So I had been adopted and my real father, the man who had sired me, was Harrison Dextrose. Yet to gaze upon him now… Were there anything active left in those aged
walnuts, I imagined a lonely sperm wheezing on a fag, shouting obscenities to itself at some sort of ball-bag bus stop.

The imagery made me bring up a small amount of sick.

Still I should have been delighted. My father – a renowned explorer! For 15 years I had lapped up the exploits in his book,
The Lost Incompetent: A Bible for the Inept Traveller
.
Those exploits were the reason I was here, in this tired and tatty bar in a rainforest, many miles from what less adventurous souls might term ‘civilisation’. Dextrose’s seedy,
rampant, exotic travels had seemed such an antidote to my suburban lethargy that I had been drawn to follow in his footsteps, only to chance upon the great man himself at my journey’s
end.

I should have been delighted. But I wasn’t.

The star of
The Lost Incompetent
slumped before me in Gossips was a mess. Flushed and decaying, beaten by the booze. He had once explored foreign lands and their womenfolk as diligently
as my fingers had explored the crevices of crisp packets – but no longer. How could he have fallen so far down? His dark grey hair and beard, silver-streaked, were so much tumbleweed. His
vast gut seeped like lava from beneath a khaki shirt, buttons stretched to near pinging point, and hung down over a pair of pink velour tracksuit bottoms. He wore a tweed overcoat – in a
jungle – that was torn and interestingly stained.

And there he existed, barely, making indiscernible noises as his eyelids flickered and froth gathered at the corners of his mouth.

My so-called father.

There had to be some mistake.

The owner of the Mlwlw nightspot was one Livingstone Quench, a friend of Dextrose’s since way back when. I called to him as he mock-beavered behind his bar, my thoughts spinning like
smalls in a tumble-dryer.

“Mr Quench? Could you help me, please?”

He smiled. “Yes, son?” And came over to our table.

Quench was not remotely the alcoholic landlord I might have expected. He wore an old dinner suit with bare feet. His skin was absurdly tanned and his face deeply lined, in the manner of one who
laughs easily. His long, whitening hair was pulled back into a ponytail and his nose was splattered against his face, as if he had once boxed, or sleep-walked into an elephant. He was burly and
toned: a presence, despite his advancing years.

“’Ow can I ’elp?” he asked, gravel-voiced.

When he had pulled up a chair, I explained about the photographs.

Barely 15 minutes ago I had entered Gossips as Alexander Grey, son of the middle-England Greys of Glibley – or so I had believed. The only other customer in the bar had turned out to be,
to my amazement, Harrison Dextrose, holed up with his old mucker in the middle of nowhere. Sozzled and morose, he had lurched at me clutching two battered, browning photographs from his wallet: one
depicted his wife in a headscarf, gaily clinging to the mast of a yacht; the other, his baby son, bawling, adopted shortly after the shutter had clicked.

Down to the dust flecks from the lens, the latter picture matched the one I carried around in my own wallet. Dextrose’s adopted son and I were one and the same.

What was it he had exclaimed?

“Me son! Pilsbury! I found him!” As if he had put in the legwork.

Which made me Pilsbury Dextrose, which would take some getting used to, and one third of the Dextrose family, a wandering cock-up. It was all rather much to take in.

(Concerning the poor woman in the headscarf, Dextrose had mentioned in passing that he’d lost her while exploring and that her whereabouts remained a mystery.)

Yet at no point during my recounting of the tale did Quench look perplexed.

“You don’t seem surprised,” I said.

He shrugged. Big shoulders. “Why would I? The way ’e put it abaht – back in the day when it worked – I’m surprised there ain’t more of you!” Quench
winked. “’E’s shown me that photo before, a few times. When ’e gets really drunk and mitherin’. ’Ere, show me yours, son.”

I pulled out my dog-eared old snap and handed it to him.

“Yep, one and the same,” he said. “And, y’know,” he went on, peering at me keenly, “I reckon I can see the family resemblance. Same eyes, same
nose.”

I glanced at Dextrose’s nose, pock-marked, crimson and bulbous, the overripe strawberry that everyone leaves in the punnet. As I did so, his right nostril blew a bubble of snot that might
fascinate a small child.

Quench must have caught me grimacing. “Well, maybe not the nose,” he chuckled. “But why not? Every lad’s someone’s son an’ plenty of folks ’ave been
adopted. Stranger fings used to ’appen in
Dynasty
, right?”

Barroom logic, it made some sort of sense.

“Did he ever say why his son… why I had been adopted?”

“Not that I recall.” He pondered for a moment. “Nah, sorry. Anyway, when ’e gets in that sort o’ state ’e generally talks a load o’ shite.”

“You really think I’m his son, Mr Quench?” Could it really be true?

He put his hand, twice the size of mine and extensively signet-ringed, on my knee. “Yep. An’ call me Livingstone, son. Reckon it calls for a celebration, don’chew?
Beer?”

“YES! BEER!” barked Dextrose, waking up.

I considered engaging this new father figure in conversation while we sat there, just the two of us, but could not begin to think where to start. He avoided my gaze, possibly on purpose, and I
wondered whether he had forgotten who I was.

It was a relief when the barkeep returned clutching three bottles in one mitt, placing them on the table. Dextrose grabbed the nearest and upended it into his gob, then did the same with mine
before I could snatch it away.

Quench raised an eyebrow and passed me his. “So,” he said. “’Appy families at last!”

As far as I could tell, he wasn’t being ironic.

He held up a finger. “Although, I s’pose, you’d really need ’is missus ’ere to be a proper ’appy family.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I replied distractedly, still suffering from the swirling smalls.

“Yeah,
course
!” averred Quench, apparently having made up his mind.

“Well, I have only just found my…” – Dextrose was excavating his nose with a pinky – “father.”

Quench eyed me less than benevolently. “What, you’re prepared to leave ’er aht there,
somewhere
? Now you’ve found ’im, you’re not goin’ to find
’er as well?”

In that moment, with his wonky conk and watery, piercing eyes, he looked like an East End gangster (who are notoriously loyal to their mothers). Indeed, thinking about it, nowhere in
The Lost
Incompetent
had it mentioned what Livingstone Quench did for a living, though he had never seemed short of a bob or two.

I was torn between fear and indignation; that Mrs Dextrose was missing was hardly my fault. “It’s all a bit sudden…”

Quench cut me dead and leaned in. “Nah listen ’ere, son. I’ve been tryin’ to get ’Arry ’ere off ’is arse to find the old girl for a while nah. But look
at ’im. ’E ain’t up to it! ’E couldn’t find a bird in a… bird zoo. But you. Strapping young lad like you…”

Quench was staring at me. Even Dextrose was trying similarly to focus his gaze.

“Well. I…”

The barkeep slapped my back, causing me to go “Oof”, and announced: “Good! That’s sorted then!”

Was it? “But…”

“More beer!” cried Dad.

Dextrose’s appraisal of his wife’s situation had been succinct: “Minking
¹lost her!” That was it. No place names, no
directions, not even a description. Hardly food for thought for the budding Holmes.

Still, buoyed by Quench’s forthrightness – or too timid too demur – when he returned with refills I decided to show willing. “Any idea where she is, Mr Quench?”

“I told you, son, call me Livingstone. You don’t fink I’ve asked before? ’Ere, watch…” He patted the table in front of him. “Oi, ’Arry, what
’appened to the missus? Where’d’you lose ’er?”

“Only ever minked her once!” Dextrose slurred, then tried to wink but managed more of a disturbed squint.

“Couldn’t she have just made her own way home?” I asked.

“You’d ’ave fort so. But no. ’Arry’s got some special explorer’s passport – gets ’im frew dodgy borders, stuff like that – an’
’e put her on that. Mrs D don’t have no normal passport, son. So she can’t go nowhere wivaht ’im. She, as they say, is right royally stuffed.”

“Right. Oh dear.”

“Y’see what I’m sayin’.”

He then spoke to Dextrose, enunciating slowly, as if to a visiting foreigner. “Your boy ’ere is gonna ’elp you find your missus, ’Arry. So you need to ’elp
’im aht. One more time, for old time’s sake: Where. Did. You. Last. See. ’Er?”

Dextrose seemed suddenly to notice me. “Who’s this nod-cock?” he sneered.

We were getting nowhere.

From what I’d read, Quench had opened the ‘wine bar’ (I’d seen no sign of the grape) having done a runner from England some decades hence. Why Dextrose had returned here
– and how long ago – I did not know.

“How long’s he been here?” I asked Quench.

The lapsed explorer had once again fallen asleep, mid-interrogation, and a slime-trail of drool was snaking its way down the bird’s nest that passed for his beard.

“You mean ’ow long’s ’e been sat there today, or ’ow long since ’e arrived ’ere in Gossips?”

“Since he arrived in Gossips.”

The barkeep looked around, as if that might jog his memory, and whistled. “Couple o’ weeks? Could be more. Time flies in a place like this, y’know?”

I could imagine. “But you haven’t seen anything of Mrs Dextrose?”

“Not a sausage.”

I asked him when Dextrose realised she was missing.

“When I said to ’im, ‘Where’s the missus?’ and ’e looks startled and goes, ‘Not a minking clue!’ and starts lookin’ under the
tables.”

“And when was that?”

“Not long after ’e got ’ere.”

“So she could be absolutely anywhere!”

“Don’t give up so easy, son. Livingstone Quench ’as a cunning plan!”

He repaired behind his bar, clinked around among glass and reappeared clutching a bottle shaped into the form of a horned devil’s head, containing a liquid the colour of blood. Six inches
high, it bore no labelling of any kind.

“I’ve ’ad this for years,” he said. “Never used it before.”

“What is it?”

The local shaman had given it to him, he said, in return for a favour (on which he declined to elaborate). “’E called it demon juice, told me it ’ad magic powers.” Quench
leaned in close. “Told me it works like a troof serum, y’know, taps into the soul? Like good old-fashioned torture, but wivaht the pain! Might just ’elp old ’Arry ’ere
to remember.”

He handed me the bottle. The liquid was viscous and clung to the insides of the horns. There was a small cork stopper in the top of the head. The devil leered.

“It looks toxic,” I pointed out.

“Shaman reckoned it might work if you jus’ blew the vapours over someone. ’E reckoned only the well stubborn’d need to actually drink some of the muck.”

We looked at each other pointedly.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

He took the demon juice off me and removed his dinner jacket. “We should at least try just blowin’ it over ’im first.”

I heard a quiet ‘sqnk’ as the bar owner eased the cork from the top of the bottle. A cloud of russet vapour rose instantly from the open neck, reminding me of bromine experiments in
school chemistry lessons. It lingered, swirling, like a genie.

Quench held the bottle close to the slumbering Dextrose’s face and blew.

The effect was instantaneous. My biological father lurched upright in his seat, eyes filled with unseemly desire, and lunged at the brew.

BOOK: Looking for Mrs Dextrose

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