At the high head end there were points of interest. A fine aquiline nose. A noble brow in the making.
A mouth made for smiling. Gentle eyes. The head was swathed in bandages and topped off by a cap with the words Ultimate Warrior printed on the front.
The short one, and he was a very short one, scarcely reaching the knee of his companion, sported Mother-care dungarees, a tartan shirt and red jellies. He had the face of a cherub.
Anna switched off the expensive guitar, unplugged it and set it carefully aside. Then she climbed down from her stool, tucked the rear of her T-shirt into the twenty-three-inch waistband of her jeans, stroked back her hair and pounced.
She plucked up the fellow in the dungarees and cradled him in her arms. ‘Watchamate, Tuppe,’ she laughed, lowering her cheek for a kiss.
‘Great licks, Anna.’ The small one applied his lips to the allocated beauty spot.
‘And watchamate, Cornelius.’
The tall boy stood and he sniffed.
‘I bet you can’t get it.’ Anna grinned wickedly.
‘I bet you I can.’ Cornelius took another sniff ‘Chanel,’ said he.
‘But which one?’
One more small sniff and one big smile. ‘Chanel No. 19.’
‘Correct, as ever.’ Anna carefully set down the Tuppe, then fell upon the lowered neck of Cornelius Murphy and kissed it. It was the kiss of an old friend. Cornelius kissed her hair. It smelled wonderful. He could easily have identified the shampoo. But he did not. He closed his eyes and savoured the subtle fragrances which composed the olfactory identikit that was Anna Gotting. It was all quite wonderful.
‘So where have you been?’ Anna stepped back and glanced him up and down. ‘I haven’t seen you since we left school a month back.’
‘We’ve been working,’ Tuppe said. ‘But it didn’t work out,’ he added.
‘So what are you doing here? Starting a band? I’m getting the hang of lead guitar, if you are.’
‘We’d like to buy an ocarina,’ said Tuppe brightly.
‘A what?’
‘An ocarina.’ Cornelius mimed the playing of one. ‘It’s an egg-shaped wind instrument with a protruding mouthpiece and six to eight finger holes. It produces an almost pure tone. Do you have one in stock by any chance?’
Anna eyed the tall boy. ‘What happened to your head?’
Cornelius gingerly fingered his cap. ‘Car accident,’ he suggested.
‘Oh. I’m sorry.
‘About the ocarina?’ Tuppe grinned up.
Anna smiled down. ‘I think I’ve seen one somewhere. Do you want me to look for it this minute?’
‘Please.’ Tuppe nodded vigorously. ‘It’s quite urgent.’
Anna shrugged. ‘OK. You can play the guitars if you want. But don’t touch the Sunburst. It’s an original.’
And with that said she swept away to the storeroom, laying down a trail of Chanel No. 19 that Cornelius could have followed with his nose bandaged.
Tuppe gazed wistfully around the shop and sighed. ‘I wish I could play the guitar.’
‘You could learn.’ Cornelius strapped on the Stratocaster and did Pete Townsend windmills with his right arm. Then he stooped hastily to pick up the rack of sheet music he’d overturned. ‘Why don’t you take lessons?’
‘I couldn’t reach the fretboard. My arms are too short.’
Cornelius did not apologize for his thoughtless remark. And Tuppe did not expect him to. They were best friends. Each saw the other as an equal. The glaring difference in their heights did not enter into it.
‘Is this an ocarina?’ Anna returned with an item resembling a tiny bullet-pocked mahogany submarine.
‘That’s the fellow,’ chorused her customers.
Anna turned the instrument between her delicate fingers and perused the faded price tag. ‘£5.18s.6d. Is that a fair price for an ocarina?’
‘The price of a thing bears no relationship to its value,’ said Tuppe wisely.
‘That depends whether you’re buying or selling,’ replied Anna, wiser yet.
Cornelius shuffled his loafers. ‘We weren’t actually thinking of buying it.’
‘You mean you just want to have a blow or something?’
‘Well no.’ Cornelius chewed his lip. ‘We were hoping to steal it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we don’t have any money.’ Tuppe pulled out his pockets. ‘We’re stony broke.’
‘So you want to nick this?’
‘I don’t want to.’ Cornelius held down his cap and shook his head. ‘Dishonesty does not dine at my table as a rule. But the present circumstances are somewhat exceptional. Might I perhaps borrow the ocarina?’
‘I could ask Mickey, but I don’t think he’d be keen. What do you want to do with it? Busk?’
‘I want to drill holes in it.’ Cornelius smiled painfully.
‘Then forget it. Listen, are you two on something or what?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Then why do you want to drill holes in an ocarina?’
Cornelius looked at Tuppe. And Tuppe looked at Cornelius.
‘Tell her,’ said Tuppe.
‘I can’t,’ said Cornelius.
‘Of course you can. If we succeed in this thing, everybody in the world is going to know about it anyway.’
‘Everybody in the world?’ Anna looked from the one to the other of them.
‘All right.’ Cornelius smiled a little less painfully. But not much. ‘You see,’ he began, ‘Tuppe and I have just returned from an epic journey. And during the course of it we learned a great and terrible secret. A secret which we have sworn to reveal to the world.’
‘Oh yes?’ Anna put her hands in her back pockets (Bette Davis style).
‘Oh yes. We learned that all across London there are Forbidden Zones. They are cunningly concealed and only a very few people know of their existence. Inside these Zones exists another order of being.’
Tuppe whistled the theme from The Twilight Zone.
‘Another order of being?’ Anna spoke the words in a toneless tone.
‘Another order of being, yes. A secret civilization. And it has apparently been orchestrating the progress of mankind for centuries.’
‘Screwing it up,’ Tuppe added.
‘I see.’ Anna turned up her eyes. Bumblies hung from the ceiling. She’d never noticed them before. They were constructed from the rolled-up foil of Woodbine packets, circa 1965. ‘Go on,’ she said.
Cornelius went on. ‘We also learned that it is possible to enter the Zones by playing certain notes on an ocarina. Notes which cannot normally be played. You have to drill new holes. I have the plan here in my pocket, on a map. We plan to drill the holes, enter the Zones—’
‘And grab the booty,’ Tuppe put in.
‘What booty?’ A note of interest entered Anna’s voice.
‘Riches.’ Cornelius made expansive gestures. Then he stooped once more to clear up the sheet music. ‘Untold riches. The stones from engagement rings. Missing art treasures—’
‘Biros,’ Tuppe put in.
‘Biros, umbrellas, odd socks, yellow-handled screwdrivers, supermarket trolleys, all the stuff that unaccountably goes missing. We’ll only be going in for the untold riches to start off with.’
Anna studied the ocarina and then the face of Cornelius Murphy. ‘And you really expect me to believe this?’
‘No. Not at all. I only want the ocarina. You asked me why and I told you. I’d prefer it if you didn’t believe a single word. I wouldn’t, if I was in your place.’
‘You really are on something.’ Anna prepared to return the ocarina to the spot it had occupied for the last twenty-three years.
‘No wait,’ Tuppe cried. ‘His dad’s trapped in one of the Zones. They captured him.’
‘Now I know you’re lying. I saw Jack Murphy going into the bank this morning.’
‘He’s not my real dad.’ Cornelius sighed. Explaining the unexplainable is always a pro
blem. ‘My real dad is a great magus called Hugo Rune.’
‘And mine is Elvis Presley. So long, guys.’
Cornelius fluttered his fingers. ‘Could I just look at the ocarina, before you put it away?’
Anna hugged it to her bosom. ‘What will you do if I give it to you?’
‘Well, I thought I would say something like, “Can take it outside to see the colour in the daylight?” then just sort of run off with it.’
‘Sound plan,’ said Tuppe.
‘I can’t let you do that. I’d lose my job if Mickey found out.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ Cornelius rammed his fluttering fingers into his trouser pockets. ‘I wouldn’t want that. We’ll go elsewhere. Listen, it was really nice to bump into you again, Anna. And smell your perfume. If Tuppe and I survive in one piece, rescue the daddy, return with the riches, best the blighters in the Forbidden Zones and reveal them to the world, then I’d like you to bear my children. Bye for now then.’
‘And be lucky,’ Tuppe added.
Anna watched the odd couple turn and make for the door. She’d known Cornelius for five years. He as a friend. Eccentric perhaps, weird even, certainly not like the rest. But he was honest. And he was really quite handsome. Although Anna did harbour a secret passion for ageing musos with baldy heads, beer bellies and bad breath. Well, anything was possible. Almost. But the tall boy’s story was clearly ludicrous. An insult to her intelligence.
Anna glanced around the interior of Minn’s Music Mine, seeing it all as if for the first time. Which is sometimes the way when you see something for the last time. Or even, when you discover yourself to be in the right place at the right time.
‘Perhaps’, she said, as the tall boy reached the door, ‘you’d like to take this outside. To see the colour in the daylight.’
Cornelius turned back. And he smiled a most winning smile. ‘Perhaps you’d like to see it too,’ he suggested.
2
Mr Thompkin, who ran Thompkin’s Tools in the high street, was a canny fellow. But not quite canny enough. If he hadn’t found himself suddenly prey to erotic fantasies, he would never have let the beautiful seventeen-year-old girl in the Gandhi’s Hairdryer World Tour 93 T-shirt take one of his nice new electric drills outside, to see the colour in the daylight.
When she hadn’t returned after fifteen minutes, he dutifully, if somewhat regretfully, telephoned the police.
The line was engaged. A Mr Michael Minns was on it. Apparently, he had returned from a late business lunch with Japanese clients, to discover that his assistant had, like the Elvis of old, left the building. But this time leaving the door unlocked. He was calling to report the loss of twenty-three expensive guitars. Including an original Les Paul Sunburst, valued at around five thousand pounds.
‘There’s no point in just claiming for an old ocarina,’ his wife had told him. ‘Go the whole hog, do it in one, and we’ll sell up the shop and move to Benidorm.’
As Mickey was far too pissed to argue, he had agreed. He wrapped the precious guitar in an old kaftan and hid it in the wardrobe. ‘Is this my tank top in here?’ he asked.
Anna, Tuppe and Cornelius Murphy sat on a bench in the park. They were sharing the large chocolate cake that Master Bradshaw, the baker’s son, had actually allowed Tuppe to take outside to see the colour in the daylight.
‘I feel’, said Tuppe between munchings, ‘that the “see it in the daylight” ploy might be subject to the law of diminishing returns. I only outran young Bradshaw by the skin of my teeth.’
Cornelius dusted chocolate crumbs from his lap. ‘I don’t think we’re really cut out for a life of brigandage. We must remember to pay everyone back as soon as we’re able.’
‘So where do we go from here?’ Anna licked her fingers.
‘Back to my house,’ Cornelius told her. ‘We’ll have to walk I’m afraid. I had a car, but it got—’
‘Dumped on,’ said Tuppe. ‘From a great height. A crying shame so it was.’
‘We were tricked,’ Cornelius explained. ‘By a villain called Arthur Kobold. He employed me to find the missing chapters from a great book. Tuppe and I were almost killed doing so. Come on, let’s go. I’ll tell you everything that happened on the way.’
Anna shrugged. ‘I’m still not certain I should believe anything you’ve told me so far.’
‘It’s all true.’ Cornelius stood and stretched.
‘It is,’ Tuppe agreed. ‘There’s no plug on that drill, by the way.’
‘Stuff the plug,’ said Anna. ‘Tell me again about the booty.’
‘Tell me again about the booty.’ These words, although spoken at exactly the same moment, came from another mouth altogether.
Coincidence? Synchronicity? The chromium-plated megaphone of destiny? The speaker of the words didn’t know. Neither did he care. All he knew about and all he cared about, above and beyond everything, including the call of duty, absolutely everything, was the science of deduction. The art of detection.
And why should it be otherwise?
For this man was a detective. And not just any old detective. This man was the detective.
This was he of the Harris Tweed three-piece whistle.
He of the albino crop and the ivory ear-ring.
He of the mirrored pince-nez, the black malacca cane and the heavy pigskin valise.
He of the occasional affectation.
This was the man, the legend and the detective. Inspectre Hovis of Scotland Yard.
The man, the legend and the detective straddled a single regulation police-issue chair and carefully rephrased his question.
‘The booty,’ he boomed in a deep baronial baritone. The voice of one whose social class is scheduled to be first up against the wall come the revolution. ‘Tell me about it.’
Terence Arthur Mulligan, known regularly as ‘the accused’, made a surly face at the great detective. ‘I’ve told you all I know,’ he muttered in fluent working class.
‘Then tell me again.’
‘Look,’ Terence gripped the edge of the regulation police-issue interview table, ‘I was driving me cab, right? And I’d just dropped off me fare, right? Old bloke, white hair, looked like Bertrand Russell.’
‘Bertrand Russell.’ Hovis breathed on to the silver pommel of his cane and buffed it with a monogrammed handkerchief.
‘Bertrand Russell, ‘cept it weren’t him, because he’s dead. Though I did have him in the back of me cab once. D’you know what I asked him?’
‘About the booty.’ Hovis examined his reflection in his cane’s gleaming pommel. It was immaculate. As ever.
‘Nah, it weren’t about that. I. asked him—’ But the flow of Mulligan’s discourse was unexpectedly staunched by the sudden introduction of a polished silver pommel into his gob.
‘The diamonds.’ Inspectre Hovis rattled Mulligan’s teeth, withdrew the cane and cracked it down on the interview table. ‘Tell me about the bally diamonds and tell me now.’
‘Just you see here...’ Mulligan fell back, flapping and spluttering.
‘No.’ Hovis rose to loom above him. ‘Just you see here. You were pulled in for exceeding the speed limit. When asked to turn out your pockets, what should the arresting officer find but a veritable king’s ransom in diamonds. Now, I am going to ask you just one time more. Where did you get them?’
‘I found them. I was having a fag, right? Sitting in me cab and then there was a bloody big explosion and this dirty great sort of train thing came steaming out of this hoarding. Lights flashing and stuff. And it flew by, right? And then I saw the diamonds. They were lying all over the road. So I scooped them up and I was just driving to the nearest police station to hand them in, when two of your blokes stopped me, right?’
‘Wrong,’ said Inspectre Hovis.
‘It’s the truth,’ pleaded Mulligan. ‘Except for the last bit. I wasn’t really taking them to the nearest police station.’
‘No,’ said Hovis. ‘I thought not.’
‘No,’ said Mulligan. ‘I was going to distribute them amongst the poor and needy.’
Hovis raised his cane to smite Mr Mulligan, but thought better of it. There was always the chance that the video camera, supposedly recording the interview, might actually be switched on.
‘Tell me some more about this train,’ he said wearily.
‘I only saw it for a moment. It was like a ghost train or something. It made this sound...’
The great detective lifted a quizzical eyebrow.
‘Yabba dabba do,’ said Terence Arthur Mulligan.
‘Where did you steal those diamonds?’
‘I didn’t steal them!’ Mulligan drummed his fists on the table. ‘How many more times? I found them. They were lying all over the road. Just like I told your blokes.’
‘Yet when they drove you back to the scene of this outré occurrence, they could find no broken hoarding. No evidence of any train.’
‘I can’t explain that.’ Mulligan slumped in his chair. ‘But I didn’t steal them. I found them. I swear.’
Hovis shook his head. ‘No,’ said he, ‘and again no. I put it to you that you are telling me a pack of lies. Spinning me the crambe repitita.’
‘What is that, by the way?’
‘The crambe repitita. The warmed-up cabbage. The old old story.’
‘Ah,’ said Terence. ‘That.’
‘That.’ Inspectre Hovis removed his mirrored pince-nez and fixed Mulligan with a baleful stare. ‘I regret to inform you, sir, that you are, as we say in the trade, bang to rights. In the frame and up the Swanee. Flagrante delicto, or as near as makes no odds.’
‘I wanna see my brief,’ growled Terence, who knew his rights.
‘And so you shall,’ replied Inspectre Hovis, who knew them also. ‘But you are going down this time, chummy. There’s bird in this for you. Your goose is cooked.’