Simon Ian Childer

by Tendrils (epub)

  Thomas was intrigued. ‘And where is this mysterious job, or is that a secret too?’

  Mitchell handed him a piece of paper. ‘You're to liaise with a Chief Inspector Langford at this address. He’s there now so you’d better get moving.’

  He read the address. It was in Harpenden, which was only a few miles north of St Albans, where he lived. That meant he could drop in on Anne on the way back and have lunch with her. Assuming, of course, that the job wasn’t going to be a long one. ‘Are you sure you can’t tell me a bit more about all this?’ he asked Mitchell.

  Mitchell grimaced, as if he was smelling something bad. ‘Like I said, I really think it would be better if you saw for yourself.’

  In Harpenden he had to ask directions twice before he found his way to the address on the paper. It turned out to be a small, detached house on the northern outskirts, of the town. As he pulled up behind a parked police car he realized the area looked familiar and remembered that several years ago he and Anne had considered buying a house right nearby. That was when she was pregnant and they were looking for a bigger house with a large garden. Then had come the miscarriage and the news she’d never be able to have any children. That’s when she’d started writing the books . . .

  A constable met him at the door and took him through the house and into the back garden. There he met Langford, a big man in his late forties. There were two

  more uniformed officers there in the garden as well as a thin, sallow-faced man in plain clothes who had ‘forensic’ written across his forehead in invisible ink. There was ;ilso an old woman at the far end of the garden, who Thomas presumed to be the owner of the house. She was standing with her back to them, head bent forward, leaning on a garden rake. She seemed to be studiously ignoring all these intruders in her garden . . .

  ‘Glad you could get here so quickly, doctor,’ said the C hief Inspector after he’d introduced himself. ‘We’ve got a bit of a poser on our hands. I’m flummoxed and I don’t mind admitting it.’

  The one who Thomas had pegged as forensic gave a disdainful sniff and said sharply, it’s a hoax. It has to be.’

  Thomas was by now feeling completely mystified. He had seen nothing out of the ordinary in the house and as he looked around the garden he could see no sign of anything being wrong there either. No corpses, no blood, no evidence of general mayhem. What was all the fuss about?

  The feeling of mystification increased as the Chief Inspector led him across the garden towards the old lady who, Thomas noticed, hadn’t moved once since he’d been watching her. Nor did she turn as he and the Inspector, followed by the forensic man, approached. Was she deaf, Thomas wondered?

  When the woman remained completely still even when Langford stood close beside her Thomas realized that something was seriously wrong. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ he asked as he walked round in front of her.

  ‘She’s dead,’ said the Chief Inspector matter-of-factly.

  Thomas looked at him in astonishment, then bent down so that he could see the woman’s face. Her eyes were half-closed as if she was dropping off to sleep - her mouth hung open in a way that suggested she was about to call out. Her cheeks were a healthy pink and for a woman he judged to be around 70 years of age she appeared to be in good condition. But she definitely wasn’t breathing . . .

  And yet she continued to stand there, leaning on the garden rake which she was gripping firmly with both hands. Had she had a heart attack and died but by some fluke of balance remained standing upright? A bizarre event, true, but hardly one that justified his presence . . .

  Tentatively, he touched her on the shoulder - and got the shock of his life.

  Despite the lightness of his touch the woman toppled over sideways, but slowly - ever so slowly - as if she weighed nothing at all. And she stayed in the same rigid posture as she fell, still gripping the rake. And when she landed on the lawn she bounced.

  Thomas stared down at her and then at Langford and the forensic man. Langford gave an apologetic shrug and said, ‘Same thing happened to me. We stood her up again so that you could see how we found her.’

  The forensic man muttered, ‘It’s a hoax.’

  Thomas knelt down beside the woman and touched her again. Her whole body rocked back and forth. It was like handling a papier-mache dummy. She couldn’t have weighed more than a few pounds.

  Hs tapped the bare skin of her forearm with a fingernail and got another shock. Her skin was rigid as if it had been petrified. ‘She’s nothing but an empty shell,’, he said hoarsely. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping you’ll tell us,’ said the Chief Inspector.

  4

  After Doctor Thomas had hung up on her, Robin Carey had made a face at the phone and muttered, ‘Well, poot to you too, mate.’

  She hung up and then started to chew reflectively on the end of her biro. She was an attractive woman in her mid-twenties with frizzy black hair, eyes a startling shade of blue and a long, slim and vaguely androgynous body.

  Damn him, she thought. How dare he accuse her of being a journalistic vulture! She was always very considerate of the feelings of the people she interviewed if they had been involved in some kind of personal tragedy but, for heaven’s sake, the Thomas woman had apparently come through completely unscathed. So why was her husband being so touchy?

  She leaned back in her chair and looked around. The newsroom was humming with noisy activity. Typewriters, dictaphones, teleprinters, telephones, conversations and arguments all added together to make a reassuringly constant background to the job she loved. And it was going to take more than one sour, ill-mannered doctor to stop her doing it.

  Where to now? She looked down the short list of names and ran a blue line through Anne Thomas’s. Pity about her. Getting some quotes from her would have really helped the piece. Not only was Anne Thomas a minor celebrity because of her children’s books but she also seemed to be the unofficial spokesman for the protesters.

  She looked at the next name down. Yates. The geologist. She tried to call him earlier but his office said he was incommunicado for the time being. She’d then tried to call him at home but discovered he’d moved house only a month ago and his new number wasn’t listed.

  She picked up the internal phone and pressed three buttons. ‘Larry? Robin. You know that geologist you spoke to on Monday evening? Yates? Well, I’m doing a general follow-up and I want to talk to him. Have you got his new home number?’

  Larry McCullough, sitting on the far side of the large room, turned and waved acknowledgement to her across the intervening chaos. ‘Yeah, I think so,’ he told her over the phone. ‘Just let me check my notebook . . .’

  Robin watched him flipping through the pages of his little black book, then heard him say, ‘You’d better get a move on with your story, kid. I hear the powers that be are thinking of slapping a D-Notice on the whole shebang.’

  ‘Oh no!’ she cried, ‘Where’d you hear that?’

  ‘From a contact of mine in the Department of the Environment. Seems the government are not happy that the story refuses to die a natural death. The rumours are continuing to fly around despite the official version of events they put out.’

  ‘But if they impose a news clampdown the rumours will only increase!’

  ‘Of course. But when do these people ever think logically? And you know what this government is like about secrecy. They’d put a D-Notice on the Royal Honours List if they could . . .’ it makes you even more suspicious about the official story, doesn’t it?’

  it do dat, Miz Bernstein. It sure do dat ... ah, here it is . . .’ He gave her Yates’s new number. Then, ‘Good luck, kid. Let me know if you dig up anything interesting.’ ‘I will,’ she told him. ‘Thanks.’ She hung up, got an outside line and dialled Yates’s number. The phone rang

  for a long time before it was picked up at the other end. She heard a vaguely anxious voice say, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Doctor Yates? Doctor Gordon Yates?’r />
  Yes. Speaking. Who’s that?’ The note of anxiety in his voice had increased.

  She identified herself and gave the name of her paper. Immediately he said, ‘No, sorry. I can’t say anything to you. I’ve been told not to talk to the media anymore.’ ‘Who told you?’ she asked quickly.

  ‘Officials from NIREX. And the Department of the Environment. Made me sign the Official Secrets Act. I told them I’d already signed it before when my company went under contract to NIREX but they insisted I sign it again. Madness. The bureaucratic mind never ceases to amaze me . . .’

  This comment encouraged Robin. She pressed on carefully. ‘I don’t want you to give away any Official Secrets, Doctor,’ she told him. i’d just like your help in dispelling some of the more way-out rumours concerning the accident on Monday. And I promise I won’t reveal my source. Your name won’t be mentioned.’

  There was a pause. Then Yates asked warily, ‘What rumours?’

  ‘Well, like the one that the Daily Mirror splashed all over its front page yesterday - that the explosion was caused by radioactive waste.’

  ‘Utter nonsense!’ he snorted. ‘There was no radioactive waste at the site! We were just drilling a test hole, for Christ's sake! Even if the site had been found suitable it would have been years before any actual waste was brought to the area.’

  ‘That’s what NIREX has said,’ agreed Robin. ‘But if the site hasn’t been contaminated why has the government sealed it off?’

  ‘The reason has nothing to do with radioactive waste, believe me, Miss Carey.’

  ‘Can you tell me what it has to do with then?’

  There was silence at the other end. She tried another tack. ‘Okay, can you at least tell me how close the official story is to the truth? Did you really hit a pocket of inflammable gas?’

  ‘All I can say is that the tragedy was caused by some sort of natural phenomenon.’

  ‘But not gas?’

  ‘Sorry. That’s all I’m willing to say.’

  She decided not to press him further at this point so again she changed tack with her line of questioning. ‘You were very lucky to escape completely unharmed when so many other people on the scene were either killed or severely burnt. Weren’t you near the rig when the, er, “accident” occurred?’

  ‘No. I was in one of the huts analysing the . . .’ He paused.

  ‘The what?’ she asked quickly.

  There was such a long silence that Robin was beginning to think Yates had simply walked away from the phone. Then, to her relief, she heard him say, ‘Oh, what the hell, I don’t see what harm it would do to tell you.’

  She felt a familiar tingle of excitement - the feeling she always got when things started to go her way on a story. The excitement of the chase . . .

  ‘I was analysing material that had been removed from a sampling bit shortly before the . . . the explosion,’ he told her.

  ‘What sort of material?’ she asked, her pulse quickening.

  ‘It was a tight wad of yellow fibrous material. I’d only just started to examine it under the microscope when, well, it happened . . . All I know is that it seemed to be made up of natural polymers . . .’

  ‘Hang on, you’ve lost me. Natural what?’

  ‘Polymers. Long chains of molecules, like you get in hair, wool, silk and so on.’

  She thought hard for a couple of moments. ‘Just a sec. Are you saying the stuff came from an animalT it would appear so.’

  ‘But how far down did you find it?’

  ‘Almost 500 feet.’

  ‘But surely it’s impossible for the remains of an animal to be buried that deep underground,’ she said.

  ‘Not really. Not if it’s a very old fossil. But in that case I can’t understand how these fibres could have survived so long.’

  She nodded thoughtfully and asked, ‘So what’s the connection between this stuff and the accident?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I think there has to be some connection - otherwise it’s a hell of a coincidence.’ ‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘What happened to the sample? Do you still have any of it?’

  ‘No. It was all taken away by the DoE boys.’

  ‘Have you heard if they’ve managed to identify it?’

  ‘No. I tried to make some enquiries and got nowhere.’ ‘What’s your personal opinion about the stuff?’ i don’t have one. It’s a complete mystery to me. I’ve never come across anything like it before. And no one else has either, believe me. Since Monday I’ve been scouring the pages of every textbook I can get my hands on but I can’t find a likely explanation for it - or for what happened afterwards . . .’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to change your mind about giving me the whole story . . .?’

  ‘No, Miss Carey. I think I’ve told you too much already. Just remember you promised my name would be kept out of it.’

  it will be, don’t worry.’

  He gave a humourless laugh. ‘Don’t worry? Miss Carey, if you’d seen what I saw on Monday you’d be doing nothing but worry. Like me, now . . .’ Then, without warning, he hung up.

  Robin put her phone down slowly, leaned back, clapped her hands together and shouted, ‘Whoopeee!’

  No one paid any attention.

  It was while Thomas was still carrying out his initial examination of the old woman’s body in the garden that another police officer arrived and engaged Chief Inspector Langford in urgent conversation. Thomas looked up as Langford came over. He could tell by the expression on his face that he’d received bad news. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Got some more cases of the same thing,’ he told Thomas grimly. ‘A farmer with a small dairy herd found most of his animals the same way as the old lady here. Appreciate it if you could take a look at them as well when you’re finished with her . . .’

  Thomas got to his feet. ‘Nothing more I can do with her until I can get her back to my lab.’ He turned to the surly forensic scientist, whose name was Pickersgill. ‘I presume you have no objecting to her being sent to CPH? I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes.’

  The scientist shrugged. ‘Do whatever you want. Rather you wasting your time with this nonsense than me.’ Thomas regarded him curiously. ‘You still think it’s some kind of elaborate hoax?’

  ‘What else could it be?’

  ‘Well, if it is it's a very impressive one.’ He gestured at the old woman’s body, which was now naked, i’d like to know how someone can remove every internal organ from a body without making a single incision.’ The only mark he’d found on her was a scab the size of a twopence piece on her right ankle.

  i don’t think it’s a real body,’ said Pickersgill. it’s a clever dummy made from a body mould. When you analyse it I’ll bet you find that “skin” is actually plastic.’

  ‘I sincerely hope so,’ said Thomas, staring at the body. Then he sighed and said to Langford, ‘Let’s go look at those cows . . .’

  It was an uncanny sight. From a distance it looked like a typically idyllic country scene - a small group of dappled cows in a lush, tree-lined field - it was only as you got closer that you began to realize that something was very wrong.

  Most of the cows were sitting down but two of them were standing, their heads lowered as if grazing. But they weren’t grazing. They were perfectly still.

  As Thomas stood there in the field looking around at the motionless cattle he felt an icy sensation move along the skin covering his spine.

  He walked over to the nearest cow and touched it. It rocked back and forth. Like the old woman it was nothing but a brittle shell.

  A young police constable looked at Thomas hopefully. ‘What happened to them, sir?’ he asked.

  Thomas smiled at him. He obviously had a touching, if naive, faith in the infallibility of scientists. ‘I wish I knew, constable. I really do,’ he told him.

  He walked over to where Pickersgill was standing with his shoulders hunched and an expression of distaste on his face. It was as if he considered the surround
ing scene as a personal attack on himself. ‘Well, doctor, my admiration for your hoaxers grows by leaps and bounds. They crept up on this herd of cows in the night, made moulds of their bodies, created these marvellously lifelike replicas from them and switched them for the real cows. Right?’

  Pickersgill glared at him but said nothing.

  Billy pointed his toy gun at his mother and cried, ‘Pow! Pow! Pow! You’re dead, Mummy!’

  He waited lor ;i few moments then lowered the gun with a sigh. She was slill playing her funny game. She’d been playing it .ill morning and he was getting very tired of it. He was also getting very hungry. He couldn’t yet work out whal (he big and the little hand meant on the clock but he knew it was long past the time when his mother usually gave him breakfast.

  Yet she hadn’t even set the table. Instead she just stood there at the sink looking down into the basin.

  She wouldn’t move nor would she talk to him. She’d been playing this game since he’d got -up. Normally the games she played with him made Billy laugh and though he’d laughed a bit at first this morning he didn’t think this game anywhere near as funny as her other ones.

  ‘Mummy, I’m hungry!’ he told her yet again and waited for an answer. But still his mother refused to speak.

  He went over to her and tugged on the side of her skirt but she ignored him. She wouldn’t even look at him.

  Sulkily he reached higher and gave the sleeve of her cardigan a sharp pull.

  And got a fright as his mother toppled over and began to fall . . .

  He jumped back in alarm and his mother’s body just missed him. She made a cracking sound as she hit the floor and he saw her head break into little pieces, just like the salad bowl he once dropped.

  ‘Mum?’ he whispered, just a little frightened. She would probably be angry with him because he’d broken her. But broken things could be mended. He knew that. With glue . . .