Slither by John Halkin Page A

was a shit.’
    Matt refilled her glass, not knowing what to say.
    ‘I’ve a lot of faith in you, Matt. You really seem to understand about sewer worms.’ She reached out and touched his mutilated hand, then bit her lip with a quick frown and laughed. ‘If only we’d a better name for them.’
    ‘The kids called them “biters”.’
    ‘What kids?’
    He told her about it; she listened, interested.
    ‘You talk as though they’ve some kind of intelligence,’ she commented uneasily. ‘As though they could read our minds. That local journalist – you really think they
planned
to bite his hand, don’t you?’
    ‘I imagine…’ He hesitated. ‘You can surprise them once but not twice,’ he said at last. ‘Which makes them that much more difficult to hunt.’
    She shivered, and fingered the worm-skin belt she was wearing with her simple brown dress. ‘What if one day they take it into their heads to start skinning
us
?’
    He took her hand and moved his thumb gently across her palm. ‘It won’t happen,’ he tried to reassure her.
    At Television Hall later that afternoon he heard that Annie was missing. It seemed the police had been around to question the two children about the worms in the swimming pool; naturally they’d denied all knowledge, but next morning Annie had set out for school and never arrived there.
    ‘But kids are always running off somewhere,’ Jimmy remonstrated with him when he tried to discuss it. ‘ ’Specially when they think they’re in trouble. She’ll be picked up somewhere. Not our worry, thank God. We’ve enough on our plates.’
    He paused to light a second cigarette from the stub of his first, drawing the smoke deeply into his lungs. Killing himself, Matt thought. His fists were massive, for he’d been something of a boxer in his early days, but now even the short flight of stairs up to the bar left him breathless.
    ‘Our revered Acting Managing Director has agreed to see you.’
    Matt was startled. ‘When?’
    ‘Thought that’d please you!’ Jimmy’s chuckle broke up into a cough; his face flushed a deep red. ‘Today, at five. Don’t ask me what made him change his mind – your latest exploits, I shouldn’t wonder. I know you rang beforehand, but I’d have advised you differently if you’d said it was worms.’
    ‘Newsroom was interested,’ Matt defended himself.
    ‘Haven’t used the film though, have they?’
    ‘That big earthquake story knocked everything else off the screen.’
    Jimmy shook his head. ‘It’s the worms, Matt. And your reputation. If only you could forget those bloody worms.’ He rummaged among the papers on his desk and fished out a green form. ‘Here. Your annual report. No doubt you’d like to see it before I send it off.’
    Matt glanced over it quickly. The accident in the sewers … three months in hospital … not quite readjusted after his unfortunate…
    ‘Maybe you should’ve had more leave,’ Jimmy was apologizing even as he read it. ‘But you’d been passed as fit by the doctors, we were very short-handed, and… We acted for the best.’
    ‘Has the Managing Director seen it?’
    ‘
Acting
Managing Director,’ Jimmy corrected him. ‘No.’ He paused, fumbling for a third cigarette to cover his embarrassment. ‘Look, Matt, don’t take this the wrong way. These reports they’re routine, intended to help you… We think very highly of your work, you know that.’
    This conversation didn’t exactly leave him in the right mood to sell his great idea for a documentary to Aubrey Morgan, Controller of Programmes,
Acting
Managing Director, and Lord God Almighty in Television Hall. But it was the only chance he’d be given, so he’d have to make the best of it. He’d thought it over often enough, worked out one or two gimmicks to help it along… Such as suggesting Aubrey himself as presenter. Flattery wins empires.
    The carpeted, curving corridors of power were in a part of Television Hall he’d seldom penetrated