She waited until the men had gone through the door, and then got up and went quickly and quietly after them. Shallow steps led down from the doorway, curving round as they went. The walls had the smoothness of extreme age so there were no handholds anywhere–it would be treacherously easy to miss your footing and tumble all the way down to the bottom. You might lie down there in the dark for days, badly injured–dead or dying–with no one knowing where you were. Donna shivered, but went all the way down, thankful there was enough light from the searchers’ torches to see her way, trying not to brush against the black stones of the walls which were crusted with the dust and grime of years.
‘There’s a lot of dirt and debris everywhere,’ said the inspector’s voice from deeper in the tunnels. ‘So it’s difficult to be sure about footprints, but I think there are several sets. See them?’ The torchlight moved around. ‘They look fairly recent, but they might just have been made by local kids on a dare, or a version of “chicken”, or something. Dawkins, since you know the place better than the rest of us, you’d better lead the way.’
A dreadful stifling warmth seemed to push downwards, and the drumming of the clock’s mechanism was more noticeable down here. Twy-Grist…Twy-Grist… That was what it was saying. Twygrist meant twice ground, presumably. Or was the clock saying, Two-dead…Two-dead…
Twygrist’s bowels were a series of stone and brick-lined cellars, most of them so narrow they were scarcely more than tunnels. Donna counted the rooms as she went. Three, four, five…Would they search every one? The inspector had said earlier that Twygrist was a labyrinth, and Donna found herself remembering that all labyrinths have a centre, a heart, a dark core…
And there, at Twygrist’s dark core—
‘What in God’s name is that?’ said one of the voices, and Donna jumped nervously. She stole forward, hoping to see without being seen.
‘Just another cellar, isn’t it?’ said the inspector.
‘No, it’s doors,’ said someone, shining one of the torches. ‘In fact, steel doors, by the look of it.’
‘It’ll be the old kiln room,’ said Dawkins’ voice. ‘We’re most probably directly under the floor where they used to spread the grain to dry it out–the drying floor, they called it. You can’t see it from outside any more because they concreted over it years ago, but it’s a kind of flat roof near the ground at the back of the mill. It’s clay or terracotta or something like that, and it was made with hundreds of tiny holes.’ He paused as if waiting to see if anyone interrupted, and when no one did, went on, ‘They spread the grain over it, and then lit a fire down here directly underneath so the dry heat rose up and drove the moisture out of the grain. My grandfather used to farm around here, and he remembers it being done.’
‘And you reckon this kiln room’s on the other side of those doors?’
‘Seems logical, sir.’
‘So it does,’ said the inspector thoughtfully. Donna was keeping well back in the shadows, but she could see the men grouped around the doors.
‘We’re right at the heart of the building here,’ said the inspector. ‘So the kiln room is surrounded by all these other rooms. If a fire ever got out of hand, there’d be some protection.’
‘And,’ said Dawkins, ‘The steel doors seal it off.’ He paused and the inspector said, ‘And if the drying floor is concreted over, it’d be virtually airtight in there.’
The hot bad-smelling darkness seemed to gather its forces and jump out at them, and then in a completely different tone, the inspector said, ‘Get those bloody doors open now!’
The doors were not locked, and although there were indentations where handles must once have been, they had long since rusted off. The doors were wedged tight together and virtually seamless.
‘They open outwards,’ said the inspector after a moment. ‘But without the handles they’re as smooth as eggs–there’s nothing we can get hold of to pull them back. What we need here is a set of old-fashioned burglars’ tools.’
‘The jemmy principle, sir?’
‘Exactly. See if you can break off any sections of the old machinery to use as levers–anything that looks strong enough and thin enough.’