'Half six. Listen, I rang to suggest that it'd be a good idea if you stayed at home today and didn't go to work.'

There was a pause.

'I can't do that,' she said at last. 'I've arranged childcare and everything. But there's nothing to stop you getting out of town and never returning.'

'This is my town too, Cindy.'

'Leave now or the Next family crypt will be up for a dusting.'

'I won't do that.'

'Then,' replied Cindy with a sigh, 'we've got nothing else to discuss. I'll see you later — although I doubt you'll see me.'

The line went dead and I gently replaced the receiver. I felt sick. The wife of a good friend would die today and it didn't feel good.

'What's the matter?' said a voice close at hand. 'You seem upset.'

It was Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.

'No,' I replied, 'everything's just as it should be. Thanks for dropping round; I've found us a William Shakespeare. He's not the original, but close enough for our purposes. He's in this cupboard.'

I opened the cupboard door and a very startled Shgakespeafe looked up from where he had been scribbling by the light of a candle end he had stuck upon his head. The wax had begun to run down his face, but he didn't seem to mind.

'Mr Shgakespeafe, this is the hedgehog I was telling you about.'

He shut his notebook and stared at Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. He wasn't the slightest bit afraid or surprised — after the abominations he'd dodged on an almost daily basis in Area 21, I suspect a six-foot-tall hedgehog was something of a relief. Mrs Tiggy-Winkle curtsyed gracefully.

'Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr Shgakespeafe,' she said politely. 'Will you come with me, please?'

'Who was that?' Landen called out as he walked downstairs a little later.

'It was Mrs Tiggy-Winkle picking up a William Shakespeare clone in order to save Hamlet from permanent destruction.'

'You can't ever be serious, can you?' He laughed as he gave me a hug. I had smuggled Shgakespeafe into the house without Landen seeing. I know you're meant to be honest and truthful to your spouse but I thought there might be a limit, and if there was I didn't want to reach it too soon.

Friday came down to breakfast ten minutes later. He looked tousled, sleepy and a bit grumpy.

'Quis nostrud laboris,' he moaned. 'Nisi ut aliquip ex consequat.'

I gave him some toast and rummaged in the cupboard under the stairs for my bullet-proof vest. All my stuff was now back at Landen's house as if I had never moved out. Sideslips are confusing, but you can get used to almost anything.

'Why are you wearing a bullet-proof vest?'

It was Landen. Drat. I should have put it on at the station.

'What bullet-proof vest?'

'The one you're trying to put on.'

'Oh, that one. No reason. Listen, if Friday gets hungry you can always give him a snack. He likes bananas — you may have to buy some more, and if a gorilla calls, it's only that Mrs Bradshaw I was telling you about.'

'Don't change the subject. How can you go to work wearing a vest for "no reason"?'

'It's a precaution.'

'Insurance is a precaution. A vest means you're taking unnecessary risks.'

'I'd be taking a bigger one without it.'

'What's going on, Thursday?'

I waved a hand vaguely in the air and tried to make light of it.

'Just an assassin. A small one. Barely worth thinking about.'

'Which one?'

'I can't remember. Window . . . something.'

'The Windowmaker? A contract with her and you stick to reading short stories? Sixty-seven known victims?'

'Sixty-eight if she did Samuel Pring.'

'That's not important. Why didn't you tell me?'

'I ... I ... didn't want you to worry.'

He rubbed his face with his hands and stared at me for a moment, then sighed deeply.

'This is the Thursday Next I married, isn't it?'

I nodded my head.

He wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly.

'Will you be careful?' he whispered in my ear.

'I'm always careful.'

'No, really careful. The sort of careful that you should be when you have a husband and son who'd be surpremely pissed off if they were to lose you?'

'Ah,' I whispered back, 'that sort of careful. Yes, I will.'

We kissed and I Velcroed up the vest, put my shirt over the top of it and my shoulder holster on top of this. I kissed Friday and told him to be good, then kissed Landen again.

'I'll see you this evening,' I told him, 'and that's a promise.'

I drove to Wanborough to find Joffy. He was officiating at a GSD civil union ceremony and I had to wait in the back of the temple ' until he had finished. I had some time before I had to deal with Cindy, and looking more closely into St Zvlkx seemed like a good way to fill it. Millon's idea that Zvlkx wasn't a seer but a rogue member of the ChronoGuard involved in some sort of timecrime seemed, on the face of it, unlikely. You couldn't hide from the ChronoGuard. They would always find you. Perhaps not here and now, but then and there — when you least expected it. Long before you even thought about doing something wrong. The ChronoGuard left no trace, either. With the perpetrator gone, then the timecrime never happened either. Very neat, very clever. But with the historical record so closely scrutinised and the ChronoGuard themselves giving Zvlkx the seal of approval, how on earth did Zvlkx — if he was a fake — get around the system?

'Hello, Doofus!' said Joffy as the happy couple kissed outside the church in a shower of confetti. 'What brings you here?'

'St Zvlkx — where is he?'

'He got the bus into Swindon this morning. Why?'

I outlined my suspicions.

'Zvlkx a rogue member of the ChronoGuard? But why? What's he up to? Why risk permanent eradication for dubious fame as a thirteenth-century seer?'

'How much did he get from the Toast Marketing Board?'

'Twenty-five grand.'

'Hardly a fortune. Can we look in his room?'

'Outrageous!' replied Joffy. 'I would be guilty of a shameful breach of trust if I were to allow a room search in his absence. I have a spare key here.'

Zvlkx's room was much as you would suppose a monk's cell to be — spartan in the extreme. He slept on a mattress stuffed with straw and had only a table and chair as furniture. On the table was a Bible. It was only after we started searching that we found a CD Walkman under the mattress along with a few copies of Big & Bouncy and Fast Horse.

'A betting man?' I asked.

'Drinking, betting, smoking, wenching — he did it all.'

'The magazines show he can read English, too. What are you looking for, Joff?'

Joffy had been rummaging under the pillow.

'His Book of Revealtments. He usually hides it here.'

'So! You've searched his room before. Suspicious?'

Joffy looked sheepish.

'I'm afraid so. His behaviour is less like that of a saint and more like that of, well, a cheap vulgarian — when I translate I have to make certain . . . adjustments.'

I pulled out his desk drawer and turned it over. Stuck to the bottom was an envelope.

'Bingo!'

It contained a single one-way Gravitube ticket to Bali. Joffy raised his eyebrows and we exchanged nervous glances. Zvlkx was definitely up to something.

Joffy accompanied me into Swindon and we drove up and down the streets trying to find the wayward saint. We visited the site of his old cathedral at Tesco's but couldn't find him, so went on a circuit that took in the law courts, the SpecOps building and the theatre before driving past the university and down Commercial Road. Joffy spotted him outside Pete & Dave's, lumbering up the street.

'There!'