“Well,” said I. “Hm.”

“And there are these bars that you go to, where the barman is always your friend Fangio. Who was a fat boy and now is a thin boy, because he bopped you on the head, so that you could stay within the rules of your genre. The nineteen-fifties American detective genre. One that only truly existed in fiction. You live your life in fiction, my friend. You have no hold on reality.”

“No,” I said. “I do, I really do.”

“You don’t,” said the doctor. “Just think about this. Every time you are in what you call a ‘tricky situation’, you are rescued.”

I shrugged.

“And who rescues you?”

I shrugged again.

“Your brother rescues you,” said the doctor. “And the evil men who have you in the sticky situation, the doctor and the third child of God, another brother, you note, who was telling you about living in the shadow of his brother, these evil men vanish away to melted goo the moment your brother arrives to save you.”

“Coincidence,” I said.

“Tell me about your brother,” said the doctor.

“I like to think of myself as a relocator,” said the cabbie. “I relocate people. Take them from one location to another. In my small way I help to put the world to rights. If people weren’t in the wrong places at the wrong times, there’d be no need for cabbies. We put people where they want to be. Where they should be. You could learn a lot from cabbies.”

Icarus looked at Johnny Boy.

And Johnny Boy looked back at him.

“If I asked you how to get to Shangri La, do you think you might drive a little faster?” said Johnny Boy.

“Perhaps quite fast,” said Icarus, glancing into the driver’s mirror. “There’s a long dark automobile following us.”

“Are you following me?” asked the doctor. “Do you see where my reasoning is taking us?”

“We’re here,” said Icarus, paying off the cabbie. “Please wait, we’ll be back in just a minute, we have to pick up my brother.”

“Sibling rivalry,” said the doctor. “You admire your brother, but you can’t bring yourself to admit it. He is your hero. He always arrives in the nick of time to get you out of your sticky situation.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not like that at all.”

“I don’t like this at all,” puffed Johnny Boy, as he and Icarus ran towards the entrance of the hospital. “That horrid dark automobile again. Why is it following us?”

“Perhaps my forged memos didn’t convince them. Come on, try to keep up.”

“The pretence you’re keeping up is nothing more than that,” said the doctor. “If you could come to terms with your relationship with your brother, you would be well on the way to recovery.”

“Which way to Mr Woodbine’s room?” asked Icarus.

The male nurse looked up from the reception desk. He had on a little badge that said, “Hi, my name is Cecil.”

“Mr Who?” asked male nurse Cecil.

“Mr Woodbine,” said the breathless Icarus. “He’s being held in the psychiatric wing. I’ve come here to sign his release form.”

Nurse Cecil made little lip-smacking sounds. “There’s a lot of paperwork involved in that kind of thing,” he said. “Perhaps you should make an appointment. Next week some time.”

“Next week will be too late. I have to see him now and take him out of here.”

“Are you a relative?”

“I’m his brother. I’m Icarus Smith. I signed the form to commit him.”

“How come your name’s Smith and his is Woodstock?”

“It’s Woodbine,” said Icarus. “Lazlo Woodbine. Some call him Laz. Not that I ever have.”

“Shit!” said Johnny Boy. “They’re coming in the door, Icarus. Two of them and they’re wrong’uns.”

Icarus made fists at male nurse Cecil. “Which room is my brother in?” he demanded to be told.

“I shall have to ask you to leave,” said Cecil. “Leave of your own free will, or I’ll get out the big stick that I punish the naughty loons with and ram it right up your …”

“Tunnel of love,” said the doctor. “We call it our tunnel of love therapy. We will bring together you and your brother. Take you slowly through the darkness of despair and out into the light of love. At the other end of the tunnel.”

“I don’t belong here in the psychiatric wing,” I told the doctor. “You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not a loon.”

“We never use the word loon here,” said the doctor. “All our staff are highly trained psychiatric carers. You’ll be treated well here. Here where it’s quiet and peaceful.”

“That’s SHITE!” said Johnny Boy, as he and Icarus ran along. “Another stick of SHITE. What are you going to do with that?”

“What do you think I’m going to do with it?”

“Blow the door off your brother’s room?”

“Or wherever he’s being held.”

“I never did ask how you managed to light the fuse last time without any matches.”

“Then don’t ask this time either.”

“Time,” said the doctor, rising from his desk and taking himself over to the door. “Time is all you really need, Mr Woodbine. Time to put all the pieces back into the right places. Time to understand the true relationship that you have with your brother. That you do admire him, which is why you have created this fantasy life for yourself. Why you always believe that he can ultimately get you out of any sticky situation, although you remain in denial of this.”

The doctor took down his jacket from the back of the door.

“This door,” said Icarus.

“Why?” asked Johnny Boy.

“Fate,” said Icarus. “Let’s leave it to fate.”

And Icarus lit up the SHITE.

I looked dumbly at the doctor. I’m rarely lost for words, especially wise ones. But I was lost for words now.

I mean, hey. This was Woodbine he was dealing with. Lazlo Woodbine, private eye. The greatest dick that ever there was. I wasn’t some wimp with a brother fixation. I could handle myself. I’m the best in the business and I didn’t need this creep trying to make out that I was some kind of a loon.

“!!!” went the silent explosive.

“That silence doesn’t get any less loud,” said Johnny Boy.

The doctor was there, putting on his coat.

And then the doctor was gone.

Gone.

Just gone!

Melted to a steamy pool of goo upon the floor.

Icarus burst into the office.

“Come on, Laz,” he said. “I need your help. I’m busting you out of here.”

I stared at the guy as he stood in the doorway.

And friends, I got all choked up with tears.

“Brother,” I said, breaking down in a blubber. “Brother Icarus, it’s you. I’m not Lazlo Woodbine any more. I’m cured. I’m your brother Edwin. Come and give me a hug.”