Slime (4 page)

6

‘Hold the torch steady, will you?’

Dave Pine cursed as he wrestled with the recalcitrant nut. He’d already wasted three days stripping the diesel engine down, checking every part, and thought he’d cured the fault, at least for the time being, but once back at sea it had resumed its old tricks, coughing and spluttering when it should have been purring with pleasure at the straight run. To make matters worse, the wind had perked up, causing the little boat now to roll, now to pitch, sending his spanners sliding over the bottom boards.

But at last he got it fixed and straightened up, grinning in the dark at his cousin Colin. ‘Right, let’s try her, though I don’t promise anything!’

He pressed the starter. The engine wheezed into life.

‘What was it?’ his father called from the tiny wheelhouse where they had installed their secondhand sonar.

‘Old age, Dad!’ Dave shouted back cheerfully. ‘Engine’s arthritic, if you ask me!’

So was the whole boat, he thought, in which all three of them had sunk their savings. He lowered a bucket into the sea for water to wash some of the oil off his hands. There were times when he really felt they were crazy even trying to make a go of it. All the cards were stacked against them. Still, he had to look on the bright side. The name was right, at least: the
Medusa
. He liked that.

She had been on her last legs when they had found her. They bought her for next to nothing, reckoning they could patch her up and get her to sea again. With some small-scale traditional fishing – his father’s idea – they
could supply the hotels. Anything they couldn’t sell, they would eat themselves and so cut down on food bills. In season, there would be day trips around the bay for holidaymakers. They had it all worked out.

It was his father who was the fisherman. Dave himself had worked at an engineering factory in Sheffield until it closed down. Rather than stick around there – his marriage had broken up and he was glad of the chance to get shot of it – he’d decided to come and throw in his lot with this zany venture. In any case, he’d never been the type to sit on his backside all day. As for his cousin, Colin Broad – well, he’d burned his fingers in more risky business enterprises than most and nothing could keep him away. At the moment he was manager of a caravan site farther along the coast, but his wife could take that over whenever he was away at sea, and make a better job of it too, probably.

But his father came from a long line of fisherfolk and made sure everyone realised it, especially holidaymakers from the big towns. He was a well-known sight, leaning against the sea wall in his navy-blue jersey and peaked cap, always ready to accept a pint of beer. Not that he couldn’t afford to buy his own; he did it for the challenge. ‘Pines have fished off this coast since time immemorial,’ he would tell them, puffing at his pipe and laughing behind their backs. What he didn’t say was that he had joined the Royal Navy on the outbreak of war in 1939, been torpedoed, picked up after two weeks in an open boat, risen through the ranks – Able Seaman, Leading Seaman, Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer, Warrant Officer – until finally they had pensioned him off as a full Lieutenant RN.

They lived with those photographs framed on the wall at home: one for each step in his career. One for each uniform. Tropicals, fore-and-aft, the lot. Quite a career that had been.

Twelve, he was, when he first went out with his fisherman father – Dave’s grandfather, long since dead – on a boat not unlike this one, and they had landed their catch the following morning for the women of the family to sell at the quayside. By the time he reached sixteen he was a full member of the crew and might have spent the rest of his life fishing if it hadn’t been for the war.

He was the driving force behind this enterprise; and its philosopher, too.

‘The days o’ the large-scale fact’ries wi’ thousands o’ jobs are dead,’ he’d say, sucking on his pipe. ‘We’ve got to get back to bein’ small, so we can see the beginnin’ an’ end o’ things. Same wi’ fishin’. All those big trawlers laid up, an’ others that should be. Fact’ry ships, too. The seas are well nigh empty o’ cod… herrin’… even mackerel these days. Family fishin’ never did that.’

The sound of the engine dropped suddenly. In the unnatural quiet, Dave could hear the doppler
ping
of the sonar, faster than the human pulse.

‘Bloody hell, Dave – we’ve hit a shoal!’ his father called excitedly. ‘Never seen anythin’ like it!’

They shot the net over the side, all three of them working together as a team – trust Lt Jack Pine RN to drill them so thoroughly that they could have gone through the motions in their sleep. Not all his Senior Service routines had worn off yet, and they were glad of it. The net was his own design, too. It was a small mid-water trawl whose weight with a full catch was just about within the power limits of the
Medusa
– so long as the engine didn’t start playing up again.

It was not until they began to winch the net up that they noticed something was wrong. Colin was the first to draw attention to it as he stared down over the side of the boat.

‘Odd bloody fish,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong with ’em?’

‘Shinin’ like a bloody Christmas tree.’

‘Don’t be daft!’

‘Have a look for yourself.’

He was right too, Dave realised as he joined him. The trawl was just about breaking surface and whatever was in it – certainly it didn’t look like fish – was glowing eerily, as though covered with luminous paint.

‘What d’you think, Dad?’

‘Blowed if I know. Winch her up a bit higher an’ let’s take a closer look.’

‘Have you seen anything like it before?’ Colin asked.

‘Not in these waters.’

They went back to the winch. Whatever it was, thought Dave, it meant saying goodbye to that bumper catch of illegal herring he’d been hoping for, something that would have fetched a good price, with a few on the side for themselves. He’d been kidding himself he could almost smell the gutted fish lying side by side in their big frying pan back home, or in the oven dish, dressed with spices…

‘Jesus Christ!’ his father exclaimed suddenly, his voice sharp. ‘Dave – belay that winchin’!’

They could now see that the net was packed full of some slimy, gleaming substance which gave off a light of such intensity that it was as though they had a giant lamp suspended there in mid-air from the derrick. On his father’s instructions – his voice now hard and crisp, honed by a lifetime of giving orders – they eased the derrick around to bring the net closer to the side.

‘Jellyfish!’ His father gave vent to his disgust. ‘Looks like we’ve trawled in half the ocean’s jellyfish. Bloody hell.’

There must have been hundreds of them in the net, which bulged obscenely. Through its wide mesh protruded a mass of waving tentacles and other appendages. His father was leaning forward to examine them more
closely when the boat gave a sudden lurch – the sea was still lively – causing the net to swing towards his face.

‘Colin – let go the net, for Chrissake!’ Dave yelled as he saw his father reeling back in pain.

Before he could get to him, his father had stumbled, twisting around in a vain attempt to regain his balance, and then staggered helplessly forward until his face once again brushed the net. Dave felt sick as he realised how those seeking tentacles welcomed him.

Somehow he managed to drag him clear. Only just in time, too, for the net unexpectedly dropped a couple of feet, ending up astride the gunwale.

‘Bloody winch has jammed!’ Colin shouted. ‘Line’s fouled!’

Before his eyes, first one, then another, strand of the mesh parted and a jellyfish oozed out through the enlarged gap. It dropped on to his gumboot, covering the toe. He kicked it clear, but then a second jellyfish appeared… then a third… and a fourth.

‘Colin – hurry, damn you! They’re eating through the net!’

‘We’ll have to cut it! No other way!’

He managed to get his father over to the starboard side where he slumped on to the engine casing, scarcely conscious, mumbling incoherently something about his eyes. Thick red weals covered his entire face which was already swollen out of all recognition.

But there was no time to tend him further. They had to cut the trawl free before they were completely swamped by the jellyfish. By now the deck was carpeted with them, all glowing with a greenish-pinkish light, so strong it might have been daylight. With every step, his boots slithered over them, unable to grip.

On the wheelhouse wall they carried an axe, but there was no way he could reach it. Instead, he thumbed open his clasp knife and was about to join Colin when he saw
him fall, his hands thrown up to protect his face. The boat was still rolling and, as he tried to reach him, Dave’s feet gave way beneath him, sliding over those treacherous jellyfish which were as slippery as ice over cobbles. Oh, God, his name was on this one…

He found himself sprawling headlong among them.

He felt them shifting beneath him.

He experienced the first stings caressing his neck, followed by that sharp, exquisite pain which sent spasms of fear zipping through him.

In his hand he still held the open clasp knife. He tried to use it to fight back, stabbing into any jellyfish within reach until the blade point stuck in the worn timbers of the deck and had to be tugged out again before he could cut into the next. Ripping through that hard, muscle-like tissue was such a pleasurable sensation. They’d not find it so easy, taking him.

Then a flick from the tentacles flashed across his knuckles like a charge of high-voltage electricity, shooting through his hand to drain the strength out of it.

One attacked his throat.

Another explored his inner ear before stinging, and the agony sent his mind spinning off down dark corridors.

Oh, he’d been there before – yes, he recognised it: that scalpel-cut of a girl’s broken promises, all he’d conned himself into believing she had sincerely meant, that whole unspoken relationship – far more than words – which had been so real while it lasted; and then the bitterness of their parting, and the longing for everything to end.

But no end came, not yet: only a growing numbness, only the realisation of how hopeless it all was, how there could be no solution, ever.

That scream – was that Colin? Still alive?

But it was all so far away.

Far.

When Jane went down to the harbour the next day they were talking about the missing boat. Overdue, they said. She detected the uncertainty in their voices. A spot of engine trouble, maybe; no more than that. It was old Jack Pine’s boat and he knew what he was doing all right. He could still make it back under his own steam.

At that stage it didn’t occur to Jane to connect the story with jellyfish. Why should she? They certainly attacked people, but they could hardly cause a whole crew to abandon ship. She’d managed at last to get through to her marine biologist sister, Jocelyn, who’d said it was like being stung by nettles, no worse than that, not in these waters. In fact, that’s what they were sometimes called – sea nettles.

When Jane had described finding the dead boy, and then what had happened to Tim and Arthur, she’d listened at first with obvious disbelief. Reading from her notebook, Jane then summarised all she’d observed of the characteristics and markings of the jellyfish, including the deposit of slime on the policeman’s gloves.

‘If you’re right, it’s a type I’ve not met before,’ Jocelyn conceded. ‘Not unlike
Pelagia noctiluca
, but the differences might be significant. If you could get me one, Jane…?’

Was it worth bothering, Jane wondered. She’d covered the jellyfish story as far as she could, first the boy whose body they had stumbled across on the sand dunes, then that business with Tim and the punch-drunk thug, but when the morning papers had arrived she’d found only the usual disappointment: two paragraphs about Tim on an inside page; nothing about the boy. No byline for her, either. She might just as well not have bothered. Bad luck, of course, because the main story – a three-in-the-bed sex scandal involving a woman Cabinet Minister – had broken only the previous afternoon, and it pushed out everything else.

Just her bloody luck!

The men’s talk irritated her. She moved away from them, heading around the harbour wall until she reached the far side where she could be on her own. The seagulls swooped low over the dark, debris-strewn water, crying plaintively, occasionally quarrelling over some disgusting morsel. Grey clouds billowed over the narrow harbour mouth, threatening rain.

It matched her mood, this sort of day.

The truth was, she told herself, things were just not going her way any longer. If they ever had; perhaps she’d been conning herself all along. At university she’d been the leading light in student journalism; everyone in that generation knew the name Jane Lowe. When, in her third year, as a matter of form, she had gone along to see the careers advice people, it was understood immediately that her destiny lay in journalism. No question of anything else. Then came four years on her local paper, not a bad one either, serving a community of almost four hundred thousand and not afraid of taking up issues, running campaigns on subjects people really cared about, until rising costs and falling advertising revenue forced them to cut back.

Ten redundancies, and her name high on the list. Well, she’d expected as much ever since Bill – highly professional Bill, the best news editor in the business – had finally come to his senses and refused to leave his wife for her; after that, it had been intolerable working on the same paper. She hadn’t blamed him either. He loved his wife, she had evidence of that, and was devoted to his three children; their own affair had blown up so fiercely, so intensely, who could tell if it would have lasted anyway? As for the redundancy list, he’d sought her out to try and explain that he hadn’t been responsible for including her name on it, but then he’d taken no steps to remove it either; wasn’t it better that way?

Was it?

She still wasn’t certain. More sensible, yes – but better?