'You can't go in there, sir.' A uniformed sergeant barred his path to the door.
'I ... have to . . .'
'I'm sorry, sir.'
'There's been a ... killing. Another death.'
The officer puffed his cheeks out, closed his eyes, opened them again. 'Who? Where?' His voice was low, tired.
'The council houses .. . the Doyles ... I'm not sure which one, Mrs Doyle probably. It was the python.'
'We'll get somebody up there right away.' The sergeant gave some instructions to another officer in the doorway, turned back to the zoologist. 'There's problems this morning. PC Aylott vanished during the night shift. We don't think it's the snakes, he just appears to have walked out. His nerve might have cracked, we don't know. Anyway, it's not up to me to say.'
'Where are we going to search today?' John was still shaking from his experience; the last thing he wanted was another day in the burning sun bashing out thick undergrowth.
'We'll be told soon,' the policeman replied. 'Until then you'll just have to hang around like everybody else.'
It was another ten minutes before the superintendent emerged from the building, those lines in his features etched even deeper, his voice husky as though he had done a lot of talking and his vocal cords were on the verge of packing up.
'There is the possibility that we have another snake casualty.' He addressed the crowded driveway, commanded an instant silence. The listeners felt the tension, the sudden change in those around them. 'We cannot be sure at the moment but it seems that way. Also we have one of our officers missing but again we do not know if that is directly linked to the current crisis. We must, therefore, for the safety of this community, assume that the snakes have not left the area. We have searched for them diligently, and for that I thank every one of you, but now the time has come when we must change our tactics. We shall not let up on the offensive but priority has to be given to the defence of this village. We must guard every house 24 hours a day, leaving just a small band to continue the search. No more lives must be lost. Let us hope that we can conclude this terrible business in as short a time as possible.'
John Price moved away back out on to the road. They would not be needing him today, maybe not again. The searches over the last few days had yielded nothing, he had not come up with a magical formula for finding the serpents' hidden lair, so he had not been much use after all. They could dispense with him now. The authorities resented civilian help, you could sense it even if they did not put it into words. They used you just so long as you were useful to them.
He had the rest of the day to kill somehow; the rest of the week, month, year. Except for Aunt Elsie's funeral tomorrow he had no plans. That was when being unemployed hit you; you had no plans, nobody had any for you. Just hang around, John Price. The game of eternal waiting, building up futile hopes.
A police van passed him, It would be going up to the Doyles. He grimaced. He wondered again where Keith had gone. And Aylott. There were a lot of disquieting, unexplained mysteries right now.
Something interrupted his thoughts, a movement breaking into his morbid reverie, a small creature darting across the road, long body, reddish brown fur, streamlined. A half-jar on his nerves, alarm bells starting to ring in his system and then cutting out because it was a false alarm. These days everything that moved had to be a snake until proved otherwise.
He identified the animal just as it was disappearing into the overgrown verge on the opposite side of the road. A stoat, the fiercest of all British mammals for its size. A predator. A killer of...
His brain was beginning to click, a human computer assimilating facts, processing data. A killer of snakes, certainly, but only small ones; grass snakes like die one that had caused his aunt to have a heart attack, adders .., not big ones like those that had escaped but . . .
. . . family mustelidae, comprising stoats, weasels, otters, .pine martens, polecats and . . .
His pulses were beginning to race, his computer was coming up with the answer, had already given it to him but he was barely able to accept it in his excitement. Family mustelidae, the ferret family, and the Big Daddy of them allthe mongoose.
Jesus Christ Almighty, why hadn't he thought of it before, the one creature that was the nemesis of all snakes, at one time imported from India to Latin America to control a plague of reptiles. Rikki-tikki-tavi, the mongoose hero invented by Rudyard Kipling, the creature that fought and overcame a cobra and a krait.
It was the answer, the only solution to the crisis in Stainforth, Juvenile excitement took him over, almost had him sprinting back to the station. Superintendent, I've hit on the answer, all we need is a pair of mongooses. They'd find the snakes, kill 'em too. The whole thing could be over in an hour or two. You're crazy, laddie. We can't go loosing more wild animals into the countryside, contravening the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981. Look what happened when a few mink escaped and bred, the scourge of domestic animals, poultry, rivers. And we've never got rid of the rat-like grey squirrel since some bloody idiot thought it would be great to have a few of them in the suburban parks and gardens. It wouldn't work, we wouldn't allow it.
You wouldn't allow it but it would work as far as the snakes are concerned. Isn't human life more important than ducks and geese and trout in the rivers? It was a matter of conscience, not a decision to be taken at a desk somewhere far removed from the danger. His decision.
He stood beneath the shade of a leafy oak tree, rolled a cigarette with unsteady fingers. He needed a few minutes to calm himself, to think clearly. If you jump in, do it with both feet, no half measures. In other words, don't fuck it up. Go the whole hog and be prepared to take the consequences.
His tidy mind began to put everything in order, formulate a hypothetical plan of action. If it was to be mongooses then they had to be brought here secretly and released under the cover of darkness. Point number two, where in hell do you find a mongoose?
Bill Arkwright might still have one! John Price's pulses pounded again. Bill had been at university with him, had got his degree and gone back to Scotland to work on snakebite serums, had his own private collection of reptiles, had had the necessary licence to keep dangerous animals granted on research grounds. Arkwright had kept a pair of mongooses as pets; John remembered that rumpus with the RSPCA when some busybody had written and claimed that Bill was organising mongoose-snake fights and was taking bets on the outcome. The case was disproved and it had all died down.
John wondered if Bill still had his place up in Edinburgh, if he still had those mongooses, and if he would be prepared to help. All bloody ifs again, but there was only one way to find out.
Aunt Elsie really should have had a telephone installed. She might have been alive now if she had had some means of summoning help. And John Price would have been able to sit down in comfort and privacy and attempt to track down Bill Arkwright. As it was he found himself in the oven-like telephone box on the Green, keeping the door propped open with one foot whilst he tried to persuade a Directory Enquiries operator to locate a Mr W. Arkwright in Edinburgh. No, I'm afraid I don't know his address but I can't tell you how urgent it is. Normally we don't look for numbers without an address, sir, but on this occasion ...
He hoped three pounds' worth of ten-pence pieces would be enoughanother few hours and it would have been a lot cheaper. There was a saying that time was money; it was also lives.
'Arkwright speaking.'
'Bill, this is John Price.'
'Who?'
'Bleep . . . bleep . . . bleep . . .
It took him another ten pence to establish his identity.
'Why, John, of course. How are you? Look, old boy, let me ring you back or we'll never put two words together without that bloody thing interrupting.'