First Among Sequels

  “Nah!” said Spike, sniggering as if I were a simpleton. “If that was Mephistopheles, you’d really know about it. Firstly, the air would be thick with the choking stench of brimstone and decay, and we’d be knee-deep in the departed souls of the damned, writhing in perpetual agony as their bodies were repeatedly pierced with the barbed spears of the tormentors. And secondly, we’d never have got Jaffa cakes. Probably rich tea or graham crackers.”

  “Yeah, I hate them, too. But listen, if not Satan, then who?”

  Spike closed the door carefully. “A demi-devil or Junior demon or something, sent to precipitate mankind’s fall into the eternal river of effluent that is the bowels of hell. Let’s see if we can’t get a make on this guy. Have a look in the backyard and tell me if you see anything unusual.”

  I peered out the window as Spike looked around the room.

  “I can see the old carpet piled up in the carport,” I said, “and an almost-brand-new washing machine.”

  “How does the carpet look?”

  “It seems perfect.”

  “Figures. Look here.”

  He pointed to an old cookie jar that was sitting on the mantelpiece. The lid was half off, and clearly visible inside was a wad of banknotes.

  “Bingo!” said Spike, drawing out the hefty wad. They were all fifty-pound notes—easily a grand. “This is demi-demon Raum, if I’m not mistaken. He tempts men to eternal damnation by the sin of theft.”

  “Come on!” I said, mildly skeptical. “If Lucifer has everyone that had stolen something, he’d have more souls than he’d know what to deal with.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Spike. “The parameters of sin have become blurred over the years. A theft worthy of damnation has to be deceitful, cowardly and loathsome—like from a charming and defenseless pensioner war veteran. So what Raum does is stash the real Major Pickles in a closet somewhere, assume his form, leaves the cash in plain sight, and some poor boob chances his luck. He counts his blessings, has a good few evenings out and forgets all about it until Judgment Day. And then—shazam! He’s having his eyeballs gouged out with a spoon. And then again. And again…and again.”

  “I…get the picture. So this Raum guy’s a big deal, right?”

  “Nah—pretty much a small-timer,” said Spike, replacing the money. “First sphere, tenth throne—any lower and he’d be in the second hierarchy and confined to hell rather than doing the cushy number up here, harvesting souls for Lucifer and attempting to engineer the fall of man.”

  “Is there a lot of this about?” I asked. “Demons, I mean—hanging around ready to tempt us?”

  Spike shrugged. “In Swindon? No. And there’ll be one less if I can do anything about it.”

  He flipped open his cell phone and dialed a number, then pointed at the floor. “You better get those grippers down if we’re to finish by lunchtime. I’m kidding. He doesn’t want a carpet; we’re only here to be tempted—remember all that stuff in the backyard? Hi, Betty? It’s Dad. I’ve got a five-five in progress with a tenth-throner name of Raum. Will you have a look in Wheatley’s and see how to cast him out? Thanks.” He paused for a moment, looked at me and added, “Perhaps it wasn’t Felix8 at all. Perhaps he was…Felix9. After all, the linking factor between the Felixes was only ever his face, yes?”

  “Good point,” I said, wondering quite how Spike might be so relaxed about the whole demon thing that he could be thinking about the Felix problem at the same time.

  “Betty?” said Spike into his phone. “I’m still here…. Cold steel? No problem. Have you done your homework?…Well, you’d better get started. One more thing: Bowden said he’d do the washing for us, so get all the curtains down…. Love you, too. Bye.”

  He snapped his phone shut and looked around the room for something made of steel. He picked up the nail gun, muttered, “Damn, galvanized” then rummaged in the toolbox. The best he could find was a long screwdriver, but he rejected this because it was chrome-plated.

  “Can’t we just go away and deal with Raum later?”

  “Doesn’t work like that,” he said, peering out the window to see if there was anything steel within reach, which there wasn’t. “We deal with this clown right now or not at all.”

  He opened the door a crack and peeked out.

  “Okay, he’s in the front room. Here’s the plan: You gain his attention while I go into the kitchen and find something made of steel. Then I send him back to the second sphere.”

  “What if you’re mistaken?” I asked. “He might be suffering from some—I don’t know—rare genetic disorder that makes him grow hooves.”

  Spike fixed me with a piercing stare. “Have you even heard of such a thing?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s do it. I hope there’s a Sabatier or a tire iron or something—it’ll be a pretty messy job with an eggbeater.”

  So while Spike slipped into the kitchen, I went to the door of the front room where Major Pickles was watching TV. He was seated on a floral-patterned settee with a cup of tea and a slice of fruitcake on a table nearby.

  “Hello, young lady,” he said amiably. “Done already?”

  “No,” I said, trying to appear unflustered, “but we’re going to use the nail gun, and it might make some noise.”

  “Oh, that’s quite all right,” he said. “I was at Tobruk, you know.”

  “Really? What was it like?”

  “My dear girl, the noise—and you couldn’t get a decent drink anywhere.”

  “So a nail gun is no problem?”

  “Nostalgic, my dear—fire away.”

  Spike hadn’t yet reappeared, so I carried on. “Good. Right, well—Hey, is that Bedazzled you’re watching?”

  “Yes,” he replied, “the Brendan Fraser version—such a broad head, but very funny.”

  “I met him once,” I said, stalling for time, “at the launch party for the Eyre Affair movie. He played the part of—”

  “Thursday?”

  It was Spike, calling from the kitchen. I smiled and said to Major Pickles, “Would you excuse me for just one moment?”

  Pickles nodded politely, and I walked to the kitchen, which was, strangely enough, empty. Not a sign of Spike anywhere. It had two doors, and the only other entrance, the back door, had a broom leaned up against it. I was about to open the fridge to look for him when I heard a voice.

  “I’m up here.”

  I glanced up. Spike was pinned to the ceiling with thirty or so knives, scissors and other sharp objects, all stuck through the periphery of his clothing and making him look like the victim of an overenthusiastic circus knife thrower.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed. “We’re supposed to be dealing with the Raum guy.”

  “What am I doing? Oh, just admiring the view—why, what do you think I’m doing?”

  I shrugged.

  “Thursday,” added Spike in a quiet voice, “I think he’s on to us.”

  I turned to the door and jumped in fright because Major Pickles had crept up without my realizing. But it wasn’t the little old gent I’d a seen a few moments ago; this Pickles had two large horns sticking out of his head, yellow eyes like a cat’s, and he was dressed in a loincloth. He was lean and muscular and had shiny, bright red skin—a bit like those ducks that hang in Chinese-restaurant windows. He also smelled strongly of sewage.

  “Well,” said Raum in a guttural, rasping voice that sounded like a box of rusty nails, “Thursday Next. What a surprise!” He looked up. “And Mr. Stoker, I presume—believe me, you are very unpopular from where I come from!”

  I made a move to thump him, but he was too quick, and a moment later I was thrown to the ceiling with a force so hard it cracked the plaster. I didn’t drop; I was held, face pointing down, not by any knives or scissors but the action of an unearthly force that felt as if I were being sat upon by a small walrus.

  “Thursday,” added Spike in a quiet voice, “I think he’s onto us.”

  “Two unsullied souls,” grow
led Raum sadly. “To His Infernal Majesty, worthless.”

  “I’m warning you,” said Spike in a masterful display of misplaced optimism, “give yourself up and I’ll not be too hard on you.”

  “SILENCE!” roared Raum, so loudly that two of the kitchen windows shattered. He laughed a deep, demonic cackle, then carried on. “Just so this morning hasn’t been a complete waste, I am prepared to offer a deal: Either you both die in an exceptionally painful manner and I relinquish all rights to your souls, or one of you gives yourself to me—and I free the other!”

  “How about a game of chess?” suggested Spike.

  “Oh, no!” said Raum, wagging a reproachful finger. “We don’t fall for that one anymore. Now, who’s it going to be?”

  “You can take me,” said Spike.

  “No!” I cried, but Raum merely laughed. He laughed long and loud. He laughed again. Then some more. He laughed so long, in fact, that Spike and I looked at each other. But still Raum laughed. The plates and cups smashed on the dresser, and glasses that were upside down on the drainer broke into smithereens. More laughter. Louder, longer, harder, until suddenly and quite without warning he exploded into a million tiny fragments that filled the small kitchen like a red mist. Released from the ceiling, I fell to the floor via the kitchen table, which was luckily a bit frail and had nothing on it. I was slightly dazed but got up to see…the real Major Pickles, standing where Raum had been, still holding the steel bayonet that had dispatched the demon back to hell.

  “Hah!” said the elderly little gent with an aggressive twinkle in his eye. “They don’t like the taste of cold steel up ’em!”

  He had several days of stubble and was dressed in torn pajamas and covered in soil.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “He thought he could keep me prisoner in the garden shed,” replied the pensioner resolutely, “but it was only fifteen yards nornoreast under the patio to the geranium bed.”

  “You dug your way out?”

  “Yes, and would have been quicker, too, if I’d had a soup spoon instead of this.”

  He showed me a very worn and bent teaspoon.

  “Or a spade?” I ventured.

  “Hah!” he snorted contemptuously. “Spades are for losers.” He looked up and noticed Spike. “I say, you there, sir—get off my ceiling this minute.”

  “Nothing I’d like better.”

  So we got Spike down and explained as best we could to the sprightly nonagenarian just who Raum was, something that he seemed to have very little trouble understanding.

  “Good Lord, man!” he said at last. “You mean I killed a demon? There’s a notch for the cricket bat, and no mistake.”

  “Sadly, no,” replied Spike. “You just relegated him to the second sphere—he’ll not reappear on earth for a decade or two and will get a serious lashing from the Dark One into the bargain.”

  “Better than he deserves,” replied Major Pickles, checking the cookie jar. “The rotten blighter has pigged all my Jaffa cakes.”

  “Spike,” I said, pointing at a desk diary I’d found on the counter, “we’re not the only people who have had an appointment this morning.”

  He and Major Pickles bent over to have a look, and there it was. This morning was the first of three days of soul entrapment that Raum had planned for the house-call professionals of Swindon, and we had been the third potential damnees. The first, an electrician, Raum had crossed out and made a note: “sickeningly pleasant.” The next, however, was for a new washing machine, and Raum had made three checks next to the name of the company: Wessex Kitchens. I rummaged through the papers on the counter-top and found a job sheet—the workman had been someone called Hans Towwel.

  “Blast!” said Spike. “I hate it when Satan obtains a soul. Don’t get me wrong, some people deserve to be tortured for all eternity, but damnation without the possibility of salvation—it’s like a three-strike life sentence without the possibility of parole.”

  I nodded in agreement. Obscene though the crime was, eternal damnation was several punishments too far.

  “All this defeatist claptrap is making me sick to the craw,” growled Major Pickles. “No one is going to hell on my account—what happens if we get the money back?”

  Spike snapped his fingers.

  “Pickles, you’re a genius! Mr. Towwel doesn’t join the legion of the damned until he actually makes use of his ill-gotten gains. Thursday, call Wessex Kitchens and find out where he is—we need to get to him before he spends any of the cash.”

  Ten minutes later we were heading at high speed toward the Greasy Monk, a popular medieval-themed eatery not far from the rebuilt cathedral of St. Zvlkx. I had tried to call Towwel’s cell phone, but it was switched off, and when I explained that there was a substantial sum of money missing from Major Pickles’s house, the boss of Wessex Kitchens said he was horrified—and promised to meet us there.

  The restaurant was filled to capacity, as the cathedral of St. Zvlkx had just been nominated as the first GSD drop-around-if-you-want-but-hey-no-one’s-forcing-you place of worship/contemplation/meditation, and the many followers/adherents/vaguely interested parties of the single unified faith were having lunch and discussing ways in which they could best use the new multi-faith for overwhelming good.

  As soon as we pushed open the doors Spike yelled, “Hans Towwel?” in his most commanding voice, and in the silence that followed, a man in a navy blue coverall signaled to us from behind a wooden plate of bread and dripping.

  “Problems?” he said as we walked up.

  “Could be,” said Spike. “Did you pay for that meal with the money you pinched from Major Pickles?”

  “Did I what?”

  “You heard him,” I said. “Did you pay for that meal with the money you stole from Major Pickles?”

  “Ballocks to you!” he said, getting up. Spike, who was pretty strong, pushed the man hard back down into his seat.

  “Listen,” said Spike in a quiet voice, “we’re not cops, and we don’t give a shit about the money, and we don’t give a shit about you—but we do give a shit about your soul. Now, just tell us: Have you spent any of the cash or not?”

  “That’s well sweet, isn’t it?” growled Towwel. “Some cash is missing so you blame the workingman.”

  “Towwel?” said a crumpled and untidy-looking man in a crumpled and untidy-looking suit, who had just arrived. “Is what they say true?”

  “Who are you?” asked Spike.

  “Mr. Hedge Moulting of Wessex Kitchens,” said the untidy man, offering us a business card. “I must say I am shocked and appalled by our employee’s behavior—how much was taken?”

  “Now, look here!” said Towwel, growing angrier by the second, which caused Mr. Moulting of Wessex Kitchens to flinch and hide behind Spike. “I don’t steal from people. Not from customers, not from pensioners, not from you, not from anyone!”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself!” said Moulting, still half hidden behind Spike. “You’re fired—and don’t expect a reference.”

  “How do we know you didn’t take it?” demanded Towwel.

  “Me?” exclaimed Moulting. “How dare you!”

  “you made a random inspection of my work this morning, and you’re a sleazy piece of crap—I say you took it.”

  “An outrageous accusation!” yelled Moulting, waving a threatening finger in Towwel’s direction. “You’ll never install a washing machine in this town again, and what’s more I will make it my duty—nay, pleasure—to see you convicted of this heinous crime. A thousand pounds? From a war veteran? You deserve all you’re going to get!”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “Mr. Moulting,” said Spike, “we never said how much was stolen. As I said to Mr. Towwel here, we don’t give a shit about the money. We’re here to save a soul from the torment of eternal damnation. It was a diabolical entrapment from one of Old Scratch’s accomplices. If you’ve got the money and haven’t spent any of it, then just drop i
t in the nearest poor box, and your soul is clear. If you have spent some of the cash, then there’s nothing anyone can do for you.”

  I turned to Mr. Towwel. “Sorry to have accused you unjustly, sir. If you need a job, call me anytime at Acme Carpets.”

  And we walked out, bumping aside Moulting as we went. His shaking hand reached for a chair back to steady himself. He had turned pale and was sweating, trembling with the fear of the man who is condemned to eternal hellfire and knows it.

  We recarpeted Major Pickles’s entire house with the finest carpet we had. We also did his shopping, his washing and bought him two dozen packets of Jaffa cakes. After that, the three of us sat down and nattered all afternoon, drinking tea and telling stories. We parted the best of friends and left our phone numbers on his fridge so he could call us if he needed anything. I even suggested he give Polly a call if he wanted some company.

  “I never realized carpet laying could be so much fun,” I said as we finally drove away.

  “Me neither,” replied Spike. “Do you think Bowden will be pissed off that we’ve done this one for free and it took us all day?”

  “Nah,” I replied with a smile, “I’m sure he’ll be just fine about it.”

  29.

  Time Out of Joint

  I never did get my head around time’s carefree propensity to paradox. My father didn’t exist, yet I was still born, and time travel had never been invented, but they still hoped that it might. There were currently two versions of Friday, and I had met him several times in the past—or was it the future? It gave me a dull ache in the head when I thought about it.

  H ow was work?” asked Landen when I walked in the door.

  “Quite good fun,” I replied. “The floor-covering business is definitely looking up. How are things with you?”

  “Good, too—lots of work done.”

  “On The Mews of Doom?” I asked, still hopeful about Scampton-Tappett and remembering that I had sent a note down to Bananas for Edward for him to swap books. He’d cost me a thousand book-guineas, and I was sure as hell going to get my money’s worth.