Flesh and Blood (12 page)

The stone steps were worn, most of them slightly slumped in the middle. To the right-hand side of the door was a keypad, just like the one I’d seen before. It was shielded from the elements with a curved plastic cover.

Glancing over our shoulders, we went down the steps. We huddled together in the doorway as Liam drew a laptop and an assortment of connectors from his backpack.

If someone had asked me, at that moment, what I thought we were going to find, I wouldn’t have been able to say. I was trying to keep my mind and my eyes open. Maybe a cell for containing Byron – or whoever – during psychotic episodes? Or supplies of experimental drugs? Paperwork showing how the residents of Priory Mews had been doped? Clothes stained with the blood of the murder victim from the park?

There were so many possibilities. The only thing we weren’t prepared for, in any way, was what we actually found.

Liam used a tiny screwdriver, the sort you find in Christmas crackers, to remove the cover from the keypad. Beneath it, the plastic number keys stood out from a small circuit board.

“That’s where the power comes in,” he whispered, pointing to the top left corner of the board. “And this is where the signal from the keys goes, over here.” I had the feeling he was talking to himself rather than us, mostly as a way of steadying his nerves. His fingers shook slightly as he pointed.

He flipped open the laptop. Its screen showed a series of black boxes with lists of coding in green. He plugged two USB leads into the computer, and handed it to me.

“Hold this,” he said quietly. “Now, these little metal rods on the other ends of these leads, what we have to do is touch the right parts of the circuit board with them, to intercept the signals going through it,
and then the program on the laptop works out what the right keycode is.”

He stood examining the board, ducking his head up and down, the two leads held between his fingers. The cold was biting at my face, and I shivered again. Jo had tucked her hands under her arms for warmth. I could hear Liam’s breathing.

At last, Liam connected the ends of the leads to different parts of the circuit board. As soon as he did so, one of the boxes on the laptop screen began to scroll. He glanced over at it, keeping his hands as still as possible.

“OK,” he muttered. “Tell me when you get an ‘at’ symbol followed by numbers.”

A few seconds later, the flowing green codes had reduced down to: ‘@34516’

Liam plucked the ends of the leads away, replaced the keypad cover, and tapped 3, 4, 5, 1, 6 into it. Behind the door, there was a sudden loud click. The sound made us all jump. The laptop and leads were bundled away into Liam’s bag.

“Ready?” I said. They nodded.

I took hold of the door’s handle and turned it slowly. The door opened, swinging back a little on
fat, squeaky hinges.

Without pausing, we moved inside. I took a look at the door’s edge. There was a thin layer of metal visible from top to bottom.

“See? Security doors,” I said.

“No barking,” mumbled Liam.

As I closed it behind us, Jo flicked a light switch. We were in a kind of antechamber, about three metres square, with a stone floor and brick walls painted in off-white gloss. Ahead of us, a low archway led to a narrow passage. To one side was a darkened recess, holding a lawnmower and a rack of garden tools. To the other side, more stone steps went up, in a curve, until they were out of sight.

The air was absolutely still. There was a slightly musty smell, like old sacking. We didn’t have to look at each other to know we were all trembling with fear.

I took a couple of paces towards the stairway. “I expect that goes up into the main part of the house,” I whispered.

“What are we whispering for, there’s nobody here,” said Liam.

“When this place was built, down here was
probably servants’ quarters,” said Jo. Like Liam outside, we were talking to distract ourselves from the reality of the situation.

“What’s the time?” I said.

“Nine minutes past ten,” said Jo. “Their flight takes off at half past. I checked online before I left home – all flights to New York are fine, no bad weather, no strikes.”

“Look again,” I said.

Jo pulled her phone from her back pocket. “All fine, everything’s on time. The only flights at any airport showing delays are flights to the Far East. Typhoon warning in China, it says here.”

“OK, where do we begin?” said Liam.

Of course, we should have checked once more, a few minutes later, but we were too overwhelmed by our discoveries. If we’d checked again, we would have seen the word ‘cancellation’ come up. The Greenhills would be back in their Renault very soon, disappointed and heading for home.

We thought we had all the time in the world. We had less than an hour.

“Let’s look down there,” I said, indicating the archway. “We’ve got to be methodical and
systematic, so we know we won’t miss anything. OK? Remember, go carefully; we don’t want to leave any sign we’ve been here, just in case.”

The others nodded. We’d been through all this before, but the repetition of it was reassuring.

We crept into the passage, the sleeves of our coats brushing against the walls. There was another light switch at the far end. Here was a second room, larger than the first. It was lined with wooden cupboards, all of them old and hefty. Some had drawers from top to bottom and others had pull-down slatted fronts, the sort of thing you see on antique desks.

I tried a couple of drawers, and then a couple more. They were all locked.

The only way out of this room, apart from going back the way we had come, was down yet more steps, wide ones, disappearing at a steep angle into near-darkness. Standing at the edge, with Jo and Liam right behind me, I could see that the steps ended in another coded door, this one made of reinforced metal.

“Down there,” I said.

“Must be a cellar,” said Liam. “D’you see, it’s one level down from where we came in.”

“There must be something secret in there, it’s got another keypad,” I said. Our voices sounded weirdly deadened by the low ceiling, and by the cupboards behind us.

Keeping close together, we descended to the lower level. This second door was a dull grey, cold to the touch. The large grip it had, in place of a handle, and the seam in the wall to one side of it, showed that it slid aside rather than opened in. The smell down here was different, faintly queasy, like the smell you get inside a brand-new fridge.

Liam got to work exactly as before. Two minutes later, we heard the clank of a bolt pulling back. The door glided across easily, on well-oiled tracks. Beyond it was pitch dark.

I reached out and turned on the overhead lighting. It blinked into life, sharp and cool, faintly blue, and bright enough to make us shield our eyes for a few moments.

The room was starkly tiled in white, both floor and walls. There were a couple of metal trolleys, like small tables on wheels, and a couple of tall, deep glass-fronted cabinets.

The soles of our boots squeaked gently against
the clean, shiny tiles. Nervously we walked over to one of the cabinets. Arranged on shelves inside were an array of tools. There were long, stick-like objects with curling hooks at the end; some metallic trays filled with little clips; two items that looked like drills, but which were fitted with small circular discs instead of drill bits. As I looked closer, I could see that the discs were sharply serrated, like the cutting edges of a saw.

“Aren’t those…” Liam stumbled over his words, “surgical instruments?”

“Yes, I think so,” I breathed. “Caroline’s a GP, and Byron’s a trained surgeon. Maybe they collect these things.”

“Nice collection,” whispered Liam. “No wonder they keep it locked up.”

Jo took a step back. Suddenly, she gasped. “Oh God, look under there!”

She pointed to one of the trolleys. On its lower shelf were a number of large glass jars, with chunky vacuum-sealed lids, the modern equivalent of those biological preservation jars you see in museums.

Jo retreated across the room. She clutched at the sleeve of Liam’s coat. My heart drumming,
I crouched down to see into the jars.

There were eight or nine of them, all filled with a thin yellowy liquid. Floating inside the first was a human hand, with pale empty blood vessels protruding from its stump. The skin of three of its fingers had been carefully cut away. In the second were ears, piled up on top of each other.

I stood up straight, trying to catch my breath. The rest were filled with organs and flesh, some recognizable. One held a brain. The last one contained half a human head, split lengthways, its nose pressed tight against the glass, its single eye closed as peacefully as if it had been sleeping. A short continuation of its spinal column curled at the base of the jar.

“I don’t like this,” said Jo unsteadily.

“Christ almighty,” muttered Liam. “It’s like a cross between a science lab and an abattoir.”

Jo had a hand pressed across her mouth.

“Are you OK?” I said.

She looked at me and nodded sharply.

Opposite the cabinets was another sliding door. This one had been left slightly open. Without further thought, I crossed the room and pulled it aside.
It was wider and heavier than the other one, and took a lot more effort to move.

The room behind it was more than three times the size of the first. The walls and floor had the same gleaming white tiles. The place smelled cold and sour. Up in the corner, a huge extractor hummed with power, indicators flicking on and off as its fans whirred into life or wound down.

There were long metal work surfaces and big stainless steel storage units. Two large rectangular washbasins were attached side by side to the wall close to the door. Taps with long paddle handles jutted out from the tiles above them. The deep inner surfaces of the basins were worn, well used, well scrubbed.

After this brief first impression, our attention was drawn to the animals, and the machines around them. My heart began to hammer.

Close by was a neat row of chrome cages, each with straw bedding and one of those upside down water feeders you see in pet shops. I thought at first that the animals inside the cages were dead, but I could hear a rasping breath coming from one of them, and the hunched back of another was rising
and falling in short, shuddering movements.

Liam stepped slightly ahead of us, staring into the cages, his face slowly twisting in disgust. “What … the
hell
… is this?” he spat.

The creatures were vile. There is no other word I can use. As I felt the blood drain from my face in horror, my mind recoiled at what had been done to them, and groped in vain for explanations about why it had been done at all.

One was a cat, or had been. Its legs had been replaced with what looked like the longer, shaggier legs of a dog. Its eyes had gone, too, replaced with larger ones that were held in place on the outside of its skull with a network of wires. The eyes turned to follow me as I approached.

Another creature had the head and body of a grey rabbit. Half the fur on its back had been shaved away, and there was heavy stitching running in four haphazard lines over its pink skin. Like the cat, its legs had been replaced, but these were stubby and mechanical, powered by a battery that sat in the straw bedding. Behind the animal, flicking at the back of the cage, twitched a long, rat-like tail. Like an afterthought. Like a joke at the rabbit’s expense.

“Oh my God.” Jo’s fingers fluttered around her face.

The most nauseating horror was held in the cage at the end of the row. It was a small pig, little more than a piglet, I think. It was surrounded by tubes, wires, and electric pumps. Nothing had been replaced, but everything had been taken apart. Its head and neck were held at the top of the cage, its limbs to one side, its body split open, internal organs spread out like exhibits, still connected by veins and sinews. All of it was pulsing with life. Like the cat, it looked directly at me, its tongue lolling.

“What the hell have they been doing down here?” cried Liam. “Why? What for?”

I tried to pull my mind back from it. To stay objective. To stay rational, or else anger and revulsion would drown me. “Experiments,” I stammered. “Like … biology homework. Picked to pieces, then kept alive, just to see if it could be done.”

Here, at last, in front of me, was an explanation of what I’d seen that first night. That dog in the Priory grounds had escaped and been snatched back, to become part of all this. But why…?

“I feel sick,” said Jo. She staggered back. As she did
so, she brushed against a long white plastic curtain that was screening off a section of the room. The slight crumple of it against her back made her yell in fright. She whipped round, pulling the curtain aside.

Behind it there were other cages, but these ones contained humans.

There was a brain, just like the ones in the jars, but set inside a kind of metallic web. Thin metal probes punctured it all over. A couple of suspended medical drip feeds supplied it from above. Under it was a metal tray, collecting slow drips of oily liquid. Electrical connections were linked to a tablet PC, displaying graphs that danced into little mountain ranges.

The thing was living. Thinking.

A heart, held in a similar frame, twitched steadily, beating out the seconds. Plastic tubes fed into its aorta and arteries, and blood flowed around and around, aerated via a box-like device positioned behind it, a kind of artificial lung.

A head and torso lay on its back. Where the limbs had been severed, rough circles of flesh and gristle showed, a cross-section of bone at their centres. Most of the blood had been drained, leaving the flesh ghostly except for a few livid purple bruises. The
chest had been split and opened up to either side, the organs pulled out and arranged around the remains of the corpse. A coil of intestines rested across the gaping hole. Sections of skin and other tissue had been delicately sliced from sides, face, shoulders. A square portion of the scalp was gone, exposing bone beneath. The remains were those of a man about ten years older than us, maybe less.

Inside a glass-fronted refrigerator were a number of packages, wrapped in plastic sheeting. I could make out what looked like kidneys, and a stomach. In one of the larger packages was a severed head, face down, hair crudely cut down to a fuzz. I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman.

In our state of rising terror, we took in all these horrors in no more than a few seconds. The whole place was scrubbed, and orderly. A medical playroom for the insane.

“Shit, we’ve got to get out of here!” cried Liam, sweat beading on his face. “We take pictures, right now, and then we get the hell out of here!”

“We haven’t seen through there,” I said, pointing. At the far end of the room was a wide, rectangular arch, leading to another section of the basement that
was out of sight round a curve in the wall.

“I don’t want to!” cried Liam. “You’ve been proved correct, Sam. Both of you. Congratulations. These people are sick! Now let’s get out!”