The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag

13

I awoke in some confusion, feeling most absurd. It wasn't the bopping on the head I objected to, it was the manner of the bopping. Bopped by a dame! Woodbine would never have let himself get bopped by a dame! Tricked by one, maybe, deceived by one, done wrong by one, but never actually bopped on the head by one. The ignominy, the shame.

But then I wasn't Woodbine.

In fact, when it came right down to it, I had to confess I was really crap at being '˜Woodbine. I hadn't been in character at all when I got bopped on the head. And I hadn't been indulging in the usual banter with Barry either. I'd really fouled up and I'd got my just deserts. I had no-one to blame but myself.

But enough of self pity.

'˜That was your bloody fault, Barry,' I said. '˜You could have warned me she was coming. Call yourself a Holy Guardian Sprout?'

But Barry did not reply.

'˜Don't sulk,' I told him. '˜Just admit that it was all your fault, and we'll say no more about it.'

But Barry still did not reply.

'˜All right, then,' I said, '˜it wasn't all your fault. Most, but not all.'

But Barry- '˜Barry,' I said. '˜Are you there?'

I shook my head, and tapped at my temples.

'˜Barry? Barry?' But he wasn't there. I could feel he wasn't there. My head felt, well, empty, really.

'˜Bloody typical,' I said. '˜Just like God, never around when you need him.'

I struggled to my feet and rubbed at my head. But my head didn't hurt. Inside or outside. There was no bruising. I felt fine.

'˜She must have hit me with something really soft. Now where exactly am I?' I had a good old look around. I wasn't in an alleyway, which I would have been had I been playing Woodbine, but wherever I was, it looked far from familiar.

Because it looked far from anywhere.

Absolutely anywhere.

I was standing upon an utterly flat surface. Like sheet ice, or clear plastic, or something. And it just went off in every direction. And the sky- '˜Oh, shit!' I said. '˜The sky.'

The sky was white. Paper white. I'd never seen a sky like that before. But then, was it actually the sky? The harder I looked, the more uncertain I became. Perhaps it wasn't the sky, at all. Perhaps it was a ceiling. Perhaps I was inside some vast modern building, with a white ceiling and a plastic floor. That had to be it. But whatever it was, I had to be off.

For one thing I had to call the police. I may have indulged in client confidentiality with Billy's mum regarding the boxed-up Inspector Kirby, but this was different. I wasn't in Billy's pay, and that bastard had murdered someone. I'd actually witnessed a real-life murder. And that was no laughing matter.

'˜Where is the exit?' I asked myself.

'˜I do not know,' I replied. But I set off to find out.

Now, I don't know what exactly was wrong with my wristwatch, but it had stopped working.

I was most upset by this, because it was a really expensive wristwatch. A Piaget. An image thing, I don't want to dwell on it. But I will say this, you can always tell a man by the quality of his wristwatch. The same way you can judge a woman's morals by her shoes. My dad could tell a woman's age just by looking at her knees. But sadly that was a skill he never passed on to me.

But I digress. My watch had ceased to function, and although my legs were working fine, they didn't seem to be getting me anywhere. How far had I walked? And, when it came to that, was I walking into this place, or out of it?

I was lost all right, and that was a fact.

I remembered being lost before. Once before. A long time before, when I was a small boy. My dad had taken me to the British Museum to show me the shrunken heads. We'd been walking through the Egyptian gallery, and I'd stopped to look at a sarcophagus in a glass case. I was fascinated by all the hieroglyphics. Row after vertical row. What did they mean and who had drawn them? Who were these people who had once been living but now were so long dead? I asked my dad, but he wasn't there. I was all on my own in that long gallery. All alone amongst the dead. And right there and right then I understood, for the first time, the loneliness of death. It just hit me out of the blue and it hit me very hard. The young are far from death, the young consider themselves immortal. Aged aunties or grandparents die, but not the young, their time is now. And my time was now. But I was here. Alone amongst the dead whose times. were very long ago.

And I grew afraid and I wept.

Wept as I was weeping now.

Weeping now? I wiped tears from my cheeks. I was weeping now. Why was I weeping?

And where-?

I looked all about me. I was no longer all alone in the middle of nowhere. I was all alone in- The Egyptian gallery of the British Museum. And it was all exactly as I remembered it. I was standing by the very case. The one with the sarcophagus with the hieroglyphics. And the smell of the place and that certain light, it was exactly how I remembered it.

And at this I became very afraid.

'˜Are you all right, son? Lost your dad have you?'

I looked up. And I remembered this man. He was the curator of the Egyptian antiquities. It was he who had found me when I was a child. He who had taken me by the hand and led me around until we found my dad.

'˜Come on,' said the curator. '˜Let's see where he is.

And he reached out his hand.

'˜No,' I said, backing away. '˜I'm not a child any more. I'm not here.'

And he faded away. Right in front of my eyes. He faded away and was gone.

And so too the Egyptian gallery.

And I was all alone once more. All alone in the very middle of nowhere. And then it dawned upon me. Because it was then that the loneliness of death closed in all about me and then spread out in every direction.

And I knew what had happened.

And why I was here.

And I knew why Barry wasn't with me any more.

Because his job was over. Because he only guarded the living.

And I was no longer one of the living.

Billy Barnes had killed me.

I was dead.