The Da-Da-De-Da-Da Code

by Robert Rankin

  Ranger Hawtrey shrugged.

  ‘And there’s nothing else here,’ said Jonny. ‘No box of chocolates or sign saying, “You have found the printing press, you are the winner.” Mind you, how difficult can it be to find out who did the printing? They must surely have done a lot of printing. That takes time and deliveries of paper and ink. Lots of coming and going. Someone must have seen something. The lady on the desk must have seen them.’

  ‘Let’s ask her, then,’ said Ranger Hawtrey.

  ‘I think it best that you ask her,’ Jonny said. ‘She might recognise me.’

  ‘This is really exciting,’ said Ranger Hawtrey. ‘Secret passage and everything, brilliant.’

  ‘I’m happy that you’re happy.’ Jonny did some thinking. ‘So this is what I want you to say to the lady on the desk,’ said he. And he whispered.

  ‘Why are you whispering?’ Ranger Hawtrey asked.

  Jonny sighed. ‘Because it makes it even more exciting,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, yes, you’re right. Carry on.’

  And Jonny did so.

  ‘Good plan,’ said Ranger Hawtrey. And they returned to the secret passage. And from there to the museum proper. And from there to the entrance hall.

  Joan, the lady on the desk, sat at the desk. She was a fine-looking lady, was Joan. Jonny admired her looks, but he did so in a furtive fashion with his cap drawn down to hide his face.

  Joan the desk lady was watching TV. She had a little portable jobbie. It was her own – she’d brought it in to watch the tennis at Wimbledon. Which must have meant that it was that time of year. Well, one of those weeks, actually.

  Ranger Hawtrey went over and had a word with Joan. Actually, he had quite a few words. More words, Jonny felt, than were strictly necessary. But then, Joan the desk lady was a fine-looking woman.

  At due length Ranger Hawtrey ambled over to Jonny and then led him from the building.

  Out into the sunlight.

  In a rather firm kind of a way.

  ‘Stop pushing me,’ said Jonny. ‘What did you learn?’

  ‘Quite a lot,’ said Ranger Hawtrey. ‘But nothing good.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, it appears that the printing was carried out under the instructions and supervision of a Mister James Crawford.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘A descendant of the Sir Henry Crawford who once owned the house and grounds back in the eighteenth century. Sir Henry’s sons gambled away the family fortune, so by the time James was born there was no money left. But apparently he did some work, research or something about the Big House here, its history. And in return, the curator allowed him to use the printing machine for some private project he had.’

  ‘So we have him,’ said Jonny. ‘Good work. We have the man who printed the competition letters.’

  ‘Well, not exactly.’

  ‘We don’t?’

  ‘Not exactly, no. Which is why I led you from the Big House. There’s been another spot of bother.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Jonny in a low and sorry tone.

  ‘Joan was watching the TV and the news was just on. James Crawford has been murdered. This very morning.’

  ‘This very morning? Oh no.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Ranger Hawtrey. ‘And apparently you did it.’

  12

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Ranger Hawtrey. ‘Give yourself up?’

  ‘Give myself up?’ and Jonny made the face that Ranger Hawtrey was so good at making. ‘That, I have to say, is not an option.’

  ‘Perhaps, then, you should leave the country. We might alter the uniform you’re wearing, make you look like a merchant seaman and—’

  ‘No,’ said Jonny, in as firm a manner as he could manage. ‘I am not guilty of these crimes. And I’ll prove it. All this is connected somehow. Me, the competition, Doctor Archy, James Crawford – this is all part of something big.’

  ‘I’m not altogether certain how you reached that conclusion.’ Ranger Hawtrey took to steering Jonny off into some bushes.

  ‘Just stop pushing me about.’ Jonny made resistance. ‘This is something big, I feel it, I know it. Don’t ask me how, but I do. Will you lend me some money?’

  ‘How much money?’

  ‘How much do you have?’

  ‘What do you want it for?’

  ‘Please just give me some money.’

  Ranger Hawtrey parted with what money he had and Jonny thanked him for it. And then Jonny asked, ‘Do you by any chance know the late Mister Crawford’s address?’

  ‘Joan will know it.’

  ‘Then might you ask her for it?’

  And so Ranger Hawtrey did, and he returned to Jonny with the address upon a slip of paper. Jonny thanked him and then he said goodbye.

  ‘You’ll be back, won’t you?’ asked Ranger Hawtrey.

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘You can sleep in the hut. I won’t tell anyone, you can trust me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jonny. ‘I really appreciate all this.’

  And the two shook hands.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Ranger Hawtrey, I really appreciate all this, kiss kiss love love love.’

  ‘Shut your face,’ Jonny told Mr Giggles.

  ‘Well, it’s pathetic. I think that Ranger Hawtrey is not so much a park ranger, he’s more of an uphill gardener. He definitely fancies you.’

  ‘Please be quiet,’ said Jonny.

  ‘And so now you’re going to go to James Crawford’s house and immediately get arrested by the police?’

  ‘No,’ said Jonny. ‘I’m going to the pub.’

  ‘Thank the Gods,’ said O’Fagin as Jonny Hooker entered the bar, collar up and cap-peak down and really in need of a drink.

  ‘Thank the Gods for what?’ asked Jonny in an Irish accent.

  ‘Ah, even better,’ said O’Fagin. ‘A Jewish police officer, splendid.’

  Jonny Hooker mounted a barstool and spoke further words from beneath the cover of his cap. ‘Can I help you in some way, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t think they were going to send anyone,’ said O’Fagin. ‘When I made my report at the police station they just kept sniggering. I didn’t think they’d taken me seriously.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better begin at the beginning,’ said Jonny. ‘And please draw me a pint of King Billy whilst you do so.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ And O’Fagin applied his hand to the pump and his tongue to the telling of stuff. ‘T’were a dark and stormy night,’ he began.

  ‘And I’ll have to stop you there, sir,’ said Jonny. ‘Was this a recent dark and stormy night?’

  ‘No, this was back in nineteen thirty-eight. The night that the Devil took Robert Johnson’s soul, in this very bar.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jonny. And he sighed. Sorrowfully.

  ‘Ooh, what sorrowful sighing,’ said O’Fagin. ‘That would fair have me going if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m as hard as a marble headstone, me.’ And he passed Jonny Hooker his beer. ‘On the house,’ he said. ‘I hope it cheers you up.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Jonny. ‘Carry on with your story.’

  ‘And then they threw me out of the police station,’ said O’Fagin.

  ‘No,’ said Jonny. ‘Carry on from the point where you left off. In nineteen thirty-eight.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘Not in the least. I have my beer now and I probably won’t be listening anyway.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said O’Fagin, ‘because I’d be prepared to share the wealth.’

  ‘Omit nothing,’ said Jonny. ‘What wealth?’ he continued.

  ‘Well,’ said O’Fagin, ‘Robert Johnson spent the last couple of years of his life living here in this pub. He lived here with this big buck-toothed n****r – his brother, I think.’

  ‘I really don’t like that word,’ said Jonny. ‘Nobody should use that word any more.’

  ‘It’s all right to call another n****r, a n****r, if you
’re a n****r yourself.’

  ‘So I have been unreliably informed,’ said Jonny. ‘But you are not a n****r, as it were.’

  ‘Oh yes I am,’ said O’Fagin.

  ‘Not,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Am too.’

  Jonny looked O’Fagin up and down. Well, as much up and down as he could from beneath the cover of his cap. ‘Oh,’ said Jonny. ‘Well blow me down, so you are. I never noticed before’.

  ‘People rarely do,’ said O’Fagin. ‘That’s what I love about West London – class, colour or creed mean nothing. A man is accepted for what he is inside.’

  Jonny nodded thoughtfully.

  And didn’t laugh at all.

  But the sun did go behind a cloud and a dog did howl in the distance.

  ‘So,’ continued O’Fagin, ‘that bucktoothed … black chap, he recorded Johnson’s thirtieth song right here in this pub.’

  ‘And you saw this?’

  ‘No,’ said O’Fagin. ‘I was somewhat handicapped from doing so by the fact that I hadn’t been born then.’

  ‘Just testing,’ said Jonny.

  ‘For what?’ asked O’Fagin.

  ‘Oh, look,’ said Jonny. ‘My beer is finished already. I wonder how that happened.’

  ‘Probably something to do with the way you’ve chucked it down your gob.’

  ‘Same again, please.’

  O’Fagin took Jonny’s glass and returned to the beer engine in its company. ‘Anyway,’ he said to Jonny, ‘he was in here last night. Asked after my dad. Pointed to that picture back there.’ O’Fagin gestured. Jonny peeped. ‘That’s him, with my dad. And he hasn’t changed at all. How does that work, you tell me?’

  Jonny shook his head. He had never noticed that photo behind the bar before. Next to the one with O’Fagin’s dad and Robert Johnson, it was. Of O’Fagin’s dad and what could only be described as a black man with large teeth. A black man with large teeth who wore a fez and a brightly coloured waistcoat.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Jonny. ‘He looked exactly the same?’

  ‘Didn’t seem to have aged by a day. He said he was looking for Jimmy.’

  ‘Jimmy?’ Jonny asked.

  ‘James Crawford, the old drunk fella who wore the long, black coat with the astrakhan collar.’

  ‘Him?’ said Jonny, who had seen that particular old drunk many a time. ‘That chap was James Crawford?’

  ‘Never a happy man,’ said O’Fagin, ‘what with his great-great-great-granddaddy doing the family fortune on the roulette wheel at Monte Carlo. He used to spend most of his days drinking cider in the park and bleating to passers-by that all the park should have been his.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jonny. ‘And in all truth I don’t blame him for it. I’d be pretty pissed off if I’d had rich ancestors and they’d wasted away the family fortune before I’d had a chance to do it myself.’

  ‘Oh,’ said O’Fagin. ‘Then no one’s ever told you about your —’

  ‘What?’ said Jonny.

  ‘Nothing,’ said O’Fagin. ‘I must be thinking about someone else. Because you are a Jewish policeman I’ve never met before. So where was I? Oh yes. The blackamoor with the expansive dentition. He wanted to know where Crawford was. Said that Crawford had something of his and he wanted it back and if Crawford didn’t hand it over, he’d kill him.’

  ‘Golly!’ said Jonny.

  ‘I’m sure that’s not politically correct,’ said O’Fagin.

  ‘Do you know where this character is now?’

  ‘The schwartzer with the big railings?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘On the run from the police for murdering Jimmy Crawford, I should think. Isn’t that why you are here?’

  ‘Just trying to get all the relevant information,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Whatever happened to your Jewish accent?’

  ‘Acclimatisation?’ Jonny suggested.

  ‘And that’s a very strange police uniform.’

  ‘Special branch,’ Jonny suggested.

  ‘It says “Gunnersbury Park Ranger” on your breast pocket.’

  ‘It says “Calvin Klein” on my knickers,’ said Jonny, ‘And “Kelogue” on my cornflakes, but I’m sure that’s a misspelling.’

  ‘Gunnersbury park ranger,’ said O’Fagin.

  ‘Special Branch,’ said Jonny. ‘Trees have branches, special trees have special branches, and there’s loads of special trees in Gunnersbury Park. Even one that involves the word “minge”. I’m sure you’ll agree about that.’

  ‘I’m always agreeable,’ said O’Fagin. ‘You’d be surprised at what I’ll agree to after I’ve had a few gin and tonics.’

  ‘I thought you black lads drank rum,’ said Jonny.

  ‘You racist bastard,’ said O’Fagin. ‘If there was any justice they’d bring back the birch.’

  ‘I didn’t know it had been away,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Two weeks in Benidorm,’ said O’Fagin. ‘God, I love this job.’

  ‘First-class toot,’ said Jonny, ‘but I don’t know whether it’s helping.’

  ‘Talking the toot always helps,’ said O’Fagin.

  The sound of police car sirens reached the ears of Jonny Hooker.

  ‘See,’ said O’Fagin, ‘I told you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That talking the toot always helps. I saw you through the window as you were approaching the pub – recognised you at once. There’s a reward on your head, so I called the police on my mobile. I’ve kept you talking the toot in order to give them time to arrive. I expect they’ll have the place surrounded by now. I’m really looking forward to spending the reward money.’

  ‘How much reward money?’ Jonny asked.

  ‘One thousand pounds,’ said O’Fagin. ‘That was the wealth that I mentioned. That I was prepared to share. I lied about being prepared to share it, though.’

  ‘One thousand?’ said Jonny. ‘For one thousand pounds, I’ll turn myself in.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ O’Fagin fell back. In alarm.

  ‘You just watch me,’ said Jonny and he put up his hands.

  ‘But that’s not fair,’ said O’Fagin. ‘I made the phone call.’

  ‘I’ll give you the money for the call,’ said Jonny. ‘That’s only fair.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said ‘Fagin. ‘No, hold on, that’s not fair. I want the reward money, all of it.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jonny. ‘It’s mine. Although—’

  ‘Although what?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jonny, ‘it’s only a thought. I don’t know whether you’d be interested.’

  ‘I would,’ said O’Fagin. ‘I really would.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jonny, once more, ‘if I were to make an escape now, maybe bop you over the head to make it look as if you tried to stop me – I bet they’ll raise the reward money.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ O’Fagin scratched at his head.

  ‘They’d double it, I’d bet,’ said Jonny. ‘Then you could turn me in at a later date and make twice as much money.’

  ‘Right,’ said O’Fagin. ‘We have a deal.’ And he put out his hand for a shake.

  And Jonny Hooker shook it.

  ‘I’ll show you the secret passage,’ said O’Fagin.

  13

  The secret passage emerged from the far side of the pub’s car park. Jonny Hooker emerged from it.

  There were police cars all around The Middle Man.

  Most of these, however, were unoccupied, their occupants now storming the premises. As it were.

  Jonny Hooker took himself over to the nearest of the unoccupied vehicles. He did this in what is called a skulking fashion.

  The key was in the ignition.

  Jonny Hooker entered the car and, as officers of the law unnecessarily employed one of those big steel cylinder jobbies to smash open the unlocked saloon bar door of The Middle Man, Jonny backed the police car slowly from the car park.

  The valiant policemen, having stormed into The Middle Man, w
ould find its landlord prone upon the saloon bar carpet, cruelly struck down by a copper warming pan. The brutality of this new atrocity would elicit a doubling of the reward money.

  ‘You’ve been ever so quiet,’ said Jonny, as he drove along.

  Answer came there none to Jonny’s ears.

  ‘Oh, come come,’ said Jonny. ‘Surely you have something to say on the matter.’

  Mr Giggles, however, remained silent. And unseen to Jonny at the present also, as it happened.

  ‘All right,’ said Jonny. ‘Don’t talk to me. ‘I’m more than happy for you not to talk to me.’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Mr Giggles.

  ‘Do you really?’

  ‘You think that I killed James Crawford, and the doctor, too.’

  ‘It does rather look that way, doesn’t it?’ said Jonny.

  ‘It will never hold up in court.’

  ‘But it does look that way. I was in the Special Wing of Brentford Cottage Hospital, drugged up to the eyeballs, your presence suppressed from my mind. So where were you during that time? Perhaps you are some kind of shapeshifter, capable of moving from the noncorporeal to the corporeal at will. Perhaps you killed the doctor after I left. And you became the large-toothed black man once more and then killed James Crawford.’

  ‘Outrageous,’ said Mr Giggles. ‘You have no evidence whatsoever to support this outrageous allegation.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but it does fit together rather neatly, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m Mister Giggles,’ said Mister Giggles. ‘I’m not Mister Homicidal Maniac.’

  ‘I don’t know what you really are,’ said Jonny, ‘but I will find out. Oh yes, I will. You just wait and see.’

  ‘This is all a bit sudden, is it not?’ asked Mr Giggles. ‘All this assertiveness. Making decisions for yourself, getting all bold and adventurous.’

  ‘Do you mean taking control of my life?’ Jonny asked.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Mr Giggles.

  ‘To the house of the late James Crawford.’

  ‘Let’s go to the shopping mall instead.’

  ‘No,’ said Jonny. ‘Let’s not.’

  ‘Oh, come on, we can play “Mumma or Munter?”’

  ‘“Mumma or Munter?” What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a game I’ve just invented. It would make a really great reality-type TV show. You go to the shopping mall and pick out big fat women with big fat stomachs and you poke them with a stick and ask them whether they are pregnant, or simply fat – “Mumma, or Munter”? See. There’d be a prize if they’re a mumma, and a forfeit if they’re just a fat munter. You stomp on their mobile phone or pie them in the face or something.’