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He opened the door a crack and pointed at Pickles, who was limping down the corridor to the kitchen. “His feet.”
I looked, and the hair on the back of my neck rose. There was a reason Major Pickles was hobbling—just visible beneath the hems of his trouser legs were hooves.
“Right,” said Spike as I looked up at him. “The cloven one.”
“Major Pickles is the devil?”
“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?”
