There were three men, tattoos and earrings. Crouching in the slush behind a juniper bush he watched them leave Cassie’s place. Carrying the briefcase, casing the road. When they’d driven away in a silver Peugeot, he waited, the curtains of the neighbors moving and shimmering still, and when he’d waited long enough he made his way back to her door. Through the shattered thing on its hinges he stepped. Cassie on the bedroom floor. Her face red meat, pulp, swollen and split, her fine, sandy hair all matted and red, dress gathered up by her waist, her nakedness there on display. Blood all about. He felt for a pulse. She was breathing. Sirens in the distance. He pulled down her dress to cover her decent, then dressed in a hurry — another art he’d perfected — returned quickly to the mantel, and was gone again out through the back, from garden to garden behind the flats, slipping off like a thief in the twilight to wait for his bus.
“Oh my God. They’re absolutely adorable. Terrance—” She looked at him standing there as though seeing him for the first time. “I can’t believe you actually bought me a gift. You actually bought anyone a gift. I’m impressed. It tells me something, Terrance.”
“What does it tell you?”
She stood. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table with a solitary cup of tea when he’d come in and presented the parcel without a word, watching her open it. Now she came up to your man, put her arms around him. “I’ll show you what it tells me,” says she. Lafferty sniffed, trying to catch a whiff of the other man.
In her bedroom they took off their clothes. Peggy was leaner, younger than Cassie. Lafferty looked for signs of the other man. Over inch after inch of his wife’s naked body, he looked closely for signs of the other man so as to block from his mind the image of Cassie the last time he saw her. He climbed into bed beside Peggy. When she began to kiss and grope he took her chin, gave her a peck, said let’s go slow, and when he did that, she looked at him again with the same awe the pigs had inspired, wondering who on the face of God’s sweet earth was this man in the bed beside her, this new man, mature and tender. She reached to the stand for the figurine, holding it there for them both to admire. “They are so adorable. I just love them.”
Lafferty looking in vain for something adorable. What he saw was two helpless pigs clutching one another in fear, four eyes filled to the brim with mortal terror.
Heaven Knows
by Marilyn Todd
Last year Untreed Reads brought out all of Marilyn Todd’s Claudia Seferius Ancient Roman mystery novels in e-book format. Now they’ve followed up with her High Priestess Iliona series, set in Ancient Greece. Reviewing the first Iliona novel, Blind Eye, Kirkus said: “Todd casts an eerier mood in this series hick-off, hut provides the same abundance of historical tidbits and robust prose.” This new story isn’t historical hut it’s not quite set in the present either...
“Come in, Frank. Sit down.” St. Peter waved me to the chair in front of his desk. It was deep and cushioned, like floating on air. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”
“Didn’t realize I had a choice,” I said. “Only last time—”
“I know, I know. One minute you’re driving down the Ml in thick fog. Next thing, here you are, with no recollection of that twenty-two car pileup, much less the lorry that smashed into you at sixty miles per hour.” His mouth twisted. “Sorry we couldn’t cushion the shock, Frank. There’s nothing I’d like better than to give everyone a heads-up on these things. Just doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid.”
Better for me than for most, I supposed. No devastated wife throwing herself on my coffin. No traumatized kids growing up scarred. Even my parents beat me to it by thirty-nine years, after a car wreck claimed their lives on the north side of London. We O’Donnells are obviously magnets when it comes to twisted metal.
“If it’s about being behind on my report—”
When you arrive, you’re asked how you’d like to spend eternity. What would make you happy forever? I was a detective in the police force before I went private, I said. Any chance of—? Rhetorical question. Heaven always gives you what you want. Which means that although my job is to reunite new arrivals with their loved ones, this is a big place and the issues are complex. Tracing them is not always easy.
“No, no, no, Frank, nothing of the kind. Any time you’re ready, no rush.” St. Peter smiled. “Time has no meaning here, and in any case—” he allowed himself a soft chuckle “—it’s not as if either of us is going anywhere, is it?”
“Glad to hear it. Because for a moment, I thought I was being reassigned.”
“Reass—? Oh, you mean expelled. Absolutely not, Frank. No way. Once you’re in, you are in.”
“Funny, but I recall some bloke by the name of Lucifer was served with an eviction notice awhile back.”
“History, schmistory.” St. Peter swatted it away as if a wasp had slipped in through the Gates. “We’ve tightened the Admissions procedures since then, talking of which—” He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Are you happy, Frank?”
“This is Heaven,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
No answer. He just sat there, stroking his neat little Van Dyke beard, dark eyes staring into space. Through the Gate House window, I watched cherubs weighing the feather of truth, while angels read the newcomers’ auras. Integrity. Loyalty. Honesty. Humour. Every human attribute splayed out in a vast spectrum of colour, like some celestial peacock, shaded according to strength.
“Thing is,” St. Peter said, “we have something of a conundrum on our hands.”
A few taps on the divine keyboard brought up a photo on the big screen behind him. Blond girl, pretty, laughing into the camera.
“Lucy Fuller,” he said. “Twenty-four years old. Events organizer. Single. She sustained seventeen stab wounds close to her home in Winchester, where her attacker either left her for dead or ran off on hearing footsteps approaching.”
A second picture flashed up alongside. Middle-aged couple with kind eyes and a springer spaniel at their feet.
“John and Susan Kincade were walking their dog in the woods, dog started barking, and bingo. Without Mrs. Kincade’s nursing skills, a strong mobile signal, and an exceptionally rapid response from the emergency services, Lucy Fuller would have died.”
“Except she obviously did, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Now that, Frank, is precisely the kind of logic we’re looking for on this case, so let me ask you a question. How do you feel about going back in the field?”
My stomach tightened. “You mean Earth?”
“We... don’t actually think of it in those terms, but, yes. A temporary return to your old life.” He spread his hands. “Sort of your old life, anyway. Technically you won’t be alive, and you most certainly won’t be allowed to contact your loved ones—”