Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

plastic cutlery. So she had to be satisfied with washing all her cutlery regularly. At first she had carried out the task at least five times a day, just to be sure, but she had managed to reduce this to twice a day, along with brushing her teeth. It was important not to let these daily chores take over her life. There were other demands on her time that were equally important.

     
    She finished washing her cutlery and consulted her list. Usually she knew what to do without checking, but her mind wasn’t feeling very sharp this morning. It was her day for wiping the paintwork, which she did once a week. It helped keep her mind quiet if everything was clean. She went into the bedroom and sat down for a moment, overwhelmed with tiredness. While she sat, immobile, something stirred right on the periphery of her vision. It was barely a movement, more like a faint twitch of an eyelash but in that still room any activity was impossible to ignore. She folded her damp cloth neatly and hung it on the side of the plastic bucket before standing up and walking across to the window. A tiny creature was wriggling across the window sill. She leaned forward to look at it more closely. It was a round grey speck. As she watched, the mite uncurled and curled up again, to progress slowly across the sill, looking like a minute caterpillar or the larva of a tiny fly. To her surprise, she noticed a second insect, then a third. She fetched a chair and sat beside the window, watching, counting the tiny creatures as they appeared. Small enough to crawl through invisible cracks, they seemed to appear from nowhere, in growing numbers. She counted twelve of them while she sat there in silence, transfixed by the only living creatures visible in the place apart from her. She could scarcely believe what she was seeing.

     
    There was something devastating about their minute crawl into the light. To them one wall must seem like an entire universe. If they only knew what else lay out there, beyond their wit to understand, they would never crawl out of the cracks in the woodwork to make their slow journey across the painted window sill. Had they travelled across it before, or were these pioneers, searching for a new life? Either way, it made no difference. She fetched her cloth and wiped them away. This was her domain. She wouldn’t brook any intrusion, however small. Having given the sill and its surrounds a thorough scrub, until some of the paintwork flaked away, she rinsed the cloth, changed the water in the bucket, and prepared to start again. The paintwork still had to be washed down before she could relax. While she worked, she glanced over at the window sill from time to time, checking to see if any more little grubs had surfaced. None did.

     
    When she had finished cleaning she went straight out to buy insect spray. The assistant in the supermarket wasn’t helpful when she asked which spray could be guaranteed to eliminate her infestation.
    ‘This should do the trick,’ was all he would say. ‘Without knowing what the insects are, it’s impossible to offer any guarantee. But there shouldn’t be a problem.’
    She felt like screaming at him, because there already was a problem: there were bugs in her bedroom. Having read all the instructions, she settled on six different sprays, between them claiming to kill all flying and crawling bugs. The insecticides might not be healthy, but at least she knew what she was dealing with. She glanced down the list of contents: Permethrin, Tetramethrin, Cypermethrin, Imiprothrin. She had no idea what any of them were, but they sounded toxic. They all warned that they must be used in a well ventilated area. Of course they would say that, thinking they were being clever. Opening the window would entice more insects to fly in, so she would end up having to buy even more of their products. It was hard to believe most people were stupid enough to fall for that. She saw through it straight away.

     
    She considered trying the insecticides one at a time to discover which worked best. The drawback with that plan was that the sixth one might be the most effective at eliminating her particular infestation, and it would take her nearly a week to reach it. There was no guarantee any of the sprays would work for the bugs she had found earlier in which case she would have to contact the pest control people who would tramp through her bedroom in their outdoor shoes, spreading dirt and germs. Rather than risk