by Heide Goody
Spartacus swiped and tapped his phone.
“Gran,” he said loudly. “It’s me. Mum’s told me to bring Bea over but I’m leaving her at the funeral place. The funeral place. Buford’s. I’ve got to deliver some flyers, but I’ve left Bea with Mr Clovenhoof for a bit and then I’m staying at Herbie’s. No, she’s not hungover. She’s going to Kenya. On holiday. Look, I’ve got to go and deliver these things.” Spartacus’s voice dropped to a sudden whisper. “Love you too.” He hung up.
“Right.” Clovenhoof pushed the pile of leaflets towards Spartacus.
“And?” said the boy.
“What?”
“A dead body.”
“Coming right up.”
Clovenhoof bent down, hoiked the cat off the floor by the scruff of its neck and held it up for the boy to see.
“Spartacus, meet Snarf. Snarf, Spartacus.”
“A real dead body!” said Spartacus.
“This is real. Deposited with me by Mrs Tompkins yesterday, who’s expecting an urn of precious cat dust later this afternoon. Real body. Real dead. You didn’t specify a species.”
Spartacus snorted.
“You truly are a complete cock,” he said, and left with the leaflets, slamming the door behind him.
“Wouldn’t want to be half a cock, would I?” said Clovenhoof.
In response to the slamming of the door, the baby started to cry, a few tentative wails at first, a little limbering up exercise, and then a full-throated howl. Clovenhoof scooted round the counter, pushed back the pram hood, and looked at the creature for the first time. Clovenhoof had very little experience with babies, either in this life or his former existence as Prince of Hell.
There were no babies in Hell. In the Good Old Days, babies had been sent to the nothingness of Limbo and, later, in the namby-pamby restructuring following the Reformation, all were transferred to Heaven. Babies could never go to Hell; they were deemed incapable of sin. Sure, there were demons with baby faces. In fact, the screwed up little face in the pram, all red, furious and open-mouthed, put Clovenhoof in mind of Beelzebub at the height of his demon wrath.
He’d had little need or reason to come into contact with babies on Earth. They didn’t hang out in pubs. They didn’t frequent the bookies. They had no money he could steal, borrow or con from them. They didn’t know any juicy gossip or dirty jokes. They were clearly without use or value.
They weren’t particularly attractive either. Their limbs were too pudgy and their heads were too big. This last attribute, Clovenhoof understood, was a deliberately cruel joke the Almighty had played on mothers in labour following that whole garden/apple/serpent business. He’d heard it said that all babies resembled Winston Churchill and Clovenhoof could see that, assuming that it referred to physical resemblance only and not, say, political opinions on Indian independence or the desire to carpet-bomb German cities.
The baby’s cry was something quite impressive. The high notes were clear and piercing, like a needle to the brain. Below, the throaty roar wasn’t particularly strong, but it had a tone of utter urgency to it that cried wordlessly, “Attend to me! Attend to me! The world is going to end if you don’t attend to me!”
Clovenhoof could have listened to it forever, but it was the kind of noise that drew attention in the hushed confines of a funeral directors.
“You need to stop now,” he told the baby.
The baby did no such thing.
“Right, listen. Bee… Beebee… Beelzebelle. You need to pipe down before someone comes in.”
The baby wailed on.
“Fine,” he said, pulled back the fleecy covers, dug his hands under her armpits, and lifted her out. She stopped crying immediately.
Baby Beelzebelle kicked and wriggled as he held her up.
“You’re not even working with me,” said Clovenhoof. “I’m putting all the effort in here.”
As he drew her close, all warm and squidgy, the baby reached up and grabbed onto his horns. Clovenhoof froze and thought on the matter.
“Hmmmm. Endearing behaviour or gross invasion of private space?”
The baby popped her lips, blinked, and pulled on his left horn.
Clovenhoof growled. The baby smiled and burbled.
“Let’s put you somewhere out of the way. I’ve got a cat cremation to fake before lunchtime.”
Clovenhoof went into the viewing room next door, dragging the pram with him. An unoccupied coffin rested on the panelled table. Forcibly unpeeling Beelzebelle’s grip on his horns, Clovenhoof laid her down in the cushioned satin interior.
He stepped back and looked at her. She looked at him.
“Can I get you anything while you wait?” he said. “Tea? Coffee?”
Beelzebelle gurgled and blew a spit bubble out of her mouth.
“Fine,” said Clovenhoof.
Ash theft was a fine art. Buford’s Funeral Directors had numerous clients’ ashes on the premises for short periods of time. These would be the source of Clovenhoof’s fake pet remains. He had weighed Snarf the cat and done his calculations, and planned to steal a teaspoonful from each urn, four and a half ounces of ash. This was a sneaky and laborious process and involved not only avoiding the attention of Manpreet Singh, his supervisor, but also humming his own ‘secret mission’ theme tune under his breath.
Mission completed, Clovenhoof returned to his back room and secured the ashes in a tin urn that had once been an under-13s netball trophy, just as the door chimed and a woman walked in. Clovenhoof looked her up and down, from her over-stretched lycra leggings to her gravity-defying hair. She peered at him with wide eyes, made all the wider by the thick eyeliner she wore and by the fact that she clearly needed glasses but was too vain to wear them.
“Over here, madam,” he said, waving at her from a distance of six feet.
She gave Clovenhoof a look.
“My grandson said I should come here,” she said. “That’s right. Grandson. Don’t look old enough, do I?”
She gave him a further look, an invitation to either agree or perhaps say something charming.
“Funeral plan, is it?” said Clovenhoof and pulled out a brochure from the rack.
“I don’t need a funeral plan,” she said.
“Ah, planning on being left out with the recycling, are you? Or doing a DIY job in the back garden? Very green.”
“What?” she scowled. “I’ve no intention of dying yet. How old do you think I am?”
“Seventy-three?”
“Spartacus said something about posting leaflets and me needing to come down here.”
Realisation dawned on Clovenhoof.
“Oh, Spartacus. Got ya.” He swapped the funeral brochure for one of his far jollier and much more cheaply printed animal cremation leaflets. “Gerbil. Tortoise. Guinea pig. You bring ’em, we burn ’em. Got a special on dogs this week.”
“I beg your pardon?” said the woman, her voice rising to a squeak.
“You do have pets, don’t you?” said Clovenhoof.
“I have tropical fish.”
“Hmmm. Never done fish before. They’d be quite soggy. Maybe if I batter them first…”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“No, madam,” he said. “This is the funeral industry. We’re not allowed to make jokes. You take that and give me a call when little Nemo dies.”
Spartacus’s grandma took the leaflet hesitantly.
“But he told me I had to come here. Something about his mum.”
“Yes,” said Clovenhoof helpfully. “She’s gone on holiday to Kenya because leopard print drives her boyfriend wild with desire.”
“Yes. That sounds about right,” said the woman faintly.
“Now, is there anything else I can help you with this morning?”
“Definitely not,” said the woman and left.
Clovenhoof smiled broadly. He liked helping members of the public. He also liked not helping members of the public. Most of all he liked to confuse members of the publi
c.
Clovenhoof went through to the viewing room and saw the baby asleep in the open coffin.
“Ah,” he said.
In an upstairs flat on Bush Road, Nerys Thomas woke up in the tangled sheets of an otherwise empty double bed and stared at the ceiling.
Here we are again, she thought to herself. How many different bedroom ceilings had she stared up over the years, her hungover brain awash with both a sense of shame and of minor sordid triumph? She used to keep a tally. She actually used to keep a dossier, a scrapbook of her sexual conquests, but she was past that phase. She sometimes posted on the Rate My Shag website, but that was mainly to help others.
From elsewhere in the flat came the sounds of breakfast being cooked, and of at least three tropical birds hooting and squawking at each other. Nerys rolled naked off the bed and groaned as the blood and the full force of the hangover rushed to her head. Maybe a fry-up would do her some good. Subjecting herself to the menagerie of pets and exotic creatures Ed kept around the house definitely wouldn’t.
“I’m getting too old for this.” She stumbled over discarded stilettos and a pair of jeans and, in the closed-curtained gloom, checked herself in the mirror above the bedroom sink. She was nothing if not critical. “Still looking perky though.”
She jiggled up and down and considered her best-loved attributes.
“Soon. Soon, I’ll be too old for this.”
Nerys heard a buzzing sound. She rooted through the debris on the bed, tossed aside tights, socks and bra, and found her mobile inside her screwed up leopard print dress.
“What do you want?” she said.
“How you doin’?” said Clovenhoof.
“I was fine until you rang,” she said. “Does Satan do wake-up calls now?”
“People call me Jeremy,” he said.
“People don’t know the real you,” she replied.
Nerys held the phone wedged between cheek and shoulder, and attempted to climb into her dress.
“Are you still at Animal Ed’s?” he asked.
Nerys froze.
“How did you know that?”
“I have ways and means.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Wouldn’t want to spoil the air of mystery?”
“No, just don’t give a shit.”
“You’re such a flirt. I’ve got something you might be interested in.”
“I’ve seen it before, Jeremy, and I wouldn’t touch it even if you cleaned it in bleach.”
“No. It’s something every woman wants.”
“What?”
There was a sharp knock, not at the door, but at the window – the first floor bedroom window. Frowning, Nerys adjusted her dress and pulled back the curtains. Clovenhoof grinned at her, his mobile phone to his ear.
She lifted the window sash.
“How the Hell…?”
She looked past him and down. Clovenhoof stood at the top of an extended ladder with its feet wedged into the gutter of Bush Road. Behind him, the slate-grey rooftops of suburban Sutton Coldfield stretched towards the distant motorway.
“Where did you get that from?”
“Number sixteen,” he said, nodding up the road. “They’re having new tiles.”
“The roofer will be furious when he comes back and sees his ladder is gone.”
“What do you mean ‘comes back’? He’s going nowhere. It’ll be fine.” Clovenhoof made to peer past her into the bedroom. “So, how was he? Animal by name, animal by nature?”
“It’s not like that,” Nerys replied.
“Oh?”
“Ed and I are going to go on holiday together. He suggested it last night. An all-expenses paid trip to Kenya. Flights leave this afternoon.”
“And so last night was just to…” Clovenhoof attempted some vulgar hand actions but wobbled precariously and had to grab hold of the ladder once more. “… to cement the deal?”
“Exactly.”
Clovenhoof nodded approvingly.
“A woman using her body to get material rewards.”
“Hey. I’m not a prostitute,” said Nerys.
“The word is entrepreneur,” Clovenhoof corrected.
Nerys really wasn’t sure if she should be offended.
“As an entrepreneur, you’ll have an eye for a bargain,” said Clovenhoof. “And have I got a bargain for you.”
He gestured downwards. Nerys leaned out the window to look. A chunky pink baby carriage stood on the pavement.
“You’ve stolen a pram? Oh, that’s low. Ladders is one thing but…” She fixed him with a glare. “Why would I want a pram? I don’t have a baby.”
“But that’s the beauty of the deal I’m offering,” said Clovenhoof. “Not only do you get the pram for the rock bottom price of five thousand pounds, but I’m also throwing in …”
He was interrupted by a shout from within the flat.
“What?” yelled Ed. “You can’t!”
Nerys looked the bedroom door and listened to her lover’s frantic words from the kitchen.
“I paid for those tickets!” he shouted at whoever was on the other end of the telephone. “They are mine and this is theft!”
Nerys began to shake her head. This did not sound good.
“Jesus Christ, Toyah, what have I done to deserve this treatment?” There was a very long pause. “Well, yes, but apart from that?” said Ed.
“I would suggest that your holiday to Kenya might be off,” said Clovenhoof cheerily. “No matter how much cementing of the deal you did last night.”
“It’s not my fault!” cried Ed. “She was wearing leopard print! Wait, Toyah! Wait!”
There was silence and then a stream of quiet swearing.
“Nerys?” called Ed. “Nerys, I’ve just got to pop out for a bit. You can let yourself out, can’t you?”
Keys jangled, feet clattered on stairs, a door slammed, and then silence. Nerys stood, stunned, in the musty pet-shop and sweat stink of Ed’s bedroom, wearing nothing but a tight dress and a gobsmacked expression.
“Now, about this pram…” said Clovenhoof.
Nerys whirled on him.
“Absolute bargain as I was saying,” he said.
“Jeremy.”
“Yes?”
“You can’t die, can you? You can’t even really be hurt.”
“True,” said Clovenhoof. “Those Heavenly gits fixed it that I couldn’t get back to Hell by just killi…”
As the pavement rushed up to meet him, Clovenhoof couldn’t help but admire the strength of a woman spurned.
Books ‘n’ Bobs, Ben Kitchen’s second-hand bookshop on Boldmere High Street, was the kind of shop that had almost no customers and only survived because of low rent, low capital outlay, and an owner who was willing to live on beans on toast nine meals out of ten. Whole days went by without a single customer.
So it was that when the door chimed and Ben was forced to drag his attention away from a battered copy of Christmas Stuffing: Make Your Own Nativity Scene From Roadkill, it was with the air of one who has been rudely interrupted.
It was Jeremy Clovenhoof, sporting a livid graze on his face and wheeling a pink pram ahead of him. Ben grunted in greeting and flicked a pointing finger between Clovenhoof’s face and his own.
“Snap.”
Clovenhoof looked at the scratches that covered Ben’s face.
“Head-butted a pavement. You?”
“You know those Canada geese in Sutton Park I was going to kill and mount?”
“Mmmm.”
“Turns out that they have strong opinions on being picked up by amateur taxidermists. And did you know that webbed feet could have claws too? I did not know that either ’til today.”
“Cheer up,” said Clovenhoof, and pulled out a carrier bag and deposited it on the counter. “Brought you a little something.”
Ben peered inside the bag.
“Cat. Neat. Thanks.”
“Always happy to help a mate. That’ll be twenty qu
id.”
Ben grimaced and patted pretend pockets.
“Bit low on funds at the moment. Been trying to entice customers in with my new window display.”
“Ah. The window display,” said Clovenhoof.
Ben had decided to merge his new taxidermist interest with his work, and created a decorative diorama in the window. Stuffed stoats, squirrels, moles and a solitary badger were arranged in a homey little scene, several with tiny books in their paws.
“What’s it supposed to be?” said Clovenhoof.
“What?” said Ben, surprised and somewhat offended. “They’re all enjoying their books, aren’t they? Perhaps they’re on a picnic or a school outing. And all those little ones are listening to wise old badger read his stories.”
“And why are their eyes pointing in different directions?”
“Eyes are difficult.”
“And the badger with his mouth wide open?”
“He’s reading. Quite a few of my customers look like that when they’re reading.”
“And that white stuff pouring out of his ears and nose?”
“Some of the tapioca stuffing has escaped. I’ll clean it up.”
Clovenhoof nodded.
“Because, to be honest – and I’m nothing but honest …”
“Err, no.”
“It looks like a bunch of riverbank crackheads trying to fund their habit by robbing a bookshop. Stoaty-boy there, high as a kite, is going to fence that copy of Barbara Cartland to buy his next fix.”
“But look at all the little ones gathered round badger.”
“Clearly, the Fagin figure,” said Clovenhoof. “Except their poor old leader has found one of them ancient magical texts that drives you insane. All his brains are oozing out and, at any moment, he’s going to go mad and eat all the tiny rodent junkies. It’s smashing!”
“You’re rude, Jeremy.”
“I’m just speaking the truth as I find it. I think they could be of great use though, for frightening burglars away. I wouldn’t want to break in here and find those things facing me.” Clovenhoof looked round. “Not that there’s anything worth stealing in here anyway.”