Now normally I open doors with caution. I mean, you never know what lies beyond them and like I’ve said before, I work only the four locations. My office, the bar, the alleyway and the rooftop. So I can’t go off kicking open every door that lies before me, no matter how big the temptation. But the way I see it is this, a bar’s back door always leads to an alleyway. So I put my boot to this one and kicked down the son of a—
BANG BANG BANG and BANG again.
The sound of gunshots came to me and they weren’t music to my play-my-ears. I pride myself that I can identify almost any handgun in the western world, simply by hearing it fire. And so I knew right off that the sounds of firing were coming from a pair of P37 Narkals, Greek army issue revolvers, pearl-handled probably, with the blue metal finish.
I took a peek round the doorpost to gauge the situation and then ducked back to regain my wits and then burst forth with my gun held at the ready.
BANG BANG BANG then BANG again.
There were two guys at the alley’s end, pumping bullets, thus and so, into a third on the ground. I didn’t ask any questions and I didn’t offer any deals. I let off just two straight shots and the two guys joined the third.
“Nice shooting, chief,” said Barry.
“Thank you, Barry,” said I.
I made it down the alley, checked out the gunmen to make sure they were dead and then turned over the victim who was lying face down in the mud and red stuff.
And then I leapt up all in a lather and damn near soiled my underlinen for a second time off.
“Oh God!” I cried. “It’s God! I felt His power and now He’s dead. Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!”
“Hold on to yourself, chief, easy now.”
“But God’s dead, Barry, He’s dead.” I began to do the wee-wee dance.
“Then he can’t have been God, can he, chief? God wouldn’t go getting Himself shot dead in an alleyway. That’s not how God does business. This must be some other Richard E. Grant lookalike.”
“Yeah, but if God was being a man. So He could pull the Jewish chicks and everything. He’d be vulnerable. He could be killed.”
“Well, chief, I suppose He could. But it’s not very likely, is it? God getting Himself shot in an alleyway.”
“So you reckon it’s the wrong guy? Do ya, Barry? Do ya?”
“Has to be, chief, has to be.”
I breathed a mighty sigh of relief. “That had me going for a minute,” I said. “I mean imagine if it really had been God. I’d be in really big trouble with His wife, wouldn’t I?”
“Big, chief. Bigger than big. The biggest that ever there was.”
“And what about the weather, Barry? What with God controlling the weather, the way He does. Imagine what might happen to the weather with Him no longer in charge of it.”
“It doesn’t bear thinking about, chief.”
“Well, phew,” said I. “All I can say is phew.”
“I’ll join you in that one, chief, phew.”
I straightened my hat and turned up my collar. “Let’s go back inside,” I said. “It’s getting chilly out here.”
“You’re right, chief, downright bitter.”
“And it looks like rain.”
“Snow, chief, looks like snow.”
“Not at this time of year, surely?”
Something hit me right upon the snap-brim. “Hail,” I said. “It’s hail. No, it is snow. No, it’s rain, no, it’s, oh, the sun’s come out again. No it’s not …”
“Chief,” said Barry.
“Barry?” said I.
And then the hurricane hit us.
8
Two hours prior to the terrible death of God and the rather unseasonable change in the weather, Icarus Smith and Johnny Boy knelt on the floor of the late Professor Partington’s shed, worrying at a map of the world, which now had been cut into many tiny pieces.
“Try putting that bit there,” said Johnny Boy.
“Please leave it to me,” said Icarus Smith. “I am the relocator and this is the stuff of my dream.”
“I’ve got a piece of Afghanistan here.”
“Then kindly give it to me.”
Johnny Boy handed Icarus the piece of Afghanistan, then clambered to his feet and stood with his hands on his hips, peering quizzically over the lad’s stooped shoulders.
“The secret”, said Icarus, “is for me not to think about it. Just let it happen naturally. Just let the right pieces fall into the right places. That’s what the science of relocation is all about.”
“Things don’t just fall into place by themselves,” said Johnny Boy, stretching his tiny arms and clicking his tiny neck. “Things require a catalyst. And the ‘relocation’ theory of yours requires you to be its catalyst. But you’re making a right pig’s earhole of the map.”
“It will all fall into place,” said Icarus. “Trust me.”
“Oh, I do trust you. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just suggesting that you need a little help with this one. I’ll pop up to the house and get us a cup of tea. A cup of tea always helps.”
“No,” said Icarus, turning, “don’t open the shed door.”
But it was too late. Johnny Boy had opened the shed door and a breeze from the garden came curling in, lifting the pieces of map from the floor and whirling them into a fine little papery snow storm.
“Oooh,” went Icarus, snatching here and there and everywhere.
“Ooh,” went Johnny Boy, joining him in this.
“Just shut the door. Shut the door.”
Johnny Boy hastened to shut the door.
Bits of map came fluttering down to land here, there and everywhere.
“Sorry,” said Johnny Boy.
“Just hold on,” said Icarus Smith.
“You’ve got it?”
“Yes, I think I have. Look at the way the pieces have fallen. Look at all the different colours. The colours of the rainbow. Like the flowers on the floral clock. Help me gather them up.”
Johnny Boy helped in the gathering up and in the sorting out.
Icarus Smith did the putting into order and then the laying down. “Some came in violet, some in indigo, In blue, green, yellow, orange, red, They made a pretty row.”
“Rainbow,” said Johnny Boy. “That’s pretty.”
“Yes it is. And now the biro lines join up and spell something.”
“What do they spell? What do they spell?”
“Words,” said Icarus. “They spell, TOP OF THE BILL. What does that mean, TOP OF THE BILL?”
“I know what it means,” said Johnny Boy.
“Then tell me, please.”
“Me and the professor,” said Johnny Boy, and he bowed grandly to Icarus. “Me and the professor were once top of the bill.”
“Go on.”
“Back in the nineteen fifties. Long before you were even born. The professor was a stage magician, Vince Zodiac, he called himself, or the Vince of Darkness, I liked that one. But he was a pretty crap magician and he was usually near the bottom of the bill. Until he met me. I’ve always been right down at the bottom. Life’s like that, when you’re a midget. But anyhow, I met the professor one night in a bar. He stepped on me, people often do. He was rather drunk. Drank far too much, the professor. Mind you, if he hadn’t been drunk, he wouldn’t have seen the flowers on the floral clock. Even if the floral clock doesn’t exist.
“But I digress, he was drunk and I was sore because he’d stepped on me and he bought me a drink and we got to talking and that’s how the stage act came to be. Professor Zodiac and Johnny Boy. He dressed up as a headmaster and I was dressed as a schoolboy and made up to look like a ventriloquist’s dummy. I had a special box with air holes that he used to carry me in and out of the theatres in. No-one twigged that I was a person and not a dummy. We made it to top of the bill.”