‘We’re ahead of schedule. We can fit it in easily,’ he argued.
‘Shouldn’t we ask permission, or something?’
‘I’ll clear it with them. Have to ring them anyway about the rushes. If you agree.’
He went to the phone in the passageway at the rear of the pub, waited impatiently for the exchange to answer, then put in his daily reverse-charge call to Jimmy Case. It took some time to get through. Jimmy’s voice boomed at him through the crackles saying the rushes looked fine, no problems, up to his usual high standard, and asked how things were going. Matt said he’d no problems either and asked for the call to be transferred to Newsroom.
‘A local scandal that’s just blown up,’ he explained. ‘A late-night swimming party, all starkers, two of them dead and three in hospital. My director wants to know, can Newsroom do with any pictures?’
‘Sounds you’re a bit late on the scene for pictures,’ Jimmy bawled down the line with a bellowing laugh. ‘But I’ll get you transferred.’
Deliberately he hadn’t mentioned the worms because he knew just how they’d react. Jimmy, anyway. ‘It’s a bloody obsession with that man,’ he’d once said. ‘Everywhere he goes he sees worms. Must be bloody Freudian.’
Newsroom answered. No, Al Wilson was out at lunch. What was that? Worms? Two dead? Well, no promises, mind, but as they were on the spot… At first she seemed more interested in the sex angle, but then she said: ‘Worms? But who put them in the swimming pool?’
‘Who puts them anywhere?’ he replied. ‘Get there by themselves, don’t they?’ But as he went back to the table he began to realize she might have a point, something he hadn’t thought of before.
Rodney Smith, still in his shabby raincoat, led the procession of cars in his own battered, snub-nosed Morris Eight. The Cedars turned out to be a medium-sized house set in its own grounds which were cut off from public gaze by a high wall. The gates were open and they drove straight in. Two children, about the same age as Jenny, stood on the grass verge watching them pass. Twins, Matt thought. At one time he and Helen had dreamed of having twins. Just twins. No other children. Then Jenny was born and they forgot about it.
A uniformed constable sitting in the porch of the house came forward to ask what they wanted, but Rodney Smith knew him and there were no problems. He pointed out the swimming pool. While Matt and Jacqui stared down into the water, his stocky, dour camera assistant, Pete, began to set up.
‘I can’t see any worms,’ Jacqui commented, walking along the edge. ‘What do they look like? Small snakes?’
‘Sometimes small, but they come in all sizes.’
‘About the length of your hand, these were,’ Rodney Smith said. ‘No telling if there’s any more in the water. The ones I saw were dead.’
‘Green?’ Matt asked.
‘Greenish.’ He went back to the constable, who nodded and indicated the shed. ‘Some of the dead ones are still here,’ he called over to them. ‘I imagined the police had taken them all away but it seems they haven’t. I’ll get them.’
For a moment he disappeared into the shed, then came out bearing what looked like an old metal oven dish. In it lay several dead worms, stiff and straight, their greenish-purple colour lacking the sparkle of the larger variety. Jacqui picked one up gingerly.
‘Urgh! Like pricks with teeth!’
They filmed her holding it and describing, straight to camera, how last night’s swimming party had ended in disaster when these sharp little incisors had found their prey. Matt had no idea whether Newsroom would use the item or not, but it would all come in useful for that documentary if ever he got permission to do it. He took a couple of close shots of her holding the jaws apart, then suggested she should crouch down by the side of the pool.
‘Wish we could see some live ones,’ she said.
Rodney Smith sniggered. ‘Dangle your fingers in the water,’ he suggested nastily. ‘If there’s any of ’em left, they’ll soon show themselves.’
‘For Chrissake!’ Matt swore at him. That high-pitched, nasal voice was beginning to get on his nerves.
‘I was only saying if—’
‘Do it yourself!’ Matt told him roughly. ‘I’ll film them having a go at your hand, and gladly.’
They were packing up to drive down to the hospital when Matt noticed the two children who had followed them into the grounds. He grinned at them. Encouraged, they crept forward; the constable was examining the sound man’s Nagra tape-recorder with absorbed interest and didn’t notice them. He was a hi-fi fanatic, it seemed.
‘You with TV, mister?’ the boy wanted to know.
‘Yes.’
‘We can show you live biters if you like.’
‘Biters?’
‘Them.’ The boy pointed to the metal tray. The girl stared at him speculatively, but without saying a word. ‘We call ’em biters.’
‘Good name,’ Matt approved. ‘D’you find a lot round these parts?’
‘If you know where to look.’
The girl joined in, ‘If you pay the right price. You are with telly, aren’t you?’
She drove a tough bargain, five pounds, but Matt was too eager to see the worms to argue for long. He called Jacqui over. She agreed, and took the two children in her car. On the way to the Council rubbish dump he stopped in front of a small cluster of three shops and bought some offal. ‘For the dog,’ he explained to the butcher.
They parked just beyond the petrol station and followed the children along the path which led past the dump. Rodney Smith scoffed at the whole exercise and became irritated when a loop of rusting barbed wire sprang out of the undergrowth at him, catching his raincoat. The sound crew decided to stay in the car whilst Matt and Jacqui did the recce. Pete remained behind too to reload the camera.
The girl, Annie, suddenly stopped and pointed. ‘Down in that ditch. There’s lots down there. Little ’uns.’
They balanced precariously on the sloping grass sides of the ditch, staring down at the clear water. Bent grasses trailed in it; tiny insects busied themselves above the surface.
‘Nothing there,’ Rodney Smith declared nasally. ‘You kids having us on?’
‘That’s where we…’ she stopped, then giggled ‘… saw ’em last. Innit, Tim?’
Tim confirmed her story. ‘Yeah, ’bout here.’
Matt unwrapped the packet of offal, took a small piece and dropped it into the water. The others looked at him curiously. ‘Bait,’ he grunted, watching it intently. No sign of them yet. He selected another piece which he tore to crumb-size shreds before scattering it on the water a little farther upstream.
‘Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days,’ murmured Jacqui; she’d once mentioned her father was a Baptist minister, four-square on the Bible. Then, breathlessly: ‘And here they come.’
‘Look at ’em! Look at ’em!’ Rodney Smith’s voice rose even higher in his excitement. ‘Did you ever see anything like that?’
Matt went up the bank again and waved to Pete to bring the camera over. They wouldn’t be easy to film in this light. Too much reflection from the surface of the water, and their colouring almost merging with the bed of the stream. He tried from several angles and took some readings; it was vital he managed to get a couple of shots at least. Angus had told him about these small ones before, so had his press cuttings, but it was the first time Matt had seen them for himself. Were they a different species after all? Or, as Angus had often said, merely younger? And if so, why? He’d like to take a couple back with him as specimens. Perhaps that busy professor was back from his long holiday by now.