“The difference between our approaches being that they take it seriously and are prepared for-indeed, are already engaged in-taking practical steps to combat the threat.”
He got to his feet. “And now, gentlemen, I leave you to make a tour of inspection if that would amuse you. Take Matron along if you wish. Alternatively, take Miss Joliffe-she knows the building inside out, inquisitive little creature that she is. You may go about wherever you please.”
Joe spoke ritual words of departure. “… and thank you for taking the time to see us, professor,” he said politely. “We’ll leave you now to practice your salute.”
There was a tense moment as Ben Lomond crashed into Ben Levi in the craggy expanse of the face. Bentink managed to turn his frown into a benign smile as they left.
“Lord, Dorcas!” Joe whispered. “Whatever did you put in that man’s boots?”
“I know one of the lab technicians. I asked him to get me a particularly obnoxious sample of monkey diarrhea.”
CHAPTER 25
They walked disconsolately down corridors, occasionally peering into rooms that appeared to be unoccupied, ducking out of busy wards with murmured apologies to the duty nurses, preoccupied and getting nowhere with their token inspection.
“Sir, could you work out what that bloke’s point of view was? After all that chat, I couldn’t say whether he approves of the Nazi new boys or hates their guts,” Gosling said when they reached a deserted corridor.
“I was wondering if he knows himself. Many people are ambivalent. I’d say he started out by making vaguely antagonistic noises to draw a reaction from us. To find out where we stand. Was he reassured by the stiffness of our upper lips, Gosling? By our flamboyantly patriotic professions? Possibly. But I think it was his own instinct for glory-seeking and empire-building that swept him into a revelation, towards the end, of something much nastier. Well, nasty by my lights. Admiration for the new regime? Fascination?”
“You don’t know the half of it!” Dorcas said. “It’s obsession! It’s my belief he won’t return from Dresden! Your crack about the saluting really shook him. I think he’s heard the siren song of prestige and unlicensed power.”
“We came here for Spielman, not to put Bentink’s psyche under the microscope,” Joe reminded them.
“We may not know what we’re looking for, but we ought to make a serious start and stop casting about like a pack of masterless hounds,” was Gosling’s suggestion.
“Just one more ward,” Joe advised. “Keep your heads down. We’ve still got company! And we do know what we’re looking for. We’re looking for the Lethal Chamber,” he said grimly.
“Don’t be mealy mouthed! The Killing Room, in blunt old Anglo-Saxon,” Dorcas said. “We won’t find it anywhere close to these scenes of well-regulated medical care.”
“Where’s she taking us, sir?” Gosling wanted to know as they left the Edith Cavell Ward and their pace along the corridor accelerated.
Dorcas stopped, looking about her, and spoke urgently to them. “We’ve been given free rein, so he’s very confident we’ll find nothing. But I’m not wandering into this maze completely clueless. Think of the architecture-flat roof, so nothing over our heads. Modern, so no archaic features like cellars and basements. It’ll be on the ground floor with easy access to the rear for entry and disposal. Away from public and patient areas. Only one way to go. The animal research lab. No casual enquirer would go into that menagerie out of choice.”
Minutes later they stood surveying cages and operating benches in a very long room, empty and scrubbed clean. White tiles and chrome pipes gleamed. The air was redolent of pine-scented disinfectant.
“Nothing here,” Gosling said, running a careful eye around the walls. “All activity abandoned, you’d say. A dead end.”
He jumped, startled, to find a green-coated technician had appeared at his side.
After a soft cry of recognition, Dorcas seized the stranger by the sleeve and drew him forwards. “George, Joe, this is someone I know. It’s Adam. He’s one of the animal stewards. He cares for the creatures in their main quarters in the village and presents them here in the holding cages ready for experimentation and … clears up afterward.”
“Miss Joliffe!” The red-haired boy could not have been more than seventeen. He had eyes only for Dorcas, and his pale, sharp features flooded with relief. “I saw you come. My letter? You got it?”
“I did, Adam. That’s why we’re here. Thank you. Wheels in motion. These two gentlemen are inspectors from London. They’ll know what to do. Not much time. What have you to show us?”
“We should be all right. I watched the boss take off in his Rolls for the station a quarter of an hour ago. You were tracked as far as Cavell Ward. Then Matron decided you were a waste of time, gave up, and went for a cuppa.” He looked anxiously behind him. “Or else she passed on the baton.”
“I don’t believe we were followed this far,” Joe said.
Adam gave an uneasy grin. “Don’t be too sure. You didn’t see me. Nobody sees a bloke in a green coat pushing a trolley. And I’m one of a dozen. So prepare for a swift bailout. There’s a back exit. You needn’t cross Matron again.”
“This is where the boss torments baby animals?” Joe said, looking about him at the cheerless cages with dismay.
“Sir!” Adam turned an anxious look on him. “That’s bad enough, but it’s worse than that. Tell him, Miss Joliffe!”
“Yes, Miss Joliffe,” Joe said invitingly, turning to her with a politely enquiring expression. “You’ve got our attention! Something you’ve been working towards for quite a while. Perhaps you’ll tell us why you’ve lured us to this charming spot?”
“I told you about the experiment that was abandoned. There were six of us students present to witness the torment. You can’t imagine what an inferno of pain and screams this room was! Afterward, three of the students went away to write up notes, and three of us stayed behind.”
“It took courage, sir,” said Adam stoutly. “I was proud to hear them speak out!”
“We faced up to the professor and demolished-at the time we thought we were demolishing-his experiment in no uncertain terms. We gave him what for, Joe.”
“Ouch! And his response?”
“He demolished us. All three of us. Sacked us on the spot. ‘Leave the hospital at once!’ What’s more, he told us we lacked the qualities to be students of psychology in his university and he was going to have the Chancellor strike us off.”
“But you didn’t leave it there?”
“No. I went straight to Sir James and told him everything. He listened. He laughed at me and explained that no laws of any kind had been broken and that his brother-in-law had a point. This was a scientific field of enquiry. He thought I was being overemotional, but he was sympathetic. He talked to people, and the upshot was that all three of us were quietly reinstated. We never came back here, of course.”
“Until today.”
“Adam had seen the whole grisly scene, and afterward he helped me.”
“With information, sir. And I warned her as how there were other things-worse things-no students ever clapped eyes on, and she gave me her address at the university.”
“Three weeks ago I got a note from Adam. I rushed round to James to show him, and he was shocked. He’d suspected his brother-in-law was capable and probably culpable of unpleasant behaviour-”
“Hold it there, Dorcas. Why suspected? Who had alerted him? Did you ask yourself? Bentink doesn’t go about with A for Arsehole branded on his forehead.”
“He didn’t say, but I believed him when he said he’d no idea how far it went. He could hardly take on Bentink, the most respected psychologist in the country and a director of a prestigious hospital with royal funding. The British Establishment will do anything to avoid a hint of a scandal. You know that, Joe; you’re a part of it. You and Gosling, both. James thought the best plan was to attack this … this … cancer with a scalpel. He spoke with Commissi
oner Trenchard, and they decided to get the evidence-clandestinely if necessary-then face him with his iniquity and force him into a discreet resignation at the least, the gun and the brandy on the terrace with MI5 to witness it at best.”
“Heavens!” Joe said. “What on earth did you put in your letter, Adam? That resulted in me-an honest copper-being shoved down this rat hole like a ferret?”
White-faced and earnest, the boy squared up to him. “I need this job, sir. I don’t go getting into mischief lightly. The animals, I get too fond of ’em. I know that, and I can hide it-master it, needs must. If I weren’t here, looking out for them, there’s those who aren’t too particular. But what I can’t stomach is the children, sir.”
“Children?” Gosling exclaimed in disgust. “They allow children to come down here? What are they thinking of? It’s not a zoo!”
“You haven’t understood, sir!” Adam’s anguish was hobbling his tongue. He struggled to force out: “Animals are not good enough for his purposes, it seems. He’s moved on to humans. Children.”
“He’s not the first, Joe. There are rumours that Pavlov himself was not content to experiment with dogs. He worked on children.”
“Pavlov? But he’s Russian! This isn’t bloody Russia!”
“Come and have a look next door, sir. That’s where it all goes on.”
Adam went to the far side of the room and produced a key from his pocket. He slid aside a chrome panel to reveal a keyhole.
“Ah. The Locked Door! A touch of the Gothick at last in this monument to modernity!” Gosling’s light remark covered his fear and incredulity, Joe thought.
The space beyond proved to be a suite of three rooms. The two smaller ones were study and filing space for documents. The largest was evidently the operating theatre, though Joe struggled to find a different word, a word to encompass the horrors he sensed had occurred in this grotesque space.
“It’s very white.” Gosling was finding his powers of expression strained as Adam switched on blinding high-wattage lights.
“There’s a reason for that, sir,” Adam said.
A central, shaped couch at working height, clearly an operating table, was covered in some shiny white material that Joe had never seen before. He noted sockets in the walls on either side providing current for the electric wires that dangled from a peg. A range of fluids in laboratory glass containers were ranged neatly on the shelves of a bureau, and a copious sink and draining board occupied one corner. Hospital? Research laboratory? Torture chamber? It could have been any or all of these.
“This is where he brought them, sir. The gyspy children.”
“Gypsies?”
“Don’t expect that would be reported in the capital, but here in Sussex it was. Just once.” Adam spoke roughly. “The gypsies have been complaining that children have disappeared from their camps. Makes a change! They’re always being accused of stealing country children. T’other way round it makes you think there’s something to it. Anyway-I know as there is. I told Miss Joliffe. And now you’ve come. I’ll leave you to do what you have to do and go and keep an eye out.”
Joe looked back uneasily, checking their line of retreat. “Wait! Bentink must have help. Apart from Matron, I mean. An operation so well organised depends on manpower. Manpower that stays vigilant and doesn’t knock off at teatime. Who’s still in the building, Adam?”
“The two medics he’s hand in glove with are off for the weekend. But the heavies he uses are still on duty. There’s only two, but they’re big ’uns. The Trusties. Well paid. London blokes. Don’t mix with the rest of us. Hobnailed boots but not thick heads. No, they’re sharp lads as well as rough. They restrain the animals and the kids that get hysterical until someone can get the needle in.”
“Where are they?”
“They were detailed to be on watch out there by the cages. Right now. Making sure you didn’t get any further. I gave ’em a message. Nicked a sheet or two of the prof’s writing paper last week in case of emergency, and I scribbled a note. Pretended I’d rushed it back from the car for him. An afterthought before he shot off. They don’t read too well, either of ’em. Told them they were to go and stand guard in the graveyard over the fresh plots. They went but they won’t stay out there freezing for long. Better get on-they’ll be back.”
“And looking for you, Adam?” Joe asked.
“I’m scarpering. Picking up my old ma and going off to an auntie’s in London.”
“And then?” Joe handed him a card. “Give me a ring next week and we’ll talk.”
“Get on, Joe!” Dorcas urged. “You know what’s gone on here. Sterilisation. Death to order. Death by experimental methods, even. You’ve seen it now. Let’s get out.”
“No, wait!” Joe was peremptory. “I can’t use this! There’s absolutely no proof here that what you claim has happened, has indeed happened. It could be simply a dentist’s chair or equipment for the treatment of epileptic patients. Easy to account for. Speaking professionally, I can’t take this any further. Unprofessionally, that’s a different matter, and I shall put the boot in but as it stands.…”
“Proof? I can get you proof!” Adam was impatient and sweating with fear in the cold room. “See that little window over there? He filmed the experiments through it. That’s why he needs the big lights and the white paint. If you go next door into the filing room you’ll find there are reels still on the bottom shelf. Not labelled so I can’t help you there.”
Dorcas was swiftly on her knees working her way along a shelf of boxed film reels. “No names. No dates. Just numbers. I’m going to take the last two in the sequence. Experiments gather momentum and refinement. The last in a series is what you want. It’s a lucky dip, but here goes. They’ll just fit into my satchel if I move the pistol over a bit.”
Somewhere a door banged shut, and the sound was followed by absolute silence.
Desperate to leave now, they made for the door.
A sudden clang of metal on metal broke the silence. A signal. It was followed seconds later by a crescendo of noise as a steel stick was bounced from bar to bar along the cages, coming towards them. A bass accompaniment of nailed boots swelled the sound, clattering along the tiled floor of the monkey lab. They stopped, frozen for a moment in flight. Instinct took over. Dorcas pushed Adam behind her and ranged up behind Joe and Gosling who, without a word spoken, stepped out into the larger room, presenting a solid front to whoever was surging onward down the darkened laboratory.
“Well, what have we here?” A Cockney voice. “I can see you, Adam, yer carroty little runt! Hiding behind the skirt. Having a party are yer? Yer forgot to invite us.”
Joe looked with dismay at the guardians of this foul place. Adam’s description had not gone far enough. Over six feet tall and burly, both men wore not a reassuringly crisp lab coat but the coarse leather jerkin of a gunnery sergeant-or a London thug. They had the sleek muscled bulk and pitiless eyes of wild boar. Big boots and showy red neckerchiefs announced that they meant business. As did the short metal truncheon the spokesman held in one hand.
He smirked at Joe and Gosling and smacked the weapon suggestively into the palm of his other hand in a gesture he’d surely seen in a gangster movie. “Well, well! Two smart-arses caught abusing the boss’s hospitality! These men are intruders, Jonas. Did anyone warn you they were expected? Naw! Me neither! Show ’em how we welcome intruders, shall we?”
The man talked too much. Bored, belligerent show-offs whose moment had come at last, they were going to savour it. But it was their eyes, supercilious and mocking, that chilled Joe. These men were confident in their place and their position. Like bull mastiffs, they obeyed one master. And that master was not on hand to call them off. The pack instinct would take over. He’d encountered London thugs before; once they’d downed their prey they kicked their heads in. They owed no allegiance to law and order; they would be deaf to an upper-class voice. Useless to try to talk his way out of this encounter. Bluster or reason, either one wo
uld go unheard. He wondered if Gosling had come to the same conclusion. Better be certain.
“Give it ten, Hercules,” he muttered sideways.
He was spurred on by the click of a safety catch behind him.
Presenting a broad smile to the two slowly advancing thugs, Joe held up his left hand, waggling his Scotland Yard warrant card showily in front of their eyes.
“Ever seen one of these, eh?”
His right hand chopped sideways into the nearest man’s neck before he’d finished speaking. His left, dropping the warrant, slammed upwards into the wrist that was already raising the cosh, and the metal bar continued on its trajectory, shooting upwards out of the man’s grasp and clanging to the floor behind him. Joe followed with a fist to the undefended jaw to slake his own anger and then threw his weight onto the slumping body with the determination of a hound bringing down the heavier boar. He forced the man to the ground and applied more judicious pressure until the grunting stopped.
Gosling’s left hook on the other man’s jaw was a satisfying cruncher but not a disabling blow against a taller and heavier opponent. He needed to duck and dodge two swipes from an over-confident meaty fist before a second blow from his left put the man down to join his pal on the floor. He stepped back, looking slightly surprised.
“Do we need to do anything further with these louts, sir? Um.…” He glanced around him at the stark surroundings. “In the matter of restraining, I mean? A bit of rope, perhaps?”
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