Free The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag by Robert Rankin Page A

much like everybody other than
himself.
    Which
made him quite hard to describe, really.
    But he was different.
    And the
difference was all on the inside.
    Billy
Barnes was a regular boffin. He was, quite simply, the brightest kid in the
class. In the school, probably. But he kept it mostly to himself. Once in a
while it bubbled right up, as in the notorious ‘man walks into the desert’
affair, which earned him considerable contempt and cut him right out from the
herd for a while. But he was soon back, strictly low-profile, blending in with
the rest and not looking out of place.
    He was
a subtle manipulator, Billy. Always up to something, but no-one knew quite
what.
    He was
different, you see.
    And he
always had ‘business elsewhere’.
    There
are now well over one hundred Billy Barnes web sites. These range from the
official World Leader corporate pages that list Billy’s business interests as
resource management, social engineering and off-world development, to the Unofficial
Conspiracy pages that have Billy down as the sole cause of all the world’s
ills.
    Today
the face of Billy Barnes is the best-known face on the planet, but you’d still
find it hard to pick it out from an identity parade.
    Exactly
how Billy rose to his exalted position of ultimate controller has never been
satisfactorily explained or fully chronicled before. Rumour has it that an
unofficial biography, exposing Billy as an arch criminal, depraved pornographer
and all-round bad egg, was withdrawn before publication and destroyed in the
great Health Purge of 2001, along with all other books, newspapers and printed
material. But that is only a rumour and the man who spread it is long dead,
cut down cruelly in a freak accident involving handcuffs and an electric drill.
    So what
do we really know about Billy?
    Well,
not a lot.
    We do
know that at the age of twenty-three he went missing and that ten years later,
at the age of thirty-three (which may or may not be a significant age), he
reappeared and swiftly took control of just about everything.
    But
there’s an awful lot of unanswered questions. It is interesting that those who
knew him at school remember him only as the boy who answered the ‘man walks
into the desert’ question and for very little else. It is to be noted that all
the great prophets have their missing years, and that each of them walked into
a desert. Entering as a man, but returning as a son of God.
    So what
went on with Billy?
    Well,
let’s go back and see.
     
    If you enter the village
of Bramfield from the end where the common is, turn right at the mini-roundabout
that everyone drives straight across, pass the restaurant that is always
changing hands, the off-licence run by the fat bloke with the earring, and the
newsagent’s where they sell the dreary greetings cards, you will come to the
war memorial.
    It’s
only a very small war memorial, because it was built by public subscription and
the public weren’t too giving, but it’s there all right if you’re prepared to
look hard enough. And if you do look hard enough and you take the left where
you find it, you’ll find yourself in the lane where Billy lived.
    There
is no road sign on this lane. The elders of Bramfield felt that the name of
this lane was not in the best possible taste, so they had the road sign taken
down. The name of this lane is Colin Regis Lane.
    As you
may know, the word Regis is tacked onto the name of a town to signify that some
old king or queen of times past slept there and liked it very much, as in Lyme
Regis or Bognor Regis. Exactly who Cohn was is now anyone’s guess, but he was
obviously someone who caught the royal fancy.
    Moving
along this lane you will pass several fine-looking Georgian houses on the
right. There is Lugger’s View, where Tim lives. Stoker’s Folly, where Tom
lives. Barnet Villa, where Nick resides. And Colin’s End, which is presently
unoccupied.
    Moving
further- along you will come to the allotments, and presently, the