Venom

by Alan Scholefield

  He’d had his own little kingdom then with his own laboratory at University College Hospital where he was doing research on tissue rejection by cold-blooded animals, and often they would both be able to get back to the flat at lunchtime–for sex and a sandwich as he had called it. Everything had been going just fine. And then they’d telephoned. Cerebral haemorrhage. No chance at all.

  That was three years ago, yet whenever she felt a crisis coming on she half-expected to be able to go into the next room and talk to him. Perhaps it was the suddenness of his death that made it seem as though he was so close; there had been no time to get used to the thought of his dying. One moment he was there, the next gone. For God’s sake, she told herself, I must stop thinking about it. She had picked up the telephone, dialled Gerald Road police station again and asked for Inspector Nash. It had been like setting off a train of gunpowder.

  She had spoken to the Duty Officer who had asked her all sorts of questions and then she had been put through to a Sergeant . . . Glazer was it? She had told him substantially what she had told Inspector Nash, then she’d had to hang on and finally he had told her he was sending a police car for her and when she asked specifically about the snake and about Inspector Nash he had said he had no information. No information! Then there had been all the business of coaxing Mrs Lloyd from the flat next door to come and babysit and then the young police car driver who also didn’t have any information. “Routine” had been his word. How many movies hadn’t she seen, with smoking guns, and corpses Uttering the set, and the bland Scotland Yard man saying everything was purely routine? It made her extremely angry to be treated this way. It couldn't be routine. Something must have happened to Nash. Something must have happened with the snake. Could it have been an accident? Had the police gone in with guns to shoot the snake and shot one of themselves?

  That meant the snake was loose, why else would they be calling on her? Briefly her fingers felt along the seat until they touched a small leather satchel containing the anti-venene. She placed it on her lap. It had been Tim’s and she could still see the scratch on the leather where it had fallen on that trip to the Hex River Mountains sixty miles from Cape Town. They had gone out to South Africa in the long winter vacation supposedly on a catching trip–Tim had wanted to study the yellow cobra–but instead they’d spent most of the time in a double sleeping-bag.

  They had met at Cambridge. She was studying medicine, Tim was doing research on the isolation of protein poisons of certain snakes, and she had made the switch away from medicine to work with him. She had made her decision after that trip to the mountains and it had not had much to do with science but a lot to do with Tim.

  He was a South African, a PhD at the University of Cape Town, so in reality he had been going home. She had never been south of the Equator and having left London in grey December, the heat and sunshine of southern Africa had come as a shock of pleasure. They had spent a few days with his parents in a Cape Town suburb and had then hired a Volkswagen camper and driven out into the mountains where they had stayed for nearly a month. It was the best time she had ever had in her life. As a youth Tim had been a trout fisherman and knew all the rivers of the Western Cape Province including several small streams that only he and a few other fishermen had ever penetrated. They went up one such stream. Sometimes high grey cliffs came down to the river’s edge making it impossible to walk upstream and then they swam through the deep dark water pushing their supplies ahead of them on inflated inner tubes; at others the stream opened out and they could splash through the shallow golden water pulling the tubes behind them. At each bend a new vista opened before them, wild grey mountain slopes reminiscent of the Scottish Highlands, and the river bubbling over white stones and sand spits. They’d slept in the open, swimming naked, making love, eating, in what seemed a never-ending cycle. By the time the holiday was over they had seen one yellow cobra and she was pregnant; it had been that sort of time.

  Now, sitting in the police car as it sped round Hyde Park Corner and made for Belgrave Square, she felt a sense of desperate longing, of a need to put the clock back, for a second chance. Why had it had to be Tim?

  She was still held by the web of memory when the car came to a halt. There were half a dozen other cars near the opening of a short cul-de-sac. She could see a TV camera, a sound truck and a group of people, some with cameras, others with notebooks, being kept back by a couple of constables. There was an air of tension and purpose. Farther on, at the beginning of the street itself, was a rope barrier on the other side of which was the misty figure of a man, big, almost gross, standing with his back to the police, sipping a cup of coffee. As she left the car another young man–were they all so much younger than she?–this time fresh-faced and looking like a schoolboy, held the door for her. He was wearing a fur-lined parka with the hood hanging back. “My name’s Rich,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

  “What’s happened?” she said. “And don’t say routine to me.”

  He smiled briefly. “No, it’s not routine. But I’d best leave it to Detective Chief Superintendent Bulloch to tell you.”

  The name touched some chord in her mind but what she did not know. Then she said, “It’s about Inspector Nash, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s Inspector Nash.”

  “I knew it. What ha–”

  There was a commotion behind them and a police Land-Rover edged slowly past. It had a towing hook and a cable on the back. She watched as it went slowly up to the single house at the end of the street, turned and one of the men fixed the hook to the front of a parked yellow Ford. A second policeman got into a Citroen and started the engine.

  * * *

  In the house the two men, Dave and Jacmel, watched from the window. At first Dave was speechless, then he blurted, “They’re taking the fucking cars away. Look! They’re towing them away!”

  Jacmel nodded. “He is a hard one, your Mr Bulloch. But we have the boy.”

  Howard was still sitting on the sofa, Philip was asleep, leaning on his shoulder. For the first time Howard heard a note of indecision in Jacmel’s voice. He did not know whether to be glad or sorry.

  “There’s always him,” Dave said, pointing at Howard. “Him as well. That’s two of ‘em.”

  “Yes,” Jacmel said dryly. “There’s is M ‘Oward. But no wife. No mother. No family. Who would bargain for M ‘Oward? Not the police, I think.”

  No, Howard thought, not the police, nor the British Government, nor the Kenya Government, nor Blanchet. He suddenly realized that there was no one to bid on him, that his body, his whole being, was worth nothing in the only market where modern man was given a valuation. Zero. They would kill him, he knew, because he had heard the words “Shakespeare Close”. And they would not feel a thing, nor would anyone else: He was already a blank.

  Part IV

  Friday 9.50 p.m -Saturday 2.45 a.m.

  “I’ve said all this twice–no, three times–already!” Dr Stowe was saying.

  Bulloch stood over her, dwarfing her, sipping loudly at his coffee. “Well, tell me again,” he said. “You say a mistake was made. That the boy got the wrong snake. Is that right?”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

  They went over it, Bulloch probing, Marion telling it as it might have been told to a child. And while they talked they judged each other. Bulloch saw a physically attractive woman who had the misfortune to be English and who spoke with an educated accent. He wouldn’t mind brutalizing her, he thought. She saw a figure bending towards her, with a huge head and heavy shoulders, which reminded her of the friezes at Knossos depicting the Minotauros. Given a chance, she thought, he would bruise her physically and mentally.

  They went through her story item by item, starting with the discovery that the Institute had been sent the wrong specimen and ending with his question about the anti-venene shots and whether she had brought the serum.

  “Now it’s your turn,” she said.

  “My turn?”

  “Yes, you
r turn. I’ve been fobbed off by words like routine!” She waved her arm in the direction of the police cars and the media and said, “If this is supposed to be routine for Eaton Square at ten o’clock at night. . . ! ”

  He stared at her over the top of the plastic cup and wondered if she liked doilies and Chesterfield suites and magic-glow electric fires. She was putting on a little weight, he thought, just how he liked them. A good grip on the cheeks of the arse. He’d like to . . . what? But all he could think of was watching her undress. Jesus, he thought, if that’s all, I’m over the top.

  “I’m waiting,” she said.

  It was the tone of her voice, not so much what she said, that got to him. He hadn’t been spoken to like that, he thought, for a long time. Not even by the Deputy Commissioner. He shrugged. “All right.” And he outlined what he knew.

  When he’d finished she said, “And that’s all? You mean he didn’t tell anyone. Not the Reptile House at the Zoo? Not St George’s Hospital? Not even his colleagues? I find that astonishing.”

  “D’you know how many calls a day we get telling us there’s a bomb in the Houses of Parliament or under a bench in Hyde Park? Or that there’s a body in the Kingsway underpass or a cat up a tree in Surbiton? Christ, woman, we get hundreds of calls like that every day; ninety-nine per cent of them cranks.”

  “And mine was just one of them?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The fact that I represent a government institute has nothing to do with it, I suppose.”

  “Sometimes they ring us up and say they’re the Archbishop of bloody Canterbury. We don’t necessarily believe them.”

  She swallowed her anger. “Inspector Nash said he was writing it down. Why didn’t he leave a note?”

  He felt in his pocket and brought out a crumpled piece of paper, showing it to her. “Hardly a note,” he said.

  “Yes, I see, there’s not much to go on,” she said.

  “Not unless you wanted coffee and tea and spuds.”

  “But there’s the word–”

  “We read it as mambo. My constable tells me it’s some sort of dance. Now you tell us it’s mamba. It’s easy when you know, Doctor. What do you want, Rich?”

  “Thought Dr Stowe might like a cup of coffee, sir.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” she said.

  “That’s very kind of you, Rich,” Bulloch said, deliberately parodying her.

  Rich tried to hide his distaste, then said, “Sampson and Hodges in the mews behind have been inside the dressmaking place, and they’ve found a door.”

  “A what?”

  “It was papered over. Leads into the house, sir.”

  “Who told them to go in.”

  “I did.”

  “On whose authority?”

  “Yours, sir.”

  “Warrant?”

  “No.”

  “You’re learning, Rich. What about the door?”

  “Well, sir, the dressmaking place must be in what were the old mews stables. It was natural to have a door between the house and the stables–save the owners walking round to the end of the mews. Like a door between a garage and a house.”

  Bulloch stared past Rich. He should have thought of that. A door. Christ, of course there must have been something. If he’d thought he’d probably have assumed it was bricked up. But he’d never thought and that was bloody bad.

  “What d’you think, sir?”

  What did he think? What Rich was asking was: do we send them in? But the snake might be loose. Well . . .

  He turned to Dr Stowe and said, “How’s the coffee?” Surprised, she said, “Very good, thank you.”

  “Rich’ll make someone a marvellous wife. Tell me about the snake, Doctor. Everything. And give the doctor a cigarette.”

  “They come from Africa,” she said. “South-east mainly. They spend their lives in open grassland but are just as at home in trees. Family elapidae. Genus dendroaspis.”

  “I don’t want any bloody long words, doctor. We’re not all as educated as yourself.”

  She looked up angrily and then realized he had a point. She was not lecturing to a group of students. “I’m sorry,” she said. “All right. They come from Africa, they grow to between ten and twelve feet long–that’s about average–and they’re probably the most aggressive snakes in the world. That’s what makes them so awkward.”

  “Awkward,” Bulloch said, tasting the word. “I like that.”

  “Drop for drop they’re not the most poisonous snakes in the world. The Australian tiger snake or the Cape cobra is more toxic but that’s academic since a drop or two of mamba venom can kill. The biggest problem is their aggressiveness and the fact that they rear so high off the ground that when they strike they can cause the wound as far up as the shoulder or neck. This cuts down the victim’s chance of survival because the bite is closer to the vital organs.”

  “Even with your needle?”

  “Without it there’s no hope at all. No one’s ever been known to recover from a serious mamba bite without antivenom–and even that’s not certain. In fact, nothing’s certain about snakes. When you’re bitten it depends on your state of health, their health, where the bite is located, how much poison was injected, how soon you can be treated, lots of factors. But there is one certainty–this is the worst of all the snakes. It’s a neuro-toxic poison mainly. Which means it acts on the central nervous system and paralyses the lungs and you die by being unable to breathe. Its venom also contains a haemorhagin–”

  “What’s that?”

  “It affects the blood. So if you survived the onslaught on your central nervous system you’d die of a kind of blood poisoning. The first, depending on where you were bitten and how much poison was injected, could kill you in minutes. The second would take hours, perhaps days. But you can forget the blood poison; when you’re bitten by a mamba you die of a failure of the nervous system. Is that clear?”

  Bulloch ignored the implied insult. “And you have an anti whatever it is to counteract it?”

  “Anti-venom. Or anti-venene. Same thing. Yes.” She tapped the satchel. “South African poly . . .”

  “Polly?”

  “Polyvalent. In other words wide-spectrum. It’s specific against both or either.”

  “So as long as you’ve got your wee needles we haven’t too much to worry about?”

  Irritated, she said, “You haven’t been listening. I’ll go over it once–”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake save your lectures,” he said brutally. “I’m fighting a bloody war, don’t you see! And I want to know how many fronts I’m fighting on. Do we have to fight the dirt and the snake? That’s what I want you to tell me. If you say you can control the snake then I can think of letting my men in the back–”

  “You want me to decide for you. And if something goes wrong you’ll say, well, Dr Stowe’s the expert and she said so.” Bulloch took a step towards her.

  “More coffee, doctor?” Rich said. “Another cigarette?”

  She took one without thinking and by the time he had lit it for her the tension had diminished. “Look,” she said. “There’s nothing certain about snakes. There are cases where people have been bitten by mambas and got anti-venom shots within a minute or two and still died. Just because I’ve brought along some anti-venom doesn’t mean you can risk your men. Anyway, some people are allergic to the anti-venom: it’s dangerous stuff and we only use it because snake venom is more dangerous.”

  “All right,” Bulloch said. “All right.”

  “And surely you’re overlooking one thing. We don’t know for sure that the snake’s loose. Often they’re kept in their travelling crates for days until they settle down after a journey.”

  “I hadn’t forgotten it,” Bulloch said.

  “We could ask them,” Rich said.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Rich–”

  “Not ask,” Marion Stowe said. “Tell them.”

  “What the hell for? If it’s loose it’s
working on our side.”

  “I thought you said there was a child in there,” she said bitterly.

  “You could tell them,” Rich said. “And then–”

  “Rich, I’ll–”

  “You’ve got to,” she said.

  Bulloch moved from foot to foot as though about to put down his head and charge. “You think they’d believe that!”

  “They may already know,” she said. “I mean, there seem to be several alternatives. A, the snake may be loose in the house and they may know that. B, it may be loose and they may not know. C, it may still be in its box. But whatever the alternative is they still think it's a harmless African house snake.”

  All three paused for a moment as the truth of her statement sank in.

  “You’ve got to let them know, sir, whether they believe you or not,” Rich said.

  Bulloch turned to Dr Stowe. “They might believe you,” he said.

  She felt a touch of fear. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Go to the front of the house,” Bulloch said. “Talk to ‘em.”

  “They could . . .” Rich began and then stopped, but Marion read his thoughts. So did Bulloch.

  “They haven’t shot at me,” Bulloch said. “There’s no reason to shoot at her. I’ll go with you,” he said.

  What would Tim have done, she thought? And then: but I’m not Tim.

  She felt the eyes of both men on her. Then Bulloch said, almost gently for him, “I’ve stood outside for an hour or more, talked to ‘em and they’ve done nothing. Haven’t even shown themselves.”

  “But they shot Inspector Nash,” she found herself saying.

  “That’s true. But he went to the door. Must have surprised them. And he was in uniform.”

  “It’s the boy,” Rich said.

  “Yes, the boy,” she said, and saw a picture of Susan’s sleeping face. What if it were her child and someone else was wasting time? “All right,” she said.