But this was the wrong doorway, leading not the way he’d come in, but into another classroom. His torchlight flickered unsteadily; he could scarcely stand any longer. Slowly, wearily, the ideas taking shape only reluctantly in his mind, he began to understand what that foul smell was doing to him. It must be some sort of defence mechanism… a tranquillising poison used to lower their victims’ resistance.
Got to master it, he thought. Question of will-power. Kill the buggers one by one. Then get out of here. Out.
Carefully he let go of the doorframe, transferring the torch to his left hand. The veering light-beam revealed a sight which left him momentarily motionless with shock, as if a massive electric voltage had suddenly pulsed through him.
On the low patform before the blackboard lay a man’s body spreadeagled like so much carrion, its face destroyed — all but the accusing eyes — and its abdomen open to the air, exposed, while several long, pale snakelike creatures appeared to be feeding on it with slobbering mouths.
‘ U-u-uh/’ he gasped, recoiling at the horror of it, his stomach turning over.
Nothing he had experienced in action in the Army had prepared him for that terrible charnel-house vision. His torch rolled across the floorboards as he staggered backwards into the darkness, all reason gone from his tortured mind. Blindly he collided with some invisible object which seemed to give way; then he heard the rending and groaning of collapsing timber; the air filled with an abrasive sour dust which choked up his nostrils, and he realised the room was tumbling around him.
He felt a blow across his shoulders. He was falling: a long slow free fall.. arms and legs spread.. sky a pure black… a rich, velvet blackness which gently… so very gently.. absorbed him.
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.’