by Guy N Smith
It was obvious to Keith that the snake hunters had beaten the place out thoroughly, bracken and grass flattened, even some of the low-growing bushes on the steep face had been ripped out. At least there was no danger here.
He switched the engine off, was aware of the silence, the gathering dusk down in this desolate place, the tension in the van. We'd better go somewhere where we can talk. We're here, so let's talk.
'Well?' Unless he said something they might sit here like this all night.
'I'm pregnant.' She stifled a sob.
'Oh.'
'What d'you mean, 'oh'?'
He didn't reply. What the hell did she expect him to say, what do other guys say when their girlfriends inform them they're in the club?
'You've had it confirmed?'
'No, not yet, it's too early.'
'Then how the hell d'you know?'
'I know,' her voice rose, almost a scream of frustration, 'girls know those sort of things long before they're confirmed.'
Keith fell silent. Mixed feelings, jubilation, you can't walk out on me now, darling. Apprehension because it was too involved even to start to comprehend at this stage.
'I'm not running away.' His tone was low when he spoke at last. 'I'll stand by you, you know that.'
'That's not the point.' Kirsten was back on the verge of tears. 'You haven't run away, but .' have.'
'What . . . whatever arc you talking about?'
'Mum and Dad decided it was best if we left Stainforth for a while, at least until the snakes had been rounded up. They insisted that I went with them. As you know, Dad has a flat in the city and we all squashed into that. They wanted to get me away from you, thought that if I didn't see you for a bit and that if I was introduced to one or two of Dad's eligible bachelor business associates, or their sons, they could persuade me to finish with you. Oh God, Keith, it was awful. The pressure they put on me ... all snobbery . . .'
She was crying, shaking with constricted sobs, and he slipped an arm around her.
'I walked out on them this morning.' It was a couple of minutes before she was able to continue. 'We had a fearful row at breakfast. Mum must have guessed something because she accused me of being pregnant. So I stormed out, caught a bus and walked the rest of the way. I had a bit of bother at the checkpoint but in the end the police sent an army cadet to escort me home. Now I'm in a fine mess. I've left home, I've nowhere to go, and I've also lost my job. Mrs Holloway has sacked me for not turning in for work. Oh, Keith . . .' Her tears came in a flood, her face buried against his chest. 'Whatever are we going to do?'
'We're going to get married.' He tried to keep the jubilation out of his voice. Sod your folks, they can take a running jump. Then a sudden awful thought occurred to him and he added, 'If you want to get married, that is.'
'Of course, I do.' She squeezed his hand. 'It's just that it all seems such a frightful, awful mess, that's all.'
Silence again. Dusk had merged into near-darkness down in the quarry. Only by craning his neck could Keith see the evening sky up above them, the remnants of a summer sunset. For some reason he remembered the date—21 June, the Summer Solstice. The longest day. This was one midsummer night he would never forget.
'What's that?' Kirsten's head was suddenly erect, listening.
'What's what?' He didn't want to be in a hurry to go.
Savour every second, you'll remember this night for the rest of your life.
'I heard something.' She was staring into the sandpit darkness, trying to make out shapes and silhouettes that would be gone in a matter of minutes. 'Like something's round the front of the van.'
Probably rats, he thought, but you don't tell emotional girls that. 'A rabbit maybe,' he sighed, 'there are lots of them in here. The sand is full of their burrows.'
'There it is again.' She was tense, holding on to him. T can feel it vibrating on the .. . Keith!' A piercing scream; she was clutching at him, almost hysterical. 'There, do you see it?'
He saw it all right, felt his stomach heave up, tasted something sharp and sour at the back of his throat, recalled a TV documentary he had once watched about snake-charming, the way the snake came up out of a wicker basket, a wriggling revolting creature mastering a vertical stance with a body that had no backbone. And the snake was doing just that now, rising up from somewhere in the region of the radiator grille, uncoiling, going up and up; aware of the two humans inside the vehicle, its tiny eyes fixed on them, scenting their terror and mocking them with open jaws that seemed to laugh.
'It can't get at us,' Keith Doyle whispered hoarsely. 'No way. We're safe.'
'Let's get away from here,' she pleaded, shuddered and closed her eyes. 'Oh Keith, take me home.'
'No problem.' He laughed but it sounded forced and the fingers that rested on the ignition key trembled. 'No problem at all, we can swing round, drive right back on to the road, and if we don't dislodge this bugger on the way then there are loads of police and soldiers in the village who will be only too delighted to shoot it.'
Seconds later he knew that he did have a problem, a very frightening one. The starter-motor whirred but did not fire, vibrated hollowly beneath the bonnet. He tried it again, much slower this time, they felt it groaning, stopping. A third time; it would not even turn over.
'Keith!' Kirsten was on the verge of panic. He gripped her wrist hard, was not taking any chances on her opening the door and trying to make a run for it. He recalled his own flight three days ago. He had only made it to the garage by the grace of God. Kirsten certainly would not make it back to the road.
'Don't worry.' He tried to sound convincing. 'She'll go in a minute.' But he knew it wouldn't because it had been reluctant to start even on these hot summer mornings. It was the battery, sure enough, possibly the same one that was on this S-registered vehicle from new, now old and tired. Dying, maybe dead already. There was just a faint chance that if they waited a few minutes it might fire. A very faint chance, the kind you only relied on when there was nothing else left. The snake was on the bonnet now, coils of it. Keith would not even attempt to guess at its length but in the fading daylight he was just able to make out its colouring; a ringed body, red, black and white rings, the fearsome snout jet-black. Colourful, deadly, its head only inches from the glass of the windscreen, staring inside intently. 'Keith, I don't want to look!' 'You don't have to. Close your eyes.' 'I can't, it's like I've 'got to look!'
A thought crossed his mind, one that would have been funny in any other situation except this. You paid a quid or so to go into a reptile house and gawp at snakes through glass but this bugger was getting a close-up of humans in a cage for free! Jesus, that was rich, it kind of put things in perspective, made you realise that when it came down to the law of the jungle Man counted for nothing. 'Keith, I can't stand it any longer!'
'Hang on, I'll try the battery again.' He knew before he turned the key that it wasn't going to be any good. This time the starter-motor didn't even turn over. The engine was as dead as the proverbial dodo, and even if it hadn't been he wondered if there was enough petrol in the tank to get them out of there. You're a stupid prick, Keith Doyle. The snake on the bonnet seemed to be laughing in agreement with him.
'We're stuck.' Kirsten was sobbing again. 'There's no way we're going to get out of here.'
'Don't be stupid, we're only yards from the village, the main street. I've only got to blow the horn and the soldiers will come on the run.'
'Blow it then.'
He pressed the klaxon button, knew even as he did so that it would not even muster up the force of a good fart. Simply because the horn worked off the battery like everything else on a vehicle—lights, flashers—the battery was the heart of a motor car, determined whether it lived or died. And Keith Doyle's van right now was very dead.
'I'll think of something. Don't panic.' He leaned across her and locked the door; as much to prevent her from leaping out as the snake from getting in. 'It can't get to us.'
'It's . . . horrible
.'
'I wonder what species it is.' Talking for the sake of talking. 'It certainly isn't a rattler because I know what they look like.' A joke that did not sound funny.
'I don't care what sort it is,' she snapped. 'I just wish it was dead along with all its mates.'
It was dark now, the two people inside the vehicle could barely see each other's silhouettes. Even the dashboard lights were too faint to give off so much as a glow. But there was enough light for them to be able to make out the shape of the snake that held them prisoner. It had coiled itself up again, settled down on the bonnet, head up against the glass windscreen. Watching and waiting.
And the coral snake which had so recently witnessed the death of its mate at the hands of Man was in no hurry. Vengeance was within its grasp and there was no way it was going to allow its prisoners to escape. After it had killed them it would die because there would be nothing left to live for. It would wait.
'We can't stop here.'
Keith was relieved to hear Kirsten speak fairly normally, keeping her face turned away from the windscreen, pushing herself back into the seat.
'At the moment we can't do much else.' he answered. He remembered that the rear doors of the van were not locked but it did not really matter, no snake would be capable of turning the handle, and, in any case, the lock only functioned from the outside. Don't think about it. 'We'll just have to be patient. Somebody is bound to find us soon.'
He did not add that it was unlikely to be before morning. The searchers had called off the hunt for today; it would be seven o'clock before they recommenced. He and Kirsten were almost certainly there for the night.
It was going to be a long one.
Chapter 12
PC KEN AYLOTT stared around the small room that for the past two years had been his office. It bore little resemblance to the neatly arranged room that had contained only a week ago two filing cabinets, a desk with some wire trays on it, telephone, a notice-board with warnings about such relatively harmless creatures as Colorado beetles pinned on it. Dull and boring but at least it had been his. Whatever his resentment about this out-of-the-way posting, he had had the small consolation of knowing that this was his pad and he was the boss. Now, within the space of a few days, all that had been taken from him.
The office was a shambles; piles of untidily heaped papers that would in all probability never be sorted and filed, a mountain of rubber boots in the corner, discarded clothing. If he had been in charge of operations the place would never have been allowed to get into this state. Damn it, he had been relegated to the status of office boy. Stop here and answer the phone, Aylott, radio us if anything important crops up. Your job is to hold the fort. The super made it sound important, like telling a child he was responsible for picking up his scattered toys; do your best and we'll check it over when we get back. You're not getting the chance to skive on outside operations. Not that Aylott particularly wanted to be out there with every chance of a rattler jumping at you out of the undergrowth.
Shirley, his wife, was asleep in the police house adjoining the official office block. She didn't seem to be able to grasp that Stainforth was a dead-end job, said quite calmly that she would be happy to stay here for the rest of her life, buy one of those semis in the village after Ken retired in another fifteen years. Fifteen years, Jesus wept! Ken Aylott could weep if he stopped to think about it too long.
Of course, it was the Raglan case that was the sole reason for his posting to Stainforth, A balls-up, the classical clanger that a copper on a Manchester beat should not have dropped. He'd picked up Raglan, the man who had committed a dozen horrific sex murders and questioned him. He should have held the bastard, but at the time the man's story seemed genuine enough. The policeman had fallen for a false name and address and a volume of lies thrown in, a few scribblings in his notebook that he had not thought worth the paperwork so he'd let it go at that, and Raglan too. Three months and six corpses later the CID had nailed Raglan and everything came out. You could have saved us millions of pounds and six lives as well, copper, if you had done your job properly on the night of 10 January. Every rookie makes a mistake, some bigger than others. This will go against you.
'It wasn't your fault," Shirley had said. She had stuck by him as she invariably did in everything. 'They can't blame you, you weren't to know.'
Kick PC Aylott's arse. Hard. If it hadn't been for an acute shortage of manpower due to the police commitment on manning picket lines Ken might well have had his arse kicked even harder, right out of the Force. He spent weeks away from home in the daily turmoil of shoving, yelling crowds, had a week in hospital when he was unfortunate enough to have a half-brick land on his head. And then, within a fortnight of the settlement of the long dispute, he received the Stainforth posting.
They even tried to make a meal out of that, "This is your big chance, copper, your opportunity to prove yourself.' There was the odd case of sheep-worrying by dogs (there weren't even any rustlers around Stainforth), threatening to nick the Rising Sun because one night there were half a dozen in there drinking after eleven. Keeping an eye on one or two suspect vehicles that might not get through their MOTs and could just be used on the roads when their owners were in possession of a failed certificate. Oh, Mother of God, big deal!
It wasn't Ken Aylott's week on nights but he clicked for it just the same. They had taken the two boys from the town off the night shift—they should have covered Stainforth from 8 P.M. to 8 A.M.—because they needed them on 'days' to man the road-blocks. 'It'll help if you'll cover the night shift, Ken. There won't be much happening.' There never bloody well was, that was the trouble. Keep on your toes, copper, this is your big chance.
Ken lit a cigarette, sat looking at this pig-hole of an office, even thought about tidying it up, restoring some semblance of order. He'd get a bollocking from the super for sure if he did that. You seem to think this is jour office, Constable.
He half-considered jacking it all in, typing out his notice and leaving it on the desk for Burlington to see when he arrived in the morning. Stick that where the monkey sticks his nuts, I finish on Saturday week. But he didn't, and not just because Shirley was expecting their first baby and the monthly jobless tally, according to the television last Monday, had risen by another 2,000 in the month of May. That alone wouldn't have stopped him, it was his personal pride that did. You failed, copper, so you threw in the sponge, hadn't the guts to see if you could make it all the way back, claw yourself out of demotion and Stainforth. You took the easy way out, didn't you?
But how, for Christ's sake, tell me how? He knew the answer without waiting for it to echo back off those four walls in taunting whispers. You know how, copper, go out and find those snakes. Nobody else has so far. You'll be a national hero, they'll have to give you your stripes then because if they don't the people of Stainforth will petition for your promotion. Like bloody hell they will! The villagers don't petition for anything except against somebody making too much noise on a Sunday.
It'll still count for a lot. Yeah, maybe you're right but I don't stand much chance, not in the dark. You won't get your opportunity in the daytime, you know that; stop here and mind the phone, Constable. Radio us if there's anything really important.
Ken Aylott was sweating just at the thought of going out there. He could smell his own body odours, a sour stench that highlighted his fears, stopped him from kidding even himself that he was not afraid. A good copper's one who does his duty even though he's scared to hell, only fools and liars kid themselves.
He looked at the clock on the wall. Twenty-seven minutes past twelve. He took a swig of lukewarm coffee, lit another cigarette. It was no good just rushing blindly out there into the night, he needed to work out some plan of campaign; look what happened to that clever bastard Eversham. Don't think about him or you won't go. Or Barbara Brown. You're different, Ken Aylott, you've got a tidy mind, you plan.
All the facts pointed to the snakes being somewhere in the village. Well, if th
e fuckers weren't on the moors or in the fields, and hadn't gone elsewhere (no sightings reported yet apart from scaremongers and those seeking to waste police time), then they had to be still in the vicinity. Every garden in the village had been searched, the sandpit and the churchyard (the old disused cemetery adjacent to the current graveyard included), so logically there wasn't anywhere else left.
It's just a bloody waste of time, you're fooling yourself. Coward! You won't know for sure if you don't go out there and look. And if they're not around you won't be in any danger, will you? You will have been seen to have done something positive, not just sat here all night on your arse as you're perfectly entitled to do. Well done, Constable, you didn't find the snakes but at least you did your best. A fraction of the way towards getting your stripes.
Ken Aylott swallowed the rest of his coffee at one gulp and stood up. He'd better take a pair of those rubber boots off the heap in the corner, size nines, just to make his feet sweat and stink. A torch, too. He thought about a shotgun out of the armoury in the back and decided against it; too many complications if anything went wrong. The police weren't allowed to arm themselves except on written instructions from the Chief Constable. I was hunting snakes, sir. All the other officers carried guns in the daytime. In the daytime, Constable, but you had no right to be prowling about the village in the dead of night with a gun. It amounts to armed trespass for which you will be disciplined. Bloody hell, better leave the gun and play safe. I'm not out to shoot the snakes or enrage them like Eversham obviously did, I'm only going to try and locate them. I've discovered their lair, Superintendent, they're in the ... Ken could not for the life of him think where they might be. It didn't really matter, suffice it that he had had the guts to go out there in the dark, prove himself to himself.
