Читать книгу The Satan Bug - Alistair MacLean, Alistair MacLean, John Denis - Страница 7
ОглавлениеThe Army had a helicopter waiting for us, but the fog was too heavy. Instead we went down to Wiltshire in a big Jaguar saloon driven by a plainclothes policeman who took far too much satisfaction in leaning with all his weight on both accelerator and siren button. But the fog lifted as we cleared Middlesex, the roads were fairly clear and we made it intact to Mordon by just after midday.
Mordon is an architectural monstrosity, a guaranteed blot on any landscape. Had the designer—if it had a designer—based it on an early nineteenth-century prison, which it exactly resembles he couldn’t have achieved an uglier or more repulsive structure. But Mordon is only ten years old.
Grim, grey and gaunt under the darkly lowering October skies of that day, Mordon consisted of four parellel rows of squat, flat-topped concrete buildings, three stories high, each row, in its repellent forbidding lifelessness, for all the world like condemned and abandoned Victorian tenements in the worst slums of a great city. But a fitting enough façade for the work that went on behind the walls.
Each row of buildings was about a quarter of a mile in length, with about two hundred yards separating the rows. The space between buildings and boundary fence, five hundred yards at the nearest approach, was completely open, completely clear. No trees, no bushes, no shrubs, not even a clump of flowers. A man can hide behind a bush. He might even be able to hide behind a clump of flowers. But he can’t hide behind a blade of grass two inches high—and nothing higher grew in the bleak desolation of the grounds of Mordon. The term boundary fence—not a wall, people can hide behind walls—was a misnomer. Any World War 2 concentration camp commandant would have sold his soul for Mordon: with fences like those a man could sleep soundly at nights.
The outer barbed-wire fence was fifteen feet high and sloped outwards at so sharp an angle that the top was four feet out of line with the foot. A similar fence, only sloping the other way, paralleled the outer for its entire perimeter at a distance of about twenty feet. The space between those fences was patrolled at night by alsatians and dobermann-pinschers, trained man-hunters—and if need be, man-killers—answerable only to their own Army handlers. Three feet inside the second fence and actually below its overhang, was a two-strand trip-wire fence, of so fine a metal as to be normally almost invisible—and certainly would be invisible to anyone climbing down at night time from the top of that second fence. And then, another ten feet away, was the last fence, each of its five strands running through insulators mounted on concrete posts. The electric current passing through those wires was supposed to be less than lethal if, that is, you were in good health.
To make sure that everyone got the general idea the Army had put up notice-boards at ten-yard intervals round the entire perimeter of the outer fence. There were five different types of notices. Four of them, black, on white, read, “DANGER KEEP OUT BY ORDER”: “WARNING GUARD DOGS IN USE”: “PROHIBITED PLACE” and “ELECTRIFIED FENCES”: the fifth, a violent red on yellow, said simply: “W. D. PROPERTY: TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.” Only a madman or complete illiterate would have attempted to break his way into Mordon.
We came on the public ring road that completely surrounded the camp, bore right by the gorse-covered fields and after a quarter of a mile turned into the main entrance. The police driver stopped just short of the lowered boom and wound down his window as a sergeant approached. The sergeant had a machine-pistol slung over his shoulder and it wasn’t pointing at the ground either.
Then he caught sight of Cliveden, lowered his gun, gave a signal to a man we couldn’t see. The boom rose, the car moved on, halted before heavy steel crash-gates. We left the car, passed through a steel side door and made our way into a one-storey block marked “Reception.”
Three men waited for us there. Two I knew—Colonel Weybridge, deputy commandant of Mordon, and Dr. Gregori, Dr. Baxter’s chief assistant in “E”’ block. Weybridge, though technically under Cliveden’s command, was the real boss of Mordon: a tall, fresh-faced man with black hair and an incongruously iron-grey moustache, he was reputed to be an outstanding doctor. Mordon was his life: he was one of the few with his own living accommodation on the premises and it was said that he never passed outside the gates twice a year. Gregori was a tall, heavy, swarthy, dark-eyed man, an Italian and ex-professor of medicine from Turin, and a brilliant microbiologist greatly respected by his fellow scientists. The third man was a bulky, shapeless character in a bulky shapeless tweed suit who looked so much like a farmer that he had to be what he turned out to be—a policeman in plain clothes. Inspector Wylie, of the Wiltshire Constabulary.
Cliveden and Weybridge made the introductions, then Hardanger took over. Generals and Colonels or not, Army establishment or not, there was no question from the word “go “as to who was in complete charge. Hardanger made it clear from the start.
He said bluntly, “Inspector Wylie, you shouldn’t be here. No member of any county constabulary has any right to be inside those gates. But I doubt if you knew that and I’m sure you’re not responsible for your presence here. Who is?”
“I am.” Colonel Weybridge’s voice was steady, but he was on the defensive. “The circumstances are unusual, to say the least.”
“Let me tell it,” Inspector Wylie put in. “Our headquarters got a call late last night, about eleven-thirty, from the guardhouse here, saying that one of your car crews—I understand jeeps patrol the ring road all night—had given chase to some unidentified man who seemed to have been molesting or attacking a girl just outside your grounds. A civilian matter, outwith Army jurisdiction, so they called us. The duty sergeant and constable were here by shortly after midnight, but found nothing and no one. I came along this morning and when I saw the fences had been cut—well, I assumed there was some connection between the two things.”
“The fences cut!” I interrupted. “The boundary fences? It’s not possible.”
“I’m afraid it is, Cavell,” Weybridge said gravely.
“The patrol cars,” I protested. “The dogs, the trip wires, the electric fences. How about them?”
“You’ll see yourself. The fences are cut, and that’s all that’s to it.” Weybridge wasn’t as calm as he seemed on the surface, not by a long way. I would have taken long odds that he and Gregori were badly frightened men.
“Anyway,” Inspector Wylie went on calmly, “I made inquiries at the gate. I met Colonel Weybridge there and he asked me to make inquiries—discreet inquiries—to try to trace Dr. Baxter.”
“You did that?” Hardanger asked Weybridge. The voice was speculative, the tone neutral. “Don’t you know your own standing orders? That all inquiries are to be handled by your own security chief or my office in London?”
“Clandon was dead and——”
“Oh, God!” Hardanger’s voice was a lash. “So now Inspector Wylie knows that Clandon is dead. Or did you know before, Inspector?”
“No, sir.”
“But you do now. How many other people have you told, Colonel Weybridge?”
“No one else.” His voice was stiff, his face pale.
“Thank heaven for that. Don’t think I’m carrying security to ridiculous lengths, Colonel, for it doesn’t matter what you think or what I think. All that matters is what one or two people in Whitehall think. They give the orders, we carry them out. The instructions for an emergency such as this are quite clear. We take over—completely. You wash your hands of it—completely. I want your co-operation, of course, but it must be cooperation on my terms.”
“What the superintendent means,” Cliveden said testily, “is that amateur detecting is not discouraged, it’s forbidden. I suppose that includes me too, Hardanger?”
“Don’t make my job more difficult than it is already, sir.”
“I won’t. But, as Commandant, I must ask for the right to be kept informed of all progress and the right to be present when number one lab in ‘E’ block is opened up.”
“That’s fair,” Hardanger agreed.
“When?” Cliveden asked. “The lab, I mean.”
Hardanger looked at me. “Well? The twelve hours you spoke of are up.”
“I’m not sure.” I looked at Dr. Gregori. “Has the ventilation system been started up in number one?”
“No. Of course not. Nobody’s been near the place. We left everything strictly alone.”
“If anything had been, say, knocked over,” I went on carefully. “Would oxidisation be complete?”
“I doubt it. Air’s too static.”
I turned to Hardanger. “All those labs are specially ventilated by filtered air later cleaned in a closed circuit special compartment. I would like this switched on. Then maybe in an hour.”
Hardanger nodded. Gregori, dark eyes worried behind his thick lenses, phoned instructions then left with Cliveden and Weybridge. Hardanger turned to Inspector Wylie.
“Well, Inspector, it seems you’re in possession of information you shouldn’t have. No need to issue the usual dreadful warnings to you, I suppose.”
“I like my job,” Wylie smiled. “Don’t be too hard on old Weybridge, sir. Those medical men just aren’t security minded. He meant well.”
“The paths of the just—that’s me—are made thorny and difficult by those who mean well,” Hardanger said heavily. “What’s this about Baxter?”
“Seems he left here about 6.30 p.m. last night, sir. But later than usual, I gather, so he missed the special bus to Alfringham.”
“He checked out, of course?” I asked. Every scientist leaving Mordon had to sign the “Out” register and hand in his security tag.
“No doubt about that. He had to wait for the ordinary service bus that passed the road end at 6.48. Conductor and two passengers confirm that someone answering to our description—no names, of course—got on at the road end, but the conductor is quite positive that no one of that description got off at Alfringham Farm, where Dr. Baxter lives. He must have gone all the way to Alfringham, or Hardcaster, the terminus.” “He just vanished,” Hardanger nodded. He looked consideringly at the burly quiet-eyed man. “Like to work with us on this, Wylie?”
“It would make a change from checking up on the old foot-and-mouth,” Wylie admitted. “But our super and the Chief Constable might have something to say about that.”
“They could be persuaded, I think. Your office is at Alfringham, isn’t it? I’ll call you there.”
Wylie left. As he passed through the doorway we caught sight of an army lieutenant, hand raised to knock on the door. Hardanger cocked an eye and said, “Come in.”
“Morning, sir. ‘Morning, Mr. Cavell.” The sandy-haired young lieutenant looked tired, but his voice was brisk and alert in spite of that. “Wilkinson, sir. Officer in charge of the guard patrols last night. Colonel said you might want to see me.”
“Considerate of the Colonel. I do. Hardanger, Superintendent Hardanger. Glad to meet you, Wilkinson. You the man who found Clandon last night?”
“Perkins—a corporal of the guard—found him. He called me and I had a look at him. Just a look. Then I sealed ‘E’ block, called the Colonel and he confirmed.”
“Good man,” Hardanger approved. “But we’ll come to that later. You were notified of the wire-cutting, of course?”
“Naturally, sir. With—with Mr. Clandon gone, I was in charge. We couldn’t find him, not anywhere. He must have been dead even then.”
“Quite. You investigated the wire-cutting, of course?”
“No, sir.”
“No? Why not? Your job, surely?”
“No, sir. It’s a job for an expert.” A half-smile touched the pale tired face. “We carry automatic machine-guns, Superintendent, not microscopes. It was pitch black. Besides, by the time a few pairs of regulation army boots had churned the place up there wouldn’t have been much left to investigate. I set a four man guard, sir, each man ten yards from the break, two inside and two out, with orders that no one should be allowed to approach.”
“Never looked to find such intelligence in the Army,” Hardanger said warmly. “That was first class, young man.” A faint touch of colour touched Wilkinson’s pale face as he tried hard not to show his pleasure. “Anything else you did?”
“Nothing that would help you, sir. I sent another jeep—there’s normally three on patrol at a time—round the entire perimeter of the fence to make a spotlight search for another break. But this was the only one. Then I questioned the crew of the jeep who’d made this wild-goose chase after the man who was supposed to have attacked the girl and warned them that the next time their—ah—chivalrous instincts got the better of them they would be sent back to their regiments. They’re not supposed to leave their jeeps, no matter what the provocation.”
“You think this episode of the distressed young lady was just a blind? To let someone nip in smartly and unobserved with a pair of wire-cutters?”
“What else, sir?”
“What else, indeed,” Hardanger sighed. “How many men usually employed in ‘E’ block, Lieutenant?”
“Fifty-five, sixty, sir.”
“Doctors?”
“A mixed bunch. Doctors, micro-biologists, chemists, technicians, Army and civilian. I don’t know too much about them, sir. We’re not encouraged to ask questions.”
“Where are they now? I mean,’ E’ block is sealed off.”
“In the refectory lounge. Some of them wanted to go home when they found ‘E’ block shut up but the Colonel—Colonel Weybridge—wouldn’t let them.”
“That’s convenient. Lieutenant, I’d be grateful if you’d lay on two orderlies or messengers or whatever. One for me, one for Inspector Martin here. Inspector Martin would like to talk to those ‘E’ block men, individually. Please make arrangements. If there are any difficulties you are free to say that you have the full authority of General Cliveden behind you. But first I’d like you to come along with us and identify us to your guards at this gap in the fence. Then tell all the guards, the men who man the jeeps and the dog-handlers to be at the reception office in twenty minutes. The ones who were on duty before midnight, I mean.”
Five minutes later Hardanger and I were alone at the break in the fences. The guards had withdrawn out of earshot and Wilkinson had left us.
The barbed wire on the outer fence was strung between curving reinforced concrete posts like junior editions of modern city lighting standards. There were about thirty strands on the fence, with roughly six inches between each pair. The fourth and fifth strands from the bottom had been cut then rejoined with heavy grey twine tied round the barbs nearest the cuts. It had taken a pretty sharp pair of eyes to discover the break.
There had been no rain for three days and there was no trace of footmarks. The ground was damp, but that was still from the heavy dew of the previous night. Whoever had cut those wires had left long before the dew had begun to settle.
“Your eyes are younger than mine,” Hardanger said. “Sawn or cut?”
“Snipped. Cutters or pliers. And have a look at the angle of the cut. Slight, but it’s there.”
Hardanger took one end of the wire in his hand and peered at it.
“From left at the front to right at the back,” he murmured. “The way a left-handed man would naturally hold cutters or pliers to obtain maximum leverage.”
“A left-handed man,” I agreed. “Or a right handed man who wanted to confuse us. So a man who’s either left-handed or clever or both.”
Hardanger looked at me in disgust and made his way slowly to the inner fence. No footprints, no marks between the fences. The inner fence had been cut in three places, whoever had wielded those cutters would have felt more secure from observation from the ring road. The point we had yet to establish was why he had felt so secure from the attention of the police dogs patrolling the area between the two fences.
The trip-wires under the overhang of the second fence were intact. Whoever had cut that fence had been lucky indeed in not stumbling over them. Or he’d known their exact location. Our friend with the pliers didn’t strike me as a man who would depend very much on luck.
And the method he’d adopted to get through the electric fence proved it. Unlike most such fences, where only the top wire carried the current all the way, the others being made live by a vertical joining wire cable at each set of insulators, this fence was live in every wire throughout. The alarm bell would be rung by the shorting of any of those wires to earth, as when someone touched them, or by the cutting of any of the wires. This hadn’t fazed our friend with the pliers—insulated pliers, quite obviously. The two strands of TRS cable lying on the ground between two posts showed this clearly enough. He’d bent one end of one strand on to the lowest insulator of one post, trailed it across the ground and done the same with the lowest insulator on the next post, so providing an alternate pathway for the current. He’d done the same with the pair of insulators above these, then simply cut away both lowermost wires and crawled through under the third wire.
“An ingenious beggar,” Hardanger commented. “Almost argues inside information, doesn’t it?”
“Or somebody just outside the outer fence with a powerful telescope or binoculars. The ring road is open to public traffic, remember. Wouldn’t be hard to sit in a car and see what type of electric fence it was: and I dare say if the conditions were right he could have seen the trip-wires on the inner fence glistening in the sun.”
“I dare say,” Hardanger said heavily. “Well, it’s no damn’ good us staying here and staring at this fence. Let’s get back and start asking questions.”
All the men Hardanger had asked to see were assembled in the reception hall. They were sitting on benches around the hall, fidgeting and restless. Some of them looked sleepy, all of them looked scared. I knew it would take Hardanger about half of one second to sum up their mental condition and act accordingly. He did. He took his seat behind a table and looked up under his shaggy brows, the pale blue eyes cold and penetrating and hostile. As an actor, he wasn’t all that far behind Inspector Martin.
“All right,” he said brusquely. “The jeep crew. The ones who made the wild-goose chase last night. Let’s have you.”
Three men—a corporal and two privates—rose slowly to their feet. Hardanger gave his attention to the corporal.
“Your name, please?”
“Muirfield, sir.”
“You in charge of the crew last night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Yes, sir. We’d completed a circuit of the ring road, stopped to report everything O.K. at the main gate and then left again. It would be about eleven-fifteen, sir, give or take a minute or two. About two hundred and fifty yards past the gates we saw this girl running into the headlights. She looked wild, dishevelled like, her hair all over the place. She was half-screaming, half-crying, a funny noise. I was driving. I stopped the jeep, jumped out, and the others came after me. I should have told them to stay where they——”
“Never mind about what you should have done. The story, man!”
“Well, we came up to her, sir. She’d mud on her face and her coat was torn. I said—”
“Ever seen her before?”
“No, sir.”
“Would you recognise her again?”
He hesitated. “I doubt it, sir. Her face was in a fair old mess.”
“She spoke to you?”
“Yes, sir. She said——”
“Recognise her voice? Any of you recognise her voice? Can you be quite sure of that?”
Three solemn shakes of their heads. They hadn’t recognised her voice.
“All right,” Hardanger said wearily. “She pitched the tale of the damsel in distress. At the psychological moment someone conveniently betrayed his presence and started running. You all took off after him. Catch a glimpse of him?”
“A glimpse, only, sir. Just a blur in the darkness. Could have been anyone.”
“He took off in a car, I understand. Just another blur, I take it?”
“Yes, sir. Not a car, sir. A closed van type, sir. A Bedford.”
“I see.” Hardanger stopped and stared at him. “A Bedford! How the devil do you know? It was dark, you said.”
“It was a Bedford,” Muirfield insisted. “I’d know the engine anywhere. And I’m a garage mechanic in civvy street.”
“He’s right, Superintendent,” I put in. “A Bedford does have a very distinctive engine note.”
“I’ll be back.” Hardanger was on his feet and it didn’t need any clairvoyance to see him heading for the nearest telephone. He glanced at me, nodded at the seated soldiers and left.
I said, pleasantly enough, “Who was the dog-handler in number one last night?” The circuit between the two barbed-wire fences were divided into four sections by wooden hurdles: number one was the section in which the break-in occurred. “You, Ferguson?”
A dark stocky private in his middle twenties had risen to his feet. Ferguson was regular Army, a born soldier, tough, aggressive, and not very bright.
“Me,” he said. There was truculence in his voice, not very much, but more waiting there if I wanted it.
“Where were you at eleven fifteen last night?”
“In number one. With Rollo. That’s my alsatian.”
“You saw the incident that Corporal Muirfield here has described?”
“’Course I saw it.”
“Lie number one, Ferguson. Lie number two and you’ll be returned to your regiment before the day is out.”
“I’m not lying.” His face was suddenly ugly. “And you can’t talk to me like that, Mister Cavell. You can’t threaten me any more. Don’t think we don’t all know you were sacked from here!”
I turned to the orderly. “Ask Colonel Weybridge to come here. At once, please.”
The orderly turned to go, but a big sergeant rose to his feet and stopped him.
“It’s not necessary, sir. Ferguson’s a fool. It’s bound to come out. He was at the switchboard having a smoke and a cup of cocoa with the gatehouse communications number. I was in charge. Never saw him there, but I knew about it and didn’t worry about it. Ferguson always left Rollo in number one—and that dog’s a killer, sir. It was safe enough.”
“It wasn’t, but thanks. You’ve been in the habit of doing this for some time, haven’t you, Ferguson?”
“I haven’t.” He was scowling, sullen. “Last night was the first——”
“If there was a rank lower than private,” I interrupted wearily, “you’d stay in it till the end of your days. Use what little sense you have. Do you think whoever arranged this decoy move and was standing by with his pliers ready to break in did it unless he knew for certain you wouldn’t be on patrol at that particular time? Probably after Mr. Clandon finished his 11 p.m. rounds visit to the main gate every night you went straight into the gatehouse for your smoke and cocoa. Isn’t that it?”
He stood staring down at the floor in stubborn silence until the sergeant said sharply, “For God’s sake, Fergie, use your loaf. Everybody else here can see it. So can you.”
Again silence, but this time a sullen nod of defeat.
“We’re getting someplace. When you came here you left your dog—Rollo—behind?”
“Yes, sir.” Ferguson’s days of truculent defiance were over.
“What’s he like?”
“He’d tear the throat out of any man alive, from the general downwards,” Ferguson said with satisfaction. “Except me, of course.”
“He didn’t tear out any throats last night,” I pointed out. “I wonder why?”
“He must have been got at,” Ferguson said defensively.
“What do you mean ‘got at’? Did you have a look at him before you turned him into his compound last night?”
“Look at him? ‘Course not. Why should I? When we saw the cut outer fence we thought whoever done it must have caught sight of Rollo and run for his life. That’s what I would have bloody well done. If——”
“Fetch the dog here,” I said. “But for God’s sake muzzle him first.” He left and while he was away Hardanger returned. I told him what I’d learned, and that I’d sent for the dog.
Hardanger asked, “What do you expect to find? Nothing, I think. A chloroform pad or something like that would leave no mark. Same if some sort of dart or sharply tipped weapon with one of those funny poisons had been chucked at him. Just a pinprick, that’s all there would be.”
“From what I hear of our canine pal,” I said, “I wouldn’t try to hold a chloroform pad against his head if you gave me the crown jewels. As for those funny poisons, as you call them, I don’t suppose one person in a hundred thousand could lay hands on one of them or know how to use them even if they did. Besides, throwing or firing any sharp-tipped weapon against a fast-moving, thick-coated target in the dark would be a very dicey proposition indeed. Our friend of last night doesn’t go in for dicey propositions, only for certainties.”
Ferguson was back in ten minutes, fighting to restrain a wolf-like animal that lunged out madly at anyone who came near him. Rollo had a muzzle on but even that didn’t make me feel too confident. I didn’t need any persuasion to accept the sergeant’s word that the dog was a killer.
“Does that hound always act like this?” I demanded.
“Not usually.” Ferguson was puzzled. “In fact, never. Usually perfectly behaved until I let him off the leash—then he’ll go for the nearest person no matter who he is. But he even had a go at me this afternoon—half-hearted, like, but nasty.”
It didn’t take long to discover the source of Rollo’s irritation. Rollo was suffering from what must have been a very severe headache indeed. The skin on the forehead, just above eye-level, had a swollen pulpy feeling to it and it took four men all their time to hold the dog down when I touched this area with the tips of my forefingers. We turned him over, and I parted the thick fur on the throat till I found what I was looking for—two triangular jagged tears, deep and very unpleasant looking, about three inches apart.
“You’d better give your pal here a couple of days off,” I said to Ferguson, “and some disinfectant for those gashes on his neck. I wish you luck when you’re putting it on. You can take him away.”
“No chloroform, no fancy poisons,” Hardanger admitted when we were alone. “Those gashes—barbed wire, hey?”
“What else? Just the right distance apart. Somebody pads his forearm, sticks it between a couple of strands of barbed wire and Rollo grabs it. He wouldn’t bark—those dogs are trained never to bark. As soon as he grabs he’s pulled through and down onto the barbed wire and can’t pull himself free unless he tears his throat out. And then someone clouts him at his leisure with something heavy and hard. Simple, old-fashioned, direct and very very effective. Whoever the character we’re after, he’s no fool.”
“He’s smarter than Rollo, anyway,” Hardanger conceded heavily.
