Necrophenia (22 page)

Exactly eighty-five dollars! How handy was that?

It was indeed a happy coincidence and with its coming I recalled once more that the barman was supposed to be paying for my drinks, and so I let him buy me a few more doubles before I made my way back to 27th Street.

Now, I suppose you might say that I was a wee bit tiddly by the time I got to the famous office where the famous detective had met with his clients before heading off to his other three locations in order to solve his cases. Well, perhaps a tad tiddly, rather than just a wee bit. But I was able to tap on the door without putting my hand through the glass and string sufficient words into sufficient sentences to make myself understood.

The man from American Heritage was very nice. He was just going home when I arrived, but he looked quite pleased to see me. He said that if I hadn’t arrived, then he was preparing to give the whole thing up as a lost cause, auction off the contents of Mr Woodbine’s office and let the building be demolished to make way for a proposed detective-themed shopping mall.

‘I’m sure the developer will be very pleased when I tell them that someone has agreed to take over Mr Woodbine’s business,’ he said, ‘because it will save them all the trouble of building that brand-new mall.’

I agreed that it was a possibility and asked where I had to sign.

There wasn’t much in the way of paperwork involved. And I was certainly never asked any probing or personal questions. It was just ‘sign your name on this here dotted line and hand over your eighty-five dollars’. And that was that. And he shook my hand, gave me an official deed to the office and a licence (another licence! But this time one that would work in my favour). Handed me a set of keys, told me that the water cooler needed refilling and that if I wished to make a complaint to City Hall regarding the solo saxophonist, whose dreamy rhythms drifted even now through the window, then I would have to do so in writing.

Then shook my hand once more and took his leave.

Chuckling.

Yes, that is what I said, chuckling. Why chuckling? Well, I have absolutely no idea at all. But that’s what he did. Perhaps it was just relief at finally getting the perfect tenant to take over from Laz. Who can say? Not me.

He shut the door behind him and I was left alone. And as it was now getting dark, I switched on the light. And then recalled that the man from American Heritage had also mentioned something about the electricity having been switched off. Although I hadn’t really been listening carefully to that bit. So I upped the venetian blind and let what light there was enter the office. It was rather a cool light, really, being composed of a street lamp on the alleyway corner and the flashing neon of a night club called The Engine Room. I sat down in Lazlo’s chair – Lazlo’s chair that was now my chair – and put my feet up on the desk that had also been Lazlo’s but was now my desk.

And I smiled considerably.

The office wasn’t quite how I remembered it. It had been tidied up a bit. And repainted in a colour that I did not know the name of. And the carpet that dared not speak its name had been replaced by one whose name I wouldn’t have listened to even if it had dared to speak it. So it wasn’t quite Lazlo Woodbine’s office. But it was his office. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do. And I thought to myself, as one might think-

HOW COOL IS THIS?

I was now, to all intents and purposes and things of that nature generally, Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye.

HOW COOL WAS THAT? Well cool.

Although, all right, there were certain things that weren’t all that cool.

The years that were missing out of my life.

The entire horrible Papa Crossbar business.

The fact that I had missed out on fame and fortune with The Sumerian Kynges and hadn’t even got a songwriting credit on the Greatest Hits album.

And that it was I who was, let us say, indirectly responsible for Lazlo Woodbine vanishing into the ether.

I have not, perhaps, printed this list in order of priority. But these things were not cool.

But having this office was.

And so I smiled, somewhat contentedly, which is not to say also smugly, and thought that what I should do now would be to go somewhere and celebrate my good fortune. Back to the Pentecost Hotel, might it be, to take advantage of the barman? No, it was a long walk back. Across the street to Fangio’s Bar, then?

That was a better idea.

The light was now uncertain in the office and I stumbled about a bit, bumping into some things and knocking other things over. But during this stumbling I did come across three things that very much took my interest: a fedora and a trench coat and a trusty Smith & Wesson. Lazlo Woodbine’s spares, I supposed. So I took off my coat and togged up, and tucked the trusty Smith & Wesson into an inside trench-coat pocket. The fedora fitted and I knew I looked cool.

And then I left my office. Locking my door behind me.

And I crossed the street to Fangio’s Bar and pushed open that famous shatter-glass door. And Fangio’s Bar had not changed at all. It was the same woe-begotten dump of a dive, and this I found a comfort. I mooched in with a grin on my chops and hailed the fat-boy barman.

Because there he stood, as large as Life, but slightly less glossy than Vogue. He wore the look of a man who knew just where he was. And also an eyepatch and cutlass.

‘Hello there,’ I said to the fat-boy. ‘And so we meet again.’

‘Arrr, aharr harr,’ went Fangio and he rolled his visible eye.

As I was already somewhat in my cups, I felt I was up to the challenge.

‘Old war wound, is it?’ I asked, approaching the bar counter and hoisting myself onto the bar stool that had formally been Lazlo Woodbine’s favourite and would now be mine. ‘Or is it medieval mouth-music from the mountains of Mongolia?’

‘Well, swab me decks,’ said Fangio. ‘ ’Tis you, so ’tis, so ’tis.’

‘Give me just one clue,’ I asked, ‘and then I can join you in this.’

Fangio sighed and did thumbings. To a sign above the bar:

FANGIO’ S BAR WELCOMES PIRATES (It read)

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I see. Pirates.’

‘You see pirates?’ asked Fangio, lifting his eyepatch. ‘Where?’

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘What I said was, I see, full stop, pirates.’

‘Right,’ said Fangio. ‘So what will it be, Laz – a tot of rum, a parrot or a flog-around-the-fleet? The last one is a cocktail, before you ask.’

‘I wasn’t going to. But why are you calling me Laz?’

‘The guy from American Heritage drinks in here every day and just popped in for a quick bottle of champagne to celebrate the fact that some sucker, I mean, some plucky son of a gun, had purchased the franchise. And you’re wearing Laz’s spare clothes, so it must be you.’

I was impressed by Fangio’s reasoning. But had he just said sucker? I glared pointy daggers at him.

‘Of course, I was thinking of buying it myself,’ Fangio continued, ‘But I couldn’t afford the inflated price. Oh damn.’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Inflated price?’ I said. ‘Franchise,’ I said, also.

‘I read in this month’s copy of Detective Franchises Today magazine that P. P. Penrose was selling franchises worldwide now,’ said Fangio. ‘He started out with one in Brentford, England, and due to its success he started selling them all over the world.’

‘But I bought the office of the real Lazlo Woodbine,’ I said.

‘Which makes you the real Lazlo Woodbine now. Doesn’t it, Laz?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘I can pretend to be. And to be honest I did pretend to be, for a while, in England. But neither I, nor anyone else, can ever be the real Lazlo Woodbine. There can only ever be one Lazlo Woodbine.’

‘And so what do you think ever became of the one Lazlo Woodbine? ’ asked Fangio.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Ah.’

‘No,’ said Fangio, ‘it’s “arrr, harr-harr”. The way that Robert Newton did it in the television series of Treasure Island. Newton is the Long John Silver against which all future Long John Silvers must be measured. Measured and found to fall short, in my opinion. Arr-harr. Harr.’

‘Quite so,’ I said. ‘But there will never be another Lazlo Woodbine. ’

‘So what did become of him?’ asked Fangio.

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

‘Do you want a couple of pieces of eight with that?’

‘No,’ said I. ‘Nor a sunken galleon.’

‘Don’t go refusing my cocktails before you’ve tried them,’ said Fangio. And he actually went off to fetch my bottle of Bud. So things had changed just a little hereabouts.

Fangio returned with a Bosun’s Whistle. A cocktail of his very own formulation, he assured me. So perhaps things hadn’t changed after all.

He did not discuss the matter of immediate payment, so, out of politeness, nor did I. I sipped at my Bosun’s Whistle and picked a bit of seaweed from between my teeth.

‘I’ll bet you can’t identify all the different ingredients in that cocktail, ’ said Fangio.

‘I’ll bet you’d be correct on that,’ I said.

‘How much do you bet?’ Fangio asked.

‘That you are correct and that I cannot identify the ingredients?’

‘Precisely. How much?’

‘Ten dollars?’ I said.

‘You pussy. Arr-harr-harr-harr.’

‘One hundred dollars?’ I suggested.

‘That’s more like it. Shake.’ And Fangio extended a hand across the bar counter. ‘Sucker,’ said Fangio. And chuckling away, as had the man from American Heritage, he stumped off along behind the bar counter upon his newly fitted wooden leg.

Leaving me to ponder one of life’s eternal questions.

Why had I not pressed him further to explain about the pirates?

I viewed the clientele of Fangio’s Bar. None of them were dressed as pirates. Although I did notice two fellows and a lady sporting wooden legs. But that was not necessarily an indication of piratical leanings. Most who know anything about New York in the nineteen-seventies will know that there was a brief fashion for bums. Bums being the American word for tramps. Fanny, apparently, being the American word for bum. The famous bums’ bible, The Autobiography of a Supertramp, which was written in the nineteen-twenties, had been reprinted, and along with Jack Kerouac’s On the Road had become the thing to read. And in the final chapter of Supertramp, the author, who is riding-the-rods on an American train, falls off and loses a leg and this caught the reading public’s imagination. And many folk went out and had a single leg amputated. Weird, eh? Of course, that kind of thing would not happen today, because the readers of autobiographies are far too sophisticated. And intelligent. And beautiful. And sexy. And-

‘Life, eh?’ said Fangio who, having served others, had now returned unto me. ‘You can’t live with it, but you can’t live without it. Or is that women I’m thinking about?’

‘Probably women,’ I said. ‘I think a lot about women. But I never seem to have sex with any of them.’

‘Perhaps you’re gay,’ said Fangio.

‘How dare you,’ I said.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Fangio.

‘Quite so.’

‘I should have said perhaps you’re gay. Ah-harr-harr-harr.’

‘I should think so too.’ And I sipped at my Bosun’s Whistle.

‘Getting anywhere near a solution regarding its ingredients? Ah-harr? Ah-harr-harr?’ asked Fangio.

‘Sadly not,’ I said. ‘If I can’t come up with something soon, I will just have to accept defeat and take the hundred dollars for failing.’

‘And that will serve you right.’ And Fangio chuckled again. ‘Harr-harr-harr-ah-harr, ’ he went.

And then he said, ‘Ah-harr slice-me-membrane and walk-me-plank (also cocktails), there was a guy in here earlier, asking for you.’

‘Asking for me?’ I said.

‘That’s right. Aar-harr-harr-’ and then Fangio coughed. ‘I don’t know how pirates keep it up,’ he said. ‘It makes my throat sore. But yes, asking for you. Well, asking for Lazlo Woodbine, Private Eye.’

‘A client?’ I said. ‘Well, if you see him again, you send him over to my office.’

‘No,’ said Fangio, shaking his head. ‘I can’t do that. Oh no.’

‘And why not?’ I asked, and I downed the last of my Bosun’s Whistle and then picked a pair of lady’s underpants out of my teeth. ‘Why can’t you send them to my office?’

Fangio beckoned me close and whispered into my ear. ‘Between you and me only,’ he whispered, ‘that was the real Lazlo’s format. The four locations. You’ll have to come up with your own special format. I’m not going to help you to copy his.’

And I thanked Fangio for his whispered words. And I concluded, in my rather drunken state, that he did have a good point there. I mustn’t copy the way Laz had conducted his business, even if I was going to work under his name. And I was. I would have to come up with my own special way of doing things. Perhaps, learning by Laz’s fatal mistake, not such a hands-on, in-your-face, get-up-and-go, jumping-directly-into-danger kind of way of doing things. I would definitely have to come up with my own. Some way to get the job done with no direct danger to myself. Some technique, in fact, that mostly involved sitting down, preferably in the office, or in this bar, and thinking things out. A technique of my own. A technique for Tyler.

The Tyler Technique, that’s what.

And I would have ended this chapter right there. At that momentous moment, when I made my momentous decision. But for the fact that Fangio suddenly tapped me briskly upon the left trench-coat sleeve and said, ‘Hey, Laz – that’s the guy. The one that wants to speak to you. About a case. I think.’

And he pointed and I turned to look. And there he was in the doorway. And I raised up my fedora to the guy.

Because he was Elvis Presley.

Well, it certainly looked like Elvis Presley.

But then, how was I to be sure?

Because I remembered Dr Darren McMahon, the Scouse one at the Ministry of Serendipity. So was this the real Elvis Presley, or just another Elvis Presley? Whatever that might mean. But think about this. If this really was Elvis Presley. And he had a case he wanted Lazlo Woodbine to solve. And I was, for all the world, Lazlo Woodbine now. It would mean that I would be solving a case for Elvis. How cool would that be? How cool? I tried to hold on to myself and my composure. I would have to act professionally here. Keep calm, I told myself. And so I kept calm. Very calm. Very very very calm, I kept. Though really rather drunk.

The chap that might be Elvis Presley caught sight of me and he grinned, with that most-distinctively-Elvis-lip-curl grin, and swaggered in my direction.

And I use the word ‘swaggered’ without fear of correction. Elvis was a swaggerer. He sidled also, did Elvis. In fact he combined swaggering and sidling into a walk that was quite his own. Unique, one might say. So perhaps I shouldn’t say that he swaggered. No, he swaggered and sidled simultaneously.

He swiddled.

‘Mr Lazlo Woodbine, sir?’ he said to me, swiddling up and sticking out his hand. He smelled very strongly of ‘product’, this fellow did, and I found myself almost immediately engulfed by an overall cloud of it. I know folk like to write that in his last years Elvis rarely washed, taking the occasional ‘whore’s bath’ – a wipe under the armpits and around the willy and bum/fanny regions – but I can vouch for his cleanliness. It was scrupulous. And so he smelled of ‘product’. Of products.

A musky aftershave. A cedarwood-based body lotion over vanilla soap. An olive essence hairspray that kept those roguish darkly dyed strands
[23]
in place and a lily-of-the-valley-flavoured foot powder, which ensured for ever freshness of the feet. I did not know at the time, and in fact never did find out, that these personal products had all been promoted through a Fifth Avenue advertising agency in which my old chum Rob of The Sumerian Kynges now owned a controlling interest. I’m glad I never knew, really, because I’m sure it would probably have upset me.

‘You are Mr Woodbine, ain’t you, sir?’ asked the sweetly smelling swiddler.

I nodded in the manner that suggested that yes, I might be, but who was it who was asking.

‘The name’s Presley, sir,’ said the fellow. ‘Elvis Presley – you might have heard of me.’

‘I might,’ I said. Enjoying the moment. A drunken moment, it was.

‘Help me, Mr Woodbine. You are my only hope.’

I bade the fellow seat himself beside me. And I glanced around at the clientele, who had now all ceased to speak, but not to whisper, and were staring slack-jawed at my would-be client. ‘Back about your business,’ I cried at them. Firmly, with authority.

‘A drink?’ I asked Elvis. Because it appeared to be him. The accent was certainly right. And the manner. And the swiddling.

‘Well, thank you, sir.’

I called out to Fangio. But not too far, as he was leaning right across the bar counter behind me.

‘It is him,’ whispered Fangio, his big face once more close against my ear. ‘It is him, isn’t it? Say it is him.’

‘It is him,’ I whispered in reply.

And Fangio whistled. Tunelessly. ‘Richard Nixon,’ he said. ‘Right here in my bar. Just wait until I tell the guys at the tennis club.’

‘Tennis club?’ I said. ‘You?’

‘I’ll have you know that I do own a tennis club,’ said Fangio.

‘Own a tennis club?’

‘Certainly. It’s a thing about yay-long.’ Fangio mimed the yayness. ‘Made of wood, with criss-crossed strings at the fat end.’

‘That’s a tennis racquet,’ I said.

‘Not the way I use it,’ said Fangio.

‘Two Bosun’s Whistles,’ I said to Fange. ‘And don’t feel that you need to skimp on the speed when serving them up. As fast as possible will do just fine.’

Fangio made the sound that a sparrow will make when pushed through the strings of a tennis club. And went to mix our drinks.

‘An honour to meet you, sir,’ said Elvis. ‘Might I say that you’re younger than I figured you’d be.’

‘I keep myself fit,’ I told him, ‘because in my business, keeping yourself fit can mean the difference between serving up a winning storm at Wimbledon and serving time in Sing Sing with a swarm of bees up your jumper.’

Elvis looked at me blankly.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re right, it was rubbish. I promise I’ll never do it again.’

Elvis looked at me some more. Even more blankly this time.

‘Right,’ I said. And then our drinks arrived.

‘Shall I put these on your bar tab, Laz?’ asked Fangio.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Take the cost out of the one hundred dollars you owe me. I give up on these cocktails. I have no idea what’s in them.’

‘And you never will,’ said Fangio. And chuckling once more he took himself off to the cash register.

‘Were you just talking the toot, sir?’ asked Elvis. ‘Only I read about that, in the Lazlo Woodbine Thrillers.’

‘You’ve read those, have you?’

‘Well, no, sir, not really. I have them read to me.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘But you need my help. You have a worried mind. And a problem that only Lazlo Woodbine can solve for you. Am I correct?’

‘You are, sir, yes.’

I was really rather taken with the way Elvis spoke. He didn’t just smell nice, but he was so polite, too. So well mannered. All right, he was rather fat. And I didn’t mention this at the beginning of the chapter, although perhaps I should have, because he had put on weight. He was now a bit of a bloater. But I didn’t mention it, and what with him being so sweetly smelling and so polite, I am not going to mention it. Not even in passing. No.

‘So,’ I said to Elvis Presley, ‘what can I do for you?’

‘Well, sir, I gotta problem. I been playing Vegas, six nights a week, two shows a day, practising for my big tour. This tour is going to take me all over the world. I never left America before, except to go to Germany for my call-up, and now I’m going to England. And through Europe. And Africa. To Sumeria.’

‘Sumeria?’ I said. ‘Why Sumeria?’

‘I don’t know, sir. It’s on the tour list – New Begrem, Sumeria.’

‘Begrem?’

‘Yes, sir. But that ain’t the problem.’

‘You might need me to accompany you on that leg of the tour,’ I said. ‘In fact, we should probably write out a contract to that effect right now.’ And you do have to understand that me saying this was not going against the Tyler Technique even before I’d had a chance to put it into operation. Because, come on, I really did have to get to the Lost Golden City of Begrem if there was any chance at all. Didn’t I! ‘Fangio, fetch paper and pen,’ I said.

‘Coming right up, sir,’ said Fangio. But he didn’t move an inch.

‘So what, exactly, is the problem?’ I asked Elvis.

‘It’s my brother,’ said Elvis.

To which I said, ‘Your brother?’

‘Not so loud, sir, if you please.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. But your brother – I didn’t know that you had a brother.’

‘I was born one of twins,’ said Elvis.

‘Yes, well, I know that. But your twin died in childbirth. I know that, too. Very sad.’

‘He didn’t die,’ said Elvis. ‘They took him away. He was a special boy. He is a special boy.’

‘Have you ever heard of the Ministry of Serendipity?’ I asked Elvis.

‘Yes, sir, I have. And that Doctor McMahon ain’t no brother of mine.’

‘But you do know of him?’

‘Certainly, sir. He was part of the experiment.’

And yes, I confess, I was warming to this. Elvis Presley’s twin brother. The Ministry of Serendipity. Part of the experiment. Oh yes, I was certainly warming to this.

‘I will have to ask you to tell me everything as clearly and precisely as possible,’ I told Elvis. ‘The facts are the most important thing to a detective. Oh, and one more thing-’

‘Yes, sir?’ said Elvis.

‘Not you,’ I told him. ‘Fange.’

‘Yes?’ said Fange the barman.

‘Clear off,’ I said to Fange. ‘This is private.’

And Fangio stumped away in a right old grump and a battered tricorn and I spoke on with Elvis.

‘Tell me everything,’ I said. And he told me everything.

‘You must understand, sir,’ said he, ‘that I only know what I am going to tell you because my daddy told it all to me. After my mummy died-’ and Elvis crossed himself, though I never thought he was Catholic ‘- my daddy took me aside and said, “Son, I have things to say to you, and you’d better listen when I say them.” And I listened and so I’m telling them to you now.’

‘And very well, too,’ I said. And Elvis continued.

‘You see, sir, there’s a war going on. And I don’t mean a war like Vietnam. This war has been going on for ever. Between Good and Evil, God and the Devil.’ And I thought back to Captain Lynch and all he had told me when I was young. And I thought that I knew what was coming. And I did. To some degree.

‘Good and Evil, God and the Devil,’ said Elvis. ‘But God, He doesn’t war too much Himself. Though the Devil keeps right on. And the bad guys who work for the Devil – black magicians, I tell you, sir, real black magicians.’ And Elvis looked at me. Deeply, right into my eyes.

And, if I had been gay, well…

‘Please carry on,’ I told him.

‘Powerful bad magic, sir,’ said Elvis. ‘And every century the most powerful black magician performs the most powerful spell there is and causes the Homunculus to be born – a human being with the soul of an unholy one. He’s kinda the Devil in human form, but not quite.’

‘And how do you and your brother, and indeed Doctor McMahon, fit into this?’ I asked.

‘It was meant to be me,’ said Elvis. ‘I was supposed to be the Homunculus.’

‘Golly!’ I said.

‘Where?’ said Elvis.

‘Never mind. Please continue. Please.’

‘I don’t know what you know about the Second World War,’ said Elvis, ‘but it wasn’t all fought with tanks and bombs. It was fought with magic, too. And Adolf Hitler got raised into power by black magicians and the SS was a black-magic cult.’

‘I have read of such things,’ I said. ‘And you believe this to be true?’

‘I know it to be true, sir. The Nazi magicians were trying to create the twentieth-century Homunculus, Hitler being the nineteenth-century Homunculus. The new one was to be his unholy son. But there were other magicians, all around the world, all waging war in their own ways. And the most powerful of all was in England. Have you ever heard of a guy named Aleister Crowley?’

‘Yes,’ I said, and I nodded also. ‘My father met him once.’

‘Your daddy met the Great Beast of the Apocalypse?’ And Elvis had awe in his voice and he crossed once more at himself.

And I felt rather good that I had impressed him.

‘The British Government,’ Elvis continued, ‘a secret department of war in the British Government – the Ministry of Serendipity – recruited Crowley to beat the German occult war machine by raising the Homunculus before they could.’

I looked on as Elvis spoke all these words. And I admit that I was pretty slack-jawed. Because you really wouldn’t have expected such stuff to come out of the mouth of Elvis Presley.

Would you?

‘Mr Crowley was an old man,’ Elvis continued, ‘but still strong with spells. They brought to him a woman who would be mother to the Homunculus. My mummy. Their idea was simply to beat the Germans to it. And once they had brought the Homunculus into being, they would then kill it straight away, and so void the chance of another being created for another one hundred years.’

‘Rather clever,’ I said. ‘If a little horrid.’

‘So, Mr Crowley – he-’

‘Had sex with your mum?’ I asked.

‘Please keep your voice down, sir.’

‘So you are the son of Aleister Crowley?’

Elvis looked to the right and the left, then nodded. ‘Through magical invocation.’

‘Well, damn me!’ I said.

‘That’s not really my line, sir,’ said Elvis.

‘Go on, please.’

‘I was one of twins, sir, like I told you. The English magicians beat the German magicians in the race to create the Homunculus. And eventually they managed to kill Hitler also and end the war. The Americans did that, sir, not the Brits.’

‘Why did it come as no surprise to me that you were going to say that?’ I said.

‘Because you are Lazlo Woodbine and always one step ahead of the game, sir?’ Elvis suggested. And I agreed with him. And so he went on-

‘It wasn’t twins, sir,’ said Elvis. ‘I have to be honest, sir. On January eighth nineteen forty-five, six boys were born. Because Mr Crowley was the Beast Six-Six-Six. Three boys died. I survived, and my brother. And my other brother – Doctor McMahon, as he calls himself now.’

‘And the actual Homunculus?’ I said. ‘It’s not you, is it? And it’s not Doctor McMahon?’

‘No, sir. It’s my other brother, Keith.’

‘Keith?’ I said, both slowly and surely.

‘Keith,’ said Elvis.

‘Keith,’ I said once more. ‘Your sextuplet, Keith, the evil Homunculus.’

‘That’s about the size of it, sir. And I want you to find him.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I see. He’s gone missing, this Keith?’

‘He escaped, sir, yes.’

‘Escaped?’ I asked.

‘The Ministry of Serendipity intended to kill him at birth, sir, but then someone got to thinking that maybe they should study him instead. Keep him under control and under constant surveillance, but keep him, as their own. For their purposes.’

‘And the British Government thought this?’

‘The Ministry of Serendipity, yes, sir. So they moved Mummy and Daddy over to America. They were originally from Brentford in London, England, but the Ministry resettled them in Tupelo, Mississippi. My brother Keith was kept a secret – he never left the house. He has ways about him, sir. Horrible ways. Wherever he goes, things die. All things. So my mummy and daddy kept him indoors. And time passed and now I’m kinda famous. Which I hear don’t please my other brother Darren too much. And he’s kinda angry too that Mummy and Daddy left him behind at the Ministry. You see, sir, they couldn’t care for three children – they didn’t get much of a Government grant.’