Read Online The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag by Robert Rankin - Free Book Online Page B

waste”. I told you I’d heard strange tales and I’d
heard this one before. I’d heard tell that there are vans like that all over
England. That’s why you see so many of those old VW Campers. They clean up the
streets, recycle the dispossessed. It’s all the government’s doing, and the
minced-up meat goes to feed animals in secret research establishments.’
    ‘But
someone should do something. Where is this farm?’
    ‘Not
far from here. But it won’t do you any good. The strange thing that happened to
me on the way here was this: I went back there. Back to the farm today. But it wasn’t
there. The place had been razed to the ground and concreted over. I figure they
had secret security cameras and they saw me escape. So they destroyed the
evidence. They’re cunning, you see, cunning as—’
    ‘Foxes,’
I said.
     
    And that was the mendicant’s
story. Well, the travelling salesman’s story. But the mendicant told it better.
I can’t say whether it’s really true, of course, and it certainly wouldn’t have
been true if it had been told to me by a travelling salesman, because he wouldn’t
have been hitch-hiking, would he? But if it is true, then it could have
explained what happened to Billy. Although, as I would later learn, what
happened to Billy Barnes was something far more sinister.
    The
reason Billy’s disappearance led me to be-come involved in the case of the
voodoo handbag was this:
    Billy’s
mum was a friend of my mum and so, shortly after Billy went missing, Billy’s
mum came round to tea with my mum, and my mum suggested that Billy’s mum should
have a word with me.
    I had
just opened my first private detective agency, nothing swanky, just a table and
chair in the shed, but I was hungry to take on something big. A missing person
case was right up my alley, and so when Mrs Barnes came right up my alley and
knocked on the shed door, I was more than pleased.
    I
ushered her in and sat her down on the half-bag of solid cement that served as ‘client
chair’.
    ‘So,’ I
said to Mrs Barnes, ‘how might I help you?’
    ‘It’s
my Billy,’ said the distraught lady. ‘He’s gone missing.’
    ‘Yes, I
read about it in the newspapers. Do you want me to see if I can find him?’
    ‘No
thanks,’ said Mrs Barnes.
    ‘No
thanks?’
    Mrs Barnes
shook her hair-net. ‘I’m quite pleased to see the back of him, really. It’s the
handbag I want returned.’
    ‘Billy
took your handbag?’
    ‘Oh no.
Billy vanished a couple of weeks earlier. But it was only a matter of time
before the handbag went too.’
    ‘I don’t
quite understand,’ I said.
    ‘It’s a
voodoo handbag,’ said Mrs Barnes. ‘Belonged to my mum.’
    ‘And
what, exactly, is a voodoo handbag?’
    ‘It’s
an object of veneration.’
    ‘Like a
saint’s relic, or something?’
    ‘Very
much like that, yes. In voodoo there is a pantheon of gods. Papa Legba, most
benevolent of all, he is the guardian of the gates. Damballo Oueddo, the wisest
and most powerful, whose symbol is the serpent. Agoué, god of the sea. Loco,
god of the forest, Ogoun Badagris, the dreadful and bloody one, and Maîtresse
Ezilée, an incarnation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.’
    ‘And
the handbag was hers originally?’
    ‘Maîtresse
Ezilée’s, yes. From her bag the good receive favours, the bad something else
entirely.’
    ‘And
your mum had this very bag?’
    ‘Not
the real one, no. A copy, cast in plaster.’
    ‘And is
it valuable?’
    ‘Only
to those who know how to use it.’
    ‘I see,’
I said. But I didn’t.
    ‘It is
a transitus tessera, literally a ticket of passage. He who carries the
bag and understands its ways can travel from one place to another.’
    ‘And
you’re quite certain Billy didn’t take it when he went off on his travels?’
    ‘Quite
certain.’
    What
does it look like, this voodoo handbag?’
    ‘About
twenty inches high, handbag-shaped, covered in skulls. You’ll know it when you
see it.’
    ‘And