I took a closer look. It was utterly innocuous. From the big, bright writing to the cartoon character beaming at me from the front of the packet, there was nothing in the least suspicious about it. And yet, as I stared, I couldn’t help feeling that there was something deeply disquieting about it.

Chapter 6

AT SEVEN O’CLOCK THE NEXT MORNING, I dragged myself out of bed. As usual, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and my heart felt as light as a fully-laden semi-trailer. Somehow, I managed to dress myself, finding to my relief that during the night my wardrobe had been stocked with multiple pairs of fresh, clean, and amply-bottomed trousers. Then I trudged out into the streets of Heaven and made my way to the Pearly Gates.

When I arrived at the Gates, I walked over to the door through which I had first passed into Heaven. It was firmly shut, but beside it there was a buzzer and a small note. The note said, Please ring the buzzer for service. Be prepared for a very long wait.

I rang the buzzer. I prepared myself for a very long wait. In less than a minute, the door opened and I found myself greeted by Peter’s lined but cheerful face.

“Mr Clarenden, welcome again to the Pearly Gates,” he said as he ushered me in.

I followed Peter down a short corridor, up a flight of steps, and into a very small room.

“My humble office,” Peter said.

The room looked less like an office and more like the place where all the world’s paper went to die. There was paper everywhere: stacked up in unsteady-looking piles on the one small desk in the middle of the room; laid out over the ground like an unkempt arrangement of floor tiles; overflowing out from the drawers of the filing cabinet standing in the corner.

Apart from this extensive paper collection, the only other objects of note were a batch of books arranged on top of the cabinet. I took a closer look. Every single one of them was a detective novel.

“A small selection, I know,” said Peter, observing my glance. “As I said before, I have very little time to read. Would you like some chewing gum?” He proffered a stick.

I shook my head. “Not before breakfast.”

“This is breakfast for me.” He popped the stick into his mouth. “Keeps the old nerves in check on stressful days. And believe me, every day here is a stressful day. But I’m sure that’s not what you came here to hear. Please, take a seat.”

I shifted some paper off a chair and sat down. As he went to extricate another chair from behind the mounds of paper on the far side of the room, I quickly scanned the contents of the desk. Most of it seemed to be official paperwork of some sort or another, but one pile caught my eye. I picked up the top sheet and read it aloud.

“The Case of the Screaming Angel. A novel by St Peter.”

Peter snatched the sheet away from me. “Don’t look at that old thing.”

“You never told me you were an author.”

“I’d hardly call myself an author.” Peter picked up the rest of the pile and placed it on the floor behind him. “You wouldn’t want to look at it. You’d probably just laugh. Anyway, it’s not even half finished. Writing is a luxury I can barely afford. You can see how much paperwork I’ve got to get through. In fact, I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to give you my undivided attention, but don’t let that stop you.” He placed a pair of reading glasses over his eyes, grabbed a pile of papers from the desk, and began to leaf through them. “So tell me, are you really working on a case? I’d love to hear about it.”

“All in good time,” I said. “I was just wondering if you could tell me about what this paperwork involves.”

Peter looked at me over a handful of paper. “You really don’t want to know about this.”

“Try me. They say curiosity killed the cat, but I guess I don’t need to worry about that anymore.”

Peter chuckled. “No, I guess you don’t. If you must know, most of this is biographical details. You see, as soon as someone dies, a decision has to be made about whether they come up here, or whether they go . . . down below, to the other place. In order to make that decision, we need to have as much information as possible about that person’s life. All the good things and bad things they’ve done. How they’ve treated other people. Basically everything about them.”

“And that’s your job?” Suddenly I didn’t feel like I’d ever had it so tough.

“What is this supposed to be?” Peter exclaimed, glaring at the sheet in front of his face. Then he looked up at me again. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked if all that biographical detailing and decision-making was your job.”

“Not exactly.” Peter picked up a pen and began scribbling furiously on the paper.

“Not exactly?”

“I don’t actually find any of the biographical details myself. We have a team of researchers that does that. I also don’t decide who is to go up and who is to go down. We have a committee that is responsible for all those decisions. Mine is purely a managerial role. I have to make sure everything everyone else does runs smoothly, and that the appropriate procedures are being adhered to, and that every last form is correctly filled. And, as you can see, there are an awful lot of forms that need to be filled.” As Peter spoke, he alternated between scrawling over the paper and waving the pen in descriptive circles through the air.

“Can I detect from your tone that you are not enamoured of these appropriate procedures?”

Peter sighed and put down the pen. “Look, there’s no way we could manage without the procedures. It’s just that, well, this job isn’t what it used to be.”

“What did it used to be? Welcome to Heaven parties every day? People bringing you flowers and chocolate when they arrived at the Gates?”

“Maybe not quite,” Peter said with a dry laugh, “but it used to be a whole lot easier. There was a time when I used to manage all of this on my own. Back then, I could make decisions myself, and there was no need for any paperwork. I made a point of greeting every person individually as they arrived at the Gates. Never had any trouble remembering anybody’s name. And in the evening there was always the chance to curl up in front of the fire and enjoy a good detective yarn.”

“Sounds like a good life. Why ruin it with procedures?”

Peter picked up the pen again. “Population explosion. The more people there are being born, the more people there are dying. Eventually, there were far too many people arriving at the Gates for me to deal with each one personally. If you think the queue is bad now, you should have seen it twenty years ago. It was taking almost six months for anyone to get through.”

“A fellow could die and go to Heaven in the time it took him to die and go to Heaven,” I said, rather cleverly I thought.

Peter wasn’t paying the slightest attention. “What have you done now, you idiot?” he cried, his eyes red with exasperation. “I’ve told you a hundred times, surname first, then given names.” He ripped up a couple of sheets of paper and tossed them onto the floor before looking back at me. “I’m sorry. What were we talking about?”

“Procedures.”

“Of course, the procedures. Eventually, we reached a point where the people in the queue got so impatient they rioted outside the Gates. Some of them actually tried to enter Heaven by force. It got so violent, half the people involved ended up being sent down below. Can you imagine that? Sent down for misdeeds you committed after your death.”

“That’s why I made sure to get all my misdeeds out of the way before I died,” I said. “So what happened after that?”

“I can’t follow any of this. He’s going to have to start again from scratch.” Peter cleared a place on the left side of the desk and dumped the pile of papers down. Then he picked up another pile from the middle of the desk and began thumbing through that. In the midst of all this activity, he did his best to answer the question.