Robert Rankin

Necrophenia

© Robert Rankin 2008

It was about a week after I’d almost saved mankind.

1

And I was having a lie-in.

It had been a late one, the night before, I so remember.

A reunion of old school buddies. The class of 63. Of course, there are fewer of us every year now. Not, I think, because we are dying off. No, I suspect that it is because we have, over the years and through the many past reunions, learned just how much we all truly hate each other. How little we ever had in common when we were at school together and how, with the passing of the years, that little has become less and less.

And less.

So fewer turn up every year.

There were just the three of us last night.

And we didn’t really have a lot to say to each other.

There was Rob, who is always jolly, come what may, and who is responsible for putting these get-togethers together. Rob is of medium height and about as broad as he is long. He is always jolly. Although last night he was less jolly than usual. This lack of jollity probably occasioned by the less-than-impressive turnout.

Rob is in advertising. He is a copywriter and he has, over the years, worked on some quite famous campaigns.

You can earn big money in advertising as a copywriter if you have the ability to come up with snappy catchphrases that touch the public’s imagination and through so doing subtly influence the public to purchase whatever product it happens to be that is having a snappy catchphrase applied to it.

You will no doubt recall the ‘Get Some Cheese’ campaign a few years back, with that bloke out of that series on the telly saying ‘Get some cheese’ to all kinds of famous people in unusual situations.

That was one of Rob’s. I never quite got it myself. But, like almost everyone else at the time, I would say, ‘Get some cheese,’ to some stranger on a bus, or the lady behind the dry-cleaner’s counter. To much mirth.

In fact, now that I come to think about it, I really miss saying ‘Get some cheese’ to complete strangers. I might take it up again today and see how it works out.

So that’s Rob, really.

And then there’s Neil.

Neil did really well. He went into radio, started as a sound engineer, became a DJ, then a producer. Started with the wireless, but later moved onwards and upwards.

As they say.

Neil is now a film producer.

And he’s promised me a part in the next film he produces. Not that I’m altogether keen.

There is something decidedly odd about the films that Neil produces. They aren’t ever shown at regular cinemas. They receive ‘special showings’ in art houses and the DVDs cannot be purchased legally in this country.

I have one of Neil’s DVDs. And I hope very much that what is shown on the screen is actually acting.

And so that is Neil.

And that is Rob.

Which leaves only me.

The Third Man, as it were. A bit like Michael Rennie, or indeed Orson Welles, depending upon which version you prefer.

And I am a bit like the Third Man. A bit. I’m enigmatic, me. I move in the shadows. I’m a sort of private investigator. A rather strange sort. You see, I developed this technique that I call the Tyler Technique, because my name is Tyler and it is my technique. If I take up just a moment to explain it here, it will save time later, when something will occur that will need an explanation, but in all the excitement of whatever is going on (and there will be excitement, lots of it, because in my business there always is) won’t get one and therefore may be found worrying by those who worry about such things.

Put simply (and there’s a lot more to it than this, let me tell you, but this will suffice for now), the Tyler Technique involves letting things happen naturally. Not pushing things. Not being the cause and effect of things. For I’ve found that things tend to work out for the best, eventually. If you leave them alone.

And so, with all that said by way of a brief introduction to myself – with a brief aside regarding my two ex-school chums Rob and Neil, for more will be spoken of them later – let us take ourselves back, back to where this story began and the events that led me to become the greatest detective that ever was. And how I almost saved Mankind as well.

2

I was a very musical youth.

I harmonised with hairdryers. And whistled along with the rhythm of life. There seems to be music everywhere when you’re young. And there certainly was a lot of it about back in the nineteen-sixties, when I was growing up. I know they say a lot of silly things about the nineteen-sixties now, such as all that rot that ‘if you can remember the nineteen-sixties, you weren’t part of them, man’. A lot of tosh and toot, that is. They were very intense and colourful, though. And very musical, too, and when it is said that ‘The Beatles tunes were the background music for an entire generation’, this is not without some truth.

But there was a lot more music about than just what you heard coming out of a dolly-bird’s transistor radio.

For instance, there were The Sumerian Kynges, who were my favourites. Still are, really. But then, I know where the bodies are buried, so I can have The Sumerian Kynges come and play at my house for free whenever I want them to.

Which isn’t often, because they’ve never really added much to their nineteen-sixties repertoire.

I was the lead singer with The Kynges for a while back in nineteen sixty-three, which is why I mention them here. I was in the original line-up when they formed. And not a lot of people know that.

The Kynges were a school band then. Because we were all at the same school together and the only instruments that there were to be played belonged to the school.

We couldn’t afford to purchase our own instruments because we were poor. And poor people cannot afford expensive musical instruments. You will note that whilst you may see many a drunken down-and-out jigging from one foot to another and engaging in a bit of the old unaccompanied singing, you will rarely, if ever, see a drunken down-and-out sitting in the gutter playing either the harp or a Bechstein concert grand. It’s a monetary thing. A fiscal thing.

The Kynges began as a ukulele band.

There were five ukuleles in the school’s ‘band room’. The band room was a large cupboard with a skylight. As far as I can recall, the sole purpose of the skylight was to admit the midnight entry of disgruntled scholars hell-bent on destruction.

Have you noticed that whenever schoolboys break into their schools at night they always destroy the musical instruments?

They always do. I wonder why that is.

My therapist says it is due to frustration caused by a lack of wish-fulfilment. I tell her that it is more likely a tradition, or an old charter, or something.

Mr Jenner, the music teacher, was evidently a student of human nature who well understood the schoolboy psyche. He kept the surviving ukuleles (once there had been a full brass section and two bass drums) under lock and key. Which is to say that they were locked in the ‘band room’ (the one with the skylight). But they were also locked inside a Cameo Mason Celebrated Percussion Safe. You don’t see many of those any more, but then they were all but impregnable.

As far as I know, only one boy in the long history of the school ever penetrated the band-room safe without Mr Jenner opening it up for him.