Blood Worm

13

By the time the action committee meeting at Worth Road police station was brought to an end that afternoon, they had reached agreement on several recommendations. At Mary’s insistence — and despite some hesitation from Bill Jenkins about how realistic their targets were — they agreed that all schools and hospitals were to be inspected immediately for bloodworm infestation and work begun on treating the timber; meanwhile other public buildings were to be closed until their turn came.

To protect the public, a leaflet and poster campaign backed up by TV announcements was to be instituted. People living in older property would be offered guidance on examining and spraying their own houses. Those with relatives or friends with whom they could stay in the country were advised to leave London as soon as possible, particularly if they had children; their house-keys should be deposited at their nearest police station.

Even while they were discussing these provisions, reports came in of incidents at a famous old hotel near Euston Station and a snooker hall approximately half a mile away. As Evan marked the locations on his map, it was obvious to everyone present that the menace was spreading across London like an ink blot. It was only a matter of time before it reached London University, the West End and Whitehall.

It was at this point that Mary’s friend Derek Owen repeated his view that they would get nowhere without more specimens for detailed study. ‘Bloodworms in particular,’ he insisted. ‘With so many in evidence, surely I’m not demanding-the impossible?’ Guy supported him and, for the second time, offered to do something about it himself. It was an offer which Evan took up without hesitating, and for the next ten minutes he and Guy immersed themselves in a discussion of the best way to approach the problem.

Mary shuddered at the mere thought of the risks they’d be taking. At that table she was the only one who had actually encountered giant bloodworms face to face and knew what they were like, though Guy had glimpsed them briefly all those weeks ago. Derek was right, she thought; they did need specimens.

The atmosphere of that room in the police station was beginning to get on her nerves and she didn’t linger once the meeting was over. With a quick smile which was meant for Evan — though she couldn’t be sure whether he saw it or not — she slipped out and went down to her car, which was parked in the rear yard. Later that afternoon she’d have to put the action committee’s proposals to the borough councillors and attempt to win their support, but she calculated she just had time first to inspect the temporary offices which had been allocated to her department.

It should have been a ten-minute drive, but in fact it took her double that time to get there because of the traffic. From the look of some of the cars with families packed inside and heavy luggage on the roof-rack, the exodus had already started without any prompting from the committee.

At last she turned into Shoreham Road and drove slowly along, trying to identify the building. It was council property, previously used for evening classes, but she’d never been there before and she felt a twinge of fear as she drew up outside. A double-fronted Victorian house with large bay windows, it looked just the sort of place the beetles seemed to favour.

It had been inspected, though; she’d been assured of that. Simpkins himself had brought a team down to give the whole house a thorough going-over before the furniture was brought in. As an emergency measure, the most obvious danger points had been treated with a strong insecticide lacquer spray, with a more thorough fumigation scheduled for the weekend.

it’s pretty bleak,’ her assistant Adrian greeted her as she went in. He was carrying several boxes of stationery through the bare hallway towards the stairs. ‘They’ve given us the big front room on the first floor. Parks and Amenities have the back, with the borough engineer’s lot in the rest. Oh, and Housing’s on the ground floor.’

She followed him up. ‘Bleak’ was the right word for their room, she thought when she stepped inside: yellow ochre painted walls pitted with drawing-pin punctures among a scattering of adhesive-tape stains; uncovered floorboards; uncurtained windows and no lampshades.

‘Until they can salvage our files from Worth Hail, we’re working from scratch,’ Adrian commented as he dumped the stationery on a table near the window. ‘We’ve plenty of blank paper but nothing else. Not even a phone yet.’ i’ve just been with Derek Owen,’ she told him, still looking around. ‘He agrees with you about those two beetles you sent down, the ones from the school. Almost certainly females of the same species, he says.’

At least they’d found some furniture for the place, she thought. Old stuff, but still functional — desks, chairs, a cupboard, even a coat-stand. She put her briefcase on the largest of the desks and sat down, almost instinctively opening the top drawer to see what state it was in.

‘Urgh!’ she exclaimed, recoiling with horror. Her chair fell with a crash as she backed away. ‘Adrian…! Oh, God, are they everywhere?’

Several large beetles lay inside the desk drawer, apparently motionless, their colours — that enamel pink with the luxuriously deep green and patches of yellow — making them look particularly deadly. She could easily have put her hand in there without thinking, her flesh might have been lacerated by those pincer-claws, her blood..

‘Stand clear!’ Adrian was yelling at her, almost elbowing her aside.

In his hand was an aerosol spray. Every office was to be equipped with one, she recalled, as the pungent smell reached her nostrils, forcing her to retreat even farther. But it had no obvious effect. A beetle appeared on the top of the drawer, hauling itself up, unbothered by this attack on it. Adrian gave it an extra squirt, holding the nozzle less than a couple of inches away, but still it moved on.

‘The other drawers, Adrian,’ she heard herself almost sobbing. ‘There’ll be more in the other drawers Come away!’

Instead of getting clear, she was horrified to see him bend down to flick open the top drawer on the other side, but with too much force. The drawer shot out and then dropped on to his feet, though he kicked it away immediately.

Just in time, she thought. Her hand flew to her mouth to stop herself screaming as she saw more beetles emerging from it, scrambling out of the drawer, which was now on its side, like soldiers jumping down from the back of a lorry. They spread out across the floor in that familiar half-circle, cutting him off from any possibility of reaching the door.

‘Adrian!’ she shrieked, beside herself. ‘Walk over them! Use your spray!’

She picked up the nearest chair and began slamming it down on the beetles nearest to her, but it was no use. She killed three or four perhaps, and then the half-circle re-formed, still concentrating on Adrian and ignoring her.

Staring around desperately for some more effective weapon, she noticed the table on which Adrian had piled the new supply of stationery. She dashed behind it, swept the notepaper, internal envelopes and pads of official forms on to the floor, and tipped it over once, then again, until it lay upside down, crushing many of the beetles beneath it. Standing on it, she jumped up and down two or three times, adding her weight to it to make absolutely sure they were squashed to death.

‘Hurry!’ She grabbed his arm, dragging him towards the door. ‘Let’s get out while we can!’

But his legs gave way. She saw blood soaking through his clothes. A beetle emerged from his sleeve, its claws busy on his wrist. It was too late, she realised dully. Much too late.

Then everything was taken out of her hands. The door burst open and three or four other people rushed in, among them Simpkins and Bill Jenkins, shouting something at her as they aimed their aerosols at the remaining beetles regrouping around the edges of the upturned table.

‘So many of them still!’ she tried to warn them.

bier arms were seized and she felt herself being guided away. Adrian must be dead, she was convinced. No one could survive that number of beetles. No escaping from them, not any longer.

It was only then that she realised the truth. Up to that point she had always assumed they could be beaten, these bloodworm-beetles, that it was merely a question of finding the right poison and persuading the powers that be to use it on a large enough scale. When it came to war between the species, insects stood no chance against human beings, surely?

But now she knew that was not the case. She had been wrong from the very start. These bloodworm-beetles reproduced with such rapidity that humans stood no chance against them. Already they had spread in a few weeks from a derelict school to claim a large part of London for themselves. Why should they ever stop?

Oh no, they intended to go on, she could swear to that.

Intended? But that assumed a will-power. A mind. No, there couldn’t possibly be a mind; what she was witnessing was something far more terrifying. It was the instinctive, blind will to reproduce and seek food, a characteristic shared by all living creatures and one which could never be defeated.

A sudden roar of agony from the room snapped her out of her semi-trance, bringing her back to her senses. She was on the landing close to the bannister where they had left her before returning to help Adrian. But what was happening in there? Why all that shouting and screaming?

She forced herself to the doorway to look in. Surely there must be something she could do for them?

Adrian lay slumped on the bare floor, his body unnaturally twisted and beetles crawling over it like ants over spilled jam. Next to him, writhing in pain across the upturned table, was Simpkins, his face a mass of beetles busy with their incisor claws, the blood glistening. The others were trying to lift him, but already she could see beetles on their shoes.. their legs.. their jacket sleeves..

‘The idiots!’ she murmured to herself, shocked, indecisive, knowing that the only sensible course was to leave Simpkins to die, yet feeling she must help them somehow. ‘Oh, the idiots!’

Seizing a fallen aerosol can which lay near her feet, she went into the room, determined at least to save the two rescuers if she could.

The fish and chips in the police canteen were unappetising. Guy pushed his plate away half-finished and went up to the counter for another cup of tea. Evan and Derek Owen, who were sharing his table, had both chosen the minute steak and seemed to be experiencing difficulty cutting through it. For the moment they were in no great hurry. They had decided on their course of action. Now all they could do was wait until the superintendent, who was still in conference at Scotland Yard, rang through to give his permission.

Or to withhold it, Guy mused gloomily. He’d had enough experience of top brass in the past to realise that there was no stupidity of which they were not capable.

Their plan was simple enough. He went over it again in his mind, trying to spot the flaws but finding none. They would operate as a team, the three of them together, with himself in charge making the actual snatch, Evan backing him up with the metal bin in which the giant bloodworm was to be dumped, and Derek — a much older man — coming along mainly to observe how the bloodworms reacted. Derek had also devised a method of calming down any beetles that happened to be around, though Guy was doubtful whether it would really work.

That was the weak point, he knew. If it went badly wrong — if there were so many of the creatures that they were overwhelmed or their retreat cut off — none of them would get out alive.

The biggest problem had been to select the right location. At Link Lane underground station the emergency services were still working to rescue any survivors, but the decision had already been taken to seal the tunnels; anyone still alive on those platforms would have no chance. In any case, the special difficulties ruled out Link Lane for this operation. As for the places attacked during the night, a fire had destroyed one, while others abutted on to neighbouring buildings into which — in several instances at least — the beetles and bloodworms had already begun to move.

That left Worth Hall — set in its own grounds, well distanced from any other structures; guarded too, as he remembered from his own experience that morning; and untouched since the previous night.

At last he reached the cash desk, where he paid for his tea, though it was probably cold by now. Back at the table, he found that Derek had abandoned the attempt to eat his steak and was thumbing through a folder of completed report forms.

‘Odd thing here,’ he commented, looking up as Guy rejoined them. ‘Three different officers — two constables and one fireman who later made a statement — all tell of having seen giant bloodworms while they were involved in rescue attempts, but when they returned only seconds later the bloodworms had gone.’

‘Slithered away,’ Evan said. ‘Under the floorboards, into drains, anywhere.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Derek argued, frowning. ‘From these reports it doesn’t sound like that.’

‘All in the same place, were they?’ Guy asked. ‘Different incidents. A mile or two apart.’

The loudspeaker interrupted them, calling Detective-Sergeant Evans to the telephone. ‘This is probably it,’ Evan informed them, getting up slowly. ‘Soon know, anyhow. Decisive man, our super. Keen cutting edge. Favourite expression of his, keen cutting edge. Still not sure what it means.’

Guy watched him as he ambled through the canteen to the phone extension near the door. In this past twenty-four hours his Welsh accent had become more marked than usual. He was nervous, Guy realised — who the hell wasn’t? No one in his right mind would deliberately plan to walk into a nest of bloodworms. Volunteer for it, even.

‘We’re on, we can go ahead,’ Evan informed them soberly when he came back. ‘With Macchiavelli’s blessing, for what it’s worth. So let’s get moving.’

Between them, the police and the fire brigade provided the safety clothing which Guy himself had specified. It consisted of boots, heavy-duty overalls, gauntlet gloves which could be strapped tightly over their sleeves, gas masks and dirt-track riders’ helmets with rubber face pieces which buckled under their chins. Not an inch of flesh was left unprotected.

They drove the short distance to Worth Hall in an unmarked police van which also contained the rest of their equipment. It stopped briefly by the gate where Guy had been held up that morning, then went through it up the driveway to a spot approximately fifty yards from the main entrance. This was the door they had decided to use, though after much argument; in some ways the rear door might have been wiser, but it was narrow and they might have to get out in a hurry carrying the metal bin between them.

Standing briefly on the step at the back of the van, Guy took a quick look around him.The police and firemen were standing well back, though hoses had already been run out and were fixed to their tenders. A separate group of firemen clad in full hazardous chemical gear waited to one side, and these were obviously the men who had volunteered to follow them in.

Beyond the trees the journalists had been corralled behind crowd-control barriers. Guy wondered if Tessa Brownley was among them, licking her thin lips with pleasure at having stumbled on such a major story on her own patch. No doubt that was what they were up to as they lurked behind their telephoto lenses, salivating at the thought that something might go wrong: what wouldn’t they pay to photograph a giant bloodworm in action against human victims?

They hadn’t been told the real reason why the authorities had waited until mid-afternoon before tackling the infestation at Worth Hall instead of going in earlier. The leader of the borough council and the police superintendent had agreed — though for different reasons — to suppress the news that the firemen had called an immediate strike when they heard about the bloodworms and the number of policemen killed. It had taken several hours of negotiation before they had consented to enter the building.

Overhead a police helicopter circled, surveying the hall from above.

‘No visible activity,’ came the voice in Guy’s earpiece, a tiny gadget like a hearing aid, which fitted snugly in his ear under the helmet and had a thin wire leading to the miniature receiver attached to his respirator strap, i’ll go round once again just to make sure.’

Guy and Evan stood at either side of the double doors, waiting for the right moment to go in. Derek, carrying a small garden spray for immediate self-protection, waited next to Evan. He had rejected the idea of using insecticide as being too slow-acting; instead, he had filled the spray with ethyl acetate. ‘Far more effective,’ he’d explained to Guy.

‘Clear of all visible activity,’ the observer in the helicopter said again.

Guy signalled to the other two, then inserted the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed open one wing of the double doors, stepping aside again smartly. Derek faced the opening, his spray ready. A moment later he too raised a hand to indicate that they could go in. No sign of any danger.

The entrance hall looked as though a bomb had hit it. Dust and rubble covered most of the floor, heavy beams had smashed through the reception desk, the display screens were broken, an empty gap and a pile of splintered timber indicated where the staircase had once stood, and it seemed nothing had escaped destruction, with the sole exception of the old print of Worth Hali in the eighteenth century, which still hung on the wall where he had last seen it, though slighdy awry.

A muffled exclamation came from behind Evan’s gas mask and he pointed to where the bodies of the dead police officers lay. Their faces were unrecognisable, the flesh gone; beetles swarmed over them as though they were only so much carrion.

Nearby, emerging from beneath some fallen panelling, a large bloodworm came pushing itself towards them.

Guy had designed his own snake-catching equipment. Nothing very original: simply a deep-sea fishing rod which he’d bought from the Worth Road sports shop, replacing the nylon line with a reel of insulated wire with a noose at one end instead of a hook. His sole chance of success lay in his own skill at manoeuvring the noose over the slobbering head of the bloodworm.

The beetles had noticed them and began scurrying over to investigate, but he had no time even to think of defending himself. That task he had entrusted to Derek, leaving himself free to concentrate on the bloodworm, while Evan — who was lumbered with the galvanised metal bin — had to receive it at exactly the right moment.

It was a crazy venture, a small quiet voice in the back of his mind informed him as he stepped forward… then sideways a little… adjusting the position of the noose with each movement of the bloodworm. Vaguely he was aware of Derek scattering balls of cotton wool around their feet; he’d soaked them too in ethyl acetate in the hope that the fumes would at least last long enough to stun the beetles, if not kill them.

Again the bloodworm shifted over the rubble, then — like a spitting cobra — it reared up to confront him.

‘Got it!’ Guy yelled as the noose slipped easily over its head. With his gloved hand he tugged the wire tight. Nylon, he’d reckoned, might cut through the bloodworm if it struggled, whereas this was thick enough to hold it at least until the metal bin was in place. Evan was already there at his shoulder, ready and waiting.

The bloodworm disintegrated.

But that was impossible, his reason told him. It just couldn’t happen!

Yet it was happening. Tiie noose was swinging at the end of the rod, empty. Before his eyes, that giant bloodworm had broken up, fallen apart into hundreds of little, squirming portions. What was worse, he recognised only too well what they were. These were larvae, identical in appearance to the grub which he and Tony had dug out of the timber at the workshop and which had later eaten through Tony’s hand.

The slab of fallen plaster on which the giant bloodworm had squatted before rearing itself up was now covered with these tiny maggots wriggling over each other, twisting and swaying like living pasta.

Derek bent down to give them a soaking in ethyl acetate from his spray. Then Guy recovered from his stupefaction sufficiently to signal that they should all three of them get the hell out of this place.

As they withdrew, the squad of firemen in protective clothing spread out around the building and started preparations for their own operation. Guy stood near the police van watching them. They should have brought the Army in for this job, he thought. It was no part of a fireman’s duty; he wouldn’t be trained for it.

Guy had pulled the main door shut again on his way out, but the firemen now began smashing several of the windows through which they intended to pump their chemicals. Expansion foam had been tried at several incidents, and successfully too; it rapidly immobilised beetles by the drop in termperature and also depriving them cf air, but many inevitably escaped by flying up to the walls and ceilings. A number of firemen had been injured by beetles landing on their clothing; invariably they found some way through to a patch of bare skin.

From what he’d heard, this time they intended to use hydrogen cyanide gas, which was the chemical formally favoured for putting down rabbits and rats. It might kill off enough beetles and bloodworms to enable them to retrieve the bodies of those poor bloody policemen, he supposed. It wouldn’t solve the main problem, though.

Christ, what a mess'.

He glanced at Evan and Derek as they took off their respirators. Lost in thought, both of them. Trying to come to terms with what they’d just witnessed, he decided. In front of their eyes that long, snake-like creature had actually fallen apart — but had it really been there in the first place?

During the short drive back to Worth Road police station none of them had very much to say. Derek sat staring thoughtfully down at his knees, while Evan had retreated behind a stolidly neutral expression which made it impossible to judge his mood. No reaction came from him even when the police driver told them about the latest incidents on the London underground at Piccadilly and Green Park stations.

‘It’s getting bad,’ he added, an understatement if ever there was one.

At the police station he tried again to telephone Dorothea but heard only her voice reciting the usual recorded message. He toyed with the idea of driving home to check on what was happening about spraying the house, but Evan was agitating for them to get down to work on the new evidence they had gathered, so that wasn’t possible.

The desk sergeant also handed him a note from Mrs Lee, who had phoned to say that a Miss Lise Turns tall had been attempting to contact him. There was trouble at the reggae shop where ‘my two beetles’ had been found. Could he get there as soon as possible.

He couldn’t do it, of course, not right away, but he checked with the desk sergeant, who said that a panda car had already been sent there.

Upstairs in the action committee’s room he found Evan grimly adding more ink spots to his map. He too had heard about the reggae shop, though he had no details yet.

‘What about this place here?’ Guy enquired.

‘This police station? It’s a new building, Guy. Steel girders and concrete. Hardly any timber, but I’m told they are going to treat it again. Now, if we can settle down, please. The fact is we failed.’

Derek Owen was standing at the side table, absorbedly spooning coffee powder into three cups and then adding hot water. That’s probably how he looks in his laboratory, Guy thought. Totally absent-minded.

He carried the cups over, then placed an opened bottle of milk and a packet of sugar on the table, and sat down. ‘The ethyl acetate was a success,’ he observed mildly. ‘Stopped them in their tracks immediately.’

‘Think that’s the solution, do you?’ Evan asked him.

‘Not long-term, but it kept us alive. It’s a weapon. I’d say we should buy up as much as we can lay our hands on.’

‘What we really want to know,’ Guy burst out impatiently, ‘is whether we can believe our eyes? Did you two see the same as I did — one bloody great worm the size of a cobra, bigger than that even — suddenly dissolving? Turning into hundreds of little worms not the length of my thumbnail?’

‘We all three of us saw it, Guy.’ Evan was shaking his head as he spoke. ‘And you’re right, we do need an explanation.’

‘I’ll give you two,’ Guy said. ‘Either it actually happened — but that’s impossible. Or else it was simply hallucination. Didn’t you think that when I first told you about them? It’s that defensive gas they give off.’

‘Dr Owen, this is your department,’ Evan said.

‘Hallucinations, I’m told, usually vary with the psychological make-up of the person experiencing them, but the three of us all saw the same thing,’ Derek commented drily, pressing his fingertips together as he spoke, i’d place hallucinations of that kind in the realms of science fiction, I’m afraid.’

‘So according to you, we actually did see what we saw,’ Guy cross-examined him clumsily.

it is possible, yes. I’m trying to recall something I read not long ago about slime moulds.’

‘What are slime moulds?’

‘Myxomycetes,’ he explained, though obscurely. ‘Single-cell creatures, amoebae, come together to form larger organisms, which then have a coherent life of their own in what way?’

‘As slugs, sometimes. Or as fangs. An American professor has done some really first-rate work on them. 'The point is, they can break up again into smaller living creatures. And what’s more, in some formations they can be quite nastily carnivorous.’

‘You’re not trying to persuade me that beetle larvae are single-cell organisms,’ Guy challenged him.

‘Of course not, Guy. Though they certainly start as a single cell. We all do. Look, I think I need to do some telephoning and get my assistant in Oxford to track down a few references. There are various approaches we should investigate.’

in the meantime/ Guy suggested to Evan, i suggest we draw up a new briefing document for all the emergency services on what to expect and how to stay alive. A few practical tips.’

‘Thinking that myself, boyo,’ Evan agreed wearily. His face looked grey and exhausted. ‘That’ll be something else for Macchiavelli to put his name to.’

The situation was worsening by the minute and everyone at Worth Road police station knew it. The only reported success came from Worth Hall, where firemen had at last recovered the dead officers’ bodies, together with those of two civilians. All had been transferred to the overcrowded mortuary.

By now the bloodworm menace was present in most parts of London north of the Thames and there were also unconfirmed reports of casualties in Birmingham and Coventry. From Fleet Street came the news that no national papers would be available for the rest of the week at least, following the discovery of bloodworms in the massive rolls of newsprint which they used on their rotary presses. Their entire stock had been damaged; casualties among their print workers included more than twenty dead.

In the courts, absenteeism among jurors led to the cancellation of trials; no one wished to be trapped in the largely wooden courtrooms. Clerks were becoming afraid even to open cupboards, or to take down a file from a wooden shelf. Throughout the day, a growing number of office staff abandoned their work and went home by whatever means they could, though London Transport reported near-empty trains on those underground lines which were still running. Word about the Link Lane disaster had spread rapidly.

For those at Worth Road perhaps the most shattering news was that Mary Armstrong was dead. No one was quite sure how it could have happened. Only one room in the borough council’s Shoreham Road building had been infested; in fact, earlier that day the whole place had been thoroughly checked. Somehow beetles had found their way in — perhaps flown in through an open window, it was suggested — with the result that Mary, her assistant and the borough engineer had been killed. Bill Jenkins and two others were in hospital.

Evan took the news badly. He reached for a chair and sat down, his face drained of all colour. The detective-constable who had brought the report immediately offered to fetch him some hot tea, or a stronger drink even, but Evan shook his head.

‘Leave me alone for a minute or two,’ he said, his voice flat and neutral. ‘Let me digest it, will you?’

They went out into the corridor, closing the door behind them. The detective-constable offered Derek Owen the use of a desk in the CID office for the time being, and Guy headed for the payphone in the canteen to ring Dorothea again. When he got there he had to wait until someone else had finished before he could try the number. Still no answer; only that bloody recorded message.

Putting the receiver down, he was about to move away when Evan came through the swing doors.

‘They said you’d be down here, Guy. Can I ask you a small favour? I think I’d better go down to Mary’s place right away and pick up my things, like. Before her family turns up, you know? Be grateful if you’d come with me.’ On their way out, Inspector Ryan waylaid them, a sheaf of papers in his hand. It was going to be a bad night, he informed them gloomily; everything pointed that way. All leave cancelled, of course. Temporary beds were being brought in to allow people to sleep when they could, and that went for Guy and Derek too. Action committee members were to be issued with special identity cards and the superintendent had instructed that Evan should be in uniform whenever he visited the site of any bloodworm incident.

‘You too, Captain Archer, if that’s possible,’ the inspector added. ‘It would help our people to know who you are. What’s happening behind the scenes I can’t be sure, but I believe the Ministry of Defence are aware that you’re working with us now.’

It was not until they were in the car and driving out through the gate that Evan risked making a comment. ‘Macchiavelli again, you see!’ he murmured. ‘I’d not be surprised if one day that man doesn’t become prime minister.’

The traffic on the main road told its own story. Cars were bumper to bumper heading north to the motorway as grim — faced families tried to make their escape, taking with them whatever luggage they could cram in. One small saloon with steam rising from its overheated radiator had been man-handled on to the broad pavement to prevent it holding up the others.

Evan had to use his siren to force a way through to the residential streets on the other side; perhaps a uniform might be helpful after all, he admitted reluctantly. Fiddling with the radio, he picked up a message relayed from a police helicopter. Every major trunk road was similarly choked with streams of vehicles all trying to get out of London in what the voice described as ‘the great exodus’.

‘That’s more than simple panic, boyo,’ he remarked sombrely. ‘It’s a deep-seated instinct, that is. They’re not fighting back, but giving up. Ceding territory.’

‘To beetles,’ Guy added.

it’s what it amounts to.’

Mary’s flat was on the third floor of a modem low-rise block with parking space at the side. Evan fell silent as they walked across to the front door, which he opened with his own key. Immediately inside was a bank of mailboxes. A folded brown envelope protruded from the one bearing her name; he tugged it out, then led the way upstairs.

It was a woman’s flat, Guy noted with interest: pretty curtains, scatter cushions, flowering plants, and three pairs of tights hung to dry from a string over the bath. Not much evidence of Evan living there with her. He caught a glimpse of her dressing table through the open bedroom door: the usual paraphernalia of creams and what-have-you was there, all her stuff.

‘Sit down and watch television or something,’ Evan suggested awkwardly. ‘I shan’t keep you a minute.’

Guy went back into the living room and glanced idly at the block of lined paper on the small table she’d used as a desk. On it she had jotted down some disconnected notes on the Worth Hall bloodworms. Estimated size, segmented skin which seemed sufficiently transparent to appear pink after drinking blood, dark eyes, then— Dislike very bright light. Fear? Alarm? Do they feel threatened by it?

He read this note two or three times, wondering if there was anything in it.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Guy.’ Evan came back into the living room with an open canvas grip, which he put on the table while he checked through the few books on the sideboard. In it Guy saw brown slippers and striped pyjamas; quite domestic. ‘Mary’s family would be upset to find I’d been here with her, you know. Methodist minister, her father is. Old-fashioned.’ i hadn’t realised,’ said Guy.

‘It’s rum the way things go. My wife died ten years ago in a car accident and I’ve been on my own since then, till I met Mary, like.’ He dropped a paperback travel book into the grip and zipped it shut. ‘Not long ago, either. At the old school it was, day after you were attacked there. Now I’ve lost her too. I haven’t quite grasped it yet.’

Out on the landing, he paused to double-lock the door. ‘Guy, I only hope she didn’t suffer too much pain,’ he went on. ‘Or fear. She used to worry about that.’

Wondering about Kath and Dorothea, Guy asked if they might call at his house on their way back to the station. Evan agreed right away and they drove through the maze of back streets, which he seemed to know like the back of his hand. Already it was noticeable how many fewer cars were parked along these roads; as the lamps came on in the semi-darkness they even looked attractive. He found the house dark and deserted. No message from Dorothea; no indication that Kath had even been home. The step-ladder had gone from the front room but the floorboards were untouched and the spraying equipment lay near them. Upstairs, the bed was unmade; from the way her clothes lay scattered about the room it looked as though she’d left in a hurry. Yet her wardrobe was as tightly packed as ever, he noticed, her favourite suitcase was still there, so where had she gone?

Evan waited patiently while Guy found the phone number of Dorothea’s sister in Dorset and tried to call her. He let it go on ringing for a bit, but then gave up.

‘I’ll get a few things, then I’m ready,’ he said. ‘Can you hang on that long?’

Going upstairs again to the spare room, he dug out his battledress uniform and changed into it. What the Army would say about him parading around dressed like this he didn’t care to think about; at least he felt more comfortable in it. When he went down to the hall again, Evan raised an eyebrow and smiled ironically, but said nothing.

That night was all that Inspector Ryan had predicted. It began with the second meeting of the now slimmed-down action committee, this time with the superintendent in the chair. He treated them to a pep talk stressing the need for as full a picture as possible of bloodworm behaviour patterns ‘if we’re ever to defeat these things’.

As if Mary hadn’t said exactly the same thing weeks ago, Guy thought wearily, though few had listened to her then.

The reports of bloodworm incidents, several of them major disasters, came in with sickening regularity. Guy and Evan, usually accompanied by Derek, went to investigate a number of them on the spot, questioning witnesses and sometimes going into the buildings themselves. Slowly through the night a pattern did begin to emerge.

It was first noticed at London’s historic Guildhall, which had been booked by a City organisation for an important dinner at which the Lord Mayor was to speak. Having paid a hundred pounds a head for their tickets, most of the guests made it a point of honour to turn up, crisis or no crisis. A glittering occasion, it should have been. Everyone in evening dress, a fortune in diamonds around the ladies’ necks…

After the wining and dining, the Lord Mayor was announced. She rose to her feet and in that moment all present were startled by a loud fluttering, whispering sound above their heads. The beetles had emerged for their first flight.

No one recognised them as beetles; that point was important. Those with better eyesight than the rest reported seeing what appeared to be little round balls of hyperactive fluff. This was of course an optical illusion created by the rapid movement of their wings, and it led some people to imagine they must be moths.

On that occasion — it was the only one — very few beetles were tempted by the feast of rich humanity at the tables below them. As it happened, there had been complaints about the stuffy atmosphere in the Guildhall that evening and the top windows had been opened, which allowed the beetles to stream out into the fresh air.

However, the next stage in the pattern followed almost within seconds when, with a deafening series of cracks and groans, the entire building^hook and then collapsed on top of the assembled guests. Many were killed outright; most survivors found themselves buried beneath the rubble.

Then silence. Most mentioned that terrible silence and found it more frightening even than the ear-splitting sounds which preceded it, though no one was sure whether it last for seconds only or longer.

Gradually people’s voices were heard. Whimpering. Moaning. Calling for help.

Beetles crawled out of the dust to explore the ladies’ bare shoulders and deep necklines, and the men’s faces, their hands and wrists, their calves exposed through the tatters of their clothing.

The screaming turned to shrieks of terror as something else appeared from among the filth and rubble, something long and sinuous, a pale worm-like creature, which moved in that odd way, bunching itself up and then pushing purposefully forward as it searched for food. Human, food.

This was the third stage; the emergence of the giant bloodworms.

Yet perhaps there was a fourth stage too. It involved a coach-load of German tourists grimly determined to complete their sight-seeing schedule, come what may. St Paul’s Cathedra! was the last stop on their list, after which they expected to drive straight to Dover for the midnight boat. It was late, of course, but even the floodlit St Paul’s was impressive, their travel-leader told them.

The swarm of beetles which had escaped from the Guildhall via the upper windows was observed flying towards the cathedral by one witness. Briefly they were caught in the floodlighting; then circling lower, seeking the shadows, they alighted on the unfortunate tourists. Few lived long enough to describe the experience.

It wasn’t until the following morning that Guy heard about this incident in any detail. Too much else had been happening. The roof and part of the first floor of the National Gallery had fallen in, though only the night staff had been in the building at the time, so casualties were few. Both damage and casualties at the Palace of Westminster were considerably worse, particularly as the

House of Commons had been crowded at the time for the debate on the Emergency Powers Bill relating to the bloodworm crisis. A high number of MPs present lost their lives and others were reported missing. Two hospitals were also attacked, with more than three hundred dead and injured in both instances, some of them having only been admitted earlier that day to be treated for wounds received in other bloodworm incidents.

While many of the police had taken up Derek’s idea of carrying ethyl acetate sprays for their own protection, these were only effective at close quarters. For general rescue operations the fire brigade still favoured hi-expansion foam as the most rapid way of putting the maximum number of beetles and bloodworms out of action, but by midnight, with every machine out on the road, supplies began to ran low.

So many buildings were affected that the emergency services could no longer deal with every call, but had to pick and choose among them, concentrating on those where they felt they had a reasonable chance of saving lives. Fractured gas mains made the situation worse, and by morning more than twenty fires were still burning in various parts of London.

Guy and Evan drove towards Worth Road in the pale, sickly light of that dawn feeling that they had failed. Derek, too, sitting in the back seat, was staring morosely at the notes he had made of eye-witness accounts; for the past twenty minutes he had not spoken a word. Hundreds of people had died during that night and major London landmarks had been destroyed by these insects, yet a solution was as far away as ever.

‘Go past my road, would you, Evan?’ Guy requested. He was dead tired, drained out, his mouth dry; he felt perhaps he would never sleep again, he was so unnaturally wide-awake, as though drugged, i’d like to check if Dorothea and Kath are all right. Unless they’ve had the sense to get out of town.’

But the road was blocked. The fronts of several houses, including his own, had been blown out, leaving the sagging floors exposed. Their own bed — that ‘film star bed’ as they’d called it when Dorothea had picked it out in the shop — hung over the edge, still unmade, he noticed.

He left the car and went over to question a woman sitting patiently on some suitcases at the roadside. She wore a warm coat and had a scarf over her hair; from her appearance she might have been a refugee anywhere.

‘A gas explosion, they said,’ she explained indifferently, as if none of it really concerned her any longer. ‘Though before that we heard a terrible noise from one of those houses opposite. You lived there, didn’t you? Recognise you.’

‘Did you see my wife? Or Kath — our little girl? About eleven, long hair.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Saw nobody. My feller’s gone to fetch the car, then we’re leaving. ’What’s the point? London’s finished, innit?’

Guy climbed over the rabble to examine the houses more closely. As far as he could judge, it seemed to have been his neighbour’s place which the bloodworms had attacked, though there was no sign of them now.

‘Dorothea!’ he shouted as loud as he could. The sour dust lingered on the air and got into his throat. ‘Kath! Anybody in there?’

No answer came, of course; he hadn’t really expected one. The steps up to the front door were broken, but several big chunks of brickwork lay there. He managed to clamber over them into what was left of the hall. It was impossible to go any farther and he was turning to go when his foot kicked against the telephone-answering machine. Stooping down, he saw that it was still switched to take messages; he removed the cassette and slipped it in his pocket.

‘Anything?’ Evan asked when he returned to the car.

‘No sign of either of them. God knows where they’ve ended up.’

‘What about the house?’

‘A write-off. No infestation that I could see, but they were there all right. I could sense it. Somewhere among all that rubble.’

During the short drive to the police station Evan began to rhapsodise about bacon and eggs in the canteen. ‘With fried bread, tomato, sausage, all the trimmings. Best meal they do!’

Guy shrugged. A cup of tea maybe, he thought; he couldn’t face food. Though he didn’t say it, he was puzzled at his own feelings about Kath and Dorothea; he was just as fatalistic as that woman at the roadside. Whatever had happened, it was nothing he could control; perhaps that was the reason.

‘Are we being misled about the larval stage, that’s the big question,’ came Derek’s voice unexpectedly from the back seat. ‘They bore through the timber so rapidly, I don’t know what to think.’

‘Weeks rather than months,’ Guy agreed, meaning to encourage him. He recalled what Tony had said.

‘Days rather than weeks would be nearer the mark, judging from how quickly they’re spreading. They’re obviously reproducing at quite an incredible rate.’ Derek fell silent again, deep in thought. Since that earlier meeting his attitude had changed.

They arrived at the station and went to check in. It was one of the rules the superintendent had instituted, and just as well under the circumstances. Several officers had gone missing during the night; at least two were known to have died.

‘Captain Archer.’ The desk sergeant stopped him as he was about to go for a wash. ‘Your wife’s been in looking for you. Left you a note.’

‘She’s gone, then?’ The disappointment hurt like a knife.

‘Wouldn’t wait.’

‘Is she all right? How did she look?’

‘How do any of us look? Like she doesn’t know what’s hit her. Isn’t that how we all feel?’

Guy nodded. He tore open the note, which had been scribbled on police paper, folded and then stapled together. Guy — your daughter Kath has run away, she’d written. Really, this time. It is my fault. I was in bed with Pete when she opened the door and saw us. Made me feel a slut which Fm not, you know that. You won’t like this but there it is. I've searched everywhere and can’t find her. I do blame myself, Guy.

Blunt, uninhibited Dorothea, he thought, hating her. He pushed the note into his pocket.