Clovenhoof (46 page)

“I thought God was everywhere,” said Nerys.

“Yes, he is. And he’s in the Empyrium.”

Evelyn looked ahead along the track.

“Not far to the station,” she said.

“Too far,” whispered Joan and then gave a cheesy grin to the sash-wearing man who was now standing before her.

“Permits,” he said flatly.

“This is mine,” said Joan loudly and thrust her card in his face.

The man gave it a cursory glance and tried to pass it back to her.

“Do you think that picture does me justice?” said Joan.

“Your card, madam.”

The man pressed the card against Joan’s breastplate and let it drop. He clicked his fingers for the others to pass theirs over.

The three other KHH sashes had finished with the other passengers and now approached the women. The woman in white made a big show of searching herself for her permit.

“I’ve only been here three weeks,” she said, grinning. “I’m sure it’s here somewhere.”

“For your sake it had better be,” said an angel.

Three weeks, thought Nerys.

“We’re coming into the station,” said Evelyn.

“Permits,” said the angelic sash and held out his hand to receive them.

“Here it is,” said the woman in white and held it up for inspection.

“Got mine here,” said Evelyn and waved it vaguely at them while she looked out of the window.

Nerys could feel the monorail slowing.

“Your card, madam,” said a sash and, without looking, Nerys knew he was talking to her.

“This is hers,” said the woman in white, passing her own card over again.

“No,” said the man. “This is yours.”

There was a platform beside the door now but the monorail had not yet stopped.

“Do you want to see my card again?” said Joan and thrust it into one of the angel’s faces.

“Madam,” he said, looking past Joan at Nerys, his sandy hair ablaze with light, “your permit. Now.”

“I’m over six hundred years old but I think I can still pass for nineteen, don’t you think?” said Joan.

The angel stretched an arm forward and gently but implacably swept Joan aside.

“Hey,” she said, “you can’t push me around.”

As the monorail came to a halt, the angel gave the French martyr a contemptuous look.

“Why not?”

“Because,” said Joan and rammed a gauntleted fist into his nose, flattening it against his face.

The automatic doors shushed open and Nerys leapt out onto the platform, followed rapidly by her three friends and, shortly after, by four KHH sashes, one of them clutching his smashed nose.

“Stop!” yelled one of the sashes.

“No!” yelled Joan and the four women ran.

“No, your honour,” said Mr Devereaux. “I am not offering an opinion on whether Mr Dewsbury is dead or alive. What I can say is that the Crown Prosecution Service holds no evidence to suggest that any corpse was found in Mr Kitchen’s flat.”

“With your permission, your honour,” said the prosecution barrister, “there is the photographic evidence. The scenes of crime officers took many photographs of the body.”

“And have these photographs been mislaid as well?” asked Judge Arbuthnot, a little giddily.

“No,” the prosecution assured him. “I even have copies here with me.”

“He does indeed, your honour,” said Mr Devereaux. “Photographs of what appears to be a human corpse.”

“Appears?” said Judge Arbuthnot, his voice shooting up halfway through the word.

“Mr Kitchen is a gifted model maker. My learned friend’s photographs will no doubt feature the paints and model-making materials that Mr Kitchen has throughout his flat.”

“Is this so?” said Judge Arbuthnot and Ben, who had been watching the proceedings with an anxious detachment, realised that this question was addressed to him. “Was the corpse in the trunk a model?”

“Jeremy told me to make it as a model for Pitspawn,” Ben heard himself say.

“Please, your honour,” said the prosecution barrister. “Mr Kitchen readily confessed to the murder. Without prompting.”

“As might any man in Mr Kitchen’s fragile state of mind,” said Mr Devereaux.

“Fragile?” said Ben.

At the base of the stairs leading down from the monorail station was a narrow street, a row of closed up buildings and a wrought iron gate leading into a park area. Nerys grasped the gate, pushed and then saw the padlock and chain.

“They’re coming!” yelled the woman in white.

Nerys read the wooden sign pinned to the gate.

“Sanctuary for Blessed Animals. Closed for Redevelopment.”

“Duck!” shouted Joan.

Nerys turned as one of an angel with a broken nose came swooping down on an eight-foot long wingspan. Joan stepped forward and swung her broadsword upward, neatly clipping the angel’s wing and sending it slamming face first into the wall next to the gate. She turned and, continuing the same stroke, brought the sword down on the chain securing the gate. The chain shattered.

They barrelled through into the park and ran on towards the colossal wall that marked the city limits. As she ran, Nerys realised that the body she had possessed as an eighteen year old, the body she now possessed, was far fitter than the one she had left behind on the floor of Pitspawn’s room. Sprinting through the parkland, past animal enclosures and pastures, was an almost enjoyable experience.

An angel in a purple sash landed with a thump on the path ahead of them. He pointed a silver spear towards the women.

“Through here,” said Joan, vaulted a fence to the side, sliced through a wire mesh fence and ran on through a herd of pure white horses. She slapped one on its hindquarters with the flat of her blade to scatter the herd.

“Joan’s enjoying herself,” said Nerys as they followed in the wake of the now stampeding horses.

“I don’t think she gets out much,” replied Evelyn.

“Over there,” said the woman in white, pointing.

Nerys looked.

“Are those lions and lambs lying down together?” she said.

“Mmmm,” nodded the woman in white. “Do the lambs look nervous to you?”

“Through here,” cried Joan.

Nerys glimpsed a larger group of purple sashes off to the left but was distracted by events over to the right where the stampeding horses had crashed into an enclosure for large mammals. A great animal cry went up.

“We’re not exactly being subtle,” said Nerys.

“Can’t be helped,” cried Joan, skirting a deep fishpond and joining a path that ran towards the city wall.

A man in a brown robe with what appeared to be a giant grizzled wolf on a lead was hurrying towards them along the path. Nerys couldn’t sure if he was hurrying to intercept them or hurrying because the snarling beast on the lead was pretty much dragging him along.

“Twespassers! Vandals!” he cried. “The sanctuawy is closed!”

The shadow of an angel passed over Nerys.

Joan ducked sideways and leaped into another enclosure. Nerys leaped after her. Something squeaked and slipped beneath her feet.

“Not the wabbits!” cried the robed man. “Have you no wegard for your fellow cweatures?”

“Sorry, Frank!” called Joan, kicking aside a fat white ball of fur.

They scrambled up an embankment at the far side of the rabbit enclosure. In the distance, the lisping curator was berating someone else. There was a cry of “mind the whinocewos” and then an almighty bellow of animal, human and angel voices.

Evelyn pointed.

“There’s the gate.”

It was a gate very much like the one by which Nerys had entered Heaven albeit closed and unattended.

They put in a final sprint to the gate and, with the sounds of animal confusion fading behind them, it seemed that they had left their pursuers far behind. But then, emerging from behind a row of trees, came a band of half a dozen KHH sashes, and at their head was a man Nerys had glimpsed less than an hour before, although he hadn’t been wearing such an expression of fury before.

Joan skidded to a stop.

“St Peter,” said the woman in white, almost running into the back of her.

“Do you think he wants his keys back?” said Evelyn.

“Mr Kitchen has had a traumatic year,” explained Mr Devereaux, “and has had a number of stressful encounters with the law.”

Ben felt the urge to ask his barrister what on earth he was on about but, since the man was apparently working for his benefit, he did his best to nod in mournful agreement.

Mr Devereux picked up a sheet of paper and read.

“He was briefly detained following a police raid on a rock concert at the beginning of the year and although no charges were brought, your honour, I believe the incident had a profound effect on him. Only a few months later, he was captured and tortured by a known bank robber in a case of mistaken identity. The police arrested him yet again and, once again, he was released without charge.”

“Are you suggesting Mr Kitchen is being persecuted by the police?” said Judge Arbuthnot.

“I’m painting a picture, your honour.” Mr Devereaux consulted his notes. “Then there was the nasty business of the house fire.”

“Is this relevant?”

“Mere scenery, your honour. Mr Kitchen has obviously been under a lot of pressure and has been caused a great deal of embarrassment of late. Shall I mention the woman’s head?”

“Woman’s head?”

“Found in his wardrobe by the police. Not a real head of course, your honour. It was part of a – how shall I put it? – a mannequin. A marital aid, if you will.”

Now genuinely traumatised and mortified by embarrassment, Ben looked away. He began to think that spending twenty-five years in prison might be preferable to hearing a crown court judge discuss the dismembered sex doll in his wardrobe.

He looked aside at the public gallery, maybe a dozen faces, all entranced by the exchange going on between barrister and judge. At least, he noticed, none of his family were among them. Although he was surprised and mildly disappointed to see neither Nerys nor Clovenhoof among them.

He froze. Not all of the faces were turned to the barrister and judge. One particular pair of eyes was fixed on him, brows screwed up in an expression of malevolent hatred.

Herbert Dewsbury silently shook an angry fist at him.

“Herbert?” said Ben.

Herbert twitched.

“Mr Kitchen,” said Judge Arbuthnot sternly. “I must ask that you remain silent unless questioned.”

Ben pointed uncertainly at Herbert.

“Can
you
see him?” he asked the judge uncertainly.

“Mr Kitchen!”

Ben looked to the gallery.

“What are you doing here, Herbert?”

“Mr Kitchen! I will have you removed from the court!”

“Take him away!” blurted Herbert. “Lock him up! Send him to the gallows!”

“Order!” cried Judge Arbuthnot.

“He did it!” replied Herbert, pointing furiously. “He killed me!”

“Order!”

“I was there! I saw everything!”

The judge pounded his table with his fist.

“What is going on here?” he demanded.

Mr Devereaux paused a moment, his lips frozen on the cusp of forming words.

“Your honour,” he said, finding his tongue, “I believe it is the murder victim.”

St Peter shook his head in patronising disapproval.

“I have no idea what you hope to achieve, Joan,” he said. “But it stops here.”

Joan passed her sword from one hand to other and then back again.

“Just give up,” said Peter. “You are one woman against all of us.”

“Ahem,” said Evelyn loudly.

“Sorry,” said Peter. “You have your trendy vicar, tennis girl and – what?” He waved a hand at Nerys. “A go-go dancer?”

Nerys was in a mind to object to the accusation but was distracted by the realisation that the woman in white was indeed dressed for a tennis match, albeit one from fifty odd years ago. It stirred some vague memory within her but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“I’m almost glad you’ve chosen to rebel in this way,” Peter said to Joan. “You are nothing but a rabble-rouser. A troublemaker. This act of treason gives me the justification to have you removed from the Celestial City.”

“You do not rule this city,” said Joan between clenched teeth.

Peter raised his eyebrows.

“You give me back my keys and we’ll see about that.”

Joan tightened her grip on her blade and then abruptly let it drop.

“Oh, my goodness!” she shouted, pointing. “A rampaging elephant!”

“Please,” said Peter wearily. “Am I going to fall f-”

His words were lost in a thunder of feet and tusks as a blessed grey mountain of African elephant led a stampeding menagerie through the
Keep Heaven Holy
squad.

“Now!” yelled Joan and led the women forward, through the dust clouds and lumbering tail end of the stampede.

She plucked the keys from beneath her breastplate and tossed them to Nerys. Nerys caught them and ran forward. Joan spun on her toes to defend the rear.

“Oh, my poor cweatures!” came a plaintive cry from behind. “What have they done? Peter, are you all wight?”

There was a growl and the sound of violence.

“Bwother wolf! No! Leave! Put him down!”

Pitspawn had pushed himself into the corner of his room, wedging himself into the corner between two walls.

His conscious mind had resurfaced from the shock of discovering that his resurrection spell had worked and now fervently wished it could sink back into the depths of delirium. Not only had he successfully brought someone back from the dead but he was now in a room with a man who claimed to be Satan and the woman he had murdered.

After killing the woman, Clovenhoof / Satan (whoever he was) had become deeply bored. He spent several minutes rearranging the corpse. First of all, he laid it out, arms crossed over the chest. Bored with that, he stuck one of the woman’s fingers up her own nose and then two. This amused him only momentarily.

He then sat her upright and tried to compose her into the pose of Rodin’s
Thinker
. The floppy corpse was quite uncooperative in this endeavour and he settled for sitting her on the bed next to him and holding her head upright with his hand.