“Did you?” Ruth shouted.
“I don’t–”
“Help him!”
“Mr Beale will be here in a minute,” Marion said.
“For God’s sake–!” Ruth tore at Howard.
He held her for a moment before she flung herself off. She ran to Philip’s door and dragged at the handle. Every fibre in Howard’s body was protesting. He had coped in the sitting-room. He could not be expected to–
“The key!” Ruth yelled.
It was on the telephone table.
“Give it to me,” Marion said. “I’ve had experience with snakes.”
Howard reached for the key. He held it in his hand. It was unfair. Dreadfully unfair. Ruth grabbed it and began fumbling at the lock. Marion tried to hold her but Ruth shook her off. Howard finally moved. He ran back into the sitting-room, scooped up the long poker and the largest cushion.
“What the hell are you doing?” Bulloch said, coming back up the stairs.
Howard did not hear. He pushed Ruth aside and opened the door very slowly, inching it back. When he got his head through he said, “Listen, Phil, I’m going to try and distract its attention.” His voice was high-pitched. “I’m hoping it will come down off the bed. If it moves towards me, get your head, arms, everything under the blankets.”
The snake had turned towards the new figure. Howard closed the door behind him. He was so frightened now that he was numb. The snake lifted its head higher. Howard held the poker in his right hand and tried to cover himself with as much of the pillow as he could. He took another step. The snake swayed, but did not seem willing to leave the bed. Instead it moved slightly towards the boy.
The alarm went off. In the room it sounded like a million whirring pieces of metal. The little brass tongue between the bells moved backwards and forwards, vibrating so quickly that the human ear could not take in anything but a continuous noise. The vibrations entered the snake’s brain. It reared, a gigantic moving shadow on the wall. Then it struck. It struck at the alarm-clock, sending it crashing down from the bedside table on to the floor. The clock continued its vibrations. The snake struck again from the bed, shooting forward, smashing the glass, stunning herself on the whirring mechanism for a brief second. That was enough. Howard brought the poker down on the long black body. He broke the mamba’s spinal column within a foot or two of her head, paralysing the whole of the back section. She had nothing now to grip with, no muscles left to launch her body. Only the front two feet of her body had strength and she raised herself defiantly as Howard hit again. And again. And again . . . again . . . again. He hit and hit until there was nothing left but a long strip of orange pulp where once the head and throat had been and he was still striking with the poker, smashing down wildly, when Bulloch came in and took his arm.
* * *
Saturday 9.14 a.m.
Rich stood on the pavement and watched the sound engineers from the BBC and ITN trucks begin to pull in the cables and pack up. The TV interviews were over, the reporters had gone, the cars had gone, the police notices had been taken away, the barriers removed. Everything was over. The night was over and the morning was a replica of the previous one, grey, cold, misty. He turned and looked at the house. The front door was closed, the windows were closed. It was shut up. Locked. There was nothing to tell of the horrors it had been host to.
Rich was so tired he could hardly stand. He walked slowly to the car and got in. He put his head on the back of the seat and closed his eyes. Just ten minutes and he’d feel better. But he did not sleep. His mind was filled with racing images: he saw again the orange stripe on the carpet in the boy’s room that had once been a venomous snake; he saw Mrs Blanchet, face taut like a skull, eyes far back in her head, carrying her child to the ambulance; he saw the shell of the man called Howard being helped down the stairs by Bulloch and Glaister, his feet hardly touching the ground as they took him to a second ambulance; he saw Dr Stowe, with tears wet on her cheeks, watch as the ambulance slowly turned from the cul-de-sac and made off into the traffic; he saw Bulloch in front of the TV cameras, big, ebullient, aggressive once more, making jokes with the reporters. He saw Mr Beale being interviewed about the deadliness of the snake and how such a thing could have happened. And above all he saw the dirty handkerchief and the etiolated horror it had held. The night unrolled in hindsight, like a black and white movie, made grimmer by chiaroscuro.
He thought of Bulloch. He turned in his seat and looked through the rear window of the car. The sound trucks were moving away. Bulloch stood at the end of the street giving one last interview. He must have been interviewed by every TV reporter, every national daily crime man, every agency, every provincial journalist. It wasn’t that Bulloch got much satisfaction from the interviews, Rich knew he had never sought the Press, it was just that he seemed to feel so good. He had erased any doubts, forgotten anything that Rich had said.
As Rich watched him the reporter finished the interview, got into his car and drove off. Now everyone had gone and Bulloch was left on the pavement. And suddenly Rich saw a different man from the one he had watched over the past hour. Bulloch looked right and left. He was alone. For a few moments he seemed lost. Then he saw Rich in the car and came striding towards it. He dug his hand into his pocket and tossed a sheet of paper on to Rich’s lap as he got in.
It was a dossier on Jacmel from Interpol. Rich flicked his eyes down the list of political murders, bombing and robberies.
“Glad I didn’t know that,” Bulloch said. “Sometimes it’s best not to know too much about the dirt. But I’d have done him anyway.”
Still Bulloch v. The Dirt, Rich thought. Still the one-man show. The game he had to win.
“Coming for a drink?”
There was nothing Rich wanted less than a drink. He wanted coffee. Bacon and eggs. A warm bed. Sleep. Nor did he want to spend another minute in Bulloch’s company.
But underneath the seemingly casual question he knew an effort had been made. Bulloch did not forget, no one forgot such things. And so his effort had been a great one.
“My place first until the pubs open,” Bulloch said, starting the car. “Right?”
“Right,” Rich said, and they headed out into the London traffic and the long, long day ahead.
Venom Page 25