Jeff jumped down on to the road and went around to shine his torch through the jagged hole in the windscreen, but immediately wished that he hadn’t.
‘Urgh! My God!’
The dead green-haired girl, her head through the glass, was half-kneeling on the man’s body. On both of them, wherever there was exposed flesh, caterpillars were feeding. In several places they had eaten through his shirt, and bitten into her legs through her tights. A dozen or more horned green rumps wriggled busily as the hideous insects gorged their fill.
Turning away, the bile rising in his throat, Jeff was on the point of being sick when he noticed another caterpillar on the ground rapidly approaching his shoe. The shock brought him back to his senses. Once it reached him, he knew it would go directly for his ankle. He stamped on it — not once, but several times in a mounting fury, determined to squash the life juice out of it.
When at last its fat body broke under the hammering he gave it, he saw that the green slime oozing out of it was streaked with red.
Blood, he realised dully, his temper subsiding.
Blood which earlier today had been pulsing through some poor sod’s veins.
He got back into the car, tore a page out of his log book and cleaned up his shoe as best he could before slamming the door shut. Gripping the steering wheel, he stared out at the wrecked van, his heart thumping violently in his chest as he tried to come to terms with what he’d seen.
A slight fluttering sound behind him was the first evidence he had that something was in the car with him. Then he felt a tickling sensation on the back of his neck. He raised his head, hearing another movement, this time seeming to be immediately behind his ear.
No more than a vague whoosh of air, like a lightly blown curtain.
And that tickling again.
Cautiously he reached up, his whole body tense at the thought that somehow a caterpillar must have got on to his clothes, creeping over the sleeve of his tweed jacket, then on to his collar… He braced himself for the inevitable stab of pain, remembering all Jamie had told him in hospital.
But he was bitter, too. Christ, had he survived that 707 crash for this? To be killed by — what? A caterpillar?
Whatever it was, he grabbed it. Instead of pain, he experienced the strange sensation of palpitating wings against his cupped hand, like a small bird’s panic at being trapped. Instinctively he released it and switched on the interior light. In the car was a large moth wheeling desperately this way and that in the confined space, from time to time flying head-on against the window glass in its attempts to escape.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Jeff laughed, so relieved that it was not a caterpillar after all that it made him feel light-headed. ‘Here, let’s have a look at you!’
For a moment the moth settled on the head-rest of the passenger seat beside him, its wings still spread. It was a giant specimen, as big as any he’d ever seen in the tropical rain forests of West Africa; in fact, larger than most. Its wings seemed to contain every imaginable shade of brown, with purple and red markings like eyes. He bent closer to examine it in more detail but it took off again, flying past his head, then around, uttering a little squeaking noise like a mouse.
Finally, returning from the opposite direction — and when he least expected any attack from it — it spat at him.
Only just in time he managed to jerk his head aside. Had his reflexes been any slower the saliva — if that’s what it was — would have gone straight into his eyes. But it missed him, landing on the shoulder of his jacket.
‘Bloody hell!’ he bellowed at it. ‘There was no cause for that!’
A defence mechanism, obviously — but he wasn’t even attacking the thing!
Furiously he tried to snatch at the moth but it evaded him easily, swooping down between the front and rear seats, eventually fluttering in vain against the back window. Then he felt sorry for it. After all, what wouldn’t a man give to be able to fly like that? He touched the button which opened all the Range Rover’s windows and allowed the moth to escape.
The next morning he regretted it. He should have found some way of trapping that moth. Its size alone made it worth a closer look. As for those caterpillars — well, he was a pilot, not a scientist.
He had already made a statement to the police the previous night but that had been concerned only with the bare events. Taking a pot of coffee into his study, he spent the next couple of hours tapping a more detailed version into his home word processor.
When he had finished and read it through once more, he hunted in the desk drawer for his old address book, remembering something Sophie Greenberg had told him last time they met. Eight months ago that must have been at least: some work she was doing which involved caterpillars. She’d be interested, he was sure.
He found her number, only to get a stranger’s voice at the other end. Dr Greenberg had been in the United States since the autumn and it was not known when — or even if — she would return. No address, not over the phone, sorry. Dropping the receiver back on to its cradle he turned to the work he should have been doing. An African agency wanted to fly a clapped-out passenger jet back to Britain for overhauclass="underline" could he find a qualified crew?
7
The news of these latest deaths caused Ginny to telephone the literary agent in London and put off their appointment for another week.
While Lesley was still in hospital it would be irresponsible to be too far away. Even the short trip into Lingford to visit her sister meant leaving Phuong on her own to look after three lively small girls. It was hardly fair on her, however competent she was proving herself to be. They refused to play indoors all day — naturally, considering the warm weather — but at least with Phuong’s backing Ginny managed to persuade them to stay in the centre of the lawn, well away from any of the plants likely to attract caterpillars. Phuong spread a groundsheet on the short grass and invented several new games to keep them occupied.
‘When’s Mummy coming home?’ Wendy would ask gravely from time to time. ‘Is she coming home at tea-time?’
‘Soon,’ Ginny always promised.
And then — what?
For long hours every night Ginny lay awake turning it all over in her mind. Nothing had happened between her and Bernie despite them sleeping in the same house, their bedroom doors hardly a yard apart. Only once had they properly kissed — with a lovers’ kiss, that is — for that first occasion after dinner at the hotel was not repeated.
Because there had been no need to repeat it. They had both recognised what was happening. She glimpsed a look in his eyes — oh, a dozen times a day! She would turn around suddenly and a quick signal of understanding would pass between them. A bond which surprised and delighted her, yet at the same time filled her with dismay. She could see Lesley’s face, pale against those white hospital pillows, and hated this betrayal which she was unable to control.
Which she didn’t want to control. They could each have their part of him, couldn’t they? She’d not ask for more than that.
Of course, it had been building up through the past winter, she could see that now, though at the time neither of them would have been honest enough to admit it. Unwittingly, she’d even encouraged him by being always ready with a welcome when he’d dropped in for a quiet moment or two before returning home to the warmhearted chaos of Lesley and the girls. Not that she regretted it. No, she was much too deeply in love with him to regret it.
Her heart beat faster with a rush of mixed emotions when she heard that Lesley was about to be discharged from hospital. She was genuinely overjoyed for Lesley’s sake; impulsively, she ran out to gather the children around her and give them the news, only to be brought up short when Wendy said in her two-year-old innocence: