Dead Man's Land (20 page)

Once inside the tent, he divested himself of his coat and tunic and began to look around. The body, its torment now hidden within a stitched blanket, was where he had left it. But it wasn’t the deceased that interested him for the moment.

Instead, he began to test the walls of the tent, looking for rents or ventilation openings. He knew only too well that death could enter a room in many ways, through a false ceiling, a ventilation shaft, a trap door. But there was little to suggest anything of the sort here. True, someone could lift up the skirts of the tent and come in, but the rain had done its best to remove anything that might be helpful in that regard. Still, he went over the ground, looking for incriminating imprints, just in case. No stone unturned, as he told himself.

Afterwards, his back aching from all the bending, he sat on one of the empty cot-beds. It had been foolish to think a solution would spring out at him fully formed. But there was one aspect he could eliminate very easily indeed.

He stood and crossed to where the Icehouse box stood on a trestle table. He twisted the two barrel-locks and opened it. To his relief a wash of cold air hit him in the face. Most of the ice had melted, but only just: the temperature had not risen above . . . he looked at the dial thermometer . . . thirty-nine degrees. One short of the maximum. He would have to refill it shortly.

From the cold cavity he extracted one of the glass bottles and then resealed the lid of the box. Watson was a group IV, a universal donor – his blood could be given to anyone with relative safety – but he could only receive a transfusion from his own kind. Fortunately, IV was well represented in the population, and he actually had two 500cc samples of it. He quickly located a sterilized cannula and was rolling up his sleeve when he became aware that someone was watching him.

‘What do you think you are doing?’

Staff Nurse Jennings stood close to the entrance, the bottom of her long grey woollen coat weighted with fresh mud. She was wearing gumboots several sizes too large, with her regular shoes in her hand.

When he didn’t reply, she said: ‘I heard all about the incident with the sergeant. What use is it testing the blood on yourself, Major?’

‘Every use.’

‘But it might have been one contaminated batch.’

He finished rolling up his sleeve. ‘All samples were treated equally, Staff Nurse Jennings.’

She took off her coat and slid out of the gumboots. ‘But what if . . . ?’ Her eyes darted towards the canvas-shrouded corpse. ‘What if it does that to you? If you start to fit?’

A fatalistic shrug. ‘Then I have my service revolver in my coat pocket.’

‘Major!’

He gave a smile he hoped was reassuring. ‘I am not serious. I am absolutely confident that I am in no danger. Check my pockets. There is no revolver.’

She looked relieved.

‘Why are you here, Staff Nurse?’

‘I was asked by Mrs Gregson to find you. With this.’

She handed him a grey papyrus Regia envelope. His name was written, in a lovely copperplate, on the front. ‘Where is she?’

‘Gone back to Bailleul.’

‘The foolish woman,’ he snapped. ‘I needed her here. And Miss Pippery? Has she fled the coop also?’

‘No. She is with Sister Spence. I fear her nerves are shot.’

‘Good, good. I mean that she is here, not about her nerves. I shall need to question her later.’ He stuffed the letter into his trouser pocket, still wondering how Mrs Gregson could be so selfish. ‘Well, Staff Nurse, I was going to carry out this procedure for my own personal satisfaction, but, fortuitously, it appears you can be my witness.’

He began to lay out the necessary paraphernalia for his transfusion of blood.

‘I’m not entirely certain—’

He spun around. ‘Staff Nurse, I will do this either with or without you. You can always leave. I only ask that you tell none of the others what is occurring just yet. But if you are staying for my venesection, I need you to make a two-inch incision above my median basilic vein to expose it.’

He was slightly perplexed by the forcefulness of his tone. It had echoes of a decisiveness that was usually quite alien to him. He supposed because he had to accept that there was no leader to follow now. He was no longer the shadow, the sidekick, the note-taker, the foil. No more rhetorical ‘What would Sherlock do?’ questions for Watson. It was a time for standing on his own two feet. And enjoying it, he added.

‘You would trust a nurse with surgery?’ She was genuinely perplexed. A doctor allowing a subordinate to wield the knife was unheard of.

‘I would trust you.’

She gave a solemn nod and straightened her headdress. ‘If you are to be my patient, please sit on the bed here. Do we need to warm the blood, as it has been on ice?’

The question seemed naïve, but he remembered this was all new to her. ‘No. It makes negligible impact on core temperature.’

‘And how much will you require?’

‘Five hundred cc should be enough.’

‘A local analgesic might be in order.’

‘There’s eugenol. In the cupboard there. And, more pertinently, a bottle of brandy at the rear.’

After she had painted his arm with the solution and poured him a tumbler of the alcohol, she prepared a tray with sutures, scalpels, syringes, iodoform and tubing. He admired the precision and neatness of her display.

‘How long have you been with the service, Staff Nurse Jennings?’

‘Almost six years. Well before war was declared. My elder brother died in St Kitts and we came back to England. There was money from the sale and my father set up in business. It was all a terrible shock after the Caribbean. There, at least, there was some freedom from convention. You have no idea how proscribed the life of a young woman from a well-to-do family in Didcot is, Major. All laid out, from cradle to grave. To be frank, being a Territorial meant at least a few weeks’ a year escape from Mother and Father and their endless introductions to suitable young men. It was a very mild rebellion. I never had it in me to become a suffragette like your Mrs Gregson. I was too cowardly, I think.’

‘Mrs Gregson told you she was a suffragette?’

She smiled a smile that suggested shared secrets. ‘She didn’t have to.’

‘No. I think it’s written through her like a stick of rock,’ he laughed.

‘I think she and I got off to a bad start.’

‘We’ve had our rocky moments. She doesn’t always choose the smooth path.’

Jennings seemed to want to say something else, but apparently thought better of it and turned her attention to the job in hand.

‘And was there a suitable young man?’ he asked.

She stopped unscrewing the top of the Lysol bottle, as if considering how to answer.

‘Since you ask, yes. There was. Is. But he released me from any understanding until after the war.’

‘That’s very considerate of him. Many young men have insisted on a formal engagement before leaving. Or a wedding.’

She arched an eyebrow. ‘If there is one thing Mother won’t stand for, it’s a quick wedding. She’s been planning it for more than two decades now. I think we’re ready for you, Major.’

‘And what about Dr Myles?’

‘What about him?’

‘He seems rather struck on you.’

‘Really? I hadn’t noticed.’ She began to move the items on her tray around at random.

‘Forgive me for asking, but it has been preying on my mind. Has he made any suggestions that might compromise you professionally?’ Watson asked.

She fluttered her eyelids at him in a deliberately exaggerated way. ‘What kind of suggestions, Major Watson?’

‘You know exactly what I mean. Improper suggestions.’

His nostrils filled with the smell of cloves from the eugenol. He took a mouthful of the brandy and gave a small cough as it attacked his throat. Not the finest.

‘Keep still now. Arm over this bowl. There’ll be blood.’

‘I’m counting on it.’

She hovered over the skin. He could see the tip of the scalpel shaking. ‘Don’t be tentative.’ He flinched as the blade entered the skin and the first deep red globules formed.

‘Improper by my standards or Sister Spence’s, Major?’ she asked, more to distract him than anything else.

‘Either. Ouch. I think that incision is long enough. You need to go deeper now.’

She worked for a few moments in silence, her forehead lined in concentration, the tip of her tongue showing between her teeth. ‘All right, Major, that’s exposed. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not sure Dr Myles is any of your concern. Not away from medical matters. Remember, I joined the Territorials to get away from suffocating parents. The world has moved on, you know.’

He suddenly felt like an over-protective grandfather. ‘You’re right. My apologies. But my background has made me insufferably inquisitive. And I wouldn’t want anything . . .’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Right, back to the business at hand. You need to insert a traction ligature, to close the vein when we are done.’

Her hands were steady now and she did as she was told. ‘I’m ready to put in the first syringe. Are you entirely certain you wish to proceed?’

‘It is the only way to convince some people that my blood didn’t kill Shipobottom.’

‘Nobody could really think that, surely.’

‘Possibly in preference to the alternative.’

‘Which is?’ she asked.

Watson hesitated to answer. It didn’t do to spread suspicions as if scattering seeds on a ploughed field. But he was trusting her with this procedure, which meant, subconsciously, he believed her to be untainted by these incidents. ‘That there is a murderer in our midst. Someone who is not only making sure that the victim suffers, but takes care to mark the victim, as if keeping a tally. A person who thinks the war is simply not killing our young men fast enough.’

‘My goodness. A German spy?’ she asked.

‘My first thought. But, no. Where is the advantage for a spy? Unless Shipobottom was a source of important intelligence? I suspect he could tell the enemy where the regimental rum ration was stored and how much each barrel contained to the nearest tot. But anything more than that . . . no, whoever did this is someone from our own side. And murdering for reasons we can’t, as yet, even guess at.’

‘Golly,’ was all she could manage this time.

‘So let us eliminate the citrated blood as a contributory factor, eh?’

The eugenol was a poor analgesic, as he had expected, and his arm was rippling with pain, but he clenched his jaw. She inserted the cannula into the glistening cylinder of the vein and slowly pressed the plunger. The walls bulged alarmingly as the blood flowed in.

‘That’s nothing to worry about.’

‘Dr Myles did invite me out to accompany him. To a dance. But I am afraid I had to disappoint him. Sister Spence has an attack of the vapours at the very mention of the word. So he has asked me to dinner in town. In Armentières, no less. He claims the normal rules of fraternization do not apply, as he is not an officer in any army.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘Second syringe now. Are you comfortable, Major?’

Comfortable wasn’t the word he would have chosen. He looked up into her young face, as yet unlined, her blue eyes clear and shining. Mary had not been much older when he first laid eyes on her. It was easy to see why the soldiers fell in love with these young girls. After the rough horrors of the trenches, the debasements and the deaths, the bellowing and cursing and petty squabbles, the gas and the constant, debilitating shelling, these pristine visions of womanhood really must seem like angels, come down to walk among men and minister to their every earthly need. He shook his head. It was possible those clove fumes were addling his brain. ‘A little more brandy when you are between infusions.’

‘Certainly. And I told Dr Myles I would not even contemplate a dinner this evening without a chaperone.’

‘Well said, Staff Nurse. And whom did you nominate as your protector?’

‘You, Major Watson.’

Twenty minutes later, as they were resterilizing the equipment, Watson felt the first prickles of fever on his forehead.

Bloch remembered little about how he had reached his own lines and been evacuated away from the front. He had avoided being shot by his own side, he recalled that much. A collapse into an officer’s arms. Alcohol forced between his lips. Then a café in a shattered street, hardly a wall standing, the floor tiles covered with straw to soak up the blood. Then an ambulance transfer to the building where he was now, something approaching a normal hospital. It was close to a railway; he had heard the clank and huffing of the trains through the night. It was said the wounded were always moved back to Germany after dark. That the sight of the maimed might be bad for civilian morale at home.

The men in Bloch’s immediate vicinity seemed lightly wounded, although the infantryman next to him was a
Pfeifer
– a whistler – who had received a throat wound. It was most likely the type of wound that would take him home. He hoped so. He wouldn’t last five minutes in a trench dugout making an irritating noise like that. Someone would finish the job the Tommies had started.

Bloch shuffled up in bed and took in more of his surroundings. The rectangular room was subdivided by wooden screens, either to shield the badly wounded from the lightly injured, or officers from other ranks. The enormous floor-to-ceiling windows were crisscrossed with blast tape. There were dark coloured squares and oblong panels on the heavy wallpaper, the phantom remains of portraits and landscapes that had once graced the spaces. Two enormous chandeliers, mostly intact, were still in place. He supposed they were too difficult to remove for safe storage. It was, he would imagine, a former dining room. From hosting sumptuous dinners to collecting the deformed and the damaged, it was quite a fall from grace for such an elegant space.

He ran his hands over his face, wincing as he touched unfamiliar protuberances beneath the bandages that masked the centre of his face. His tongue found the gaps in his previously perfect teeth. They were enormous, like canyons. His left hand had the little finger splinted and strapped to its neighbour. At least he could hear now, although occasionally there were high-pitched whistles, of the kind that
Pfeifer
was making, but seemingly generated from within his cranium.