“Tunnel under?”

“Like in this film I saw. The Wooden Horse, I think it was called. These prisoners of war built this vaulting horse and they went out every day and exercised with it. But there was a bloke inside with a spoon and a bag and he dug this tunnel and…”

“Wasn’t Trevor Howard in that one?”

“He might have been. I think John Mills was.”

“Didn’t Anton Diffring play the Nazi officer?”

“With the long leather coat?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you always want a coat like that?”

“I still do.”

“I’ll buy you one when we get our first pay cheque.”

“Thank you very much, John. Now what exactly were we talking about? I think I’ve lost the plot here.”

“You were just telling me that we should build a vaulting horse and carry it out into the library garden every morning so that while I exercise on it you can be underneath with a spoon tunnelling to the bench.”

Jim nodded enthusiastically. “I have to say,” he said, “that when you put it that way, it comes across as a really stupid idea.”

“Doesn’t it though.”

“So,” said Jim, “that leaves us with Marchant.”

“Marchant?”

“Once he’s restored to his former greatness, we’ll hitch him to the bench with a length of chain and…”

John was shaking his head.

“You’re shaking your head,” said Jim.

“I am,” said John.

“All right then, I give up. I’ve offered you three perfectly sound suggestions and you’ve pooh-poohed every one. It’s your turn.”

John offered up another sigh. “There has to be some simple way to shift it,” he said. “Let’s go and discuss it somewhere else. The sound of all these road drills in A minor starting up again is giving me a headache.”

And John looked at Jim.

And Jim looked at John.

And then they both smiled.

And Early the Very Next Morning

“And what do you think you’re doing there, my good man?” asked the official-looking gent with the bowler hat, the big black moustache and the clipboard.

“Me, guv?” asked the bloke down the hole.

“Yes you, guv.”

“Cable TV,” said the bloke. “We’re laying the cable.”

“Does anyone in Brentford actually want cable TV?”

“I shouldn’t think so. It’s all crap, isn’t it? Presented by a lot of has-beens, like that Blue Peter bloke who had that spot of bother with the…”

“I believe I read of it in the Sunday Sport. But if no one actually wants cable TV, what’s the point of all this digging?”

The bloke down the hole grinned. “Now you’re asking,” he said, “and I’ll tell you. You see, I drill the hole and then my mate here takes this big saw and cuts off the important roots of the roadside trees.”

“But won’t that kill them?”

“It certainly will. Within two years from now there won’t be a single tree left in any town or city in the country.”

“But surely that’s a very bad thing?”

“Depends whose side you’re on, I suppose. It will be a bad thing for us, but not for the alien strike force drifting secretly in orbit around the planet.”

“What?”

“Well, this is only my personal theory, and I may be well off the mark, but I believe that the cable television network is run by space aliens bent upon world domination. And they’re seeing that all the trees get cut down so the atmosphere on Earth changes to one more suitable for themselves.”

“Great Scott!” said the official-looking gent.

“Nah, only kidding,” said the bloke down the hole. “The truth is that we only do it because we’re stupid. Blokes who dig holes in the road are all working class and all the working class are stupid.”

“Surely that is a somewhat classist remark.”

“What does ‘classist’ mean?”

“You really wouldn’t want to know.”

“But who are you, guv? You look a bit of a toff. Should I call you ‘your honour’ rather than ‘guv’?”

“‘Guv’ will be sufficient. I am from the Department of Roads.” The official-looking gent flashed an official-looking ID.

“Gawd luv a duck,” said the bloke. “That has me fair impressed.”

“And so it should. Now I want you to stop digging there at once and start digging over there instead. I will supervise.”

“Whatever you say, guv. Where exactly do you want us to dig?”

“Right there.” The official-looking gent pointed to the bench outside the Memorial Library.

Now, the other chap who did a lot of pointing hadn’t been heard of for a while. But he had been busy and he was up to absolutely no good whatsoever. Dr Steven Malone wasn’t lecturing this morning, nor was he putting in any time at the Cottage Hospital. He was working alone in his underground laboratory at Kether House.

You might well suppose that as a chap who looked the dead Kennedy of Paget’s Holmes, in black and white, Dr Steven would have had one of those Victorian Mad Scientist’s laboratories. You know the kinds of jobbies, all bubbling retorts and brass Bunsen burners, with squiddly-diddly glass pipes and red rubber tubing. There would be a lot of early electrical gubbinry also, sparking coils and polished spheres and a heavy emphasis on the switchboards with the big “we belong dead” power handles.

But not a bit of it.

Because, let’s face it, nobody would have a laboratory like that nowadays. In fact nobody really had a laboratory like that in those days. Laboratories like that were invented by Hollywood. And although we are all eternally grateful for the way Hollywood has rewritten history for us, this is not Hollywood.

This, thank God, is Brentford.

And we do things differently here.

Dr Steven Malone’s laboratory was a living hell. Anyone who has seen photographs of Ed Gein’s kitchen, or Jeffrey Dahmer’s bathroom, will be able to form an immediate impression. Somebody once said that “psychos never comb their hair”; well, neither do they wash their dishes. And Dr Steven Malone was a psychopath, make no mistake about that. Although he did comb his hair, and wash his dishes.

For the record, it is possible to trace the precise moment when the genetic engineer stepped out of sanity and entered loony-doom. The day five years before when he changed his name from Stephen to Steven.

It came about in this fashion. Dr Steven had been introduced to a certain writer of Far-fetched Fiction at a party in Dublin. This writer showed Dr Steven his pocket watch. The numbers on the face had been erased and replaced by the letters of the writer’s name. Twelve letters, six for the Christian name and six for the surname. Dr Steven viewed this preposterous vanity and, unlike others who have viewed it and responded with certain gestures below waist level, Dr Steven was intrigued and he knew that he must own one. The effect upon him was profound, because he realized that the name Stephen Malone has thirteen letters. And thirteen is an unlucky number.

And the man who would change the world would not have thirteen letters in his name.

There was some kind of Cosmic Truth in this, albeit one of a terrible madness. The body of the writer was pulled from the river the following day. His pocket watch was never seen again.

Except by Dr Steven Malone.

So back to his laboratory.

It smelt bad down here. Bad, as in fetid. Bad, as in the stench of death. There were Dexion racks down here, poorly constructed. Glass jars stood upon these racks, glass jars containing specimens. Human specimens. Pickled parts, suspended in formaldehyde. Here a tragic severed hand, its fingertips against the glass, and here some sectioned organ, delicate as coral, wafer thin as gossamer. And all around stared human eyes, unseeing yet reproachful from within those tall glass jars.

On the floor was litter. Crumpled cartons, empty bottles, discarded cigarette packs (for most psychos smoke), and magazines and books and newspapers and unopened letters and flotsam and jetsam and filthy rags and tatters. And there were bloodstains on the walls and on the ceiling and on the litter. And on the hands of Dr Steven Malone.