Dead Man's Land (30 page)

A blast of euphoria coursed through him. He looked at the phrase again.

Three words that told him there was no Thomas Patrick, no new colleague and friend.He found he was on his feet, doing a little jig, as if he had the knees of a man forty years younger.

Tommy Patrick was the villain in Chicago who had created the Dancing Men code. Alberti and Kerckhoffs weren’t apiarists – they were cryptographers. And the code used in the article was one of the simplest in the annals of ciphers, yet his blithering idiot’s eyes had not recognized it, nor the clues that the article was a device to deliver a message to Watson. It was McCrae’s mention of Chicago that had caused the synapses in his brain to finally fire properly. To appreciate that Holmes was up to his old tricks.

With shaking hands Watson set about ringing the other letters, until he had an entire missive from his old friend. He read through it, twice, and felt his eyes sting. He was tired, he supposed. Soon, his body would start protesting about his sprint through the hospital grounds and his impetuous dancing. It had been another long and eventful day and there was a lot more to do before the cloak of night allowed the war to restart in earnest. He blew his nose.

After he had finished the code, he quickly wrote out the longest, most expensive telegram he had ever composed and went in search of Miss Pippery to send it for him. Anyone observing the man who bowled down the stone steps and burst out into the gloom of late afternoon might have thought he had taken some kind of stimulant, or found an elixir that could roll back biological time by a decade or two. There was a hint of weightlessness about Watson, as if the gravity around him had been turned down a notch or two. With nary a creak of the knees he bent and scooped up Cecil, de Griffon’s Jack Russell, and, with the dog yapping under his arm, he picked up the pace, aware he had to give his body some respect now, walked briskly to the transfusion tent.

Corporal Percy Lewis considered himself a lucky man. True, he was cold, his feet ached, his puttees were too tight, and rain was dripping off his steel helmet into the gap between collar and neck. Yet, guard duty was preferable to being ten miles to the east, where the men he had served with before being seconded to the BSGC were about to re-enter the front-line trenches for another four days of alternating boredom and fear. The only constant up there was discomfort, and it was of a different magnitude from a cape that didn’t keep out all the water.

Lewis had been lucky before. He had been sent home poorly from the four p.m. shift at the Connolly Pit when it fired. He’d only just reached home and was preparing to go and sleep off whatever was ailing him when there came a knocking at the door. Smoke was coming out of the shaft, the neighbours said. He had rushed to the pithead and the women were gathering for their terrible vigil. Of course, he’d volunteered for the rescue party, but it was three hours before the fires were put out and it was safe to send a cage down. There were three survivors. They buried the thirty-six dead in two communal trenches. His father and two brothers among them. He swore he would never go down a pit again. So he’d joined the army.

He was also lucky to have survived the conflict for this long. Only a handful of his original Old Contemptibles had come through unscathed. Most of those who had landed with him at Le Havre existed only as faded faces in his mind’s eye, slowly merging into each other, to become one single entity. And now, just when there was talk of another big push coming, he had been taken out of the front line for guard duty. Perhaps it was his age: nearly forty. Maybe someone thought he’d done his bit, that one day his luck might just run out.

The rain gave one last violent burst and then faded to nothing. Lewis gave a little shake to flick the water from his clothes.

‘Rider approaching!’ The voice came from above. Reggie Smillings, a Durham lad, also from a mining family.

Lewis raised a hand to show he had heard and stepped out from the meagre shelter the stone-capped pillar had provided to position himself in the centre of the iron gates that gave access to the grounds of Burnt-Out Lodge.

The rider came out of the thickening dusk and down the approach road at a steady trot, slowly resolving from a blurred, indistinct shape, to an officer on a horse, to a major on a rather fine steed. And not a young major, either. Certainly not one of those schoolboy officers, the one-pip wonders, who still needed help wiping their arses. Lewis felt a touch of butterflies, wondering what sending a senior member of the brass meant. Were they being recalled to go back to the front?

‘Sir!’ he shouted when the mounted officer was within hailing distance. ‘I’ll have to ask you to stop there. This facility is out of bounds to all but authorized personnel.’

The officer made no sign of acknowledgement. He pulled the horse to a halt, dismounted, and tied his mount to a makeshift hitching post, stroking the face and saying something softly in its ear. He turned, flicked the rain from his cape and approached Lewis.

‘Corporal. I wonder if I might see your commanding officer?’

‘Sorry, Major,’ he said in a Lanky accent not so broad as it had once been. ‘The unit’s bin moved to the front. Just a couple of us left to guard the site.’ He glanced up at Smillings. ‘Four privates, a lance corporal an’ me.’

‘Which makes you the senior person here,’ Watson said brightly.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Lewis said cautiously. He’d never liked too much responsibility. Never wanted to proceed as far as sergeant. He was happy where he was, anonymous enough, but not sitting at the bottom of the heap.

‘I assume all the, um, special armaments have been moved up as well?’

Lewis put an index finger under his collar, releasing another trickle of icy water. ‘I am not allowed to discuss such things, sir.’

Watson hesitated. He knew that his sponsor was a double-edged sword. The Hero of Sidney Street; the Butcher of Gallipoli. Which would the corporal recognize? ‘I have here a letter,’ he said at last, extracting it from his pocket and displaying it with a flourish. ‘Which gives me permission to inspect these and any other grounds where I believe there to be a medical issue.’

‘Medical?’

‘The material we are dealing with is designed to hurt, maim and kill. I need to ensure they only hurt, main and kill the enemy.’

‘Ain’t heard of no accidents here. Besides, there’s only—’ He caught himself.

‘Corporal. If I have to ride all the way back to Colonel Churchill to tell him that I have been obstructed—’

‘There’s only one small dump left. Everything else has gone for’ard.’

‘May I see?’

Watson held up the letter again as a reminder of his authority. Lewis read it once more
. ‘. . . are required to offer all consideration and assistance in all matters pertaining to . . .’

It wasn’t so much a request as an instruction. Even the signature, aggressively scrawled across the lower half of the page, had a bullying tone. Was this, Lewis wondered, the moment when his luck ran out? A decision either way could have fearful ramifications.

‘Come with me, sir,’ Lewis said eventually, turning to unlatch the gate with heavy steps and an even heavier heart.

Burnt-Out Lodge had been chosen, Lewis explained, because, although the upper building had been severely damaged, there were extensive cellars that were intact. It was below ground that the ‘special armaments’ were stored. It was, he explained, a wise precaution to guard against air raids, which might cause casualties over a wide area if a dump were hit.

Lewis led Watson down mossy stone steps to double steel doors that had replaced the original wooden ones. These were kept closed with a bolt that was provided with a hasp for a lock, although none was fitted.

‘Do we need any sort of protection?’ Watson asked, as Lewis swung the door back. ‘Against the gas?’

Lewis flinched at the three-letter word. ‘Not really. You get the odd sniff now and then, stingy eyes, mebbe, but nothing too bad.’ He reached in and flicked a switch for the electric lights. There was a low hum and several false starts before light flooded the place. He pointed to a rack on the wall, lined with hypo helmets and emergency packs of gauze soaked in anti-gas chemicals. ‘Anything happens, you just grab one of those quick.’

Watson stepped into the subterranean space, its vaulted ceiling supported by sugar-twist pillars. Beneath his feet was an uneven, stone-flagged floor. It was cold, damp and mostly empty, save for a small hillock of something at one side, covered with a tarpaulin.

‘May I?’ asked Watson.

‘Aye. But be careful how you lift it.’

Watson did as instructed, removed the stones that weighted down the edges of the covering and gingerly rolled it back. Underneath was a series of canisters, each shaped like a steel cigar, with a valve arrangement at one end. Each of them had a lengthy rubber tube, coiled like a tendril, emerging from the neck, just above the valve wheel. The cylinders were marked with a skull and cross bones on the side, stencilled in white, with a prominent red star beneath it. Watson felt something grab at his throat even as he looked at them. ‘Is this the only dump?’

‘Only one with anything left, I reckon.’

‘Where were the others?’

‘Wherever there was a decent cellar. Dotted about, they were. But emptied now.’

‘Then why are these still here?’ Watson asked Lewis, pulling the cover back over the pile.

‘Old stock.’

‘It loses potency?’ A blank expression greeted him. Watson rephrased. ‘Does it become less effective over time?’’

Lewis unslung his rifle. He’d already compromised himself; he reckoned he could do no more harm. ‘With these you build a trench, bury the cylinder in sandbags, run the tube up onto no man’s land, wait till wind blows in t’right direction and open t’valves. And then, run. ’Cause if that wind changes . . . The new stocks, them’s not cylinders at all, but they call ’em projectiles. Well, designed to be fired at enemy from some sort of trench mortar. So at least ye know it’s goin’ to right side of lines.’

He gave a laugh. Watson didn’t feel able to join in. The whole concept of chemical warfare was anathema to him.

‘What’s in these exactly?’

‘Chlorine.’

‘And the new ones?’

Lewis shrugged, as if he didn’t quite grasp what he was being asked.

‘What type of marking do the new projectiles have? The same red star?’

‘Reckon.’

‘Have you ever had any cylinders here with different markings? Symbols or letters or colours?’ Watson knew from laboratory work that there were internationally accepted codes that denoted various gases.

‘Not so I’ve seen, sir.’

Chlorine was a horrible vapour, an irritant that burned the eyes and stripped out the lung lining, causing victims to drown in the leaking fluid. But it didn’t turn people blue nor bring on
Risus sardonicus
. Whatever hideous new methods of poisoning were being deployed at Burnt-Out Lodge, they weren’t the source of the poison that killed Edward Hornby, Geoffrey Shipobottom and almost did for Robinson de Griffon.

Night was setting in as Watson reached the barn at Suffolk Farm. The lorry parks he passed were alive with lights and idling engines; the munitions trucks rattled along the narrow-gauge tramways that crisscrossed the countryside, and everywhere men were on the march. The crunch of hobnails would have filled the air but for the blasts of the guns that had started up, their muzzle flashes scorching the base of the low clouds.

Suffolk Farm was deserted, the only sign of habitation the detritus left behind by the Pals – bully beef cans, piles of carelessly thrown tea leaves, rain-sodden newspapers and magazines, a few broken and useless piece of equipment – and a brief sighting of Cecil, who raced a few circuits around the yard before sprinting off.

‘Hello?’ Watson shouted. There was normally a farmer around, the man who would have let out his property (five francs for an officer, one for a regular soldier), a Madame and some kids. This one appeared deserted. ‘Anybody there?’

Watson dismounted, reached down and picked up several large, dangerously sharp shards of earthenware that were littering the yard. They had once been part of a container marked SRD, the mysterious organization – Supply Reserve Depot or Special Rations Department, depending on whom you believed – that managed to deliver rum to every corner of the conflict. It was the remains of one of the jugs that the tots arrived in. He tossed the pieces onto the big rubbish pile adjacent to the stone horse trough. Another unit would doubtless be in the next day, complain about the state the billet had been left in, clean it up and then, as was the way of the world, leave it similarly strewn with detritus when they abandoned it. Lord Lockie pulled him over to the trough near the midden of garbage, bent his head and drank.

The bay gelding had done exceptionally well, riding dozens of miles without any complaint, and appeared to have more to give. Watson, on the other hand, was almost spent. He felt somewhat deflated, his bones excessively heavy. The sudden elation he had felt when he discovered the coded message in the magazine had been deflated by fatigue and a gnawing sense of failure. He could not help feel that, had Holmes been with him, he would have seen wide avenues to explore where Watson only saw culs-de-sac, discovered connections when all Watson could sense was a scatter-pattern of unrelated incidents, spread like buckshot across the fabric of the case. He was, he concluded, only half a detective. Perhaps less.

But, he reminded himself, half a Holmes was better than none. He had met successful policemen at Scotland Yard who were a fraction of that. But so far he had established one fact: Caspar Myles was a far more decent man than he suspected. Though perhaps hotheaded and clumsy around women, he was no molester. Quite the opposite. Which posed the question: where had he taken Staff Nurse Jennings?

No, it didn’t, he reminded himself. It wasn’t any of his business. His sole concern, he told himself, had been for Staff Nurse Jennings’s safety. If she was safe, even if she was perhaps behaving foolishly, then he really should close the matter.