Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

‘She was very beautiful,’ I said, rather sadly.

‘Yes, but she was going to kill you. And think about it, Tyler – did you hear what she had in mind for the nineteen-sixties? All that business of eschewing loud music, strong ales and strange drugs? A decade of the cockney work ethic?’

‘You do have a point,’ I agreed. ‘But without her, there’s no telling what might happen to the nineteen-sixties.’

‘It’s a risk we’ll have to take.’

‘Well,’ I said. And I looked down at the lovely figure once more. ‘I hope you haven’t done something, you know, cosmic, or something. Changed the course of history, or something.’

‘Hm,’ went Andy, ‘you might have a point there.’

And then the Zeitgeist gave a little moan.

‘She is not dead,’ I cried.

And Andy leaned down. And clocked her again. Repeatedly and hard.

And there was a sort of twinkling of fairy-dust and the Zeitgeist faded all away.

‘She is now,’ said Andy. And he replaced the clock upon the bedside table. ‘And without any evidence of a crime, who is to say that one was ever committed?’

I looked long and hard at Andy. For all his madness, he did at times display a great deal of wisdom. And this was one of those times.

‘My only regret-’ said Andy.

‘Oh,’ said I. ‘You have a regret?’

‘I do,’ said he, ‘and my only regret is this: that I never had the opportunity to employ my disguise, which, you will agree, is a blinder. But now no one will ever know that I had it on, because it was never employed.’

‘That is regrettable,’ I agreed. ‘Do you think we should go home now?’

‘Well,’ said Andy. And he made a thoughtful face. ‘My thoughts are of Lola.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘We must wake her up and tell her that we have solved the case.’

‘Those weren’t precisely my thoughts. My thoughts were of the killing-two-birds-with-one-stone persuasion.’

‘Go on,’ said I, intrigued.

‘Well, firstly, I do not think that Lola would really want to see her brother all turned to gold like that. That might really upset her.’

‘I don’t really think she liked her brother that much,’ I said. ‘I think she’ll be glad to see the back of him, so she can claim whatever family inheritance there is. I suspect that we were actually called in to prove that the brother was a fake so that she could have the real one declared either missing or dead.’

‘Very wise of you,’ said Andy. ‘These were my thoughts exactly. But I don’t think we need to bother her with this golden fellow. Which is where the other bird that we can kill with the single stone comes in. We have not been paid, and she pleads poverty. So why do we not just take away this frightful turned-to-gold brother? Then we can quietly have him melted down and cast into ingots that we will then sell on the gold market. I got the sense that he is now composed of very pure gold. So we get paid, and at no expense to Lola.’

‘You are wisdom personified,’ I said. ‘And altruism, also. Let’s get this fellow shifted.’

Pongo Perbright was not easily shifted. A man made of gold weighs a great deal more than a man made of flesh and blood. And neither of us were particularly keen to touch him with our bare hands in case there was still some alchemical magic lurking about that might just turn us into gold. So we wrapped him up in an eiderdown and dragged him.

It was a hassle bouncing him down the stairs, but once outside the house, amidst all the slush, it was relatively easy to slide him along the pavement.

But it was a long haul and we were both quite tired when we got home. So we left Pongo in the sitting room with the eidey over him and took ourselves to bed.

I had a good lie-in in the morning. I always like a good lie-in after a strenuous or exciting night. And I had earned this good lie-in and this good lie-in would probably have lasted until beyond lunchtime had my brother not rather rudely woken me up.

‘Up and at it!’ cried my brother loudly into my ear.

I did the, ‘What?’ and, ‘Who?’ and, ‘Why?’ and damn near wet myself.

‘We have to get a move on,’ said Andy, shaking me all about. ‘We have to get Pongo off to Hatton Garden to arrange for the melting down. I’ll borrow Captain Blood’s wheelbarrow, the one he uses for shifting contraband. But I need you to give me a hand with Pongo. We can take him on the Underground.’

I, now awake, said, ‘what?’ once more. And, ‘On the Underground? ’

‘I can’t afford a taxi – can you?’

No, I couldn’t afford a taxi.

‘Breakfast first, then,’ I said.

So we both went down for breakfast.

And when we got down for breakfast, there was our mother, all cross, with her pinafore on and her hands on her hips. ‘Which one of you beastly boys left the sitting-room windows open last night?’ she asked of us.

And Andy and I shook our heads.

‘Well, one of you did and until that one owns up, there will be no breakfast.’

I had encountered this logic before and so I owned up immediately. ‘It was me,’ I said, although it certainly was not.

‘Well, at least you are being honest now and so I will forgive you and you can have an extra sausage with your breakfast.’

Andy looked daggers at me. But that was his tough luck.

‘If you leave the window open, you let the cold in and the warm out. And although there’s nothing of value in the living room, apart from the Peerage brass companion set, there is an increase in crime nowadays, so we should all be vigilant.’

And at this I looked at my brother once more.

And he looked at me.

And as one, we both dashed into the sitting room.

The window was now closed. And a fire blazed in the grate. And the brass companion set, the one with the galleon in full sail upon it, was where it always was, right there in the hearth. And there was the visitors’ chair and there was the Persian pouffe.

But as to the golden statue that was Pongo Perbright? It was not to be seen. It was not there at all.

Andy groaned and I groaned with him. We had been robbed in the night. Someone, or someones, had forced open the sitting-room window and made away with our golden booty.

‘I don’t believe this,’ I said. And I fell to my knees, most dramatically. ‘This can’t be true. It’s so unfair. It can’t be true. It can’t.’

‘Calm yourself down,’ commanded Andy. ‘Are we not detectives? These burglars have chosen the wrong sitting room to break into.’

‘You think?’

And now Andy dropped to his knees also. And he began sniffing around. And then he pointed and said, ‘There and there and there and there.’

‘What’s there?’ I asked him.

‘Footprints,’ said Andy, ‘deep, heavy footprints driven into the green baize carpet. And they’re not our footprints, nor Dad’s, nor Mum’s – although they do bear some resemblance to hers.’

‘How?’

‘Because they are the imprints of women’s shoes, but too big, you see, and too heavily imprinted. They are the footprints of-’

‘Cross-dressing zombies?’ I asked him.

‘Got it in one,’ he replied.

And how unfair was that?

And how angry was I? And how determined to get our booty back? Very. Very. And very. Are the answers to those.

But I did have Andy. And Andy did have remarkable skills as a tracker-sniffer dog. And though he didn’t bother to don the suit, he took off like a greyhound.

And he sniffed his way to next door. Where we discovered Captain Blood’s shed broken into and his wheelbarrow gone. And then he sniffed from there to South Ealing Underground Station.

We made enquiries at the ticket booth and were told that yes, two huge women with a wheelbarrow bearing an enigmatic eiderdown-smothered load had passed through the barrier earlier. Their destination? This was unclear. They had purchased Red Rovers, the one-day travel passes of the day, which allowed folk to travel anywhere on the Underground.