The Brentford Triangle

17

Professor Slocombe peered over the pen-besmirched, match-riddled map with profound interest. At length he leant back in his chair and stared a goodly while into space.

“Well?” asked John, who had been shifting from one foot to the other for what seemed like an age. “Has Pooley found it?”

The Professor pulled himself from his chair and crossed the room to one of his bookcases. Easing out an overlarge tome, he returned with it to his desk. “Undoubtedly,” he said, in a toneless voice. “If you will pardon my professional pride, I might say I am a little miffed. I have sought the pattern for weeks and you find it in a couple of hours.”

“I think we had the natural edge,” said Omally.

Pooley, whose injured parts were now beginning to pain him like the very devil, lay slumped in an armchair, a hand clasping the neck of the whisky decanter. “I only hope that it will help,” he said. “Those lads are on to us, and I escaped death by a mere hairbreadth this night.”

“We have by no means reached a solution,” said the Professor, in a leaden tone. “But we are on the way.”

Omally peered over the old man’s shoulders as he leafed through his great book. “What are you looking for now?”

“This book is the Brentford Land Register,” the Professor explained. “The pubs you have plotted were all built during the last one hundred years. It will be instructive to learn what existed upon the sites prior to their construction.”

“Ah,” said John, “I think I follow your line of thought.”

“I think my right elbow is fractured,” said Jim Pooley.

The Professor thumbed over several pages. “Yes,” he said. “Here we have it. The Four Horsemen, built upon the site of the cattle trough and village hand pump.” He turned several more pages. “The New Inn, upon this site there has been a coaching house for several hundred years, it has always boasted an excellent cellar and a natural water supply. Built in 1898, the North Star, a significant name you will agree, founded upon Brentford’s deepest freshwater well.” The Professor slammed the book shut. “I need not continue,” he said, “I think the point is clearly made.”

“My collarbone is gone in at least three places,” said Jim.

“It can’t be the water supply,” said Omally. “That is ludicrous. Aliens do not steer themselves through space guided by the village waterworks. Anyway, every house in Brentford has water, every house in the country, surely?”

“You fail to grasp it,” said the Professor. “What we have here is a carefully guided natural watercourse, with the accompanying electrical field which all underground water naturally carries, culminating in a series of node points. The node points channel the ley earth-forces through the system, terminating at the Flying Swan. If you will look upon the map you will see that the Swan is built exactly one third up from the Thames base line of the Brentford Triangle. Exactly the same position as the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid. A very powerful position indeed.”

“It all appears to me a little over-circuitous,” said Omally. “Why not simply stick up a row of landing lights? If these Cerean lads have all the wits that you attribute to them, surely they could tamper with the National Grid and form a dirty big cross of lighted areas across half of Britain?”

“Possibly,” the Professor replied, “they might be able to do that for an hour, possibly for a day, but this pattern has been glowing into space for a hundred years, unnoticed by man and untouched. It is reinforced by the structures built above it, pubs, thriving pubs. This is Brentford; nobody ever knocks down a pub here.”

“True,” said Omally. “We have little truck with iconoclasts hereabouts.”

“This beacon could go on radiating energy for a thousand years. After all, the Cereans had no idea how long they would have to wait to be rescued.”

“There is definitely evidence of a cracked rib here,” said Pooley, feeling at his chest.

“All is surely lost,” said Omally.

“I didn’t say it was terminal,” Pooley replied. “Just a job for a skilled surgeon or two.”

Professor Slocombe stroked his chin. “At this very moment,” he said, “somewhere on the outer rim of the galaxy, the Cerean Strike Force is heading towards its homeworld. Finding none, it will inevitably be turning here, guided by the descendants of its stranded forebears. Unless otherwise diverted or destroyed, they will home in upon their landing area, and I do not believe that we can expect any of that ‘We bring greetings from a distant star’ benign cosmic super-race attitude to be very much in evidence upon their arrival. We must work at this thing; I do not believe that it is without solution.”

“My ankle’s gone,” grizzled Pooley. “I shall walk with a limp for the rest of my life.”

“Do put a sock in it, Pooley,” said the Professor.

“But I’m wounded,” said the wounded Pooley. “Somebody might show a little compassion.”

“I don’t think you realize the gravity of the situation.”

“On the contrary,” said Jim, waggling a right wrist which was quite obviously a job for the fracture clinic. “I’ve never missed an episode of ‘The Outer Limits’ – true, I’ve been in the bog during many a title sequence, or slept through the last five minutes, but I know what I’m talking about. None of this smacks to me of sound science fiction. All this sort of stuff does not occur in the shadow of the gasworks. Alien invaders, who we all know to be green in colour and pictured accurately upon the front page of the Eagle, do not muck about with council water supplies or conveniently arrange for the location of public drinking-houses. I take this opportunity to voice my opinion and pooh pooh the whole idea. There is a poultice wanting upon these knees and more than one of my fillings has come adrift.”

“An uncle of mine has connections with the Provos,” said Omally. “If you will sanction the exemption of the Swan, I might arrange for the levelling of every other relevant pub in Brentford.”

Professor Slocombe smiled ruefully. “That, I think, might be a little too extreme,” he said. “I am sure that a less drastic solution can be found.”

“Nobody ever listens to me,” said Jim, going into a sulk.

“As I see it,” said Professor Slocombe, “the Flying Swan is the epicentre of the entire configuration. It has been so aligned as to act as the focal point. The harnessed Earth forces flow through the alignment and culminate therein. There must be something located either within the Swan or beneath it into which the energy flows. Something acting as locative centre or communicating beacon to these beings. As to what it is, I have not the slightest idea.”

“Maybe it’s the darts team,” said Pooley. “We’ve held the shield for five years. Perhaps your lads have infiltrated the team and are guiding their mates in through a series of pre-planned double tops.”

“You are not being obstructive are you, Jim?” the Professor asked.

“What, me? With the collapsed lung and the damaged cerebral cortex? Perish the thought.” Pooley took up his glass in a grazed fist and refilled it.

“Now we know where it is,” said the Professor, “it surely cannot be that difficult to find it.”

“But what are we looking for?” asked Omally. “You find a great triangle, we find the constellation of the Plough.”

“I find it,” said Pooley.

“Pooley finds it,” said Omally, “one thing leads to another, but we just go around in circles. What are we looking for?”

“I think I can make a reasonable guess,” said Professor Slocombe. “We are looking for something which is the product of a high technology. Something which utilizes the vast power fed into it and acts as the ultimate homing beacon. It must have been placed in the Swan during the last year or so, for it was only during this time that the Earthbound Cereans gained knowledge of their prodigals’ return and wished to announce their own presence.”

Pooley shrugged. “Product of a high technology, runs off its own power supply and recently installed in the Swan. Can’t see anything filling that bill, it would have to be pretty well camouflaged…” Pooley ceased his discourse in mid-sentence. An image had suddenly appeared in his brain. It was so strong and crystal clear that it blotted out everything else. It was the image of a large bulky-looking object shrouded beneath a groundsheet and secured with baling wire, and it was humming and humming and humming.

“By the light of burning martyrs,” said John Omally. “It has been staring us in the face for months and we never even twigged.”

“What is it?” the Professor demanded. “You know, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Jim Pooley. “We know well enough, but believe me the thing will not be easily tampered with. It will take an electronics expert with the brain of an Einstein to dismantle it, and where are we going to get one of those in Brentford?”

Norman Hartnell was not a happy man. Apart from being barred from the Swan with darts night rapidly approaching, which was the kind of thing that could easily drive a sensitive soul such as himself to the point of suicide, he also was suffering a grave amount of concern over his camel. Still wedged firmly into the eaves of his lock-up garage, and gaining bulk from its hearty consumption of cabbage leaves, the beast still showed no inclination whatever to return to Earth. On top of these two insoluble problems, Small Dave’s untimely return to Brentford and his disconcerting perceptions were causing the shopkeeper a good deal of grief. He really would have to get rid of the camel. It was damning evidence by any account, and he also had the definite feeling that Small Dave was on to him. The nasty vindictive grudge-bearing wee bastard seemed to be dogging his every move. If he was ever to transfer the Great Pyramid of Cheops from its present foundations in Egypt to its planned relocation upon the turf of Brentford football ground, he really couldn’t have the dwarfish postman blundering in and spoiling everything before the project was completed.

Norman dropped into his kitchen chair and did a bit of heavy thinking. The mantelclock struck eleven, time once more to feed the camel. Norman glanced despairingly about; perhaps he should simply blow the garage up. The trouble was that he was really growing quite attached to the mouldy-looking quadruped.

He’d never been allowed to have a pet when he was a lad, and dogs didn’t exactly take to him. But Simon, well, Simon was different; he didn’t snap at your ankles or climb on your furniture. True, he didn’t exactly do anything other than sleep in the rafters and roar for food when hungry, but there was something about the brute which touched Norman. Possibly it was his helplessness, relying upon him, as it did, for his every requirement. Perhaps it was that he had Simon exclusively to himself, nobody forever patting at him and offering him biscuits. Whatever it was, there was something. Simon was all right. He was cheap to feed, living as he did upon Small Dave’s cabbages, and his droppings made excellent manure for the roses. Norman wondered for one bright moment whether a camel might be trained to eat dwarves; shouldn’t be but a mouthful or two. Pity camels were exclusively vegetarian.

Norman rose from his chair, drew on his shabby overcoat and put out the kitchen light. Stepping silently through the darkened shop, he put his eye to the door’s glass and peered out at the Ealing Road. All seemed quiet, but for the distant sound of police sirens. Small Dave was nowhere to be seen.

The shopkeeper drew the bolt upon the door and slipped out into the night. He scuttled away down Albany Road, keeping wherever possible in the shadows. Down the empty street he hurried, with many a furtive glance to assure himself that he was not being followed.

Young Chips, who was returning from some canine equivalent of a lodge meeting, had been watching the shopkeeper’s progress for some moments. Now where is Norman off to, he asked himself, and who is the character in the Victorian garb hard upon his heels? If I wasn’t half the dog I believe myself to be, I would be certain that that is none other than the famed American author, Edgar Allan Poe. Scratching distractedly at a verminous ear, the dog lifted his leg at a neighbour’s Morris Minor, and had it away for home.

Norman reached the allotment gates and peered around. He had the uncanny feeling that he was being watched, but as there was no-one visible he put the thing down to nerves and applied his skeleton key to the lock. A wan moon shone down upon the allotments, and when Norman had had his evil way with Small Dave’s already depleted cabbage crop, no living being watched him depart with his swag.

The row of lock-up garages slept in the darkness. As Norman raised the door upon its well-oiled hinges, nothing stirred in the Brentford night. “Simon,” he said in a soothing tone, “din dins.”

Having closed the door behind him, he switched on the light, illuminating the tiny lock-up. Simon looked down from his uncomfortable eyrie, and Norman sought some trace of compassion upon the brute’s grotesque visage. “Yum yums,” he said kindly. “Chow time.”

If camels are capable of displaying emotions, other than the “go for the groin if cornered” variety, Simon was strangely reticent about putting his about. As he hung in the air, the great ugly-looking beast did little other than to drool a bit and break wind. “You cheeky boy,” said Norman. “It’s your favourite.”

Behind him, Edgar Allan Poe eased himself through the closed garage door and stood in the shadows watching Norman making a holy show of himself. Simon saw Edgar at once, and Simon did not like the look of Edgar one little bit.

“WAAAAAARK!” went Simon the zero-gravity camel.

“Come, come,” said Norman, flapping his hands, “there is nothing to get upset about. It’s really only cabbage, your favourite.”

“WAAAAAARK!” the disconsolate brute continued.

“Shhh!” said the shopkeeper. “Calm yourself, please.”

“WAAAAAARK!” Simon set to wriggling vigorously amongst the eaves.

“Stop it, stop it!” Norman frantically waved the cabbage leaves about. “You’ll have the whole neighbourhood up.”

Edgar Allan Poe was fascinated. Times had certainly changed since he had shuffled off the old mortal coil. Small Dave had spent a goodly amount of time impressing upon him the importance of finding a camel. But to think that people actually kept them as pets now, and that they were no longer tethered to the planet of their birth by gravity. That was quite something. “Stone me,” said Edgar Allan Poe.

John and Jim were taking the long route home. After the incident earlier that evening at the Swan they had no wish to cross the allotment after dark. It was a brisk, cloudless night, and as they slouched along, sharing a late-night Woodbine, they were ill-prepared for the ghastly wailing cries which suddenly reached their ears.

“What is it?” Pooley halted in mid-slouch.

Omally peered up and down the deserted street and over his shoulder to where the allotment fence flanked an area of sinister blackness.

“It is the plaintive cry of the banshee,” said he, crossing himself. “Back in the old country no man would question that sound. Rather he would steal away to his own dear hovel and sleep with his head in the family Bible and his feet in the fireplace.”

“I have never fully understood the ways of the Irish,” said Jim, also crossing himself just to be on the safe side. “But I believe them to be a people not without their fair share of common sense, best we have it away on our toes then.”

Another horrific cry rose into the night, raising the small hairs on two ill-washed necks, and causing Pooley’s teeth to chatter noisily. This one, however, was followed almost at once by vile but oddly reassuring streams of invective, which could only have arisen from one local and very human throat.

“Could that be who I think it could?” Pooley asked.

“If you mean that very electronics expert with the brain of a veritable Einstein to whom you previously alluded, then I think that it might just be.”

The two men strained their ears for another sound, but none was forthcoming. Slowly, they proceeded along the street, halting outside the row of lock-up garages. “Would you look at that,” said Omally, pointing to where a line of orange light showed beneath one of the doors. “Now what would you take that to be?”

“I would take it to be another trap,” said Jim. “I have recently had a very bad experience through entering sheds without being asked.”

Omally shuddered. The thought of those icy-black subterranean waters was never far from his mind. “Caution then?” he asked, creeping close to the door and pressing his ear to it.

It was at that exact moment that Edgar Allan Poe, who had been badly shaken by the floating, screaming camel, chose to make his exit from the garage. Passing discreetly through the solid wood of the garage door he slid right into the skulking Omally. For one ghastly moment the two forms, one solid and smelling strongly of drink, the other ectoplasmic and probably incapable of bearing any scent whatever, merged into one.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” screamed Omally, clutching at his head. “The very devil himself has poked his clammy finger into my ear.”

“Who’s out there?” Norman spun away from Simon, who was now silent beneath the falcon hood of a potato sack which had been rammed over his head.

“Night watchman,” said Pooley unconvincingly. “Twelve o’clock and all’s well. Goodnight to you, stranger.”

“Pooley, is that you?”

“Norman?”

The garage door rose a couple of feet and Norman’s face appeared, peeping through the opening. “Is Small Dave with you?” asked the persecuted shopkeeper.

“That vindictive grudge-bearing wee bastard? Certainly not.”

Norman crawled out under the door and drew it rapidly down behind him. “Just servicing the old Morris Minor,” he said.

“Sounds a bit iffy,” said Omally.

“A bit of gear trouble, nothing more.”

“Let me have a look at it then.” Omally was all smiles. “I know the old Morris engine like the back of my hand.” He extended this very appendage towards the garage doorhandle, but Norman barred his way.

“Nothing to concern yourself about,” he said, “nothing I cannot handle.”

“Oh, no trouble, I assure you. Nothing I like better than getting to grips with a monkey wrench and a set of allan keys.”

“No, no,” said Norman, “I think not, it is growing late now and I have to be up early in the morning.”

“No problem then, I have no a.m. appointments, to me the night is yet young. Leave me the garage key and I will post it through your letter-box as soon as I am done.”

“You are kindness personified,” said Norman, “but I could not impose upon you in such a fashion. My conscience would not allow it. I will just lock up and then we shall stroll home together.” He stooped to refasten the padlock.

“You’d better switch the light off before you go,” said Jim Pooley.

Norman’s hand hovered over the padlock. A look of terrible indecision crossed his face.

“Allow me,” said John Omally, thrusting the shopkeeper aside and taking the handle firmly in two hands. “I should just like to have a look at this car of yours before we depart.”

“Please don’t,” whined the shopkeeper, but it was too late. The door flew upwards and the light from the lock-up garage flooded the street, exposing Norman’s secret to the world.

Pooley took a step backwards. “My God,” was all that he had to say.

Omally, however, was made of sterner stuff. “Now, there we have a thing,” he said, nudging the cowering shopkeeper. “Now there we have a thing indeed.”

Norman’s brain was reeling, but he did his best to affect an attitude of bland composure. “There, then,” he said, “satisfied? Now if you don’t mind, it is growing late.”

Omally stepped forward into the garage and pointed upwards. “Norman,” he said, “there is a camel asleep in your rafters.”

“Camel?” said Norman. “Camel? I don’t see any camel.”

“It is definitely a camel,” said John. “If it were a dromedary it would have but one hump.”

“You have been drinking, I believe,” said Norman. “I can assure you that there is nothing here but a Morris Minor with a tetchy gearbox. I have read of folk suffering such hallucinations when they have imbibed too freely. Come, let us depart, we shall speak no more of these things.”

“It’s definitely a camel,” said Jim.

“Dear me,” said Norman shaking his head, “another victim of Bacchus, and so young.”

“Why is it in the rafters?” Pooley asked. “I was always of the opinion that camels preferred to nest at ground level and in somewhat sunnier climes.”

“Perhaps it is a new strain?” said Omally. “Perhaps Norman has created some new strain of camel which he is attempting to keep secret from the world? Such a camel would no doubt revolutionize desert travel.”

Norman chewed upon his lip. “Please be careful where you stand, Omally,” he said. “Some of the primer on the bonnet is still wet.”

Omally put his arm about the shopkeeper’s shoulder. “Why not just make this easy on yourself?” he asked.

“Although I accept that mentally you are a fearsome adversary, surely you must realize that the game is up? Cease this folly, I beg you.”

“Don’t scuff the spare wheel with your hobnails,” said Norman.

Pooley raised his hand to speak. “If I might make a suggestion,” he said, “I think that the matter could be easily settled with a little practical demonstration.”

“Yes?” said Norman doubtfully.

“Well, you suggest that Omally and I are suffering some kind of mental aberration regarding this camel.”

“You are.”

“And we say that your Morris Minor is only notable for its complete and utter invisibility.”

“Huh!”

Pooley drew out his pocket lighter and struck fire. “You rev up your Morris,” he said, “and I shall toast the feet of my camel.”

“No, no!” Norman leapt into life. “Not toast his feet, not toast the feet of my Simon.”

“The camel has it,” said Jim Pooley.

Norman sank to his knees and began to sob piteously. Omally suggested that Jim should lower the garage door and this he did.

“Come, come,” said Omally to the crumpled shopkeeper, “there is no need for this undignified behaviour. Clearly we have intruded upon some private business. We have no wish to interfere, we are men of discretion, aren’t we, Jim?”

“Noted for it.”

“Not men to take advantage of such a situation are we, Jim?”

“Certainly not.”

“Even though this manifestation is clearly of such singularity that any newspaper reporter worthy of his salt would pay handsomely for an exclusive.”

“Say no more,” moaned Norman between sobs. “Name your price. I am a poor man but we can possibly come to some arrangement. A higher credit rating, perhaps.”

Omally held up his hand. “Sir,” he said, “are you suggesting that I would stoop to blackmail? That I would debase the quality of our long-standing friendship with vile extortion?”

“Such I believe to be the case,” said Norman dismally.

“Well then,” said Omally, rubbing his hands together, “let us get down to business, I have a proposition to put to you.”