‘It’s a picture of a motorway. The M25, to be precise. Taken by a police speed camera. So we can fine motorists who drive above the legal limit.’
‘That’s clever,’ said Soap. ‘How does it work?’
‘I don’t know how it works. It’s digital, some computerized nonsense. It’s triggered automatically to catch the registration plate of the offending motorist. Surely you’ve heard of the damn things.’
‘Well …’ said Soap. ‘I’ve never actually owned a motorcar. In fact I’ve never actually been on a motorway. But I get the picture.’
‘And what do you get from looking at that picture?’
‘Well …’ said Soap.
‘Well, look at it, man, what do you see?’
‘I don’t see any motorcars,’ said Soap.
‘No,’ agreed Hovis. ‘No motorcars at all. But what about that?’ and he pointed.
‘Oh,’ said Soap. ‘It’s a man in the middle of the road. A plump man. In a black T-shirt and shorts.’
‘Yes,’ said Hovis. ‘And what is he doing?’
‘He’s walking along,’ said Soap.
‘Isn’t he, though. And look at the little figures in the bottom left-hand corner of the photograph. The ones in miles-per-hour. Tell me what speed he’s walking along at.’
‘Oh,’ said Soap, ‘that can’t be right. It says here he’s walking along at one hundred and forty miles per hour.’
‘Pretty spry for an over-weight fellow, don’t you think?’
‘There must be something wrong with the camera.’
‘Would that there were,’ said Hovis. ‘But look,’ and he pushed further photos at Soap. ‘Here he is again, caught on another camera. And here again and here and here.’
‘And he’s in all these photographs?’
‘Not all,’ said Hovis. ‘There’s at least twelve different men involved. All dressed alike. Each of them strolling along the middle lane of a motorway at impossible speed in the early hours of the morning.’
‘Avoiding the traffic.’
‘Good point,’ said Hovis.
‘Thank you,’ said Soap. ‘So how’s it done?’
Inspectre Hovis made a fearsome face.
‘Sorry,’ said Soap.
‘Never mind. I have certain theories, of course. Or should I say, had?’
‘And these were?’
‘Well, firstly I thought that perhaps some whizz-kid joker was hacking into the computer system and feeding these images in. But that won’t wash because the cameras aren’t linked to a central system and, before you ask, they haven’t been tampered with. Secondly, I reasoned that it was some new form of automotive technology. A stealth car, perhaps.’
‘Stealth car?’
‘Like the stealth bomber that evades radar. This car evades speed trap cameras and throws up some kind of holographic after-image to mock honest policemen who are only doing their duty.’
‘But it’s not?’
‘Certainly not. If such technology existed the police would have it first.’
‘So where does that leave you?’
‘It leaves me, Mr Distant, with a dirty great pile of photos on my desk.’
‘Ah,’ said Soap. ‘But why your desk?’
‘Because I am Brentford’s Detective in Residence.’
‘I don’t think I quite understand.’
‘No, and that is because there is something I neglected to mention. You see, we’ve plotted the routes taken by these moonlight strollers. Plotted them out on a map. Would you care to take a look?’
‘I would,’ said Soap.
‘Then be my guest.’
The map was a big’n and was blu-tacked to the bookcase behind the crowded desk.
Soap gave the map a good looking over. There were twelve lines drawn upon it. Each followed the route of a motorway or A-class road. They began at twelve separate points of the compass, but all met up at a single location.
That single location was Brentford.
‘Oh,’ said Soap.
‘Yes, oh indeed. The photographs were taken two nights ago and there have been no further sightings. Whoever, or whatever they are, they’re here. Right here in the borough.’
‘Oh,’ said Soap once more.
4
John Omally sat in his kitchen.
And a horrible kitchen it was.
It was a fetid kitchen. A vile kitchen. A foul and unkempt kitchen.
It was the kitchen of a single man.
Now, it might well have been argued that Omally’s kitchen was also an anomalous and contradictory kitchen, given the scrupulous personal hygiene of its owner. Omally was nothing if not clean. His shirts were always laundered, his jackets showed no neck oil and as to his underpants, these were free of wind-smear. His clothes weren’t new, but they were spotless and although he had never been a man of fashion, due to his ever-limited resources, he possessed a certain jumble sale chic that women found appealing.
So why the Goddamn horrible kitchen?
Well, when Viv Stanshall said ‘Teddy boys don’t knit’ he was pretty near to the mark. Manly men don’t do the dishes.
This may sound like male chauvinism, but it’s not. In fact it is quite the reverse. It’s all down to women and what women find attractive in a man.
You see, if a woman finds a man attractive, really attractive, more attractive in fact than any other man she knows, she will like as not wish to marry him. If she succeeds in doing so, her next task will be to domesticate him. Purge him of his nasty habits, mould him into a loving husband and caring father.
This on the face of it would seem reasonable enough. It makes perfect sense. But it has a tragic downside. It puts an end to their sex life.
Because a domesticated man is not a sexy man. A domesticated man, who does the dishes and cooks the dinners and hoovers the carpets and mends the fence and redecorates the house, is anything but sexy. There are few things less sexy than a man in a pinny.
And so while he might be very good about the house, his wife no longer finds him sexually attractive. Because he is not the man she married. He is a pale and domesticated shadow of the man she once found alluring.
And so while he is at home in the evenings, babysitting the kids and putting up a new spice rack in the kitchen, she is out at her amateur dramatics, being rogered rigid in the back of a Ford Cortina by her toyboy called Steve.
Steve lives in a grubby bedsit.
And Steve don’t do the dishes.
Nice for the wife and nice for Steve, but what about the poor domesticated cuckold of a husband?
Well, he’s having an affair with his secretary.
So it all works out fine in the end.
So there you have it, whether you like it or not.
Manly men don’t do the dishes, that is that is that.
Now, as well as dirty dishes, there are other things single men possess that married men do not. These are highly essential things and known as ‘toys for boys’. They include such items as an expensive motorbike, an expensive sound system and an expensive electric guitar.
These items will vanish shortly after marriage.
The expensive motorbike will be traded in for a sensible family saloon. The expensive sound system will end up in the garage, having failed to survive the assault made upon it by a one-year-old child with a jam sandwich.
And the electric guitar?
Goodbye, Stratocaster. Hello, Flymo hover-mower.
That is that is that.
Omally possessed no toys for boys. He would have liked some, but, having never done an honest day’s work in his life, for he valued freedom above all else, he knew not the joys of the chequebook or the loan that is paid back in monthly instalments.
He had his freedom, he had his health and he had his dirty dishes. But he dearly would have loved that Fender Strat.
When it comes to guitars, it can be said that it’s all a matter of taste. But when it comes to taste itself, it’s a matter of good taste or
bad. And this is not a matter of personal preference. Some things simply are better than others, and some people are capable of making the distinction.
When it comes to electric guitars, the Fender Strat is king. For sheer elegance, beauty and playing perfection, the Strat has never known equal. When it appeared upon the music scene in 1954 musicians marvelled at its ergonomics, its sonic versatility, its tuning stability and its pure pure tone. The sleek new body form, developed from the original Telecaster, featured the now legendary double cutaway, or twin-horn shape. The advanced tremolo, allied to the three single-coil pickups, allowed the player greater playing potential. The Strat was capable of doing something new. And something wonderful.
One could spend all night singing praises to the Strat or indeed to composing paeans to its inventor, the mighty Leo Fender. That Mr Fender never received the Nobel Peace Prize during his lifetime and seems unlikely to be canonized by the church of Rome just goes to show how little justice there is in this world.
And that is that is that.
But Omally was Stratless. An air-guitarist he. Not that that fazed him too much, for, after all, he had no talent. He could strum a passable ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ without looking at his fingers, but anyone could do that and you don’t do that on a Strat.
On a Strat you play rock. On a Strat you play the twenty-minute solo. And if you cannot play the twenty-minute solo you should not step onto the stage with a Strat strapped round your neck. Leave the Strat to Hendrix. Leave the Strat to Stevie Ray Vaughan.
So that’s how John Omally left it. He left the Strat to the great rock legends, whom he joined onstage in his dreams.
But the point of all this, and there is a point, or else it would not have been mentioned, the point of all this was that Omally had recently heard tell of a rock band playing pub gigs in Brentford that owned to a Strat-playing fellow who could, in the words of one who’d heard him play, ‘make that mother sing like an angel and grind like a thousand-dollar whore’.
Which is something you don’t hear or see every day, especially in the suburbs of West London.
The Stratster’s name was Ricky Zed, although his employers at the West Ealing Wimpy Bar, where he worked as the griddle chef, knew him as Kevin Smith. The band was called Gandhi’s Hairdryer and they were playing tonight at the Shrunken Head. Which was why Omally now sat in his kitchen. He was polishing his winkle-picker boots.
For Omally wished to look his best tonight. Omally wished to see this band and if they were all they were cracked up to be and indeed if Ricky proved to be the new Jimi, or the new Stevie Ray, Omally hoped to make them an offer he hoped they would not refuse.
An offer to manage them.
Because Omally had also heard that the Gandhis were looking for a manager.
Now the fact that Omally had never had a day job, nor indeed knew anything whatsoever about managing a band, did not, in his opinion, enter into the equation.
John felt deep in his rock ’n’ roll heart that he was born to such a role. Wheeling and dealing, ducking and diving, bobbing and weaving and things of that nature were what he was all about. He was a man with no visible means of support who somehow managed to enjoy a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. Even if it didn’t run to any toys for boys.
He was management material.
If cut from humble cloth.
So, if this band had potential, he, Omally, would realize this potential. And if he couldn’t play the Strat he would bathe in the reflected glory of one who could. And also in the heated swimming pool into which he had driven his Rolls Royce.
Omally buffed his boot and hummed a little ‘Smoke On The Water’.
The kitchen clock had long since ceased to tick, but John’s biological counterpart told him that opening time drew near. He took his boots upstairs, shaved and showered and put his glad-rags on. They were slightly ragged, but they were extremely glad. Omally chose for this special occasion a Hawaiian shirt that his best friend Pooley had given him for Christmas, a dove-grey zoot suit he had borrowed from this self-same Pooley, and the aforementioned winkle-picker boots, which in fact were also the property of the also aforementioned Pooley. And which Omally had been meaning to give back. Examining himself in the wardrobe mirror, Omally concluded that he looked pretty damn hot.
‘You, my friend,’ he said, pointing to the vision in the glass, ‘you, my friend, will really knock ’em dead.’
He teased a curly lock or two into a bit of a quiff, struck a pose and did the Pete Townshend windmill.
‘Rock ’n’ roll,’ said John Omally. ‘Rock ’n’ roll and then some.’
Ring ring went the front doorbell as John went down the stairs. He skipped up the hall and opened the door and greeted the man on the step.
‘Watchamate, Jim,’ said John.
‘Watchamate, John,’ said Jim.
The man on the step was Pooley. Aforementioned Pooley and John’s bestest friend. Jim, like John, was ‘unemployed’, but where John did all that ducking and diving and bobbing and weaving, Jim applied himself to science. The science of horse racing. Jim considered himself to be a man of the turf and had dedicated his life to the search for the BIG ONE. The BIG ONE was the six-horse Super-Yankee accumulator bet. Which every punter dreams of and every bookie fears.
So far Jim had failed to pull off the six-horse Super-Yankee or, as future generations would know it, the Pooley.
But it was just a matter of time.
Regarding the looks of Jim. They were varied. He was much the same stamp as John, and but for the obvious differences bore many similarities.
‘Come on in,’ said John Omally.
‘Thank you sir,’ said Jim Pooley.
‘No, hold on,’ said Omally. ‘I was coming out.’
‘I’ll join you, then,’ said Jim.
And so he did.
The two friends strolled up Mafeking Avenue and turned right into Moby Dick Terrace. Jim’s face wore a troubled look which John saw fit to mention.
‘What ails you, Jim?’ asked John. ‘You wear a troubled look.’
‘I am perplexed,’ said Pooley. ‘I just ran into Soap.’
‘Ah,’ said John. ‘I saw him at lunchtime. How did his interview go at the Mercury?’
‘None too well by all accounts. Soap seemed very upset. He said that the world was going mad and it wasn’t his fault.’
‘Wah-wah,’ said John.
‘Wah-wah?’ said Jim.
‘As in wah-wah pedal. Go on with what you were saying.’
‘Soap said that he’d expected things to change a bit while he’d been away. But he didn’t see how they could have changed before he went away, without him noticing at the time.’
‘I am perplexed,’ said John.
‘It was about the Queen being assassinated. And Branson being on the pound notes.’
‘Who’s Branson?’
‘The bloke whose face is on the pound notes, according to Soap.’
‘But I thought Prince Charles was on the pound notes.’
‘That’s what I told Soap. I showed him a pound note and I said, “Look, Soap, it’s Prince Charles.” ’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said, no, it was definitely Branson.’
‘He’s confusing him with that film star,’ said Omally.
‘Which film star?’
‘Charles Branson. In the Death Wish movies.’
‘I think you’ll find that’s Charles Manson,’ said Jim knowledgeably.
‘Oh yeah, that’s the fellow. Wrote a lot of the Beach Boys’ big hits and then went on to become a star in Hollywood.’
‘You’ve got him.’
They reached the Memorial Library and sat down upon Jim’s favourite bench. Early-evening sunlight filtered through the oak trees, sparrows gossiped and pussycats yawned.
Omally took out his fags and offered one to Jim. ‘Soap will be all right,’ he said. ‘It’s just all the excitement of getting back and everything. He’ll soon
sort himself out.’
‘I hope so. Some of the stuff he was telling me was seriously bonkers. He said a policeman had showed him pictures of a plump man in a black T-shirt and shorts walking down the middle of a motorway at one hundred miles an hour.’
‘Oh dear,’ said John, lighting up.
‘And he said that the more he thought about it the more he noticed odd little changes that didn’t make sense. That things just weren’t the way they should be.’
‘He had been drinking a bit,’ said John.
‘He owned up to that.’ Jim took John’s lighter and lit his fag. ‘I used to have a lighter just like this,’ he said.
Omally stretched and yawned.
‘And come to think of it,’ said Jim, ‘I used to have a suit like that and a pair of winkle-picker boots.’
‘They’re only borrowed, Jim. And if all goes well tonight I’ll buy you a dozen suits and a dozen pairs of boots.’
‘Yeah, right. But I am rather worried about old Soap.’
‘He’ll be fine. It’s just some temporary aberration. When I last saw him we drank a toast to Brentford and how what he liked about it best was that nothing ever changes here. I mean, look around you, can you imagine this place changing?’
Jim looked all around him. He saw the mellow-bricked library and the streets of terraced Victorian houses. He saw a crumbling wall plastered with movie posters, one of which, coincidentally, advertised Virgin Films’ latest release. Charles Manson starring as Forrest Gump. And above and beyond, the high-rise flats and the gleaming silver spires of Virgin Mega City.
‘No,’ said Jim. ‘You’re right, of course. Nothing ever changes round here.’
5
When Terence the Thespian got his comeuppance and copped the old bolt from the blue, his children were left to divvy up the spoils.
The eldest, Alexander, or Sandy to his daddy, or Master Sandy to his private tutors, or just plain jammy toerag to the rest of us, found himself in the enviable position of being a teenaged millionaire.
Now, while it is certainly true that many a man of means owes his success in life to the labours of a deceased relative, it is also often the case that wealth that is suddenly come by, is wealth that is suddenly gone.