A Deadly Compulsion

by Michael Kerr

  Withdrawing a jointed metal handling rod, he opened it out to lock into what looked like a thin, yard-long shepherd’s crook. After first shaking the holdall, he unzipped it, held it out over the bottom of the bed and tipped it forward to allow the agitated and starving occupant its freedom.

  Uncoiling from the darkness, the slender taipan flicked out its boot lace-thick tongue to ‘taste’ the air, and then guided by the aluminium hook, it moved up Gerald’s body, disoriented, pausing on his stomach to survey its surroundings.

  Walking back to the doorway, Lucas switched on the light and shouted, “Wake up, Palmer, you’ve got company.”

  Gerald shot up into a sitting position, confused. The room was filled with light. He blinked and saw the man standing at the bedroom door, just a moment before his eyes refocused on the olive-brown snake in his lap. As he watched, it reared up to display its bright yellow belly and assume the characteristic ‘S’ shape with its neck.

  Fear locked Gerald’s muscles for what seemed an eternity as he tried to make sense of what should have been a nightmare, not something that could be taking place in reality.

  Panic caused him to scream out loud. He pedalled his legs to back away, but was stopped abruptly as his head thudded into the solid rosewood headboard. He cringed, and raised his hands instinctively in front of his face for protection.

  The taipan struck with lightning speed, sinking its short fangs into his bare chest, just an inch below his left nipple. Gerald grunted at the impact, but felt no immediate pain as he made a grab for the snake’s head. Disengaging from him, the darting jaws latched onto his hand, fastening into the soft tissue between his thumb and index finger.

  “Bad move, Palmer,” Lucas said, approaching the barrister, who was still fighting the reptile; an act which only incited it to bite repeatedly, its muscular body coiling, twisting and writhing over the terrified man. “You should have stayed as still as a rock.”

  Chuckling, Lucas used the handling rod to lift the snake off the whimpering barrister and gently lower it back into the holdall and close the zipper.

  Gerald began to shake, gasping for breath as he looked from the bleeding wounds on his hand, arms and chest to the stranger, who was studying him with an expression of amused interest.

  “Who are you?” he said. “What―?”

  “All in good time,” Lucas said. “And I suggest that you do your best to stay very calm and try not to move. You’ve just been bitten several times by one of the most venomous snakes on earth; oxyuranus microlepidotus, the inland taipan.”

  “I...I need help,” Gerald whimpered, reaching for the phone, only to withdraw his hand as the man shook his head in dissent. He lay back in shock and stared at the maniac who had broken into his home and placed the deadly snake on him while he slept.

  Lucas smiled. “I think you got a full dose, manhandling him like that. I reckon you could last half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, max. You might be interested to know that the venom now in your system contains a fascinating mix of toxins: neurotoxins that will cause respiratory arrest and paralysis, haemotoxins that attack the blood cells, and rhabdomyolytic agents that destroy muscle tissue. It also contains hyluronadase, which will accelerate the absorption of them in your body.”

  “Pleeease, help me!” Gerald begged, wincing as a severe headache took hold and his stomach began to churn. “What do you want, money? How much? Just tell me.”

  “No, Palmer, it’s not about cash,” Lucas said. “Your wealth can’t buy you out of this. I want your life. I came here to kill you. And before the pain gets too bad or you slip into a coma, I’ll tell you exactly why you are about to die.”

  THE SNAKE PIT - CHAPTER TWO

  Joe groaned aloud as his pager bleeped insistently, dragging him back from the edge of much needed sleep. The dream of a now long dead dog he’d had when he was a youngster drifted back into his subconscious. He blinked, and then squinted at the cherry-red display of the LCD on his alarm clock. It read 10:14 AM. Shit! He’d only been off duty for just over two hours. Being on standby sucked. This better be good he thought, rolling out of bed, slipping his boxer shorts on and padding through to the galley of the converted barge, which he had lived on alone since splitting with Clare.

  After turning on the coffeemaker, he found his mobile and phoned his DS, Jerry Lewis, who was neither an ageing comedian nor old rocker.

  “Yeah, Jer. I hope this warrants interrupting my ugly sleep.”

  “It’s a weird one, boss,” Jerry said. “We’ve got a high profile corpse that appears to have been bitten to death by a snake.”

  “Details, Jer.”

  “The decedent is Gerald Palmer; the pompous bastard who takes on all the big cases that he knows will generate maximum media coverage. A cleaner found him in bed at his drum. She called for an ambulance, and the paramedics determined that he’d been dead for hours. They decided he’d been bitten by a venomous snake or a vampire. The pathologist is at the scene now―”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That we don’t have many cobras or card-carrying vampires on our books.”

  “Could the snake still be at Palmer’s place?”

  “Search me, boss. There’s no sign of one.”

  “Okay, Jer. Get on to the zoo. I want an expert at the scene who can control the area, catch it if it’s still there, and maybe give us some information on what we might be dealing with.”

  Joe made a note of the apartment number at Carlton Court Towers, told Jerry that he would be there in thirty minutes, give or take, and rang off. He lit a cigarette, poured stale, reheated coffee into the Taz mug that his son, Ross, had bought him from a Warner Brothers’ shop the previous Christmas. Jesus, he missed the little feller. It was Ross’s seventh birthday on the first of August, and he would not miss it come hell or high water. Not being around for birthdays, anniversaries and holidays had cost him dearly. He and Clare had just emotionally drifted apart. He had blown his marriage, but was determined not to alienate his son.

  Taking a mouthful of the bitter black brew, he winced, emptied the mug and the pot’s contents down the sink and set fresh going, before going back into the bedroom and pulling on blue jeans, a sweatshirt and scuffed tan-coloured cowboy boots. He then grabbed a grey, lightweight blouson from the top of the cane wash basket, not to wear, but to have something with pockets for his wallet, phone, cigarettes and Zippo lighter.

  Several minutes later, Joe was walking across the wide path to his battered Range Rover, which was parked up against the railings of a small park, and was overhung by the leafy branches of a large chestnut tree. Climbing in, he started up and headed for Carlton Court. He drove with the window wound down, elbow cocked out, resting on the sill, and with Sinatra’s voice erupting from all four speakers. One of life’s pleasures (to Joe) was Old Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, belting out his hits. Especially if backed by The Nelson Riddle Orchestra, or as now, by Count Basie.

  Joe remembered that he had met Palmer once at the Old Bailey. The QC had been prosecuting Tony Caruso, a notorious London gangster whom Joe’s team had brought to book for the murder of a fellow lowlife. At the time, he had thought Palmer a smug prick; the best at what he did, but full of shit and self-importance. It wasn’t hard to imagine the man having a phone-book-thick list of enemies at all levels. But that he would be purposely killed by someone using a snake as the murder weapon was a big stretch of the imagination. The possible cause of death was bizarre, but not necessarily foul play. Some weirdo in one of the other apartments may have illegally kept a poisonous snake, and would most likely not have been inclined to report that the creature had escaped.

  Pulling under the porte-cochère that led to the residents’ car park, Joe flashed his warrant card to the bored looking uniform that had pulled the short straw. He entered the building and took the lift up to the twelfth, searching the corners of the claustrophobic car, half expecting to see a hooded cobra or a rattlesnake poised and ready to strike.
r />   Jerry was standing inside the apartment door talking to DS Charlotte (Charlie) Adams, the Crime Scene Coordinator. Joe smiled as he approached them, knowing that Jerry had the hots for anything that was female and sported a pulse. Charlie had been spurning his lame advances for at least a year. She was intelligent enough to know that the tenacious DS would lose interest once he had taken coup by getting inside her knickers.

  “So what have I missed?” Joe said to Jerry, nodding in greeting to the shapely CSC.

  “The techies are doing the business. And the pathologist has confirmed that the vic is dead, and has released the body,” Jerry said. “As soon as you give the word, they’ll tag and bag it.”

  “And what have you found that points to the victim having been murdered?”

  “Graphite spray,” Jerry said, grinning. “Looks like someone picked the lock to gain entry. The mechanism’ll be removed and checked out. Oh, and the safety chain was cut through.”

  Joe nodded. “Where’s the wildlife expert?”

  “On the way from Regent’s Park Zoo, boss. Should be here any minute.”

  “Okay, let’s see the body.”

  Nat Farley, the Home Office duty pathologist, was peeling off his latex gloves as they entered the bedroom.

  “Christ that stinks! What’s the verdict, Nat?” Joe said, looking past him to the naked corpse on the top of the bed.

  The tall, balding man pushed his gold-rimmed glasses back up his nose. “What you see is what you get for now, Joe,” he said. “I count six non-human bites, which I would attribute to having been made by an extremely pissed-off snake. I also have recent semen stains on the sheet, and pubic hairs that don’t match the deceased’s.”

  Joe moved closer and studied the body of Gerald Palmer. It could have almost been a statue, carved from marble. The figure’s back was arched, up off the sheet; the legs crossed and drawn up, and both hands clasped to its throat. The face reminded Joe of a zombie out of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. It was contorted, and bloody foam had dried on the blue lips, which were drawn back in a silent, frozen scream. The smell that filled the room was a result of the body fluids and solids that the corpse was respectively covered in and lying on.

  “That’s the face of abject fear,” Nat said, looking down into the bulging eyes, which although glazed, continued to hold a tortured expression of utter terror.

  “Did the bites kill him?” Joe said.

  Nat nodded. “Yes, in a sense. His heart arrested. He may have suffered a ventricular fibrillation.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That a massive amount of epinephrine could have been released into his system. There’s a real possibility that he almost literally died of fright. An autopsy and toxicological tests will no doubt give us a precise cause of death.”

  “We’ve got a couple of civvies downstairs, guv,” DC Vern Henton said, entering the room. “They’re from the zoo. Do you want them escorted up?”

  “Yeah, Vern,” Joe said, looking away from the vic. “I’ll talk to them in the living room.”

  When she’d got the early morning call, Dr. Beverley McGovern had just finished checking out an underweight, twenty-foot-long reticulated python that she suspected was infested with internal parasites. The snake’s appetite was normal, but the telltale presence of blood in its faeces indicated worms.

  “Jason. I want you to quarantine Lord Hiss, and then do a work-up on a faecal sample,” Beverley said, leaning against the doorjamb of the food preparation room, where her assistant was helping a keeper to unpack a delivery of mice, rats, day-old chicks and other freshly killed goodies that were whole prey items for the residents of the reptile house.

  “Okay, Bev. I’ll just help Shirley feed the troops, then get on it.”

  The phone next door in Beverley’s office rang. She went through and picked up. It was Gavin Stark, the new assistant director, with a request which rated as one of the most unusual that had ever been asked of her.

  “Jason,” she said, returning to the food prep room. “Shirley will have to manage without you. We may have a venomous snake on the loose in an apartment block.”

  “Awesome,” Jason said. “Do we have any other details?”

  “Uh-uh. We’re to liaise with a Detective Inspector Hope at the scene.”

  “The police?”

  “Yes. They have a snakebite victim.”

  “Dead?”

  “’Fraid so. Which rules out a garter snake or some other harmless pet that’s escaped from its vivarium and gone crawlabout?”

  When they arrived, a young plainclothes cop came down to the foyer and rode back up in the lift with Beverley and Jason to the twelfth floor.

  “Guv, these are the snake experts from the zoo,” Vern said, ushering them into the apartment.

  “Thanks, Vern. Rustle up some coffee, would you?” Joe said.

  The DC nodded and left, glad to be away from the foul-smelling apartment. He would take a slow stroll to a nearby Starbucks.

  “I’m DI Hope. It was me that had your Mr. Stark asked if he could help us out here,” Joe said, shaking hands with first the attractive brunette, and then her sidekick, who looked how Joe imagined a seventies rock group’s roadie might, with a ring in his ear, a long ponytail, and wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt and camo pants. No doubt he was a big fan of Ozzy Osbourne, though not old enough to have caught Oz at the height of his first incarnation as a force in heavy metal.

  Beverley thought that the cop held her hand in his for a few seconds longer than necessary. And she felt that his intense, blue-eyed stare was looking straight into her mind, examining its contents. She found the man a little unnerving.

  “I’m Dr. Beverley McGovern,” she said. “And this is my assistant, Jason Walker.”

  “I’m glad that you’re both here,” Joe said. “I’m out of my depth with this one. We have a body in the bedroom that has apparently been bitten several times. The pathologist reckons that a snake did it. But he’s no, er...”

  “Herpetologist, Inspector,” Beverley offered.

  “Whatever. And call me Joe, please.”

  “Okay, Joe. Do you want us to examine the wounds?” Beverley said.

  “Yes, I need expert advice. But it would be voluntary on your part. And it goes without saying that this is police business and strictly confidential.”

  “Our lips are sealed,” Beverley said.

  Jason nodded in affirmation.

  Joe and Nat stood back as the two herpetologists studied the corpse. It surprised Joe that neither appeared disturbed by the sight or smell. Their attitude was as clinical and detached as the pathologist’s had been. And as Beverley and Jason appraised the body, he found himself appraising Beverley McGovern. She was maybe thirty, around five-seven, with short, dark brown hair and large umber eyes that radiated intelligence and sensuality in equal parts. Her jean-clad bottom was – to Joe’s reckoning – perfect. And her smallish breasts strained against the front of a too-tight blouse. Jesus, I’m falling in lust, he thought as he took in her high cheekbones, full lips and pert nose. I want to know this woman.

  “These are definitely snake bites,” Beverley said, turning from the bed to address Joe, to catch him ogling her, which made her feel awkward and slightly embarrassed, but not offended. “From the visible evidence, it would appear that a short-fanged species has bitten this man. It looks as though he fought with it, which would account for the multiple bites on his hands and forearms. Most snakes are protective of their venom. They will often only inject a small dose, or even dry bite. His grappling with it will have provoked it into releasing a lethal amount.”

  “Look,” Jason said, retrieving something from the corpse’s mat of grey chest hair with a pair of tweezers.

  Beverley took what appeared to be a jeweller’s eyeglass from her shoulder bag and examined the find. It was a scale, and its colour, shape and size were indicative of the species that it came from.

  “It can’t be,” she said to Jason.
r />   “I’ll bet a month’s salary on it,” he replied.

  “Give me a clue,” Joe said. “Tell me what you’re both thinking.”

  Beverley frowned. “You could have a snake with one of the most potent venoms in the world roaming free,” she said. “We both think that a small-scaled or fierce snake bit this man.”

  “It’s also called the inland taipan,” Jason added. “It’s one seriously aggressive piece of work.”

  “Taipan! What’s that, Chinese?” Joe said.

  “No, it’s from Australia,” Jason said. “To be precise, from relatively uninhabited areas of south-western Queensland. It’s quite rare.”

  “Where would someone be able to purchase one of these...taipans?” Joe said.

  “They wouldn’t,” Beverley stated. “Pet shops don’t stock venomous snakes. A species like this would have to be imported under special license by a zoo or a research facility. But we need to be a hundred percent sure that it’s what we think it is.”

  “How do you imagine it could have turned up here?” Joe said.

  Both Beverley and Jason shook their heads. “God knows,” Beverley said. “Maybe someone in the building was keeping it illegally. It could have escaped and found its way into the air-conditioning ducts, or into a wall space.”

  “That’s all we need. What will it do?” Joe asked.

  “Spend most of its time in hiding,” Jason said. “All snakes are cold-blooded and carnivorous. It will need warmth, and will hunt mice and rats.”

  “We suspect that the apartment was broken into,” Joe said. “So I think that if there was an intruder, he brought it with him.”

  “You believe that someone used a venomous snake as a lethal weapon?” Beverley said.

  Joe shrugged. “Maybe. And I’d like to believe that the snake was taken back where it came from. The worst case scenario is that it’s still on the loose.”

  Beverley nodded in agreement. “We’ll search the place, just in case it’s having forty winks down the back of a settee or under the bed.”