‘I will get the equipment back,’ I said. ‘I really will, I promise.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Ishmael, lowering his cane and placing both hands upon its handle. ‘You have formulated a plan. Most enterprising. Share this plan with me this minute and I will see whether it needs any necessary adjustments.’

‘I have no plan, as such,’ I said and I made a sulky face. ‘But I will get our stuff back. I really, truly will.’

Mr Ishmael leaned his cane against the fireplace. He picked up the larger pieces of the clock and returned them to the mantel shelf, and he righted the Peerage fireplace companion set that was fashioned from brass and resembled a galleon in full sail. And he returned the visitors’ chair to its legs and sat himself down on it.

And then he sighed. And it was a real deep heartfelt belter of a sigh.

‘I should have been expecting this,’ he said. ‘I got careless.’

I shook my head and I shrugged a little, too.

‘I thought I had it all sussed out this time, picking a bunch of complete no-marks. It all seemed so simple. But that was because it was simple. Too simple.’

I sat down on the Persian pouffe, which had, at least, avoided attack. ‘Pardon me, sir,’ I said, ‘But I do not believe that I know what you are talking about.’

‘Well, of course you do not. The beauty of this was that had it all worked out, you and your companions would have prospered and probably never ever have needed to know what it was all about.’

Which left me none the wiser, I can tell you.

‘I will just have to start all over again,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘In another country. Probably the Holy Land. I should have set this up there in the first place. There is no other way for it.’

‘Now, hold on,’ I said. ‘Are you saying that you aren’t going to manage us any more?’

‘What is there to manage?’

‘Oh no, hold on, please.’

‘I must go,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘I have wasted far too much time on this already.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Stop. You promised to make us rich and famous. And we signed your contract. In blood! And at midnight, and down at the crossroads. And I know what that means.’

‘No you don’t,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘You have no idea what it means. And now you will never know.’

‘But I must,’ I said. And I was getting frantic. Clearly something was going on, something big. And for a moment, and unconsciously, we Sumerian Kynges had been part of this something. But now we were about to be discarded. Cast down from being part of this something. And it was all, it appeared, my fault.

‘No!’ I said. And I said it very loudly. ‘You can’t just leave us. I will get things sorted, I really really promise. I’ve been out of work since I left school, you see, because I couldn’t make up my mind about what job I wanted. And I did think that as I was going to get rich as a musician that I didn’t really need a proper job. But now I know, I do know. I will become a private investigator. And my first case will be to recover The Sumerian Kynges’ stolen equipment.’

Mr Ishmael groaned at this. It was a groan combined with a sigh and it was not a pleasant thing to listen to. Plaintive, it was. Heartfelt.

‘Don’t doubt me,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever doubt me.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘Assertiveness. This is somewhat unexpected. ’

‘Tell me what all this is about,’ I said.

Mr Ishmael shook his head. ‘I cannot.’

‘But perhaps I could help. In fact, I will definitely help. I promise that I will.’

‘You are making a lot of promises.’

‘Because I care,’ I said. ‘Because this matters to me. I want the band to be a success. I accept that this mess is of my making. I’m taking the blame and I will make amends. And I promise that, too.’

And Mr Ishmael smiled. Which I found quite a relief.

‘You are a good boy,’ said Mr Ishmael. As indeed my mother had said upon many occasions past. ‘And I will tell you what – I will make a personal deal with you.’

‘Not more blood on the contract,’ I said.

‘No.’ And now Mr Ishmael laughed. ‘I will do this deal with you: if you can locate the stolen goods – you only have to locate them, that is all, and tell me where they are, and I will recover them – but if you can locate them successfully, then I will tell you everything. It will rock your world, as they say. And you might well wish that you had never been told.

‘But I have faith in you, Tyler. Yes, I do. And so if you locate the equipment, you will have proved yourself to me, and in return I will divulge a mighty secret. The mighty secret, regarding Mankind, its history and its future. And the part you can play in moulding this future.’

And with that said, he rose from the visitors’ chair with consummate dignity, extended his right hand for me to shake, which I did, gave me a card with his telephone number on it and then took his leave of our house.

And the pieces of the mantel clock that had been returned to the mantel shelf managed a rather faltering tick-tock-tick, and I took to wondering just what I was getting myself into.

And just as I had come to the conclusion that it was probably something absolutely wonderful and that I was going to be exalted amongst men for involving myself in it-

The clock stopped.

Dead.

You surely must know of Hugo Rune, and of his acolyte, Rizla.

Rune was a mystic and master of the arts magical who engaged, in the early nineteen-sixties, in an adventure involving twelve ‘carriage-way constellations’, zodiac figures formed from the layouts of streets in Brighton. These exploits were recorded in a number-one world bestseller, The Brightonomicon, which was translated into twenty-seven languages, became an iconic radio series and then a Hollywood movie, notable for the plethora of Academy Awards that were heaped upon the director and cast.

Well, I suppose that I must have thought, when Mr Ishmael spoke of revealing certain mighty secrets to me, that I might be entering into a kind of partnership with him that would resemble the one that Rizla had entered into with Rune.

But no.

Things couldn’t possibly have been more different. The more I think about it, the fewer the parallels become. In fact they are less than few, being less than one, which is none.

So to speak.

And, for a start off, I was going to be on my own for my first case. No gurus’ guru to inspire me. This was going to be my gig. And I felt slightly worried as to this.

I loved the idea of being a private investigator, of course. It was such a glamorous profession. One would be forever rubbing shoulders with supermodels and movie stars and members of the aristocracy.

And then there were the outfits. The snap-brimmed fedora, and the trench coat with the belt that you tied, and never buckled. For to buckle that belt would be uncool. And then there was the tweed suit. All professional private eyes owned a tweed suit. Private eyes donned the tweed suit when they wanted to disguise themselves. As newspaper reporters. It was an infallible disguise, and one that the world’s greatest fictional nineteen-fifties genre detective, Lazlo Woodbine, had used to great effect upon many notable occasions.

Whilst solving cases that involved rubbing shoulders with supermodels and movie stars and members of the aristocracy.

I couldn’t wait to get at it. I was inspired.

But I would need a trench coat. And a fedora.

And a gun.

Private eyes always carried a gun: the trusty Smith & Wesson. I would certainly need one of those. For the final rooftop confrontation with the villain that always ended with shots ringing out and him taking the big fall to oblivion.

I just couldn’t wait!

‘Mum,’ I said to my mum at lunchtime that self-same day and over lunch, ‘you have a trench coat, don’t you?’

My mother balanced a parsnip delicately upon her fork. ‘I did,’ she said, ‘but I don’t have one now.’