Jasper Fforde - Something rotten

'How can you?' I said in some surprise. 'You're almost dead yourself!'

'No,' she corrected me, 'I'm not. And what's more, I pull through. I shouldn't, but I do. Sometimes the Devil looks after his own.'

'But you'll leave Spike and Betty—

'Listen to me for a moment, Thursday. I've killed sixty-eight people in my career.'

'So you did do Samuel Pring.'

'It was a fluke. But listen: sixty-eight innocent souls sent across this river before their time, all down to me. And I did it all for cash. You can play the self-righteous card for all I care, but the fact remains that I'll never see the light of day when I recover, and I'll never get to hold Betty again, or hug Spike. I don't want that. You're a better person than me, Thursday, and the world is far better off with you in it.'

'But that's not the point, surely?' I said. 'When it's time to go—

'Look,' she interrupted angrily, 'let me do one good thing to make up for even one quarter of one per cent of the misery I've caused.'

I stared at her as the skeleton in rusty armour clanked up again.

'More trouble, Miss Next?'

'Give us a minute, will you?'

'Please,' implored Cindy, 'you'd be doing me a favour.'

I looked at the skeleton, who probably would have rolled his eyes if he had had any.

'It's your decision, Miss Next,' said the guard, 'but someone has to take that boat or I'm out of a job — and I've got a bony wife and two small skeletons to put through college.'

I turned back to Cindy, put out my hand and she shook it, then pulled me forward and hugged me tightly while whispering in rny ear:

'Thank you, Thursday. Keep an eye on Spike for me.'

She hopped quickly into the boat before I had a chance to change my mind. She gave a wan smile and sat in the bows as the ferryman leaned on his pole, sending the small boat noiselessly across the river. In terms of the burden of her sins, saving me was only small recompense, but she felt better for it, and so did I. As the boat containing Cindy faded into the mists of the river I turned and walked back towards the pedestrian footbridge, the southside of Dauntsey services, and life.

'It was touch and go for a moment,' said Landen, who was sitting by my hospital bed holding my hand. 'There was a moment when we really didn't think you'd make it.'

I gave a wan smile. I had regained consciousness only the day before and every movement felt like a dagger in my head. I looked around. Joffy and Miles and Hamlet were there, too.

'Hi, guys.'

They smiled and welcomed me back.

'How long?' I asked in a whisper.

'Two weeks,' said Landen. 'We really thought—

I gently squeezed his hand and looked around. Land divined my thoughts perfectly.

'He's with his grandmother.'

I raised a hand to touch the side of my head but could feel only a heavy bandage. Landen took my hand and returned it to the sheet.

'What—?'

'You were astonishingly lucky,' he said in a soothing tone. 'The doctors say you'll make a full recovery. The calibre was quite small and it entered your skull obliquely; by the time it had gone through most of the energy was gone.' He tapped the side of his head. 'It lodged between your brain and the inside of the skull. Gave us quite a fright, though.'

'Cindy died, didn't she?'

Joffy answered.

'Looked to be improving but then septicaemia set in.'

'They really loved one another, you know, despite their differences.'

'She was a hit-woman, Thursday, a trained assassin. I don't think she regarded death as anything more than an occupational hazard.'

I nodded. He was right.

Landen leaned forward and kissed my nose.

'Who shot me, Land?'

'Does the name "Norman Johnson" mean anything to you?'

'Yes,' I said, 'the Minotaur. You were right. He'd been trying to slapstick me to death all week — steamroller, banana skin, piano — I was a fool not to see it. Mind you, a gun's hardly slapstick, is it?'

Landen smiled.

'It had a large "bang" sign that came out of the barrel, as well as the bullet. The police are still trying to make sense of it.'

I sighed. The Minotaur was long gone but I'd still have to be careful. I turned to Landen. There was still something I needed to know.

'Did we win?'

'Of course. You pegged a foot closer than O'Fathens. Your shot has been voted "sporting moment of the century" — in Swindon, at any rate.'

'So we aren't at war with Wales?'

Landen shook his head and smiled.

'Kaine's finished, my darling — and Goliath have abandoned all attempts to become a religion. St Zvlkx does indeed work in mysterious ways.'

'Are you going to tell me?' I said with a wan smile. 'Or do I have to beat it out of you with a stick?'

Joffy unfolded the picture of St Zvlkx and Cindy's fatal pianoing on Commercial Road, the one from the Swindon Evening Globe that Gran had given me.

'We found this in your back pocket,' said Miles.

'And it got us to thinking,' continued Joffy, 'exactly where Zvlkx was heading that morning, and why he had the ticket for the Gravitube in his bedroom. He was cutting his losses and running. I don't think even Zvlkx — or whoever he was — believed that Swindon could possibly win the Superhoop. Dad always said that time wasn't immutable.'

'I don't get it.'

Miles leaned forward and showed me the picture again.

'He died trying to get to Tudor Turf Accounting.'

'So? Oldest betting shop in Swindon.'

'No — in the world . We made a few calls. It had been trading continually since 1264.'

I looked at Joffy quizzically.

'What are you saying?'

'That the Book of Revealments was nothing of the kind — it's a thirteenth-century betting slip! '

'A what?'

He pulled Zvlkx's Revealments from his pocket and opened it to the front page. There was a countersigned receipt for a farthing that we had thought was a bookbinder's tax or something. The small arithmetical sum next to each Revealment was actually the odds against that particular event coming true, each one countersigned by the same signature as on the front page. Joffy flicked through the slim volume.

'The Spanish Armada Revealment had been given the odds of six hundred to one, Wellington's victory at Waterloo four hundred and twenty to one.' He flicked to the final page. 'The outcome of the croquet match was set at 124,000 to one. The odds were generous because Zvlkx was betting on things centuries before they happened; indeed, centuries before croquet was even thought of No wonder the person who had underwritten the bet felt confident in offering such odds.'

'Well,' I said, 'don't hold your breath — 124,000 farthings only adds up to . . . up to . . .'

'One hundred and thirty quid,' put in Miles.