‘We can’t possibly know,’ he said wearily.
‘All the women wearing our belts, gloves, handbags… they’re in danger if they go anywhere near a worm. It’s true, Matt, and you know it.’
Matt didn’t answer. He was still thinking of Jenny, trying to work out what to say to her and absentmindedly sucking the wound on his finger.
‘You’re hurt?’ Fran asked.
In the heat of the fight he hadn’t noticed it happen. One of the worms must have caught him with its teeth, tearing through the artificial leather of the glove.
‘Thought you said they didn’t bite through clothing,’ she was going on.
‘That’s right.’ It had tasted his blood, he realized; its mind would have flashed the message back.
‘So?’ she demanded.
‘So they do now.’
16
Little knots of people stood around in the steep cobbled streets and on the harbour walls of Westport, talking it over, swapping experiences. That morning they’d opened their newspapers and switched on their radios expecting to learn that other towns had also been affected. No mention of any. It seemed this small fishing port had been the only one.
Everyone had a story to tell. Mrs Phillips had been about to fill the kettle when she’d discovered a worm exploring her kitchen sink; it had oozed its way up to the draining-board where she’d killed it with a bread knife. Old Jack Ridley, up early as usual, had been startled when one suddenly reared up at him as he was about to use the outside lavatory. Others had been seen lying alert on the low corrugated iron roof of a lean-to bicycle shed. In a lobster pot. In a bucket. Coiled around the milk bottles on a doorstep. Lurking among the washing Mrs Cornish was about to hang on the line.
Most people had put on thick protective clothes and tucked their trouser legs into gumboots. Many carried some sort of weapon: a heavy stick, or even a shot gun. They’d no doubt who was to blame. Only one man could be responsible, the man who’d brought the worms to Westport in the first place.
Matt and Fran left the police station and threaded their way back to the car. Everyone had heard by now of Helen’s death but there was no word of condolence, no look of sympathy. Matt felt relieved when at last they reached the car and got in, slamming the doors and starting the engine. People moved out of their way as they drove off.
Maybe they were right, he thought. If he hadn’t brought the worms here…
Helen was dead. Three more people were in hospital in addition to the young couple mentioned by the police sergeant. One of them was a child who’d gone out early that morning to meet her father off a fishing boat returning to harbour. In the estuary the body of a young man in swimming trunks had been found; a worm had gnawed its way into his intestines. And the toll of animals was not yet fully known: at least two cows, several sheep, a mare in foal, pigs, dogs, hens, geese… But no cats. Not yet.
Thank God Jenny was safe, though she refused to see him. Frank had tried to be diplomatic on the phone. ‘Shock,’ he’d said. ‘Doctor Davies has been around again. Maybe it’s best she stays on with my kids for a day or two, don’t you think?’
What choice did he have? Where could he take her — back to the cottage where she’d returned from a birthday party to find her mother dead in the bath, with the worms still feeding on her? He could hardly invite her to Fran’s flat over the shop. Over and over again he heard that hurt little voice on the phone: ‘I hope I haven’t disturbed you in the middle of sex, I hope I haven’t disturbed you in the middle of sex, I hope I haven’t disturbed you in the middle of…’
Fran was looking at him. His hands gripped the steering wheel as the car rocked over the uneven lane leading up to the cottage. ‘Oh, hell.’
The undertakers’ van was already there. As he pulled up the men manoeuvred out through the back door carrying a long narrow container covered by a waterproof cloth. He stood in the garden and watched them. No sign of the worms now, not even of those he’d killed earlier that morning, but this was their moment of trumph. Killing Helen, and in that particular way, hit him harder than anything else they could have done. The police constable watched him impassively. Fran stood near him, anxious. He felt empty, and suddenly alone.
Motorcycle engines shattered the silence, several of them roaring up the lane as the undertakers’ van pulled away. A gang of teenagers in full black leather gear with silver studs and white-painted Nazi insignia rode into the garden, round and round, revving aggressively, through Helen’s flower beds, flattening the daffodils and churning up the vegetable patch he’d sown only a few days earlier.
The policeman made no attempt to stop them, but stepped back into the shelter of the kitchen door and began to speak urgently into his radio.
Fran clutched Matt’s arm. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Nothing.’
One by one the bikes stopped, splitting the eardrums with their revving before the engines finally died. The boys dismounted and gathered in a group. Six of them. He recognized two or three, though he couldn’t see their faces clearly through their helmets. One was the telegraph boy. Another he’d seen working on a fishing boat. They looked towards him, arguing amongst themselves.
‘Now, lads, be sensible. Leave him alone,’ the policeman warned them, trying to assert his authority though he couldn’t have been more than four or five years older.
‘Who touching ’im?’ the burliest of them sneered. He went to the door of the main shed and started kicking it in with the flat of his foot till it burst open. ‘ ’Ere they are!’
Matt dashed across with a warning to be careful, the worms were dangerous, but they brushed him aside and began to carry cans of paraffin into the shed. When the young policeman tried to intervene, one of the boys stood in front of him with a crowbar in his hands, blocking his way.
‘Yer wan’ them worms dead much as we do, don’ yer?’ he threatened. ‘We’re gonna clean this place up, kill every bloody worm. Why don’ yer jus’ look the other way at the pretty view? Jus’ leave us be.’
The policeman glanced at Matt, who said: ‘Let them. Why not? They’re doing my job for me.’
Bitterly.
Through the open door he watched callously as they poured paraffin into each tank and set it alight. The worms thrashed about trying to escape the flames but he felt no pity. The largest succeeded in knocking away the safety net from the top of their tank; then their heads appeared above the edge, swaying as they burned, their eyes seeming to seek his. He didn’t move. Let them fry. The fire crackled and the sick smell of scorched flesh mingled with the stench of paraffin.
Fran joined him. ‘It’s the end, isn’t it?’ she whispered, her lips quivering. ‘The end of all we planned.’
It hardly seemed credible that only the previous evening they’d been having dinner with Cy Steinberg, negotiating the contract for worm skins which could have made them rich. Drinking champagne while Helen fought for her life. And lost.
The boys kicked open the door of the smaller shed, overturning the cages and whooping with delight as the mice ran over their feet. The white rabbits cowered fearfully against the walls. They shooed the animals out and set fire to that shed too.
One mouse headed for the far end of the garden where the grass was high; Matt had been intending to clear it that summer and maybe plant potatoes or parsnips. But before it could reach shelter, loping over the vegetable patch, a long worm appeared slithering towards it. The brilliant sunshine brought out the full splendour of its colouring. It stopped for a second as though posing to be admired, then shot out to catch the mouse between its teeth.