Clovenhoof 05 Beelzebelle Read online

  “A true hero,” burped Ben. “A knight among dogs.”

  “The King Arthur of the dog world,” said Clovenhoof.

  “Are we all talking about the same animal here?” said Michael, confused.

  “… Tiny, tiny King Arthur,” said Clovenhoof in a squeaky, drunken voice.

  “We will not see his like again,” said Nerys.

  “No, we won’t,” said Clovenhoof. “But we can give him in death what he never had in life. You know what he needs?”

  “A wash and a blow dry,” suggested Michael.

  “No. I have just the thing,” said Clovenhoof.

  He went off into the kitchen and came back with a pack of fireworks, a child’s tricycle, and a ball of string.

  “I got the tricycle from the charity shop,” said Clovenhoof. “Beelzebelle would have loved it, but I’m thinking that Twinkle can make use of it.”

  “I’m not sure this is right, Jeremy,” said Nerys.

  “Trust me, I know something about creating a kickass image. We’re going to remodel Twinkle into the sort of warrior that could take on a crow and weasel crossbow team.”

  He sat the sagging dog on top of the tricycle and tied him in place with string.

  “I was going to use the string to keep Beelzebelle in place. She’s a bit too small to ride it herself,” he said. Then he pulled a rocket out from the fireworks and strapped it to the right paw of warrior-Twinkle. He pushed him back and forth when he was done. Then he arranged the other stuffed animals to face him, so that warrior-Twinkle was prepared to fight several rabbits, squirrels, and weasels with chain mail and swords.

  “Look at that! He’s ready to do battle against all of your guinea pigs with flickknives or your crows with tanks,” warbled Clovenhoof triumphantly.

  Ben stood up and looked at it.

  “Y’know, that’s not half bad. I think he might be onto something, Nerys. It captures Twinkle’s playfulness.”

  “I don’t really know about that,” said Nerys. “It doesn’t seem very respectful to me. I’m such a bad mother, Twinkle. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t keep you alive, and now I’m not even sure I can, uh, keep you properly dead either.”

  “We’re all getting a bit morose,” said Ben. “I say we break out the snacks. What you got in, Jeremy?”

  “Pop the oven on, we’ll break out the Crispy Pancakes,” said Clovenhoof.

  Ben disappeared, but then came back moments later holding up several small plastic bags embellished with penguins and snowflakes. He jiggled the dusty contents.

  “Jeremy, are these drugs?” he asked, with a frown of disapproval.

  “I’ve seen those bags before,” said Michael slowly. “Jeremy, what have you …”

  “No!” screamed Nerys.

  There was a moment when they all turned to see Gorky strike the lighter in his hand and hold the flame to the fuse of the rocket strapped to Twinkle. There was another, much longer, moment, when the fuse burned down and several inebriated people scrambled to get to it, but succeeded only in falling over each other. The longest moment was the one when the rocket went off, propelling Twinkle forward, in a shower of sparks, through the ranks of the other stuffed animals and under the table, where the rocket exploded. Michael grabbed the demijohn of Clovenhoof’s homebrew and upended it onto the flames and, when that was emptied, grabbed the bottle of vermouth and used that as well, eventually extinguishing the flames.

  Clovenhoof stood, wavering slightly from the powerful effects of his homebrew. Nerys was screaming, Ben was muttering about drugs, and Michael was accusing him of faking animal samples. Only Gorky made sense at this particular moment. The capuchin monkey shared his pain and sorrow with the world. Gorky held the flame of the lighter above his head and swayed sadly from side to side in a solemn vigil of grief. Clovenhoof saluted him and then passed out on the carpet.

  Chapter 5 – In which Clovenhoof goes blind and goes babysitting, and Nerys bares all

  When Clovenhoof woke, it was still dark. Not grey-light-of-dawn-edging-through-the-windows-from-half-a-world-away dark. Not even dark-but-for-the-light-pollution-of-a-million-Birmingham-streetlamps dark. It was as black as the deepest pits of Hell.

  Clovenhoof turned to look at his radio alarm clock. Its glowing numerals were not glowing, were not visible at all.

  “Powercut?”

  Clovenhoof staggered out of bed. His hangover rolled around inside his empty skull like a bowling ball. The homebrew Lambrini had left him with a mouth that tasted like a highland hedgerow.

  Clovenhoof felt for the curtains and flung them open. Black. No streetlights, no houselights, nothing.

  “Big powercut,” he said, and then shouted for his monkey helper.

  Clovenhoof heard the door, and the sound of Gorky leaping onto the bed.

  “Fetch me my mobile phone,” said Clovenhoof.

  Gorky gave him an earful of monkey chatter.

  “Yeah, well she’s gone now,” said Clovenhoof grumpily, “so you’re no longer a nanny. You’re my monkey butler until such time you find a new job.”

  Gorky made a rude noise and disappeared into the darkness. When he returned, he did not pass Clovenhoof his brick of a phone, but threw it quite expertly at his forehead.

  “Ow!” Clovenhoof caught it, fumbled it, caught it again, and stabbed at the buttons. The screen did not light up. “Hmmm?”

  Clovenhoof felt his way to the door to the living room.

  “Powercut. No lights inside or out,” he mused. “No lights at all. Even battery-powered items don’t work. There can only be one explanation, Gorky.”

  Gorky made an inquisitive sound.

  “Electro-magnetic pulse from a nuclear explosion,” said Clovenhoof. “Cancel all my appointments for the day, my furry manservant,” he said cheerfully. “Nuclear Armageddon is upon us! The end of the world is truly nigh.”

  The carpet squelched wetly under his hooves. Through the haze of alcohol-fogged memory, Clovenhoof vaguely recalled something involving stuffed animals, a small explosion, a subsequent fire, and Michael wasting the remainder of his homebrew on putting it out.

  “Get something to mop this mess up, Gorky, and get me some clothes. I don’t want to face Judgement Day naked.” He thought on this. “Well, maybe later. But, for now, clothes.”

  Nerys surfaced from unpleasant dreams in which a hairy demon squatted on her chest, watching her sleep. She rolled over and groaned at the too bright daylight. She had consumed nothing but alcohol in the last twelve hours, and her dog was still dead. Her stomach hurt, her head hurt, and her soul hurt.

  There was a bang, as of a door closing elsewhere in her flat.

  “Huh?”

  Within her open wardrobe, a coathanger swung back and forth in the breeze.

  She sat upright. There was no breeze.

  Against the protests of her aching and dehydrated body, Nerys climbed out of bed. She was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, still wearing yesterday’s make up. She avoided the gaze of any mirrors as she shuffled into the lounge; she didn’t want to see the bride of Frankenstein staring back at her.

  Everything in the lounge was as it should have been. The front door was closed. There was no sign of anything having fallen over. Maybe the bang had been a figment of her imagination, the final dregs of a dream.

  She went into the kitchen. Again, all was as it ought to have been. Nothing notably out of place. She shrugged. Well, she was up now.

  “Coffee,” she said.

  She reached out for the kettle. It was hot to the touch.

  She recoiled in surprise as though it had burned her which, she realised shortly afterwards, was exactly what it had done.

  Ben heard the sound of something large bumping into his flat door, followed by earnest and earthy swearing and then someone kicking the door in retaliation in what sounded like steel-capped boots. He opened the door. Clovenhoof clutched his head in pain.

  “That hurt,” hissed Clovenhoof.

  “Alcohol wi
ll do that to you,” said Ben, looking Clovenhoof’s interesting attire up and down.

  “I accidentally headbutted the door and jarred myself on my horns.” Clovenhoof gritted his teeth and rubbed his scalp. “And, of course, by horns I meant nothing whatsoever.” He stared with an unfocused gaze at a point just above Ben’s ear. “I bet you’re wondering what’s going on, but I worked it out. It’s the end of the world. Nuclear explosions have fried every electrical circuit in the country.”

  Ben nodded in interest.

  “And is that why you’re wearing pink leggings and a crop top that says ‘Porn star in Training’?”

  Clovenhoof ran his hands over his outfit. Ben noted that Clovenhoof’s man-boobs filled the crop top quite snugly, although the sight of his hairy belly poking out from under it was frankly disturbing.

  “They do feel rather tight. There’s a surprising restriction in certain areas” – Clovenhoof pinged the elasticated material over his crotch – “not entirely unpleasant but – hang on! How can you tell what I’m wearing?”

  “Because I can see it,” said Ben. “And I can see that Nerys is going to be furious when she realises you’ve stolen her clothes.”

  “I just told Gorky to get me – no, no, no. See me? How can you…? Did the fallout radiation give you night-vision or some sort of ESP superpower? I wonder if I’ll get a superpower. I mean, apart from the one I have already, the general super-cool aura of awesomeness. And my massive schlong of course, which is a superpower all by itself. It’s so super, I gave it a name.”

  Ben was waving his hand in front of Clovenhoof’s face and feeling a rare moment of genuine and deep-rooted concern for his neighbour.

  “Jeremy?” he said.

  “No, I’m Jeremy. That’d just be confusing. And I’m not calling him Little Jeremy because, let me tell you, this trouser snake is anything but …”

  “Jeremy! Just shut up for a second!” snapped Ben.

  He threw a few V-signs in Clovenhoof’s face to confirm his fears.

  “I think you’ve gone blind, mate,” he said, his shocked voice reduced to little more than a whisper.

  “What?” said Clovenhoof and then tilted his head in thought. “Yes. That would also explain it.” He waved a hand in front of his own face. His eyes darted blindly to and fro. “And you’re perfectly fine?” he asked.

  “Apart from a fuzzy head and pee that smells of apples, yes. But I was only drinking cider, not some crazy homebrew concoction. Let’s get you back to your flat, eh?”

  Clovenhoof let him guide him back across to 2a.

  “I mean, I’ve heard of people getting blind drunk, but I didn’t think it was an actual thing,” said Clovenhoof. “You know, like shitfaced. No one ever actually shits out of their face, do they?”

  Ben steered him towards the sofa. On the floor under the window was a blast mark on the carpet, surrounded by scattered and charred taxidermy specimens. The area was sodden with the drinks that had been used to put the fire out. Gorky was busily mopping the worst up, using a pair of jeans and a women’s blouse.

  “Look what you did!” exclaimed Ben sadly, picking up a singed and now legless squirrel and cradling its ravaged form in his arms.

  “I hope you’re not looking at me,” said Clovenhoof. “I only tied the firework to the dog. I can’t be held responsible for the actual fire.”

  “It was your monkey that did it.”

  Gorky made a short, sharp noise at Ben and continued to clean up with what appeared to be items of Nerys’s clothing.

  Ben sighed.

  “We’re going to need to get you to a doctor,” he said to Clovenhoof, as he salvaged various damaged creatures from the mess on the floor.

  “Don’t like doctors,” said Clovenhoof. “Arrogant and self-important. Always telling me I’m doing stuff I shouldn’t. They’re worse than God.”

  “You’ve gone blind,” Ben pointed out.

  “It will wear off.”

  “Yeah? Who knows what diabolical ingredients you put in that drink?”

  “All natural ingredients, I’ll have you know,” said Clovenhoof. “All harvested from local parks and green spaces.”

  Ben found the remains of Twinkle. The little dog was far from whole. The firework explosion had ripped it apart and into several distinct pieces. Ben groaned, partly because the mounting of Twinkle had perhaps been his best work, but mostly because this destruction would break Nerys’s heart.

  “Come on then,” he said wearily. “If you won’t go see a doctor, then let’s at least find out what you’ve poisoned yourself with. Some perfectly innocent-looking plants are quite poisonous.”

  “Then they should have warning labels on!” Clovenhoof retorted.

  “Since when has that stopped you? And let’s get these clothes of Nerys’s back upstairs before she notices you’ve taken them.”

  “Blame the monkey.”

  “Sure and…” Ben cast about. “I’ll see if I can find the rest of Twinkle.”

  Nerys rinsed her burned hand in the bathroom sink until the stinging eased. It was when she set to removing her make-up that her mobile on top of the toilet cistern rang. She saw the caller ID and, with a sinking heart, answered.

  “Tina!” she said with a false and unconvincing brightness. “No. I’m not in the office yet. It’s only – what – seven thirty. What do you want?”

  As her boss spoke, Nerys heard the sound of a door closing elsewhere in the flat. When she had heard it earlier, she had been on the cusp of waking and put it down to imagination but, this time, she heard it clearly. It was not her imagination.

  Nerys crept out of the bathroom to investigate.

  “Sorry, Tina,” she said. “Got distracted a moment there. Were you phoning to ask what I’m going to wear to the office today?”

  The bedroom was as Nerys had left it. No one there.

  “You didn’t like what I wore yesterday?” she said. “Because I… because I clashed with your ensemble?”

  Nerys tiptoed to the living room.

  “You know this is work we’re talking about?” said Nerys. “It’s not like we’re bridesmaids at a wedding. We don’t need to colour co-ordinate our clothing every day.”

  Nerys reached for the door handle.

  “I don’t think I own any fuchsia coloured clothes. I have a lilac trouser-suit. No, I’m not saying fuchsia and lilac are the same thing.”

  Nerys stepped into the living room.

  “I do think sending the right image to our clients is important. I’m just saying…”

  The words died in her throat. On the floor by the front door was a pile of clothing; jeans, leggings, and a couple of tops, inexpertly folded, but folded nonetheless. They had not been there before.

  “I’ve got to go,” said Nerys, and she hung up immediately.

  Doors slamming. Swinging coat hangers. Kettles turning themselves on. Clothes mysteriously appearing on the floor.

  “What the Hell is going on?”

  Did she now have a poltergeist too? Wasn’t it bad enough having Satan as a neighbour?

  Nerys picked up the clothes and, to her disgust, realised that several of them were wet. She flung them over the dining chairs and rushed to the bathroom to wash her hands.

  It was only when she was drying her hands and returning to the bedroom that she saw the small ball-like lump under the bed sheets.

  “If you’re a ghost,” she told the lump, “I’m going to smash your sodding face in.”

  She flung back the sheets.

  Twinkle’s stuffed head, decidedly unattached to its body, gazed up at her. There was a playful sheen to his eyes. Nerys howled in horror.

  Michael entered the ARC labs, gave Freddy on reception a wave of greeting, and went through to the laboratory area. There were two things that inescapably caught his attention the moment he entered the sterile laboratory.

  The first thing was the destruction. The freezer unit in which he had stored the previous day’s samples was on its
side, the glass front smashed, and various test tubes, some broken, some whole, were scattered across the floor in a pool of liquid. On a side counter, jars of solution had been knocked from their brackets and had spilled their contents across the counter, over Michael’s file wallet and the laboratory computer.

  The second thing was a dog. A small dog. A Yorkshire Terrier to be precise. It sat in the centre of the room, just to the edge of the pool of liquid spill from the freezer. Michael found the human trait of applying human traits to non-human things quite baffling and somewhat sacrilegious. Nonetheless, he could not help but feel that the dog looked very pleased with itself.

  It stuck out a tiny pink tongue to lick its tiny black nose and then yipped at Michael.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered, appalled. He took several quick breaths to calm himself and tried not to think about the damage done, tried not to think about the work that had been destroyed, tried not to think about the contamination and the clean-up that would be required.

  Michael couldn’t bear to think of such things, so instead focused on the one thing that might yield quicker results and a small level of bitter satisfaction: the allocation of blame.

  The only entrance to this room was through the airlock to the preparation lab and the only entrance to that room was the airlock to the outer laboratory room. There were no windows in any of the rooms. The air circulation vents were set into the ceiling and were only two inches across.

  Michael narrowed the Yorkie’s options for getting into room to three possibilities: one, the dog had rubber bones and had inserted itself into the room by squeezing down a two inch ventilation pipe; two, the dog had the punch-codes for the airlock doors (and a step-ladder with which to reach the keypad); three, someone had let it in.

  Michael tapped his earpiece with a shaking finger.

  “Freddy.”

  “Mr Michaels,” said the receptionist.

  “Who was the last person to leave last night?” Michael heard the tap of a keyboard.

  “Me, Mr Michaels. Twenty minutes after you.”