The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag

'˜And did you?'

'˜Oh yes, I did.'

'˜And did he take you to London?'

'˜Oh no, he didn't.'

'˜Go on then, tell me what happened.'

'˜Well, I see him coming and I stick out my thumb and hold up my piece of cardboard. He stops and calls, 'њLondon?'ќ through the open window. 'њYes,'ќ I say. 'њHop in,'ќ he says. And off we go. The VW Camper is pretty knackered up inside and the driver doesn't say much, he's very gaunt and pale and he doesn't smell too good. 'њCan you take me all the way to London?'ќ I ask. 'њCertainly,'ќ he says. 'њThat's where I'm going. Go up there every day at this time.'ќ I ask what line of business he's in and he says 'њrecycling'ќ.

'˜'њRecycling what?'ќ I ask.

'˜'˜Waste,'ќ he says.

'˜And we're about twenty minutes into our journey when he says, ,,I have to make a slight detour here to drop something off. You don't mind, do you?'ќ And I say 'њNo, I don't mind, what do you have to drop off?'ќ And he says 'њJust a letter.'ќ And I notice, in the back, he has a big carton of sealed envelopes. He takes a turning off the A23 and we go along some country lanes, then he turns up this farm track and we drive into this broken down old farmyard. He pulls up, reaches over his shoulder and takes one of the envelopes. 'њDo me a favour,'ќ he says. 'њTake this to the farmhouse. Knock at the door, and if no-one answers, put it inside on the hall table.'ќ I say, 'њNo problem.'ќ I take the envelope and off I go.

'˜The farmhouse is about thirty yards away, and I glance back over my shoulder a couple of times and notice that the driver is watching me very intently. I knock at the door and I wait. Then I hear this dog barking and look back and see a great big dog snapping at the VW. The driver is momentarily distracted, so I duck down behind some old corrugated iron and wait to see what will happen next. The driver shouts at the dog, and the dog ambles off. The driver looks back in my direction. He can't see me, smiles, turns the VW around and drives away.'

'˜This is all bloody odd,' I said.

'˜Bloody odd,' said the mendicant. '˜And bloody suspicious. So I decide to take a look around. No-one has answered my knock at the front door and the place seems deserted so I slip round to the back of the house to see what might be seen. And the first thing I see is the first mountain.'

'˜The first mountain?'

'˜About ten feet high. Hundreds of pieces of mouldy cardboard, thousands in fact. The ones at the bottom of the mound look ancient, the ones at the top a lot newer. These have all got something written on them. The same something. A single word. London.'

'˜London?'

'˜And then I see the second mountain. A mountain of rucksacks and sleeping bags.'

'˜Good God,' I said.

'˜Good God is right. I go back to the front of the house and I'm wondering what to do. I figure I'll push open the front door a couple of inches and take a careful peep inside. And I'm just doing this when the big dog attacks me. It comes rushing up out of nowhere and it leaps at my throat. I duck out of the way and the dog hits the front door, knocking it wide open. As I roll over I see the dog land in the hall, and as its feet hit the floor the floor tilts like a trap door and there's this terrible sound of whirling machinery. And I just catch a glimpse of the dog as it vanishes into all these thrashing blades, howling hideously, before the floor swings back up into place, the front door closes and all goes very quiet indeed.'

'˜Holy shit!' I said.

The mendicant finished his second pint. '˜'њRecycling'ќ,' he said, '˜that's what the driver called it. 'њRecycling waste'ќ. 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. AgouГ©, god of the sea. Loco, god of the forest, Ogoun Badagris, the dreadful and bloody one, and MaГ®tresse EzilГ©e, an incarnation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.'

'˜And the handbag was hers originally?'

'˜MaГ®tresse EzilГ©e'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 it's important that you get it back?'

'˜More important than anything else in the world. You see, the bag holds power, great power. When I said that you can use it to travel from one place to another, I didn't mean ordinary places. The bag allows you to travel between the worlds of the living and the dead. To enter the spirit world and return safely.'