Slugs Read online

  The woman, who he guessed was well into her seventies, ran an appraising eye over the two newcomers.

  ‘We’re from the council. You rang about your drains,’ the Health Inspector continued, still smiling. When he got no answer, he began to wonder if the woman was deaf so he raised his voice and repeated himself.

  ‘All right,’ she squawked. ‘There’s no need to shout. They’re round the back.’

  Brady nodded and was about to say something else when the front door was slammed in his face. He looked at Palmer who was laughing quietly. The two men made their way around to the rear of the house where Mrs Fortune appeared at the back door, this time emerging into the yard itself. She was a short, tubby woman, her hair done up in a bun, with horn-rimmed glasses perched precariously on the end of her nose. But the most striking thing about her was her clothes. She was wearing a huge knitted cardigan which came to well below her knees and looked as if it could have doubled as a bedspread and Brady could just detect the faint smell of mothballs.

  ‘It’s the drains,’ she said, crisply.

  Brady followed her pointing finger to the drain just below her kitchen window. As he stepped past her, a stench so fetid as to be obscene hit him and he recoiled. It reminded him of something between rotten vegetables and dead fish.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he groaned, watching as Palmer knelt beside the foul smelling drain. The sewage man pulled a pair of thick gloves from his overall pocket and slipped them on. He seemed impervious to the nauseating stench and beckoned Brady forward. The Health Inspector put a handkerchief over his nose to keep out the worst of the odour but it was so rank that it seemed to penetrate the very material itself. As he watched, Palmer took a long, hook-like implement from his canvas bag and poked it through the holes in the grate. He stirred it about, finally lifting the grille, uncovering the drain opening. There were pieces of rotten cabbage and what looked like congealed grease around the opening and Palmer scooped them away with one hand, peering closer.

  ‘I think it’s disgusting,’ said Mrs Fortune, indignantly. ‘Fancy letting the drains get in such a state. Why haven’t the council done anything before?’

  ‘This is the first complaint we’ve had from anyone on the new estate,’ Brady told her, stepping back from the foul smelling opening.

  She grunted indignantly.

  ‘You say that your toilet is blocked too?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘It has been for more than a day now.’

  ‘But how do…’

  ‘It’s only the outside one,’ she snapped. ‘The one upstairs is all right.’ She pointed to a green door away to the right and Brady crossed to it, peering inside. The outside toilet was almost on the point of overflowing, the water already up to just below the seat.

  Brady closed the door and walked back into the yard.

  Palmer had a torch out now and was shining it down the open drain. He finally switched it off and stood up.

  ‘Well, I can’t see anything,’ he said. ‘There’s no external reason for the blockage or the smell.’ He fumbled in his bag once more, closely watched by Brady and Mrs Fortune. The sewage man finally produced several lengths of steel tubing to which he attached what looked like a small grappling hook. Carefully, he pushed the long probe down into the drain, hearing it clanking against the metal of the pipe as he pushed further.

  ‘I think it’s disgusting,’ Mrs Fortune said once more and, with a disdainful shrug of her shoulders, she disappeared back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  ‘I bet she doesn’t offer us a cup of tea,’ said Palmer, still threading the metal probe into the drainpipe. He looked across at Brady and winked.

  ‘How the hell can you stand that stink?’ asked the Health Inspector.

  ‘I must admit,’ said Palmer, ‘this one is a bit worse than usual but I’ll be buggered if I can think what’s causing it. It must be pretty deep down whatever it is.’ He suddenly stiffened and the metal rod seemed to quiver in his hand. The little man gripped the rod tight, pressing one foot against the drain surround to steady himself. The tugging continued.

  ‘What the fuck…’ the sentence trailed off.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Brady, suddenly alarmed by the expression on Palmer’s face.

  The little man was straining to tug the rod free, using every ounce of his strength to pull it from the drain.

  Brady crossed to help him, fixing both hands around the probe. He felt a similar pressure being exerted from the other end.

  It felt as if someone was trying to pull the rod from their hands.

  ‘Can you feel that?’ asked Palmer.

  Brady nodded, anxiously. Then, finally, with a concerted burst of strength, the two men managed to heave the rod free. It came up, bringing with it a lump of brown matter. Brady looked at the lump which appeared to be a very old apple.

  ‘Could that have been causing the blockage?’ he asked.

  Palmer shook his head, studying the probe closely. He sighed thoughtfully then had a quick look in the outside toilet. That done, he crossed to an iron flap which lay about ten yards down the garden. There was a disgusting smell emanating from there too. He stood on the sewer cover as if seeking inspiration.

  ‘Whatever’s causing the block is very deep,’ he said. ‘I can’t clear it from this end".’

  Brady looked apprehensive. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning, we’ll have to go down.’ He pointed at the rusty cover which led down into the sewer itself. ‘You wait here,’ he told the Health Inspector. ‘I’ll go and get the stuff from the van.’

  Brady stood beside the flap, waving a hand before him in an effort to keep the rancid stench at bay. He heard Palmer’s footsteps receding as he disappeared around the side of the house to fetch ‘the stuff - whatever the hell that might be.

  He didn’t have to wait long for an answer. A moment later, the little man re-appeared carrying two thick bundles of clothing and another canvas bag which he deposited on the ground.

  ‘Put that on,’ he said to Brady, pushing one of the bundles towards him. The Health Inspector picked up the bundle and opened it out, realizing that it was an overall of some kind. Made of oilskin, it looked like a shiny white boiler suit. It fastened up the front by a zip which, in turn, was covered with a flap which both men clipped together using the large press-studs along its length. At the back, Brady found that the folds of the material could be pulled up to form a hood which was, in turn, tied at the chin with a piece of cord. As he pulled the hood up, all the sounds around him became muffled and he looked up to see a bird sitting on a nearby tree apparently whistling noiselessly. Its song could not be heard through the thick protective headgear. He pulled on the heavy gloves which Palmer handed him, watching as the little man knelt beside the other canvas bag. He finally produced a pair of large boots which Brady found he could slip over his shoes quite easily. The soles were metal and, for a moment, he found himself rooted to the spot by the weight.

  The last things which Palmer took from his bag of tricks were a couple of face masks, rather like those worn by scuba divers, only curved and covering the whole of the face. Brady put his on, his breath coming in short gasps, the smell of plastic making him feel dizzy. The heat was almost unbearable. There was a small, circular, hole at the base of the mask which, Palmer informed him, was an air filter. The little man had to raise his voice to make Brady hear. The Health Inspector’s breathing had slowed now, rasping loudly in the mask as he stood watching the other man.

  ‘We’ve got to get this off,’ shouted Palmer, his voice still sounding slightly muffled. It was as if he were talking through cotton wool. He pointed to the metal flap which covered the sewer opening and Brady looked down at the knobbed metal. Rusted with the ravages of the weather, it had two depressions in it. One at either end, both of which had a bar across them. At a signal from Palmer, both men bent, hooked their fingers under the bars and lifted.

  The lid to the sewer opening came free and
they deposited it on the grass nearby.

  Palmer handed a torch to the Health Inspector who peered down into the darkness. It seemed to be bottomless, the iron ladder which ran down the side of the shaft disappearing into gloom so total that even the torch beams could not penetrate it for more than a couple of feet.

  The sewage man looked at Brady, who was still gazing down into the darkness, and then stooped to pick up his bag of tools which he clipped to his belt.

  ‘Last one in’s a rotten egg,’ he said, raising his voice once more to make himself heard. He smiled, then, watched by the Health Inspector, he clambered onto the ladder and began to make his way down into the darkness, visible, finally, only by his swaying torch beam.

  Brady flicked on his own torch, took one last look around at the brightness of the day and then lowered himself onto the first rung of the ladder, his metal soled boots clanking noisily as he did so.

  He steadied himself for a second, then began to descend.

  Eight

  Brady hadn’t realized quite how narrow the shaft was until he began to climb down the ladder. Now he found that he was forced to cling tightly to the metal rungs in order to prevent his back rubbing against the other side of the tunnel. The torch wavered unsteadily in his hand and his mask had begun to cloud over, making it difficult to see. He measured his steps cautiously, careful not to miss a rung and fall. However, despite his tentative tread, he felt his left foot slide from the rung beneath him and, for a moment, his heart leapt. But he gripped the ladder tighter and continued his descent.

  He heard a dull splash, signalling to him that Palmer had reached the bottom of the shaft and, a moment later, Brady himself felt his heavy boot touching something solid which he knew to be the floor of the pipe. Panting, he stood still for a moment until he felt hands tugging at his arm.

  ‘Mind your head,’ Palmer told him, shining the torch around to show him the narrowness of the pipe.

  Brady guessed that it could be no more than three and a half feet from the top to bottom and both men had to get on all fours to give themselves the room to move about in it. Brady sank reluctantly to his knees, looking down to see that the trickling effluent which ran through the pipe came up as far as his forearms. He felt sick and was thankful that he had the mask on. The walls of the pipe seemed to crush in on him and the Health Inspector imagined that this was what it was like to be buried alive. Together, he and Palmer crawled through what seemed like an endless cylindrical coffin, thick with human waste and twelve instead of six feet below ground. The heat inside the suit seemed to intensify and Brady found that he was gasping for air even though the mask was filtering it quite adequately.

  ‘You all right?’ Palmer asked him, hearing the Health Inspector’s laboured, accelerated breathing. He peered over his shoulder at his companion, shining the torch at him.

  Brady nodded, his breathing becoming less harsh. The perspiration was running off him and he almost slipped twice, the thought of ending up face first in a river of human excreta making him more careful.

  In the darkness, neither of the men saw three or four of the slugs glide past them, carried along by the flow.

  Palmer held up a hand for Brady to halt. The little man managed to scramble up onto his knees in front of a grille which was set into the tunnel roof.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Brady.

  ‘It’s the outlet from the toilet,’ Palmer told him, fumbling in his bag for a screwdriver. He set to work, removing the four rusty screws which held the grille in position. As he took each one out, he handed it to Brady to hold, then, when the last one was out, he stuck the end of the screwdriver between two bars of the grille and prised it free. By torchlight he scrutinised it.

  ‘No blockage there,’ he said, puzzled.

  ‘What now?’ Brady asked, peering up the outlet.

  Palmer grinned. ‘We hope the old girl doesn’t get taken short.’

  The Health Inspector quickly withdrew his head, handing the screws, one at a time, to the sewage man who refixed the grille.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the drain outlet,’ said Palmer and, pointing his torch ahead of him, crawled on. Brady followed.

  ‘Are all the tunnels as narrow as this?’ he asked.

  ‘Most of them,’ Palmer told him. ‘They all work like wheels though. The pipes themselves converge in one central chamber, which is like the hub of the wheel. The tunnels are like the spokes.’ He paused for a moment, steadying himself as he put his hand on something thick and soft. He grunted distastefully. He crawled on.

  The large slug which Palmer had accidentally put his hand on slithered along the floor of the pipe, the stream of effluent and the impenetrable darkness hiding it.

  ‘The manhole covers that you see in the road,’ the sewage man continued. ‘Each one of those goes down to one of the central chambers. They’re dotted all over town. The chambers are pretty big.’ The little man stopped once more, this time at a much smaller outlet which Brady realized must be the one from the drain. The same procedure was repeated, the grille removed. This time a lump of rotten potato fell out into Palmer’s gloved hand. He shook his head and dropped it into the stream of effluent.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Even down here there’s nothing to show why the bloody pipes are blocked. ‘He pulled a curved implement from his bag and began scraping around in the drain outlet. Brady meanwhile shone his torch around the walls of the pipe. About half-way up the sides there was a scum mark of green mould which, in places, had extended to the roof of the pipe too. The concrete itself seemed to be cracked and the mould had crept into the rent like bacteria into a cut, turning it gangrenous. He remembered when he had found an old man living alone who had been infected with gangrene. Unable to move after falling and cutting his leg, Brady had found him after a next door neighbour complained about the smell coming from the man’s house. He’d finally got in to discover that the old boy’s leg was green and mottled with infection, black in places it was so bad. That image suddenly came to his mind as he ran the torch up the tunnel wall, following the course of the rent until it reached the roof of the tunnel. The torch beam shone on something silvery.

  Brady felt the breath catch in his throat as he looked more closely. The marks were unmistakable.

  The roof of the pipe was criss-crossed by dozens of slime trails.

  Ron Bell’s house. The two houses in Elm Drive and now here. With shaking hand he reached up and touched one of the trails with the index finger of his glove. The mucoid fluid stuck to the material, dropping away in thick globules when Brady removed his hand. Suddenly anxious, he shone the torch down the length of the tunnel but the beam faded into darkness less than three feet from him. Something bumped against his arm and he almost shouted aloud. Looking down he saw that it was a small piece of wood. His breathing once again became rapid but he tried to control it, clenching his teeth until his jaws ached. Get a bloody grip on yourself, he screamed inside his head. Come on. He clenched his fists, his eyes tightly closed for long seconds, then he felt Palmer touch him on the shoulder.

  ‘Well,’ said the sewage man. ‘I can’t find anything. We might as well go back up.’

  The words were the most welcome Brady had heard in a long time. He crawled backwards (it was impossible to turn round in the narrow pipe) until his torch glinted on the bottom rung of the ladder. High above, he could see the blue of the sky and, with almost unnatural haste, he began to clamber up towards the surface.

  Palmer waited at the bottom of the ladder, watching as Brady climbed up. When the Health Inspector was half way up, the little man followed him.

  He didn’t even see the large slug which had crawled onto his boot.

  As he climbed, the slug crept higher, sensing the warmth beneath the overalls. It slithered onto his calf and prepared to sink its long central tooth into the material, eager to get at the warm flesh beneath. But, just then, Palmer brought his foot down particularly hard on the ladder, the slug lost its hold and fell b
ack into the stream of waste below.

  The sewage man heard the splash and thought he’d dropped something from his bag. He shone his torch down but could see nothing. Satisfied that he still had all his tools, he continued his ascent.

  The slug had disappeared.

  Nine

  The heat hung heavily over Merton, like some oppressive cloud. As the afternoon wore on and the sun reached its zenith, the little town was bathed in a cloying, sticky heat which seemed to make the air itself hot, almost unbreathable.

  Carol Wilton stood naked before the full length mirror studying the reflection which gazed back at her. Her eyelids felt heavy and she was tired, the heat seeming to sap her strength. Beads of perspiration had formed on her top lip and she licked them away, the salty taste remaining on her tongue momentarily. Another bead of clear liquid quivered at the hollow of her throat for a second before trickling slowly down her chest, between her taut breasts and across her flat stomach. She traced its path with the index finger of her right hand, allowing the digit to probe deeper, brushing through the soft curls of her pubic hair. She shuddered as the finger brushed against her clitoris and she felt a tingle run through her. She sighed, her nipples rising to erection at the same time. Carol moved her finger gently between her legs, feeling the first traces of moisture from her warm cleft. All the time she kept her eyes firmly on the mirror, watching the reflection before her. She parted her lips slightly and spoke one word.

  ‘Tony.’

  She stopped moving her finger, her expression changing from one of pleasure to one of anger.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said softly, withdrawing her finger.

  Couldn’t she forget him after four years? She shook herself out of her dream world and crossed to the bed, reaching for a pair of faded jeans which she pulled on, the tight material clinging to her slim hips and thighs. She slid further into the denims, allowing the seam to cut into her damp cleft, then she fastened the button and picked up the white t-shirt which also lay on the bed. She let it hang outside her jeans, noting how the thin material made her hardened nipples even more prominent. She slipped on a pair of backless high heels and inspected the reflection once more. You should see me now, you bastard, she thought. The image of Tony flashed into her mind once more. No, she couldn’t forget him. He’d left her a permanent reminder just to make sure. She crossed to the bedroom window and looked out.