‘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.