Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

‘This is a very bad business,’ he said as I entered the room, which felt somewhat colder than usual. ‘All of the equipment, all of it. This is appalling.’

And I agreed that it was.

‘Well, come on, then,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘Get your clothes on and I will take you down to the police station. You can make a full report and get a “crime number” so that you can claim on your insurance.’

‘Ah,’ I said. And, ‘That.’ And I think I said, ‘Really?’ also.

‘Step to it,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘These things take time and the legitimate gig that I have arranged for you is next week.’

‘Ah,’ I said, once again. And I do believe that I might have said, ‘Now there’s a thing,’ as well.

But I stood and I dithered and I think that must have been what gave the game away.

‘You do have the equipment insured, don’t you?’ asked Mr Ishmael. ‘The equipment is legitimate? You did pay for that equipment, didn’t you?’

And I don’t think I made any reply at all to this. Although I might well have done some mumbling, and I’m reasonably certain that I scuffed my naked heels upon the green baize carpet.

‘Calamity!’ cried Mr Ishmael. ‘Ruination!’ And he began to thrash about with his black Malacca cane, the one with the penis-and-balls handle. And he swept the mantel clock from the mantel shelf and overturned the Peerage fireplace companion set, the one that was made out of brass and resembled a galleon in full sail.

‘Disaster!’ he cried, and he kicked over the visitors’ chair.

And all this shouting and knocking about of things attracted the attention of my mother, who was turning parsnips gently in a bucket by the stove.

‘Whatever is going on?’ she shrieked, entering our sitting room with the parsnip-turner raised above her hair-netted head. It was a big parsnip-turner, made of brass and of the Peerage persuasion, with a handle that was fashioned into the likeness of an Indian chief.

Mr Ishmael glared at my mother. He fairly glared, I can tell you. And my mother turned tail and fled back to her turning of the parsnips (well, Christmas was coming, and a well-turned parsnip is better than a badly shuffled sprout [9]).

‘Well,’ said Mr Ishmael to me, ‘what do you intend to do about this aggrievous situation?’

‘I think I might go and assist my mother,’ I suggested. ‘And whilst doing so, give the matter some most intense thought.’

‘Oh you do now, do you?’ And Mr Ishmael rocked upon his heels and, although it must surely have been some trick of the winter light, it looked for all the world as if little sulphurous wisps of smoke issued from his ears.

‘I will get the equipment back,’ I said. ‘I really will, I promise.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Ishmael, lowering his cane and placing both hands upon its handle. ‘You have formulated a plan. Most enterprising. Share this plan with me this minute and I will see whether it needs any necessary adjustments.’

‘I have no plan, as such,’ I said and I made a sulky face. ‘But I will get our stuff back. I really, truly will.’

Mr Ishmael leaned his cane against the fireplace. He picked up the larger pieces of the clock and returned them to the mantel shelf, and he righted the Peerage fireplace companion set that was fashioned from brass and resembled a galleon in full sail. And he returned the visitors’ chair to its legs and sat himself down on it.

And then he sighed. And it was a real deep heartfelt belter of a sigh.

‘I should have been expecting this,’ he said. ‘I got careless.’

I shook my head and I shrugged a little, too.

‘I thought I had it all sussed out this time, picking a bunch of complete no-marks. It all seemed so simple. But that was because it was simple. Too simple.’

I sat down on the Persian pouffe, which had, at least, avoided attack. ‘Pardon me, sir,’ I said, ‘But I do not believe that I know what you are talking about.’

‘Well, of course you do not. The beauty of this was that had it all worked out, you and your companions would have prospered and probably never ever have needed to know what it was all about.’

Which left me none the wiser, I can tell you.

‘I will just have to start all over again,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘In another country. Probably the Holy Land. I should have set this up there in the first place. There is no other way for it.’

‘Now, hold on,’ I said. ‘Are you saying that you aren’t going to manage us any more?’

‘What is there to manage?’

‘Oh no, hold on, please.’

‘I must go,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘I have wasted far too much time on this already.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Stop. You promised to make us rich and famous. And we signed your contract. In blood! And at midnight, and down at the crossroads. And I know what that means.’

‘No you don’t,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘You have no idea what it means. And now you will never know.’

‘But I must,’ I said. And I was getting frantic. Clearly something was going on, something big. And for a moment, and unconsciously, we Sumerian Kynges had been part of this something. But now we were about to be discarded. Cast down from being part of this something. And it was all, it appeared, my fault.

‘No!’ I said. And I said it very loudly. ‘You can’t just leave us. I will get things sorted, I really really promise. I’ve been out of work since I left school, you see, because I couldn’t make up my mind about what job I wanted. And I did think that as I was going to get rich as a musician that I didn’t really need a proper job. But now I know, I do know. I will become a private investigator. And my first case will be to recover The Sumerian Kynges’ stolen equipment.’

Mr Ishmael groaned at this. It was a groan combined with a sigh and it was not a pleasant thing to listen to. Plaintive, it was. Heartfelt.

‘Don’t doubt me,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever doubt me.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘Assertiveness. This is somewhat unexpected. ’

‘Tell me what all this is about,’ I said.

Mr Ishmael shook his head. ‘I cannot.’

‘But perhaps I could help. In fact, I will definitely help. I promise that I will.’

‘You are making a lot of promises.’

‘Because I care,’ I said. ‘Because this matters to me. I want the band to be a success. I accept that this mess is of my making. I’m taking the blame and I will make amends. And I promise that, too.’

And Mr Ishmael smiled. Which I found quite a relief.

‘You are a good boy,’ said Mr Ishmael. As indeed my mother had said upon many occasions past. ‘And I will tell you what – I will make a personal deal with you.’

‘Not more blood on the contract,’ I said.

‘No.’ And now Mr Ishmael laughed. ‘I will do this deal with you: if you can locate the stolen goods – you only have to locate them, that is all, and tell me where they are, and I will recover them – but if you can locate them successfully, then I will tell you everything. It will rock your world, as they say. And you might well wish that you had never been told.

‘But I have faith in you, Tyler. Yes, I do. And so if you locate the equipment, you will have proved yourself to me, and in return I will divulge a mighty secret. The mighty secret, regarding Mankind, its history and its future. And the part you can play in moulding this future.’

And with that said, he rose from the visitors’ chair with consummate dignity, extended his right hand for me to shake, which I did, gave me a card with his telephone number on it and then took his leave of our house.

And the pieces of the mantel clock that had been returned to the mantel shelf managed a rather faltering tick-tock-tick, and I took to wondering just what I was getting myself into.