Liars' League

Thieves We Were by Simon Hodgson

 

Thieves We Were

In the spring that my father died, we walked through the confetti of Japanese cherry blossom in the Elsted churchyard after the ten o’clock service and he told me for the first time about the Reverend Norton Mudge.

 

If you would like to read the rest of this story, please check out London Lies, the Arachne Press anthology in which it, and many other London-based stories from the League archives, appears.

Funny Strange by Jim Murdoch

Read by Clive Greenwood

Here, I’ve got a new joke for you. There was this gnu walking down the street … I even got a laugh at the Glasgow Empire with that one. Only a titter mind. It surprised me they knew what a gnu was. Mind you, that’s going back a bit. They’d just look at you now, the kids these days, even if they’d never heard the gag before, they’d just look at you with that look on their face. There’s only one place you see an expression like that and that’s from a stage. It’s no wonder they keep the lights down low but you can usually make out a few rows – it’s how I gauge an audience, by those I can see – and if they’re not laughing, or worse still, if they’re laughing in all the wrong places – then you’ve got problems my old son. Problems, because they’re not getting the joke any more – you’ve became the joke and that’s not very funny. It’s not nice being laughed at.

Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions by Jonathan Pinnock

Read by Sabina Cameron

Professor Pythagoras Vavasor lies face up on the floor of his study in the house that he shares with his twin brother Archimedes, trying to comprehend what is happening to him. When the police toxicologist runs her tests on his body over the next few days, she will discover that he has been drugged. This, however, is not the primary reason for Professor Vavasor’s present terminal condition. Rather, this condition is almost exclusively due to the metal set-square that has been inserted, sharp angle first, into his aorta.

True Crime by Richard Meredith

Read by Silas Hawkins

When I walk in the Tav, the film bloke's already there, hovering at the bar all nervous like he's a little boy waiting for his favourite superhero. Mick behind the bar gives me a raised eyebrow and nods at him, as if he didn't already stick out like Prince Charles in McDonald's. I walk up and introduce myself, looking him up and down, from the cashmere flat cap to the Armani jeans. Yeah, I think, you're a director all right.

Eat at Lovecraft's by James Burt

Read by Becky Hands-Wicks

It’s not a place you’d find by accident. Or rather, it’s not a place you’d want to find by accident. Some people make pilgrimages here, black-clad and weighed down by rucksacks full of books, but these people know to be gone by dark. Those who find the place without meaning to, glad of food and warmth on an empty road, they soon wish they’d followed their satnavs somewhere else - but nothing that happens to them is worse than the proprietor’s suffering.