by Heide Goody
The ‘ah’ was directed towards the flashing blue lights approaching from the distance.
“I think we need to run now,” said Michael.
“Really?” said Clovenhoof.
“Yes. I don’t think my get out of jail free card is going to help you this time.”
Clovenhoof looked at the money in his hand. The sirens grew louder.
“Surely, they don’t think...” he said, but Michael was already ten yards away and accelerating.
Nerys came downstairs to find the two badly dressed bailiffs on the first floor landing, arguing over their clipboard.
“Yeah, but it was this door,” insisted the taller one, Knuckle-dragger.
“It was flat 2a,” said the one that she’d christened Buddha, whose belly not only hung over the edge of his belt but actually poked out from under his T-shirt, as though it were trying to make a bid for freedom.
“Excuse me,” said Nerys haughtily, not willing to physically squeeze past the obese apes.
They shuffled slowly aside and she went up to Clovenhoof’s flat door. The roguishly handsome young man had yet to come back up for his cup of tea and she had begun to worry what Clovenhoof had done with him. She raised her hand to knock, saw that Clovenhoof’s door was now labelled 2b and turned to look at Ben’s door which Knuckle-dragger had decided to knock at.
The door opened. The scar-faced man’s eyes flicked between the two bailiffs.
“Who are you?”
“Mr Clovenhoof?” said Knuckle-dragger.
“He’s not here. Piss off.”
Knuckle-dragger gave a cynical chuckle and just walked in, brushing the man aside.
“Mr Clovenhoof, you owe us some money,” said the bailiff to Scar.
“I think there’s been some mistake,” said Nerys and followed them in.
“Bloody right. Any money he’s got is mine,” said Scar.
“I really do think you should listen to me,” said Nerys, managing to manoeuvre round Buddha and then stopped.
Ben was sitting on his sofa, his hands and feet bound before him with silver duct tape. Sitting next to him was a bruised man with a rodent face.
“Kinky,” said a bailiff.
“What is going on here?” said Nerys.
Scar pulled a pistol from the waistband of his trousers.
“We’re waiting for my money,” he said. “Now, shut the door, Nerys. There’s a love.”
Clovenhoof and Michael cut a corner across St Michael’s churchyard, dodging between tombstones and looking up through the trees to see if they could see the helicopter that was circling noisily above.
“We’re not going to make it,” said Clovenhoof.
“More speed, less chat,” panted Michael. He leaped a wall and sprinted on towards the Chester Road.
The sound of sirens seemed to be coming at them from all angles. Somewhere behind them was the sound of squealing tyres. Clovenhoof didn’t dare look round and focused on keeping up with his angelic partner in crime.
Michael cut straight across the Chester Road, causing cars to brake suddenly in both directions. Clovenhoof clattered over the bonnet of a Vauxhall Astra, leaving a nice hoof-shaped dent in the bodywork, ran up the path to the flats and slammed his key into the door with astonishing accuracy.
“Upstairs! Upstairs!” he hissed, pushing Michael in ahead of him.
Together, stumbling over one another, they got to the first floor.
“Not my flat,” said Clovenhoof. “If they’ve seen my face...”
Michael hammered on Ben’s door, which was opened almost instantly by Nerys.
“Jeremy-”
“Out of the way,” said Clovenhoof, bundling Michael inside.
Clovenhoof slammed the door behind him and bent over, wheezing with exhaustion.
“That was a close one,” he said once he had regained his breath and straightened up.
He looked at the people in Ben’s flat. Nerys, Ben and Roger sat in a miserable row on the sofa. Ben was wrapped up in silver tape. The two bailiffs were sitting on either side of the dining table with their hands on their heads. They didn’t look particularly happy either.
There was only person in the flat he didn’t recognise and he was holding a gun.
“Are you a bailiff too?” said Clovenhoof.
The man pointed his pistol at the bag in Clovenhoof’s hand.
“Is that my money?” he snarled.
“I think it’s technically the bank’s,” said Clovenhoof.
“We’re not sure,” agreed Michael.
“Toss it here,” said the gunman.
Clovenhoof groaned.
“What is it with me? The moment I get some cash, someone wants to take it from me.”
“Now!”
Clovenhoof threw the bag to him and, at that moment, there was a rumble on the stairs, a crash and half a dozen armed police officers spilled into the flat, shouting and waving guns.
Ben shrieked. Nerys yelled. Several people swore. A dining chair gave way beneath a huge backside. A shot was fired and answered with several more. Hands were raised. People fell down. And Clovenhoof found himself looking straight down the black barrel of a large gun.
“I can explain,” he said. “At least I think I can.”
It transpired that Clovenhoof didn’t need to explain anything. The situation was perfectly clear to the police officers on the scene as was explained to him at the station.
Trey Daniels, renowned armed robber, currently sought for a bank job in Lichfield had broken into a flat and taken its owner, Ben Kitchen, hostage in order to force Mr Kitchen’s friend and neighbour, Jeremy Clovenhoof, to carry out another bank robbery in the local area. Mr Daniels, possibly aided by known accomplice Roger Cotton, had tortured Mr Kitchen by chemically burning his hands just to show he wasn’t messing about. Mr Clovenhoof, who had made no attempt to hide his identity whilst in the bank, had also been caught on video telling the cashier that he was worried about his friend’s well-being and needed to get back to help him. Mr Daniels, who had received a superficial gunshot wound to the arm, denied all involvement but was unwilling to give the police an alternative version of events. Where Miss Thomas and the Brothers Coddington (one of whom had taken a painful but not life-threatening bullet in the stomach during the police raid) fitted into the story was unclear but the investigating officers were certain they could weave it into their chosen narrative.
Clovenhoof and Michael were released without charge in the early hours of the morning. They might have been there longer if the moustachioed PC Pearson hadn’t come into the interview room, laughed at them and then sworn on his life that the pair of them were genuinely harmless fools.
Michael and Clovenhoof walked back to the flat together. Clovenhoof felt as if he’d been wearing his clothes for a week. Michael looked as if he’d just stepped out of an Italian boutique.
“I did not like that one little bit,” said Michael.
“I don’t think you’re meant to like being locked up,” said Clovenhoof.
“The cell was draughty. And as for the catering...”
“You could have just waved your magic wand,” said Clovenhoof. “Made it all go away.”
Michael shook his head.
“Ripples and repercussions. I’d rather this one went away all by itself.”
The star-strewn black of night was slowly giving way to a grey spring dawn.
“Here,” said Michael and passed Clovenhoof a roll of banknotes held by an elastic band.
“What’s this?”
“The last money I’m ever going to give you. I’ve cleared your bank debts but after this, that’s it, no more financial assistance.”
“Aw, Michael,” said Clovenhoof, stuffing the money in his pocket. “You do care.”
“Just stay out of trouble.”
“Aye, aye,” said Clovenhoof and gave him a ridiculous salute. “I’ll be a good boy from now on. You’ll see.”
“We’ll see,” agreed Michael a
nd was suddenly not there – not anywhere – anymore.
Clovenhoof let himself into the flats, went upstairs, looked at the plywood board put up to cover Ben’s broken door, and went into his own flat.
There was a message on the answer phone. Clovenhoof pressed play.
“I’ve seen your advert in the post office window,” said a muffled, female voice. “I need a job doing. Her name’s Tina. She needs taking down a peg or two. Nothing permanent. Do you do kneecappings? Whatever, just something that’ll mean she can’t attend a charity gala next month.”
Clovenhoof grinned, went to the kitchen to pour himself a drink and then returned with paper and pen to replay the message and jot down the details.
Chapter 6 – in which Clovenhoof looks for love, gets his hooves buffed and hits the dating scene
“Glack, glack, glack.”
Nerys cleared her throat and tried again.
“Glack, glack, glack.”
There! She was certain she’d got it now.
She shuffled round to the position indicated in the diagram and shifted the torch in her hand.
The duvet was thrown back.
“What are you doing?” said Trevor. Or was it Stephen? She couldn’t remember.
“Deep throat technique,” said Nerys. “It’ll knock your socks off. I just need to relax the muscles at the back of my throat.”
“Is that, is that…” his gaze took in the torch and the book “Is that a sex manual?”
He grabbed the book.
“‘Make him your love slave; one hundred ways to excite a man in bed.’”
“I told you, I’m a great believer in self-improvement.”
Stephen (or was it Trevor?) hurled it to the floor.
“Hey! That’s a library book!” said Nerys.
“When you said self-improvement, I thought you meant Open University or meditation, shit like that. Not coming to bed with an instruction manual, for God’s sake. What’s the matter with you?”
“What’s the matter with me? I think you’re the one with the problem, actually,” said Nerys, indicating his rapidly shrivelling member.
He gathered the duvet around him, tucking it underneath his body.
“I want you to leave. This is just too weird for me.”
“Too weird?” spat Nerys. “I’ll tell you what would be weird. It would be really weird if we were all born with the knowledge of how to give the perfect blow job! How on earth can you criticise a person who’s trying to give you the best possible time? Would you prefer it if I just made it up as I went along?”
“Er, yes.”
Nerys flung herself off the bed and stamped around, gathering her clothes. She stuffed her sequinned knickers into her handbag. They were the centrepiece of her seduction arsenal and they chafed something awful. The ingratitude of men!
“Well I hope you find some nice, mediocre girl that you’ll be very happy with,” she said as she pulled on her clothes. “I could never be happy with someone who’s prepared to take second best.”
She straightened her shoulders and strode out of the room.
Moments later she scuttled back in, grabbed the library book and the recently opened bottle of champagne and scuttled out again.
Nerys banged on the door of Flat 2a
“Jeremy! Wake up, I know you’re in there.”
She thumped the door with the base of the now empty champagne bottle.
“Jeremy! Open up!”
The door opened and she narrowly avoided smashing Clovenhoof’s face in with the bottle. She gave him a look and pushed past him into the flat.
“What do you want?” he growled. “It’s four in the morning. I was having the most delicious dream. I was back in the Old Place and we’d just opened a new wing for reality TV contestants.”
“Stop talking drivel, Jeremy, I’m having a crisis and I need help. First though, I need more wine.”
On the lounge window-sill stood a half-drunk bottle of Lambrini. She pulled a face, but swigged deeply from the bottle.
She sighed and sank into an armchair.
“When you look at a woman, Jeremy, what’s the main thing that you’re trying to find?”
“When I look at a woman?”
“Yes.”
Clovenhoof coughed and stared at his hooves.
“No, no,” he said, “it’s not like that at all.”
“Eh?”
“I mean the telescope. It’s for looking at the stars, that’s all.”
Nerys noticed the telescope by the window. She leaned over and put her eye to the eyepiece. Even in the dark, she could tell that it was angled towards a bedroom in the next road.
“Oh, I see.” She gave him a sideways look. “Well, what I really meant was what qualities do you look for in an ideal woman? Is it the superficial, physical stuff that matters, or do you want her to have a great personality?”
Clovenhoof’s face twitched with confusion.
“Ah, the second one. And the first one. Yup. Yeah, they’re both important.”
Nerys shook her head.
“You really haven’t got a clue, have you?”
Clovenhoof shook his head along with hers.
Nerys exhaled heavily and stared at the Lambrini bottle for a few long moments.
“You know what we’re going to do? I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.” She gestured grandly with the bottle, spilling some wine on the telescope. “This weekend we’re going to hit the scene. You and me. There’s a singles night on at the Boldmere Oak. We’re going out on the pull.” She pulled something from her bag and started to mop up the spilt drink.
“Why would I want to go –“ Clovenhoof stopped. “ Um, are those your knickers?”
“Jeremy! Stop changing the subject.” She stuffed the damp undies back in her bag. “We need to do this or we’ll be on the shelf forever.”
“Were they sequinned?”
“Listen! Don’t you want a woman?”
“I don’t know. Do I?”
She groaned. Clovenhoof frowned.
“Those sequins, don’t they chafe?”
In the morning, Clovenhoof dropped in on Ben,
“Do I want a woman?” said Clovenhoof.
“How should I know?” said Ben, busy at his computer.
“But should I want a woman?”
“Blimey, Jeremy. It’s not like I have a lot of experience in the matter.”
“Well, you must have been out with a woman at some point, surely.”
Ben focussed on the computer screen as his face flushed red.
“Oh, I see.” said Clovenhoof. “Okay. You must have thought about it though. Why do men want to have women in their lives? Lots of them do.”
“You know...”
“No, I don’t.”
“Please. Don’t make me spell it out.”
“What?”
Ben turned away from the screen to study Clovenhoof’s face.
“They have,” he coughed and dropped his gaze, “they have front bottoms. And boobs.”
Clovenhoof rolled his eyes.
“I know that,” he said, “but are they really that much fun to play with?”
“No idea,” said Ben, turning to the screen again. “Look at the detail on these soldiers, mmmm.”
Clovenhoof peered forward to see a miniature figure in a leather skirt and carrying a short sword. Ben ran his finger lovingly down the image and then clicked through to the checkout and entered his credit card details.
“How about the people who come into your shop?” Clovenhoof asked. “They must talk about women.”
“Well going by what they say, I think that mostly, women are useful for things like doing the cooking and washing and finding their keys,” said Ben. “That seems to be what they miss when the women leave them.”
Clovenhoof picked up Ben’s credit card and tapped it thoughtfully on the table.
“I can see that it might be useful to have a woman,” he said. “But don’t you think it
might also be hard work?”
They both found that they gazed involuntarily towards the ceiling. Their eyes met but they said nothing.
“Well if you find out, let me know,” said Ben.
“Oh no, you’re coming with me.”
“What?”
“Nerys has decided that I need to go and find a woman this weekend. She plans to look for a man.”
“So what’s that got to do with me?” Ben asked.
“Well,” said Clovenhoof, slipping Ben’s credit card into his pocket, “judging by her past performance she’ll find some poor victim in the first ten minutes and leave me sitting there. Let’s face it, I’m going to need the company.”
Clovenhoof admired himself in front of the mirror. He hadn’t had a chance to wear his leather and denim gear since that ill-fated Symphony Hall concert.
There was a knock at the door.
He gave himself one last preening look.
“You’re on fire, Jeremy.”
On the landing, Nerys tottered in the highest of heels. She saw what he was wearing and pointed theatrically.
“What are you wearing?”
“Um, pulling clothes. Babe-magnet clothes.”
“No, no, no. You look like a rent boy. Let’s go and find you something else.”
“Look, it’s this or the smoking jackets.”
“Smoking jackets? Who are you? Hugh Hefner?”
She took a step to the side and rapped smartly at 2b. Ben emerged from his door.
Nerys sighed.
“Ben, I never thought I’d say this, but I need your clothes.”
“I’m kinda busy...,” said Ben, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
“Helping me,” said Nerys. “I know.”
Inside, she ransacked Ben’s wardrobe and piled his arms high with anything that was both clean and vaguely wearable.
“What’s this?” she said, pulling out a bright red sheet.
“Seleucid cloak,” said Ben.
“What?”
“To go with the armour.”
Clovenhoof and Nerys just looked at him.
I’ve got the sandals too,” he said.
He picked up a pair of strappy leather sandals.
