Squelch by John Halkin Page A

dying, perhaps.
    ‘There’s something wrong with it,’ she said.
    ‘Eaten too much!’ The ghost of a smile passed over the porter’s face and it made him look even more like Boris Karloff in those old black-and-white movies. ‘See the size of ’im?’
    Slowly it lowered itself on to the slab and without pausing crawled towards the edge. The porter was right about its size. It must be eight inches long, she estimated; in diameter it matched one of those new pound coins that everyone hated. As they watched, it seemed to
flow
headfirst over the edge, its body rippling lazily.
    ‘We can’t let it get away,’ Jameela commented, matter-of-factly. Her keen eyes were following its every move. ‘Who knows where it would turn up next. Have wenothing to put it in, if we can catch it?’
    ‘Nothing in here,’ said the porter. ‘No more than a waiting room, this place, till the undertakers come an’ collect what’s theirs. Even this one wouldn’t be here if the town had its own morgue. Still, the caterpillar’s no problem.’
    Before Ginny realised what he intended to do, he had whipped a Bic ball-point out of his breast pocket and stood poised over the caterpillar which by now was half-way down one of the slab supports. He gave it a smart tap with the pen. It dropped limply to the floor, not even curling up as she might have expected, and he brought his heel down on top of it to grind it to death. A green smear spread around the edges of his shoe.
    ‘Right, that’s your caterpillar!’ Ginny recognised the tone of the self-satisfied male who had once more demonstrated his sex’s superiority over the mere female. ‘Now if you ladies have finished in here, I’ll just make the deceased decent again, and I can lock up.’
    ‘Someone had better clean the floor,’ Jameela pointed out with a glance at the squashed remains. She wrinkled her nose with distaste.
    ‘I’ll pass the message on, doctor. Not one o’ my duties, you understand. We’ve a typed roster settin’ out our duties. It’s all written down there.’ He picked up the sheet and began to draw it over Mrs Kinley’s mutilated body. ‘Died the hard way, poor love. Though they say she was a right raver when she was young. Not that I knew her then, more’s the pity. But it’s the way life goes, innit? One thing you can never foretell, that’s your own end.’
    At last they got away from the hospital, but only after a long delay during which Bernie and Dr Sanderson went to the mortuary themselves to make certain there were no other caterpillars around. Ginny was left to sit on the hard bench in the reception area, and half an hour passedbefore Bernie returned to collect her. By that time she was more than fed up.
    Outside, it was pitch dark. The rain was lashing down and they had to make a dash for his car. As it was, they were pretty well soaked by the time he managed to unlock the doors.
    ‘I’ll turn the heating up full,’ he said, starting the engine. ‘We’ll soon dry out.’
    ‘I felt mean, not looking in on Lesley again.’
    ‘Oh, I did put my head round the door. She’s still asleep. I checked with the sister too. It’s a matter of time now. She’s still on antibiotics, of course.’ He switched on the headlights and began to drive slowly across the rain-sodden car park. ‘I’m sorry you had to go through that experience in the mortuary. It must have been unnerving.’
    ‘Bernie, we have to talk about these caterpillars.’ She hesitated, wondering how to put it, afraid that he might think she was being hysterical and fob her off with a Valium. ‘People should be warned.’
    ‘I think you’re right.’
    ‘Thank God for that!’ Perhaps she’d been too tense. Now a sense of relief washed over her like a tidal wave and she threw all caution to the winds. ‘It’s an epidemic, if that’s the right word. We don’t know how many there are, or where the next attack will be.’
    ‘Ginny, let’s keep it in perspective. We know of