Dread and Water

by Douglas Clark

  “Somebody had touched it?”

  “Yes. It might even have been the handlers, but it was proof enough for me we weren’t being invaded. A pro would have that wire sussed out and avoid it like the plague. In fact, it’s only there to tell us if kids are fooling about. What I’m saying is that the real boyos would never try to get in that way. They arrange for secrets to be carried out of the Centre if they want them. It’s easier than going in for them, if you get my meaning.”

  “Perfectly, What happened?”

  “Toinquet ordered the wire to be electrified with full power. I told him not to; that he’d probably be killing some young fool. But he went ahead. He pushed the bloody buss bar over himself.”

  “Then what?”

  “Mailer was just coming through the gate. He bursts in and says he’s just heard some kids howling in pain and fear out there, not far from the gate.”

  “He actually said kids?”

  “Yes. Children’s voices.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I switched off the current. Toinquet was as angry as hell. Then Mailer and I went through the gate that leads into the gap and ran to where he’d heard the crying come from.

  “He didn’t have to tell me where to go. Have you ever heard a couple of youngsters badly burned as well as frightened out of their wits by a couple of Alsatians?”

  “Blood-curdling?”

  “I’ve a lad of five myself. I tell you, Mr Green, that if anybody ever harms that child there’ll be payment taken. These kids were ten or eleven. Two of them. They’d got the jolt from the electricity, they’d been torn by the barbed wire, and they were too frightened to keep still with those guard dogs around. Of course they moved. Who wouldn’t? And those dogs are trained to take anybody who doesn’t stand perfectly still.”

  Brant shuddered.

  “Jim had to tackle those dogs,” said Sue Mercer. “Jim and Doctor Mailer. Their handlers had unleashed them miles away, so they weren’t anywhere near to control them. The dogs had rushed ahead, you see.”

  “What the hell did you do?” asked Green.

  “Mailer had a stick, so I reckon he crowned his brute. You see, the dogs had hold of the lads and would have had to leave go of them to come for us. I only had one hope. I got hold of the tail of one of them and twisted it as hard as I could go.”

  “What happened?”

  “It let go of the lad. I hung on for dear life trying to stop it turning on me while Doctor Mailer swiped at it. He knocked it out at last.”

  “So both dogs were senseless?”

  “It hardly seems possible, but yes. The handlers weren’t very pleased, I can tell you.”

  “And the lads?”

  “Both hospital cases. Both in a serious condition. Mailer and I carried them in and got Dr Partington. But you should have heard Mailer lambast Toinquet. ’Course he couldn’t do anything not officially, because the safeguards are there to be used if there’s anybody trying to break in. But he didn’t let that stop him telling Toinquet what he was fit for.”

  “Was that the end of it?”

  “Not quite. Next day Toinquet said I couldn’t have this leave, and about two nights later the father of one of the lads—a farm labourer—gave Toinquet a black eye in the village pub. He’d heard, you see, that Toinquet was responsible for setting the dogs on and shoving the current through the fence.”

  “News gets around.”

  “They were a couple of nippers on a prank. We should have got them, stubbed their backsides and sent them home.”

  “So all this is what Widow Twankey wanted to stop you telling us?”

  “Was that why he let Jim have his leave after all?” asked Sue Mercer incredulously.

  “I think so.”

  “But I don’t think that Toinquet got at Mailer,” said Mercer firmly.

  Green looked suitably dismayed. Hill caught his eye and stared unwinkingly.

  “But there was bad blood between them,” insisted Green.

  “Certainly. And I’m not sure I’m going to last that long.”

  Sue Mercer gave a little cry of dismay when she heard her husband say this. Green got to his feet and patted her shoulder. “Don’t you worry, love. We’ll see he’s all right.”

  Masters was using one of the private phone booths outside the ante room when Green and the sergeants ran him to earth after returning from the village.

  “Trouble?” asked Green. “Something you didn’t want somebody to know about?”

  “I rang the North Wales Division. I asked them to send a detailed statement from the hospital casualty officer and anybody else who attended him, as well as the equipment he was using. In addition to the post-mortem findings we were already expecting.”

  “To come direct to you here?”

  Masters nodded. “They’ll send them by car tonight.”

  “What time will that be? It’s six now.”

  “More than two hundred miles,” said Hill. “And they’ll have to wait for those statements. Say midnight at the earliest.”

  “Fair enough. There are one or two things still to do.”

  “Such as?” asked Green.

  “See Winter and the other boffins in Group Six.”

  Hill looked at Brant. Masters was broody. The sure sign he was on to something. Brant nodded imperceptibly and then coughed gently. “Chief …”

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “I’ll cancel this dinner engagement if you like.”

  “Don’t do that. But I’d be glad if you’d use Doctor Dexter’s car as I think we may need ours.”

  “Right, Chief.”

  “And Brant …”

  “Sir?”

  “By and large I don’t think it a good idea to mix business with pleasure. Doctor Dexter has helped us tremendously already. Leave it at that.”

  “That’s right, lad,” said Green. “And don’t let her baffle you with science, either.”

  Winter said, “Yes, I used to gamble. Not heavily, but often. When several of you are cooped up together in a lab you form a society much the same as any other. Mild betting, horseplay …”

  “Horseplay?” asked Green. “Among senior scientists with all that apparatus about?”

  “I should have said verbal horseplay. Not everybody was old, you know, and there is some pretty wit even among dedicated scientists. Limericks, puns, double entendre … the lot.”

  “And the betting?” asked Masters.

  “I placed a bet with poor Silk—as a result of a friendly argument—that I could walk round to the top by the path route before he could make it by climbing.”

  “And?”

  “I have never placed a bet since that day.”

  “You consider yourself in some way responsible for his death?”

  “Logically, no. But I was still troubled. If there had not been a bottle of whisky at stake, would he have climbed alone?”

  “That accounts for Silk being alone, perhaps. But why did Mailer climb alone?”

  “I wish I knew. Certainly not on account of any wager I made with him.”

  “The whole of your research team knew of your bet with Silk?”

  “I imagine the whole Centre knew. It was no secret.”

  Dorothy Clay said: “What would you do if your mere presence affected your wife’s mental state adversely?”

  “And that’s why Doctor Winter stays away from his home and lives here in the Centre?” asked Green.

  “Mrs Winter is looked after by her sister. She is not physically incapacitated, but her mental health is such that the sight of her husband causes whatever neurosis she suffers from to be exacerbated to a stage where her actions are entirely unpredictable.”

  “Meaning she blames him for something he did in the past which sent her up the wall?”

  She stared at Green with distaste. He, for his part, was deliberately playing it on the aggro level to anger and thus destroy the control of his witness.

  “She mistakenly connects hi
m with the discovery and use of the atomic bomb and all the horror that conjures up. But Doctor Winter has never harmed his wife or anybody else. She is the victim of illness. Mental disease, if you like. No act of his caused it.”

  “Has he ever thought of divorcing her? To remarry? Somebody with his own interests? On his own mental plane?”

  Dorothy Clay pursed her lips in anger. “Get out, you bastard. Leave this room.”

  “Why? What have I said?”

  She was on her feet, thrusting her face forward. “You have insinuated that he should leave her for me.”

  “Not at all. There are lots of lady scientists he might like to …”

  “There aren’t!” It was a hiss. “There aren’t. Get out. You’re hounding me …” The blow she aimed took him by surprise. He retreated through the door as she broke into tears.

  Crome said: “I told you when you first came, Superintendent, that they are a corps d’élite, with all the drawbacks that can imply. An inbred society. I thought you recognised that fully when you told me this morning that nobody could cater for finely balanced minds.”

  ‘I did recognise it, Director. But to recognise that comparatively little may unbalance something teetering on a knife edge is not to know what that little cause may be. For instance, what may well be a tragedy to the ordinary man—say the loss of a hundred pounds—could well, I imagine, have no effect whatsoever on a high-grade physicist, no matter how poorly paid. He could well brush it aside as of no consequence.”

  “Oh, quite. There are some like that.”

  “So what would push them over the edge?”

  Crome paused a moment before replying. “Without a doubt—and what I have to say can be proved by known instances—the most likely event to cause mental distress in my sort of people is professional mistrust or disdain.”

  “By other scientists?”

  “Naturally. Lay opinion would count for nothing. But for his peers to pour scorn on his results or ideas is—to use an overworked word—traumatic to a scientist. Mental trauma … even psychic trauma, has been caused in this way.”

  “Do I take that to mean that the shock causes injury to the subconscious mind and produces a lasting emotional effect?”

  “I don’t think I can put it better than that. But may I ask if a case of psychic trauma is what you are considering as a possible motive for murder?”

  “I think that is what I must do. The alternative would be malicious.”

  “Thank you for that, at least.”

  Mayes, the chief lab technician of Group Six, said: “Of course they laughed. They all did. But some were kinder than others. Silk proved it wrong mathematically. Redruth and Bullock knocked their heads together over it and decided that it was hampering their work. They were, in fact, prepared to go above Winter’s head and claim that time, money and equipment were being wasted. But Redruth died before they could get their case in a presentable form. After that, Bullock didn’t seem to care so much.”

  “And Mailer?” asked Masters.

  “I don’t know about him. He was a pretty quiet sort of chap just so long as things were as he thought they should be. But when he got his dander up, he could be the very devil. I know. He’s blasted me before now when things haven’t been ready for him and it’s been important that they should be.”

  “Could he have got cross with Doctor Winter at any time?”

  “Most likely. But he’d do it in the Doctor’s office, not in public. He always came into my cubby hole if he wanted to complain to me about anything my crowd had done wrong.”

  “Your crowd?”

  “Technicians and lab assistants. My responsibility.”

  Hill and Green ran Drew to earth at his home in the village.

  “Of course I didn’t complain. What was the use? I’m getting out.”

  “But the situation was pretty bad from your point of view?”

  “Incredibly bad. You know we have a number of scientific assistants—not lab assistants—but qualified junior people? They’re there to do some of the routine, to leave us free to get on. It is hell’s own delight trying to get an hour of their time. The consequence is that our projects are held up—months behind schedule. Silk raved about it openly. Rutherford was for getting us all to sign a protest.”

  “But you did nothing?”

  “I steered clear. I take the point of view that nobody can tell what may eventually spring from apparently wild ideas. So I’ll play no part in suppressing them.”

  “Yet you’re getting out.”

  “Not because of lack of freedom. Lack of facilities and assistance caused by too much freedom.”

  “You mean there should be more money allocated for the activities of Group Six?”

  “There’s a hell of a lack of direction. There needs to be a firm hand on the tiller.”

  “Look, Superintendent,” said Saunders, “the chap who first put tags on bootlaces made a fortune. Good luck to him. Simple ideas are the best. But everything is comparative. The world today is complex. Simplicity is a matter of degree. But it’s still there to strive for. I can feel it in my bones when we start stepping outside the bounds of simplicity. And under Winter this is what has happened. It explains why he, as an able scientist, never quite made the top. He has no sixth sense which says thus far and no farther. He cloaks this attitude under the guise of diplomacy or as support for freedom of thought—which no scientist would disagree with as long as there were legitimate aims in mind. But science is a discipline—in every sense of the word. Winter’s team is in disarray, and those who have dared to say so are gone. Dead. And now you’re here. My hope is you’ll salvage something for us from the wreck.”

  At nine o’clock Masters was called to the phone outside the ante room where he, Green and Hill had been sitting after a hurried supper.

  “Chief,” said Brant’s voice, “Bullock’s here, drinking himself stupid. If you want to get any sense out of him tonight, it’s got to be now. Do you want me to bring him in?”

  “No. So long as he’s turned up, that’s fine. You return to your date. We’ll be there ourselves, shortly. Leave it to us.”

  As Hill drove them to Pottersby village, Green said, “I can’t see what the rush is. I was just going to have a drink.”

  “We’re going to a pub.”

  “Oh, aye! So we are. But it’s cheaper in the Centre.”

  “I’ll buy you one. They don’t come cheaper than that.”

  “OK. But what’s your hurry? We’re no nearer to pinning the job on Winter than we were yesterday at this time.”

  Masters didn’t reply. Inside The Bull he saw Brant, who was taking coffee in the lounge.

  “He’s in the small bar to the right, Chief.”

  “Thank you. Good evening, Doctor Dexter. Have you had a successful evening.

  “Not very, Superintendent.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. What’s gone wrong? Food no good? Sergeant Brant’s company dull?”

  “Far from it. It has all been very nice. But you asked me if it had been successful.”

  “And?”

  “I haven’t been able to persuade Sergeant Brant to become just plain Mister Brant.”

  “I see. And I told him not to mix business with pleasure.”

  She stood up. “Don’t worry. I admire him for it.”

  “And that’s as far as it’s gone?”

  “Unless you count the fact that my parents live only a few hundred yards from his, and when I visit my home next week I shall call on his mother.”

  “I’ll make sure he has the day off.”

  “Why not the week?”

  “Suffering cats,” said Green as they left her. “She knows what she wants, that one. And gets it. And what do we get? Flapper sergeants getting hitched to top-grade doctors of science! Wouldn’t it root you?”

  “Doctor Bullock?” asked Masters of the lonely, morose figure sitting in a corner of the bar.

  Bullock looked up wearily.

&n
bsp; “My name is Masters.”

  “The boss copper?”

  “That’s right. I have Sergeant Hill here with me. You remember him? And Detective Inspector Green. Can we give you a lift to the Centre?”

  “Not yet. I’m still just sober enough to see three of each of you.”

  “Another drink?”

  “ ’sgenerous of you. Whisky.”

  Masters brought the glasses over.

  “Here’s tears, doc,” said Green. “First tonight.”

  “I’m pleased to say it’s far from being my first.”

  “Doctor,” said Masters, sitting beside him. “You’re blaming yourself, aren’t you?”

  “ ’Course I bloody well am. How do I know Clive Mailer didn’t find out about Marian and me and chuck himself off that face because of it?”

  “Mailer would never have reacted like that. He’d have created hell. I’ve good evidence to prove that. He had his say with Toinquet, Mayes, Winter and various others at different times. And he always went straight to the fountain head. If he’d known you and his wife were spending week-ends together in his absence, he’d have told you in no uncertain manner. Rest assured of that.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “You know I am. You’re feeling pretty disgusted with yourself. Well, that’s natural. Just don’t let your disgust include Mrs Mailer. The best recompense you can make to your friend is to see that his wife is looked after.”

  Bullock nodded. Masters seemed to have cheered him up slightly. “Don’t worry on that score. If she’ll have me permanently after a suitable interval …”

  “Splendid. Now just one point you can help us on, Doctor. On the day you yourself nearly fell from a mountainside, what was the number of the set of gear you borrowed?”

  “Number? How the hell should I know? After all this time? One set’s just like … no, wait a minute. I always used to have five. That’s right. The regular climbers staked a sort of claim on a set each and left it adjusted from week to week. An’ then that last time Dottie said I had to have some other set because something had happened to number five. Rucksack torn or something.”