The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8) (23 page)

But then, what did
I
know about poetry?

Not very much, is the answer to that.

But then, why should I? Because
I
was a detective.

I was Lazlo Woodbine, private eye.

And I can tell you, I
was
experiencing some difficulties with this. I was having a real job keeping in the idiom. And I was in
real
trouble being at the Withdean Stadium. Lazlo did not work stadiums. The office, bars, alleyways and rooftops, yes, but
not
stadiums.

But I was young and had my health and was up for inspiration. And so I stood in one of the corridors that led down to the pitch. A corridor that was open to the sky at intervals. A corridor that would have passed for an alleyway any day of the week, with the possible exception of Tuesdays.

I lounged against the wall, sporting my trenchcoat and fedora and occasionally patting at the item that made my poacher’s pocket bulge. The item was my pistol. Naturally, I did not possess the trusty Smith and Wesson favoured by Laz, and even if I had, I would not have dared to carry it. You can get arrested for something like that and I had no Masonic connections.

What I did have, however, was an air pistol. It did not possess the clout to bring down an arch-villain, but it could make a decent dent in a seagull at more than thirty paces.

And so I lounged and patted and looked very cool.

And then a chap in a white groundskeeper’s coat came along and told me to move.

‘I am here upon official business,’ I told him. ‘Security.’ And I flashed him one of Fangio’s beer mats. ‘Just act as if you have not seen me.’

‘Move along, you twat,’ said he, in a real pea-souper of a Scottish accent.

‘No,’ I said. ‘You fail to grasp the subtle nuances of acting as if you have not seen me.’

‘If you dinna move, I’ll call fer security.’

‘I
am
security.’ And this time I flashed an origami dog, which I had created through skilful folding of cigarette papers.

‘Is that a spaniel?’ the Scottish groundskeeper asked, adding, ‘Hoots mon,’ to fine effect.

I tapped at my nose. ‘Mum is the word,’ I said.

‘I’m away to fetch my knobkerrie,’ said the groundskeeper, ‘and should I return to find y’here, I’ll set about y’ as m’ forefathers set about the Sassenachs at Bannockburn.’

‘Then I will have to shoot you dead,’ I replied, patting at my pocket bulge. ‘It is nothing personal. I am not a racist, or anything.’

The Scottish groundskeeper looked me up and down.

‘Do you know anything about croquet?’ I asked him.

‘It’s pish,’ he said.

‘Not a fan, then?’

‘Dinna get me wrong,’ he replied. ‘It’s a Scottish game, after all.’

‘It never is,’ I said.

‘Och, laddie.’ The groundskeeper threw back his ginger-haired head and laughed a highland ha-ha-ha, exposing a crop of blackened teeth that had clearly never known the joys of Colgate. ‘D’ y’ never read books?’ he asked. ‘The Scots invented everything – the Thermos flask, the television set, the Venetian blind, the Irish jig, the Norwegian wood, the Dutch cap, the French letter—’

‘The Jewish New Year?’ I suggested.

‘And that. Also the Welsh harp, Kentucky Fried Chicken, New York, New York—’

‘It’s a wonderful town.’

‘The Greek Tragedy, the Roman Holiday and the Turkish Delight. Not to mention the American Pie.’

‘The American Pie?’

‘I told y’ not to mention that.’

And oh, how we laughed. For the old ones are always the best.

‘So how does croquet work,
exactly?’
I asked. ‘I really do not understand the game.’

‘Och, ’tis simple. Listen while I explain.’

And he went on to do so. And so I shall explain it to you. Croquet apparently originated in the highlands of Scotland, where poor crofters used it as a means of settling disputes. Which generally involved peat, heather, sheep, long-horned cattle, who had been knocking whom about with claymores and someone called Dear Annie, who was the fairest of the isles.

A croquet team normally consists of four men or women, or some combination thereof, although the American WCF (World Croquet Federation) field six-man sides and allow the underpass rule, which is outlawed in Kilmarnock.

Each four-man team, and only two teams play at a time (although the natives of Papua New Guinea, who took the world title twice in the nineteen forties, allow three teams to play simultaneously, and they also allow the side-swipe-no-takers offside rule, which is punishable by death in Falkirk) consists of a captain, a flackman, a cream-dealer and a fourth man known only as the Shady. The original name for a croquet mallet was a McGregor, after the legendary Rob Roy McGregor, but was renamed the Mallet (after Lord Timothy Mallet of Marlborough) as part of the Suppression of Annoying Highlanders Act 1736. At which time any person calling a Mallet a McGregor could have his lands confiscated by the crown, himself hanged, drawn and quartered and dug into the king’s rose garden at Kew. The original name for the ball was a bollock. But as to why this was changed, the groundsman admitted ignorance.

The object of the game is to knock the bollock with the McGregor – or Mallet – through a series of hoops, which are correctly termed the Hoops of McVenus and represent either the female sexual organ or the Great Arch of Heaven from which the Celtic Goddess Danu plucked the star-stuff from which She fashioned the Earth. ‘Or least it’s some pish to do with womenfolk’, to quote the groundskeeper.

‘There are thirteen hoops, as there are thirteen months in the year and thirteen spots upon a dice. The—’

‘You are making all this up,’ I said to the groundskeeper.

‘Damn right,’ said that man, ‘y’ Sassenach twat.’

‘What time does the match start?’

‘Start?’ said he. ‘It’s almost finished.’

And I should have guessed, really, what with all the deafening cheers that were coming from the stands. And the broken bodies of injured players being carried past me on stretchers. And the reserves jogging by to replace them, crossing themselves as they did so.

‘Who are the Benedictine Bears playing in the final game?’ I asked the groundskeeper, who had fallen into fits of drunken
^*
mirth and seemed on the point of collapse.

‘Glasgow Rangers,’ he managed to say.

I looked up and down the ‘alleyway’, but apart from the grounds-keeper and myself it was otherwise deserted. I drew out my trusty air pistol and did unto the groundskeeper what Mr Rune did unto cabbies with his very own stout stick.

Two stretcher-bearers appeared from the ground end of the ‘alleyway’, bearing another bloodied body. They stepped carefully over the fallen groundskeeper.

‘Is Father Ernetti still on the pitch?’ I asked them.

‘He’s responsible for this,’ said one of the stretcher-bearers, nodding to the bloodied body. ‘Now stand aside, please, we have to get this chap into the back of a Royal Mail van.’

I took myself to the end of the ‘alleyway’ and peered out at the sunlit pitch. And I do have to say that what with all the carnage going on down there, it put me somewhat in mind of the Games of Ancient Rome, the glory days of sport, with lions and gladiators and Caesar giving the old thumbs-down from the royal box while munching lark’s noses and being given a Swedish swallow (which the Scottish probably invented) by a slave girl.

And there was Father Ernetti, in the thick of it, giving as good as he got and better and bringing his blessing-finger into play before dispatching an opponent.

Beneath the shade of my fedora’s brim, I surveyed the crowd as best I could. Was he out there somewhere, the evil Count Otto, ready
to strike? With the height of him and his long black beard, he would have to be a master of disguise to avoid recognition.

By
me.
The detective.

Well, if he was there, I could not see him. And so I lounged in the ‘alleyway’ and enjoyed the closing moments of the match. The scores were even up on the big board – six hundred and sixty-five points each. If Father Ernetti could not whack his bollock through the last Hoop of McVenus before the ref blew his whistle, there was every chance of it going into extra time, possibly even ending in a penalty hoopout.

I glanced up once more to the big scoreboard. The final seconds were ticking away upon the big digital clock. It was an early precursor of those liquid-crystal-display jobbies that were soon to become all the rage. Its internal workings involved a small boy with a skill for counting seconds and a deft hand for slotting up a numbered card.

Thirty seconds left of the match time.

And a little twinkle.

I did the old double-take, as Laz himself would probably have done, but in a more prosaic manner. What
was
that little twinkle? I delved into my trenchcoat and brought out Mr Rune’s brass telescope, the one through which he had viewed Captain Bartholomew Moulsecoomb’s pirate galleon during the Lansdowne Lioness adventure. I had taken quite a shine to it, and when the opportunity had presented itself for me to acquire it for my own professional use, I had taken up this presented opportunity with gusto.

I put the telescope to my eye and did focusings. And there I spied, upon the rooftop up above the big scoreboard, a crouching figure clad in black and peering through a telescopic sight.

A telescopic sight that was mounted upon a very long rifle indeed.

‘Oh my God,’ I said to none other than myself. ‘A sniper.’ And I angled my spyglass from his rifle to the pitch. He was aiming for Father Ernetti.

And I confess that at that moment, I did not know what to do. Cause a distraction? Run on to the pitch? I could rip off all my clothes and streak. Streaking was all the rage nowadays. Folk did it all the time, at football grounds and race meetings, in supermarkets, in cinemas (although no one noticed these streakers much).

Lazlo Woodbine
never
streaked, I told myself, although he did once take off all his clothes in
The Blonde in the Burberry Body Bag
(A Lazlo Woodbine Thriller). But that had been to display his regimental tattoo to a dame that inevitably done him wrong.

But I was in serious trouble here. My air pistol did not have the range or the requisite ballistic capabilities to bring down a sniper.

And
I did not know how to fly a Mustang.

And my chances of ever starring in a Broadway musical were, to say the least, remote.

So I would have to come up with something else.

Or in this case, it seemed, I would not, because the ref blew his whistle and the entire crowd in the stadium rose to its collective feet and cast its collective headwear into the air. Which somewhat obscured the sniper’s view and allowed the good Father Ernetti to leave the field of play unshot and head off to the changing rooms. Probably for oranges, a pep talk from his manager and a Hail Mary Haka before engaging in extra time.

Which gave
me
some extra time.

I headed off up the ‘alleyway’ in search of a stairway or something.

Looking back on all this now, I probably would have been better going directly to Father Ernetti’s changing room and informing him that there was a rooftop sniper intending to ‘take him out’. But I figured (well, in retrospect, I suppose it must have been what I figured at the time) that it was not the way that Laz did business.

Laz always went for the final rooftop confrontation.

And it never failed him once. In one hundred and thirty-two best-selling thrillers.

I steeled myself to do what must be done, and fell into genre to do it.

The alleyway was colder than the heart of an errant wife.

My footsteps echoed hollow as a hooker’s moan of passion.

But a man must do what a man must do to save another’s life.

And a stylish trenchcoat’s never out of fashion.

‘No,’ I said to myself, with more snafu than a kamikaze catamite at a coprophiliacs’ convention. ‘This is not the time for poetry. This is time for action.’

And I found myself in the stadium’s bar, which was filling up with
thirsty sports fans. I elbowed my way between two who did not look particularly psychotic and called out to the barman.

‘Which way to the scoreboard?’ I called. ‘I need to get up there in a hurry.’

‘Would you mind doing that in verse for me?

And I’ll serve you with alacrity,’

said the barman. ‘Only I have recently converted from the Tadpole of Dyslexia to the Church of Poetic Pronouncement, and I now only communicate in rhyme.’

‘Fangio,’ I said. ‘It is
you.’

‘Was that iambic pentameter?’ asked the barman. ‘Or was it a haiku?’

‘It could be either, I do not know.

I need the stairs, I have to go.’

‘Very good,’ said the barman.

‘A fine piece of verse.

It could have been better.

But I have heard worse.