Venom

by Alan Scholefield

  Howard turned and faced down the stairs. He saw Dave with the shotgun. It wasn’t robbery then. And if it wasn’t robbery it could only mean–Christ, he thought, it’s the boy. They want Phil. His hand on the bannister-rail was sticky with sweat. Phil. All along. Never the paintings. Never the jewels. Only the boy.

  He pretended to trip, held himself on the bannister and said, “Give me your shoulder, Phil.” He put his arm round the boy’s shoulder and leant on him, bringing their heads close together. He could feel Philip trembling. “When they open the door you run,” he whispered. “Doesn’t matter where. Just run. Understand? I’ll try and stop them. You run. Fast as you can. Understand?”

  He felt Phil shiver and fight for breath. “Easy now. One, two, one, two. In, out. In, out. You run. Flat out. Got it?”

  He felt the boy nod. Good, he thought. At least he’s understood. They’d never shoot him. Not the boy. A split second. Just as the door opened. Then out into the dark and away. But what could he do in that split second. How could he hold them? Stop them? Distract them?

  They came down slowly, two couples, their arms about each other. Howard heard Louise give a small cry and Jacmel said something to comfort her. Could he grab her, Howard thought? Would that be distraction enough? He felt himself cringe inwardly. If he did, what would they do to him? Shoot him? Bludgeon him to death with their guns, with his gun? If only he were stronger he would not have hesitated. But he wasn’t strong. He tried to block a thought that had been hammering at his mind, but could not: Blanchet had said that day in the hospital in Nairobi, I need a brave man . . .

  Dave met them at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Okay?” Jacmel said.

  “I must rest,” Louise said. “I feel . . .”

  “Not now. In a little while. Hold on, chérie.”

  “I cannot feel my leg.”

  “Soon you can lie down. Every– What is that?”

  A sudden silence.

  “What?” Dave said.

  “A car,” Jacmel said. “A car door.”

  “I didn’t hear,” Dave said. He held the shotgun more tightly. Jacmel seemed to notice it for the first time.

  “Leave it,” he said.

  “You’ve got one.”

  “Leave it here! How can you walk into the street with that? You . . .” he said to Howard. “You take Louise. You go first. Understand? Take her to the Citroen.”

  “Look here, there’s no need–”

  “Enough! Take her. You,” he pointed to Dave, “unlock the door. Put the gun away. Now!”

  Dave turned the key in the lock and stepped back. He held the shotgun tightly as though it were a spar in a lonely sea. “Take her,” Jacmel said. Howard came back across the carpet to put his arm around Louise when the front doorbell rang. It was like a sudden flash of lightning. Its peal rang through the silent house, screaming its urgency. For a second everyone was stunned, then Howard opened his mouth and yelled “Help!” at the top of his lungs.

  On the other side of the door Inspector Alec Nash heard the cry. He put his hand on the door-handle and pushed and, surprisingly, the door flew open, throwing him into the threshold off balance. In the brief seconds he remained there his impression was of a group of people assembled at the bottom of the stairs, suspended in time. Together they resembled marble statuary in a city park. Then he saw the gun in the hand of one of them. He was unarmed. He began to turn away. He saw the other gun, the shotgun. And as he saw it he heard the terrible noise of the exploding cartridges. The No. 6 shot, excellent for pheasant or grouse, was expelled from the breeches of both barrels at a distance of almost exactly three metres. The pellets, having no room to spread over such a short distance, travelled in two closely-packed swarms and entered Nash’s body as though they were dum-dums, smashing in the right side of his chest and blowing away part of his right lung and also blowing him off the top step and sending him sprawling back towards the pavement.

  * * *

  “Oh, God,” he said out loud as he lay crumpled at the bottom of the steps. “Oh, God.” Then, like some territorial animal, he began to crawl instinctively to the car. His right arm was useless. Blood was soaking into his uniform and as he pulled himself along he left a wide rusty swathe on the dirty pavement. He reached the car and began to struggle upwards to grab the handle of the door. He was tasting blood now, warm and slightly brackish. Instinct had brought him to the car; training and discipline took him into the next phase. He managed to kneel, opened the door and groped for the radio. With his left hand he pulled the microphone down. It lay on the dusty carpeting in front of the passenger’s seat and he bent towards it.

  “M.P.,” he said. “From Alpha Six. . . . Urgent message.”

  The crisp voice of the operator in the information room at Scotland Yard said, “All cars wait. Go ahead, Alpha Six.”

  Nash was barely alive. “I’ve been shot,” he whispered. “I’ve been shot.”

  “Your signals are unreadable Alpha Six. Repeat.”

  “Shot,” he whispered. “Shot.”

  The microphone began to grow and slowly started to spin.

  “Alpha Six give location.”

  His mind responded to the authority in the voice. “Four twelve,” he said. “Four twelve . . .” He began to slip away.

  “Alpha Six give location. Repeat, give location. Give location.”

  “Four Twelve Eaton . . . Eaton . . .” Then he said, “Shot”, and “Oh, God”, and “Help me”.

  Inside the house the noise of the explosion still seemed to echo around the walls and up and down the stairs. The group had remained like statues for several seconds after Dave had fired. Then Jacmel had burst forward, slamming the door and wrenching the gun from the chauffeur’s hands. “Imbecile!” he yelled, and hurled the gun down.

  “What d’you expect?” Dave shouted, his voice high-pitched with hysteria. “He was a bloody copper!”

  “He knew nothing,” Jacmel said. “Nothing.”

  “Let’s go! If it hadn’t been for her we’d have been out long ago. Come on!”

  “Look from the window. He may have had a companion.”

  Dave went into an adjoining room and came back in a few seconds. “Only the one. He’s lying by the car. Won’t do us any harm.”

  “Quickly, then.”

  At that moment Howard, who was standing a little in front of Louise, heard her give a choking cough. He turned, but was too late to hold her. She fell back on the staircase. Jacmel ran to her. “Please, chérie,” he said in a French so heavily accented that Howard could hardly understand it. “We must go.”

  She lay, trying to drag air into her lungs, her body jerking and bending, and Howard watched in horror as her backbone arched until he thought it must snap. She was dying. She was dying right there in front of him.

  “What is happening to her?” Jacmel said. “Cannot you do something? Is there no possibility of helping?”

  The convulsions came one after another, like an epileptic fit, her legs kicking out, her skirt half-way up to her waist. She began to froth at the mouth and she caught at her throat as though to force air down into her desperate lungs.

  “Help her!” Jacmel shouted.

  “She can’t breathe,” Howard said. “She’s dying.”

  In her extremity, she tore at her dress ripping both it and her bra from her chest. Everyone stood transfixed. Covering her left breast and side was a huge purple mark as though she had been bruised by a gigantic fist. Another purple mark covered the left side of her neck and a third her upper arm surrounding the marks of the snake’s fangs. It was then that Howard guessed what had really happened. But there was no time to pursue the thought for unless something was done Louise would die. Jacmel had knelt beside her and placed his lips on hers, breathing in and out, blowing down into her lungs, giving her all the breath he could expel from his own.

  “What’s happening to her?” Philip said.

  Howard crossed quickly to him, his own hurt forgotten. />
  “She’s having a fit,” he said, preparing the boy for something much worse. “It’s the snakebite. It does that to you sometimes.”

  “You said it was a harmless snake.”

  “No snakes are really harmless,” he said, lying again.

  Jacmel turned. His broad face was grey. “What can we do?” he said.

  Howard shook his head. “Nothing.” He put his arm round Philip and began moving him slowly towards the door. Dave had turned away and was looking at Louise. So was Jacmel. Howard bent to Philip. “When I say go, run, got it?” Again he felt the boy tremble. The door was unlocked, if there was a moment it was now. “You can do it. Run like hell.” They reached the door and Howard tried to make his hand go out to open it. It stayed by his side, held there by his own fear. Louise was in the last stage of her life, choking and gasping. Jacmel was breathing his own life into her. Dave was walking across the hall with his back to them. Now, Howard thought. Now. But his arm seemed paralysed. As though in a dream he watched Dave pick up the shotgun and put two more cartridges into it, then he closed the gun and eased off the safety. It was too late. Too late. Dave would shoot. A sense of despair mingled with relief flooded through him. It was too late.

  Dave held the gun pointing loosely towards them, his face was chalky and corrugated with emotion. “Leave her!” he yelled suddenly. “Can’t you see she’s had it? Leave her. Let’s go.”

  Jacmel pulled his mouth away from Louise’s. “Get a rug,” he said. “We will take her to the car.”

  “Let him get it,” Dave said, indicating Howard. “I don’t trust him.”

  Jacmel hesitated then said to Howard, “You fetch it. Get the boy away from the door.”

  Dave said, “He’s not going anywhere.”

  Howard went into his own room and pulled a blanket from his bed. The guns were in the sitting-room. Perhaps he could take one down under cover of the rug. He turned and saw Dave in the doorway and knew, again with a sense of relief, that he could do nothing without being seen.

  “Faster,” Dave said.

  There was no way out for the boy, no way he, Howard, could grab a gun, no way he could dominate what was happening. He must slow things down. The longer they remained in the house the more chance they had. He knew the house, Phil knew the house, it was their territory, and animals always had more chance in their own territory. Once they were away from the house they would be in Jacmel’s territory. He began to walk slowly back into the hall carrying the rug.

  “Move!” Dave said.

  Howard pointed to his stomach. “I can’t,” he said. “You’ve bloody nearly finished me.”

  He limped forward holding out the rug to Jacmel who raised Louise’s legs and wrapped her body in it. “All right,” Jacmel said. “You and Dave, pick her up.”

  “There is something,” Howard said.

  “What?”

  “I’ve got some anti-venom in my room.”

  “You said the snake was not poisonous.”

  “Mistakes can be made. I didn’t see it.”

  Jacmel paused and Howard could see he was fighting a battle within himself.

  “He’s lying,” Dave said. “Can’t you see what he’s doing? He’s wasting bloody time.”

  Howard turned on him. “She’s dying. There’s a chance this might save her.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you think of it sooner then?” Dave said.

  “I hadn’t seen the black marks.”

  “You think it poison?” Jacmel said.

  Howard nodded. “I’ve seen it before.”

  Jacmel stared at Louise. Then he made up his mind. “Quickly. Fetch it.”

  Howard went into his rooms followed by Dave. The snakebite outfit he had used in Africa was in his desk drawer underneath the cartridge boxes. It had been manufactured in South Africa and was one that could be bought in most parts of the continent south of the Sahara. He had not used the syringe for years and on that occasion–like this one, if he was right–it had been used too late.

  There was only one ampule of poly-valent anti-venom left and he filled the syringe, his hands trembling so badly he could hardly fit the needle into the top of the little bottle. His left hand obscured the label on which it clearly stated that the serum should be used before June 1974. It didn’t make any difference now, he thought, she was too far gone for anything. He drew the anti-venom up into the syringe. Take your time, he told himself, someone must have heard the shot. Someone must see the body lying on the pavement.

  “Come on,” Dave said, pushing the gun at him,

  “The needle could break.”

  “I don’t give a fuck.”

  He filled the syringe as slowly as he dared and limped back to Louise. Someone must have heard. How long was it since the policeman had been shot? Five minutes? Ten? More like six. He lifted Louise’s bitten arm from under the rug and was about to plunge the needle into the soft blackened area in the elbow joint when she gave a convulsive jerk that knocked the syringe from his hand. It fell on the floor and shattered, the serum making a viscous blob against the dark tiles. She was arched like a bow. Then abruptly she collapsed. “She’s dead,” Howard said.

  As he spoke the house was filled with the wee-waa-wee-waa of a police siren. They heard the shriek of brakes then the slamming of doors. Dave ran to the window of the room opposite Howard’s flat. The others followed. Jacmel took his gun from his trouser belt and looked at the cylinders. Howard watched him. It was methodical, professional. Jacmel turned: “I say this once, no more: if you doing anything–anything at all–we shoot the boy. Then we shoot you. You understand this?” It was said calmly, deliberately, just as the examination of the gun had been, and Howard was reminded of a soldier, a commando perhaps, going into battle.

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Lock the front door and give me the key.”

  Howard did so and watched him put the key into his jacket pocket. Only then did Jacmel walk to the window and look out into the street. Howard tried to follow with Philip but Dave held the shotgun on them. The room was dark and net curtains hid them from view; Howard could just see the pavement. One police car had pulled up outside the house, a second was blocking the cul-de-sac that led to the square.

  Dave turned to Jacmel, “Christ,” he said, and his voice was thick with fear. “What do we do now?”

  A big man had got out of the second car and was walking along the pavement. In the street lights Howard could see him clearly without making out his face. Bald head, massive shoulders, made bigger by the heavy sheepskin coat he was wearing. A man came up to him from the first car and said a few words. Then a second. They backed the first car to the end of the street. The big man came on. It was obvious he was in charge. He stopped at the bottom of the steps and knelt by Inspector Nash’s side, placing his head on the dead man’s chest. Then he rose again. It would have been easy enough to shoot him from where they watched yet his very presence defied them. It was as though he was offering himself as a target. He stood looking up at the house for a few long moments, and turned away. He picked up Nash as though he weighed no more than a child and carried him along the pavement. An ambulance appeared and stopped. The big man passed Nash to the two attendants and the ambulance drove off. Slowly he returned along the pavement to the front of the house.

  “What are we going to do?” Dave said. “They’ve got the bloody place covered. Look, there’s coppers at the end of the street even. And that’s another car.”

  Jacmel looked at him briefly. “Now it is your test,” he said.

  “What bloody test?”

  “To see if you are a man or a little boy to run to his mother.”

  “Look, you may be bloody great over there in France with your French police but over here–”

  “Don’t talk so much. Don’t talk. Don’t think.”

  Jacmel was talking to Dave but it was apparent that he was preoccupied with the figure on the pavement. The big man stood there in the misty street ou
tlined by a street lamp. Huge.

  Immovable. Implacable. And inside the house, Jacmel square, short, tough, calm now in the face of arrangements that had gone badly awry. Howard could almost feel the antipathy that each man had for the other. That they did not know each other, that at any other time they might have made common ground, have found common thoughts and emotion, was irrevelant in the circumstances. It was something he understood: the hunter and the hunted. The seconds ticked away and turned into minutes and still the big man stood there; still Jacmel said nothing, did nothing.

  “For God’s sake,” Dave said. “There’s another bloody carload.”

  Jacmel did not appear to hear him, so intense was his concentration on the policeman.

  At last he moved. He slid the double-glazed window partly open. It moved without any noise.

  “Can you hear me?” he said, not loudly but with a carrying voice.

  The big man made no move, although he must have heard.

  “Can you hear me?” This time slightly louder but still not audible much beyond the man on the pavement. Slowly he raised his head and they could see a heavy, rather brutal face. It seemed to Howard that there was a slight smile on the lips, though he could not be sure. Perhaps it was his imagination, but as the silence had deepened the feeling had grown in him that it was somehow the silence itself that was the first stage in a war between the two men and that Jacmel had lost a round in speaking first.

  “I can hear you.” The voice matched the man, heavy and rich in timbre with an overlay of a Scottish accent diluted by living in a Southern society.

  “We have a boy in here,” Jacmel said.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes. A boy. Philippe Blanchet. Ten years.”

  “Send him out, then.”

  “That is impossible.”

  The policeman made no reply, hunching down again in his sheepskin.

  After a moment Jacmel said, “There are certain things we wish.”

  “Yes?”

  “I talk to you?”

  “If you like.”

  “Have you the . . . authority?”

  “Depends what you want.”

  “A car. Money. Time.”