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The days continued to pass and the stadium neared completion. Beneath, the borough was changing, the light which now fell upon it was u
Muttering doubtfully the patrons turned up their collars to the sudden chill and shuffled back to the comfort of the saloon bar. Old Pete raised two fingers and Young Chips peed defiantly skyward.
Pooley leant upon the Professor’s spade and mopped his brow with an oversized red gingham handkerchief. The recent doings had all but done for him. Had it not been for the thought of his coming wealth and his agreement with the Professor, he would no doubt have taken to his bed for an indefinite period.
Norman laboured away long into the nights upon a project of his own formulation; but for the occasional muted explosion or fluctuation in the neighbourhood electricity supply, his neighbours had little cause to complain and so left him to it.
Je
Omally sat outside his allotment hut. Being on the boundaries of the borough the allotments continued to enjoy a natural sunset and a soft afterglow. Thus in the doorways of similar sheds, which formed a picturesque shanty town leading down the natural arc of land towards the Thames, other Brentonian males sat in similar postures, puffing upon their pipes and supping their home brew.
Omally scratched in the dust with his dibber and considered his lot. He had taxed his considerable ingenuity to the very limits in attempting to track down the enigmatic organizer of the games, who might or might not be his would-be assassin. But he had achieved very little in return for his pains. He had inveigled his way into the town hall registrar’s office and consulted the land register to discover who had purchased each of the Olympic sites. Each purchaser had told him the same story: they had been commissioned to purchase the land on behalf of a third party who had more than adequately compensated them for their time and trouble. Employing a deviousness previously unexploited, he had teased from each the name of the secretive buyer. The name was always the same: THE KALETON ORGANIZATION.
Sensing victory John sped off to Companies House, but to no avail. The Kaleton Organization was not registered, it was not a research organization nor a charitable institution, nor a trading body of any persuasion, it was not listed in any directory, public or private. It was a bank account alone and nothing more. It was a dead end.
John turned his dibber in the soil. Anyone with resource enough could have got as far as he had, which after all was nowhere at all. He was almost on the point of giving up when a sudden thought crossed his mind. It was such a pleasant thought and so ripe with engaging possibilities that he gave himself a mental boot in the backside for not thinking of it sooner. Leaping to his feet with a wild cry of exaltation, which raised eyebrows from the nearby hut-sitters, he mounted up Marchant and rode away at speed.
He caught Alison’s Floral Fripperies in the High Street just as the big girl was closing for the night and charmed her out of a bunch of Day Lilies. At a little after seven, having bathed his body to fragrant cleanliness in the Professor’s marble bath, dressed himself in Pooley’s best suit and shaved his chin to a manly blue, he set out once more upon Marchant bound for Je
As John rode out he sang softly to himself a lilting ballad rich in the pathos of the hard times of Holy Ireland. That he had never known these hard times himself, being Dublin born and Brentford bred, was beside the point. For when the soul of the Gael is stirred to song, then that song will as like as not be one of lament, heavy with sentiment and stirring memories of Erin’s tragic history, and the bittersweet times that all but were. “The night that O’Rafferty’s pig ran away,” sang John Vincent Omally. John turned right into Aiwass Avenue and suddenly applied the anchors. Marchant slewed violently and spilled lilies from his saddlebag. Muttering beneath his breath John dragged his bike into the concealment of a parked car and scooped up the fallen flowers before ducking away out of sight.
Parked in front of Je
At this moment the liveried dwarf shuffled out of Je
“Well, now,” said John, and, much after the fashion of the late and legendary, “the game is afoot.” He climbed aboard Marchant and set off in hot pursuit. The sheer nonsense of a sit-up-and-beg-bike pursuing a Porsche did not even enter his head; he applied foot to pedal and made out for the off.
At the top of Aiwass Avenue Je
Across Brentford went the little convoy, Omally riding drag in a fervour of pressing pedals. Left at the traffic lights and up the Kew Road towards the Chiswick roundabout. As John applied his best feet forward, the thought that the Kaleton Organization’s headquarters might well lie somewhere to the East of London, in Penge, or some other far-flung outpost of the civilized world, took the opportunity to cross his mind. Such matters did not bear thinking about so he plodded on. The black car took yet another left turn and entered the new estate to the rear of the great gasometer.
Omally pulled up at the corner and took a breather, rolled and lit a cigarette. To his knowledge there was no other road in or out of there, but then where was the black car heading? Delivering another bomb?
In the distance the Memorial Library clock struck the half hour. Above, a drone of engines a
Omally took a final drag and flicked his butt-end into the road. He had two choices: stay where he was, or go looking. He cocked a pedal; hanging about on the off chance had never been his way. Plough on.
John entered the new estate. He knew little about this area now, although it had been his home when a lad. The streets of Victorian houses had gone the way of all flesh, beneath the bulldozer’s plough and in their place up went the gaunt flatblocks, built by folk who cared little, to house strangers who cared even less. The place was now a wasteland. Poorly designed and indiffererently constructed, the dwellings were already begi