Snake Head (audio story)

Snake Head was the third story in the Big Finish UNIT audio series. It was written by Jonathan Clements.

Publisher's summary
A mobile phone call to the emergency services, a body found on Government land and an ancient burial site unearthed at an archaeological dig all point toward an odd mystery by the coast...

UNIT's new commander, Colonel Robert Dalton, and its political officer, Colonel Emily Chaudhry, investigate strange goings-on in Southend. What is out there on the beach? What happened to the recently found savaged body? And what of the man who's just been smuggled into the country?

Is this just a simple case for the local police or, as Chaudhry suspects, is there more to it than meets the eye...?

Plot
Kevin Lee receives a phone call from a distressed Sacha, but cannot understand him as he will not speak English. Sacha screams and the call ends.

Colonel Chaudhry and Colonel Dalton arrive at Southend to meet Dr Barney Hendrick. In his caravan, they discuss the ancient skeletons that he and his team have found, including that of a Saxon war leader, a war horse and several female slaves. He shows them where he found a beaten-up mobile phone belonging to a man whose remains washed up on MoD land at Foulness and draws their attention to the cockles.

Dr Hendrick gives a televised interview on The Place to Be with Leslie, discussing where the Saxon's skeleton will be displayed and when the beach will be cleared. He is asked questions received from the public by email, including one joking about the Saxon being an immigrant.

Chaudhry and Dalton go for food at the Lucky Dragon and discuss the unexplained deaths at the mud flats, believing that the dead were illegal immigrants employed to dig for cockles. Whilst Chaudhry believes that something has been disturbed by the dig and is now killing people, Dalton believes that it is a matter for the police. Chaudhry calls Lieutenant Hoffman, who sends her a sound file from the "loony file" for Essex Police of Sacha shouting "Vârkolak". He also passes on a request from Currie for a comment on a Chinese gang smuggling somebody into Tilbury Docks from Kosovo.

Chaudhry returns to Dr Hendrick, who speaks Albanian, and has him interpret Sacha's phone call. The call is the Lord's Prayer and a "Vârkolak" is an Albanian vampire who allegedly breaks the bones of children and sucks out their marrow. They are invisible to all but other Vârkolaks and Dhampir and one is only safe if they have an Orthodox priest or an imam in one's family. In Yugoslavia, fraudsters manipulate peasants' beliefs in Vârkolaks for monetary gain, pretending to be Dhampir. Dr Hendrick's description of a Vârkolak victim matches that of the man who washed up at Foulness.

Dalton goes to speak with the Kosovan, Goran Dhampir, who had previously attempted to enter the United Kingdom on Eurostar but lied about his convictions for fraud. Goran says that he is a hunter of Vârkolaks and claims to be ignorant of Kevin Lee, known to be a cockle racketeer.

Kevin assumes that Chaudhry is from Immigration and looking into his marriage with Anni, so he shows her around the house when she visits until she tells him she is from UNIT. He kicks her out, refusing to answer her questions about Sacha's phone calls, and they encounter Dalton and Goran outside. Chaudhry and Dalton promise to deport Goran and lose the evidence of Kevin having smuggled him to the UK in return for information. Kevin tells them that the Kosovans formed a gang and used a Vârkolak to pick off their Chinese competition; the reason he smuggled Goran was to get rid of it before summer when it might attack tourists and damage his business.

Going to one side, Dalton admits that he believes Kevin. Chaudhry calls Hoffman, who feigned ignorance when an ICIS stooge queried Dalton driving off with an illegal immigrant, and updates him. Dalton, wearing infrared goggles, and Goran head out to the beach to draw out the Vârkolak whilst Chaudhry, Dr Hendrick and Kevin watch from the caravan. Chaudhry, Dr Hendrick and Kevin are discussing the Silurians, whom the two men do not believe in, when Goran is seemingly attacked by the Vârkolak and claims to kill it. With no footprints or body as evidence, Dalton is disbelieving and humiliated.

After an angry call with Chaudhry, Dalton spots the Vârkolak heading towards her using his infrared goggles. He calls for the group to run away, but he is too late; the Vârkolak speaks Albanian and attacks Dr Hendrick. Kevin shuts off the lights at Dalton's command and Chaudhry kills it as it hunts for her, saying something in Albanian about family, with one of Dr Hendrick's measuring sticks. Upon turning the lights back on, they see that the Vârkolak has turned to dust and that Dr Hendrick has survived his attack. As police cars approach, Chaudhry and Dalton tell Kevin to keep quiet about what really happened.

The police arrive and have Chaudhry, Dalton and Kevin raise their hands, a situation which Dalton bets he can use his UNIT ID to get them out of. Goran has vanished and, given how his fraud could have resulted in the deaths of others, Dalton plans to allow the police to consider him their prime suspect.

Cast

 * Colonel Emily Chaudhry - Siri O'Neal
 * Colonel Robert Dalton - Nicholas Deal
 * Dr Hendrick - Ian Brooker
 * Lieutenant Hoffman - Robert Curbishley
 * Kevin - Ian Hayles
 * Goran - Toby Longworth
 * Anni - Jane MacFarlane

Crew

 * Cover Art - Red Ink
 * Director - John Ainsworth
 * Music and Sound Design - David Darlington
 * Producers - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Ian Farrington
 * Writer - Jonathan Clements

Worldbuilding

 * Dr Hendrick lost three mobile phones in France.
 * Chaudhry drinks her coffee without sugar.
 * Dr Hendrick only has powdered milk.
 * Alan is a police officer. He guards Dr Hendrick's dig site during the day.
 * Dr Hendrick listens to Radio 4.
 * "Dalton" is a Saxon name which dates back a thousand years to the north of Germany.
 * Dr Hendrick assumes that Chaudhry and Dalton are with UNESCO.
 * Dalton says that he would like Chinese.
 * Dalton refers to Dick Van Dyke, Germaine Greer and the idea of Occam's razor.
 * Anni says "two soups", referring to a famous sketch by Victoria Wood.
 * Hoffman answers the phone as "Pizza Hut".
 * Dalton says there could be a reasonable explanation, rather than a "John Smith" explanation.
 * Chaudhry tells Hoffman to dump the case of an old woman in Birmingham seeing the face of Jesus on a potato onto ICIS.
 * Kevin married his wife in 2002.
 * Dr Hendrick drinks scotch.
 * Dr Hendrick met his wife in Bulgaria or Romania whilst on a dig.
 * Dr Hendrick speaks Albanian.
 * Kevin was born in 1965. Anni was born in 1977.
 * The last sighting of a Vârkolak was in Kosovo in 1959, just before the country became communist. However, since the fall of communism in the 1990s, attacks have been recorded again.
 * Kevin drinks whisky.

Continuity

 * Alistair's introduction of the Silurian ambassador can be heard in the background at the beginning of the story. (AUDIO: The Coup)