by JL Merrow
“Jesus,” Phil said again. He was leaning against my wall, looking like it was the only thing holding him up right now.
I sat back on my heels and wiped my mouth. “Nah, it’s Tom, actually.”
“Prick.” But his look was fond as he ran his hand through my hair.
Sod fond. I jerked my head back out of reach. “Oi! Don’t mess it up. We’re going out, remember?”
Phil laughed. “You really think you’re going anywhere looking like that?”
I frowned. “I thought you liked this shirt.”
“I’ve got nothing against the shirt. Just depends if you want your sister and the vicar to know exactly why we’re late tonight.”
I looked down and noticed for the first time a thin trail of spunk that must have dribbled out of the corner of my mouth. Then I remembered I’d just come in my pants. “Shit. I’m going to need a bloody shower.” I scrambled to my feet. The cooling mess in my underwear started making its presence felt. Unpleasantly.
Phil was still smiling. “Nah, sponge bath’ll do it. Want some help?”
I won’t say I wasn’t tempted, but… “Yeah, right. Like we need anything else to delay us. Just wait here, all right? I’ll be five minutes.” I made to go upstairs, then changed my mind and doubled back to kiss him, open-mouthed and dirty.
Then I legged it up those stairs and grabbed a wet flannel, hoping like hell I had another decent pair of jeans that were clean and dry.
It was a bit of a drive out to St Leonard’s, out past Berkhamsted. It was less than twenty miles as the crow flies, but it was all winding country lanes, which slowed us down a bit, and then we had to find Greg’s place. It’d have been a lot simpler if Phil had turned on his bloody satnav, but far as I could tell, he only used it for work, if ever. Bit of a problem with people telling him what to do, was my diagnosis.
St Leonards was one of those places that must have been pretty important when the cathedral was built around eight hundred years ago, or else they wouldn’t have bothered, but to say it had fallen into a bit of a decline since then was like saying the Russian government was just a little bit anti-gay. It was a nice enough market town, but sleepy. Even compared to St Albans. The sort of place you moved to when you retired, assuming, of course, you’d retired from the sort of job that left you with a pension several times the size of most peoples’ salaries.
We eventually got to ye olde cobbled streets of Cathedral Close only around fifteen minutes later than Cherry had told us to be there. Which was probably still ten minutes earlier than she’d been expecting me.
The Old Deanery was signposted, luckily. It was a big old (obviously) pile with a wide, well-stomped-down gravel drive which you reached via a crumbling gateway. The gate itself, a wooden barred thing gone green with age, looked like it was permanently open. Actually, it looked like it’d disintegrate into a pile of dust and woodworm if you tried to shut it. The house itself seemed to be all windows, and they were the old-fashioned sash type.
“Carbon footprint of this place must be the size of Las Vegas,” I said as we got out of the car and headed for the front door. It was large, blue and apparently too posh to have a letterbox in it—that was set discreetly to one side, right next to an honest-to-God notice directing tradesmen to use the rear entrance. I grinned. “Think we ought to do what it says?”
“What, right here on the doorstep? I think the neighbours might complain.” We both glanced up at the bulk of St Leonard’s Cathedral, looming darkly over us from around a hundred yards away.
“Probably get struck by lightning,” I agreed. I pushed the antique doorbell, one of those Victorian ones with “Press” written on it in fancy font, presumably for the benefit of those who couldn’t work it out without instructions. It jangled sonorously.
“They don’t make ’em like that anymore, do they?” Phil muttered as we shuffled our feet on the Old Dean’s doorstep.
“Yeah, they do. You can get them online. There’s this site: Snobs’ Knobs and Posh Knockers, it’s called.”
“Oh yeah? I’ve never been that into knockers, personally. Knobs, on the other hand…” Phil smirked.
“As if I hadn’t noticed. I don’t smell of spunk, do I?”
“If the Rev gets down on his knees and sniffs your crotch I think you’ll have more to worry about than the way you smell.”
Git. “I meant my breath. I washed and changed, remember?” I huffed out a breath in Phil’s face. He grimaced and stepped back. “Shit, I do, don’t I?”
“No, but I think those bloody mouthwash fumes just took the skin off my face. How many bottles did you gargle with?”
“One capful, just like it said on the label.” Okay, maybe two, to be on the safe side.
The door opened, and another dark figure loomed over us, this one from considerably nearer. Next to him, I was relieved to see my sister.
Gregory was…not quite what I’d expected. Tall, dressed all in black, with dark, curly hair that was rapidly receding around a widow’s peak, he looked more demonic than canonical. He had sharply arched black eyebrows over brown eyes with a devilish glint. I didn’t have to look far for evidence of his evil powers: one look at Sis showed he’d managed to transform her from hard-nosed barrister to simpering schoolgirl. She was hanging off his arm like it was the only thing holding her back from a terminal fit of the vapours.
“Ah, you’re Cherry’s baby brother?” He reached out unusually large hands to enfold mine in a dry, meaty grip. I’m usually a bit careful when I shake hands with people. In my line of work, you develop a strong grip. But I wouldn’t have liked to bet on my chances in an arm-wrestling match with the Hand of God here. “Delighted to meet you. And this is your…?”
“Phil,” Phil said bluntly, while I was still struggling to work out exactly which noun I should finish that sentence with for him.
Gregory nodded, as if he thought everyone should have a Phil of their own. “Excellent!” Phil’s turn to be treated to the hearty ecclesiastical welcome. “Well, come on, come in.” Slab-like hands waved us past him and shepherded us through the hall and into a large reception room—it was too big and, to be honest, un-cosy to be a living room or anything like that. A log fire flickered halfheartedly at the far end, but it seemed to have given up on trying to heat the rest of the room. The grim brown carpet was that industrial-grade sort of stuff that’s only marginally softer than concrete, and the walls were bland magnolia interrupted only by muddy landscapes and the odd ecclesiastical mug shot.
“Sherry, Cherry?” He said it with an absolutely straight face. “And for the menfolk? Whiskey? Something stronger?” Stronger than whiskey? What was he peddling here—neat ethanol? I gave him a sharp look, which he fielded as if he’d been standing there on mid off in his cricket whites all afternoon, just waiting for it. “I’m recently returned from a retreat in Bratislava,” he said as if it explained everything. “Slivovitz?”
I reckoned Cherry probably had the We’re-not-Polish bit covered, so I went with, “I thought the Lord didn’t let no spirits in?”
Gregory guffawed. Seriously. I’d always wondered what a guffaw would sound like, and now I felt a gentle pang of nostalgia for my lost ignorance. Cherry giggled and clutched at his arm. I edged back a little closer to Phil’s solid, cashmere-clad shoulder, worried Gregory might clap me on the back with one of those dustbin lids he had for hands and swat me like a fly.
“What the bloody hell are you lot on?” Phil muttered in my ear.
I blinked for a moment, then remembered what I’d said. “It’s a song. You know. I’ll never get to heaven—”
“Could have told you that.”
“Shut up. We used to sing it in the minibus on Sunday School trips.” Back before I’d left under something of a cloud, which, sod’s law, someone was bound to mention any moment now.
“Bloody Sunday School. How did you ever end up a plumber?”
“Just lucky that way,” I said firmly. I wasn’t going to get into the old stor
y of how come I didn’t have any A Levels. From the stony look on Phil’s face, he was filling in the blanks for himself already.
I thought Gregory had tactfully turned away from our little tiff, but when he turned back, he was holding a couple of shot glasses filled to the brim with clear, yellow liquid. I hoped he wasn’t taking the piss. Or handing it to us, for that matter.
“This’ll put hair on your chests. Distilled by monks, so you can rest assured it has the official seal of approval from On High. Na zdravie!” Gregory downed the contents of his shot glass in one.
“Bottoms up,” I muttered and took a cautious sip. I managed not to turn bright red and cough up a lung, but it was a close-run thing. Forget growing hairs on chests, I could use this stuff to clear drains. Phil, I saw out of the corner of my somewhat watering eye, had tossed his shot down in one just like the Extremely Reverend Greg. His face was blank of all expression, but I noticed his ears had gone a bit pink.
Bloody hell. Did canons and private eyes really get into pissing contests? Didn’t their cassocks get in the way? The clergymen, I meant. If Phil liked to go around in a cassock in his free time, clearly we weren’t yet at the stage of the relationship where he’d feel comfortable mentioning it to me.
“Nice stuff,” I lied a bit hoarsely and looked around for something else to talk about before he decided it was time for round two already. “Is your dog all right?” There was a border collie poking its nose around the far door to look at us nervously, showing no signs of plucking up the courage to come and be sociable. Usually, dogs are all over me, probably because I smell of cat.
(All right, I smell of what my mate Gary calls eau de plumber a lot of the time too, which, if you haven’t had the pleasure, is, I’m reliably informed, a sort of rancid putty aroma. It comes from the chemical sealants I use. But I’d had a shower and changed—twice, now I came to think about it—since work so today, it was all cat.)
“Oh, he’s fine, fine. Why don’t you go over and say hello?” Greg’s eyes sparkled a bit manically. “I promise he won’t bite.”
Seeing as how I wasn’t born yesterday, I already had my suspicions even as I crossed the room. The fact that Fido didn’t turn a hair at my approach only confirmed it. He didn’t stir when I reached down to pet him gingerly on the head. The dog’s soft black fur was cool to the touch, the skin beneath unnaturally rigid and unyielding, and there was a dry, dusty smell about him, more old bones than Bonios.
“Not very lively, is he?” I threw back over my shoulder. “You want to mix a bit of Red Bull in with his Pedigree Chum.”
The Obnoxiously Reverend Greg was practically pissing himself laughing. Even Cherry indulged herself with a worryingly girlish giggle. “Gregory’s a keen taxidermist,” she explained, composing herself.
“Well, I wouldn’t like to think poor old Fido had been done by a halfhearted one,” I managed. “That could get messy—internal organs left in, that sort of thing.”
“His name was Buster, actually. Or so I believe.” Gregory had recovered from his fit of mirth.
“Stuff a lot of dogs, do you?” Phil put in. He was looking even less full of the joys of life than old Fido, sorry, Buster.
“Good heavens, no. I prefer to work on smaller creatures, actually. The delicate work is more challenging. But come, come! You must meet the rest of the family.”
I had a brief vision of a household of stuffed Gregories, some male, some female, but all with glassy dark eyes and unfeasibly large hands, and I couldn’t hold off a shiver.
“Feeling the chill?” Greg asked solicitously. I shivered again as his hand pressed into my back. “It’s this old Gothic pile. Absolute nightmare to heat, I’m afraid. Still, it’s what the family prefers.”
He’d shepherded me into the next room, which, thank God, contained no human figures whatsoever. What it did hold was about a dozen little furry creatures—no, more than that, I realised, looking around. There was a red squirrel on the windowsill, squaring up to a grey one. A tortoiseshell cat sat beneath, looking up at them both. I thought of Arthur and Merlin and vowed to have their furry little bodies cremated whenever they shuffled off this mortal coil, rather than let weirdoes with too much time and sawdust on their hands get hold of them.
“Come and meet Mrs. Tiggywinkle,” Cherry urged in my shell-shocked ear. She ushered me over to where a hedgehog snuffled silently around the bottom of the floor-length curtains. “Isn’t she adorable?” Cherry actually crouched down, picked the thing up and shoved it in my face.
“Oi! Careful. Those things have fleas,” I protested, backing off.
Behind me, Phil sounded amused. “That one won’t. Unless Gregory stuffed them as well.”
“Alas, that’s a little beyond my skill.” Gregory was beaming at me over Cherry’s shoulder.
“I thought all things were possible if you had faith?” Phil’s voice was right in my ear now, so I stopped backing up before I ended up tripping over his expensive loafers and falling, damsel-like, into his arms. Thank God I’d brought him with me, though. He could distract them while I ran away.
“Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test,” the Augustly Reverend Greg reminded us all.
“That’s Leviticus, isn’t it?” Phil challenged.
And he went on at me about having gone to Sunday School?
“Deuteronomy, actually.” Greg’s expression changed somehow. The line of his eyebrows had softened, and they didn’t look quite so demonic. It would have been reassuring if it hadn’t been so bloody unnerving. “Our Lord, you’ll find, was much less fond of Leviticus.”
I waited for Phil to come back with I see your Leviticus, and I raise you Genesis, Exodus and all the prophets, but he just sort of grunted.
“I hear you’re a private eye.” Greg rolled the words around his tongue with relish. “It strikes me that must bring you into contact with the worst excesses of human nature.”
“Pays the bills,” Phil said shortly.
“Oh, don’t mistake me—I admire you for it. It’s not everyone who can, as it were, gaze into a cesspit and remain unmoved. I suppose a great many of your cases involve affairs of the heart?”
“There’s always people who want to know if their husband or wife is cheating on them,” Phil admitted.
“And are they? Generally speaking, I mean. I’ve always thought one must have a sixth sense about the person one lives with. So to speak.” Greg leaned in towards Phil, his eyes getting that alarming glint in them again.
Phil didn’t seem fazed by it. “And there’s no smoke without fire? It varies. Some people are just paranoid, and sometimes the ‘other woman’ turns out to be a gambling problem.”
“And how do they tend to take the news? I imagine there must be a certain degree of relief when one knows the worst…?”
I could see this was going to be a long discussion, and if I wasn’t careful I was going to be stuck there with the legions of the stuffed for the duration.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. Actually, looking at my glass, I reckoned it was more like a desperate triple measure, but I girded my stomach, took a deep breath and tossed it down. I just about managed not to collapse in a choking fit, although there was probably a bit of steam coming out of my ears. “I’ll, er…” I cleared my throat, held up my empty glass and then legged it back to the other room, giving Buster a sympathetic pat on the way.
I was staring at the arrangement of bottles and decanters, wondering what was safe to touch—I’d have killed for a Coke and probably at least mugged someone for a Pepsi—when Cherry came up behind me. “You’re being a bit rude,” she muttered in my ear. “You could at least admire the skill that goes into Gregory’s art.”
“I don’t bloody believe this,” I whispered back. “You go on at me about chumming around with corpses, and your boyfriend has a whole bloody houseful!”
She stared at me. “They’re animals, for goodness sake.” Not for God’s sake, I noticed. Apparently you couldn’t say
that sort of stuff while you were actively hobnobbing with one of his main men on Earth. “Not people.”
“Are you sure the Rev knows that? He called them family.”
“It’s a joke. You’ve heard about those?”
I was momentarily speechless. She was accusing me of not having a sense of humour? “Pot, much?” I managed feebly.
She blanked me. “If that’s some druggie reference—”
“Come off it! Since when have I ever done drugs?”
“Well, I don’t know what you got up to. You dropped out of school—”
“I got hit by a four-by-four!”
“—and then the next thing I know, I’ve got Mum on the phone telling me you’re not even going to bother with an education. It wasn’t easy for her, you know.” She picked up a bottle of something I was fairly sure was sherry, and tugged at the cork.
“Right, because it was such a bloody walk in the park for me. Anyway, Dad was fine about me taking up plumbing.”
Cherry was still struggling with the sherry bottle, frown lines forming on her forehead. “Yes, but that’s different.”
“What?”
She stared at me blankly. “What?”
“What you said—forget it, just give that here.” I took the sherry bottle and opened it with a quick twist of the wrist. “There you go.”
“Thank you.” She poured herself a generous measure, then waved the bottle in my direction. “You?”
“Nah, ’s okay. Actually, any chance of a soft drink?”