The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest (Skin Deep)

164 Pages·2010·29.63 MB·English

by  Dickinson Peter

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Firstclassbyany standards...gripping, intelligent,
andoriginar-TimesLiterary Supplement(London)
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CRIME
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PENGUIN CRIME FICTION
THE GLASS-SIDED ANTS' NEST
Peter Dickinson was at one time an editor of
Punch magazine in England and now writes
full time. His work never fails to receive high
critical acclaim, including awards from the
British Crime Writers Association for best novel
of the year. His other books are The Green
Gene, King and Joker, The Lively Dead, The
Lizard in the Cup, One Foot in the Grave (pub-
lished by Penguin Books). The Poison Oracle,
A Pride of Heroes, The Seals, Sleep and His
Brothers, and Walking Dead.

FTr^Tl
aea
Nest
Ants'
by Peter Dickinson
PENGUIN BOOKS
Per Th,
title,
S \
I
hn Street,
Road,
Auckland 10, tnd
First published in Great Britain under the title
Skin Deep by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd 1968
First published in the United \merica
under the title Nest by
Harper& Row, Publishers. Inc., 1968
Published in Penguin Books 1981
Copyright T Peter Dickinson, 1968
All rights resei
LIBRARY 01 U.ICATION DATA
Dickinson. Peter.
The glass-sided ants' nest.
I. Title.
[PR( \5 19811
ISBN 14
Printed in the United
Set in Iirnes Roman
pt in the I
this non
|
that it shall DOl
be lent, resold, hired out, or other ited
without the publisher's prior consent m of
bind ther than that in I
on the subsequent p
Fnr^H
Nest
its'

N
ChapterI
'Slower,please.'
Impassively the driverslipped intothirdand thecarbegan
todawdle down the wide str
Too impassively? James Pibble stared at the cropped and
disciplined neck, wondering how the gossip ran about him in
the lowerreaches ofthe Yard. Lives ago he'd been a spr
thosewaters himself,and dien heand all theotherspratshad
evolved a shared mythology about the big fish - this one a
lecher,thisoneamiracle-worker,thisoneanear-villain-and
mostly they'd been right. What did the current generation of
sprats make of Superintendent Pibble,ageing, unglamorous,
greying towards retirement? Did they know how much luck
had gone into his reputation for having a knack with k
cases? Probably. And did they know about the Adversa:
Wandering unwary tiirough the jungle of his self, Pibble
fellintothepit.Normallyhe'dhavehadMikeCrewewithhim,
but Asian flu was sifting the Yard, and two men couldn't be
sparedwhereonewoulddo,sonowhewallowed in the di
which haunted all new beginnings. To what did it go back?
Some party for tots, at which a bigger tot had smiled him to
scorn?Hadhecomefrom thewombhaunted?Not c
case, not every supper-party in a strange house, produce
Adversary, the lounging, contemptuous male who
his soul. Pibble had, in his day, sent Adversaries to pr
Walewskiforinstance,butthatdidn'texorcisethem.Thistime,
perhaps
. . .
Defensively, as if to study the ambiance of murder, he
leaned forwards and peered at the tidy terraces: a red djor,a
turquoise door,a browndo( ait in white,atan£.
door picked out in black - the district had swallowed a lot of
money and paint since he was last down this way. Crip
wasn't that an antique shop? to be there, a
I
tobacconist?Andthefish-and-chipsh >ncandtfa
too. The doors had brass dolphins for knocker* and iq
middle-class prams stood on the pavement, each with it
Dominic 01 [ Camilla I
May sunshine. Prams u
had still been living here as did when Pibble used to come
down, fifteen years back, to rouse small-time burglars out of
bed(threefamiliestoahousethen,gascookersoneachlanding,
onecoldtap,outsidelav,theodourofdampdirt)there'dhave
been prams all right, but different. Shiny, streamlined, jazzy
withchrome-not thesestaidbarouches.
Well, well, all London waschanging, changingdreadfully
changing. Estateagents must be doingnicelydownthis way,
withaconstantthrough-putofmoneyedyoungstersmovingin
with one kid andmoving out with three. Pretty it all looked,
with theeasy, plainproportionsshownoffbythefreshpaint.
Rum sortofarea fora spade to gethis blackhead bashed in.
Thecarswungnorth.
Wrong again - just the sort ofarea for a spade to get his
headbashedin. FlaggTerracehadn'tchangedbysomuchasa
dirty dishcloth drying at a window. The tide ofmoney had
washedroundit.Thehordesofconqueringyoungexecutives,
sweeping down like Vizigoths from the east and driving the
cowering and sullen aboriginals into the remoter slums of
Acton, had left italone. Neithertastenorwealthcouldassail
itsinherentdreadfulness.Pibblesuddenlyrealisedthathehad
neverkepta promisetohimself,made fullfifteenyears back,
thathewouldlookupFlaggandfindoutsomethingaboutthe
manwhohaddesignedandbuiltthisthing.
It was like alate, phoney Tudorcastle turnedinsideout,a
crenellated cul-de-sac with deep-mullioned windows which
would havehadto facedue southforanysunlight tofall into
the rooms beyond. The bricks were an implacable and un-
weathered bulls-blood, picked out in rug-like patterns with
otherblue-blackbricks,thechoiceofpatternseemingtohave
been left to the taste or mercy ofthe bricklayer laying those
particularcourses.Tocounterpointtheseaimlesscriss-crosses
the plumbers had imposed their own pattern of vigorous
verticalsandhorizontals-drainpipesandventpipesandrising
mainsandrainwaterpipes-withprofusevirtuositydownevery
facade. Stonestepsranuptothefrontdoors;undereachflight
of steps with a dark arch, full of ungarnered milk empties;
above each a lowering porch, crenellated but without the
expected portcullis; thereweretwelvesuchhouses inthecul-
de-sac. A uniformed policeman - a rather little one with a
gingerbeard-stoodatthedoorofnumbernine,half-waydown