by Heide Goody
“Didn’t Narinda anoint it with soothing oils? I thought things were going well with you and Narinda.”
“Oh, it was amazing,” said Ben, his eyes lighting up in a way they so rarely did. “The things she showed me.”
“That’s more like it,” said Clovenhoof. “Woman of the world, is she?”
“She’s young but she’s surprisingly knowledgeable.”
Clovenhoof clapped his hands. “Give me details, Kitchen,” he said, wondering what sordid little kinks and fetishes Narinda Shah had brought into Ben’s life.
“Well…” said Ben.
“Yes?”
“For example, and it’s just an example…”
“Yes?”
“If I use my flat to store merchandise or use it to do my paperwork…”
“Um, yes?”
“Then I can claim back some of my heating and lighting as tax deductible expenses.”
Clovenhoof blinked.
“You and Narinda spent the evening discussing methods of tax evasion.”
“Tax avoidance. Yes. All legal and above board.”
“How tragically disappointing,” said Clovenhoof.
“But useful. She’s coming over again tomorrow to look at your finances too. Maybe she and I can actually work out what’s going on with your money.”
Nerys came up the stairs.
“There’s a woman downstairs with an exquisite Kelly handbag. Hermès.”
“Oh, I wasn’t expecting Hermès,” said Clovenhoof. “I’m waiting for a woman called Victoria.”
“That’s who it is,” said Nerys.
“Why didn’t you say?” said Clovenhoof and bounded down the stairs.
Joan rose.
The beds at the Society Mission for the Thrown Voice were definitely comfortable. Joan always perversely found herself preferring beds on earth to those in the Celestial City. Of course, everything in the Celestial City was perfect, the beds equally so, but while the beds of Heaven were naturally perfect, she knew that this earthly bed, any earthly bed, had only been made comfortable through the time and effort of designers and manufacturers and craftspeople and this made her appreciate it all the more.
After queuing for the bathroom behind two of the society sisters (Sister Marcus with her rag doll puppet Pepper and Sister Valerie with a fishy glove puppet called Bubbles), Joan went downstairs for breakfast and found Rutspud in the large kitchen-diner. Rutspud had a plate of toast in front of him but he was ignoring it and fiddling with the still-whining absolution detector.
“Sleep well?” she said, slipping into the bench opposite.
“Demons don’t sleep,” he said and poked at the back of the detector with a screwdriver. “And the bed was too soft. Give me a hard floor any day, preferably strewn with shards of volcanic glass. Did you sleep?”
“Divinely. The money making machine was still printing notes long after midnight. I had to put it in the bottom of a chest of drawers before I made my bag explode.”
“Might be hard to explain away,” agreed Rutspud.
Sister Anne came over and put a teapot, cup, saucer and miniature milk jug in front of Joan.
“Would you like toast and Marmite same as your friend here?” asked Tommy Chuckles.
“I’ll just have a slice of his,” said Joan. “I don’t think he’s hungry.”
“Oh, you must eat up your toast and Marmite,” said Tommy Chuckles, rolling his large wooden eyes. “Full of healthy, nutritious zinc.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” said Rutspud.
“Thank you, Tommy,” said Joan. “And, er, thank you, Sister Anne.”
When the sister and her dummy had gone off to continue preparing breakfasts, Rutspud picked up a piece of toast critically.
“You’ve got bread. Which is wheat flour mixed with water and stuff which then puffs up because a fungus inside it eats up the sugar content and inflates the bread with its farts.”
“I don’t think it’s farts, as such….”
“And then – and then! – it’s served with this gloop on it which is made by taking a tub of the same fungus and killing it off with salt poisoning or somesuch.”
“I’m not familiar with this Marmite product,” said Joan.
“It’s fungus served with a topping of zombie fungus.”
“But I’m sure it’s delicious,” said Joan and bit off a big corner.
The taste hit was sudden and unexpected. It was like an explosion of evil in her mouth. She coughed automatically but kept her lips politely sealed so she nearly ended up snorting toast and Marmite down her nose.
“How does it taste?” said Rutspud.
With shaking hands, Joan poured herself a cup of tea and used it to swill down the toast. She poured herself a second and drank that straight away before speaking.
“Visiting earth,” she croaked, “is all about discovering new experiences.”
She put the remains of the slice back on the plate.
The detector in Rutspud’s hands gave a wild screech and then settled down to produce a continuous series of clicks, spaced just less than a second apart. Rutspud moved it round in an arc and the clicks changed in frequency.
“You fixed it,” said Joan, delighted.
“It was never broken. That noise. That was just the device trying to click a gazillion times a second.”
“What do you mean?”
“Belphegor had calibrated it to click every time there was a moment of ritual forgiveness in the local area and why not. Except, for some reason, this place is – and maybe all places are – buzzing with forgiveness.”
“And you’ve just dialled down its sensitivity.”
“Correct.” He waved it about victoriously. “Which means we can go and track down the source of our current misery.” He looked at the toast. “Unless you want to finish your breakfast first.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Clovenhoof stood at his living room window and gestured to the road and the houses beyond.
“And you can probably see, just up that way, the spire of St Michael’s church. That’s how close we are.”
Victoria Calhoun, daughter of Clovenhoof’s gigoloafing client and anxious mother of young Archie, leaned on the windowsill and peered out.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Very close.” She looked at the grime she now had on her fingertips and surreptitiously wiped them with a tissue taken for the glitzy handbag Nerys had eyed so covetously. “So, we’d definitely be in catchment if we lived here?” she asked.
“You certainly would,” agreed Clovenhoof. “You put this address on the council application form and your little Archie will be a shoo-in at St Michael’s Secondary.”
“And you’re only charging three hundred a month?” she said, casting an eye about the flat.
“Introductory rate for our pioneer customers.”
She frowned quizzically.
“You’re not the only people who want to rent somewhere near to their favourite school,” he said.
“Oh. So how many flats do you have here?”
“There’s the ground floor. There’s the two on this floor and then you’ve got Nerys and her mad terrier in the floor above.”
“And she’s moving out, is she?”
“No. What?” He suddenly understood and laughed. “You’ve perhaps misunderstood me, Victoria. You need an address to put on the application. That’s what I’m renting to you.”
“Just the address? Not the actual property.”
“We have to keep things above board,” said Clovenhoof. He took a roll of wallpaper off the mantelpiece and rolled it out over the dining table. On the reverse, Clovenhoof had sketched out a scale plan of his flat and divided it up into squares. “I’ve done some rudimentary measurements of local kids and reckon you can get three children per square metre. Upright of course.” He hovered over the plan with a pencil. There were half a dozen squares already filled in. “I could put your Archie in the back bedroom. He’d have it to himself for t
he time being.”
“Does it matter where he goes?” said the confused mother.
“Doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you,” grinned Clovenhoof and scribbled the name Archie into the box. “Now, your mum told you I only work cash in hand.”
“Yes,” said Victoria, opening her handbag again. “I’m not sure what kind of relationship you have with my mother.”
“A purely financial one,” he reassured her. “I’m just stepping into the shoes of your dear departed daddy.”
“Stepping into his shoes?”
“Yes. The man was enamoured of a patent leather brogue. Stylish in his own unique manner.”
“So, there’s nothing funny going on between you and mum?”
“We have a laugh but, no, I’m just being the new Mr Calhoun in her life and trying to fill that empty void inside her.”
“Is that a euphemism?” she said.
“Tell me something that isn’t,” he replied. He held out his hand for the cash.
“I don’t like just handing over money to people,” she said, handing it to him anyway.
“But think of what you get for that money. You get a place at the local school. You get a proof of address if one is needed. You get a full 24-7 pretend residency service. I should be charging more really.”
“Will you?” she asked.
“Not to you, valued customer,” he said. “Cheap rates for those who get in at the ground floor, well, back bedroom.”
As he ushered her down the stairs, the doorbell rang.
“Possibly another eager customer,” he said.
He opened the door. A man with a bad haircut and a surly expression stood on the doorstep. Maybe he had the surly expression because he’d been given a bad haircut. Victoria Calhoun stepped past and Clovenhoof waved her off.
“Mr Clovenhoof?” said the surly man.
“Who’s asking?” said Clovenhoof amiably.
“Robin Hood Debt Collection Services,” said the man and tapped an ID badge clipped to his coat.
The ID badge identified him as Morten Morris. His ID picture also featured a different bad haircut and an identical surly expression which either meant surly was Morten’s default expression or he had made the mistake of going to the same bad barber twice.
“In that case, no,” said Clovenhoof.
“You won’t be surprised to hear that a lot of people say that. I’m here to collect on an outstanding loan and am happy to take cash, cards or items of property of up to nine thousand pounds in value. So let’s get to it, Mr Clovenhoof.”
“Honestly, I’d love to help you, Morten, but you’ve been misled. There’s no Clovenhoof living here. Obviously a made up name. Clovenhoof? Cloven-hoof? Some sort of joke.”
Morten bent down and picked up the post that sat disregarded on the doormat.
“And yet here is a letter from the Sutton Railway Building Society addressed to a Mr J. Clovenhoof.”
“I’d been meaning to report that,” said Jeremy blithely. “Do you think it’s just a mistake or some kind of identity theft thing? My name’s Calhoun, Bill Calhoun.”
“Really?” said Morten sceptically. “And would you have any form of identification to prove that?”
“Not on me but you can ask her,” he said, pointing at Victoria who was not far down the road. “That’s my step-daughter.”
Morten stepped away from the door and cupped a hand to his mouth. “Oi! Darlin’! Is this man your dad?”
Victoria gave him a sharp look.
“He’s not my real dad,” she shouted back.
Morten pointed at Clovenhoof. “Mr Calhoun?”
Victoria gave a despairing but affirmative shrug and turned away.
“She’s never quite accepted me,” said Clovenhoof. He took the letters from Morten. “Do you think I should call the police about these?”
“We’ll make our own enquiries, Mr Calhoun,” said Morten. “And I may be coming back.”
“Let us know when and I’ll be sure to put the kettle on,” said Clovenhoof and shut the door in his face.
Rutspud followed the clicks and ticks of the absolution detector. And Joan followed Rutspud.
She was a medieval girl at heart and, while no technophobe, she was happy to let someone else handle the gizmos. Electronic gadgetry held no allure for her. She could see what it had made the world.
Currently, it was making Rutspud very annoyed. He muttered obscenities and gave little squeals of frustration as the device led them on a meandering course through the suburbs of this grey modern metropolis. The one upside to the whole affair was that Rutspud’s annoyance was distracting him completely from his agoraphobic fear of the wide-open skies.
“It’s like it’s coming from two places at once,” he mumbled.
“Really?” said Joan, disinterested.
The device gave a flurry of clicks like a tap-dancing centipede. Rutspud whirled and dashed towards the nearby row of shops. Joan followed unhurriedly at a distance and waited in the shelter of an anaemic looking birch tree. Rutspud ran the detector over the short queue of people at a bus stop.
“Can I help you with something?” said a woman.
“Have you been forgiven recently,” said Rutspud, looking at his readings rather than the woman.
“Pardon?”
“Bloody Jehovah’s Witnesses,” said a man in the queue.
“You’re not Bishop Iscansus, are you?” Rutspud asked him.
“Am I what?” said the man.
As Joan watched this exchange, she became aware of a knocking against her feet. She looked down to find a filthy and wretched looking man in a poor excuse for a beard using a trowel to poke at the ground directly by her feet. Joan stepped aside and away.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
The man shushed her violently. “You’ll scare them away. They don’t wanna be caught.”
“You’re looking for something?” she whispered.
“Devils,” said the man, placed his bulbous diseased nose to the ground and sniffed. “An’ their tunnels.”
“You can’t do that here,” she said. “We’ve already got one fool searching for something he can’t find on this street and that’s one too many as it is.”
But the man was paying scant attention. He scraped at the soil at the base of the tree and listened. As he did so, he reached back and pulled a limp potato chip from his pocket and thrust it in his mouth. Without looking up, he reached back, pulled out another and offered it to Joan.
“Chip?”
“That’s very kind, sir, but no,” she said.
Rutspud stepped off the pavement and into the road, blithely ignoring the double decker bus that had to brake to avoid hitting him. He ignored the beeping horn and panned the device around.
“There’s an echo,” he called over to Joan. “It’s like it’s always coming from two places at once.”
“Can you tell ‘im to be quiet,” said the filthy man. “What’s he doin’ anyway?”
“He’s looking for someone,” said Joan.
“Is the someone he’s looking for radioactive?”
“He’s a bishop actually.”
“He don’t look much like a bishop,” said the filthy man.
“No, the man he’s looking for is a bishop,” said Joan.
“Uh. Anyone we know?”
“Bishop Kenneth Iscansus. Bishop of Birmingham.”
The filthy man sat back on his haunches. “I’ll not be able to hear them with the noise he’s making.”
“The devils,” Joan said.
The man nodded. “Sometimes, I don’t even think they’re there. Uh’m sure I started doing it for a reason. Make some point. Grand philosophsi – oh, bugger, grand philososphical point.” He reached into his other pocket and pulled out a stout plastic bottle from which the label had been ripped. “Helps me think,” he told her before taking a swig. “You want some?”
“No, thank you.”
“Okay but I asked. In
case you’re that sly bugger Jesus. Can’t have you judging me later going, I was hungry an’ I was thirty, was you there, was you there? I was here, Jesus,” he said bitterly. “And I offered you a swig.”
Rutspud was spiralling round back towards Joan. A thought occurred to her.
“I’m Joan,” she said to the man.
“You look like a Joan,” he replied. “S’good name.”
“What’s your name?”
He had to think about that for a moment. “Ken!” he declared loudly. “Dear me, forget my own trousers next. And I did once. Call me Festering Ken on account of this astonishing odour for which I will not apologise.”
“Nice to meet you, Ken,” she said. “What would you say if my friend and I offered to take you out for lunch?”
“Dunno, are you likely to?”
Joan smiled.
“You have nothing to smile about,” fumed Rutspud, stomping over. “This device is just playing silly buggers –”
“Great game, great game,” reminisced Festering Ken quietly.
“Rutspud, let me introduce you to Ken,” said Joan. “Rutspud is currently scouring the streets for a missing bishop. Ken is looking for little devils in the dirt. I suspect you two could make each other very happy.”
Rutspud gave Joan a look and pointed at the ragged man questioningly. Joan nodded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Clovenhoof strode with outwardly visible contentment towards the house of Alice, the widow Calhoun. He was experiencing something he had experienced a mere smattering of times in his long existence: job satisfaction. He was making cash for doing essentially very little and yet was providing a much-appreciated service to a delightful old bird. He got to wear shitty clothes, parade his bad habits and got a slap-up meal into the bargain. As such, he was starting to put in an extra special effort. He had combed his hair to match that of the late Bill Calhoun and had drunk four pints of artichoke and cabbage smoothie to hopefully tweak his farts to the right aromatic shade Alice was looking for.
As he crossed the main road, his phone rang. It had rung numerous times today, a slow but accelerating stream of calls to rent utterly fictitious flat space so that little darlings across the borough could get into the popular church school.