The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag (7 page)

‘They?’

‘They,
them. The powers that be.’

‘Always
the same old
they,’
I said. ‘Been having trouble with them myself.’

‘I
uncovered this terrible secret,’ said Dan. ‘You see, every man, woman and child
in the entire world has an invisible alien sitting on their shoulders
manipulating their thoughts.’

‘Bummer.’

‘Yes,
isn’t it? And no-one will believe me. Because the aliens manipulate their
thoughts and tell them not to.’

‘Tricky
situation.’

‘And I
know about the Jesus conspiracy.’

‘Is
that like the JFK conspiracy?’

‘Only
in that it’s a conspiracy.’

‘So it’s
not like Jesus wasn’t really crucified, he was shot with an arrow from the
grassy knoll, or anything like that?’

‘No, it’s
about the second coming.’

‘Oh
yeah? What, you know the date or something?’

‘July
the twenty-seventh.’

‘This
year?’

‘No,
not this year, don’t be stupid.’

‘Sorry.’

‘July
the twenty-seventh, nineteen sixty-seven.’

‘How
about a stroll around the exercise yard, chief?’

‘In a
minute, Barry, I don’t want to miss this one.’

‘Barry?’
said Dan.

‘Never
mind about Barry. July the twenty-seventh, nineteen sixty-seven, you say? I
wonder how that slipped by me.’

‘Perhaps
you were doing the Hippy Trail, or at Woodstock, or reading a Johnny Quinn
novel, or something.’

‘That
must have been it.’

‘Of
course it wasn’t it.’ Dan banged his spoon on the table. ‘It was never in the
newspapers. It’s a conspiracy. Didn’t you ever wonder about the Summer of Love?
Why nineteen sixty-seven was different from any other year? It’s because it was
the year Jesus was reborn. He was reborn in San Francisco. The CIA knew it was
going to happen, they had copies of the missing pages from the Bible that were
suppressed by the Pope prior to the English translation being done for King
James. The date of the second coming was in there. The CIA took Jesus into protective
custody, he’s being brought up on a farm in Wisconsin. He was born in nineteen
sixty-seven, so he will be thirty-three, his age at his former death, when the
millennium comes around.’

‘Something
for us all to look forward to there, then.’

‘Twat,’
said Dan.

‘And I
thought we were getting along so well.’

‘Take
the piss if you want. But when Jesus comes down in glory from the clouds, in a
helicopter would be my guess, you and all the other unbelievers are going to look
pretty silly.’

‘Don’t
get me wrong,’ I said. ‘I’m no unbeliever. But let me put this to you. The
Bible Belt of America called the Summer of Love an abomination unto the Lord.
They said that all free love was the Devil’s doing. You don’t suppose your CIA
friends have got the wrong fellow by any chance? Perhaps it isn’t Jesus at all.
Perhaps it’s the Anti-Christ.’

Dan had
a bit of a think ‘Let me get back to you on that,’ he said. ‘So, do you want to
tell me what you’re
really
in here for?’

‘Propagation
of conspiracy theory, same as you. This is the Conspiracy Theorists’
Correctional Facility, isn’t it? We’re all in here for the same reason: “Oral
dissemination of rumour and hearsay, liable to elicit independent thought and
cause a breach of the status quo” — Clause 23 of the new Suppression of
Misinformation Act. I’m a tall-storyteller by profession. All I was doing was
plying my trade, chatting to a bloke in a bar. Trouble was, the bloke in the
bar turned out to be an off-duty clerk from the Ministry of Serendipity. Six o’clock
the next morning, bang goes my front door, in storm the men in grey, and I’m
dragged off here for a spell of corrective therapy.’

‘And
are the tablets helping?’

‘Tablets
always help. That’s what tablets are for, isn’t it?’

‘Have
you thought about planning an escape?’

‘Novel
idea.’

‘Oh,
are you writing a novel?’

‘Certainly
not! How dare you!’

‘Sorry.
But I’m planning to escape.’ Dan drew me closer, but I wasn’t keen. Not with
the BO and the bad breath and everything. ‘I’m building wings,’ whispered Dan. ‘From
pillow feathers. I’m going to fly out of here.’

‘Well,
give my regards to Jesus when you see him.’ I rose to take some exercise in the
yard.

‘Or I
might just go out through the tunnel tonight with everyone else.’

I sat
back down again. What did you say?’ I asked.

‘Chief,’ said Barry, as I
jogged around the exercise yard. ‘Chief, I really don’t think you should put
too much faith in young Danny boy.’

‘Oh
really, Barry, and why not?’

‘Because
he’s two eggs short of an omelette, chief. He’s cooking without the gas on.’

‘He
said the tablets were helping.’

‘Tablets
always help, chief. But he’s still a wacko. You can’t trust him. It will end in
tears.’

‘No it
won’t, Barry. Because I have no intention of following Dan down any tunnel.’

You don’t,
chief?’

‘I don’t,
Barry. But the idea set me thinking. I’ve been going about all this in entirely
the wrong way. Tunnels and feathered wings and squeezing through bars. Those
are all
obvious
ways of escaping. What I should be doing is applying
Rune’s Law of Obviosity. I should be thinking of the least most obvious way of
getting out of here.’

‘Shouldn’t
that be the least most obvious, least most obvious way, chief, because the
least
most obvious way would be the most obvious way to choose, which would make it
the
most
obvious way and—’

‘Shut
up, Barry.’

‘Sorry,
chief.’

‘The
least most obvious way of escaping would be simply to walk out of here in broad
daylight.’

‘I do
foresee a problem or two there, chief.’

‘Good.’

‘Good,
chief?’

‘Good,
Barry. Because the more problems there are, the more impossible the task
becomes. And the more impossible it becomes, the more it proves itself to be
the least most obvious way of getting out.’

‘It’s
all so simple, once you explain it, chief.’

‘Isn’t
it always?’

I walked back to my room.
This I considered a very good start, as normally I would have been marched back
to my room. But male nurse Cecil was busily engaged striking Dan with a
truncheon and shouting something about a tunnel. So he didn’t notice me as I
strolled past.

I
packed my suitcase, put on my street clothes, and stepped from my room into the
corridor. An orderly wandered by, tripped, fell, struggled to his feet and
continued his wanderings. I picked up the keys he’d dropped and unlocked the
door that divided the Conspiracy Theorists’ Correctional Facility from the rest
of the hospital beyond.

Here I
met a nurse who mistook me for a visitor. ‘Would you like me to call you a cab?’
she asked. ‘Yes, please,’ I told her.

‘Well I’m
not going to, because it’s a really crap old joke.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘But I’ll
give you a lift if you want. I’m just going off my shift.’

I
looked the nurse up and down. She was a very pretty nurse. Gorgeous blond hair,
really sexy brown eyes, fabulous mouth, marvellous tits— ‘Do you mind?’ asked
the nurse.

‘Sorry,’
I said. ‘I was just thinking out loud.’

‘You
want to watch that, they’ll put you in the nut house.’

‘Ha ha ha,’
I went.

‘So do
you want a lift or not?’

‘I do,
yes please.’

I
followed the nurse to her car. It was one of those new solar-powered electric
jobbies. Very smart, very high-tech. I drive a 1958 Cadillac Eldorado myself,
electric blue, big tail fins, the whole caboodle. It’s an image thing, I don’t
want to dwell on it.

I sat
down next to the nurse.

‘So,’
she said, ‘where do you want to go?’

I gave this
some thought. The most obvious place would be my office. But when Cecil and co
found I was missing, that would be the most obvious place they’d choose to come
looking. So where would be the least most obvious place for me to go? I had to
get back on my case. Track down that voodoo handbag. Save the world the way
only I could save it. But not in the most obvious way. Obviously.

Why don’t
you come back to my place?’ asked the nurse.

‘An
obvious choice,’ said I.

‘But I’ll
have to ask you a favour,’ she said.

‘Go
ahead,’ said I.

‘I need
some help moving a bit of junk out of my attic. Would you object to giving me a
hand?’

‘I
certainly wouldn’t. What kind of junk do you have in mind?’

‘Just
junk,’ she said. ‘Stuff that belonged to my aunt. Old clothes, pictures,
umbrellas, a voodoo handbag—’

I smiled a lot as she
drove me back to her place. And I blessed the name of Hugo Rune. When we got to
her place I was pleased by the way it looked. A big place it was, a mansion, no
less. Georgian, very up-market. Hardly the most obvious place you’d expect to
find a nurse living.

Splendid.

She
drove up the sweeping gravel drive and parked in the double garage next to the
Rolls Royce.

‘Come
on,’ she said, and I followed her across to the big front door. It was open.

‘That’s
odd,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I locked it when I came out.’

‘Leave
this to me, lady,’ I told her. ‘I’m a professional.’

Now you
probably didn’t notice that, but I slipped the word
lady
in there. ‘Leave
it to me,
lady,’
I said, rather than just ‘Leave it to me.’ I might have
said, ‘Leave it to me,
sweetheart,’
or ‘Leave it to me,
luv,’
but
I didn’t, I said, ‘Leave it to me,
lady.’
And the reason I did this was
because I was moving into genre. A most specific genre, that of the American
Private Eye circa 1958 (same year as my Cadillac Eldorado and no coincidence).

Back in
those days your American Private Eye was a hard-nosed, lantern-jawed, snap-brim-fedora’d,
belted-up-trench-coated, Bourbon-swilling, fag-smoking, lone-walking,
pistol-toting, mean-fighting, smart-talking, broad-humping, tricky-case-solving
son-of-a-gun.

And
none more so than Lazlo Woodbine.

Woodbine,
described by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as ‘the detective’s detective’, was the
creation of the English writer P. P. Penrose. Woodbine was the classic 1950s
American Private Eye. He worked just the four locations: his office where
clients came, a bar where he talked a load of old toot, an alleyway where he
got involved in sticky situations, and a rooftop, where he had his final
confrontation with the villain. And he always ended the very first chapter by
being struck on the head from behind and tumbling down into a deep dark
whirling pit of oblivion. In one hundred and fifty-eight thrilling adventures,
Woodbine never deviated from this award-winning format.

Woodbine
was
the man.

He wasn’t
cheap, but he was thorough and he got the job done. With Woodbine you could
expect a lot of gratuitous sex and violence, a trail of corpses, and a final
rooftop showdown. No spin offs, no loose ends, and all strictly in the first
person. And the literary style, the language, the description, the nuances, the
running gags. Magical stuff.

And I
had him off to a T.

So let’s
take it from ‘Leave it to me, lady’. You’ll soon get the picture.

‘Leave
it to me, lady,’ I said. ‘I’m a professional.’ The dame took a step to one side
and I cast my steely gaze over the door lock. It was a
Dovestone Wilberforce
triple-lever mortice deadlock Five rotational tumblers, multi-facet
optional reverse-action interior facility. I knew this lock, every good
detective did. In this game, knowing your locks can mean the difference between
cutting a dash and splitting the beaver. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure
that you do.

‘Does
anyone else have a key to this door?’ I asked.

She
copped me a glance like she was polishing fish knives and shook her beautiful
bonce.

‘Then
you’d better let me take a look inside. Wait here.’

I put
my foot to the door and kicked it fully open. Then I leapt into the hall,
rolled over a couple of times, and prepared to come up firing.

And then I was struck on
the head from behind, and found myself tumbling down into a deep dark whirling
pit of oblivion.

So I’d got off to a pretty
good start.