Breeding Ground, page 18
He glanced back into the foyer at the slugs and did not hesitate any longer.
He jumped.
The impact broke both his ankles, the sound of snapping bone audible in the nearly-deserted street, and Pagett rolled over, his face a mask of pain. In a matter of seconds his men were with him, carrying him back to the waiting Land Rover, away from the hotel.
Away from the slugs.
Thirty-two
As they were escorted from the police car to the main entrance of New Scotland Yard, Finch wondered if this was what a criminal felt like as he was being taken into custody. Flanked on both sides by uniformed men, the doctor almost felt like pulling a blanket over his head. Had the circumstances been different he might well have found the situation amusing. As it was, he and Lisa walked briskly into the building and followed one of the uniformed men to a lift. It carried them to the fifth floor, where they all stepped out into a long corridor which looked somewhat familiar to Finch.
During the journey the doctor had attempted to discover what was going on but the two policemen seemed to know little more than Finch himself. Either that or they’d been instructed not to divulge any information.
The trio stopped outside a door and the constable knocked, leaving them alone as it was opened.
George Bennett smiled at Finch and beckoned him inside, casting a puzzled glance at Lisa. The doctor made swift introductions, explaining the somewhat tenuous reasons for Lisa’s presence.
‘I’m sorry to hear about your mother,’ said Bennett when the doctor had finished.
Lisa smiled thinly at him and sat down in the proffered chair.
Finch nodded greetings to the other men present. To Sir James Hughes. To DI Grogan and a military man he hadn’t seen before.
Dressed in combat fatigues, the soldier was in his thirties, perhaps a year or two older than Finch. On the belt round his waist there was a holster and the doctor could see the butt of an automatic pistol protruding from it. The man had bright blond hair which glinted beneath the fluorescents. When he moved, Finch saw that he dragged his left leg slightly.
The soldier looked strangely incongruous alongside the other occupants of the room, Finch thought. And a little menacing too.
Captain Sean Maconnell returned Finch’s nod of greeting, reserving an approving glance for Lisa. Maconnell had been an officer in the Coldstream Guards for four years, having risen from the ranks since first joining back in 1966. He came from a family which was anything but steeped in military tradition. His father had spent most of his National Service time in the glass house, and his grandfather had been shot in 1916 as a conscientious objector. Maconnell loved the army, though, and wondered now how he would survive without it. Even after an IRA sniper’s bullet had shattered his left hip six years ago, during a raid on an arms cache in the Falls Road, he had pulled through against all odds. The prospect of getting back into uniform had driven him on. For a time, doctors had thought that the Armalite bullet had succeeded in condemning him to crutches for the rest of his life. Maconnell had refused to accept their prognosis, and after months of pain and numerous operations he had managed to walk once more, albeit with a limp. But he didn’t complain and only on odd occasions did it still cause him pain.
s‘Before we start,’ Finch said. ‘Could someone tell me what’s going on? Why was I called?’
He was looking at Bennett but he didn’t care who answered the question.
‘The affected area has been cleared,’ Hughes answered, scratching the scar on his chin. ‘We must destroy the slugs now, before they have a chance to move on.’
‘But we still don’t know how to destroy them,’ Finch said.
‘We’re sticking with the idea of cyanide,’ Bennett informed him.
‘But it can’t be done because of the risk of poisoning,’ said Finch, aghast.
Bennett ignored the doctor’s protestations.
‘As long as the slugs are spread through the tunnels that idea could never succeed. No matter how much cyanide we pumped down into the sewers we couldn’t be sure of killing them all,’ Finch added.
‘If they could be gathered in one place it might just work,’ Bennett said, quietly.
‘There must be miles of tunnels under that area,’ the doctor exclaimed. ‘It’s impossible.’
‘Nothing is impossible,’ countered Maconnell, catching Finch’s gaze and holding it.
‘What we propose to do is to drive the slugs back along the tunnels,’ said the officer. ‘The sewers would be sealed off one by one until all these bloody creatures were forced into one spot. Then the cyanide could be released.’
‘How do you expect to “drive” them?’ Finch asked.
‘I’ll send some engineers down there with flame throwers. Most animals retreat from fire, don’t they?’
‘You can’t use flame throwers,’ Hughes said. ‘You’d blow up the entire system. We have to find another way.’ Bennett stroked his chin thoughtfully.
‘Why drive them?’ he said. ‘Why not use a lure?’
The others looked at him, their expressions ranging from surprise to bewilderment.
‘Let the slugs follow something instead. Lead them to the place where they’re to be destroyed, don’t drive them.’
‘And what do we lead them with?’ Grogan asked, taking another drag on his cigarette.
‘They feed on human flesh, right?’ the pathologist said, his tone calm and measured. ‘Give them what they want.’
‘My God, you’re not serious,’ Grogan said, gaping in astonishment. ‘You want to sacrifice the lives of innocent men just so they can act as fucking bait?’
‘What’s a dozen or so lives compared to the number it could save?’ Bennett challenged.
‘There’s no guarantee it would work anyway,’ the DI persisted.
‘I think there is,’ the pathologist told him. ‘The secretion left by the leading slugs, the slime trails, seems to act as a stimulant for the others. Much the same as pheromones works for ants. The stronger the secretion, the more likely the slugs are to follow it.’ He paused. ‘Men injected with that secretion would automatically attract the slugs.’
‘But if they were injected, they’d die of the disease anyway,’ Finch said.
‘Not for at least six hours,’ the pathologist countered. ‘Six hours to clear the tunnels, that’s all the time we’d need.’ ‘That’s murder,’ said Grogan. ‘You’re talking about murdering men in cold blood.’
‘I’m talking about saving the rest of this city, millions for Christ’s sake,’ Bennett snapped. ‘It’s the only way.’ He studied the faces of the others in the room. ‘Don’t look at me passing moral judgements, you all know I’m right.’
Commissioner Hughes turned and looked at the map of the sewer tunnels.
‘How would we go about it?’ he said, quietly, almost conspiratorially.
‘Sir, you can’t be serious,’ Grogan interrupted.
The commissioner turned on him, eyes blazing.
‘What choice do we have?’ he snapped. ‘I don’t like this any more than you. I wish there was another way but there isn’t.’
The two men regarded each other coldly for a moment then Grogan shook his head resignedly.
‘The men would be put into the sewer tunnels ahead of the slugs,’ Bennett said. ‘They’d move in front of the hordes until they converged at a place where the cyanide could be released.’
‘That gives them a great choice,’ Grogan snapped. ‘They either get eaten alive, poisoned or die of this fucking disease.’
‘How would we seal the tunnels?’ Maconnell wanted to know.
‘Groups of your men could follow the slugs, at a safe distance. The tunnels could be brought down when the signal was given. The men following wouldn’t be in danger as long as they kept well back. The slugs would be too intent on following the infected men.’
‘So first we pinpoint where the slugs are concentrated,’ Hughes said, studying the map again. He lowered his voice slightly. ‘God, there must be so many of them.’
‘That shouldn’t be too difficult,’ Maconnell said. ‘Find the location of their last victims and they should be in the vicinity.’
‘Where are you going to obtain the secretion in order to inject the men?’ Finch wanted to know.
‘From the slugs that hatched from that young boy’s body,’ the pathologist told him.
‘What do we tell the men who are infected?’ Grogan asked. ‘That they’re going to be used as food for slugs? That if the slugs don’t get them they’re going to die anyway?’
‘We tell them nothing,’ Hughes said before the pathologist could answer. He sighed. ‘If any of them do make it out of the tunnels, Bennett, what happens to them then? We can’t just sit around and watch them die.’
Bennett swallowed hard, then shrugged. When he spoke, his voice was low.
‘They’ll have to be killed. Shot, if the disease is too far advanced by the time they emerge.’
‘Like rabid dogs, eh?’ grunted Grogan.
An uneasy silence settled, almost as if the enormity of the proposed solution had robbed the room’s occupants of the ability to speak.
Grogan lit another cigarette. Bennett sat with his hands folded on his lap, head lowered slightly.
Finch got up, went over to the map of the sewers and studied it carefully.
‘The effluent will be recycled into drinking water,’ he murmured. ‘Remember what the Water Board men told us? We can’t use cyanide to kill the slugs.’
‘But the area where they’ll be destroyed will be sealed off,’ Maconnell protested.
‘The slugs might not be able to get out but, short of building walls, there’s no way we’re going to be able to stop that poison reaching these other tunnels.’ He ran his finger over the diagram. ‘And, eventually, the Thames.’
‘It’s the only solution we have,’ Hughes told him. ‘We can’t burn them, we can’t blow them up. Poison is the only alternative.’
Finch was looking at the diagram again, narrowing his eyes as he studied several other lines, some drawn in blue, which ran parallel with the sewer tunnels.
‘What are these?’ he asked, indicating the lines.
‘They’re electricity cables,’ Grogan told him.
Finch turned and looked at the others in the room, a slight smile on his face.
‘That’s how we destroy them,’ he said. ‘Electrocute them.’
Bennett too found that he could smile. He nodded admiringly.
‘Would it work?’ Hughes wanted to know.
‘I don’t see why not,’ Bennett told him. ‘A large enough current applied for long enough ought to kill them and there’s no better conductor than water.’
‘What sort of voltage do those cables carry?’ Maconnell asked.
‘We don’t need to use those,’ Hughes said. ‘We can set up portable generators. When the slugs have been drawn into position we’ll fry them.’ He chuckled.
Maconnell smiled broadly.
For the first time, Lisa spoke.
‘There’s one thing you haven’t decided,’ she said, quietly. ‘Who’s going to be the bait? Which men go into the sewers?’
Thirty-three
At 10.28 that morning, men of the Royal Engineers succeeded in locating the first mass of slugs. They were between Dean Street and Shaftesbury Avenue in a mid-level tunnel.
Five minutes later a second group were discovered in a storm relief sewer under Brewer Street.
A wider sweep of the area revealed the third, and largest, concentration of the creatures beneath Sherwood Street.
They appeared to be stationary, but for how long no one dared guess.
The officers in charge of each detachment of engineers relayed the information to Maconnell, who was still at New Scotland Yard, then to units of police who were also in the vicinity of Piccadilly.
Bennett lifted the last slug from the jar and deposited it in a specimen tray normally reserved for human organs. The pathologist watched the writhing black monstrosities for a moment with a mixture of fear and loathing. Some were as much as five inches long, and as thick as his index finger. He carried the tray across the lab and set it down carefully on the other workbench, his eyes never leaving the slugs, which were sliding up the sides. He knocked one back with the sharp end of a scalpel, severing one of its eye-stalks as he did. Then, opening a cupboard above him, the pathologist took out a bottle of sulphuric acid and unscrewed the stopper. He poured the lethal liquid over the slugs, watching almost gleefully as the corrosive fluid ate into their soft, slimy bodies. A choking stench rose to fill his nostrils but he continued to gaze at the creatures. The tray began to fill up with a sickly yellow mixture of pus and slime as the last of the slugs simply dissolved. Bennett emptied the glutinous contents down the sink then ran the hot tap, washing away the last vestiges of corruption. He dropped the tray in a plastic bag and sealed it, knowing that he must dispose of it as soon as possible, then he returned to the jar and peered in.
There was a thick, reeking coagulation of mucus at least two inches deep inside it.
The pathologist took the first of three syringes laid out close to him and drew off some of the slime. He then filled the rest of the receptacle with saline solution so that the fluid would flow more easily in the bloodstreams of the men to be injected.
He paused for a moment, sighing.
The plan to infect men with the disease had been his idea. An honest attempt to solve what was becoming an increasingly insoluble problem. But as he looked at the syringe and its deadly contents, he realised just how close to the truth Grogan had been.
Bennett was condemning at least a dozen men to the most agonising and horrific death imaginable.
He tried to balance that view against his own feeling that the sacrifice was necessary in order to save many more lives, but still that nagging doubt continued to surface in his mind.
Murderer.
The word flashed brightly in his mind’s eye like a neon sign.
Think how many would be saved, though?
But the men who are going to die. They have families.
It’s a small sacrifice.
Will their wives, girlfriends, children and parents agree with you?
Bennett stood still for a moment, resting his arms on the worktop, trying to clear his mind, attempting to stop the endless self-accusations.
This was the only way, he told himself, filling another syringe.
As he did so, he noticed that his hands were shaking slightly.
At 10.43 six large Scania lorries arrived in Piccadilly Circus. They parked in a rough semi-circle around the Eros monument.
Detective Inspector Ray Grogan watched as troops and police opened the back doors of the lorries.
Inside each one was a kVA 1000 portable generator, fifteen feet long and as tall as a man. The machines were given a hasty check-over by the civilian engineers who maintained them.
As Grogan looked on, cables were run from the generators to the open manholes and were lowered into the gloom below until they entered the stinking water. The roar of the Scania engines was replaced by a loud hum as the machines were switched on.
They were ready.
Cables as thick as a man’s arm criss-crossed Piccadilly, lying there like slumbering snakes, waiting for the power to be pumped through them.
Grogan drew another cigarette out of his rapidly dwindling packet and looked at his watch.
It was 11.04.
At 11.18 one hundred men of the First Battalion, Coldstream Guards, drew lots to decide who would descend into the sewers. They were not told the purpose of the selection. One hundred pieces of paper, twelve of them marked with an ‘X’, had been folded and placed in a cardboard box.
It took less than five minutes for the dozen marked scraps to be retrieved.
The men holding them were ordered out into a waiting truck, and their companions sent back to their positions around Piccadilly.
The twelve men were driven to New Scotland Yard in the truck, escorted down to the pathology lab and told to wait outside.
‘I wish somebody would tell us what the bleeding hell’s going on,’ said Private Terry Banks, shifting his feet nervously. He scratched his chubby face and looked around at his companions.
‘No doubt we just “volunteered” for something,’ Chas Granger told him.
‘What kind of thing?’ Banks insisted.
‘If we knew that we wouldn’t be standing around here with our thumbs up our arses wondering, would we?’ chided Pat Morrissey.
‘Shut it, will you,’ snapped Simon Johnson. ‘Let’s see what the fucking hell they want before we start getting uptight about it.’ As he was a corporal, Johnson’s voice carried some authority and the men duly stopped talking.
‘I wish I’d got a fag,’ murmured Banks, chewing the nail of his index finger.
An acid glance from Johnson silenced him.
‘Come on, corp,’ said Morrissey. ‘What do you reckon’s going on? Why do they want us?’
‘They don’t necessarily want us,’ Johnson said. ‘We just happen to be the silly fuckers who drew the wrong lots.’
The men suddenly drew themselves to attention as the door of the lab was opened and they saw Captain Maconnell standing there.
‘Stand easy,’ he said.
The men did, but they didn’t relax.
‘Come inside one at a time,’ Maconnell said and ushered Granger forward, closing the door behind him.
Banks tried to move to a position further down the line but Johnson shook his head.
‘You’re next, Banks,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t want to miss the surprise would you?’
The private muttered something under his breath but his audible murmurings were silenced when the lab door opened again. Granger did not emerge but Banks was ordered inside.
As he entered the room he saw his companion sitting on the far side of the lab.
‘Roll up your right sleeve,’ said Bennett brusquely, careful to avoid looking at Banks too closely, especially at his eyes. These men he was sending to their deaths must, for him, remain faceless. He brandished the hypodermic before him, gripped Banks’ wrist and then ran the needle into the pulsing fat vein in the crook of his arm, pressing down carefully on the plunger, forcing 10ml of the lethal fluid into the soldier’s bloodstream. Banks winced until the needle was pulled free. Bennett pushed a swab into his free hand and told him to press it against the tiny puncture until it stopped bleeding.
He jumped.
The impact broke both his ankles, the sound of snapping bone audible in the nearly-deserted street, and Pagett rolled over, his face a mask of pain. In a matter of seconds his men were with him, carrying him back to the waiting Land Rover, away from the hotel.
Away from the slugs.
Thirty-two
As they were escorted from the police car to the main entrance of New Scotland Yard, Finch wondered if this was what a criminal felt like as he was being taken into custody. Flanked on both sides by uniformed men, the doctor almost felt like pulling a blanket over his head. Had the circumstances been different he might well have found the situation amusing. As it was, he and Lisa walked briskly into the building and followed one of the uniformed men to a lift. It carried them to the fifth floor, where they all stepped out into a long corridor which looked somewhat familiar to Finch.
During the journey the doctor had attempted to discover what was going on but the two policemen seemed to know little more than Finch himself. Either that or they’d been instructed not to divulge any information.
The trio stopped outside a door and the constable knocked, leaving them alone as it was opened.
George Bennett smiled at Finch and beckoned him inside, casting a puzzled glance at Lisa. The doctor made swift introductions, explaining the somewhat tenuous reasons for Lisa’s presence.
‘I’m sorry to hear about your mother,’ said Bennett when the doctor had finished.
Lisa smiled thinly at him and sat down in the proffered chair.
Finch nodded greetings to the other men present. To Sir James Hughes. To DI Grogan and a military man he hadn’t seen before.
Dressed in combat fatigues, the soldier was in his thirties, perhaps a year or two older than Finch. On the belt round his waist there was a holster and the doctor could see the butt of an automatic pistol protruding from it. The man had bright blond hair which glinted beneath the fluorescents. When he moved, Finch saw that he dragged his left leg slightly.
The soldier looked strangely incongruous alongside the other occupants of the room, Finch thought. And a little menacing too.
Captain Sean Maconnell returned Finch’s nod of greeting, reserving an approving glance for Lisa. Maconnell had been an officer in the Coldstream Guards for four years, having risen from the ranks since first joining back in 1966. He came from a family which was anything but steeped in military tradition. His father had spent most of his National Service time in the glass house, and his grandfather had been shot in 1916 as a conscientious objector. Maconnell loved the army, though, and wondered now how he would survive without it. Even after an IRA sniper’s bullet had shattered his left hip six years ago, during a raid on an arms cache in the Falls Road, he had pulled through against all odds. The prospect of getting back into uniform had driven him on. For a time, doctors had thought that the Armalite bullet had succeeded in condemning him to crutches for the rest of his life. Maconnell had refused to accept their prognosis, and after months of pain and numerous operations he had managed to walk once more, albeit with a limp. But he didn’t complain and only on odd occasions did it still cause him pain.
s‘Before we start,’ Finch said. ‘Could someone tell me what’s going on? Why was I called?’
He was looking at Bennett but he didn’t care who answered the question.
‘The affected area has been cleared,’ Hughes answered, scratching the scar on his chin. ‘We must destroy the slugs now, before they have a chance to move on.’
‘But we still don’t know how to destroy them,’ Finch said.
‘We’re sticking with the idea of cyanide,’ Bennett informed him.
‘But it can’t be done because of the risk of poisoning,’ said Finch, aghast.
Bennett ignored the doctor’s protestations.
‘As long as the slugs are spread through the tunnels that idea could never succeed. No matter how much cyanide we pumped down into the sewers we couldn’t be sure of killing them all,’ Finch added.
‘If they could be gathered in one place it might just work,’ Bennett said, quietly.
‘There must be miles of tunnels under that area,’ the doctor exclaimed. ‘It’s impossible.’
‘Nothing is impossible,’ countered Maconnell, catching Finch’s gaze and holding it.
‘What we propose to do is to drive the slugs back along the tunnels,’ said the officer. ‘The sewers would be sealed off one by one until all these bloody creatures were forced into one spot. Then the cyanide could be released.’
‘How do you expect to “drive” them?’ Finch asked.
‘I’ll send some engineers down there with flame throwers. Most animals retreat from fire, don’t they?’
‘You can’t use flame throwers,’ Hughes said. ‘You’d blow up the entire system. We have to find another way.’ Bennett stroked his chin thoughtfully.
‘Why drive them?’ he said. ‘Why not use a lure?’
The others looked at him, their expressions ranging from surprise to bewilderment.
‘Let the slugs follow something instead. Lead them to the place where they’re to be destroyed, don’t drive them.’
‘And what do we lead them with?’ Grogan asked, taking another drag on his cigarette.
‘They feed on human flesh, right?’ the pathologist said, his tone calm and measured. ‘Give them what they want.’
‘My God, you’re not serious,’ Grogan said, gaping in astonishment. ‘You want to sacrifice the lives of innocent men just so they can act as fucking bait?’
‘What’s a dozen or so lives compared to the number it could save?’ Bennett challenged.
‘There’s no guarantee it would work anyway,’ the DI persisted.
‘I think there is,’ the pathologist told him. ‘The secretion left by the leading slugs, the slime trails, seems to act as a stimulant for the others. Much the same as pheromones works for ants. The stronger the secretion, the more likely the slugs are to follow it.’ He paused. ‘Men injected with that secretion would automatically attract the slugs.’
‘But if they were injected, they’d die of the disease anyway,’ Finch said.
‘Not for at least six hours,’ the pathologist countered. ‘Six hours to clear the tunnels, that’s all the time we’d need.’ ‘That’s murder,’ said Grogan. ‘You’re talking about murdering men in cold blood.’
‘I’m talking about saving the rest of this city, millions for Christ’s sake,’ Bennett snapped. ‘It’s the only way.’ He studied the faces of the others in the room. ‘Don’t look at me passing moral judgements, you all know I’m right.’
Commissioner Hughes turned and looked at the map of the sewer tunnels.
‘How would we go about it?’ he said, quietly, almost conspiratorially.
‘Sir, you can’t be serious,’ Grogan interrupted.
The commissioner turned on him, eyes blazing.
‘What choice do we have?’ he snapped. ‘I don’t like this any more than you. I wish there was another way but there isn’t.’
The two men regarded each other coldly for a moment then Grogan shook his head resignedly.
‘The men would be put into the sewer tunnels ahead of the slugs,’ Bennett said. ‘They’d move in front of the hordes until they converged at a place where the cyanide could be released.’
‘That gives them a great choice,’ Grogan snapped. ‘They either get eaten alive, poisoned or die of this fucking disease.’
‘How would we seal the tunnels?’ Maconnell wanted to know.
‘Groups of your men could follow the slugs, at a safe distance. The tunnels could be brought down when the signal was given. The men following wouldn’t be in danger as long as they kept well back. The slugs would be too intent on following the infected men.’
‘So first we pinpoint where the slugs are concentrated,’ Hughes said, studying the map again. He lowered his voice slightly. ‘God, there must be so many of them.’
‘That shouldn’t be too difficult,’ Maconnell said. ‘Find the location of their last victims and they should be in the vicinity.’
‘Where are you going to obtain the secretion in order to inject the men?’ Finch wanted to know.
‘From the slugs that hatched from that young boy’s body,’ the pathologist told him.
‘What do we tell the men who are infected?’ Grogan asked. ‘That they’re going to be used as food for slugs? That if the slugs don’t get them they’re going to die anyway?’
‘We tell them nothing,’ Hughes said before the pathologist could answer. He sighed. ‘If any of them do make it out of the tunnels, Bennett, what happens to them then? We can’t just sit around and watch them die.’
Bennett swallowed hard, then shrugged. When he spoke, his voice was low.
‘They’ll have to be killed. Shot, if the disease is too far advanced by the time they emerge.’
‘Like rabid dogs, eh?’ grunted Grogan.
An uneasy silence settled, almost as if the enormity of the proposed solution had robbed the room’s occupants of the ability to speak.
Grogan lit another cigarette. Bennett sat with his hands folded on his lap, head lowered slightly.
Finch got up, went over to the map of the sewers and studied it carefully.
‘The effluent will be recycled into drinking water,’ he murmured. ‘Remember what the Water Board men told us? We can’t use cyanide to kill the slugs.’
‘But the area where they’ll be destroyed will be sealed off,’ Maconnell protested.
‘The slugs might not be able to get out but, short of building walls, there’s no way we’re going to be able to stop that poison reaching these other tunnels.’ He ran his finger over the diagram. ‘And, eventually, the Thames.’
‘It’s the only solution we have,’ Hughes told him. ‘We can’t burn them, we can’t blow them up. Poison is the only alternative.’
Finch was looking at the diagram again, narrowing his eyes as he studied several other lines, some drawn in blue, which ran parallel with the sewer tunnels.
‘What are these?’ he asked, indicating the lines.
‘They’re electricity cables,’ Grogan told him.
Finch turned and looked at the others in the room, a slight smile on his face.
‘That’s how we destroy them,’ he said. ‘Electrocute them.’
Bennett too found that he could smile. He nodded admiringly.
‘Would it work?’ Hughes wanted to know.
‘I don’t see why not,’ Bennett told him. ‘A large enough current applied for long enough ought to kill them and there’s no better conductor than water.’
‘What sort of voltage do those cables carry?’ Maconnell asked.
‘We don’t need to use those,’ Hughes said. ‘We can set up portable generators. When the slugs have been drawn into position we’ll fry them.’ He chuckled.
Maconnell smiled broadly.
For the first time, Lisa spoke.
‘There’s one thing you haven’t decided,’ she said, quietly. ‘Who’s going to be the bait? Which men go into the sewers?’
Thirty-three
At 10.28 that morning, men of the Royal Engineers succeeded in locating the first mass of slugs. They were between Dean Street and Shaftesbury Avenue in a mid-level tunnel.
Five minutes later a second group were discovered in a storm relief sewer under Brewer Street.
A wider sweep of the area revealed the third, and largest, concentration of the creatures beneath Sherwood Street.
They appeared to be stationary, but for how long no one dared guess.
The officers in charge of each detachment of engineers relayed the information to Maconnell, who was still at New Scotland Yard, then to units of police who were also in the vicinity of Piccadilly.
Bennett lifted the last slug from the jar and deposited it in a specimen tray normally reserved for human organs. The pathologist watched the writhing black monstrosities for a moment with a mixture of fear and loathing. Some were as much as five inches long, and as thick as his index finger. He carried the tray across the lab and set it down carefully on the other workbench, his eyes never leaving the slugs, which were sliding up the sides. He knocked one back with the sharp end of a scalpel, severing one of its eye-stalks as he did. Then, opening a cupboard above him, the pathologist took out a bottle of sulphuric acid and unscrewed the stopper. He poured the lethal liquid over the slugs, watching almost gleefully as the corrosive fluid ate into their soft, slimy bodies. A choking stench rose to fill his nostrils but he continued to gaze at the creatures. The tray began to fill up with a sickly yellow mixture of pus and slime as the last of the slugs simply dissolved. Bennett emptied the glutinous contents down the sink then ran the hot tap, washing away the last vestiges of corruption. He dropped the tray in a plastic bag and sealed it, knowing that he must dispose of it as soon as possible, then he returned to the jar and peered in.
There was a thick, reeking coagulation of mucus at least two inches deep inside it.
The pathologist took the first of three syringes laid out close to him and drew off some of the slime. He then filled the rest of the receptacle with saline solution so that the fluid would flow more easily in the bloodstreams of the men to be injected.
He paused for a moment, sighing.
The plan to infect men with the disease had been his idea. An honest attempt to solve what was becoming an increasingly insoluble problem. But as he looked at the syringe and its deadly contents, he realised just how close to the truth Grogan had been.
Bennett was condemning at least a dozen men to the most agonising and horrific death imaginable.
He tried to balance that view against his own feeling that the sacrifice was necessary in order to save many more lives, but still that nagging doubt continued to surface in his mind.
Murderer.
The word flashed brightly in his mind’s eye like a neon sign.
Think how many would be saved, though?
But the men who are going to die. They have families.
It’s a small sacrifice.
Will their wives, girlfriends, children and parents agree with you?
Bennett stood still for a moment, resting his arms on the worktop, trying to clear his mind, attempting to stop the endless self-accusations.
This was the only way, he told himself, filling another syringe.
As he did so, he noticed that his hands were shaking slightly.
At 10.43 six large Scania lorries arrived in Piccadilly Circus. They parked in a rough semi-circle around the Eros monument.
Detective Inspector Ray Grogan watched as troops and police opened the back doors of the lorries.
Inside each one was a kVA 1000 portable generator, fifteen feet long and as tall as a man. The machines were given a hasty check-over by the civilian engineers who maintained them.
As Grogan looked on, cables were run from the generators to the open manholes and were lowered into the gloom below until they entered the stinking water. The roar of the Scania engines was replaced by a loud hum as the machines were switched on.
They were ready.
Cables as thick as a man’s arm criss-crossed Piccadilly, lying there like slumbering snakes, waiting for the power to be pumped through them.
Grogan drew another cigarette out of his rapidly dwindling packet and looked at his watch.
It was 11.04.
At 11.18 one hundred men of the First Battalion, Coldstream Guards, drew lots to decide who would descend into the sewers. They were not told the purpose of the selection. One hundred pieces of paper, twelve of them marked with an ‘X’, had been folded and placed in a cardboard box.
It took less than five minutes for the dozen marked scraps to be retrieved.
The men holding them were ordered out into a waiting truck, and their companions sent back to their positions around Piccadilly.
The twelve men were driven to New Scotland Yard in the truck, escorted down to the pathology lab and told to wait outside.
‘I wish somebody would tell us what the bleeding hell’s going on,’ said Private Terry Banks, shifting his feet nervously. He scratched his chubby face and looked around at his companions.
‘No doubt we just “volunteered” for something,’ Chas Granger told him.
‘What kind of thing?’ Banks insisted.
‘If we knew that we wouldn’t be standing around here with our thumbs up our arses wondering, would we?’ chided Pat Morrissey.
‘Shut it, will you,’ snapped Simon Johnson. ‘Let’s see what the fucking hell they want before we start getting uptight about it.’ As he was a corporal, Johnson’s voice carried some authority and the men duly stopped talking.
‘I wish I’d got a fag,’ murmured Banks, chewing the nail of his index finger.
An acid glance from Johnson silenced him.
‘Come on, corp,’ said Morrissey. ‘What do you reckon’s going on? Why do they want us?’
‘They don’t necessarily want us,’ Johnson said. ‘We just happen to be the silly fuckers who drew the wrong lots.’
The men suddenly drew themselves to attention as the door of the lab was opened and they saw Captain Maconnell standing there.
‘Stand easy,’ he said.
The men did, but they didn’t relax.
‘Come inside one at a time,’ Maconnell said and ushered Granger forward, closing the door behind him.
Banks tried to move to a position further down the line but Johnson shook his head.
‘You’re next, Banks,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t want to miss the surprise would you?’
The private muttered something under his breath but his audible murmurings were silenced when the lab door opened again. Granger did not emerge but Banks was ordered inside.
As he entered the room he saw his companion sitting on the far side of the lab.
‘Roll up your right sleeve,’ said Bennett brusquely, careful to avoid looking at Banks too closely, especially at his eyes. These men he was sending to their deaths must, for him, remain faceless. He brandished the hypodermic before him, gripped Banks’ wrist and then ran the needle into the pulsing fat vein in the crook of his arm, pressing down carefully on the plunger, forcing 10ml of the lethal fluid into the soldier’s bloodstream. Banks winced until the needle was pulled free. Bennett pushed a swab into his free hand and told him to press it against the tiny puncture until it stopped bleeding.
