‘Be with you in a minute, Tim!’ Jackson called breezily over his shoulder, and went on discussing the sheaf of papers he held in his hand. Gulliver business, of course. Munich, Stockholm and Copenhagen were to be telexed, assuring them that the agreed dates would be met. ‘As for New York,’ he was saying, ‘they’re probably still eating their breakfast over there, but I’ll call them this afternoon.’
Keep your visitor waiting, thought Tim sourly. The old technique: he’s only a bloody actor after all. Mustn’t be allowed to get above his station. Yet where would he be if I walked out on him? Now. At this minute.
His hair was greying at the temples, yet how old could he be? Forty-two? Forty-three?
His secretary Margaret mothered him unashamedly. Her hair was always perfectly set, jet black, her figure still attractive beneath those rather formal clothes she always wore. Only the backs of her hands betrayed the fact that she must be well over fifty by now.
‘Tim!’ Jackson turned away from what he’d been doing and placed an affectionate hand on Tim’s shoulder, propelling him towards the inner sanctum. ‘Sorry to keep you hanging about, old chap, but now we’ve established you are fit and well — fit enough to work, at any rate — I had a few messages of comfort to send off. How is the hand, by the way? Healing nicely?’
‘It’s a bloody nuisance, if you want to know. I imagine you’ve already spoken to the quack.’
‘Gave me a ring the moment you’d left.’ He settled himself smugly behind his large desk. ‘Oh, do sit down, Tim. I want a word about these jellyfish — though first, if you’ll excuse me, there’s someone else who’d like to be in on this.’ He pressed a key on his intercom. ‘Margaret, give Alan Brewer a tinkle, would you, to say Tim’s arrived?’
‘How’s New York?’ Tim asked, remembering what he’d overheard in the outer office. ‘Nibbling?’
Jackson’s expression changed. Where business was concerned he was like a rattlesnake. ‘Nibbling,’ he confirmed cautiously.
‘No sale yet?’
‘A chance they may bite.’ His tone was reluctant. ‘Look, this is all very confidential, you understand. Not to be spread around. It’s in all our interests we achieve a breakthrough in the States but I’d be grateful if you’d keep it under your hat for the time being.’
In all our interests? thought Tim broodily. It could make him internationally famous, certainly. Rich. And kill what little chance there was of putting things right with Sue. Was that what he really wanted?
‘Ah — here’s Alan!’ Jackson exclaimed as the door opened. He was obviously relieved to get away from the subject. ‘Alan, do come in, old chap! I don’t think you’ve met Tim, have you? Alan Brewer is in charge of current documentaries. Old friends, Alan and I. Did our initial training course together.’
The newcomer shook Tim’s hand warmly enough, while at the same time regarding him with dark, cynical eyes. His scuffed grey suit sat on him uneasily; it had probably never really fitted him even when it was new. With it he wore a striped shirt and a nondescript blue tie. He was thin, as though he’d recently recovered from a wasting illness, but his face betrayed a sharp intelligence.
‘You tangled with one of these jellyfish, I hear?’
Tim raised his bandaged hand. ‘As you can see.’
‘Know anything about them? It’s a new breed, they tell me. At least, unknown around our coasts. You must have been their first victim, after that boy of course.’
‘And Arthur.’
‘Our extra,’ Jackson explained briefly. ‘But there’s a complication with him because of his stroke. He’s still not able to speak, they tell me.’
‘What’s it all about?’
‘It’s clearly a very serious situation.’ Alan’s tone was cool and unemotional. ‘A lot of people are worried about it, particularly in the holiday trade. It could spell disaster for some resorts if a panic sets in before the summer season.’
‘An even bigger disaster if they take no notice.’
‘That’s what we need to find out — the hard facts. So far we know of half a dozen incidents, all in the past week in different parts of the country. That could be the end of it — just a freak. One of those things.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Tim. He remembered Sue’s despair as she hacked desperately at those wriggling segments of jellyfish on the floor of the little shop. ‘I think this is only the beginning.’
‘Evidence?’ Alan demanded crisply.
‘Hunch.’
Alan refused to follow him along that road. ‘Either way,’ he continued, ‘the public have a right to information, and it’s our duty to provide it. But before I detail what we have in mind, perhaps you could go over everything that happened to you, step by step. Fill in a few gaps.’
Tim shrugged, but raised no objections. He started with that day’s filming in the sandhills when they’d found the dead teenager lying half-submerged in the water and how the sight of the jellyfish squatting over his face had shocked the whole crew. It seemed a lifetime ago. The quarrel with Arthur he omitted but said merely that he’d seen him fall into the harbour and tried to go to his aid. He recounted only the bare facts, ending with a description of how he’d been spending the weekend with his wife when they’d come across another of the killer jellyfish, and how his attempt to keep it as a specimen for Jane’s marine biologist sister had gone so horribly wrong.
‘They do more than sting,’ he added as a sober afterthought. ‘They eat into your flesh.’
‘You’re not saying they have teeth?’ Jackson protested, his face pale. ‘Whoever heard of jellyfish with teeth?’
‘Not teeth. More like —’ How could he put it, Tim wondered. ‘Well, your flesh begins to break up, like it’s being digested. You know, stomach juices, only not in the stomach.’
‘Do they have mouths?’
‘Oh, yes.’
Blinking, Jackson turned towards Alan. ‘What d’you think?’
‘They certainly have mouths. I had a library send a couple of books over to the office. “Voracious carnivores”, that’s how one book described them — all jellyfish.’
‘Not just this kind?’
‘Oh, this is a new breed, or so I’m advised. Of course, that could mean merely that the scientists haven’t met them before. For all we know, they could’ve been sitting there at the bottom of the ocean just waiting for this moment. The point is, we don’t understand what we’re up against, which is why I think we should go ahead.’
‘Go ahead with what?’ asked Tim.
A moment’s silence. With a glance at Alan, Jackson heaved himself up from behind his executive desk and went over to the bookcase whose shelves were seemingly crammed with books. He unlocked the glass door to reveal a varied collection of bottles hidden behind this façade.
‘Whisky?’
He poured a large one for each of them, then gulped down half of his own before answering Tim’s question.
‘Alan’s proposing to produce one of his special documentaries,’ he explained. ‘He’d like you to front the programme.’
‘Why me?’
‘You’ve experienced these jellyfish at first hand. That’s the first reason.’ Alan counted off the arguments on his fingers. ‘Second, the public know you from Gulliver, so they’re more likely to believe you. Third, that’ll also help us place the programme in other countries in Europe where these jellyfish have been seen — Ireland, France, Holland, Denmark, Norway…’