Slither (9 page)

Jacqui lay sprawled on the grass. His sudden move had knocked her off balance; she was lucky not to have slipped down into the water. ‘You bloody fool,’ she told him, ‘charging about like that.’ She spoke quietly and intensely; her face drained of all its colour.

He ignored her, intent on fishing out a second worm. Jacqui, still on her back and still furious, flexed her leg. It was patently obvious what she was about to do. One gentle nudge with her foot would be sufficient to topple Rodney Smith into the stream among the worms.

Matt touched her arm. ‘No,’ he told her softly.

She ganced at him and he witnessed the anger melting from her face. Her expression became mischievous; her eyes twinkled, exploring his.

‘Chuck some more meat in, will you?’ Rodney Smith called over his shoulder. ‘Bit nearer the edge.’

‘If you’d only get out of the bloody way – you’re ruining the shot!’ Pete snapped at him.

‘Never mind.’ Matt tossed a handful of offal into the water. The worms were in turmoil in their eagerness to get at it. ‘Can you take him fishing the things out?’

Pete widened his shot. Again the motor whirred as Rodney Smith bent over the narrow stream at the foot of the ditch. Then he grunted, a quick sharp grunt, and pulled back.

‘
U-uh, u-uh
,’ he moaned in a mixture of fear and pain.

This time the worms had won. One had bitten deeply into the ball of flesh where his thumb joined his hand.

‘One all,’ came Jacqui’s voice calmly.

9

When he got home Matt found a note from Fran saying she was coming up to London to see him. Business was flourishing and she’d already received more orders than she could handle. It seemed everyone in the fashion world was fascinated by the luminous quality of the worm skins and their subtle changes of colour triggered off by variations in the light. But it was time, she suggested, they drew up a more formal agreement. She’d already had a word with a solicitor.

Helen stiffened defensively when she saw who the note was from. She read it without comment, then handed it back to him. ‘You’d better meet her,’ she said drily.

‘Come with me?’ he coaxed her. ‘Darling, this could be the opening we’ve been waiting for. We’ll be able to afford things for the cottage, and take Jenny to France, and…’

‘You go by yourself,’ Helen told him wearily. ‘She’s your partner. Your … business associate.’

‘That’s all she is!’ he replied warmly.

Helen looked at him, her eyes puckering into an expression of doubt. But she said nothing.

They met at the solicitor’s office near Wigmore Street. He was her cousin, it seemed: a fair young man, very formally dressed, with blue eyes and a slightly turned-up nose. After a few preliminaries he read out a draft agreement he’d drawn up. Fran was a tough negotiator. She hammered away at every clause, not giving an inch of ground until forced to. Matt tried to control his rising irritation. Without his worms, he reminded her, she’d get nowhere. Then she’d smile her sudden acceptance of the point, her nose would wrinkle and the tip of her tongue would appear for a split second between her lips.

In the end, when all the details were settled, she invited him to lunch in a nearby restaurant while the agreement was being
typed. She’d already booked a table, she said.

‘Champagne? To celebrate?’ She turned over the pages of the wine-list. ‘Matt, our business is really taking off, do you realize that? And so far we’ve no competitors.’

She began to tell him about some of the people she’d met from the top fashion houses. Then, when the
sole meunière
came and she tasted it, she launched into an enthusiastic account of how she always bought fish straight off the boat at Westport, how she prepared it, and the fish parties she sometimes gave.

‘I’m glad you like fish too.’ Her eyes seemed to be exploring his face. ‘My husband didn’t. But then he was a shit.’

Matt refilled her glass, not knowing what to say.

‘I’ve a lot of faith in you, Matt. You really seem to understand about sewer worms.’ She reached out and touched his mutilated hand, then bit her lip with a quick frown and laughed. ‘If only we’d a better name for them.’

‘The kids called them “biters”.’

‘What kids?’

He told her about it; she listened, interested.

‘You talk as though they’ve some kind of intelligence,’ she commented uneasily. ‘As though they could read our minds. That local journalist – you really think they
planned
to bite his hand, don’t you?’

‘I imagine…’ He hesitated. ‘You can surprise them once but not twice,’ he said at last. ‘Which makes them that much more difficult to hunt.’

She shivered, and fingered the worm-skin belt she was wearing with her simple brown dress. ‘What if one day they take it into their heads to start skinning
us
?’

He took her hand and moved his thumb gently across her palm. ‘It won’t happen,’ he tried to reassure her.

At Television Hall later that afternoon he heard that Annie was missing. It seemed the police had been around to question the two children about the worms in the swimming pool; naturally they’d denied all knowledge, but next morning Annie had set out for school and never arrived there.

‘But kids are always running off somewhere,’ Jimmy remonstrated with him when he tried to discuss it. ‘ ’Specially when they think they’re in trouble. She’ll be picked up somewhere. Not our worry, thank God. We’ve enough on our plates.’

He paused to light a second cigarette from the stub of his first, drawing the smoke deeply into his lungs. Killing himself, Matt thought. His fists were massive, for he’d been something of a boxer in his early days, but now even the short flight of stairs up to the bar left him breathless.

‘Our revered Acting Managing Director has agreed to see you.’

Matt was startled. ‘When?’

‘Thought that’d please you!’ Jimmy’s chuckle broke up into a cough; his face flushed a deep red. ‘Today, at five. Don’t ask me what made him change his mind – your latest exploits, I shouldn’t wonder. I know you rang beforehand, but I’d have advised you differently if you’d said it was worms.’

‘Newsroom was interested,’ Matt defended himself.

‘Haven’t used the film though, have they?’

‘That big earthquake story knocked everything else off the screen.’

Jimmy shook his head. ‘It’s the worms, Matt. And your reputation. If only you could forget those bloody worms.’ He rummaged among the papers on his desk and fished out a green form. ‘Here. Your annual report. No doubt you’d like to see it before I send it off.’

Matt glanced over it quickly. The accident in the sewers … three months in hospital … not quite readjusted after his unfortunate…

‘Maybe you should’ve had more leave,’ Jimmy was apologizing even as he read it. ‘But you’d been passed as fit by the doctors, we were very short-handed, and… We acted for the best.’

‘Has the Managing Director seen it?’

‘
Acting
Managing Director,’ Jimmy corrected him. ‘No.’ He paused, fumbling for a third cigarette to cover his embarrassment. ‘Look, Matt, don’t take this the wrong way. These reports they’re routine, intended to help you… We think very highly of your work, you know that.’

This conversation didn’t exactly leave him in the right mood to sell his great idea for a documentary to Aubrey Morgan, Controller of Programmes,
Acting
Managing Director, and Lord God Almighty in Television Hall. But it was the only chance he’d be given, so he’d have to make the best of it. He’d thought it over often enough, worked out one or two gimmicks to help it along… Such as suggesting Aubrey himself as presenter. Flattery wins empires.

The carpeted, curving corridors of power were in a part of Television Hall he’d seldom penetrated before. The atmosphere was hushed, as in some private mortuary. Maybe this was how they disposed of unwanted staff, he speculated gloomily. Discreet, taped organ music, a noiseless exit through sliding doors, a quick moment of intense heat, and all would be over. That split second of fierce desire as the flames licked his body…

Or as worms cut into it with sharp little teeth – was that to be his destiny?

He’d be tumbled naked into an oval pit filled with sewer worms while all the Heads of Department looked on from the safety of an observation gallery, jotting down notes for their reports.
Not quite readjusted… hardly up to the requirements of the job… could do better…

‘Mr Parker?’ A voice like icicles. ‘You can go in now.’

The secretary was tall and slim, a fashion-plate. She crossed gracefully to the interconnecting door and held it open for him, smiling as he passed – but with her lips only; her eyes remained indifferent.

‘Ah, you’re Matt Parker! I’m so glad to meet you at last. Do come in!’

The moment he saw him, Matt realized he’d met Aubrey Morgan before. A young director he’d been in those days, straight out of university and sporting patched denim jackets, not the lemon-coloured jet-set sweater he was wearing now. They’d both been starting out at the same time, Matt as a camera assistant, shy and awkward, making more mistakes than most. He wondered whether he should mention it, but decided against.

‘I’d hoped we could manage a chat long before this.’ The
expression on Aubrey’s face changed as he realized Matt’s hand was mutilated; he released it hurriedly. ‘But you’ve been on location and I’ve two jobs these days, my own plus the Managing Director’s. You heard about her little mishap? Oh, do sit down.’

‘The worms?’ Matt lowered himself into a mock-leather armchair.

‘In a chocolate box!’ Aubrey tutted. ‘Of course, the shop wasn’t responsible. The police checked on that. No one ever discovered who sent them. Now they tell me you want to do a documentary?’

‘Yes, I—’

Aubrey stopped him. ‘You’ve certainly plenty of experience of worms. Even this week, I’m told. In fact, they’ve become quite a hobby with you, haven’t they?’

Say it, man,
thought Matt.
Say it – obsession
!

‘And I know exactly how you feel. Handled them myself, you know, when they attacked Mary. Had to pull them off her, squeeze the life out of them before they’d release her, feel their skulls crack between my fingers…’

‘You noticed their eyes?’

‘A sobering experience. I began having nightmares about them afterwards. For weeks. You too?’

Matt nodded.

‘Not surprising. Come and look at this.’

He took Matt across to a map displayed on the far wall of the office. On it were a couple of dozen tiny coloured pins.

‘The distribution of the worms, based on reports which have come in to us since you were attacked. Quite a number at first, though they’ve tailed off a bit. Mostly small ones – they’re the blue pins. The larger worms are red.’

‘They’re all over the country!’ Matt examined the map eagerly. Seeing the places marked like this really drove it home how widespread they must be. ‘East Anglia has quite a bunch … fewer in Yorkshire … and fewer still in the big towns.’

‘Fewer reports,’ Aubrey corrected him. ‘There must be thousands of places where people have either not yet noticed them, or not bothered to write in.’

‘Who’s working on it?’ Matt asked, trying not to betray his disappointment.

‘Working on—?’

‘The documentary.’

‘There’s to be no documentary,’ Aubrey told him blandly. ‘Board of directors won’t wear it, not after that affair with Mary. It wouldn’t be in good taste. Drink? Scotch?’

‘But you can’t waste all that material!’ Matt burst out. ‘And what about the public? Shouldn’t they be told about all this?’ He waved his hand at the map. ‘Those pins … sightings … here, here… here… here…’

‘Small worms, ninety-seven per cent of them.’

‘They grow. Next year most of those pins will be red.’ He took the glass Aubrey was holding out and placed it on the desk untouched. ‘You do realize they’ve some degree of co-ordinating intelligence? We can’t afford not to take them seriously.’

‘You think we’re no longer safe in our beds?’

‘They’re dangerous,’ said Matt. ‘How dangerous I don’t think we know yet.’

‘Matt, when I saw the film of you being attacked in the sewers, my reaction was
Oh, Christ, now we’re going to have worms crawling out of every gutter, snapping at our ankles
… But that’s the point. It never happened. Nobody’s even died yet.’

‘Those two in the swimming pool?’ Matt objected heatedly. ‘Aren’t they dead?’

‘Drowned. Not killed by worms.’

‘They chewed the man’s balls off. Isn’t that enough?’

‘Have your drink,’ Aubrey replied patiently. ‘Look, don’t think we haven’t looked into this. We brought Professor Jones here, a world-famous herpetologist, who told us the worms are no more dangerous than ferrets. No less, but certainly no more.’

‘Ferrets work on their own. You don’t get a whole battalion coming after you.’ But Matt immediately regretted saying it. That familiar look of understanding had appeared on Aubrey’s face.
Humour the man. Don’t forget his terrifying experience in the sewers. Must’ve unhinged him.
‘Could I see the letters?’ he asked in an attempt to cover himself. ‘The reports of worm sightings?’

Aubrey handed him a file from the shelf. ‘They’re all here. Take your time looking through them. I’ve one or two things to do anyway. Just sit there quietly and have a read.’

He sat in the armchair with the file on his knee. They were mostly letters, though some were notes of telephone conversations. A nip here, a nip there – no major attack – often no more than a report that someone thought he’d seen one but wasn’t sure. One letter, though, was more interesting than the others. He read it twice, then – Aubrey was in the outer office – slipped it out of the file and into his pocket. When Aubrey returned he was finishing his drink.

‘My dear fellow, I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me now.’ He bustled over to his desk and started selecting folders which he put into his briefcase. ‘Late for a meeting already. But I’m glad we were able to meet at last. Very glad.’

The interview left Matt feeling irritated and isolated. He couldn’t get the message through to anybody. To most people he was merely unbalanced. Fran regarded the worms as nothing more than a source of income, Helen didn’t want to hear about them, and Angus – well, good old Angus accepted them as yet another inexplicable fact of nature. Survive, that was his philosophy.

Survive…

Matt stopped dead in his tracks, then turned on his heel and headed for the nearest phone. He rang Newsroom first. Annie? No news yet. He tried the Middlehampton police. Sorry, doing our best but… Very sorry.

So was he, he told them. He checked through his notebook, then dialled Rodney Smith.

‘Hello, yes?’ The nasal voice was unmistakable. ‘Annie? Of course I’ve not been out searching for her. I’ve been sitting at home nursing a chewed-up hand. Those doctors shot me full of anti-tetanus and lord knows what else. I’ve an aching hand, an aching backside, and an aching head. Now you ring with some stupid questions about the girl who stood and laughed at me while I was in danger of…’

‘She might be in trouble,’ Matt interrupted.

‘So am I. She’s probably gone to her auntie’s for all I know, scared of a good hiding. Serve ’er right, too. You know what I felt like? You know? Like something on a butcher’s slab. Not a human being. Meat, that’s what.’

Matt put the phone down without waiting for him to finish. As he drove back to his small tenace house in one of the grimier streets of Chiswick, his fingers tapped the wheel nervously. A thought nagged at the back of his mind, something one of the kids had said…