Norman’s van accelerated.

“Oh and this is fast!” Mr Merkin was out of his seat once more and straining his voice into the mask-mic. “Landru to Lane and back to Landru again. Intercepted by Ricardo, no, it’s Rivaleno. Oh no, it was Ricardo. But to no good.

“Landru back to Lane. And Lane is on course, but no, Lane is down, brought down by Beckham. The crowd are on their feet. The ref is showing Beckham the yellow card. It’s a free kick for Brentford just outside Manchester’s penalty area.”

“Nice area,” observed Jim. “Is this Penge again?”

“It’s Southall,” said John, “but there are many similarities. Hold on tight, everyone. And get a move on, you useless piece of ****!”

The A40 van drew level with the limo. On the wrong side of the road, though, to the great consternation of oncoming traffic. Cars swerved and mounted the pavements, ploughing into kerbside displays of exotic fruit and electrical goods and saris and socks and Blu-Tack.

John slammed the van into the side of the limo.

A blackly tinted window swished down. The chauffeur’s hand appeared and offered John a finger gesture that in America is known as “flipping the bird”.

“Bastard!” shouted John.

Norman’s van gained speed.

“Have at you!” roared John, swerving in front of the limo and applying the brakes. The rear of the van struck home, upending its mysterious hidden occupant. Headlights shattered on the limo, but it accelerated, thrusting Norman’s van forward at alarming speed.

Ahead were red lights. Van and limo rushed through them. Vehicles with the right of way swerved and applied their brakes and mashed into one another.

“Exciting this, isn’t it?” said Professor Slocombe.

Jim Pooley cowered and ducked his head, still twiddling the radio’s dials as he did so.

John clung on to the steering wheel. “He’s going to have us off the road.”

They were approaching a junction, one of those T-junctions where you can turn either left or right, but there is nowhere to go straight ahead. Except directly into a building. A Gas Showroom, upon this occasion.

One of those junctions.

“Turn left here, I think,” said the professor.

“I can’t,” shouted Omally. “We’re going too fast. We’re going to crash.”

Behind them and grinding into the van’s rear bumper, the limo pressed onward, gathering speed. The driver’s eyes shone that blackest of blacks. His teeth ground together, teeth that were blacker than the blackest of blacks. His foot (in a green driving shoe, because he had verrucae) pressed further down upon the accelerator pedal.

“Left, please,” said the professor. “Left, please – now, I think.”

Omally, both feet on the brake and telling Norman’s van what a lovely van it was, heaved the steering wheel portside.

The van hit the junction, swerved and then rolled.

The limo rushed on towards the Gas Showroom building before it.

“Ooooo!” went John and Jim and the professor and the mysterious stowaway in the back as Norman’s van rolled over and over, scattering pedestrians and cyclists and oncoming cars and cats and dogs and a casual observer.

The limousine struck the Gas Showroom building before it.

A mighty explosion occurred.

Jim Pooley raised his head from a tangle of twisted limbs and body parts that were not his own.

“Am I dead?” Jim asked.

“Not dead,” came the voice of Omally. “Get your damned foot off my head.”

“Professor?”

“Fine, Jim – somewhat battered, but fine. The van seems to have landed the right way up, which is a blessing.”

“Untangle me,” said Jim. “There’s a hand in my trouser parts that is not my own.”

The Gordian knot that was John, Jim and the professor was finally cut with the aid of oncoming onlookers, or good Samaritans as they are sometimes called.

“Now, in my opinion,” began a casual observer. But he said no more, for Pooley swung open the passenger-side door and knocked him from his feet.

“Has anyone been listening to the match?” Jim asked the onlookers. “Anybody know what the score is?”

Professor Slocombe crawled from the van. “Your assistance would be appreciated,” he told Jim.

Jim Pooley hastened to oblige the scholar.

“The limousine,” said the professor. “Starling. Is he dead?”

Jim viewed the devastation fifty yards behind them. “Are you okay, John?” he asked.

Omally heaved himself from the van. “Battered but all in one piece.”

“We have to see if Starling survived,” said Jim.

“I’ll finish him off if he has.”

As the onlookers onlooked and the casual observer observed small stars and sailing ships and sausages and sprouts, the three front-seat survivors made their way towards the now open-fronted building from which projected the rear of the limousine. Smoke was rising freely and flames crackled around and about the wrecked automobile.

“Careful,” said the professor. “If he is alive, he won’t be pleased to see us.”

Jim Pooley took hold of a rear doorhandle. “It’s hot,” he said, blowing on to his fingers.

“Open it, Jim, but be careful.”

Pooley dragged open the door and peered into the rear compartment. It was very much of a mess, thoroughly mangled, and shards of twisted metal had ripped through the seats. But of William Starling there was nothing to be seen.

“He’s not in here,” said Jim. “He’s gone.”

A sudden cry of pain was to be heard.

The three men turned. Along the road, beside Norman’s somewhat dented van, they saw Starling. His clothes were torn, but he was still in one piece. The cry of pain had come from a motorcyclist whom Starling had unseated. As the three men looked on, William Starling climbed astride the motorcycle and swerved away at speed.

“Back to the van,” the professor cried. “And after him.”

“It’s all go nowadays, isn’t it?” said Omally.

“Maybe the crash will have got the radio working again,” said Jim.

Sponge Boy, Terrence and the Campbell were working their way steadily up the many floors of the Consortium building. Flames now roared beneath them in the stairwell.

The Campbell had a sweat on, but his claymore arm was still more than sound. He hacked away with a vim and vigour, cleaving darksters before him.

In his claymore-free hand, the Campbell carried a tartan holdall. Within this holdall lurked many pounds of Semtex.

“The crash and the explosion should have killed him,” said Jim, as John swore at Norman’s van and Norman’s van set off once more at speed.

“We are dealing with no ordinary man,” said Professor Slocombe.

“Who – or what – is he?” Jim asked.

“A man from another time,” said Professor Slocombe. “Another period of time – the late-Victorian age. He sold himself to the Dark Side, if I might put it so, and he should have died when the clock struck twelve midnight on the thirty-first day of December in the year eighteen ninety-nine.”

“Time travel,” said Jim. “Is that what all this has been about? Norman there bringing Brentford’s nineteen twenty-eight team to Wembley with the help of Mr H.G. Wells? This really is beyond belief.”

“I think I’m probably able to believe absolutely anything at all now,” said Omally, “no matter how absurd it may appear. And thus I think I’ll give up being a Catholic and become a Wiccan instead. Get on, you worthless ****.”

Norman’s van got on at the hurry-up.

“Another world existed in Victorian times,” Professor Slocombe continued, “a world of supertechnology, but it vanished from the pages of history. It was erased at the stroke of midnight, with the coming of the twentieth century.”

“This supertechnology,” said Jim, “is this the stuff that you mentioned to us? The stuff you said Starling needed to free the serpent from beneath Griffin Park?”