“I don’t know,” I said. “My headache’s cleared up.”

“But you can’t see anything different? Everything looks the same to you?”

“What do you want from me, kid?”

“I give up,” said Icarus. “He’s barking mad. Always has been, always will be.”

I raised my glass to the kid. “You sure have a funny way of saying thanks,” I said.

“I seem to recall”, said Captain Ian, “that it was we who initially rescued you.”

“Yeah, well, thanks for that. So now, if we’ve all finished rescuing each other, I must be off on my way.”

“Perhaps I should punch him,” said Captain Ian. “Just once, in the face.”

“Help yourself,” said Icarus. “I don’t really care any more.”

“Hold up, fella,” I said. “You raise a hand to me and I’ll stick you with this machete where the furtling farmer stuck his toilet duck. But just let me ask you something. Why did you rescue me?”

“Because you’re the best,” said the captain. “And we need the best.”

“We don’t need him!” said Icarus. “Please, not him.”

“We do need him,” said the captain. “And whether he’s your brother, or not—”

“I’m not,” said I.

“He is,” said Icarus.

“—is neither here nor there,” said the captain. “We need Mr Woodbine’s help. Mr Woodbine is on a case and that case is linked directly to us. If anyone can sort everything out, that anyone is Lazlo Woodbine, private eye.”

“But he’s not Lazlo Woodbine. He’s my barking mad brother,” said Icarus. “We’ll just get drawn into his madness. Escaping from the Ministry on the back of a pizza man’s motorbike. Coming to a pub that’s got a jungle with a sundown in it.”

“And a snake,” said Johnny Boy, munching on the pizza. “Mr Woodbine hacked its head off.”

I brandished the machete. “Keep your hands away from that olive,” I told the wee man. “Or you’ll be playing Stumpy, in Snow White meets the Eighth Dwarf.”

“We’ll end up as mad as he is,” said Icarus.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to drink up and leave,” said the landlord. “The yearly migration of the wildebeest will be coming through here in a minute and the management can’t take responsibility for any patrons who get trampled.”

“See what I mean?” said Icarus. “Absolutely barking.”

“No, they don’t migrate through Barking,” said Fangio. “They go across Streatham Common and down through Tooting usually. Oh, and Laz, I’ll have the trenchcoat and the fedora dropped round to your office in the morning. The in-house tailor’s just come down with a bad attack of spontaneous human combustion and it will be a couple of hours before the night relief in-house tailor comes on duty.”

“So it’s farewell,” said I. “I’d like to say it’s been real nice knowing you guys. But as it hasn’t, I won’t.”

“Wildebeest!” cried Captain Ian, pointing over my shoulder.

I turned around to take a look and would you believe it, the guy struck me down from behind.

And once more I was falling into that deep dark whirling pit of oblivion. And I for one was frankly getting sick of it.

I awoke to find myself once more in my office, with dawn’s crack on the horizon.

“What am I doing back here?” I asked, for it seemed a reasonable question.

“We brought you here.” It was the guy with the military bearing. Captain Ian “I’ve-got-a-hiding-coming” Drayton. “The landlord gave us your office address. We brought you here in a taxi.”

“The driver knew all about the knowledge,” said Johnny Boy. “We came via Beat Street, Elm Street, Amityville Road, through Little China, past the Breakfast Club and the Cinema Paradiso, turned left at—”

“Forget it, buddy,” I said. “If that’s a running gag, it’s lost on me.”

Captain Ian pointed a gun. It was my gun. And he pointed it at me.

“All right,” he said. “Enough. We haven’t slept and I get very edgy when I haven’t slept. I might just lose my temper and beat you about the head with this pistol.”

“So what do you want from me?” I asked, in the manner known as polite.

“I want you to tell us all about the case you’re on and then we’ll tell you all about the case we’re on.”

“Oh,” said I. “You’re on a case too, are you?”

“The biggest ever,” said Icarus.

“No way, buddy. The case I’m on is far bigger than yours.”

“Isn’t,” said Icarus.

“Is,” said I.

“Isn’t.”

“Is too.”

“Isn’t.”

“Chaps,” said Captain Ian. “I don’t know whether you’re brothers or not, but—”

“Not,” said I.

“Are,” said Icarus.

“Not.”

“Are too.”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said the captain. “But I will beat you most severely with this pistol, Mr Woodbine, if you don’t tell me everything you know.”

“I’ll tell you, fella,” said I. “But you won’t believe a word of it.”

And so I told them mine and they told me theirs. And when we were all well done with the telling, which took quite a fair old time and required us to send out for several more pizzas, it was slack jaws all round and a lot of heavy silence in the air.

But I for one could hear the sound of distant applause. It was still a week distant, but I felt certain I could hear it, because now I had a handle on the case. Now it made some kind of sense to me.

“The surveillance video,” I said. “The one I have here in my pocket. Play it on my TV and tell me what you see.”

“Fair enough,” said Icarus. And he took the cassette and slotted it into my VCR.

Now OK, I know I didn’t tell you that I owned a VCR, but hey, come on. Who in this world doesn’t own a VCR? They’re commoner than canker on a tomcat’s codpiece.

“Let it roll,” said I and the kid let it roll.

Icarus and Johnny Boy and Captain Ian viewed the television screen. I viewed it too, but I couldn’t see what they were seeing.

“Demons,” said Icarus, “two demons and they’re shooting a man. But he’s not a man, he’s golden, golden. He’s …”

“God,” said Captain Ian in a croaky choky voice. “They’ve murdered God.” And he sank down onto my unspeakable carpet and buried his face in his hands.

Icarus stared at the captain and then he stared right back at me. “I’m prepared to believe the evidence of the video footage,” said he. “But I still don’t believe that you’re Lazlo Woodbine. You are my brother and that is that.”

“Kid, I ain’t your brother.”

“And how come you can’t see the demons or angels? You’ve taken the drug, but you can’t see them. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I have a theory of my own about that,” I said. “But if demons murdered God, a whole lot of things make sense and I can have this case wrapped up in a couple of days.”

“Do what you like,” said Icarus. “I don’t care. I have to make the public aware of what is going on around them. That creatures of Hell are here among us, orchestrating everything. I have to tell the world.”

“Just one moment,” said Captain Ian. “Back at the Ministry of Serendipity, I said that I would explain everything to you. About what is really going on in the world. Now I think would be the time for me to do it.”

“Do you mind if I take a pinch of snuff before you get started?” I asked, pulling out the silver snuffbox that was given to me by a crowned head of Europe, in reward for certain services rendered, of which I must not speak. “I always find that a pinch of Crawford’s Imperial, the king of snuff, helps me to cogitate at times such as these. As the poem goes, whenever the going’s getting rough, take a pinch of Crawford’s snuff. I’ve tried others, but—”

“Shut your face,” said Captain Ian. “Or I might just shoot you in the head.”

I shrugged. “God’s widow won’t take kindly to that,” I said.

“No,” said Captain Ian, “you’re probably right. What I’m going to tell you all concerns Her. You see, God created the Earth as a present for His wife.”