapsed once more.

Fred touched the button again and Pooley looked up.

“You are going to be a good boy, aren’t you, Jim?”

But Pooley did not reply.

Old Pete sat at the bar counter of the Road to Calvary, a most miserable look upon his face.

“What troubles you, Old Pete?” asked Neville the part-time barman. “This is a day for celebration, half-priced beer until midnight.”

Old Pete sniffed. “Take a look at this,” he said, and reaching down he brought up a carrier bag and placed it on the counter.

“What’s in there?” asked Neville.

Old Pete rooted in, lifted out what looked to be a toy piano and a toy piano stool. Rooting again he lifted out what appeared to be a tiny man in a dress suit.

Old Pete placed the tiny man upon the bar top. The tiny man bowed, clicked his fingers, sat down upon the stool and rattled out “Believe It If You Like” on the piano.

Neville stared, his good eye wide.

When the tiny man had finished, Old Pete snatched him up and thrust him, the piano and the stool back into the carrier bag.

“That’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Neville.

“Huh!” said Old Pete, in a depressed tone.

“What do you mean, ‘Huh’?”

“Well, let me tell you what happened. I was walking down by the canal earlier and I saw this woman drowning. I pulled her out and she said to me, ‘Thank you, sir, for saving my life.’ I said, ‘No problem,’ and then she said, ‘I am a witch and to thank you properly I will grant you a single wish.’…”

“She never did?” said Neville.

“She did,” said Old Pete. “But she was either a bit deaf or had water in her ears, because I now possess this ten-inch pianist.”

“I’ve heard it before,” said Neville.

“Everyone’s heard it before,” said Old Pete. “But it’s a blinder of a joke, isn’t it?”

“A classic. Same again?”

“Cheers,” said Old Pete.

“But surely…” said Norman. “I mean, you have… I mean…”

“What?”

Norman Hartnell shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll figure that out, given time.”

“Amber bottle tops,” said Neville.

“Sorry?” said Norman.

“Amber bottle tops this week, red last week, green the week before.”

“Oh yes,” said Norman. “Amber this week. Don’t serve anything else, will you?”

“I am a professional,” said Neville. “Do I have to keep on telling you? And what would happen if I did make a mistake? It would hardly be the end of the world, would it?”

Norman did not reply.

The big brass band played the theme tune from Blue Peter. The world-famous Brentford Girls’ School Drum Majorettes high-stepped and baton-twirled; carnival floats manned and womanned by Brentfordians who had actually spent their Millennium grant money on what they said they would followed behind.

These fine-looking floats were constructed to display tableaux from Brentford’s glorious past.

Here was a great and garish Julius Caesar, fashioned from papier mache, dipping his toe in the Thames, prior to crossing it down by Horseferry Lane. Here were the king’s men, ready to hammer the parliamentarians at the historic Battle of Brentford. Here too the Bards of Brentford, the poets and playwrights, the literary greats, born to the borough and now beloved the world over.

And there was, well, there was – er…

Moving right along, here come the all-ladies over-eighties synchronized paragliding team.

And the band played “Believe It If You Like”.

30

Tour trucks rolled into Brentford. Mostly Bedford vans they were, all knocked and knackered about. They had the names of the bands who travelled within them spray-painted on the sides. There were also one or two of those VW campers. You know the ones, the old lads with the two-tone orange and cream colouring. The ones that German terrorists always drive in movies that have German terrorists in them. Have you ever noticed that? It’s always two-tone VW campers. And if that’s not a tradition or an old charter, or something, then gawd knows what it is.

Hollywood again, probably.

A big bad black Bedford van drew up outside the football ground and a man with considerable hair, considerable piercings, considerable tattoos and a bulge in his leather pants which merited considerable consideration stepped down from it.

He flexed his arms, which did not have particularly considerable muscles on them, and cried out to the groundsman who was lounging outside smoking a cigarette.

“We are the Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death,” he cried out. “And we have come for your daughters. Those we can’t screw, we eat.”

“It’s a shame Jim couldn’t get the Spice Girls,” said the groundsman. “Park your old van round the back, mate. There’s booze laid on in the bar.”

A two-tone VW camper pulled up behind. It was driven by an Aryan type in a roll-neck sweater and denim cap. His name was Axel and he was a member of an organization known as the Black Umbrella Militant Faction Underground Communist Killers. Which was the kind of acronym that didn’t bear thinking about.

“You round the back too, mate,” called out the groundsman. “Park in the bay marked Terrorists.”

The big parade kept on parading by and a carnival atmosphere was beginning to grow. Jim and John had splashed out on vast quantities of bunting and balloons to decorate the streets and the town looked a treat. And what with there being a free rock concert in the evening, and the free beer festival all day and night, and the free fireworks sometime later on, the numbers were swelling, as out-borough types arrived to lend their heartfelt support. There was even a hippie convoy on the way, with a chap called Bollocks driving the lead bus.

It certainly looked like being a night to remember.

At the Hartnell Millennial Brewery (two lock-up garages knocked into one, near the clapped-out trading estate down by the old docks), Norman tinkered happily away at his mobile de-entropizer.

It was constructed mainly from Meccano and mounted upon pram wheels. There was a conveyor belt running through it and the general principle was that you put the item you wanted de-entropized in at one end and it came out of the other – well, de-entropized.

Of course there was no end to the complications of gubbinry crammed inside. Lots of old valve-radio parts, whirring cogs and clicking mechanisms, all beavering away at the ionization of beta particles, thus creating a positronic catalyst, which bombarded an isotope with gamma radiation, giving rise to galvanic variations and the transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic anti-matter.

The way these things do.

Norman twiddled with his screwdriver and whistled an old Cannibal Corpse number. He set the dial to repeat, placed a long-defunct penny banger onto the conveyor belt, watched it pass into the de-entropizer and smiled hugely as, one after another, bright new reconstituted clones of the former firework poured out of the other end.