Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

And I shook my head one more time. And then twice.

‘A Jewish coat,’ said Fangio, between great gales of gusto. ‘That’s a good’n, that is. Wait until I tell my wife. You don’t know a dame who might want to marry me, do you?’ And he laughed again.

‘I really don’t see what’s so funny,’ I said.

‘You Swiss,’ said Fangio, wiping big tears from his eyes. ‘You will be the death of me. And indeed of all of us,’ he added, ‘with your cuckoo clocks and chocolate and all that neutrality. How many borders do you have? No, don’t get me going on that.’ And he laughed a little more. Then stopped.

‘So what would you care to drink?’ he asked. The model of sobriety.

‘Well,’ I said, well flummoxed. ‘What would you recommend?’

‘Well,’ said the Fange. ‘Now you’re asking.’

‘Yes I am,’ I said. ‘I am.’

‘Which calls to mind a most illuminating and entertaining anecdote that was passed on to me the other day by one of those Jimbos who seem to be so popular in England nowadays. It concerns this fallen angel who is trying to get his car started and he-’

But Fangio didn’t get any further with the telling of his tale because the shatter-glass door now opened and in he walked. The one, the only, the man, the myth.

The Private Eye, Lazlo Woodbine.

It was he.

Applause.

He looked a little past his sell-by date.

But given the life he had led and the adventures he’d had, this was hardly surprising. But it was him, it definitely was.

There could be no mistaking those gimlet eyes, those chiselled cheekbones, the hammered hooter and that joineried jawline. And he wore the fedora and he wore the trench coat. And he looked like Lazlo Woodbine.

It was he.

‘Fange,’ said Lazlo Woodbine.

‘Laz,’ said Fangio.

‘A bottle of Bud and a hot pastrami on rye.’

‘A ploughman’s umbrella and a parsnip in a poetry.’

Lazlo looked at Fangio.

And Fange looked back at Laz.

And oh how they laughed.

Well, they did. Don’t ask me why, but they did. It was a talking the toot thing, I suppose. I had unconsciously engaged in it with Fangio a little earlier, but I did not as yet understand how it worked. The strict rules of the vernacular and the inflective. The subtleties of variant pronunciation. The coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.

Not to mention the connotive labels or the cross-referenced etymologies.

Which neither of them ever did.

‘So, would you care for a drink, sir?’ said Fangio to Laz.

‘A bottle of Bud?’ said Lazlo Woodbine, seating himself on a bar stool.

‘A bottle of Bud?’ And Fangio now took to the stroking of one of his many chins. ‘A bottle of Bud? I’ll get it in a minute, I’m sure. It rings a bell somewhere.’

‘You’re thinking of Quasimodo,’ said Lazlo Woodbine. ‘He rings a bell somewhere – Paris, I think.’

‘Paris?’ said Fangio, selecting another chin for a stroking. ‘Now don’t get me going on Paris.’

‘Still that trouble with bicycles?’

‘Bicycles?’ said Fangio. ‘It’s Amsterdam for bicycles and Paris for the Orient Express.’

‘You can catch the Orient Express in London,’ said Laz. ‘But then you can catch almost anything in London.’

‘I once caught a tiger by the tail,’ said Fangio, ‘but that was in India. And let’s face it, I’ve never even been to India.’

‘Don’t get me going on India,’ said Lazlo Woodbine. ‘Cambay, Chandrapur, Chikmagulur, Coonoor, Cuddalore, Cuttack-’

‘You sure know your Indian cities that begin with the letter C, buddy.’

‘Friend,’ said Lazlo Woodbine to Fangio, ‘in my business, knowing your Indian cities that begin with the letter C can mean the difference between a clean-cut curr in curlers at Crufts and dirty dogging in Dagenham. [20]If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.’

And Fangio knew what he meant.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, and two eye-pairings turned as one to view me.

‘Who’s the Swiss Anabaptist abortionist?’ asked Lazlo Woodbine.

‘Abortionist?’ I said.

‘Doctor of Death,’ said Fangio. ‘By any other name. I speak as I find and you won’t find me speaking of raffia.’

‘He abhors raffia,’ Lazlo Woodbine explained. ‘And also Koya matting.’

‘Any form of matting,’ said Fangio. ‘Raffia, coir, logo, anti-slip, fitted, Milliken Obex – a revolutionary matting system unequalled in performance – rustic, rush or rag-rug.’

‘Buddy, you sure know your matting,’ said Lazlo.

‘Friend,’ said Fangio the barman, ‘in this business, knowing your matting can mean the difference between an uncovered linoleum floor and one that has a mat on it.’

There was a moment’s pause. Outside the sun went behind a cloud and a dog howled in the distance.

‘It’s not quite as funny when you do it as when I do it, is it?’ asked Lazlo.

‘Abortionist?’ I said once more.

‘We did that one,’ said Fangio.

‘Yes, I’m sure you did. But I’m sorry – you’re talking the toot, aren’t you? The now legendary toot that Lazlo Woodbine and Fangio the barman always talk. Especially when Laz is on a case.’

‘The Swiss,’ said Lazlo Woodbine. ‘They’ll be the death of me. And indeed of us all, with their cuckoo clocks and chocolate bars and garden gnomes called Zurich.’

‘I did that bit,’ said Fange. ‘I mentioned Swiss neutrality, though.’

‘Don’t get me going on that.’ And Lazlo Woodbine doffed his fedora and wafted it round and about.

‘I’m really not Swiss,’ I told the both of them. ‘Really. Not.’

‘Ah,’ said Fange. And he tapped at his nose with a thumb like an unsliced pastrami. ‘You’re here undercover. I understand.’

‘And I’m not undercover. And I am certainly not an abortionist. And I’m not even sure what an Anabaptist is.’

‘Don’t get me going on that,’ said one or other of them, but I couldn’t tell which one.

‘It was me,’ said Fangio. ‘I have the deeper and more resonant voice. A natural baritone, I am.’

‘But not a natural blonde,’ said Lazlo Woodbine.

‘But I do have all my own teeth.’

‘I’ll bet you can’t open a beer bottle with them.’

‘Oh yes I can.’

‘Then a bottle of Bud, please, barman.’

And I applauded this.

And Fangio bowed and Lazlo Woodbine bowed. And Fangio brought Laz a bottle of Bud. ‘I was lying about the teeth,’ he said as he opened it with an opener.

‘So, young lady,’ said Lazlo Woodbine to me, ‘what is it that I can do for you? You are a long way from Switzerland, and your vast bank vaults of Nazi gold.’

‘And I’m not a young lady,’ I said. ‘You’re supposed to be a detective, aren’t you? Swiss? Anabaptist? Abortionist? Young lady?’

‘One at a time,’ said Fangio. ‘I only have one pair of hands. Form an orderly queue, if you will, Swiss boys to the rear.’

‘Do they?’ said Laz to Fange. ‘I thought that was an English thing. All those Jimbos and everything.’

I took to massaging my temples. I had never encountered the talking of the toot before, and frankly it was giving me a headache.

‘Freemason also,’ said Fangio to Lazlo as he passed him over his Bud. ‘They always do that thing with their temples. It’s called a Masonic temple, you know. But I can’t tell you more than that or they’ll cut my nipples off and post them through a vicar’s letterbox.’

‘They’re only being cruel to be kind,’ said Lazlo Woodbine, and he drew on his bottle of Bud.

‘And I am not a Freemason,’ said I.

And Lazlo Woodbine placed his bottle on the counter. ‘And now,’ said he, ‘we have established all the things that you are not. You are not a woman, neither are you Swiss, an Anabaptist, a Doctor of Death, a Freemason, nor, I believe, a dogger.’