Blood Worm

6

It was three o’clock in the night when Bob Fraser turned into Miller Road in his little Ford van. The three street-lamps evenly spaced along the full length of the road produced only isolated pools of light to break up the darkness. No moon that night, and enough cloud to obscure all but the brightest stars: perfect conditions for a break-in, he thought, driving slowly to check on the few vehicles parked at the roadside.

Outside the old furniture workshop he pulled in and stopped, switching off the engine.

‘OK, Grimsby, calm down now,’ he reassured the Alsatian in the back of the van. ‘No need to get excited.’ He reached forward for the microphone.

‘Bob here. D’you read me?’

‘Go ahead, Bob,’ the speaker crackled.

‘Routine check. I’m in Miller Road, just about to inspect the furniture workshop. Over.’

‘Roger. Time now three-oh-five. Over.’

‘Three-oh-five — check. Everything looks very quiet. I’ll switch over to personal radio. What channel? Over.’ ‘Channel five. Over.’

‘Channel five. Over and out.’

Putting the microphone down, Bob unclipped his personal radio from his jacket and made sure it was set to channel five. Then he stepped out on to the road, locked the door and opened the back of the van, slipping the lead on to the Alsatian’s collar before letting him out.

The dog was restless tonight, which was unusual. Normally he was so quiet in that van, you wouldn’t know he was there, and that made him ideal for this sort of security work. Bob had acquired him as a pup from Grimsby Jake, a tough giant of a man, all muscle, who had picked up the nickname because that was his home port.

For five years he and Jake had gone to sea together on the same trawler, weathering the roughest storms, dodging the Icelanders’ gunboats in the cod war, getting pissed in the same bars ashore, in one mad month even laying the same bird turn and turn about till they signed on again to get away from her. Only that time — ay, he remembered, that was the time they were rammed by the Icelanders and had to be fished out of the sea by a Royal Navy' corvette. It was soon afterwards the cod fishing stopped altogether. Jake took over a pub — he’d been putting money aside for years, the bastard, and telling nobody — married a widow-woman, and that’s when he came by the Alsatians. He gave one to Bob as a free gift, his way of saying push off, those days are over. Finite.

Bob had understood all right; no hard feelings. For old times’ sake he’d called the pup Grimsby.

So he’d come south to the Smoke — no jobs in the north anyroad — and settled down. Married. Couple o’ kids. He could’ve joined the boys in blue, the ‘Met’ they called it down here — they were always looking for dog handlers — but he couldn’t see himself snapping handcuffs on some poor drunken sod who’d only gone out for a good time, then dragging him off to court. Come to that, he earned more with this private security firm, and it was varied work. This week’s was a cushy number, driving around doing spot checks on business property, and he didn’t mind nights.

‘Come on, boy!’ he said, not bothering to keep his voice down. Any villains must have heard the van drive up anyway. ‘Let’s go an’ do the rounds.’

The furniture workshop, as he called it, was an unoccupied rectangular building in pale brick. It was set a little way back from the road and on its concrete forecourt stood a pile of breeze-blocks and a couple of builder’s skips. No lights were on inside. Bob flashed his powerful torch over the front, lingering on the wire-meshed windows; then he went up to the large double doors to test whether they were still firmly locked. Everything seemed much the same as on his previous visit earlier that night.

‘Have a look down the side, shall we?’ he suggested to Grimsby. ‘Let’s go.’

He liked to do a thorough inspection each time. His usual method was to work out for himself how many different ways he could break into the building if he wanted to, and he’d double-check all of them.

Suddenly Grimsby growled, and he felt the lead in his hand become taut. He stopped absolutely still.

‘Quiet, boy,’ he said softly.

From inside he heard a creaking sound, as though someone had trodden on a loose floorboard. Again a low rumble came from the Alsatian’s throat, and he bent down, putting a hand on the dog’s neck to reassure him.

More creaking, followed by a strange tearing and cracking which he couldn’t quite identify.

Right, this was it, he decided. He slipped the personal radio out of his pocket and pressed the control button, holding it very close to his mouth.

‘Bob here, Jimmy. D’you read?’

‘Go ahead, Bob.’

‘Suspect intruders in furniture workshop. Quite a racket going on in there. Over.’

‘OK, Bob. Message understood. Smokey bear on his way. Stick around till he shows, but for God’s sake keep out o’ trouble, will you? Over and out.’

‘Smokey bear’ was their code for the police. Bob knew too well what would happen when they arrived. There’d be sirens wailing and lights flashing, waking up the entire neighbourhood; by the time they reached the workshop any intruders would be well away — and his chance of earning a bonus gone with them. Well, he’d have to see about that, he and Grimsby. A good team they were, when they put their minds to it. The best.

Still keeping Grimsby on a short lead, using his torch only sparingly, he made his way along the dark path to the rear of the building. The small door next to the lean-to shed was the obvious weak point, and he expected to find that was how the intruders had broken in, but he was wrong. It was undamaged, solid to the touch. The windows then, he thought, stepping back to take a look at them, but then he heard the same noise again. Only longer this time, like a crackling roll of thunder.

‘Jesus!’ he swore under his breath. He could sense how Grimsby had suddenly become tense, backing away. "What the hell are they doing in there?’

The whole building seemed to be tearing itself apart. A loud creaking and rending as though in agony was followed by two cracks like rifle-fire; then a heavy tumbling of bricks, dust and debris as the upper part of the rear wall collapsed.

Recoiling in the darkness, Bob managed to release the Alsatian before a fresh shower of mortar and masonry enveloped him, smashing against his head and face and sending him reeling back. The hard dust was in his eyes, in his nostrils, choking him as he fumbled with his personal radio in a desperate attempt to call the office for help.

‘Jimmy, the whole fuckin’ building’s cornin’ down on top o’ me!’ He coughed and spluttered and spat, gasping for clean air but succeeding only in gulping in more of the filthy dust. ‘Jimmy, for God’s sake, get somebody here quick!’

An ear-piercing, unnatural keening split the air, a heart-rending sound which he knew could only be Grimsby, though he’d never heard such a banshee racket from him before, not from his dog.

‘Grimsby!’ he yelled, struggling in the blackness to get to his feet again, puzzled that his legs were now entangled in loops of sharp wire which dug into him. ‘Grimsby — here, boy!’

He almost made it, almost managed to push himself up on to one knee; then his precarious balance was lost and he fell painfully back, hitting his head. One more yelp from Grimsby; one only, and then nothing. Oh shit, if only he could seel

He lay there, winded, flat on his back, his whole body aching. The wound on the back of his head throbbed violently when he touched it. His fingers were sticky with blood. Cautiously he tried to sit up but his ribs gave him hell, one twinge of pure, searing pain after another. Yet he had to move somehow, hadn’t he, before the rest of the wall came down on him?

Directly above, where the darkness was less intense, he could pick out a few stars. He’d known about stars on the trawlers. Watching over him, he’d sometimes thought. Idiot idea.

But something was blotting them out, a pale, long shape like a bare arm with the fist clenched, undulating, slowly curving down towards him… A cold, treacly liquid was splashing on to his face, over his mouth and nose, and instinctively he turned his head away. In the next second came a slow, agonising suction on his neck till his skin burst, leaving a raw open wound. He was screaming, he realised that, screaming and struggling; but it all merged with a dancing, whirlwind dizziness and pinpricks of light before his eyes in a million colours. Disconnected thoughts and memories jumbled together until all consciousness was sucked down into a dank, dark tunnel through stinking rocks to the place where ice-cold Arctic waves were waiting to receive him. He heard Jake’s laugh down there, fuckin’ oP Grimsby Jake half-seas-over, and his voice intoning the hated words: ‘.. commit his body to the deep to be turned into corruption… into corruption.. commit his body to the deep to be turned… and turned.. and turned…’

That morning Guy was already up by six o’clock. He collected his tilings together in the half-darkness and retreated to Dorothea’s Hollywood-style bathroom to shave, wash and dress. Needing a clean shirt, he went back into the bedroom and opened his end of the wardrobe as quietly as the sliding door permitted, but Dorothea heard him just the same. From the heaped-up duvet came her muffled voice furiously informing him that he must be mad getting up in the middle of the night, he wasn’t in the Army now, and must he be so bloody noisy about it?

‘Sorry, love,’ he answered cheerfully, found a shirt and returned to the bathroom. She’d never been an early-morning person; in the Army he’d always left quarters long before she was awake.

Except perhaps in Cyprus. Things had been different there.

When he was ready he went quietly through the bedroom again to replace his slippers under the bed, return his electric razor to the top shelf of the wardrobe and take a clean handkerchief from the drawer.

Til not bother to come up again, Doro-Iove,’ he said gently, bending down to kiss her tousled head, the only part of her which was visible. ‘Leaving earlier this morning. Sorry I woke you.’

‘Oh, go to hell!’ came her reply from under the duvet. He grinned. That sounded more like her.

But sitting in the kitchen over coffee and toast — he always made himself toast for breakfast — he wondered again what was going wrong between them. Whatever it was, it had been happening for a long time now. Of course life in the Army hadn’t suited her, not as an officer’s wife. That was one thing. She’d trodden on a lot of corns — often deliberately, he suspected. She had a tongue like a sting-ray and a sharp eye for other people’s weaknesses. It was what had attracted him to her in the first place, that and the fact that she didn’t give a damn about anybody, however high-ranking. She was her own woman, was Dorothea.

And she could be bloody funny. At times she’d had the whole mess rolling about the floor.

In Cyprus, at the beginning, their love affair had seemed like a hurricane — even to her, he remembered. One night, lying back exhausted on the bed, both of them bathed in sweat, she’d suddenly blurted out: ‘Christ, and this is only Act One!’ For months afterwards it had been a private joke between them which she repeated at the most inopportune moments, such as the time they were taking sherry with a visiting Anglican bishop and his wife.

‘You’ve got a touch of Cyprus fever, that’s ail!’ the adjutant had dismissed it, laughing at him. ‘For God’s sake, take sick leave, take her to bed, and don’t get up till you’ve worked it out of your system.’

But he never did — work it out of his system, that is. As for her, he couldn’t be sure.

Though if he’d wanted to be sure of everything in life he would never have married her in the first place, a girl he’d known only three or four weeks, who’d gone to Cyprus on a package holiday with her boy friend, only to walk out on him after a quarrel in a late-night bar. They’d all thought Guy was mad, everyone in the mess. ‘Lay her an’ leave her!’ they’d unanimously advised him. But it was the madness that had appealed to him, that great feeling of kicking free. And it was that which was missing now, perhaps — for both of them.

‘Daddy?’ Kath was in her dressing gown, her long dark hair in a tangle around her face. ‘Can I have some coffee? Please?’

‘Couldn’t you sleep?’

He poured an inch of the strong black coffee into a breakfast cup and quickly warmed up some milk to add to it.

‘I’ve been awake for ages, she said. ‘I was thinking. These scars on your face really don’t make you look all that different.’

‘Who said they did?’ He turned off the gas and carefully poured the milk into the cup.

‘Susi. She saw the photo I’ve got in my room, the one from last year. Her father doesn’t have any scars.’

‘Oh?’

‘But he doesn’t live with them in their flat either, so that makes us even,’ she commented inconsequentially as she slotted a music cassette into her tape recorder and switched it on. ‘We’re going to do an evening of dance.’ ‘At the ballet school?’

‘Yeah. I’ve got to do a pas de deux with Susi, just the two of us. This is our music. She’s good. She’s the best.’ Guy glanced at the clock and saw it was already twenty to seven. He’d promised Mary Armstrong he’d be punctual at the workshop. Seven sharp, she’d said.

‘Kath, I’ve got to go,’ he told her regretfully, getting up. He rinsed his cup and plate under the hot tap. ‘You’d better get yourself washed and dressed now you’re up, and you might have another look at your homework. You know what your teacher said last week.’

‘Daddy, there’s loads of time,’ his daughter responded airily, not without a touch of condescension. Til dry your things. Don’t worry.’

Driving to Miller Road took him less than ten minutes. Even at that time of the morning there was plenty of traffic about but it was moving rapidly with no hold-ups. It was not until he entered Miller Road itself that he realised something was wrong. People were standing about in tight, subdued little groups and at least three police vehicles were parked there, together with a couple of borough council lorries as well as the woodworm contractors’ vans and a dozen or more ordinary cars.

He drove slowly, searching for a space for his own car, and spotted Mary Armstrong talking earnestly to Detective-Sergeant Evans. Behind them he saw the collapsed building. The old brick walls were still standing, though truncated; between them Say a tangle of snapped-off joists, floorboards, window-frames and broken slates — all that was left of the upper part of the workshop. He wondered what the hell had been going on.

At the end of the road, in front of a terrace of high gloomy Victorian houses with thin, ill-fitting curtains on their windows and clusters of unwashed milk bottles standing empty on their doorsteps, he discovered a gap into which he could manoeuvre his car. Getting out, he paused to kick some of the broken glass away from his tyres before locking the door and hurrying back to join Mary and her policeman friend.

‘We were too late, Guy,’ she greeted him in that oddly emphatic manner she affected. “The infestation must have been far more advanced than any of us thought. You know Detective-Sergeant Evans?’

Guy nodded. ‘Morning.’

‘Good morning, Mr Archer. Not a very nice sight this, is it?’ The Welsh accent seemed more marked than before. ‘Shortly after three this morning it happened, which is only four hours ago, when you think of it. We’ve had a narrow miss. Lucky we weren’t all inside. As it is,

there’s one roan dead. Security guard.’

‘And his dog,’ Mary added.

She was shivering in her thin raincoat, Guy noticed, and her face was deathly pale.

The destruction of the building was complete. Even the segments of side walls still standing contained jagged cracks and bulged dangerously. The heavy beams lay splintered and torn like so much matchwood, in places actually bending under the weight of fallen masonry. Exploring the edges of the rains was a young bearded man in overalls; in his gloved hands he carried a chain-saw.

‘That’s Tony from the borough council,’ Mary explained, pointing him out. ‘It wasn’t council property but we do have an interest. The contractors have engaged a top academic expert to examine the site, but it could take weeks before his report is available, so I asked Tony to sniff around for me. He’s one of those pearls you don’t find very often — a skilled craftsman who really has a nose for the job. I’d trust him above any academic.’

‘Let’s get this straight. You told me yesterday this place had a clean bill of health from the original surveyors, but then flight holes were discovered in the timber after the new owners had bought it.’

‘More than you’d expect in such a short period of time,’ she confirmed.

‘Fair enough, but what then? The specialist contractors come in. They examine the timber and say they can treat it. In my book that means they judged the building was still safe. Are you saying they made the same mistakes — the first surveyor and the contractors?’

‘I’d have thought it much too early yet to reach any conclusions,’ the detective-sergeant intervened.

‘ What if we assume both were right?’ Guy persisted, wanting to follow the argument through. ‘At the time?’

‘Then we have here a variety of woodworm which can chew through timber faster than anything yet known,’ Mary observed. ‘But that’s ludicrous.’

‘Not only ludicrous, but in my opinion impossible,’ a new voice commented sharply. The man who joined them wore an expression of — perhaps permanent — disapproval, which his heavily-framed glasses and balding head seemed to emphasise. In his fifties, Guy estimated. The voice went on: ‘You’re the chap they found at the school, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right,’ Guy agreed amicably. ‘At death’s door.’ ‘Similar sort of business to this.’

‘So it seems.’

‘My name’s Simpkins. Borough engineer. I see that experience left you with a few marks. Is there nothing the doctors can do about those scars?’

‘They say they can’t guarantee success.’

‘So you decided not to let ’em try, eh? Wise man. You do realise the borough council can’t he held responsible? You were trespassing where you shouldn’t.’

‘Quite,’ Guy said briefly.

‘As for this incident here, it’s too early to say. It was a very old building, after all. Probably poor maintenance over the years, plus some subsidence, I’d not be surprised. It was a chapel before the furniture people moved here just after the war. Strict Baptist. I remember it from the thirties when I was a boy. In those days this was quite a respectable street.’ He turned towards Mary, addressing her personally. ‘Miss Armstrong, there’s a young lady from the press buzzing around like some inquisitive fly, poking her nose in. I’ve had a word with the town clerk. He’d be grateful if none of us said anything to her at this juncture. Glad to meet you, Mr Archer… detective-sergeant… Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way.’ He moved off a few paces, then stopped thoughtfully and came back.

‘Would you believe it, the town clerk was still in bed when I phoned! After seven o’clock and he wasn’t up yet! Amazing!’

Without waiting for their reaction he went directly to one of the parked cars, got in and drove off.

‘If anyone’s unbelievable it’s that man!’ Mary exploded the moment he was out of earshot. ‘Probably poor maintenance'. Has he ever known that to cause a whole building to collapse like this one, overnight? Nothing left standing? He’s trying to cover up. There’s no other explanation. Not that it surprises me. It doesn’t surprise me in the least.’

‘What are you implying, love?’ the detective-sergeant asked gently.

Before she could reply, the man she’d called Tony came across from the rains of the workshop with a length of sawn-off timber in his hand. It was pock-marked with flight holes.

‘This is no more than frass!’ he exclaimed, his excitement betraying itself on his face. ‘What we call frass — all eaten away! Look, I’ll show you. I’m no Tarzan, but I reckon I can break this in half in my hands.’

Still wearing his thick gloves, he gripped the timber with both hands and tore a piece out of it as easily as he might break bread. Inside, the wood was dry and powdery, riddled with a network of passageways.

‘If you ask me, this is all recent,’ he said. ‘You see it’s quite clean.’

Guy took a pinch of the wood powder and rubbed it between his fingertips. It was as fine as castor sugar. Here and there in the channels he found dry curls of what appeared to be pink skin or leaf. He picked one out.

‘Abandoned cocoons,’ Tony told him. ‘That’s my guess, but I could be wrong.’

‘But no larvae?’

‘Haven’t seen any.’

‘It might help your experts if we were to find some specimen larvae, I imagine?’ Guy asked Mary. ‘Must be some among all that timber.’

‘You can try, she answered doubtfully.

‘Tony?’

‘I dunno.’ He tossed the piece of frass aside. Pulling off a glove, he nibbed the back of his hand over his eyes. ‘It’s not too easy to get at, not the way it’s all lying at the moment. The ground floor went down with the rest of the building into some sort of cellar underneath. We’d have to risk climbing'down there.’

‘I don’t want either of you taking any chances,’ Mary insisted. ‘It’s probably crawling with beetles.’

‘Haven’t seen any.’ Tony shook his head. ‘No beetles, no woodworms, nothing. It’s as though now they’ve done their job they’ve all moved on.’

‘You don’t mean that?’ Her voice was tense, Guy noted. Yet what Tony had said was blatant nonsense. Had to be.

‘Quiet as the grave, that place,’ Tony repeated. ‘No life there at all’

Mary shuddered, then turned impulsively towards the detective-sergeant, putting a hand on his aim. Tony grinned at Guy, raising an eyebrow and indicating with a slight movement of his head that they should take a look at the devastated building together.

‘From this side it’s quite useless,’ he explained, picking up his chain-saw from the low wall where he’d left it. ‘But I found a spot round the back that might be possible. There’s a path.’

What remained of the path was now an obstacle course buried under smashed glass, roof-slates and rough fragments from the old brick wall. Their progress along it was made slower by the need to be constantly on the alert for beetles. The yard at the rear, Tony explained when they reached it, was where the security guard’s body bad been discovered.

‘Badly chewed up, from all accounts,’ he added.

The yard surface was potholed and had dark, greasy patches left by dc: ades of spilled oil. Alongside a broken fence were stacks of worn-out tyres and rusting metal drams. The back wall of the workshop had not been totally destroyed.

‘We can get through here.’ Tony led him to a gap where the doorway had been.

i’ll go first,’ Guy said.

The remains of the door, splintered and jagged, still hung loosely on one hinge; it had been tom free from the others by the impact. The doorframe itself leaned over at an angle. It was partly blocked by rubble, but he managed to manoeuvre himself through on to a remaining section of stone flooring not more than a square metre in size. First he tested it with one foot, gingerly holding on to the door-jamb till he was confident it would take his weight.

Tony joined him.

The slightest movement sent dust and debris showering down into the deep opening immediately before their feet. Beam ends, some with long bent nails protruding from them, stuck out of the rubble like fat thorns; other sections of timber lay across them, or were threaded between them: one touch might cause the whole lot to shift dangerously.

Every beam was peppered with flight holes. Hundreds of beetles must have emerged from them, he speculated; unless — the thought sent shivers through him — they were still hiding inside, waiting for the right moment.

it’s possible,’ said Tony when he mentioned it. if they are like death-watch beetles, they’ll wait till the temperature is right before coming out. That’s when you’ll hear them tapping — tic-toc-tic-toc — signalling for a mate.’

‘Then if we want some of the larvae, a beam with only few flight holes might be best. Or none at all.’

‘Perhaps.’ Tony seemed doubtful.

‘Such as that one down there, if we could reach it.’ Guy pointed to the one he meant.

‘With all that stuff piled on top of it? You must be joking.’

‘We’ve got the chain-saw. We’ll cut a section out of it.’

Tony squatted on his haunches to take a closer look. ‘One slip an’ we’d break our necks.’

‘My neck,’ said Guy. ‘I’m not asking you to do it. Look, I think this is important. The sooner we can get the boffins working on these worms, the happier I’ll be.’

About five feet below the ledge on which they stood, a square corbel of chipped stone jutted out from the old brickwork. There wasn’t much of it, but enough for a foothold perhaps. Guy took off his jacket and hung it from a protruding nail on the sagging doorframe.

A bit farther along the wall was a red-painted reel of fire-hose. To get hold of it he had to lean out over the sheer drop, digging his fingers into the brickwork’s crumbling mortar to steady himself. At the third attempt he managed to grab the nozzle and Tony helped him back to safety.

‘Got a knife?’ Guy grunted.

‘Sure.’ Tony produced a clasp knife.

‘Hand this down to me when I’m ready, will you?’ He cut off a usable length of hose. ‘I’ll secure the timber with it before I start cutting.’

‘OK.’

Carefully Guy lowered himself over the edge, groping with his feet until he found the stone corbel. Slowly he transferred his entire weight to it. Taking a breath, he began to shuffle round till he faced the beam he wanted. Beneath him was a drop of maybe fifteen feet down a twisting funnel through the debris of fallen beams, Victorian brickwork and heavy slabs of plaster, with rusty nails and sharp daggers of broken glass to lacerate him if he fell. It would need only very little blood to attract the attention of any beetles nearby. He could picture a whole army of them waiting for him down there, and with them a squirming mass of giant worms stretching up through the rubble towards him.

In an effort to clear his mind of such nonsense he closed his eyes for a second.

‘You all right?’ Tony asked anxiously.

Guy forced a laugh. ‘Just remembered something, that’s all,’ he replied without lying. ‘Something bloody stupid.’

Fear was irrational, he knew that well enough; as irrational as dreams about bloody outsized maggots.

‘I think this is going to work OK,’ he said, forcing himself to concentrate. ‘No problem reaching the beam, which is half the battle. I’d prefer a length of rope rather than the hose-pipe, but I suppose it’ll have to do.’

Slipping off his leather belt, he swung it around the beam; it needed a couple of attempts before he managed to catch the buckle and thread the tail end through it. In order to fasten it tightly, he borrowed Tony’s knife and made an extra hole; it would be wasted effort if the belt slipped after all. Next, he asked for one end of the hosepipe, which he tucked through the belt, then passed back up to Tony.

‘Right — now the saw.’

‘You come up now,’ Tony offered, it’s my job to do the cutting. Never used one of these things, have you? They can be a bastard if you’re new to ’em.’

‘Just start the bugger and hand it down to me,’ Guy told him impatiently. ‘And keep hold of both ends of that hose-pipe. We don’t want to lose the wood after all this.’

‘OK, but don’t blame me if you cut your leg off.’ He was only half-joking, Guy realised.

He gripped the chain-saw firmly. Balanced on that minute stone slab with his back against the brick wail, it seemed to kick and rear like an old Lewis gun.

The beam was in front of him. All he had to do was reach out and let the chain-saw slice through it, while praying that it wouldn’t shift once the cut was made. The chain ground against the wood, sending chips flying in every direction, then bounced away. He brought it down again, holding it steady, and it ate through the beam as hungrily as if it had been on field rations for a month.

‘Oh, fu—!’ he started to curse. The newly sawn ends were shifting. With a sudden rending noise the main part of the beam sagged, leaving a two-foot gap. ‘No. No, it’s OK!’

The near part of the beam — the section that mattered— had hardly moved at all. Holding the snarling saw in one hand, he tested the beam with the other. It was not too firm, though the weight of rabble was still keeping it in place.

‘What d’you think — risk it?’ he called to Tony.

‘I can’t judge. Better leave it if it’s too loose.’

Guy decided to try. He had to swing the saw above his head to avoid the twin strands of fire-hose — no thicker than an ordinary garden hose — then down on the left side, hoping he could steady it long enough to make the cut.

But everything was against him this time. He was holding the saw at too awkward an angle and was forced to stand half-twisted away from the wall, which made balancing a problem. To make matters worse, the beam end began to dance about the moment the high-speed chain touched it.

•Cursing, he lifted the saw clear, but simultaneously the timber seemed to jump up with it, and in that split second he knew he was going to fall. He’d leaned over too far; trying to straighten up, his arm hit the wall; he’d no hope of steadying himself.

Time stretched. His mind rationalised every move as though he were watching himself from the outside: how he dropped the saw and it clattered down screaming into the pit; how he put up a hand to grasp the top of the wall but it wasn’t there; how he felt his foot shifting involuntarily away from its stone perch as he teetered wildly to avoid the inevitable plunge downwards; and how — when he least expected it — that beam which had been the cause of it all came swinging towards him.

An arm went around it instinctively; one hand gripped the hose.

‘Steady there!’ came Tony’s voice. ‘You OK?’

Guy regained his foothold and gradually straightened up, while Tony kept the hose-pipe taut,

‘Think so. Give me a second to get my breath back.’ The beam — that is, the remaining five or six feet of it— had worked itself loose from the rubble, he realised; it was now hanging freely with the help of the hose-pipe looped through his belt. Bracing himself against the wall, Guy released his hold on it.

‘Tony, you can pull the beam up now,’ he instructed. ‘Sorry about your chain-saw.’

‘The borough council’s, not mine!’ Tony replied cheerfully. ‘Old Simpkins won’t be too pleased. Wait till I’ve shoved the beam outside to give you more room when you climb up. Don’t go away!’

Guy edged round until he was facing the wall again and was able to hoist himself up on to the narrow ledge. A comer of the brickwork broke off as it took his weight, slithering and bouncing down into the pit, and he felt sick at the sound of it. Getting to his feet again, he glanced down; no trace of the chain-saw among the rubble, though he could still hear the motor chuffing away.

‘You’ve managed?’ Tony grinned at him through the half-blocked doorway. He seemed surprised. ‘Go rock climbing, do you?’

‘Something like that.’ Guy tried to slap some of the muck off his clothes. They were in such a mess, he’d have to go home and change before putting in an appearance at the office. ‘Let’s take that timber round to the front. I’d like Mary to be there when we split it open.’

‘What d’vou bet we don’t find anything?’

‘In that case we’ll have wasted our time.’

Guy retrieved his belt and jacket, then set off back down the pathway towards the road, leaving Tony to follow, shouldering the length of timber. It may well have been a waste of time, he reflected; on the other hand, every little they learned helped to construct the picture. So far — Mary would agree — they had so few pieces of the jigsaw as to be practically useless.

He found her talking to a short, stumpy girl arrned with a shoulder bag, notebook and pencil, though she seemed to be writing nothing down. Press, he thought. The round metal glasses magnified the girl’s eyes; her curly unkempt hair looked like a wig which had been caught out in a storm, then merely left to dry without further attention: the overall effect was remarkable, particularly side by side with Mary’s precise neatness.

‘Guy! What happened?’ A look of shock crossed Mary’s face when she saw him. ‘You haven’t hurt yourself, have you?’

‘It’s only dirt,’ he said briefly. ‘We cut another specimen length, but perhaps you’d prefer to examine it later on.’

He glanced pointedly at the girl reporter, remembering what Simpkins had said about the press. Mary obviously took his meaning but chose to ignore it.

‘This is Tessa from the Gazette. I’ve just been explaining it’s too early to be able to comment on what might have caused the workshop to collapse like this. But Set’s see what you’ve found. No harm in her looking on.’

Guy showed her the section of beam. Probably it had been part of the original Victorian chapel; it was quite roughly hewn and obviously old. Several long dark cracks ran along the grain.

‘No flight holes,’ Mary commented.

‘Which is why I chose it.’

Guy explained his theory. She looked doubtful, pursing her lips and shaking her head.

‘Let’s find out then,’ he said.

Tony had been back to his car to fetch his tool kit. From it he selected a large chisel and a mallet. His first couple of cuts met firm timber; he didn’t pursue them, but tugged the chisel out again and tried elsewhere. The third attempt was more rewarding. With one tap from the mallet the chisel blade plunged into the wood almost up to the haft. It splintered so easily that within seconds he had split some of the beam away and revealed the delicately intricate network of galleries.

‘There’s the worm!’ Guy exclaimed, pointing at a naked, whitish slug snuggling in one of the channels through the wood. ‘I was right after all!’

‘Urgh!’ Tessa from the Gazette offered as her contribution. ‘How horrible!’

Til fish it out,’ Tony said. ‘We’ll take a closer look.’

He was about to poke it out of its groove with his little finger when Mary stopped him.

‘Tony, be careful,’ she warned him urgently. ‘We don’t know anything about it yet. That’s not an ordinary woodworm.’

‘If you say so.’

This time he pulled on his work gloves, then used the chisel blade to coax the maggot to leave the protection of the wood. It began to explore this unfamiliar metal object, which was exactly what he wanted. Transferring it to the palm of his left hand was no problem at all.

‘Urgh!’ said Tessa for the second time.

As he examined it, Guy’s apprehension returned. In every respect it seemed identical to the giant worms of his nightmares — yet what could that mean? Was it merely his imagination blowing them up to mammoth size? In that case, maybe he really should see a psychiatrist.

‘Segmented,’ Mary observed, glancing at him as though sharing his thoughts.

Tony gave it a push with his forefinger, wanting it to move over the chafed leather palm of his glove. Its reaction caught them all unprepared. Bunching itself up, in one swift movement it began to bore head-first into his hand.

A yell of agony burst from his lips, followed by curses as he struggled to get a grip on it to pull it away.

It went directly through the leather like a tungsten bit through soft wood. Blood welled up as it penetrated his flesh, and he gasped at the pain.

Guv grabbed his wrist, held it firmly and tore off his glove. The worm’s head was already appearing through the back of Tony’s hand. Its skin was no longer pale, but flushed red with the blood it had consumed. With a sudden twist it was completely through, and was beginning to explore other parts of the hand when Guy succeeded in knocking it away.

Mary and Tessa sprang back but they need not have worried. Guy had seen where it landed and — regardless of the trouble he had taken to find this specimen — he quickly trod on it, grinding it to death. When he took his foot away, all that was left of the larva was a damp pink smear against the grey paving stone.