Kill Fish Jones by Caro King Read Free Book Online Page A

chronometer also read the constellations and the seasons, including human holidays like Christmas, Easter and so on. In addition to that, it highlighted special events on the Spirit calendar, like various approaching catastrophes (earthquakes, tsunamis, vast floods or landslides and the like), or the births and deaths of religions.
    Right now, Grimshaw set the geography hands to outside number thirty-three, Whitefield Drive, under the rhododendron bushes. Then he pressed the send button. Then he disappeared from the kitchen.

    Outside the house, life was going on as normal. The sun was shining and there was a light breeze to cool the air and rustle the leaves. Grimshaw thought it made a nice change from Grey Space. He was well positioned on the other side of the road so that he could see the front door of Marsha’s house and the view up and down the avenue (slightly obscured by a pink rhododendron flower, but not so that it was a problem).
    Grimshaw studied the page in his notebook dedicated to Jon Figg, the Man Who Helped. By now there were ticks through dog, car, house, job and wife and the page was covered in notes. He reviewed the ones relating to last night, when Jon Figg’s wife Emily had diedin hospital. He frowned. He had written, ‘ Miserable Collapse with Despair and Sobbing ’, but somehow, thinking back, that didn’t seem quite fair. After a brief inner struggle, Grimshaw crossed the comment through and replaced it with, ‘ Heartfelt Collapse and Dignified Weeping ’, then got on with the job in hand.
    He scratched an ear and turned his inky gaze up the road, to where a small boy was kicking a ball around a front garden. The boy’s mother had told him to play in the back garden, but he had decided to ignore her because he had been made to eat porridge for breakfast instead of chocolate krispies and was in a rebellious mood.
    Next, Grimshaw looked the other way, to where a couple of men had pulled up in a truck. They got out and began unloading equipment.
    Whitefield Drive was a pleasant avenue, lined with tall houses and trimmed with leafy trees that cast cool shadows in the bright sun. Mostly this was a good thing, but every few years the trees grew too large and the council sent out some men with a truck, some yellow tape and a couple of electric saws to cut off a lot of branches and thin the trees out. This was one of those years.
    Grimshaw watched with interest as they fixed up their safety equipment outside Marsha’s house, calling cheerfully to each other as they worked. The boy in the nearby front garden kicked his ball about moreslowly as he spared some attention to see what they were doing. When the safety harness was in place, two of the men shouldered the electric saws, hopped on to the mechanical ladder on the back of the truck and rose swiftly to the leafy heights where they clambered into position. A second later the morning was split by the grinding whine of the saws and the cracking of branches.
    Being a creature born of spirit rather than flesh, Grimshaw was able to see a little way into the future. It was a very complicated place. Humans had free will, and so, although there was a
most likely
course for them to take, they might change their minds and do something different instead. So each human’s future was actually several possible futures running alongside each other. When a person made his or her choice about what to do next, then the several futures melded together into a single present. As their decision might affect everybody else’s possible futures, it could be difficult to get a forecast exactly right.
    Opening his inner eye, the one that could look forward in time, Grimshaw investigated the various futures that spanned out over the next few hours. Jon Figg left the house at around 10.30, just as a youth on a motorcycle sped down the road and disappeared around the corner. The men chopped branches until 1.00, when they stopped for lunch. The