Scorpion [Scorpions 01] (9 page)

    He closed the back door and made his way across the untidy yard where his small garage business was situated. The yard was an ugly jumble of old cars in various stages of decay and disrepair, piles of old tires, and discarded tin cans; the neglected debris of years of halfhearted Endeavour.

    Reaching the long, low building that was his workshop, Fremont unlocked the doors and swung them open. He shuffled inside. A pair of greasy overalls hung on a nail just beside the door. Fremont took them down and pulled them on.

    In the centre of the garage floor stood a Ford Transit van. The front of the vehicle had been badly smashed in an accident and Fremont was repairing it. He had the engine out and the front of the body cut away. There was a rusty bolt to burn off before he could finish trimming off the jagged edges of metal prior to fitting the new panels. He opened the taps on the bottles of oxygen and acetylene, picked up the welding torch and crossed to the van. Turning on the acetylene he lit it with a match, then adjusted the oxygen until he had a good flame. He pulled a pair of goggles over his head and was about to cover his eyes when he heard a low, menacing growl behind him.

    Fremont turned. A dog was standing in the open doorway, staring at him, its eyes gleaming with some unnatural light. It wasn’t all that large, he thought. He couldn’t tell what color it was because its fur was a filthy, tangled mess, covered with mud and grass and bits of twigs.

    The dog lurched forward. It had difficulty walking, and there was a swollen, discolored mass where its left eye should have been.

    ‘Go on!’ Fremont yelled. He waved a fist at the animal… but instead of retreating it came further inside the workshop, snarling in a continuous rumble. That was when Fremont saw the bubbling white froth drooling from its jaw.

    Rabies! The word leapt into his mind.

    ‘Get out of it!’ he yelled again. ‘Go on, you mangy hound! Fuck off!’

    His shouting seemed to anger the dog. It lunged forward, teeth snapping.

    Fremont took an awkward step back. He lashed out with the burning welding torch. The dog turned aside, then came at him again. This time it dodged under his arm, avoiding the flame, and snapped at his leg. Fremont pulled back again. He had forgotten about the van behind him. Too late he recalled the cutaway panels, the razor-edged remnants still waiting to be removed. He slammed up against the van front and felt the keen metal slice deeply into his back. He gasped with the sudden pain, pulling away from the van. The metal tore at his flesh, tearing it wide open. Blood welled out of the ragged gashes, pouring down his back. In that moment the dog shot forward, teeth clamping down on his right leg, just below the knee. Fremont screamed as the dog savaged his flesh, pulling away with stringy tatters dangling from its bloody jaws.

    ‘You bastard!’ Charlie Fremont screamed in his pain and anger. He lashed out again with the welding torch, the force of his swing pulling him off balance. He slipped on the oily floor and crashed up against the workbench.

    Fremont did a lot of spray-painting, and true to his nature he seldom bothered to tidy up. The bench was littered with tins of cellulose paints and cans of thinner. As Fremont sprawled across the bench, his body overturned the tins, spilling a flood of liquid. It soaked his overalls and gushed across the floor, quickly reaching the still-burning welding torch he had dropped. There was a dull thud as the highly inflammable solvent ignited. A boiling mass of flame engulfed the interior of the workshop. Charlie Fremont was instantly transformed into a human torch. His whole body was aflame, the flesh bubbling and shriveling away from the bones. He ran screaming from the workshop, only adding to his agony as the air fed the hungry flames. As he reached the doorway there was a heavy explosion behind him; the flames, racing along the plastic fuel pipe of the van, had probed deep into the full petrol tank and ignited it. A huge ball of flame rolled out of the workshop. The force of the explosion picked up Charlie Fremont’s body and tossed it yards across the ground. He was slammed against the side of an old car, the heat of the fireball melting his flesh against the rusty metal.

    The dog escaped the flames. It was halfway across the yard when the van exploded. The shock waves from the explosion tumbled it off its feet, sending it skittering across the yard. It came to rest in a tangle of twisted metal scrap. It lay still for a time, then it began to whimper softly. It tried to get up. The impact with the metal had broken its back.

    It was still lying there when the fire brigade and the police arrived. With the confusion and activity that ensued it was only later that the dog was found. A police officer approached with a blanket, wrapped it around the animal and carried it to his patrol car. He drove straight to the local veterinary surgeon and left the dog with him.

    

    

    Doctor Renshaw crossed the casualty department slowly. He was tired and he didn’t care who knew it. He decided he was getting too old for this kind of work. Too late in life he had realized that he should have gone into private practice, it was a mistake he couldn’t rectify now. He carried on, hating his work a lot of the time, tolerating it for the remainder. Right now he was going through a period of hating it, and he had a feeling that he wasn’t going to change his opinion very quickly. Not the way things were going at the present time.

    Renshaw paused beside a wall telephone. He lifted the receiver and dialed an internal number. He listened to the distant ringing and when there was no reply he broke the connection, hesitated for a moment, then dialed a different number. This time the ringing was acknowledged very quickly.

    ‘Is that you, Doctor Brady? Renshaw here. I’m in casualty. I rang Camperly’s office but couldn’t get a reply. He’s where? London. I see. Well, do you think you could come down here? Something I’d like you to see. Five minutes? Good.’

    Renshaw replaced the receiver. He retraced his steps across the department. There was a vending machine standing against one wall. Renshaw pulled some change from his pocket and selected the correct coins. He fed it into the machine and watched disinterestedly as the innards of the contraption disgorged a plastic cup which was filled with a steaming liquid masquerading as coffee. Renshaw removed the cup from the machine. He stood awkwardly beside the machine, the cup of coffee burning his fingers. He suffered silently for a minute or two before turning and placing the cup on top of the machine to cool. There were already three other cups of the coffee on top of the machine, placed there by people who had experienced Renshaw’s problem.

    Allan Brady stepped into the casualty department. He spotted Renshaw and joined him. ‘I think I know what you’re going to tell me,’ he said.

    ‘Two more sting cases,’ Renshaw said.

    ‘The same signs as before?’ Allan asked.

    ‘Not exactly,’ Renshaw said. ‘They’re both alive. Certainly not as critical as Les Mason, but still very ill.’

    Renshaw led the way out of the casualty department, along a passage that led to a small side ward. They paused outside. Through the glass partition Allan could see the two patients.

    ‘A young couple,’ Renshaw said. ‘Local residents. From what we’ve been able to piece together from the police report they were found in the early hours of the morning. Collapsed by the side of the coast road.’ Renshaw gave a wry smile. ‘Naked as babes the pair of them. They must have gone up there for a little recreation. Poor kids.’

    ‘Have they said anything at all?’

    Renshaw shook his head. ‘No. The boy, Steve Prebble, has been unconscious since he arrived. He’s been pretty badly stung - eight, nine times. And there are some pretty bad gashes in his flesh, too. As if something has been tearing at it.’

    They entered the side ward, going first to Steve Prebble’s bed. The boy lay motionless. His face was colorless, lips faintly blue. Blood from a plastic tube fed into his arm to replace that which he’d lost during the attack. Renshaw drew back the sheet and showed Allan the swollen, dark-red areas surrounding the puncture marks in the boy’s legs and body.

    ‘See where the flesh has been torn,’ Renshaw said, indicating the ragged gashes.

    They crossed to Judy Lewis’s bed.

    ‘She was luckier. Just one sting.’ Again Renshaw lifted the sheet, exposing the girl’s breasts. The smooth, firm flesh of the left one was marked by a huge, discolored dark patch, spreading out from the now familiar puncture.

    ‘The same flesh wounds too,’ Allan observed. ‘And the girl hasn’t spoken either?’ he asked as they left the ward.

    ‘Only mumbled gibberish,’ Renshaw said. ‘They’re both in deep shock. No way of knowing when they’ll come out of it.’

    They walked back towards the casualty department, each of them silent; separate minds trying to find an answer to an elusive problem.

    ‘Two dead as a direct result of being stung,’ Allan said finally. ‘Les Mason and Lippman. The girl who crashed her car died from her injuries - but she’d been stung prior to that. Now these two. Varying reactions, but with one thing in common - they were all attacked in the same area, to within a mile or so.’

    ‘I think you might be able to add another death to your list,’ Renshaw said. ‘Indirect but still associated. Yesterday, in the middle of the morning, a dead man was brought in. The post mortem showed he’d been badly savaged by a dog. He was in a hell of a state - must have been dead almost a week before he was found. We finally identified him as Maurice Jenkins. He was on a camping holiday - he’d pitched his tent along the cliff top. The police told us he was known by a few local people. Came every year for his holiday, and always brought his dog with him, animal called Rex. No sign of the dog was found. I said you could add one more death - I’m almost certain we can increase it to two. Early this morning the fire brigade and the police were called to a garage on the north side of town. They haven’t been able to work out exactly what happened yet, but briefly it seems that the owner, a man named Fremont, was in the garage when there was an explosion. The whole place went up in flames and Fremont himself was burned to death. When the police got there they found an injured dog in the yard. Its back had been broken. The police took the dog to Roy Wetherton, the vet over at Long Point. Wetherton rang me. He’d been asked by the police to keep his eyes open for the missing dog that had belonged to Maurice Jenkins.’

    ‘The dog from the garage?’

    ‘Yes. Wetherton found its name and Jenkins’s address on a collar tag. There wasn’t anything he could do for the animal so he destroyed it. He said that even if its back hadn’t been broken it would have died anyway. Its whole body was covered in swollen lumps. When he examined them he decided that they were the result of the dog being badly stung. But he couldn’t say what had done it.’

    ‘This is becoming wilder and wilder,’ Allan said.

    ‘I’m glad someone else agrees… ‘

    Renshaw’s last remark was drowned out by a sudden eruption of shouting. The doors of the casualty department burst open and a knot of people appeared. In the centre of the group was a burly, red-faced man dressed in jeans and a check shirt. He had a greasy flat cap pushed on the back of his head, and he was giving vent to his feelings in no uncertain terms.

    ‘What on earth is going on here?’ Renshaw demanded, his voice rising, but his voice was lost in the din. He repeated himself, his loud exclamation silencing the noisy group. Renshaw stalked across the floor and planted himself directly in front of the red-faced man who was standing alone in the middle of the floor, his huge right hand clasped tightly over his left arm.

    ‘Now, explain yourself,’ Renshaw said to the man. ‘And remember that you are in a hospital - not a pub!’

    The burly man stiffened, almost as if his dignity had been ruffled. Then he pursed his lips. ‘Yeah… well… it bloody stung me, Doc! The boys’ll all tell ya! Upped and stung me… wham… just like that!’

    Allan stepped forward and pulled the man’s hand away from his arm. There, a few inches below the elbow, in the soft, fleshy part of the muscular arm was a puncture, surrounded by red, inflamed discoloration, the area already starting to swell.

    Allan glanced at Renshaw. The older doctor’s face had paled.

    ‘Where did this happen?’ Allan asked.

    ‘Up on the coast road, Doc,’ the man said. ‘We went up there to start some road repairs. Sat down to have a cuppa. Next thing I knew there was this bloody great beetle on my arm. Fair give me a scare. I dropped me cup and give it a clout. But the horrible little bugger hung on. And before I could clout it again it stung me! Christ, it didn’t half hurt! Still does. I swatted the thing off and one of the lads put his boot on it.’

    ‘But you definitely saw the thing that stung you?’ Allan asked.

    The man nodded. He seemed to have forgotten about his arm. He turned and gestured to one of his mates. ‘Eddie, you saw it as well, didn’t you?’

    Eddie said. ‘Yeah. It was a big sod. I never knew we had them things in this country. Especially that bloody big.’

    ‘What things?’ Allan asked, hardly able to wait for an answer.

    ‘Eh? Oh,’ Eddie said, ‘them insects, of course. What’re they called now… yeah - scorpions!’

    

    

    It was unfortunate that a reporter from the
Long Point News
happened to be in the casualty department when the cause of the mystery stingings was apparently revealed. The reporter had visited the hospital in the hope of doing a follow-up to the death of Charlie Fremont. He had been hanging around in the casualty area for a couple of hours, and then suddenly, like a dream, a story fell right into his hands. He eased his way into the group clustered round Allan Brady and Doctor Renshaw, and with a skill born of years of experience left the hospital with enough facts to write a juicy story for that evening’s edition.