And so it had. It was when there were bits of recognisable human

in them that chimeras were most repellent – a failed attempt to replace a deceased loved one, or a hobby gene splicer trying to make themselves a son.

'Repulsive?' said a voice close at hand. 'The creature, or the creator?' I turned to find myself looking at a squat, beetle-browed Neanderthal in a pale suit and with a Homburg hat perched high on his domed head. I had met him several times before. This was Bartholomew Stiggins, head of SO-13 here in Wessex.

'Both,' I replied.

Stiggins nodded almost imperceptibly as a blue SO-13 Land Rover pulled up with a squeal of brakes. A uniformed officer jumped out and started to try to push us back. Stiggins said:

'We are together.'

The Neanderthal took a few steps forward and we joined him at the creature, which was close enough to touch.

'Reptile, goat, cat, human,' murmured the Neanderthal, crouching down and staring intently at the creature as it ran a thin pink-forked tongue across a crisp packet.

'The eyes look insectoid,' observed the SO-13 agent, dart gun in the crook of his arm.

'Too big. More like the eyes we found on the chimera up at the bandstand. You remember, the one that looked like a giant hamster?'

'Same splicer?'

The Neanderthal shrugged.

'Same eyes. You know how they like to trade.'

'We'll take a sample and compare. Might lead us to them. That looks like a human arm, doesn't it?'

The creature's arm was red and mottled and no bigger than a child's. To grasp anything the fingers grabbed and twisted randomly until it found something and then it clung on tight.

'Gives it an age,' said Stiiggins, 'perhaps five years.'

'Do you want to take it alive, sir?' asked the SO-13 agent, breeching the barrel of his gun and pausing. The Neanderthal shook his head.

'No. Send him home.'

The agent inserted a dart and snapped the breech shut. He took careful aim and fired into the creature. The chimera didn't flinch – a fully functioning nervous system is a complicated piece of design and well beyond the capabilities of even the most gifted of amateur splicers – but it stopped trying to chew the bark off a tree and twitched several times before lying down and breathing more slowly. The Neanderthal moved closer and held the creature's grubby hand as its life ebbed away.

'Sometimes,' said the Neanderthal softly, 'sometimes, the innocent must suffer.'

'DENNIS!' came a panicked voice from the gathering crowd, which had fallen silent as the creature's breathing grew slower. 'Dennis, Daddy's worried! Where are you?'

The whole sad, sorry scene had just got a lot worse. A man in a beard and sleeveless white shirt had run into the empty circle around the rapidly dying creature and stared at us with a look of numb horror on his face.

'Dennis?'