Read Online The Sprouts of Wrath by Robert Rankin - Free Book Online Page A

point. He informed the crowd that a model of the Olympic stadium complete with full plans and specifications could be seen that very afternoon at the town hall from two o’clock onwards. He made some mention of riot shields and extendible truncheons, tear-gas canisters, rubber bullets and policemen on horseback. And went on to offer his own feelings about the severity of sentences currently being meted out to rioters and those engaged in unlawful assembly. Finally, for good measure, he read the riot act.
    All in all it proved quite successful upon this particular occasion. The plucky Brentonians, who were strangers to such matters, hung on his every word, digested the intelligence to be found therein, perused the lines of SPG officers who had lately materialized on every side and finally drifted away with talk of pressing engagements at Tesco’s and Safeway’s.
    Inspectre Hovis joined the editor in a glass of Fleet Street Comfort. “I am going to be keeping a watchful eye on you in the future,” he told the gibbering wreck. “And I shall take a very poor view of it if I see any headlines such as TRIGGER HAPPY COPS SAVAGE SATURDAY SHOPPERS.”
    The editor tossed a triple down his throat. “I was thinking more along the line of GALLANT INSPECTOR QUELLS MOB.”
    “Inspect
re
,” said Hovis. “It is so much more enigmatic, don’t you think. You’ll want a photograph of me for the front page. I’ll have an officer drop you round a couple of ten by eight glossies.”
    “Thanks very much,” said the editor of the
Brentford Mercury
.

13
    Jim Pooley sat upon his favourite bench before the Memorial Library. Hands clasped behind his head, legs outstretched, Special Olympic Souvenir Edition aproning his knees. Jim appeared to be whistling, “Money Makes the World Go Round” — that or an ancient Abba hit, but the air was constantly disjointed by contented sighs and deep chuckles. Once in a while Jim would stretch out his arms and punch at the sky, much after the fashion of a Wembley Cup tie striker who had just hammered the winning goal into the back of the net. The sun was certainly in Jim’s heaven and all seemed very much all right with the world.
    Pooley was, however, finding some difficulty in coming to terms with his good fortune. Within the span of twenty-four short hours he had risen from the ranks of “no-mark” to those of potential millionaire. In a strange way he had almost come to resent it. Basically because it was not of his own doing. He’d been betting away for years, with scheme after scheme and system after system. Then along comes Omally who, to Jim’s knowledge, had never laid a bet in his life and the next thing you know —
Eureka! Shazam! Bingo!
— things of that nature. And it wasn’t just that. There was also Omally’s remarkable and uncharacteristic altruism in allowing him to place the bet in his own name, even though he knew it was a sure thing. That was most puzzling.
    And so there sat Jim, torn between moments of rare joy and others of brooding bafflement, although it must be fairly stated that the rare joy was winning the uneven struggle.
    From the corner of his eye, Pooley noticed a scruffy-looking individual approaching. Normally he would not have given a stranger a second glance, but there was something furtive and suspicious in the way that he moved which set Jim almost instantly upon the alert. A small red warning light flashed on the dashboard of his brain. In the light of future events, those of a mystical nature might incline to the belief that our old friend, the sixth sense was at work again. Those of a more cynical disposition might well suggest that it was nothing more than a cliched literary device aimed at holding the reader’s wandering attention. Whatever the case, Jim, recalling a night at the Flying Swan when he’d watched a drunk who claimed to be ex-SAS roll an ordinary newspaper into a sharpened point and, to Neville’s horror, drive it a full inch into the