Clovenhoof

Prologue

“We’re a little disappointed,” said Saint Peter. “Let’s take the measure of suffering. This was very straightforward.
All suffering should be graded as good or higher
.”

“And we’re certainly getting those grades in a lot of the suffering that we deliver,” said Satan.

“A lot. Not all.”

“Yes, but it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect it for everything,” Satan argued. “We get some clients who simply enjoy it too much, and then there are those who lie about the experience because they can’t help themselves.”

“All suffering means
all
suffering,” Peter said, “and some has been assessed as merely satisfactory. It’s not good enough.”

“Surely satisfactory means that it
is
good enough,” said Satan.

“Not anymore,” said Peter. “The measure is very clear. All right, let us move on to the measure where I think we’ve seen no progress at all.
To consider opportunities for outsourcing the work of Hell to private contractors
.”

Satan rolled his eyes and blew out through his teeth.

“To be honest with you, I never really had any idea what that one meant.”

“Well clearly, there is the possibility -”

“No!” snapped Satan. “Don’t start yapping on about it now. Enough of this charade. I let you give me those targets because everyone has targets, and I’m meant to lead by example. But really. I’m in charge here, and I think you’ll find I’ve been running my ass off making things better, and answering questions and generally keeping all the new plates spinning as well as the old plates. Surely, these things were set to give me something to do in the quiet times. Not that I get quiet times anymore.”

“Your response distresses me deeply,” Peter said, reaching for his glasses. “We, your assessment board have taken this process very seriously. You give me no choice but to recommend your immediate removal from the post.”

“Are you kidding?” yelled Satan. “Are you fucking kidding? I’m the Prince of Darkness! You can’t just sack me! What kind of puffed-up, pompous twat are you anyway?”

“I,” said Peter heavily, “am the Rock, you inefficient, flabby, has-been angel. I am the man that has a completed process and an airtight paper trail proving that you are not fit to do your role. I’m sorry that we’re not in agreement about this, but it’s not up for debate.”

“How can it not be up for debate? I’d like to take it up with the Other Guy. Bring him along to back up this little kangaroo court you’ve got here.”

There was a moment when the board seemed to glance at one another without actually moving, but it soon passed.

“We’ll pass your request on, of course,” said Peter smoothly, “but don’t expect anything to change. This is a tried and tested process.”

Satan turned on his heel and marched from the room, looking for something,
anything
to smash.

Chapter 1 - in which Clovenhoof arrives, fails to end it all and gets a round in.

Ben liked routine.

He got
twitchy
when confronted with the unusual.

He’d been extremely twitchy all morning.

When he left his flat, a small but weighty package that had been propped up against the door fell in on the carpet with a slap. Wrapped in brown parcel paper, it had a pink post-it note attached to it that read:

What do you think?

Nerys (upstairs)

X

That was a little unusual, since Nerys Thomas, who lived in flat 3, along with her elderly aunt and a rat-like Yorkshire terrier called Twinkle hadn’t said more than a dozen words to him in the two years they had been neighbours.

Ben put the parcel on his kitchen table next to a line of war-gaming miniatures and went out. As he locked up, he looked across to the door of flat 2a. It had now been unoccupied for over a year, since the unfortunate departure of Mr Dewsbury. The thought of Mr Dewsbury made Ben twitchy for entirely different reasons.

Once out of the flats, which were all neatly contained within a large pre-war house, he headed towards Boldmere high street. He began to realise that he had seriously overdressed for the weather. Autumn was an unpredictable season with rain varying from violent torrents to half-hearted drizzle and wind that covered the spectrum from irritating gusts to full-on slap-a-wad-of-wet-leaves-in-your-face gales. But today was more like summer. Not that it was warm and sunny. Sutton Coldfield did a nice line in grey skies and rarely experimented with much else but there was a closeness in the air that was decidedly unseasonal and an indefinable electric crackle that spoke of a storm about to break.

This was unusual too.

And yet, though each of these things was unusual, none of these strange occurrences could quite compare to what happened shortly after eleven o’clock. Having restocked the shelves of the Thriller section with a newly arrived box of Deightons and Le Carrés and settled down to a mid-morning cup of tea, Ben heard a muffled roll of thunder, looked up and saw that a naked man had appeared on the pavement outside the shop.

The naked man was turning on the spot, looking furiously in all directions and making theatrical and vulgar gestures with his hands. Ben did not have much experience of nudity, male or female, and was so mortified by the prospect of seeing naked men in public changing rooms that he had never learned to swim. However, with the window as a screen between them, a social divider, once it became reasonably clear that the man was probably not going to come into the shop for a browse, Ben found himself interested rather than worried. He took a sip of tea and watched to see what would happen next.

What did happen was that two old ladies came along the pavement and stopped in front of the naked man. They were the kind of old ladies - puffy blue-rinses and thick knitted coats, one with a tartan shopping bag on wheels, one with a wooden-handled knitting bag in one hand and a brolly in the other - who were probably called something like Betty and Doris. They were also probably the kind who, having lived through a world war, weren’t going to be put off their shopping trip by a naked man.

One of the old women used her brolly to point out the man’s hairy genitalia just in case her friend had failed to notice it. Apparently, she had failed to notice it, because she now looked down and immediately burst out laughing. The naked man did not take well to this and began bellowing at the old dears.

Ben had an underdeveloped social conscience and knew himself to be a physical coward but, fearing civil unrest and the bad press that might come from having old ladies assaulted outside his shop, he put down his cuppa and left the safety of
Books ‘n’ Bobs
to remonstrate with the man.

The man, red in the face from shouting at the old ladies, wheeled on Ben instantly.

“Kneel before me, human!” he commanded.

Ben looked down and pictured where his face would end up if he complied.

“Ah, it’s not that I’m not flattered by the offer,” he heard his own mouth say without any input from his brain. “And I’ve got nothing against that kind of thing. In the privacy of one’s home, you understand but, um...”

His mouth, having got so far by itself, ran out of steam and looked to his brain for instructions and found none forthcoming.

The man’s face creased with bitter fury.

“Don’t any of you worms know who I am? What I am?”

Ben took in the man’s life-worn face, his neatly trimmed beard, his slight paunch, his precise but profane English and his general lack of care regarding his own nakedness.

“Are you Swedish?”

The man groaned and spun round, seemingly in search of someone or something else to latch onto.

“What is this place?” he asked, straining as though the very thoughts in his head were excruciating pain.

“Sutton Coldfield.”

“Where’s that?”

“Birmingham. England.”

“Earth?”

Ah, thought Ben. And now he’ll ask us to take him to our leader.

“Where are my halls?” the man wailed. “My flesh pots? My pleasure pits?”

Ben’s thoughts shifted again. His suspicions had travelled from shameless nudist, to care in the community victim, to middle-aged hippy (perhaps one suffering an inconvenient acid flashback). But now he found himself wondering if the fellow was the victim of a stag-do prank and perhaps still inebriated from the night before. Admittedly, today was Monday and Sutton Coldfield was hardly a Mecca for hen and stag parties, particularly on Sunday nights, but maybe he had been wandering drunk, drugged and naked since the weekend. Yes, a man could walk out this far from Birmingham’s numerous ‘flesh pots’ in that time...

“Do you need me to call someone?” said Ben.

“Who are
you
going to call?” shrieked the man and with a bizarre cry of “Dung beetles!” ran off down the road in the vague direction of Birmingham city centre.

Ben looked at the old ladies.

“Are you two all right?”

They both smiled at him but said nothing. He looked past them down the road.

The naked guy was capering in the middle of the road outside the Greggs bakery. A post van had pipped its horn at him and now the man was doing his best to kick the van’s lights in and doing a surprisingly good job considering he had no shoes.

Ben sighed and shook his head.

“People, eh?” he said and then saw that the two old ladies had gone. Vanished without a trace.

Shortly, after the naked man had attacked the post van, a number 66A bus and a lamppost, the police turned up and took him away.

“People,” Ben said to himself again quietly and went back inside the shop.

They put him in a cell, which was small and clean and too bright for his liking.

The arresting officer, a lean moustachioed man, had given him a blanket to cover his nakedness and, after a length of time that suggested they had to root around in dusty cupboards or foetid lockers to find them, they gave him a pair of black police trousers, a white police shirt and a pair of heavy boots. He put on the trousers and the shirt but, of course, not the boots.

Later still they brought him a cup of tea and a plate of baked beans. He put them on the cushioned bench next to him and ignored them.

Much later, the cell door opened and the archangel Michael walked in.

He looked up at Michael and said, “What are you wearing?”

“Armani.”

“And your wings?”

“Would ruin the cut of the suit. Both fashion and faith have moved on since my last apparition.” He looked at his watch. “You’ve been on Earth for just over four hours. And already you’ve roused the ire of local law enforcement.”

“What did you expect?”

“I expected better.” He tapped his breast pocket. “Fortunately, I have a court order here demanding your immediate release.”

“I’m not going out there!” He flung out his arms, knocking the polystyrene cup of tea off the bench. The cold tea splashed around the archangel’s expensively shoed feet but did not touch them. It was not a coincidence. “Earth. It’s an anthill. It’s a cesspit. It’s an anthill in a cess pit.”