The Brentford Chainstore Massacre

15

Howl and shriek and scream.

“Will you please turn off that appalling racket?” asked Professor Slocombe.

Brentford’s mayor, the worshipful Puerto Rican Don Juan Lopez Carlos de Casteneda, switched off his ghetto-blaster. “That is not a racket,” he said. “That is my favourite band, the Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death.”

“And highly derivative they are too,” said the Professor. “I detect the influence of both Slayer and Deicide.”

“Huh,” said the mayor, chewing on a small cheroot.

They sat at the big table in the council chamber of Brentford Town Hall. Curtains of sunlight wavered from upper windows. Rich oak panelling shone with a mellow patina, smoke hung in the air.

John and Jim were there, with several members of the council, hastily gathered, the secretary of the late Mr Compton-Cummings (who knows why?) and Scoop Molloy with his notebook.

“This is all so much shite,” said the mayor, cuffing his copy of the Brentford Mercury. “I am woken from the arms of my lover by a march-past. Peons in the streets are hanging balloons from the lamp posts. Someone has passed word around that I have declared today a public holiday.”

John Omally, up since dawn and busy with it, rolled himself a cigarette.

“Yesterday riots and today we have dancing in the streets.” The mayor threw up his hands and made excitable gesturings. “It is all too much.”

“My dear Don Juan,” said Professor Slocombe, “I will agree that events have proceeded with some alacrity. More alacrity, in fact, than I might have wished for.” He waggled the fingers of his gloved hand beneath the table and John Omally’s roll-up fell to pieces. “But we are gathered here to discuss what may be done and how it may be done.”

“Such as this?” The mayor snatched up a piece of foolscap and took to the cuffing of it. “Proposal to construct the Hanging Gardens of Brentford on the site of the allotments, to be called the John Omally Millennial Tower.”

Professor Slocombe curled his lip. John grinned painfully.

“Beauty Pageants and Beer Festivals, a rock concert in the football ground, who the hell are Devo anyway?”

“Please remain calm.” Professor Slocombe raised a calming hand.

“And I tell you this.” The mayor screwed up the foolscap and flung it aside. “These scrolls that make all this possible. That make these two gringos here,” he shook a fist at John and Jim, “think that they can run all this. These scrolls were dug up on council property. I should take these scrolls.”

“The scrolls were located by Mr Pooley. Under the Finders Keepers law…”

“And what is that?”

“It’s a tradition, or an old charter, or something. But under it, the scrolls belong to Mr Pooley.”

“He didn’t find them. A young woman dug them up.”

“Under his instruction.”

“On council property. And who will pay for a new library bench?”

“That will be included in the budget for the new library,” said John. “The John Omally Mil…”

“Shut your mouth, home boy!”

“Make a note of that, Jim,” said John. “Dock the mayor a week’s pay.”

“What?”

“Gentlemen,” said the Professor. “Nothing is ever achieved through acrimony. We must act as one or we will not succeed.”

“I’ll dock him two weeks,” said Jim. “Just to be on the safe side.”

“You think to make fun of me, huh?” The mayor smote his chest. “You think I am some stinking wet-back?”

“Surely that’s a somewhat racist remark,” said Scoop Molloy, writing it down.

“Your mother!” said the mayor, thumbing his teeth.

“Gentlemen, please.”

“I tell you this,” said the mayor, all pointing fingers now. “No one will swallow this shite. Who will swallow it, huh? The real Millennium Committee? The Prime Minister? The Queen? The world? Who?”

“I will swallow it.”

Faces turned towards the new speaker.

“And who the hell are you?” asked the mayor.

“Celia Penn. I was secretary to the late Mr Compton-Cummings.”

“And you will swallow, will you?”

“I will swallow with pleasure.”

Here we go again, thought Jim. Carry on up the Council Chamber.

“Call out the mariachi bands,” said the mayor. “The day is saved.”

“If you will just let me speak.”

“Speak on, lady. Be my guest.”

“Thank you. I represent certain interested parties who are determined that the millennial celebrations go ahead on the correct day of the correct year. The Professor knows what I am talking about.”

“I do, but how…”

“SUCK,” said Celia Penn.

“Oh dear,” went Jim Pooley.

“SUCK,” said Professor Slocombe. “The Secret Unification for the Coming King, an occult organization dating back to before the Knights Templar. Keepers of the Great Mystery.”

“Protectors of the Brentford Scrolls,” said Celia Penn. “It was I who encoded the location of the scrolls into Mr Compton-Cummings’s book. And I who sent the last remaining copy to Mr Pooley. I knew I had the right man.”

“Eh?” went Jim. “But I never…”

“Aha!” went the mayor. “Oh yeah, I get this. Another one looking for a handout. What do you want, lady? A new car, is it? Well you can SUCK my -”

Click went the Professor’s fingers. Lock went the jaw of the mayor.

And KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK came a knocking at the council chamber door. And duck for cover went John and Jim.

“Come out,” called the Professor. “It’s only the tea trolley.”

The door opened and in came the woman with the tea trolley. She was wearing a straw hat and she trundled over to the mayor. “Coffee, your holiness?” she asked.

“Grmmph mmph,” went the mayor, clutching his jaw.

“Only what you see on the trolley, I’m afraid.”

“Excuse me,” said a councillor with a mean and hungry look. “But as the mayor seems to be experiencing some difficulty in speaking, perhaps I might take the chair.”

“Certainly,” said Professor Slocombe.

The councillor got to his feet, took the chair and left the chamber.

“The old ones are always the best,” said Jim. “Although this hardly seems the time.”

“Excuse me,” said a councillor who was old and rough and dirty and tough. “But as the mayor is incapacitated and Councillor Cassius has gone off with the chair, perhaps I might put in my threepenny-worth.”

“Certainly,” said the Professor.

And the councillor placed three pennies on the table.

“Where do you think this is leading?” Jim asked.

“Excuse me,” said a third councillor, this one cool as a mountain stream, yet as corny as Kansas in August. “But as the mayor is incapacitated, Councillor Cassius has gone off with the chair and Councillor Starguard of the Galactic Brotherhood has put in his threepenny-worth, perhaps I might just ask a question.”

“Go ahead,” said Professor Slocombe.

“Why does a brown cow give white milk when it only eats green grass?”

“Is it just me?” asked Jim. “Or have things taken a distinct turn for the weird?”

“Would you like an octopus in your tea?” the lady in the straw hat asked Omally. “I’ve a camel outside that will go four days if you brick it.”

“Cover your faces,” cried Professor Slocombe.

“Don’t you start,” cried Jim.

“Cover your faces quickly and make a run for the door.”

“My husband once made a run for the chickens,” said the lady in the straw hat. “But then he was a Jesuit.”

“Talking of eggs,” said Celia Penn. “There was this sausage and this egg in a frying pan. And the sausage said ‘My, it’s hot in here’ and the egg said ‘Eeeek! A talking sausage.’” Celia Penn began to laugh and the lady in the straw hat began to laugh and Scoop Molloy began to laugh and Councillor Starguard began to laugh. And then they all began to cry and to shout and to hit one another.

“Mmph grmmph,” went the mayor.

“Out,” cried the Professor. “John, Jim, out, quickly.”

“What is going on?” asked John. “And who brought that horse in here?”

“Jim, help Ms Penn and hurry.” Professor Slocombe tugged at Pooley.

“I love you, Suzy,” said Jim. “Let me show you the trick with the ice cubes.”

“Hurry, Jim.” Professor Slocombe tugged again at Pooley and Pooley tugged at Celia Penn.

“Fly with me to my plantation,” he crooned. “There may be snow on the roof but there’s a beaver in the basement.”

“Hurry, Jim. Come on, John.”

“Everybody conga,” said Omally, kicking up his legs.

And pushing and shoving in a bumbling line, Jim followed John, Ms Penn followed Jim and the Professor followed all of them and thrust them through the door.

Along a corridor which had no power at all, and out into the car park.

“Sit down, stay still and take deep breaths.” Professor Slocombe forced them to the tarmac, where they sat giggling foolishly.

Binding, the scrofulous attendant, issued from his sentry box. “They can’t sit there,” he complained. “They don’t have official permits.”

“Bring water quickly,” commanded the Professor.

“I can’t go giving out water to any old Tom, Dick and Hari Krishna, it’s more than my job’s worth.”

Professor Slocombe fixed the car park attendant with a certain stare.

“I’ll bring three cups,” said Binding, hurrying off at the double. “And a glass for your good self.”

Jim Pooley was struggling to his feet. “I will fight for the woman I love,” he shouted. “Bring on your best guitarist.”

Professor Slocombe looked both ways, then felled Jim with a nifty uppercut. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “But you’ll thank me for it later.”

“Thank you,” said Jim, somewhat later. “But what exactly happened?”

“Someone drugged us, didn’t they?” Omally held his head.

Professor Slocombe nodded his. “I had Binding drive us here in the mayor’s low-rider. A charming fellow, Binding, when you get to know him.”

Pooley sat once more in the Professor’s fireside chair. Celia Penn lay unconscious upon the chaise longue. “Is she going to be all right?” Jim asked.

“She’ll be better sleeping it off” Professor Slocombe placed a hand upon the young woman’s forehead. “She’s running a bit of a temperature. I’ll have Gammon fetch an ice-pack.” He returned to his desk and rang his little bell.

“Who did this to us?” Jim rubbed his face. “And who punched me? My chin’s bruised too now.”

Professor Slocombe decanted sherry and passed a glass to Jim. “I wondered how it was that I remained unaffected. I suspect it must have been due to these.” He pointed to his leather gloves upon the desk. “I always wear them, as you know. The skin of my hands is sensitive to sunlight.”

“So we touched something?” Jim sniffed at his fingertips.

“I have scrubbed your hands. But that I think must have been it. I placed my gloves beneath the microscope and lo and behold.”

“Lo and behold what exactly?”

“A rather lethal cocktail of mescaline, peyote and amphetamines.”

“What about the councillors? The lady in the straw hat and everyone?”

“I called an ambulance, and they’ve been dealt with. No fatalities.”

“But how?”

“How was it done? Remarkably simple. The drug was mixed with furniture polish in an aerosol can and sprayed onto the council table.”

John Omally shook his aching head. “But why?” he asked.

“I would have thought that was obvious. To sabotage Brentford’s plans to hold the millennial celebrations two years early.”

“But who?” asked Jim.

“Whoever was responsible for the pulping of Mr Compton-Cummings’s book. Ms Penn will tell us more, I trust, when she awakens.”

“But how?” asked Jim.

“We did ‘But how?’, Jim.”

“No, I mean how did they act so fast? To prepare this drug and spray it on the table just before we got there. They don’t mess around, this lot, do they?”

“Binding informed me that an unmarked van entered the car park an hour before we arrived. Two ‘cleaners’ in grey suits. He couldn’t describe them, said they looked totally anonymous.”

“But fish?” asked Jim.

“Pardon me?” said the Professor.

“Nothing,” said Jim. “I don’t think the drug’s quite worn off yet.”

“Hang about,” said John. “The lady in the straw hat never touched the council table.”

“The lady in the straw hat is barking mad anyway,” said Jim.

“Oh, right. But if I can ask one more question, Professor. How did these would-be assassins know that we’d all be at the council meeting this morning?”

“I doubt that they did. They were just being thorough. There would have to have been a council meeting to discuss matters sooner or later. They were simply putting themselves ahead of the game, as it were.”

“Well, they’re messing with the wrong lads here,” said Omally, flexing his shoulders. “This is Brentford and we have right on our side. Let them try it again and see what happens.”

Gammon knocked and entered with an ice-pack on a tray. “I’m sorry to trouble you, sir,” said he. “But I think you’d better take a look outside. The military gentlemen of yesterday have returned and this time they are erecting what seem to be barricades and border posts.”