Aubrey sighed.

  “We’d like to delay the next penalty until it stops raining,” announced Twizzit, who had appeared holding a newspaper over his head. He was on legal marshland with this request, and he knew it. The umpire asked the Whackers if they wanted to delay, but O’Fathens stared at me and said that he didn’t. So the next person on the list took her turn at the fifty-yard line—me.

  I wiped the rain from my eyes and tried to even see the peg. The rain was coming down so heavily that the cascading droplets created a watery haze a few inches above the turf. Still, I had the second shot—O’Fathens might miss, too.

  The Whackers’ captain concentrated for a moment, swung and connected well. The ball went sailing high towards the peg and seemed set to hit it fairly and squarely. But with a loud plop it landed short. There was an expectant rumble from the crowd.

  The word was relayed up the field—O’Fathens had landed four feet from the peg. I had to get closer than that to win the SuperHoop.

  “Good luck,” said Aubrey, giving my arm a squeeze.

  I walked up to the fifty-yard line, the now muddy ground oozing around my boots. I removed my shoulder pads and cast them aside, made a few practice swings, wiped my eyes and stared at the multicolored peg that somehow seemed to have retreated another twenty yards. I squared up in front of the ball and shifted my weight to maintain the right poise. The crowd went silent. They didn’t know how much was riding on this, but I did. I didn’t dare miss. I looked at the ball, stared towards the peg, looked at the ball again, clasped the handle of my mallet and raised it high in the air, then swung hard into the ball, yelling out as the wood connected and the ball went sailing off in a gentle arc. I thought about Kaine and Goliath, of Landen and Friday and the consequences if I missed. The fate of all life on this beautiful planet decided on the swing of a croquet mallet. I watched as my ball plopped into the soggy ground and the groundsman dashed ahead to compare distances. I turned away and walked back through the rain towards Landen. I had done my best, and the game was over. I didn’t hear the announcement, only a roar from the crowd. But whose crowd? A flashbulb went off, and I felt dizzy as the sounds became muted and everything appeared to slow down. Not in the way that my father could engineer, but a postadrenaline moment when everything seems odd, and other. I searched the seating for Landen and Friday, but my attention was distracted by a large figure dressed in a duster coat and hat who had vaulted over the barrier and was running towards me. He drew something from his pocket as he ran, his feet throwing up great splashes of muddy water on his trousers. I stared at him as he came closer and noticed that his eyes were yellow and beneath his hat were what appeared to be—horns. I didn’t see any more; there was a bright white flash, a deafening roar, and all the rest was silence.

  40.

  Second First Person

  Yacht Choice of Famed Literary Detective a Mystery

  The shooting of Thursday Next last Saturday leaves the question of her favorite yacht unanswered, our Swindon correspondent writes. “From the look of her, I would expect a thirty-two-foot ketch, spinnaker-rigged and with a Floon automatic pilot.” Other yachting commentators disagree and think she would have gone for something larger, such as a sloop or yawl, although it is possible she might only have wanted a boat for coastal day work or a long weekend, in which case she might have gone for a compact twenty-footer. We asked her husband to comment on her taste in sailing, but he declined to give an answer.

  Article in Yachting Monthly, July 1988

  I was watching her, right up to the moment she was shot. She looked confused and tired as she walked back from the penalty, and the crowd roared when I shouted to get her attention, so she didn’t hear me. It was then that I saw a man vault across the barrier and run up to her. I thought it was a nutty fan or something, and the shot sounded more like a firecracker. There was a puff of blue smoke, and she looked incredulous for a moment, and then she just crumpled up and collapsed on the turf. As simple as that. Before I knew what I was doing, I had handed Friday to Joffy and jumped over the barrier, moving as fast as I could. I was the first one to reach Thursday, who was lying perfectly still on the muddy ground, her eyes open, a neat red hole two inches above her right eye.

  Someone yelled, “Medic!” It was me.

  I switched to automatic. For the moment the idea that someone had shot my wife was expunged from my mind; I was simply dealing with a casualty—and heaven knows I’d done that often enough. I pulled out my handkerchief and pressed it on the wound.

  I said, “Thursday, can you hear me?”

  She didn’t answer. Her eyes were unblinking as the rain struck her, and I placed my hand above her head to shield her. A medic appeared at my side, sloshing down into the muddy ground in his haste to help.

  He said, “What’s happened?”

  I said, “He shot her.”

  I reached gingerly around the back of her head and breathed a small sigh of relief when I couldn’t find an exit wound.

  A second medic—a woman this time—joined the first and told me to step aside. But I moved only far enough for her to work. I took hold of Thursday’s hand.

  The first medic said, “We’ve got a pulse,” as he unwrapped an airway, then added, “Where’s the blasted ambulance?”

  I stayed with her all the way to the hospital and let go of her hand only when they took her into the operating theater.

  A friendly casualty nurse at St. Septyk’s said, “Here you go,” as she gave me a blanket. I sat on a hard chair and stared at the wall clock and the public-information posters. I thought about Thursday, trying to figure out how much time we had spent together. Not long for two and a half years, really.

  A boy next to me with his head stuck in a saucepan said, “Wot you in here for, mister?”

  I leaned closer and spoke into the hollow handle so he could hear me and said, “I’m okay, but someone shot my wife.”

  The little boy with his head stuck in a saucepan said, “Bummer,” and I replied, “Yes, bummer.”

  I sat and looked at the posters again for a long time until someone said, “Landen?”

  I looked up. It was Mrs. Next. She had been crying. I think I had, too.

  She said, “How is she?”

  And I said, “I don’t know.”

  She sat down next to me. “I brought you some Battenberg.”

  I said, “I’m not really that hungry.”

  “I know. But I just don’t know what else to do.”

  We both stared at the clock and the posters in silence for some minutes. After a while I said, “Where’s Friday?”

  Mrs. Next patted my arm. “With Joffy and Miles.”

  “Ah,” I said, “good.”

  Thursday came out of surgery three hours later. The doctor, who had a haggard look but stared me in the eye, which I liked, told me that things weren’t terrific but she was stable and a fighter and I wasn’t to give up hope. I went to have a look at her with Mrs. Next. There was a large bandage around her head, and the monitors did that beep thing they do in movies. Mrs. Next sniffed and said, “I’ve lost one son already. I don’t want to lose another. Well, a daughter I mean, but you know what I mean, a child.”

  I said, “I know what you mean.”

  I didn’t, having never lost a son, but it seemed the right thing to say.

  We sat with her for two hours while the light failed outside and the fluorescents flickered on.

  When we had been there another two hours, Mrs. Next said, “I’m going to go now, but I’ll be back in the morning. You should try and get some sleep.”

  I said, “I know. I’m just going to stay here for another five minutes.”

  I stayed there for another hour. A kindly nurse brought me a cup of tea, and I ate some Battenberg. I got home at eleven. Joffy was waiting for me. He told me that he had put Friday to bed and asked me how his sister was.

  I said, “It’s not looking very good, Joff.”

  He patted me on the shoulder, gave me a hug and told me that everyone at the GSD had joined the Idolatry Friends of St. Zvlkx and the Sisters of Eternal Punctuality to pray for her, which was good of him, and them.

  I sat on the sofa for a long time, until there was a gentle knock at the kitchen door. I opened it to find a small group of people. A man who introduced himself as Thursday’s cousin Eddie but whispered that actually his name was Hamlet said to me, “Is this a bad time? We heard about Thursday and wanted to tell you how sorry we were.”

  I tried to be cheery. I really wanted him to sod off, but instead I said, “Thank you. I don’t mind at all. Friends of Thursday are friends of mine. Tea and Battenberg?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  He had three others with him. The first was a short man who looked exactly like a Victorian big-game hunter. He wore a pith helmet and safari suit and had a large bushy white mustache.

  He gave me his hand to shake and said, “Commander Bradshaw, dontchaknow. Damn fine lady, your wife. Appreciate a girl who knows how to carry herself in a scrap. Did she tell you about the time she and I hunted Morlock in Trollope?”

  “No.”

  “Shame. I’ll tell you all about it one day. This is the memsahib, Mrs. Bradshaw.”

  Melanie was large and hairy and looked like a gorilla. In fact, she was a gorilla, but she had impeccable manners and curtsied as I shook her large coal black hand, which had the thumb in an odd place, so was difficult to shake properly. Her deep-set eyes were wet with tears, and she said, “Oh, Landen! Can I call you Landen? Thursday used to talk about you all the time when you were eradicated. We all loved her a great deal—I mean, we still do. How is she? How is Friday? You must feel awful!”

  I said, “She’s not really very well,” which was the truth.

  The third member of the party was a tall man dressed in black robes. He had a very large bald head and high arched eyebrows. He put out a finely manicured hand and said, “My name’s Zhark, but you can call me Horace. I used to work with Thursday. You have my condolences. If it will help, I would happily slaughter a few thousand Thraals as a tribute to the gods.”

  I didn’t know what a Thraal was but told him it really wasn’t necessary. He said, “It’s really no trouble. I’ve just conquered their planet, and I’m not sure what I should do with them.”

  I told him that this really, really wasn’t necessary and added that I didn’t think Thursday would have liked it, then cursed myself for using the past tense. I put on the kettle and said, “Battenberg?”

  Hamlet and Zhark answered together. They were obviously quite keen on my mother-in-law’s speciality. I smiled for the first time in eight hours and twenty-three minutes and said, “There’s plenty for everyone. Mrs. Next keeps on sending it over, and the dodos won’t touch it. You can take away a cake each.”

  I made the tea, Mrs. Bradshaw poured it, and there was an uncomfortable silence. Zhark asked if I knew where Handley Paige lived, but the big-game hunter gave him a stern look and he was quiet.

  They all talked to me about Thursday and what she had done in the fictional BookWorld. The stories were all highly unbelievable, but I didn’t think to question any of them—I was glad for the company and happy to hear about what she had been doing over the past two years. Mrs. Bradshaw gave me a rundown of what Friday had been up to as well and even offered to come and look after him whenever I wanted. Zhark was more interested in talking about Handley but still had time to tell me a wholly unbelievable story about how he and Thursday dealt with a Martian who had escaped from The War of the Worlds and turned up in The Wind in the Willows.

  “It’s a W thing,” he explained, “in the titles, I mean. Wind-War, Worlds-Willows, they are so similar that—”

  Bradshaw nudged him to be quiet.

  They left two hours later, slightly full of drink and very full of Battenberg. I noticed the tall one in the black cloak had riffled though my address book before he left, and when I looked, he had left it open on Handley’s address. I returned to the living room and sat on the sofa until sleep overcame me.

  I was wakened by Pickwick wanting to be let out, and Alan wanting to be let in. The smaller dodo had some paint spilled on him, smelt of perfume, had a blue ribbon tied around his left foot and was holding a mackerel in his beak. I have no idea to this day what he’d been getting up to. I went upstairs, checked that Friday was sleeping in his cot, then had a long shower and a shave.

  41.

  Death Becomes Her

  SuperHoop Assailant “Vanishes”

  The mysterious assassin who shot the Mallets’ team manager has not yet been found, despite a vigorous SpecOps search. “It’s still early days in the investigation,” said a police spokesman, “but from clothes left at the crime scene we are interested in interviewing a Mr. Norman Johnson, whom we understand had been staying at the Finis Hotel for the past week.” Asked to comment further on the rumored link between the attack on Miss Next and a grand piano incident last Friday, the same police spokesman confirmed that the attacks were connected, but wouldn’t be pressed on details. Miss Next is still in St. Septyk’s Hospital where her condition is reported as “critical.”

  Article in the Swindon Daily Eyestrain, July 24, 1988

  Table seventeen?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Table seventeen. You are table seventeen, I take it?”

  I looked up at the waitress in a confused manner. A second ago I had been taking a penalty during a SuperHoop—and now I was in a cafeteria somewhere. She was a kindly woman with a friendly manner. I looked at the table marker. I was table seventeen.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re to go . . . Northside.”

  I must have looked confused, because she repeated it and then gave me directions: along the concourse, past the Coriolanus WillSpeak machine, up the stairs and across the pedestrian walkway.

  I thanked her and got up. I was still dressed in my croquet gear, but without mallet or helmet, and I touched my head gently where I could feel a small hole. I stopped for a moment and looked around. I had been here before, and recently. I was in a motorway services. The same one that I had visited with Spike. But where was Spike? And why couldn’t I remember how I got here?

  “Well, looky what we have here!” came a voice from behind me. It was Chesney, this time wearing some sort of neck brace, but with a bruise on the side of his head where I had kicked him. Next to him was one of his henchmen, who was minus an arm.

  “Chesney,” I muttered, looking around for a weapon, “still in the soul-reclamation business?”

  “And how!”

  “Touch me and I’ll knock your block off.”

  “Ooooh!” said Chesney. “Don’t flatter yourself, girlie—you’ve just been called to go Northside, haven’t you?”

  “So?”

  “Well, there’s only one reason you go over there,” replied Chesney’s sidekick with an unkindly laugh.

  “You mean . . . ?”

  “Right,” said Chesney with a grin. “You’re dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Dead. Join the club, sweetheart.”

  “How can I be dead?”

  “Remember the assassin at the SuperHoop?”

  I touched the hole in my head again. “I was shot.”

  “In the head. Get out of that one, Miss Next!”

  “Landen must be devastated,” I murmured, “and I have to take Friday for a health checkup on Tuesday.”

  “Ain’t none of your concern no longer!” sneered Chesney’s sidekick, and they walked off, laughing loudly.

  I turned to the steps of the pedestrian footbridge that led towards the Northside and looked around. Oddly, I didn’t feel any great fear about being dead—I just wished I’d had the chance to say good-bye to the boys. I took the first step on the staircase when I heard a screeching of tires and a loud crash. A car had just pulled outside the services, jumped the curb and collided with a rubbish bin. A large man had leapt out and was running through the doors, looking up and down in desperation until he saw me. It was Spike.

  “Thursday!” he gasped. “Thank heavens I got to you before you went across!”

  “You’re alive?”

  “Of course. It took me two days of driving up and down the M4 to get here. Looks like I was just in time.”

  “In time? In time for what?”

  “I’m taking you home.”

  He gave me his car keys.

  “That’s the ignition, but the engine starter is a pushbutton in the middle of the dash.”

  “Middle of the dash, okay. What about you?”

  “I’ve got some unfinished business with Chesney, so I’ll see you on the other side.”

  He gave me a hug and trotted off towards the newsagents’.

  I walked outside and got into Spike’s car, grateful that I had a friend like him who knew how to deal with things like this. I’d be seeing Friday and Landen again, and everything would be just hunky-dory. I pressed the starter, reversed off the rubbish bin and drove towards the exit. I wondered if we’d won the SuperHoop. I should have asked Spike. SPIKE!!!

  I stomped on the brakes and reversed rapidly back to the services, jumped out of the car and ran across the footbridge leading to the Northside of the Dauntsey services.

  Only it wasn’t the Northside, of course. It was a large cavern of incalculable age lit by dozens of burning torches. The stalactites and stalagmites had joined, giving the impression of organic Doric columns supporting the high roof, and snaking amongst the columns and the boulder-strewn floor was an orderly queue of departed souls who had lined up ready to cross the river that guarded the entrance to the underworld. The lone ferryman was doing a brisk trade; for an extra shilling, you could be taken on a guided tour on the way. Another entrepreneur was selling guides to the underworld: how best to ensure that the departed soul went to a land of milk of honey and, for the more dubious characters, a few helpful hints on how to square yourself with the Big Guy on Judgment Day.