by Heide Goody
“I don’t know about that, Jeremy,” she said in a strict tone. “But he clearly takes a more mature attitude to fiscal responsibility than you do and wants me to go over some particulars.” She picked up the morning’s post which had managed to travel from the doormat to the little side table. She waved the Sutton Railway Building Society letter. “Is this a dirty hoof print?” she said.
“Maybe,” said Clovenhoof.
“Do you have a cow living in the flat?”
“Goat actually. No. Shall we?”
He led the way.
“Can you see up my skirt if I go ahead of you?” he asked.
“No.”
“What about if I hitch it up like…”
“Aagh! No! Put it away! Them! It! Just…”
Narinda was rubbing her eyes when they reached the first floor. Clovenhoof rapped on Ben’s door. Nerys was descending the stairs.
“Ooh, Narinda,” she said. “Come to see our Ben again.”
“Just to go over some of his particulars,” said Narinda.
“Ooh. You two are getting serious then?”
“They’re really not,” said Clovenhoof. “Or rather, they really are but in an incredibly boring way.”
The doorbell downstairs rang as Ben opened the door.
On the wall of Ben’s flat, Clovenhoof could see that the geeky bookseller had created a map of financial data with letters, statements, string and drawing pins. It looked like a prop from a cop show, a cop show where the evil serial killer was targeting bank accounts.
“My, you have been busy,” said Narinda, nodding.
“Right,” said Clovenhoof, shoving Narinda into Ben’s flat and arms. “You two, shush. Keep the noise down. I’m a perfectly ordinary housewife and there’s meant to be no one else at home except my bedbound son.”
“You have a son?” said Ben.
“What part of ‘shush’ did you not understand?” said Clovenhoof and ran downstairs again.
He opened the front door.
“Mrs Calhoun?” said the small woman with square glasses and thin lips.
“Miss O’Brien?” said Clovenhoof.
“I’m a little early,” said Linda.
“I noticed. Come in. What lovely shoes! What are they?”
“Orthopaedic.”
“Scandinavian. How exotic.”
She walked slowly up the stairs, not because she had any difficulty but because she was taking in her surroundings. Perhaps she was counting the cobwebs. Clovenhoof had no idea.
“You own the whole house?” asked Linda.
“Er, yes,” said Clovenhoof, not sure what answer was best.
“It looks like it’s been sub-divided into flats.”
“It has. It was. I own it all though. Every bit. Just me and my merry brood here.”
On the first floor landing, Nerys stood with her ear to Ben’s door and a hopeful leer on her face.
“This,” said Clovenhoof, “is my… sister, Nerys.”
“Much younger sister,” said Nerys.
“Let’s put the kettle on,” said Clovenhoof, steering her towards his flat.
“Who lives in that one?” said Linda, pointing at Ben’s door.
“No one,” said Clovenhoof.
“Then what were you listening for?”
“Ghosts,” said Clovenhoof.
“Mice,” said Nerys at the same time.
“Ghost mice,” said Clovenhoof. “They might be. We definitely get a spooky aroma of cheese, don’t we, Nerys?”
Nerys took a deep sniff to demonstrate. Linda sniffed too. Her expression was of a person who definitely smelled something.
Clovenhoof propelled the schools admissions woman into his flat.
“Cup of tea?”
“I can’t stay long,” said Linda. “I just have some questions I need to go over.”
“Fire away,” said Clovenhoof.
“Are these your children?” said Linda, drifting towards the intensely clustered selection of framed photos in the window.
“Most of them, yes.”
“The pictures look very professional.”
“Thank you, I do try,” said Clovenhoof, who had spent an entertaining half hour earlier with a clothing catalogue and a pair of scissors.
“And this is your son, Archie?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“And this boy?” she said, pointing to another picture.
“Is that not Archie too? No, clearly it’s a different boy,” said Clovenhoof. “That’s his brother.”
“Ben?”
“Yes. Ben.”
Linda peered at the cutely posed young lad more closely. “Younger brother or older?”
“Let’s say older,” said Clovenhoof.
“This boy looks younger than Archie.”
Clovenhoof was ready for such an obvious question. “It’s an old photo.”
“Ah,” said Linda. “Makes sense. Now, I would very much like a word with Archie. Is the bedroom this way?”
Clovenhoof stepped smartly in front of her. “No. You can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“He’s sleeping. Drugged up. He’s got mumps.”
“Mumps?”
“Oh, yes,” said Clovenhoof. “All swollen up. His glands. Horrible.”
“I’m only going to pop my head round the door,” said Linda pleasantly. “I’ll be quiet as a mouse. A ghost mouse, even.”
Clovenhoof panicked. “You can’t! He’s out!”
“Out?” She frowned. “Out where?”
“The, er, chemist. I sent him to get some medicine. I meant to say that he’s going to be sleeping because he will be drugged up when he’s got the medicine from the chemist. Sorry. I’m terrible with tenses. I do it all the time. I mean, I will be having done it all the time.”
“I never noticed before.”
“It comes and goes – that is, will come and has gone.”
“You sent a poorly ten-year-old boy to the shops by himself to get a prescription?” asked Linda.
“His brother went with him. His older brother. They’re both out. That’s why they’re not here. The house is completely empty.”
At that, there was a thump and an excited burst of conversation from Ben’s flat.
“Then what was that?” said Linda. She pushed past Clovenhoof and out onto the landing.
“It was probably just my sister, Nerys,” he said.
“What was probably just Nerys?” asked Nerys, coming downstairs from her flat.
“Ghost mice!” declared Clovenhoof loudly.
The doorbell downstairs rang.
“The mysterious children returned?” said Linda sarcastically.
“No. Archie has a very distinctive ring. Not him. Nerys, dear, would you go down and see who that is?” He turned Linda around and shoved her back into his flat before grabbing Nerys’s arm and whispering urgently, “I’m lacking children!”
“Children?”
“School kids. I needed to get some.”
“What? Like order some over the internet?” she said.
“Brilliant idea!” he said, totally unaware that one could actually do such a thing but glad that she was willing to give it a go.
“Where from?” said Nerys. “Like a talent agency?”
Clovenhoof gave her a massive thumbs-up. Nerys could be quite resourceful at times.
He dashed back into his flat to mollify Miss O’Brien until the kids turned up.
“Right, where were we? I mean, where will we would have been?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Joan rang the doorbell of four-hundred-and-something Chester Road again.
“I assume he still lives here,” she said.
Next to her, Rutspud was hopping from foot to foot.
“Do you need the lavatory?” she said.
“Demons don’t go to the lavatory,” he said. “Unless it’s part of an individual’s Personal Torture Plan. Or, you know, if we just want to. For fun.”
“Then why are you jiggling about?” she asked.
Rutspud stopped at once, but only for a second, and then clapped his hands like an excited four-year-old.
“I wonder if he remembers me. We’ve met. Obviously we’ve met. He created me. Kicked me out of the dirt himself. But there have been so many demons since.” He gave her a look of nervous excitement. “Do you think he remembers me?”
Joan sighed. “There’s a saying. Never meet your heroes.”
Rutspud was instantly still.
“Satan isn’t my hero,” he said stiffly. “Of course, he’s the devil – the devil – but I think I aspire to something a bit different. Not getting fired for one thing. But he’s… he’s my creator. Which makes him like a father. A distant, aloof father who never visits and would just as soon turn you into mincemeat as look at you.”
“I see.”
“But a father nonetheless.”
The door was opened by a sharp-faced woman in an outfit that was not so much revealing as attention-seeking. Joan knew modern women were fairly shameless in their attire but this woman was clearly at the leading edge. What was more shocking was that Joan thought she recognised the woman. The name Nerys leapt to mind.
Nerys looked at the young saint and the short demon. “Are you school kids?”
“What?” said Rutspud.
“He said he’d ordered some. I didn’t believe you could.”
“We were looking for Jeremy Clovenhoof,” said Joan.
“Yes, yes. That’s the man,” said Nerys. “In you come.”
She hurried them into the hallway. She frowned at Joan’s plate armour. “You’re perhaps on your way back from another job? These outfits won’t do.”
“Won’t do?” said Rutspud.
“I’ve got a suitcase of, um, dress-up clothes upstairs,” said Nerys. “There’s definitely some school uniform bits in there. Some blokes they like the whole naughty schoolgirl thing.” She paused reflectively for a moment. “Or is that out of fashion now? From Britney Spears to Operation Yewtree. It’s hard to keep up, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” said Joan, having no idea what the woman was on about.
Nerys glanced upstairs. “Wait here. I’ll get the clothes.”
She ran upstairs, leaving the two bewildered people in the hallway.
“Is everyone in this city mad?” asked Rutspud.
“On the basis of available evidence…” said Joan.
Nerys came flying down with a suitcase.
“There!” she said, flinging it into Joan’s arms. “School kids. As quick as you like. Are we expecting any more of you?”
“More?” said Joan.
“I don’t know how many he’s asked for. It’s to fool the school inspector woman. If any do come –”
“I think there’s been some confusion,” said Joan.
“Ha! Tell me about it,” said Nerys, breaking into a manic grin. “It’s very simple. Sort of. Jeremy is upstairs. He’s Mrs Calhoun. That’s the younger Mrs Calhoun, the daughter of the one he’s being a pretend husband for.”
“He’s pretending to be the husband of his own mother,” said Rutspud.
“Er, yes. Yes,” said Nerys. “You are his children. Not Mr Calhoun’s. Mrs Calhoun’s, the younger one. And one of you – I suppose that would be you – is a ten year old boy called Archie. I think that’s it. Got it?”
“And who am I?” said Joan.
Nerys looked at her and there was a glimmer of recognition in Nerys’s eyes, a trace of smile on her lips.
“I don’t have a name for you yet,” she said then added, “You have really nice hair. Love that page boy look.” And the glimmer was gone. “To recap. He’s Mrs Calhoun, you’re the little Calhouns. If anyone else turns up, they’re little Calhouns too. You’re to say nothing. The inspector can’t know the truth. Got it?”
“Definitely not,” said Rutspud honestly.
“Tough,” said Nerys. “Now, I’ve got to tell Ben and Narinda to keep the noise down. Don’t matter how high their passions are running. Theirs will have to be a love that dare not raise its voice.”
And she was gone, up the stairs again.
“I am confused,” said Rutspud bluntly. “Am I an idiot or am I right to be confused?”
“No, I think confused is a fair place to be at the moment,” said Joan.
Rutspud opened the case and started pulling out clothes. There was a surprising range of items: nurses uniforms, corsets, part of a nun’s habit, frilly garments that Rutspud couldn’t match up to any part of human anatomy. He suspected that these clothes all had something to do with sex, the most tedious aspect of human life in his opinion.
“Here,” said Joan, flinging a stripy tie at him. “School boy.”
“We’re actually doing this?” he said.
Joan unbuckled her shoulder plates and arm greaves. “It’s a small cosmos, isn’t it?”
“How so?” said Rutspud.
“I’ve met that woman before. In the Celestial City.”
“But she’s not dead.”
“She was at the time. She and I helped Clovenhoof break into Heaven by the back door.”
“You’re a bad girl, Joan of Arc!” grinned Rutspud. “She doesn’t seem to remember you though.”
Joan gave it some thought as she slipped off her chainmail and swapped it for a tight-fitting white blouse.
“The Almighty sent her back down to her rightful place on earth afterwards. Maybe the act of resurrection affects the mind.”
“That would go a long way to explaining this precise situation…”
Linda grunted in satisfaction as she inspected the gaggle of fake family pictures once more.
“I knew there was something not quite right with this one,” she said.
Clovenhoof wondered if he’d neglected to snip out the price when he’d cut it from the catalogue. Having a child with a price tag on would take some explaining.
“This toddler is Archie’s older brother, Ben?” she said.
“He’s not for sale!” he blurted.
“What?”
“In case, you wanted to buy him,” said Clovenhoof lamely.
“When was this photo taken?”
“When he was younger than Archie is now.”
“He’s wearing a Toy Story 4 T-shirt. That film’s not even out yet. So it has to be recent.”
Clovenhoof was impressed. Good detective skills by Linda O’Brien! He wondered if all school admissions officers were eagle-eyed lady sleuths. Now, he could explain it by saying the T-shirt was given to Ben by a friendly time-traveller or…
“Yes. It is recent,” he said. “I don’t know why I lied. Silly female brain of mine. It’s the shame you see. Ben is older but he suffers with a rare growth disorder which means he’s locked in the body of a toddler. We’ve tried growth hormone therapy but –”
“Mrs Calhoun,” said Linda fiercely. “Let me be honest and I hope you’ll do me the same return favour. I have received today alone, three applications for St Michael’s Secondary School, giving this address as the families’ home address.”
“Oh.”
“I thought I would pay a visit in case there was some unusual but nonetheless valid reason for this state of affairs. But every question I’ve asked, your answers have become more and more outlandish. And I’ve not yet seen a single child.”
“But you will soon, I promise,” said Clovenhoof. “Let me go see if Nerys has managed to round them up.”
He went to the door, subtly repositioning a breast which was leaking citrus juices. Linda, unwilling to let him get far from her sight, followed him close behind onto the landing.
Nerys was in the ajar doorway to Ben’s flat telling him to keep quiet.
“And who are you talking to now?” said Linda stridently. “Phantom rats?”
“Er, no,” said Nerys but Linda pushed past her and into Ben’s flat.
Clovenhoof nearly tripped on his skirt as he hurried after her.
; “What is this?” demanded Linda.
The wall of Ben’s flat was a riot of pinned documents and colourful thread, a pictorial web of money transfers, bank accounts, loans and financial curios. It all certainly looked very impressive to Clovenhoof. He didn’t understand any of it though. As much as he could tell, the display could have been created by a genius, a lunatic or nerdy dweebs with too much time on their hands. Looking at Narinda and Ben, he suspected that it was a pinch of this and a dab of that.
“Why are you grinning like a coked-up child, Ben?” asked Clovenhoof. “Why are you both grinning?”
Ben opened his mouth to answer, sniggered and then tapped Narinda playfully on the arm. “Go on, you tell him.”
“Tell me what?”
“We cracked it!” said Narinda. “We know where the money is.”
Clovenhoof sighed. “You are excited because you’ve done your sums?”
“It’s more than that,” said Narinda, inexplicably ecstatic. “Ben found a letter and then a pile of statements.”
“You see,” said Ben, “there’s this app called PrayPal and –”
“Wait a minute,” said Linda. “Ben? This is Ben? The boy…?”
“Yes,” said Clovenhoof, thinking fast. “The growth hormones, they really worked didn’t they. Kind of overshot the mark a little but if you look closely at him you can see he’s not really a grown man just a really big boy. Not a single hair on his body.”
“They hurt me,” said Ben, wincing. “They hurt me a lot.”
Linda frowned and wheeled on Nerys. “So, this individual is your nephew?”
Nerys had no idea what to say.
“Technically, she’s my sister-in-law,” said Ben helpfully.
“You know what I’m seeing here?” said Linda. “I’m seeing a smorgasbord of evidence pointing towards some sort of fraudulent activity.”
“What?” said Ben.
Linda flung an arm out at the financial papers. “I don’t know what this represents – Benefits fraud? Child farming? An electoral register scam? – but I’m calling the police.”
Linda pulled out her phone. Clovenhoof made an instinctive move towards her.
“Don’t you touch me, lady!” she growled, clutching her identity lanyard, “or I’ll press my emergency alarm and you’ll have a SWAT team swooping on this house before you can spit!”