Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

‘I want you to find my brother Keith, Mr Woodbine. If anyone can find him, you can.’

‘This is true,’ I said to Elvis. ‘So when did he escape?’

‘About twenty years ago.’

‘Twenty years? Haven’t you waited rather a long time to report him missing?’

‘I guess so, sir. But I guess I thought, like my daddy and my mummy thought, too, that he was dead. We thought that the Ministry of Serendipity men had changed their minds, taken him away and killed him. But he ain’t, sir. He ain’t dead.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked Elvis. ‘How do you know he isn’t dead?’

‘Because I saw a picture of him in the newspaper. He’s still alive.’

‘Let me get this clear,’ I said. ‘You recently saw his picture in the newspaper? Did it tell you where he was?’

‘Yes, sir, I have the address.’

‘Then he’s not really all that lost, is he? Why do you want me to find him if you already know where he is?’

‘Mr Woodbine, sir, this is my brother, Keith. He is at large in the world. He is the most evil man who ever lived, capable of channelling all the powers of Evil through him. He is the Homunculus.’

‘Yes, I see,’ I said.

‘I don’t think you do, sir,’ said Elvis. ‘I don’t want you just to find him.’

‘You don’t?’ I asked.

‘I don’t,’ said Elvis. ‘I want you to kill him.’

Now, to be honest, I was having some problems with this.

And I now felt suddenly sober.

It might well have been that I had drunk myself sober. I had heard of such a thing happening, but never actually experienced it myself. I always fell asleep. But I was definitely feeling rather sober now and it was probably down to all that the King of rock ’n’ roll had just told me.

And how I was having some problems with it.

With quite a lot of it, actually.

Such as, well, that was an awful lot of deeply personal secret stuff that Elvis had just spilled out, to a complete stranger. Even if he did believe that the complete stranger was Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye.

And there was a rather big gaping hole in the timeline going on here.

If Elvis was born in nineteen forty-five rather than nineteen thirty-five, as I had otherwise been led to believe, then he would only have been nine years old when he went into Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios to record ‘That’s All Right (Mama)’. And that didn’t seem all that likely.

And then there was the matter of him seeing a picture of his brother, Keith, in a newspaper. Surely this would be his twin brother. So whatever Keith was pictured doing, folk would have thought it was Elvis doing it. Which might well have had Colonel Tom Parker asking questions. These and other problems I was finding with this.

Ah, yes, and one in particular.

And this being that I was Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye.

And not Lazlo Woodbine, Assassin.

‘Are you okay, sir?’ asked Elvis. ‘You look kinda strange. Do you want that I should sing a song or something? I always do that in my movies when folk get that strange look on their faces.’

I stared hard at Elvis and said, ‘Do you know any Sumerian Kynges songs?’

And he might very well have said to me, ‘Why yes, sir, they’re my favourite band.’ But happily he didn’t. Instead he just shook his head, showering me with a fine film of olive essence. ‘There’s only one King,’ said Elvis. ‘And that one and only King is me.’

‘God bless you, Elvis Presley,’ said I.

‘Well, thank you very much, sir,’ said he.

‘And so then,’ I now said, ‘I do have many questions that I need to ask you, because things do not tie up as neatly as they might. But I do have to say to you that I am not an assassin.’

‘But the villain always dies, sir,’ said Elvis. ‘At the end of every one of your cases. In the final rooftop confrontation. They take the big, long fall to ultimate oblivion. They always do. And that’s why I came to you. Most other detectives bring the criminal to justice by taking him to stand trial. But the criminal always dies when you take on the case.’

‘Ah,’ I said. And, ‘I see.’

‘You do, sir, yes.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Right.’

‘I have the newspaper-cutting here, sir,’ said Elvis, ‘so you can recognise my brother, Keith.’

‘I think I’d know him if I saw him,’ I told Elvis.

‘How, sir?’ he asked me. ‘Cos you ain’t ever met him.’

‘Right,’ I said once more. But nevertheless Elvis pulled from the pocket of his jumpsuit (because he was wearing a jumpsuit – white, rhinestoned, big-golden-belted, bell-bottomed-trousered) a rather crumpled-up newspaper-cutting. And he flattened out the creases in this with his hands and patted it down on the bar top.

And I viewed the photograph before me.

And then I fell back in surprise.

Although, fair doos, it should not really have been a surprise, should it? Because I am sure, fair reader, that you knew who that picture was of.

A rather stumpy-looking fellow, who resembled an amalgamation of Dickens’ Mr Pickwick, a shaven-headed Shirley Temple and bad old buck-toothed Caligula of Rome.

Papa Crossbar. That’s right.

“‘Keith Crossbar”,’ I read aloud from the text beneath the photograph. ‘ “New York entrepreneur night-club owner to open brand-new venue – Papa Crossbar’s Voodoo Pushbike Scullery Two. ‘It is a dream come true for me,’ said the colourful man about town, ‘combining my favourite hobbies – clubbing, cycling, cooking and the Black Arts-’ ” ’ And there was more, but I didn’t bother to read it.

And I weighed up the pros and the cons of the matter. It was Papa Crossbar who had dispatched Lazlo Woodbine into the great beyond. And it was Papa Crossbar who was threatening to dispatch everyone on Earth into the great beyond. So killing Papa Crossbar would be at the top of the list of anyone’s priorities really. It was right there at the top of mine.

But, and this was a big but, I didn’t really want to kill anyone. And I was determined to stick with the Tyler Technique. Because the Tyler Technique would keep me out of danger.

But – and the ideas were now spinning around inside my sober head – but perhaps I could call upon the services of my brother Andy to do the actual assassination. He had dispatched the Zeitgeist without so much as a second thought, so he might well go for it. And he wouldn’t need to take a share of the very large fee I intended to extract from Elvis. He’d probably do it just for the buzz and for a chance to wear the real Lazlo Woodbine’s trench coat. Yes, the ideas were certainly spinning around, so I ordered further drinks and Fangio, who had remained throughout my conversation with Elvis, stumped off to prepare them.

‘All right,’ I said to Elvis. ‘I will take on your case. But as you are well aware, your brother Keith is a very powerful being. I have already met him and it will be no easy matter to catch him unawares and assassinate him-’ (I couldn’t really believe I was actually saying such things and saying such things to Elvis. But as I was, I continued) ‘-so it will be a very expensive case and I will need some money up front.’

And Elvis now produced an envelope from another jumpsuit pocket.

And he handed me this envelope, and I, in turn, tore it open.

And lo, there was a cheque for ten thousand dollars.

And lo, this cheque found favour in my eyes and brought joy unto my heart. And I was thankful, withal. Blessings unto thee, oh Elvis Presley.

‘Many thanks,’ I said. ‘That’s the first couple of days covered, then.’

Elvis rubbed his hands together. ‘Thank you, sir,’ said he. ‘Shall we head for the alleyway now? Or do you want to wait around for the dame-that-does-you-wrong to come in here and bop you on the head?’