Breeding Ground, page 3
The flesh and muscles seemed merely to burst and, as his shirt split open, so too did his lower torso. From pelvis to sternum, the body seemed to rupture, like some kind of pea pod. The entire cavity opened like a pair of obscene lips, sliding back to welcome the intruding boot of Mallows which disappeared into the seething mess inside. Flesh tore like fabric and the skinhead almost overbalanced as his foot sank into the tramp’s body, forcing its way through to the spine, such was the force of the impact.
His eyes widened in horror as he looked down.
Hilston tried to scream but he could only stand riveted, wondering, for precious seconds, if he was hallucinating.
He wished that he had been.
Slugs filled the riven torso like maggots in an open wound, slithering over one another, their thick slime mingling with blood and the spilled green bile which had oozed from Tommy’s gall bladder. The hideous black creatures, some as long as six inches, looked as if they had been sealed together by the glutinous muck which covered them. Like a huge black carnivorous cancer which had grown inside the tramp, literally devouring his internal organs, eating him away from the inside. Until now, at last, aided by Mallows’ boot, they had burst forth.
Tommy’s lips moved soundlessly and Mallows watched, mesmerised, as a thick black shape nudged its way free of his mouth. The slug’s eye stalks extended slowly, and as it slithered down the pale face of its host, another followed it, then another.
A smaller rent opened at the hollow of Tommy’s throat and still another slug emerged, blood also running from the cut as it ate its way free. The writhing forms inside the torso seemed to move as one, spilling from the gaping hole with a sickening slurping sound which seemed all the louder because of the silence. Blood and fragments of uneaten intestine flowed forward with them, carried on the reeking carpet of black bodies which began to move towards the watching skinheads.
Mallows felt his bowels loosen, felt something soft and warm splatter his underpants. The stench of his own excrement mingled with the vile smell which rose from the slugs like a noxious cloud. Those that had emerged from the throat and mouth of Tommy Price were now busy devouring the wasted face, burrowing through the eyes and upwards into the brain. Others fastened themselves to the bloated lips and began feeding on the soft flesh and clotted fluid within.
Mallows turned and ran, knocking Hilston over in his efforts to escape this nightmare vision. Hilston got up and turned to follow, doubling up as he did, his stomach finally surrendering to the contractions which tore through him. He unleashed a stream of vomit as he ran, almost slipping over in it. His footsteps clattered frantically up the steps.
Finally the lavatory was in silence again, except for the obscene sucking sounds made by the horde of slugs as they continued to slither from the body of the tramp until only a huge cavity remained, the bones of the ribcage shining white through the blood and slime where internal organs had once been. Like the sloughed skin of a snake the body was now merely an empty shell, and the face had been decimated by those slugs as yet unsatiated. Both eye sockets were empty now and the mouth yawned open like a black chasm to reveal that even the tongue had been eaten.
The leading slugs, the larger ones, hauled their bloated forms across the soiled floor of the lavatory, followed by their smaller companions. An undulating slimy mass which left a glistening trail of mucus behind, they moved easily and surprisingly quickly across the floor and slipped into the trough at the base of the urinals. They crawled or floated in the yellow stream of urine, allowing themselves to be sucked down into the pipes which eventually deposited them in the sewers far below. The darkness seemed to welcome them, and in the blackness they were invisible.
Above, the last few slithered down the pipe and out of sight. There were perhaps a hundred of them.
There would soon be many more.
Three
The smell was almost overpowering. A fetid combination of urine, excrement and vomit but also something more powerful. More pungent. The smell of death.
It was a smell which Detective Inspector Ray Grogan knew only too well, and he recognised it as soon as he entered the lavatory in Leicester Square.
A flashbulb exploded, momentarily illuminating the subterranean cavern with cold white light. Grogan winced slightly and slowed his pace as he reached the bottom of the stairs. He dug into his pocket, produced a breath freshener and aimed it at his mouth. The peppermint spray missed and went up his hose. Muttering to himself, Grogan tried again and succeeded, then dropped the spray back into his pocket. He looked around him at the two uniformed men and three plain-clothes policemen who were also present. A photographer was standing just ahead of him taking pictures of the tiled floor outside one cubicle. At the far end of the row, another plain-clothes man was collecting exhibits. The man was wearing a corduroy jacket worn at the elbows. His hair was long, almost reaching the collar of his blue shirt. He wore brown slacks which needed turning up an inch or two. When the man saw Grogan he turned and walked towards him.
The two men exchanged greetings and Grogan’s colleague lit a cigarette. Detective Sergeant Martin Nicholson offered one to his superior.
‘I’ve given up,’ Grogan reminded him, trying to ignore the smell of smoke as it wafted towards him. He sighed. ‘Well, what have we got? It’d better be worth dragging me out of bed at this hour.’
Grogan checked his watch again and saw that it was just after 1.00 a.m. Then he followed Nicholson to one of the cubicles and peered in.
‘Oh Christ,’ he murmured.
The photographer stepped aside to allow the DI a better look at the remains of Tommy Price.
Grogan ran a quick appraising eye over the corpse, or what remained of it, his stomach churning slightly as he gazed first at the empty eye sockets, then at the gaping hole in the torso. He turned to look at Nicholson.
‘Who is he?’ the DI wanted to know.
‘We don’t know. He wasn’t carrying any ID. Or if he was it was taken.’
‘It doesn’t exactly look like a mugging, does it?’ Grogan said, cryptically. ‘What about fingerprints? Dental records?’
‘They’ll be checked as soon as Forensics get started.’
Grogan nodded, massaging the back of his neck with one broad, powerful-looking hand.
‘Who found him?’ he wanted to know.
‘One of our uniformed blokes,’ Nicholson said. ‘He was checking down here around midnight...’ He allowed the sentence to trail off. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it before.’ ‘Join the club.’ Grogan peered around the door of the cubicle once more, his eyes drawn to the gutted corpse. ‘What’s that stuff on his face?’
‘It looks like mucus of some kind. It’s everywhere. Look.’ He motioned to the tiles beneath their feet and the sticky fluid which glittered with a vile lustre beneath the blinking fluorescent. ‘We found this as well, in one of the other cubicles.’ Nicholson held up the bag he’d been holding to reveal the empty tubes of Bostik. ‘We should be able to get some prints off these. It might give us some kind of clue.’ Grogan nodded slowly, stroking his chin contemplatively. ‘It could have been a couple of kids,’ Nicholson offered. ‘If they’d been sniffing, you never know. I’d just like to know what sort of weapon they used.’
Grogan entered the cubicle and crouched down beside the body of Tommy Price, his gaze travelling to the dead man’s hands.
‘There aren’t any defence cuts on the hands,’ said the DI. He looked at the dried vomit which had crusted on the tramp’s jacket. ‘It looks as though he could have been out when he was attacked. Drunk maybe.’ The smell finally became too overwhelming and the DI stepped back out of the cubicle. However, he continued to study the carnage inside the small enclosure. ‘There isn’t much blood,’ he observed. ‘If he was stabbed it’d be everywhere. That wound in the throat would have cut his jugular vein. The whole place would be covered in blood.’
‘Maybe he was killed somewhere else and dumped here,’ Nicholson suggested.
‘I think somebody would have noticed a person dragging a gutted body across Leicester Square. I mean, the place isn’t exactly deserted at...’ He paused a moment. ‘What do you
think was the time of death?’
‘We won’t know for sure until the lab boys have finished with him, but looking at the skin on the hands, it can’t have been much later than eleven or so. Our bloke found him just after midnight and rigor mortis has only just started to set in.’ Nicholson shrugged and took a long drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke out in a long blue stream which momentarily masked the rank odours in the lavatory.
Grogan looked almost longingly at the haze of smoke and the cigarette, then stepped away from his colleague and gazed down at the glistening trail of slime across the floor. It was too thick to be saliva, he thought, and how come there was so much of it on the body, too? Grogan dug his hands into the pockets of his jacket and sighed. Usually, upon reaching the scene of a crime, he could glean at least two or three clues from what he saw. Possible murder weapon, sometimes even motive. But this body offered no such help. They didn’t even know who the poor bastard was. The glamour of the police force, thought Grogan sardonically. Standing in a public toilet at one o’clock in the morning, surrounded by blood, piss and puke, staring into the trough of a urinal.
He brushed a hand through his tousled mop of greying hair and sighed heavily. Maybe the pieces would fit together better after the body had been examined by the lab boys. He certainly hoped so.
There was a flurry of movement from the top of the steps, and a moment later two ambulancemen descended, carrying a furled stretcher.
‘In there,’ said Grogan, hooking a thumb in the direction of the cubicle.
The stretcher was laid on the floor and one of the uniformed men entered the small enclosure. Grogan heard his low exclamation of revulsion as he saw the body. He turned to watch as the two men struggled to manoeuvre the corpse onto the waiting stretcher, one of them holding the spindly legs, the other hooking his arms beneath the shoulders of Tommy Price. They lifted carefully, but not carefully enough.
The body broke in half at the waist.
Grogan swallowed hard and turned to Nicholson as the two pieces were laid on the stretcher and covered with a blanket.
‘Give me a cigarette,’ said the DI as the ambulancemen passed close by with their grisly cargo.
‘I thought you’d given up,’ said Nicholson, as he watched his superior take an Embassy from the packet and light up.
‘I had.’
Wednesday - the 12th
Four
The first thing which greeted Doctor Alan Finch as he entered the surgery was the strident ringing of the phone. He paused a moment, putting down his briefcase, but a second later the phone was answered by someone in reception. He heard a woman’s voice and realised that the receptionist had already arrived. He should have realised it when he saw his mail and that of his two partners neatly laid out in separate piles. He smiled to himself as he reached for his own stack of white and brown envelopes.
There were a couple of circulars from drug companies, one offering a new tablet to aid in the relief of premenstrual tension, the other claiming that it had by far the most reliable new drug for controlling blood pressure. Finch folded them both up and replaced them in their envelopes to read later. Then he opened the other mail. A blood test result confirmed his diagnosis that a particular patient was hypoglycaemic, and another told him that an exploratory operation to remove a growth from a middle-aged man’s left lung had found the tumour to be benign. Finch smiled again.
He walked out into the reception, which was still empty of patients. A tall, heavily-built woman in her mid-thirties sat on the chair behind the reception desk, an appointment book open before her.
‘Good morning, June,’ Finch said, reaching for the pile of patients’ notes which had been stacked carefully for him. ‘Looks like being a busy day,’ he added, indicating the notes.
‘That’s just for this morning, doctor,’ June Webber told him. She stood up to retrieve a notepad which lay beside another phone. June was a big woman, almost five-ten, only an inch shorter than Finch himself. She had jet-black hair and an embarrassingly noticeable profusion of facial hair, particularly on her upper lip. But despite her physical shortcomings, she was a first-class worker and she, perhaps more than anyone else, had helped Finch to settle into this new practice which he’d been part of for just three months.
The surgery was a three-man collaboration in Bloomsbury Square and Finch, at thirty-two, was not only the newest partner, he was also the youngest. His colleagues were both only in their early forties but the age gap was sufficient to allow them some good-natured fun at the expense of the younger man. He took this in good humour because it made him feel a part of the set-up. He was ‘the new boy’ but the label was one which he didn’t mind. He had found it surprisingly easy to settle in following the departure of his predecessor through ill health. Even that doctor’s regular patients seemed to have taken to the newcomer, warming to his sincerity and concern. Such was the number of patients that each doctor was allocated just five minutes per patient, but people seldom left Finch’s room in less than fifteen.
‘You’ve got one or two calls to make before you see your first patient, doctor,’ June told him, checking the notepad. ‘There’s one at a house in Clerkenwell.’ She gave him the name and address. ‘A woman is worried about her little boy. And there’s another one at a flat in Flaxman Court, a Mrs Molly Foster. The notes are here.’ She handed him two files which he read quickly.
‘When’s my first appointment in the surgery?’ he asked.
‘Ten thirty,’ she told him.
‘OK, I’ll get going then.’ Clutching the files, he made his way towards the rear entrance of the building. He crossed to his car, waving to one of his colleagues who had just pulled up nearby. Finch didn’t wait to exchange greetings, but slid behind the wheel of the Chevette and started the engine. As he did so, he leant across and wound down the passenger-side window as well as his own. Although it was only 8.38 a.m., the sun was already climbing high into a clear blue sky. It promised to be another scorcher. Finch couldn’t remember the last time it had rained, and on the news that morning he had heard talk of water rationing if the blazing weather continued. Already, parts of Britain were completely without water because reservoirs had dried up.
As he drove, the smell of petrol and diesel fumes filled the car, but Finch decided this was preferable to the unbearable heat he’d have to endure with the windows shut. He drove on, having decided to make the Clerkenwell call first. He flicked on the radio. Theresa had bought the radio and cassette player for him four years ago... He allowed the thought to trail off, trying to push any images of his wife from his mind. He turned up the volume and concentrated on weaving his way along streets which were still busy with commuters who insisted on the daily confrontations which driving to work brought. Finch was relieved that he didn’t have too far to go.
‘...who said that talks had broken down once more.’ The newsreader’s voice filled the car. ‘Police in London today are trying to identify the remains of a man found in a public convenience in Leicester Square. The man had been badly mutilated but, as yet, his identity remains a mystery. Scotland Yard would not say if the man was murdered or not but they are treating his death as such...’
Finch eased the volume down again, turning the radio off as he swung the car into the street he was searching for. He double-checked the address on the sheet of paper beside him and drove the Chevette into a handy parking space.
It was 9.02.
Finch double-checked that his doors were locked before leaving the car. The sun was pouring heat down mercilessly now. The doctor wiped a bead of perspiration from his forehead with the corner of his handkerchief as he walked across the street towards the three-storey block of flats in Flaxman Court. The trip from Clerkenwell had taken him just under twenty-five minutes, not bad allowing for traffic. The call, he decided, had been necessary. The child, a boy of six, had been suffering from severely inflamed tonsils and a very bad cough. Finch had left a prescription and instructions that he was to be called again if there was no improvement within thirty-six hours. The boy’s mother had been most grateful, the child himself a nice little chap. Not unlike his own son, Chris...
Finch gritted his teeth, as if the memory was a painful one. With effort he succeeded in driving away the thoughts of his child. Temporarily at least.
He walked up to the first floor and found the flat he sought. Number five. Finch pressed the bell lightly and heard the two-tone chime inside. A moment later the door was opened and the doctor found himself confronted by a young woman he guessed to be in her late twenties. He settled on twenty-nine although her drawn expression perhaps added unfairly to her years. The dark rings beneath her eyes, he imagined, were the result of tears shed rather than sleepless nights. Otherwise, she was extraordinarily attractive, her small face framed by thick brown hair, highlighted in places as if the sun were permanently shining on it. She looked at him with deep blue eyes which were at once welcoming and apprehensive.
‘Doctor Finch?’ she said, before he could speak.
He nodded, allowing himself to be ushered inside the flat.
It was light and airy, populated by dozens of house plants which stood like green sentinels all around the room. A particularly large rubber plant towered over the television set in one corner, its leaves brushing against a photo of the young woman who now led Finch towards a door to another room. He glanced quickly at the photo, which apparently had been taken recently. It showed the girl in some kind of uniform, but he couldn’t make out what it was. Quite a contrast, however, to the flowing cheesecloth dress she wore now, the flared bottom reaching as far as her knees, revealing evenly tanned calves.
She motioned him into the next room where there were more plants, but smaller ones this time. It was a bedroom and he frowned as he caught sight of the occupant of the single bed.
