“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 would go unheard. He wondered if Gosling had come to the same conclusion. Better be certain.