17

“Come on, Laz, we have to go,” said Icarus breathing hard. “There’s wrong’uns after us. Come on.” The resident patient had his arms out for a hug. Icarus shook him by the shoulders. “There’s no time. Hurry.”

“Come on, Mr Woodbine,” Johnny Boy tugged at the patient’s leg. “We need you, we do. Come on.”

“I want to give my brother a hug,” blubbed the man who once was Woodbine.

Johnny Boy’s mouth became a perfect O and then an inverted U. “He’s lost it,” he gasped. “He’s not working in the first person any more.”

Icarus grasped the weeper’s hand. “They’ve done something to him. They’ve drugged him up.” He gave the hand a squeeze. “Come with me and hurry now,” he said.

Johnny Boy scampered over to the doctor’s desk.

“What are you doing?” Icarus glanced to the door. Marching footstep noises were coming from the corridor.

“We can’t go out without his trusty Smith and Wassaname.” Johnny Boy rooted around in the desk drawers. “Got it,” he said. “Oh, and this.”

“What’s that?”

“The spectremeter.”

“Bring that!” said Icarus. “And come on.”

They didn’t leave through the melted door hole, they left via the window. Windows are always good in movies, good for busting through. All that splintering glass in slow motion. It never fails to excite.

“You could have leapt right through that window,” puffed Johnny Boy, as he and Icarus dragged the bewildered brotherly type across the hospital lawn.

“It was easier just to open it.” Icarus yanked and pulled. “Come on, Laz, you can go faster than that.”

“I need my bed,” blubbered the stumbler. “I haven’t slept for a week. I can’t keep my eyes open. Take me home to Mum, Icarus. Tuck me into my cosy bed and send me off to the land of sleepy-byes.”

“What a wimpy little voice.” Johnny Boy pushed as Icarus pulled. “Do you think he’s trying to reach out to his feminine side?”

SMASH and CRASH went the window behind them as two demons burst through. Splintering glass in slow motion, in a manner which failed to excite Icarus.

“To the taxi,” cried the lad. “Keep up, Mr Woodbine, please.”

The cabbie was chatting with a passer-by. “You go along the Road to Morocco,” he said, “turn left at the Road to Rio, right at the Road to Mandalay, straight along the Road to …”

Icarus came puffing up.

“Ah,” said the cabbie. “You’re back. I was just telling this gentleman how you—”

Icarus gave the cabbie a head-butt.

The cabbie fell down in a flustering heap.

Icarus dragged open the rear door of the taxi and thrust the blubbering stumbler inside. “I’m relocating your taxi,” he told the groaning moaning cabbie, who was lying on the ground. “I won’t do any harm to it. You can have it back a little later.”

Icarus swung open the driver’s door and keyed the cab’s ignition.

Johnny Boy hastened into the taxi, slamming the door behind him.

The cabbie staggered to his feet. “Stop, you bastard!” he managed to shout, as the tyres of his cab burned rubber and Icarus swerved away.

“You bloody bastard,” roared the cabbie. “I’ll …”

But then two demons knocked him once more from his feet.

“Bloody, bleeding …”

Doors slammed shut on the long dark automobile.

“My taxi, my taxi.” The cabbie dragged himself once more into the vertical plane.

And was promptly run down by the long dark automobile.

The passer-by looked on, as the two cars roared away into the distance.

“I suppose I’ll never know how you get to Xanadu now,” said he.

“Put your foot down, Icarus,” shouted Johnny Boy. “They’re coming after us fast.”

Icarus put his foot down. “Keep Laz awake!” he shouted back. “Don’t let him fall asleep.”

“Zzzzzz,” went the sleeper.

SMACK! went the hand of Johnny Boy. “Wake up call for Mr Woodbine.”

The new evil chauffeur looked much like the old one, as may well have been mentioned before. But if not it will be now. He had the same evil-looking face, with that same business with the chin and the unusual birthmark above the right eyebrow which resembles the Penang peninsula. He even wore the same cufflinks.

So no further description is necessary.

“Faster,” cried a voice behind him. It was the voice of Cormerant, and it was an angry voice. Cormerant sat in the car’s rear seat, flanked by a deuce of demons. Hideous monsters the pair of them were, but not quite so hideous as Cormerant. There was something even worse about him now. A fearsome energy. Sparkling oil-beads of colour ran up and down his quills. His cruel reptilian eyes appeared lit from within. His scaly features glistened and the horrible insect mouthparts chewed and sucked.

Icarus chewed upon his bottom lip. “Where to, Johnny Boy? Where should we go?”

“You’re the relocator, relocate us.”

“Somehow I thought you might say that. Do you fancy a left at the top of the road here, or a right?”

“Definitely a left.”

“Right it is, then,” said Icarus.

They’d done the Chiswick High Road and the Chiswick Roundabout and now they were hurtling along the Kew Road at the bottom end of Brentford.

“Surprisingly little traffic for this time of day,” said Johnny Boy. “Keep awake now, Mr Woodbine.” SMACK!

Icarus spun the taxi right, through red lights and up into the Ealing Road. The long dark automobile was definitely gaining. It swerved right after them, mounting the safety island, shattering one of those little jobbie lights that drunks so love to sit upon and scattering several pedestrians into the bargain.

“What is all that about?” asked a scattered pedestrian called Pooley.

“Nothing to do with us, my friend,” his friend called Omally replied.

SMACK SMACK SMACK went the hand of Johnny Boy. “I can’t keep Mr Woodbine awake,” he shouted to Icarus.

Icarus leaned over and opened the glove compartment. It was full of gloves (they always are) but nothing else. Strapped to the floor was the medical kit that cabbies always carry. It’s a tradition, or an old charter or a City of London Commercial Vehicle Regulation number 432, or something. Icarus ripped the kit from its mount and the box fell open, showering him with hundreds of small plastic sachets filled with glistening white powder.

“I always wondered how cabbies managed to work such long hours under such stressful conditions and still remain so unfailingly cheerful,” said Icarus. “Here, give him some of this.” And he flung several handfuls of plastic sachets over his shoulder.

“But surely this is …”

“Just pour a bag or two up his nose. That should keep him awake.”

BASH went the bumper of the long dark automobile into the taxi’s rear end.

“Oh!” went Johnny Boy, lost in a sudden snowstorm.

Icarus swerved the taxi off the road and up onto the pavement.

Shoppers and strollers and dog-walking debutantes screamed and dived for cover.

The long dark automobile mounted the pavement, bringing down a lamppost.

Johnny Boy knelt on the slumberer’s chest and emptied sachets of white stuff into his nose.

“I’m going to try to lose them in the back streets,” Icarus shouted. “Do your thing with the spectremeter again when we’re out of sight.”

“He’s still not waking up,” Johnny Boy shouted back. “And I’ve poured at least a quarter-pound of this stuff up his hooter.”

“Then give him the missing three-quarters. In for a penny, in for a pound.” Icarus signalled right and then turned left at the football ground.

Brentford football ground is rightly famous. Not only because Brentford normally contributes at least four of its players to every England World Cup squad, but because it is the only football ground in the country which has a pub at each of its four corners.