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Ralph asked. Why me?'

He actually sounded frightened, which for some unfathomable reason Barry found intensely irritating. 'Because I'm going to deal with Sleeping Beauty and the all-star comedy skaters.'

Leaving Ralph dithering in front of the screens, he stalked across the laboratory to the tank. As he approached he realised that from underneath the framework of support trestles there was indeed a pool of red spreading over the floor. There were smeary marks where Meg and Tommy had skidded about. The two of them lay in an ungainly huddle, both unmoving as the creeping redness seeped around them. How had they managed to produce all this blood was it blood? Animal blood maybe. What was that film?

'All right you two, on your feet,' Barry said. 'You're sussed. This is your version of Carrie isn't it?'

Gingerly he paddled through the blood and reached for the hatch on the top of the tank. He tried to open it. The cover did not slide back the way he expected it to. He pushed harder. It seemed to be stuck. That was impossible. He had checked the mechanism very carefully. There was nothing to go wrong. There was nothing to jam. He changed position and tugged at the cover. It would not budge.

So the impossible had happened. It had gone wrong. It had jammed.

Furious at such malign absurdity, he heaved and wrenched at it. It was solid. It was as though there was no hatch there. It was defying him deliberately. He pummelled at it with his fists. A jolt of agony shot through his arms. The pain was excruciating. He looked at his hands. They were pouring with blood.

He felt a warm wetness all over him. He looked down. His clothes were soaked in blood. He watched it spreading. He was bleeding. The blood was coming from him. He was bleeding from every orifice, from every pore. So much blood. He felt dizzy. He closed his eyes. The redness broke over him like a wave. And then the real pain hit and there was darkness and nothing.

Chapter Eight

Detective Constable Martin Bartok put his elbows on the melamine-surfaced counter and rested his chin in his chubby hands. 'He's just a harmless loony. I don't know why we're wasting our time with him.'

The custody sergeant finished filling in the dockets. 'There's no such thing as a harmless loony,' he said. 'When you've been in the job as long as I have you'll know that. Loonies are always trouble. Either trouble for themselves or trouble for other people. Always trouble for us.'

'Not if we don't drag 'em in here they're not.'

'What are you whinging about now?' Detective Sergeant Bob Simpson wandered into the custody suite. He was a tall, cadaverous-looking man and he towered above the short, slightly overweight DC. Did you take the fags off my desk?' he asked suspiciously.

Bartok looked mildly affronted. 'Do you know what the statistics are on smoking-related deaths, Sarge?'

'No. And I don't want you to tell me,' Simpson said. 'What were you whinging about?'

'This Doctor bloke.'

'He's a vagrant by the way,' the custody sergeant remarked. 'No address given.'

'He says he's a doctor and I believe him,' Bartok said. 'He's clean, he's well-fed, he's articulate, he's cooperative.'

'So was Harold Shipman! I'm told,' the custody sergeant said.

Bartok looked up at Simpson. 'Why am I wasting my time with him, Sarge?'

'Because you haven't got anything better to do, Constable.'

'It's not because your brother-in-law's the rent-a-cop up at the uni then?'

That's right, it's not because my brother-in-law's the rent-a-cop up at the uni.'

The custody sergeant tucked the ledger away below the counter. 'He doesn't like his brother-in-law, do you Bob?'

Simpson shrugged. 'I can take him or leave him.'

The custody sergeant sniffed. 'Still, he is family I suppose.' He shook his head as if depressed on Simpson's behalf.

Bartok said, 'They say friends are God's apology for families.'

'I reckon he might be foreign,' the custody sergeant remarked.

'Bartok?' Simpson said.

'Your vagrant.'

'He's not my vagrant.'

'Your brother-in-law's