Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

‘I am coming to recognise certain patterns,’ said the kid. ‘I suppose you’d like me to swarm up the wall and fetch down the club membership card from the pocket of the other stiff.’

‘You’re catching on fast, kid,’ I told him. Because charm never dates and time and tide wait for Norse men. ‘And give me those tissues before you do, so I can save what I can of this trench coat.’

Now, a bar is a bar is a bar, as an alley’s an alley’s an alley.

And Papa Crossbar’s Voodoo Pushbike Scullery was, though a club, a bar by any other name. And as I do bars as part of my four-location format, the kid and I presumably flashed the membership cards that we had availed ourselves of and now found ourselves inside.

I remembered this place when it had been The Pink Camel’s Foot, an all-night topiary joint where landscape gardeners who were down on their uppers would congregate, hoping to hook up with new clients, or just to shoot the breeze with fellow artistes and swap some landscaping yarns. Those were the days, I told myself. But thankfully they were over.

The décor was of that subtle persuasion that says so much while presenting so little. There had clearly been some degree of graveyard looting involved. You just can’t get hold of that many human skulls simply by asking around. And although most morgue attendants will pretty much let you have the run of the place for a couple of Bacardi and Cokes, they don’t like to part with the heads of their stiffs because too many questions get asked.

There was a lot of red velvet all around and about and young dames in high heels and sou’westers mingled with the clientele, giving weather-forecast updates and offering love for sale.

I spied the look of bafflement on the kid’s face. ‘Something troubling you, kid?’ I asked of him.

‘The weather girls,’ said my client. ‘What is their relevance here?’

‘Aha,’ I said in reply. ‘You’ve touched upon a salient detail. You will of course be aware that God takes no direct action in the affairs of Man. He is like Switzerland, neutral. Even when the most hideous atrocities are being committed, God will not intervene.’

The kid did noddings of an agreeable nature.

‘But He does intervene in the ways of Man in a subtle and sometimes not so subtle way. God has control of the weather. You will note that you cannot insure your property against earthquake or flood, because these things are referred to on the insurance forms as Acts of God. I got involved in a case involving a Mr Godalming once and I learned all about this stuff. God is in charge of the weather, and through the weather He controls the future of Mankind.’

‘And you know this?’

And I nodded. ‘And this is a voodoo bar, where practitioners of voodoo congregate. And if they wish to invoke a particular voodoo god to achieve a particular end, they are going to need regular meteorological updates so that they don’t mess around with God’s overall purpose. It is never good to contradict God, especially if you know what He has in mind. God doesn’t take kindly to that sort of behaviour. And although He remains out of human affairs, do you really think that the folk who get struck by lightning do so through sheer coincidence?’

The kid made a face of some surprise. ‘Are you telling me that it might be possible to divine the overall purpose of God by studying weather forecasts?’

‘It is a reasonable proposition.’

The kid did further shruggings. And then, it appeared, the barman caught his eye. The barman was a beery guy in typical barman’s duds. And but for his blacky-dyed head with the white skull painted upon it, you might have had him down as any other barman, in all of the bars, in all of the world, and so forth. And suchlike. And so on.

‘I recognise that barman,’ said the kid.

And I perused the barman and did, likewise, recognise him.

‘Fangio,’ I hailed the barman. And took myself up to the bar.

The kid followed, but he didn’t look keen.

‘What is your problem?’ I asked him.

‘Well,’ said the kid, ‘if Fangio’s here too, then you’re going to talk the toot again. And I was really hoping that you’d be getting on with the case, because I have to leave New York tomorrow to head off to Woodstock. Our New York gigs got cancelled and Woodstock is now the next on the list, and it would be really brilliant if you could solve the case today.’

‘Solve this case in a single day?’

‘You always solve the case in a single day.’

‘Kid, it might seem like I do, because that’s the way that Penrose writes it up. But cases do not get solved in a day. These things take time, but things are happening. Already we’ve had the dame that did me wrong do me wrong and me gun down two assassins in an alleyway. Although I admit that you missed that bit. So although I might appear to have been mostly talking the toot, things are moving along.’

‘So you won’t be talking the toot with Fangio.’

I tipped my fedora to the kid. ‘Only if it’s strictly necessary.’

‘And do you feel that there might be the vaguest chance that you might solve the case today?’

‘Kid,’ I told him. ‘Kid, I will solve the case today. Okay? Just because you are a Brit, and you’re in a hurry, I will solve this case today.’

And I felt certain that I would. Because I was Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye, and I had never failed to solve any case that I had taken on. And although this one had certain outré qualities about it, I felt absolutely sure that ultimately I would triumph. And I would ultimately triumph today. And that would be that would be that.

But I was wrong. So terribly wrong.

So terribly, fatally wrong.

There were a great many bicycles. But then of course there would have been, because this was a Voodoo Pushbike Scullery. There were bikes aplenty, hanging from the ceiling and mounted on the walls and modified to act as tables and chairs and lampstands and whatnots and suchlike.

And these were not all just standard sit-up-and-begs, not a bit of it. Here you had your drop-handlebarred aluminium-framed Claude Butler racers, your Louis Orblanc mountain bikes, your Mulberry drop-head traditionals-

Oh yes, in my career path, knowing your bicycles can mean the difference between knowing your bicycles and not knowing your bicycles. And there I paused and took stock. That wasn’t right, surely? There should be a little bit of witty double entendre stylish wordplay jobbie going on there. But oddly there didn’t seem to be, and this made me feel most uneasy. I looked all around and about at the weather girls and the clientele.

The weather girls looked sound enough. One of them was singing a song, and I caught the line ‘It’s raining men, Hallelujah’, so all was well with them. But as to the clientele, I viewed them with care.

They were not right at all. They had about them the look of uptown swells, bankers and traders and big city muck-a-mucks. But there was something out of kilter about these chaps.

And I paused once more. Did I just say chaps?

And I began to feel most uncomfortable. There was something altogether wrong. I knew who I was – I was Lazlo Woodbine, the Private Eye and very likely the last in my line. There wouldn’t be any more like me. The fedora and trench coat were, unbelievably, going out of style and a new breed of private dick appeared to be on the cards. No one had really noticed when the world of Sherlock Holmes was no longer the world of Sherlock Holmes. And perhaps no one would notice the passing of the world of Lazlo Woodbine.

In fact, perhaps that world had already passed and I was now nothing more than a cliché and an anachronism. Something that had become a parody of itself. Something, God forbid, to be sniggered at.