We didn’t eat all of the groupie.

We left the trotters and the snout.

I really took to New York, which, I learned, was so good they had named it twice. It was midsummer, but as this was New York, it was snowing heavily and folk were skating about on various outdoor ice rinks. All the women looked like Barbra Streisand and the blokes like Elliott Gould. Which meant very little to me, because I was English.

I had no idea just how much kudos being English held in America. Folk just ‘love that English accent’, and we were asked repeatedly whether we owned bowler hats and regularly had the Queen round to tea. Which was handy for Toby because, apparently, he did!

This was nineteen sixty-nine and New York was in the throes of a big Jewish craze. Being Jewish was the in thing and people who did not look even the remotest bit Jewish were adopting yarmulkes and Jewish accents, greeting each other with oy veys and catching gefilte fish. The year before it had been fashionable to be Irish. And in the early seventies you weren’t anyone in New York if you weren’t black and didn’t sport an afro. I don’t know what the present fashion is in New York, but I have heard talk of cross-dressing.

But as Jewish was the look, we trooped into a downtown boutique and got ourselves kitted out. Black. All black. Black suit, black coat, black shoes, black homburg. It was a really cool look, and we took it with us back to England and unwittingly started the Goth movement.

And there’s something about black, isn’t there? There’s really nothing cooler to wear than black. You can go anywhere in a black suit and folk will always show you respect. Because you will always look sophisticated. We didn’t wear black onstage in America, though, because after all, we had invented Glam Rock and we wanted the American public to appreciate our glamour. Before they got too deeply into our sophistication. We did have an ingrained natural sophistication, though, which is why we didn’t eat the snout, or the trotters.

Andy just loved New York. He acquired an all-black police uniform, augmented with silver trimmings and badge, and took to performing random stop-and-searches on young women and issuing on-the-spot fines for breaches of style. Andy adored New York, and in its turn New York, it appeared, loved Andy.

Neil loved New York also and hung around the recording studios, mixing with the big stars of the day. Rob checked out Madison Avenue, home of advertising, and found favour in all that he met with there.

Toby engaged in all manner of wheelings and dealings, some of which, I felt certain, had to be legal.

Which left only me.

And I suppose that I loved New York also, even though it was so cold. But I had so many things on my mind that I could not concentrate on looking cool and having a really good time.

This whole undead business was really getting me down. I just didn’t know what to make of it. I’d seen it with my own eyes – the zombies in the cemetery and the undead at the Hyde Park gig. And the knowledge that Shadow Night really existed at Club 27 meant that it was not just me, Mr Ishmael and the mysterious crew at the Ministry of Serendipity who knew about it. This thing was big and growing ever bigger.

What I didn’t know, but really wanted to know, was who or what was behind it. Was it some evil necromancer? Or a black magician, or perhaps the Homunculus himself? It was definitely a baddy of some big-time description. A super-baddy. And whether Mr Ishmael had been telling me all of the truth, or indeed any of it, I had no way of knowing.

So I really truly did want to talk to Mr Ishmael.

But Mr Ishmael was nowhere to be found.

I still had his telephone number – I’d found it in the lining of my mother’s trench coat – and I called several times, using the special trans-Atlantic prefix and everything. But there was no answer. And thinking about that scrap of paper and the trench coat had me feeling all nostalgic and gave me a crinkly mouth. I quite missed my mum and dad, and even though I was now a rock ’n’ roll star, on the way up with a glorious future ahead of me, I actually missed being a private detective.

And this line of thinking set me to thinking of something else. So to speak. And had this been an animated cartoon rather than real life, you would have seen, at this point, a little light bulb materialise above my head and frantically start flashing.

And the word ‘IDEA’ might even have appeared within it.

And there might also have been heard the sound of a bell ringing. Flash and Ding and IDEA. Just like that.

Because I was in New York. And New York was the home of the private detective. Los Angeles was too, of course. But not really. Los Angeles was the home of the private detective in the Hollywood movies, because the studios were all in Los Angeles and if they shot the movie in LA they didn’t have to travel, or pay the cast and crew’s hotel costs. Cheapskates!

But this was New York. And New York was the home of the private eye. In fact, the real Lazlo Woodbine lived and worked in New York. Or at least had, in the nineteen-fifties. P. P. Penrose based his Lazlo Woodbine thrillers on a real-life New York private eye and I wondered, just wondered, whether this fellow was still practising his craft. And if so, whether he might care to take on an English sidekick for a couple of weeks, at no charge to himself. It would be a dream come true for me, to work with the legend that was Woodbine. But hold on! Even better than that! Although the great Lazlo Woodbine might not take to some complete stranger (no matter whether or not he had experience in the field of Private Eyedom) trying to muscle in on his field of activity, he would never refuse a commission. Especially from a stylishly clad Englishman. If I were to offer him a job, then he would work for me. And how cool would that be?

Very cool, that’s how.

That little light bulb over my head grew burning, burning bright.

And popped.

I awoke early on what I recall was a Monday morning, dressed in modish black, stepped carefully between the bits of groupie that were scattered about my room and left the Pentecost Hotel.

I knew that Laz had his office somewhere in Manhattan and that he drank in a pub called Fangio’s Bar, where he regularly sat and chewed the fat with Fangio, the fat-boy barman. And talked the toot also. Because talking the toot was something that Laz and Fangio did in a manner that surpassed any other toot-talking, past, present or future. And if he was still in business, then he was bound to be in the telephone book.

Now, I’m sure you’ve noticed it in Hollywood movies, so I will not dwell upon it here, but isn’t it odd how all American telephone numbers begin with 555? What is that all about?

In a public phone booth, which didn’t have a door and looked very much like the record booths they had in the Squires Music shop in Ealing Broadway, I beheld a telephone book.

It had pages missing and smelled somewhat of wee wee – but the vandals who had been abusing it had not got as far as the classified section. And so I ran my finger down the list of private eyes.

And I saw him! Large as life!

Lazlo Woodbine Private Detective 2727 27th Street 555 272727

Result!

And just two blocks away. I could walk it.

And so I did. For those who don’t know New York, allow me to explain to you about it. New York divides itself into quarters. You have your Irish Quarter, your Latin Quarter, your Trinidadian Quarter and your Tierra del Fuego Quarter. And many many other quarters, all to do with commerce. These quarters are also called districts. So you have your Slaughterhouse District, Fashion District, Tiger’s Eye Pottery District, et cetera and et cetera. So, once you have a map of New York with all these quarters/districts marked upon it, you can’t go wrong. And at least you know where everything is. And there is a quarter for everything in New York.