‘Well, da-da-de-da-da right back atcha!’ purred the lady of the house. ‘That’s a new excuse, I do declare.’
And she gave a certain part of the inspector’s anatomy a playful tweak.
‘Oooh,’ went Inspector Westlake. And then, ‘Damn,’ as memories returned to him in a hop, a leap and a great big jump.’
Not too far away from the inspector, in a storeroom beneath the Big House at Gunnersbury Park, a transperambulation of magnetic flux angled through the ether from the glass conducting cylinders atop the Air Loom, dispatched by the keyboard manipulation of the Glove Woman. This flux, attuned to the magnetic signature unique to Inspector Westlake, who had been magnetized by a certain boarding house landlady the previous night during a particularly frantic session of that much-loved sexual favourite, ‘Taking Tea with the Parson’, now coalesced into an audiogram within the inspector’s skull, one that effected a selective erasure of his short-term memory. Which, given what he had read, and indeed tried to play upon his little banjolele, from a piece of paper that could be dated to the seventeen nineties and which had thrown him into fear and concern for the future of Mankind, being things of an Apocalyptic nature, generally, was not, in itself, such a bad thing.
But.
Inspector Westlake could remember everything else, which was to say the days previous, in all of their dire entirety.
Every annoyance, every lack of communication, every thwarting of his wishes, every ignominious everything.
They had not been good days for Inspector Westlake.
They had been difficult days.
And what had made them so difficult, was the fact that he was quite unable to put his finger on why they had been so difficult. But it somehow seemed that no matter what orders he gave regarding the security measures at the park, these orders somehow failed to be carried out.
It was almost as if Thompson of Extra-Special Ops had taken over the running of the entire operation himself and was not allowing Inspector Westlake as much of a foot in the door.
Difficult, it was, and frustrating.
There was certainly no lack of security. The park had been closed to the general public for the weekend, which had itself caused unparalleled distress to the members of the various sporting fraternities that normally played their matches there. And the men in the black uniforms were, as one might put it, entrenched.
Electric fences ringed the park around.
At one-hundred-yard intervals, watchtowers bristling with slightly-beyond-the-present-state-of-the-art weaponry loomed with menace. Frogmen bobbed in the ornamental pond, surface-to-air missiles rising and falling with the ripples. A machine-gun nest nested between the columns of the Doric temple.
There were slit trenches in the Japanese garden.
Once in a while, a squirrel ventured across the pitch-and-putt to be vaporized by a landmine.*
Within the Big House, the Gunnersbury Park Museum, the location of the secret talks, several constables came and went, in and out of visibility.
It was all very impressive.
But it wasn’t being done the way Inspector Westlake required it to be done.
His way.
The men in black from Special Ops spoke into their little face mics and received their orders through tiny earphones embedded in their lugholes. They did not respond to the inspector’s orders.
And whenever Inspector Westlake tried to get on the blower to Thompson, Thompson, it seemed, was unavailable for comment.
Inspector Westlake knotted his wounded fists and fumed in the landlady’s bed.
‘I do like a man who’s intense,’ cooed Mrs Corbett. ‘As it’s Sunday morning, how about getting a little adventurous? More tea, vicar, as it were.’
‘Unhand me, madam!’ Inspector Westlake rose from the bed. Then returned to it in haste, still handed. ‘I have things to do, madam!’ he further protested. ‘Matters of national, indeed global, impact.’
‘As James Bond once said,’ said the lady of the house, ‘best not to go off half-cocked.’
Inspector Westlake ground his teeth, checked his wristwatch, stroked at his chin and then said, ‘I suppose there’s always time to “Take Tea”.’
Mrs Corbett grinned the kind of grin that one generally associates with roadkill. ‘The full Parson,’ she whispered in Inspector Westlake’s ear.
‘Whisper to me, people,’ came the voice of Thompson through many a tiny earphone into many a lughole.
‘Whisper?’ went Constable Cartwright, twiddling at his invisibility controls and somewhat surprising himself to discover that whilst his upper body had regained visibility, his legs were nowhere to be seen.
‘It’s a security thing,’ whispered Constable Cassidy, ‘so we don’t appear to be talking to ourselves.’
‘I knew that,’ said Constable Cartwright. ‘I am in charge, after all.’
‘Why don’t you have any legs?’ asked Constable Rogers.
‘And where’s your head gone, Rogers?’ asked Constable Milky Bar Kid.
‘By the numbers,’ came the voice of Thompson. ‘Sound off.’
And all over the park, and all through the Big House, blackly clad Special Ops fellows, a few apparently lacking for bits and pieces, sounded off.
‘I want this whole thing done by the numbers,’ Thompson repeated. ‘I want nothing – nothing – to go wrong.’
‘Sir,’ said Constable Cartwright, ‘might I just ask—’
‘Good question, Constable. Now carry on.’
‘A right carry-on and no mistake,’ said Constable Paul to Constable Justice. These constables wore the blue, and Paul envied those in the black. These constables in blue were on double time as it was Sunday, but had only got as far as the Gunnersbury Park car park before being halted by those constables in the black and told that they could go no further.
‘Are you tooled-up?’ asked Constable Justice.
‘Eh?’ said Constable Paul.
‘Are you packing heat? Are you carrying an unequaliser?’
‘Surely it’s an equaliser,’ said Constable Paul.
‘Not if you’re packing what I’m packing.’
‘Ah,’ said Constable Paul.
‘I say we should blast our way in.’
‘Right,’ said Constable Paul. ‘Yet strange as it may appear to you, I veer towards precisely the opposite view.’
‘Does that involve any weaponry?’
‘No,’ said Paul. ‘It involves you and me making away to whatever is left of The Middle Man for an early Sunday lunchtime pint. We’re on double time here and if these sods won’t let us into the park, let’s go and guard the pub instead.’
‘Do you think there might be someone at the pub who needs shooting?’ asked Constable Justice.
‘Bound to be,’ said Constable Paul, reversing Inspector Westlake’s car out of the car park, into the road, across the path of oncoming traffic and then slowly, but slowly, cruising it off to the pub.
‘There are times,’ said he, to Constable Justice, ‘when I really do love being a policeman.’
‘Do you love your Order and do you love your country?’ Candles burned in a secret place, a dark and deep such place.
Heads went nod in the candlelight, heads both quaint and odd. A dusty periwig was to be seen, and an antique female coiffure.
‘And are we loyal to our calling, we of the Secret Order that is beyond the secretest of all other Secret Orders?’
‘We are loyal,’ went those addressed. A gloved hand or two were raised.
‘I feel,’ said the speaker, ‘that today the triumph will be ours. But not ours per se, you understand.’ And mumble-mumble-mumble went the assembled company. ‘But for the good of all, the greater good.’
And the man who spoke these words stepped out from the shadows and into the wan light cast by the candles’ flames. A long and gaunt tall figure was this, in a black frocked coat, with a high-collared shirt and a flourish of frills and fancies, and a buckled shoe and a stockinged cal
f and rings that finger-twinkled.
And this fellow’s cheekbones were angled and sharp, and his eyes deep-set and all a-glitter. And his beard, long and black, wore ribbons of silk and hid the wry smile on his lips.
‘Oh, my brethren,’ intoned this body, ‘my brothers, and sisters, too,’ and he offered a bow to the ladies. ‘We of the Order beyond all Secret Orders have been summoned from our time once again, brought here to perform our duty. Oh, how we shall triumph. Oh, how we shall bring our pneumatic arts to a pretty perfection.’
‘So shall that be, my brother,’ quoth a fellow grey of hair and known as Jack the Schoolmaster, though dressed as a ringmaster, he. ‘So we shall and our souls shall be blessed for it.’
‘Blessed for it, yes.’ The body in black with the great black beard cackled laughter.
As one will do when one is a villain.
‘Yes!’ cried he, affecting a pose that was noble and arrogant both. ‘Today we do as we have done before. We set the world to rights. We do the doings and make it so, for such is what we do.’
Heads here and there nodded in mostly darkness.
‘We will succeed.’ And he of the long black beard laughed. ‘Or my name is not Count Otto Black. And we are not the Air Loom Gang.’
Golly gosh.
41
‘Golly gosh,’ said the coal-black chap
Who drove the limousine.
‘A fine to-do. An odd one-two,
As strange as I have seen.’
‘Now that,’ said the voice on the other end of the telephone line, ‘is something you should have done sooner.’
‘Excuse me?’ said the chauffeur.
‘I am talking to Black Betty Bam-a-Lam, am I not?’
‘You certainly are,’ said the Black Betty in question. ‘Note if you will the triple-barrelled surname. One of the Sussex Bam-a-Lams, I’ll have you know.’
‘Excellent,’ said the voice. ‘Then I have the right Black Betty Bam-a-Lam. What I meant when I said that that was something you should have done sooner was the speaking in rhyme. You might have established an interesting part for yourself. A black male chauffeur with a girl’s Christian name, a triple-barrelled surname and a penchant for verse-improv. Given how dull some of these blighters are, you could have got yourself star billing.’
‘Who is this?’ asked Black Betty.
‘I told you, I am the chief exec. of a top London theatrical agency and I’d like to hire your services for today to chauffeur that fine character actor John Hurt to a private film festival in Penge.’
‘Penge?’ said Black Betty. ‘I’ve heard that it’s a really nice place, although I’ve never actually been there.’
‘A veritable Eden,’ said the voice on the end of the line.
Although it wasn’t really ‘a line’, because Black Betty was speaking into the handset of his car phone as he drove his black stretched limo along.
‘Well, hum and hah and fiddle-de-de,’ said Black Betty.
‘Excuse me?’ said the voice.
‘Merely voicing my versatility. Did you say John Hurt?’
‘I certainly did, star of both The Naked Civil Servant and The Elephant Man.’
‘Not to mention Hellboy.’
‘Hellboy?’
‘I told you not to mention that!’*
‘Most amusing,’ said the voice.
‘I thought so. But no, I regret that much as I would adore to be privileged to drive, as I believe it is now, Sir John Hurt—’
‘If it isn’t, it should be.’
‘But anyway, I cannot. And the reason that I responded to your question in rhyme is this: as the chauffeur, and indeed owner, of this here black limousine, it is sad to report that for the most part nowadays I have to hire myself out, nay, prostitute myself, by taking hirings from ghastly chav girls for hen nights. Yet, yet, and here I feel that there is a God, and a God who sometimes smiles upon black chauffeurs with girly Christian names and unlikely triple-barrelled surnames. This very week, which is to say on Friday, and today, which is Sunday, I have been employed by some decent clientele. To whit, on Friday I conveyed a certain Andi Evans, heavy metal music entrepreneur, to a pub called The Middle Man in Ealing, where he made a recording. And from there, in the company of a can of audio tape, to London Airport, where, to quote Mister Evans he intended to “make away with the prize of a lifetime, because I deserve it”. He boarded a plane for Los Angeles, I believe. And today—’
A yawn came from the other end of the phone ‘line’.
‘And today,’ continued Black Betty Bam-a-Lam, ‘today I am driving, at this very moment, to Buckingham Palace to pick up none other than Her Majesty the Queen, to take her to a secret location, which naturally I will not divulge.’
‘Naturally,’ said the voice. ‘Then perhaps, if you are so engaged, you could give me the name of another limo-hire company whose credentials you could vouch for?’
‘Would that I could,’ said Black Betty, ‘but I regret to say that I cannot. I think you will find that all the top-notch limo-hire companies are busy today.’
‘Doing what?’ asked the voice.
‘Chauffeuring dignitaries,’ said Black Betty. ‘Mister Mull, of Kintyre Cars, is at London City Airport picking up Ahab the A-rab.’
‘The sheik of the desert sands?’ sang the voice.
‘The same. And Mister Jones, of We’ll Keep a Welcome in the Hillside Motors is in Neasden, picking up a Mister Bagshaw.’
‘Bagshaw, Bagshaw, stick it up your jumper?’ sang the voice.
‘Not as such,’ said Betty the Black. ‘Then there’s Mogador Firesword, of Dragonslayer Car Hire, who is frankly often rather difficult to get on the phone. He, I know, is doing a pick-up from Battersea Dogs’ Home – a chap known as Bob the Comical Pup.’
‘How much is that doggy in the window?’ sang the voice.
‘You’re not far short of the mark there. And the remaining top-ofthe-line-stretch-limo-hire-out-jobbie-person would be Mister Esau Good, of Smack My Bitch Up Motors. And he’s at Brize Norton Airport picking up Elvis Presley.’
There was a bit of a silence then.
‘“Heartbreak Hotel?” said Betty. “Jailhouse Rock”?’
‘But Elvis is dead, surely?’
‘If you say so. Don’t ask me, I’m only a black chauffeur.’
‘And are all these, what shall we call them, celebrities, bound for the same place? Her Majesty the Queen, Mister Bagshaw, Ahab the A-rab, Bob the Comical Pup and Elvis Presley, the King of rock ’n’ roll?’
‘Such I believe to be the case,’ said Betty.
‘But you can’t tell me where that is?’
‘More than my job’s worth. I’m sorry.’
‘Are they dropping off, waiting, then picking up? Or are they dropping off, returning to base in case of a job in between, then returning to pick up?’
‘The latter, I believe.’
‘So where would they be waiting, were they intending to wait, which clearly they are not?’
‘Gunnersbury Park,’ said Betty. ‘the Big House, Gunnersbury Park.’
‘Thank you,’ said the voice. ‘And I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’
‘No problem.’
Black Betty replaced the receiver of his car phone.
The owner of the voice switched off his mobile phone and tucked it away into the breast pocket of his jacket.
A jacket that was not without interest.
Although to whom must remain uncertain.
‘Exactly what I wanted to know,’ he said.
And having said this, he turned away, took himself over to a small wall mirror and grinned into it. The small wall mirror was barely to be seen amidst the stacks of army field rations that were piled up against the walls of what appeared to be a rather untidy bedroom.
The door of this bedroom now opened and a woman of middling years adorned with a quilted nylon pink gingham housecoat and matching slipperettes entered the bedroom.
‘I’m
sorry to have kept you waiting,’ she said, grinning inanely. ‘I had to get Jonny’s breakfast. And pretend, like you told me, that I didn’t know anything about what has been going on for the past few days.’
‘You did very well, my dear,’ said the owner of the voice. ‘You deserve some kind of reward, I believe.’
‘Well,’ said Jonny’s mum, for who else could it be but she? ‘It is Sunday, so we might engage in something sexually adventurous.’
‘Indeed we might. Shall we “Take Tea with the Parson”?’
Jonny’s mum did some of that roadkill grinning. ‘That would be lovely, Mister O’Fagin,’ she said.
‘Wake up, O’Fagin,’ called Paul, and he did some thump-thump-thumping upon what was left of The Middle Man’s saloon bar door.
‘This place is in almost complete ruination,’ observed Constable Justice. ‘Did someone take it out with a heat-seeker?’
‘On the contrary,’ said Constable Paul. ‘Things got rather cold. We played a gig here on Friday night and my mate Jonny played Robert Johnson’s guitar. Most of the audience got sucked into a parallel continuum – there was some kind of transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic anti-matter or something.’
‘Sorry I missed it,’ said Constable Justice. ‘So, good gig, then?’
‘Better than usual. Mostly the audience just chuck stuff. Friday night, both Jonny and me got blow jobs.’
‘You blew each other?’
‘From girls,’ said Paul, and he banged some more on the door. ‘And we got a record contract. Although we haven’t actually got it as such, but it’s in the bag, as it were.’ Constable Paul banged even more.
‘It’s only nine o’clock,’ said Constable Justice.
Constable Paul gave him the Old-Fashioned Look.
‘Oh yes,’ said Constable Justice. ‘We’re policemen. There are no such things as licensing hours when you are a policeman and you fancy a drink. How did I forget that?’
‘Because you’re always thinking about shooting people.’
‘Like you’re not!’
Constable Paul knocked even some more. ‘He’s not here,’ he said. ‘Or he’s asleep.’