“Your name comes a close second, Pooley.”

“They’re doing a nice job on the front wall,” said Pooley, smiling painfully. “What did the brewery say?”

“As it happens,” said Neville, “things didn’t work out too badly there, I told them that it was a thunderbolt.”

“A thunderbolt? And they believed it?”

“Yes, indeed, and not only that, they said that due to the evident danger they would give me an increase in salary, but did not think it wise to install the new computerized cash register in case its electronic workings attracted further cosmic assault upon the premises.”

“Bravo,” said Jim, “so all is well that ends well.” He rubbed his hands together and made a motion towards the beer pulls as if to say “Merits a couple of free ones then.”

“All is not well,” said Neville coldly, waggling his still bandaged thumb at them. “Someone could have been killed, I will have no more of it. This is a public house, not a bloody missile proving station.”

Neville counted the exact number of pennies and halfpennies into the till and rang up “No Sale”. The Siamese Twins took themselves and their pints off to a side table. They had little to offer each other by the way of conversation; they had exhausted most subjects and their enforced closeness had of late caused them generally to witness and experience the same events. Thus they sat, for the most part speechless, oppressed by fears of unexpected telegrams or fluttering pigeon post.

The bar was far from crowded. Old Pete sat in his regular seat, Chips spread out before him shamming indifference to the unwelcome attention being paid to his hind quarters by a blue-bottle. Norman sat at the bar, wearing an extraordinary water-cooled hat of his own design, and a couple of stalwarts braved the heat for a halfhearted game of darts. An electronic Punkah-fan installed by the brewery turned upon the ceiling at a dozen revolutions an hour gently stirring the superheated air. Brentford had fallen once more into apathy. The sun streamed in through the upper windows and flies buzzed in eccentric spirals above the bar.

Pooley gulped his pint. “Look at them,” he said. “The town has come to a standstill, we spend the night matching wits with the forces of darkness while Brentford sleeps on. Seems daft, doesn’t it?”

Omally sighed. “But perhaps this is what we are doing it for, just so we can sit about in the Swan while the world goes on outside.”

“Possibly,” said Pooley finishing his pint. “Another of similar?”

“Ideal.”

Pooley carried the empty glasses to the bar and as Neville refilled them he did his best to strike up some kind of conversation with the part-time barman. “So what is new, Neville?” he asked. “How spins the world in general?”

“Once every twenty-four hours,” came the reply.

“But surely something must be happening?”

“The boating lake at Gunnersbury is dry,” said the part-time barman.

“Fascinating,” said Pooley.

“The temperature is up by another two degrees.”

“Oh good, I am pleased to hear that we can expect some fine weather.”

“They pulled two corpses out of the river at Chiswick, stuck in the mud they were when the water went down.”

“Really?” said Jim. “Anybody we know?”

“I expect not. Only person to go missing from Brentford in the last six months is Soap Distant, but there was only one of him.”

Pooley’s face twitched involuntarily, it was certain that sooner or later someone would miss old Soap. “No-one ever did find out what happened to him then?” he asked casually.

“The word goes that he emigrated to Australia to be nearer to his holes in the poles.”

“And nobody has identified the corpses at Chiswick?”

“No,” said Neville pushing the two pints across the bar top. “The fish had done a pretty good job on them but, they reckon they must have been a pair of drunken gardeners, they found a wheelbarrow stuck in the mud with them.”

Pooley, who had raised his pint to his lips, spluttered wildly, sending beer up his nose.

“Something wrong, Jim?”

“Just went down the wrong way, that’s all.”

“Well, before you choke to death, perhaps you wouldn’t mind paying for the drinks?”

“Oh yes,” said Jim, wiping a shirtsleeve across his face, “sorry about that.”

Omally had overheard every word of the conversation and when the pale-faced Pooley returned with the pints he put a finger to his lips and shook his head. “Who do you think they were?” Jim whispered.

“I haven’t a clue, and there’s no way that the Captain is going to tell us. But it’s the wheelbarrow I worry about, what if somebody identifies it?” Omally chewed upon his fingers. “I should have reported it stolen,” he said. “It’s a bit late now.”

“Even if they identify it as yours, there is nothing to tie you into the corpses. We don’t know who they were; it is unlikely that you would have killed two complete strangers and then disposed of them in your own wheelbarrow.”

“The English Garda have no love for me,” said John, “they would at least enjoy the interrogation.”

“Anyway,” said Jim, “whoever the victims were, they must have been killed sometime before being wheeled across the allotment by the Captain and dumped in the river, and we have perfect alibis, we were here at Cowboy Night, everybody saw us.”

“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.”