by Heide Goody
“I think the evidence points to the exact opposite being true,” said Ben.
“Nah, hear me out,” said Clovenhoof, signalling Lennox to get another round in. “You need cash. I need to get Little Miss Tax Compliance off my back. I’m the one with the business smarts. You two are people people.”
“I’m a people person,” said Nerys.
“I know people,” said Ben.
“You’re a miniature wargamer,” she said. “Those are not real people.”
“Talk to the Shah woman. I’ll get your cash,” said Clovenhoof. “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Speaking of which…” He looked at the foil boxes on the scratch card in his hand. “Um, do either of you have a coin?”
CHAPTER NINE
The party of demons, angels and blessed dead walking through the Celestial City towards the Heavenly Moral Records Centre drew an understandable number of gasps and looks from the general populace. Thomas Aquinas’s reassurances that it was only ‘a pair of foul creatures from the Bottomless Pit’ were surprisingly ineffective.
As they walked, Joan inspected one of the heavenly bank notes she still carried. The intricacy of the note’s design was beguiling. All those finely executed swirls of green ink encouraged one to think of it as a thing of value and meaning, a thing to be respected, loved and accumulated. Joan hated it. But she couldn’t put it away.
“Do you have money in Hell?” she said.
“What would we spend it on?” said Rutspud, pointing the sin detector in different directions as he walked.
Joan spotted a familiar sight ahead.
“Scan him.”
“Who?”
“Him.”
“Which one?”
“The one with the sign that says ‘Gin and Whores’.”
“Ah. Okay.”
Rutspud ran up to the man and waved his detector wand.
“Oi, oi, mate,” said the Gin and Whores man. “How’s tricks? Don’t see many of your type around here.”
“I’m a demon,” said Rutspud, concentrating on the device readings.
“I think you’ll find you’re a discerning customer, mate. Perchance I can interest you in some gin or whores?”
“Whores…” said Rutspud. “Remind me?”
“Priceless. You a young man of the world and not knowing what whores is. The ones I can interest you in are the sweetest bit of totty in this corner of the afterlife. Women? Girls?”
“He’s asking if you’d like to have sexual congress with women,” explained Joan. “In exchange for money, of course.”
“Oh, I see,” said Rutspud, clearly giving some thought. “It’s really not my thing but…” He looked at the man. “How much are you willing to pay me?”
The man was mentally thrown and momentarily speechless. Rutspud showed the detector readouts to Joan. They meant nothing to her.
“He’s clean,” said Rutspud.
“Clean?”
“Sinless.”
Joan’s opinion of Hell’s technology took a nosedive. “He just tried to sell you sexual favours. Prostitution. Fornication.”
“And it scores zilch,” said the diminutive demon.
“That’s just strange,” said Joan.
“Says the woman expecting to find sinners in the Celestial City.”
The pair of them hurried to catch up with Gabriel, Thomas and Belphegor who had reached the steps of the Moral Records Centre.
“We will find the truth here,” said Gabriel. “We keep meticulous records on every individual in creation. Every sin, every virtuous act.”
Belphegor’s wheelchair gave a smoke-spewing roar of acceleration and powered up the steps to the door.
“That’s a lot of sins to record,” he said.
“They are a busy department indeed,” said Gabriel, holding the door open for them all to enter.
The space inside was bigger than the building outside could possibly accommodate. Beneath a circular glass dome that let in the golden light of Heaven’s glory, vast rows of shelves filled a hall larger than any cathedral on earth. Next to Joan, Rutspud put his head back to take in the towering wooden shelves of scrolls and tomes and only stopped when he got a crick in his neck. Angel workers fluttered between shelves, their arms weighed heavily with manuscripts.
“The recording angels,” said Gabriel. “Recording the good and the bad and submitting souls to psychostasia.”
Two flying angels approached an industrial-sized set of brass scales hanging from the ceiling by an anchor chain. The angels each deposited their loads in opposing scales and a metal needle the size of a church spire, wobbled left then right.
“And another soul is granted entrance to the Celestial City,” said Gabriel happily, “after some minor purgatorial cleansing. A little scrub up.”
“Yes, yes, lovely,” said Belphegor. “All delightfully metaphorical and symbolic. I was expecting something a little more precise.”
“The devils are all about the details,” said Thomas, critically.
“We are fond of actual facts, yes,” said Belphegor.
“Then you’ll be delighted to discover that one of our brightest and best is helping us make a transition to the digital age,” said Gabriel.
A bearded saint dressed in huntsman’s garb and a red felt hat bounded out from between the shelves with an almighty and very self-satisfied “Booyah!” of greeting.
“May I introduce St Hubertus,” said Gabriel.
The huntsman gave the archangel a slap on the back that sent his halo spinning.
“The jägermeister is in the house!” grinned Hubertus. “High fives for all!”
The man then did a quick circuit of the group, giving each individual a hearty high-five, apart from Thomas Aquinas who refused and got a playful cheek slap instead. Belphegor held out his hand but was given special treatment. Hubertus gave the demon lord’s stomach a speedy and impertinent mini-massage.
“Belly-Belly-Belphegor. How’s it hanging, dude?” He turned to the others. “This guy. This guy! We go way back.”
“Sadly,” said Belphegor.
“Worked on some crossover projects together. This demon works hard but he plays hard too. Huh? Huh? Am I right?”
“I’ve genuinely no idea what he’s talking about,” said Belphegor dourly and Hubertus apparently found this uproariously funny. He even held his stomach with both hands as he laughed which, in Joan’s experience, was something no real person actually did.
“Hubertus…” began Gabriel but was cut off by another halo-dislodging backslap.
“You’ve come to see sin central, right?” said the ever-cheerful saint. “The inner sanctum through which every dirty little deed passes? Right? Yeah!”
A deer with a glowing crucifix between its antlers had appeared behind Hubertus.
“Hirsch-baby,” said Hubertus, “get a round of drinks in for our guests.”
The deer bleated questioningly.
“A round of shots for starters,” said Hubertus. “Then let’s see where the mood takes us.”
The deer galloped off.
Grinning, Hubertus waved everyone towards a set of descending stairs. “Come into my lair, meine Gäste.”
As the group followed, Rutspud sidled up to Joan.
“Okay, I’ve got some questions about that guy,” he said. “Starting with ‘what?’ and moving onto ‘seriously, what?’”
“Hubertus is one of various patron saints of hunting,” she explained.
“I got that.”
“Hirsch. That’s the holy deer that turned him to the faith. Hirsch gets around a bit. Does a lot of good work.”
“Fair enough. And he’s in charge of this place because…?”
“He’s also patron saint of accountants and mathematicians.”
“Right. But the wonderful but probably quite-soon-to-be very irritating frat boy attitude? That’s…?”
“Yes, well, that’s a recent thing,” said Joan. “An alcoholic drink manufacturer d
ecided to use some of Hubertus’s iconography on its bottles.”
“A party drink, yeah?”
“That is the odd thing,” Joan conceded. “It’s a digestif, made from herbs and spices. The kind of thing working class German grandads would have to settle their stomach. And then bizarrely, overnight, every party hound and student boozer is downing them like they’re the hippest thing in creation.”
“A bit of saintly intercession?” suggested Rutspud, nodding towards the strutting saint.
“Maybe,” said Joan. “There’s no other rational explanation.”
They had descended into a modern office space. Computer screens dominated the walls. As lights automatically came on, Hubertus tapped a touch screen.
“Voice ident required,” said a mellifluous computer voice.
“Jägerbomb!” growled the saint raucously.
“Ident accepted.”
A broad translucent screen came to life in front of Hubertus. He slipped his hand into something a bit like a glove or more like the skeleton a dead glove would leave behind if gloves had skeletons. He bunched his fingers and flung them out and a universe of data exploded across a score of screens in fire reds, goblin greens and neon blues.
“Magic,” said Joan.
“Augmented reality gear,” said Rutspud. “And I thought Hell had all the best tech. Actually, some of this looks like Hell technology…”
Graphs and records flew about the room like educated disco lights.
“You have questions, dear guests,” said Hubertus. “And I have all the answers. This” – he pointed at a wavering red line on a chart – “is the current sin level. As measured at the point of judgement. Currently registering at seven point two megapeccados per second. This is the relative sin index value.”
“And what’s that?” asked Gabriel.
“How much each sin is worth.”
“The value of sins may go down as well as up,” said Belphegor.
“Surely, a sin is a sin,” said Thomas.
“Really, Tommo?” said Hubertus. “You sure? Is stealing fruit a big sin or a little one?”
Thomas blustered. “Well, really, it’s all about context and the, er…”
“A sin is a sin, you said.”
“It’s a little one. A little sin.”
“And yet…” Hubertus flung his hand out and a graphical representation of humanity’s early history appeared overhead. “When Adam and Eve took from the Tree of Knowledge, the value of sin went off the chart. The good folk of earth are still catching residual fallout from that even to this day.”
“In virtuous times, each sin weighs more heavily,” nodded Joan, understanding. “But in sinful times, everyone is given a bit more grace.”
“Simple market forces,” said Hubertus. “So, specifics? You’re itching to tap into my expertise.”
“Our… counterparts from Hell,” said Gabriel, “are under the impression –”
“Very much an impression,” added Thomas.
“– that we’ve got some individuals in the Celestial City who should have gone down instead of up.”
“But certainly not due to any error on our part,” said Thomas.
Belphegor had his tablet screen out and with a tap and a swish, the images and details of the suspiciously unvirtuous joined the data on the big screens. Lines of connection of all the colours of the spectrum, created a web between individuals and moments in recent earth history.
“Who slept with who and borrowed from where,” said Hubertus. “And who partied the hardest. Ha!”
“So, they’re sinners?” said Joan hopefully.
Hubertus gave her a reproachful look and the tiniest hint of a playful come-on. “There is such a thing as forgiveness, Joan.” With a wrist twist, the data span and became a landscape of projection lines and possibilities. “Some were indeed Hell-bound but throw in some extenuating circumstances and a couple of Christmas Carol changes of heart…” He brought the data back to the original line graph. “They’re all squeaky clean and exactly where they should be.”
The profile pictures of the unlikely but apparently virtuous slid across the screen into a tidy pile of data windows, stacked away, dismissed as irrelevant.
“That line,” said Rutspud. “The amount of sin. It is going down. So, we are definitely seeing a drop off of people coming into Hell?”
“The level of sin fluctuates naturally,” said Hubertus.
“Fluctuates naturally,” echoed Thomas.
“It goes up in summer when passions rise. It decreases in cold periods.”
“Cyclical,” said Thomas.
“Hell’s gates are rammed in August,” agreed Rutspud. “So you can show this decline is temporary by extending the range of the data.”
“Sure,” said Hubertus and drew his glove round to the left, zooming out. “Hmmm.” He pulled out further. “Hmmm.” A third zoom. “Oh. This doesn’t look good, does it?”
Hubertus’s worried reverie was momentarily broken by the arrival of a deer with a silver tray laden with shot glasses wedged in its horns. Without taking his eyes from the screens, Hubertus reached over, took a glass and necked the liqueur. He then repeated this nine further times.
“Nope,” he coughed. “Not made it any better.”
To Joan’s eyes, the story of the graph was very clear. After an initial explosion of sin at the beginning of time the line meandered like an unhurried snake across the course of human history only to take a sharp but unmistakeable dive off a cliff at some point in the last few months.
“Sin’s going down,” she said.
“It’s cyclical,” insisted Thomas Aquinas.
“That cycle’s got a flat,” said Rutspud. “What’s happened?”
“Look,” said Thomas, “we’ve just emerged from a period of high sin. A lot of wars in sandy countries. A lot of drugs. Sin is falling.”
“Did everyone just stop taking drugs?” said Rutspud.
“And then you’ve got some things that are only just being reclassified from sinful to not. There’s a lot of buggery in there that’s not being counted anymore. Could it be that?”
“Are you trying to argue that there hasn’t been a decrease in sin?” said Joan, astounded. “Look at the data.”
“Yes,” wheedled the fat saint, “but how reliable is that data? When did accurate records really start?”
“Why are you so keen to sweep this problem under the rug?” said Rutspud.
“Laziness,” said Belphegor, who was Lord of Sloth among other things so probably knew what he was talking about.
“I might ask you,” said Thomas, “why you’re so keen for there to be a problem? What have you got to gain?”
“What is there to be gained?” said Rutspud.
“That is the question. I sense a conspiracy.”
“I sense an idiot.”
“Come, come, friends,” said Gabriel. “It’s certain something is a bit awry.”
“There’s a lot of absolution flags on these people,” mused Herbertus slightly drunkenly. “We ought to cross-reference with the prayer assessment people.”
“Clearly,” continued Gabriel, “something has happened in the recent past to cause this.”
“I can tell you one thing that has happened,” said Belphegor.
“What?”
“You lot banished Satan to earth along with every crumb of sin that was clinging to him. And I imagine he’s not spent the meantime doing good deeds in the community.”
CHAPTER TEN
The newspaper man at the door passed Clovenhoof a copy of the Sutton Observer from his hi-vis shoulder bag.
“That’ll be thirty quid please,” said Clovenhoof.
“Pardon?” said the newspaper man.
“Thirty quid. It goes up to sixty quid if you take more than seven days to pay.”
“What are you talking about?”
Clovenhoof tapped the sign beside the front door to four-hundred-and-something Chester Road.
&nb
sp; “Last night, I was trying to think of ways to make money. And I thought, how do we make money from each other in The Game?”
“The Game?” said the newspaper man, taking off his glasses to read the tiny font on the sign.
“Yes. Its proper name is utterly unpronounceable. You travel round this square board landing on properties, buying them up and then charging the other players rent if they land on them. They really should do an English language version. It’s surprising that they haven’t.”
“‘By stopping here, you are entering a contract to pay for parking slash residency slash ground rental services,’” read the newspaper man.
“Yes,” said Clovenhoof. “It’s like those private car parks. As long as there’s a sign up, I can charge you anything. Apparently.”
“But I’m not parking here,” said the newspaper man. “My conscience is clear. Even if it wasn’t, I’ve got a phone app that sorts it out for me.”
“You’re stationary. You’re here. I think it’s fairly clear cut, mate. Thirty quid.”
“Piss off.”
“Tell you what, as the first customer of the day, let’s call it a tenner, eh?”
The newspaper man stormed off, his hi-vis bag swinging angrily behind him.
Clovenhoof put the newspaper on the side table and then took his box of equipment out onto the pavement. He marked off a long stretch of pavement outside the house with yellow spray paint and filled it with a cross hatch of lines. He then placed his prepared signs against the garden walls at either end of the section.
PAVEMENT TOLL-ZONE. £5 EACH WAY
You are on CCTV. Face-recognition is in effect.
He then chained the honesty cash box to the gatepost of the house and, with a little scrambling and grunting, wedged his CCTV camera into the lintel above the front door. It wasn’t actually a CCTV camera – it was a chunky shampoo bottle that he’d painted white with Tippex – but it looked authentic enough.
He was very pleased with himself and, as a reward, took himself down to the Boldmere high street to have a slap-up Full English breakfast and to peruse the Births, Deaths and Marriages section at the back of the newspaper.