Blood Worm

3

‘Beetles?’

The question was sardonic.

‘That’s right, sir,’ Detective-Sergeant ‘Evan’ Evans repeated steadily. ‘Beetles.’

He was a hefty, broad-shouldered man, big-fisted, with a bluff, heavy voice which bore traces of the Welsh hills and valleys of his childhood. Not a man who was easily thrown, as this smooth-faced uniformed superintendent had yet to discover.

‘Some of his injuries were undoubtedly caused when the school roof collapsed. The joists were riddled with holes like a cheese, just eaten away, whether by the same beetles or not is another question. But they definitely attacked him too. There are witnesses.’

‘Are you sure someone isn’t having you on, Evan?’ ‘Quite sure, sir.’ Why argue, he thought.

‘His name’s Archer, you say?’

‘Guy Archer. Local resident.’

‘What was he doing in the school in the first place?’ ‘Searching for his missing daughter, so his wife says.’ Ironically, he added, the little girl had returned home of her own accord only minutes after her father left to look for her. She had spun some yam about having tried to phone more than once but each time found the line engaged. It could be true, but you could never really be sure what kids were up to. Parents were right to be worried.

‘You’re saying this man Archer might have died if the two teenagers hadn’t chanced along when they did?’ the superintendent commented when he had finished. ‘He’s lucky they reported it instead of just making themselves scarce.’

‘Oh, they did better than that,’ Evan told him pointedly. ‘They managed to raise the beam which was pinning him down and get him out. Quite a risk they took. They could easily have brought the whole building down on top of them.’

‘Hm.’

The superintendent put on his thoughtful look. It was no more than six weeks since he had arrived to take charge of Worth Road’s gleaming concrete police station; six weeks of growing unpopularity. He was a slim, ambitious man in a tailored uniform, his dark hair plastered down. The last of the Brylcreem boys. His nickname ‘Mack’ — short for Machiavelli — had followed him from his previous job. It was Evan’s misfortune that morning to have run into him in the corridor as he was about to leave — when was he not? — for an important top-brass pow-wow at Scotland Yard.

‘And the other body?’ he was asking.

‘In a bit of a mess. They left it there. Once they got Archer out, the boy stayed with him while the girl went to call an ambulance.’

‘You believe them?’

‘Yes, sir. Until someone proves I shouldn’t.’

‘A tramp, I think you said?’

‘The tramp,’ Evan corrected him. ‘Our tramp. That’s who we judge it to be from his clothes, at any rate, and from those plastic bags he carted around with him.’

‘You’re not certain?’

‘The body was badly decomposed. His face had gone.’

‘Why d’you say “our” tramp?’

‘Everyone round here knew him. You must have seen him yourself. Down at the tube station perhaps?’

Before the superintendent could reply, the corridor loudspeaker began to crackle. Telephone call for Detective-Sergeant Evans, the switchboard girl’s voice announced. He excused himself and returned to his office.

‘Detective-Sergeant Evans here,’ he grunted into the mouthpiece.

A high-pitched male voice greeted him and immediately launched into a distasteful list of post-mortem details, repeating them relentlessly to make sure there could be no misunderstanding. As far as they could judge from a body in that state, the tramp had died at least five days earlier. No obvious foul play.

‘That doesn’t mean he wasn’t injured, but merely that the maggots left him so mangled up we can’t be absolutely certain.’ There was a rustle of paper at the other end, then the voice brightened. ‘That’s about it. Interim report only, of course. My hunch, for what it’s worth, is that he died through loss of blood. I’ve seldom come across a body so drained.’

Evan dropped the receiver back on its cradle and vigorously cleared his ear with his little finger. Bloody pathologists, he thought. He didn’t know which he disliked most: the older, hardened types who revelled in macabre jokes, or these bright whizz-kids, all so eager to prove themselves they spared you nothing. After twenty-three years on the force this sort of stuff still made him feel queasy.

Twenty-three bloody years! Now even in his bath he looked like a copper; no one could mistake him for anything else. An archetypal thief-catcher — he knew that was how Mack viewed him — the sort who’d forget to wipe the mud off his boots before treading on the commissioner’s carpet. But then he’d never be invited to cross the threshold anyway.

He realised it was high time he got moving if he was to keep his appointment with the borough engineer. He paused long enough to glance into the adjoining room, where he could hear Detective-Constable McNair’s two-finger typing as he fought a losing battle against the growing mountain of paperwork.

‘Jim, I’m going back to St John’s School to have another mooch around before they knock the place down,’ he called in. ‘Ring the hospital again, will you, to check if the patient is fit enough yet to be questioned.’ Jim McNair looked up from his war-scarred typewriter. ‘He was still out last time I tried.’

‘Well, if he comes round, get down there right away, will you? Don’t wait for me.’

‘Do we know how the old tramp died?’

‘Nothing conclusive. But I can’t believe it was beetles. This isn’t the Amazon jungle, for Chrissake!’

He was still thinking about beetles when he made the mistake of trying to leave the station through the public reception area, only to be waylaid by a middle-aged West Indian who jumped up from the benches the moment he saw him.

‘Mr Evans, I want to know why you’re holding my son.’ The man blocked his path, obviously upset. ‘You think ’cos we black you can do anything you like? What’s wrong with you people? He was trying to help.’

‘You’re Mr—?’ Vaguely he recalled having seen the West Indian before, but where? Hadn’t he been a prosecution witness in that hit-and-run traffic case? Not one of his, but he had been at the magistrate’s court that day. Was that it?

‘My name’s Palmer, Mr Evans, so don’t try denying you’ve got my son in there.’

Evan saw light.

‘Jesus, is Byron Palmer still here?’ he exploded, all the fury of his Welshness breaking through. ‘You’re Mr Palmer, are you? Well, just sit down, Mr Palmer, while I check what’s going on.’

He strode back along the corridor to the interview room, where he found the black teenager who had rescued Archer still sitting at the table coolly checking through his statement. The detective-constable stood at his shoulder.

‘OK, lad?’ he was demanding aggressively as Evans went in. ‘That’s the story you’re sticking to, is it?’

This young DC was lining himself up for a stinking bad report, Evans promised himself sourly. He had disliked the man from the first moment he set eyes on that cropped blond hair and leering, surly face. Nothing in the intervening months had persuaded him to change his mind.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Lord Byron here refused to sign the first statement. Wasn’t good enough for him.’

‘What was wrong with it, Byron?’

‘They weren’t my words,’ the boy said reasonably. ‘What I said had been paraphrased. I didn’t feel I could sign it.’

The DC began to protest but Evan stopped him. The lad was trying it on, seeing how far he could get; as he was still at school studying for A levels it was not surprising he should react this way to the DC’s bullying. And he was a witness after all, not a suspect.

‘Let’s have a look at your statement, Byron,’ he requested.

The lad gave it to him and he skimmed quickly through it. At least his handwriting was clear and easy to read. In all important respects it agreed with what the girl had told them.

‘He still won’t say why he took the girl into the school in the first place,’ the DC pointed out.

Byron’s face darkened.

‘Well, he wasn’t looking for the crown jewels, that’s for sure,’ Evan commented sarcastically, feeling his aversion to the man growing with every minute that passed. He handed the statement back. ‘Just sign it, Byron, will you, then run along. You’ll find your father waiting outside.’

‘And another thing,’ the DC insisted as they stood watching the lad meticulously signing and dating every sheet. ‘How come these beetles didn’t attack you?’

‘They ran off, didn’t they. Like cockroaches run off if you tread near them.’ He didn’t even bother to look up from his writing as he answered. ‘All ’cept a few that were on this guy, an’ they’d gone too by the time we’d got him out from under that joist. One o’ them nipped me, though.’

He pushed his statement over to Evan, stood up and rolled his sock down to reveal a Band-Aid on the brown skin of his ankle.

‘Nipped me through the sock,’ he explained. ‘It bloody hurt. Like sharp scissors.’

‘OK,’ Evan said, getting tired of all this stuff about beetles. There was enough unsolved crime on the books without having to hunt killer insects into the bargain. ‘Cut along, will you, and go gently on your father. He’s worried. If there’s anything more we want to know we’ll be in touch. You’ll probably be called to give evidence at the inquest too, so be ready for it.’

‘And Sharon?’ Byron asked.

‘Any reason why she shouldn’t?’

‘No.’

‘OK, then.’

Impatiently, Evan jammed his foot down on the accelerator and twisted the wheel to shoot into a gap in the increasing traffic. There was an angry trumpeting protest from the car he had so rudely overtaken but he ignored it. He pulled across to the nearside lane and turned into the residential street which led to the disused school.

Beetles! he thought, disgusted.

More to the point, he had to discover how the tramp had died. Natural causes was the obvious explanation. He visualised him crawling into the old school simply to find a corner where he could be ill without interference from any of the local do-gooders. From time to time several people had tried to help him but all he had ever wanted was to be left alone. He would carry his things around in those plastic shopping bags, heading for the warmth of the tube station in winter, or a cool spot in the shade during the hot summer, moving on without a murmur when he was told, no bother to anyone.

Never been seen begging, either. And if some good soul offered him anything, the most he had been known to accept was a hot drink or a couple of fags.

He had never looked well, so his death came as no surprise to Evan when he was called to the school the previous night. Not a pretty sight, those tiny white maggots, pale as tripe, feeding on him like so much carrion, yet his first hunch was that it was probably a natural death. There was no feeling of violence about the way the body lay; if anything, he seemed totally at peace.

Of course, hunches were not enough. Evan could already hear the scorn in his inspector’s voice as he demanded if they were being favoured with more of his famous Welsh second sight. No, he would need more evidence than that. But —

The problem with hunches, he decided as he changed down, was that however groundless they might be, they still nagged away at you like a sore tooth. You could not ignore them.

He left his car on the street at the top of the cul-de-sac, not wishing to risk his tyres driving over all that debris. The panda car was already there — he could see it parked some way down — and behind it were a battered white van and contractors’ lorry, near which half a dozen workmen stood idly smoking while one of them handed round mugs of tea poured from a Thermos.

A cluster of women — one with a pram — turned to stare at Evan curiously as he skirted the lorry and made for the school gate where he stopped for a brief word with the uniformed constable. It seemed the workmen were refusing to set foot in the building until something was done about the beetles.

‘Has the borough engineer arrived? A Mr Simpkins?’ ‘The bloke with glasses,’ the constable pointed out. ‘Third time here this morning. Local residents are up in arms, worried about their kids. It’s eight years, they tell me, since the council decided to knock this place down.’ Simpkins, an earnest-looking man of about fifty, was in deep discussion with a small group of colleagues in the schoolyard. Earlier on, they had probably taken a look inside, for all wore white safety helmets. As far as Evan could judge, some sort of argument was going on and they must have been piling on the pressure, if Simpkins’ expression was anything to go by. He broke away with obvious relief the moment he saw Evan approaching.

‘I’m Detective-Sergeant Evans, Worth Road CID,’ he introduced himself. ‘Good of you to meet me down here, Mr Simpkins.’

Soft soap never hurt, he thought cynically as he watched the man’s face.

‘Glad to see you, sergeant.’ Simpkins’ voice was dry and brittle. ‘We’ve something here which may interest you. Tony, bring that section of timber across, will you?’ ‘Right!’ Tony called back cheerfully.

Tony was a young, bearded man in working clothes which bore traces of sawdust, no doubt from the freshly sawn edges of the length of old beam which he carried over. It was riddled with worm holes.

‘You see the state it’s in?’ he commented, shaking his head. ‘It’s a miracle the school’s still standing.’

Two other people from the group came over to join them: a brisk, impatient man in a shabby sports jacket with a cluster of pens and pencils in the breast pocket, and an attractive woman in her thirties whose strictly-tailored navy-blue costume made her seem out of place among all the rubble.

‘Miss Armstrong, from the Public Health Department,’ Simpkins announced briefly, making no attempt to disguise his disapproval of her presence. ‘And Bill Jenkins here is my deputy. Tony you know — he’s one of our carpenters. It was Tony and Bill who together risked getting this timber.’

‘It’s pretty obvious from these cross-cuts what the trouble is,’ Bill Jenkins explained crisply, pointing to a section at one end where a wedge-shaped sample had been sliced out of the beam. ‘This is what you’d normally expect with a wood-breeding insect — a network of minute galleries where the larvae have chewed their way through. That’s bad enough, but now look a bit farther on.’

The second cross-cut revealed a pattern of branched galleries, each at least half an inch in diameter, leading deeply into the heart of the timber.

‘These holes are much larger than we’d usually find,’ he went on. ‘And d’you see this cavity here? I’ve never come across anything like it.’

‘The galleries show a similar pattern to those of death-watch beetles,’ Miss Armstrong observed in a cool, factual manner as though quoting from a textbook. ‘But of course these are very much bigger. I’m told the beetles themselves are very colourful. We know very little about them as yet.’

‘They bite,’ Evan informed her.

‘Several beetles bite. It’s not an unknown characteristic. Very few attack human beings, or even come into contact with them. But it can happen.’

‘Can it now?’ He thought of Guy Archer, who had lost so much blood after being bitten that when they got him to hospital he had needed an immediate transfusion. Was this what had happened to the old tramp? If so, he would never be able to prove it. ‘I need to go in there once more,’ he said, making up his mind.

‘You’re just in time then,’ Simpkins told him uncompromisingly. ‘That building has to come down, sergeant. Today. I know we’re not supposed to destroy evidence and al! that, but there’s no way I can accept responsibility for leaving it standing. It’s much too dangerous. Bill here wants even more drastic action.’

Bill Jenkins nodded, turning to him. ‘Bum it down, sergeant, that’s the only way. Douse it in kerosene and let the flames do the job for you.’

‘I don’t agree, of course,’ Simpkins stated, though without getting worked up about it. ‘Demolish first, then bum, that’s the usual way. And the safest. But if, as you say, the men refuse to work on the demolition, we might be left with no choice, though I’d like clearance from the fire brigade first.’

‘While you’re discussing that. I’ll just take a quick scout around,’ Evan intervened drily, not wishing to be drawn into the argument. ‘Then you can get on with whatever you have to do.’

‘You’ll need a hard hat if you’re going inside,’ Simpkins warned him. ‘Better take mine while I have a word with the men. For God’s sake don’t try moving anything, or you could bring down the whole building on top of you. Bill, go with him, will you?’

‘Right.’

i’ll come along too,’ said the woman from the Public Health Department, adjusting the white helmet over her straight blonde hair.

‘You can do just what you want, Miss Armstrong,’

Simpkins said, his annoyance with her showing through again.

‘I shall.’

Evan cursed silently, preferring to be alone when he paid his ‘morning after’ visit to the scene of an incident. The previous night the whole team had been there, scene-of-crime officer included — just in case a crime had been committed. Now all he wanted was a few minutes’ quiet contemplation to help him put his thoughts in order.

But he had no choice, that was plain enough.

The battered sheets of corrugated iron had been removed from both boys’ and girls’ doorways, and some of the rubbish cleared away to make access easier. He was about to enter when Bill Jenkins suddenly stepped in front of him.

‘Mind if I go first, sergeant?’ His voice was quiet but firm. With Simpkins out of the way, Evan noted, he had assumed an air of relaxed authority which suited him. ‘just to check it’s safe.’

Evan nodded, then — after a second or two — followed him in. Miss Armstrong was close behind him. From her quick, uneven breathing he guessed she must be more nervous than she had seemed.

They were in the cloakroom area, which he remembered from last night. Its parallel rows of black metal frames studded with coat hooks — all set low enough for children to reach — stirred up half-forgotten pictures from his own early childhood in Wales; and so, too, did that sour, institutional smell. All the lower windows were covered with protective corrugated metai to keep the vandals at bay. As a result, not much light entered the building, but Bill Jenkins carried a powerful hand-lamp with which he examined the walls and the exposed beams and trusses high above them.

‘It all looks solid enough,’ Evan commented, joining him.

‘If any of that timber is infested to the same extent as the section I’ve just been showing you, the sooner we’re out of here the better. One big sneeze could bring it down.’

‘I need to go into the classroom where the body was found.’

‘Go gently, then. That really is dangerous. There are some beams still in place that look like they could come down any minute.’

‘I promise not to sneeze,’ Evan told him. ‘Just a quick look.’

‘Bill, could you shine that light on the floor?’ Miss Armstrong asked suddenly. ‘Over to the right.’

He did as she asked. The moving light threw eerie shadows of the wire mesh in the coat frames.

‘What is it?’

‘Thought I heard something, like scratching. Listen!’ They stood in silence, all three of them close together, and Evan could have sworn the building was whispering to him. Or sighing. More Celtic twilight stuff! his inspector would have snorted, but he’d have been wrong. There was a definite noise, loud enough for a tape recorder to pick up.

‘Beetles?’ Miss Armstrong whispered.

‘It’s timber,’ Bill Armstrong answered her shortly. ‘It’s a live material, timber. Expands… contracts… Let’s hope that’s all it’s doing.’

Once more he swept the lamplight over the exposed beams but they still looked solid enough to last for ever.

Miss Armstrong guessed what was in his mind, ‘How long d’you reckon we’ve got?’

‘Mary, why don’t you wait outside? As soon as the sergeant here has finished, we’ll join you. Please.’

‘I’m not here out of idle curiosity!’ Her reply was tart, putting the deputy borough engineer firmly in his place. ‘These beetles also concern my department.’

Evan shrugged and made for the classroom door, leaving them to argue it out by themselves. The place was still in the same mess but so gloomy, with so little light penetrating from the boarded-up windows, that he had to go back to borrow the hand lamp.

Most of the room lay under a tangle of criss-crossed beams, broken laths and plaster. A brown bloodstain on the floorboards indicated where Guy Archer had been found, though it was partly covered by a fallen joist, perhaps the one which had held him pinned down: if so, he was lucky it had only been a glancing blow. Another couple of inches in the wrong direction and it might have fractured his skull.

Turning his back on the bloodstain, he began to pace out the distance to the door, then verified what the two teenagers might have been able to see from there with the help of Byron’s lighter. Not much perhaps, but there had also been Guy Archer’s torch on the floor.

And they both stated that they had not noticed the other body till later. Their story seemed consistent, at least.

The spot where the old tramp had been found was unmistakable. It was well away from the debris of the collapsed ceiling, though there was plenty of plaster dust. Chalk-marks on the boards outlined the position. While drawing them, the tough young DC with the cropped blond hair had suddenly straightened up and rushed out to bring up his supper, and Evan thought the better of him for it.

‘Not a nice way to go,’ came Bill Jenkins’ voice at his shoulder. ‘Of course, we knew the old boy was dossing down in here. 1 did, at any rate. But he wasn’t doing any harm, so why not let him, I thought. Been dead some time, had he?’

‘So I’m told.’

‘That’s the way it often is. They die alone.’

‘D’you think the local yobs may have taken a hand?’ Evan speculated.

‘I shouldn’t think so. There’d be talk.’

‘You’d hear?’

‘The men would. We’ve quite a few jobs going on in this neighbourhood. They’d be bound to pick up some rumour.’

Evan shone the lamp again over that part of the room. Some footprints in the dust, of course; that was hardly surprising with everyone tramping through. If there had been a struggle, any evidence of it had been wiped out. Yet what about the loss of blood mentioned by the pathologist?

‘That other bloke was lucky the kids found him before he bled to death,’ Bill Jenkins said, voicing Evan’s own thoughts.

‘Have you seen any of these beetles?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Not alive. A few mangled remains. Very bright colours. Quite unusual.’

‘I’ve not seen any either. I wonder why not.’

‘I reckon there must be plenty up there in that timber.’ He nodded up to the joists which were still in place. ‘Or under the floor.’

For a moment neither of them spoke. The uneasy rustling, creaking, cracking murmur of the building said all that was necessary.

Then, as if on cue, they heard a quick scream of terror from the cloakroom area behind them, followed by a whimpered ‘Help me!’ They rushed back to find the Public Health woman cowering against one of the metal frames.

Clinging to her fingers, like some ethnic ring, was a large pink and green beetle. She was staring at it, her eyes wide with fear. Blood dripped from her hand, splashing on to her shoes.

‘For God’s sake hold her up!’ Evan snapped as she began to slip down, her face drained of all colour.

While Bill Jenkins took her weight, Evan hung the lamp on the nearest coat hook and grabbed her wrist. Keeping her hand quite steady, he gripped the beetle between his finger and thumb, expecting to be able to lift it off easily, but it stuck to her flesh as firmly as if it had taken root.

Changing tactics, he shifted his grip and felt the enamel-like hardness of its smooth outer shell as he attempted to crush it. Again she screamed, hysterically gabbling incoherent pleas for help until her voice broke into choking and coughing when the insect emitted a foul, defensive smell: its own poison gas.

‘Her feet!’ Bill Jenkins gasped, struggling for breath as she slumped against him. ‘More beetles on her feet. Christ, look at the buggers!’

They were crawling over her shoes, investigating the blood.. over his own shoes, too… and even more were scurrying towards them across the floor.

‘Out!’ he heard himself yelling. ‘Let’s get out of here! Quick — get a move on!’

Even as Evan spoke the word he felt the first incisors penetrating his skin immediately above his shoe. The pain was sharp and precise, as if a surgeon’s scalpel were slicing through his skin. Elbowing Bill Jenkins aside, ordering him to get out first and find some help, he slipped his hands under Miss Armstrong’s arms and began to drag her out.

It was not the best way to carry a person needing help, he knew, but with those bright, antlered beetles exploring her ankles it was the best he could do. After that first bite he realised he risked getting them on to his clothes if he tried to lift her properly.

Help came even before he had reached the door. Alerted by the screams, Tony — the bearded carpenter — had guessed what was going on and run for the insecticide spray. The beetles recoiled, then scuttled away as he generously sprinkled the floorboard with the liquid; only five or six of them remained behind, their limbs twitching in their death throes.

‘Her legs! Spray her legs!’

But Tony had already seen the beetles fastened like leeches to her ankles and calves. The spray was adjusted to allow the insecticide to come out in fat drops with which he carefully drenched each single beetle on her legs and her hand. One by one they succumbed and fell away from her.

Two beetles were found on Evan himself — one on the upper part of his foot, and the other a few inches up his trouser leg. He allowed the ambulancemen to put temporary dressings on the wounds but refused to go to hospital.

Miss Armstrong looked as though she had been in an accident. Blood stained that neat, business-like costume and was trickling down her legs, which were a mass of cuts where the beetles had attacked her. There was even a smear — almost certainly from her injured hand — across her straight blonde hair. She had come to her senses again but her face was pale and drawn, betraying her sense of shame at her hysteria.

As the men seated her in their folding chair, which they then lifted into the ambulance, she asked Evan: ‘Did you collect any?’

‘Any what?’

‘We need some of those beetles as specimens,’ she said weakly, i was trying to pick one up but it got on my cothes and started to run up my sleeve. That’s when it did this to my hand. Then the others came..

A shudder shook her whole body. She bit her lip, gazing at him almost reproachfully, but the reproaches were all for herself.

‘Made an exhibition of myself, didn’t I?’ she went on. ‘Made myself look a real idiot.’

‘Carry on like that an’ you’ll worry yourself to death,’ he scolded her sympathetically. ‘Could happen to anyone.’

‘Don’t think I always behave this way, because I don’t,’ she retorted defensively. ‘It’s just that.. Well, those beetles took me by surprise. I had a vision of them crawling all over me.. under my clothes… everywhere… I couldn’t stand it. They’re so… so small. And so quick. I’m sorry.’

Once the ambulance had left with her, Bill Jenkins and Simpkins made their plans for burning down the building. On this question at least there was no longer any disagreement between them. Nor, as the school stood surrounded by what had once been the playground, did any objection come from the fire brigade. There was plenty of space between it and the nearest houses, and they supplied a tender to be on stand-by during the operation. The only delay was caused by the decision to send for several barrels of strong hydrocarbon-based insecticide, which was then splashed liberally around all openings — doors, windows, collapsed walls, everything— before setting light to the place. They were determined to trap the beetles inside.

Evan watched as the first billows of black smoke appeared. His wounds smarted persistently, making his entire leg feel painfully raw, as though the skin had been ripped away from it. For a second or two the men’s emphatic voices began to seem oddly unreal and he wondered if he was going to faint.

‘Soon be a big blaze,’ Bill Jenkins said, coming across to join him. ‘I might have known Mary would try to collect one of those beetles in a matchbox.’

‘Was it a matchbox?’ Evan was surprised.

‘Something like that. Must have been. She’s as stubborn as a mule. God, the rows we’ve had! She’s always on the phone to us about something or other.’

The flames broke through, appearing first around a sheet of corrugated iron covering a large window, licking at the edges and then withdrawing as though disappointed at not finding anything to bum, then returning with greater vigour from both sides at once. A second window began to bum, with long tongues of orange flame shooting fiercely out of the gaps between the frame and the metal. There was a cracking of bursting glass, and a louder crash from falling timber and masonry inside. Soon the fire was in command of every opening, doors and windows alike; flames misted and turned, darting out with a sudden eagerness, then retracting playfully for a few seconds before their next hungry assault.

Bill Jenkins gripped his arm. ‘Listen!’ he hissed. ‘Can you hear that?’

The fire was hot on his face and every breath of that sour, smoke-laden air punished his lungs. He wanted to back away but Bill Jenkins was insistent.

‘Can’t you hear them?’

Through the roar of the flames came a strange chirruping as though dozens of referees’ whistles were being gently blown in unison, just loud enough to move the pip in the barrel.

‘Beetles? Is that what you’re thinking?’

‘What else?’

‘But they can’t live in that heat, surely!’

A red-hot sheet of corrugated iron tumbled down from a burning window frame, bending like a doubled-over potato crisp as it hit the hard surface of the school playground.

‘Best stand a bit farther back,’ a fireman advised.

They were running out the hoses, Evan noticed. The fire was much fiercer than anyone had imagined. He turned to Bill Jenkins, about to comment that the whistling seemed to have stopped, when a loud rumbling and tearing prompted him to look back, just in time to witness the entire roof falling in.

Even higher flames shot up from the heart of the building, and the heat became so intense they were forced to retreat several yards.

But one thing was certain, he felt: after this there would be no more talk of beetles. Nothing could possibly survive in that furnace.