Dead Man's Land (41 page)

He was irritated with Tobias Gregson who, apparently, was on a suicide watch for a man condemned to be shot at dawn and could not help with an arrest till morning.

And with a Major Tyler, who had agreed to place de Griffon under close arrest. His incredulity, however, was apparent even down the crackly field telephone line. He would detain the captain but not release him to an outside party until someone had explained the situation fully to him.

Watson, though, was mostly furious with himself, for not being able to solve completely the conundrum that de Griffon presented. It was within his grasp, he was sure, if he just knew which pieces of information to hold on to and which to discard.

He hauled himself off the motor cycle and looked up at the sky. No rain, thank goodness, but a three-quarter moon playing hide-and-seek with an archipelago of clouds. There would be little or no wind down in the trenches, but the subterranean system could be bitterly cold and damp, so he had swapped his Aquascutum for a British Warm greatcoat.

‘Will you be all right, Major?’ Mrs Gregson asked, turning off the machine.

‘Yes. I’ll sit with him till your . . . until Lieutenant Gregson comes to place him under formal arrest. Perhaps I can get some answers from him before that.’

‘Do you have enough to arrest him? For the Military Police to charge him?’

A good question. Watson had enough circumstantial evidence of murder; but nothing he would bring to the Bailey with confidence. There was a trail of death in de Griffon’s wake, going all the way back to England, that much was certain. But how to link it to de Griffon’s coat-tails?

‘I hope so. At least until we can piece everything together. I’d best get on.’

The overhead railway was a system for delivering the wounded on stretchers from one of the forward dressing stations. It was actually more like a cable car than a rail system, with the platforms for loading the injured hanging from a steel cable that ran around giant drums and was fed through a series of pulleys en route. Most of the carriage system was sunk into a trench, to protect the wounded from further injury by shrapnel. Some of these systems worked by hand cranking, others by gravity or steam; this one ran on electricity. It was, Torrance had suggested, like a latter-day Roman road – the straightest, fastest way for a solitary officer to get near the front without too many tiresome questions or delays on crowded roads and circumventing hundreds of yards of zigzagged trenches.

There were two sappers in charge of the railway and, standing idle, half a dozen ambulances and their drivers, ready to ferry the wounded when and if they arrived. Most of the men were sleeping in the cab, heads cushioned on arms folded across the wheel. A couple, however, knowing they were well out of sniper range, were smoking with open abandon.

‘Here,’ said Mrs Gregson, handing him an armband. ‘Put this on.’ He slid the white band with a Red Cross symbol on it over the sleeve of his greatcoat. ‘That’ll explain quicker than any words why you are up there. Are you certain you should go?’

‘Try and stop me.’

He was shocked when she stepped forward and threw her arms around him, clamping him tight. His damaged rib protested and he tried not to flinch. ‘I could, you know. I could stop you. If I really wanted to. We’ve already lost Alice.’

Her body began to quiver, and he put his own arms around her back, the Dunhill leathers creaking as he did so. Her torso was shaking and her breath was hot against his neck. There were tears, too.

‘The padre told me Alice knew. About the divorce. It’s . . . difficult to accept that she must have died hating me.’

‘No.’ With a studied deliberateness Watson untangled her arms from his body. He made a mental note to intercept the letter than Miss Pippery had written in haste. Mrs Gregson must not see it.

‘That’s not true. There was an initial shock when she discovered—’

‘That I had lied to her.’

‘A necessary deception. I’ve indulged in a few of those in my time. She didn’t die angry, Mrs Gregson. You shouldn’t think that. She spoke to me, she understood, I promise you. Now, I have to leave before de Griffon charms Major Tyler into letting him go. And you crack another of my ribs.’

‘Sorry.’ A big sniff. ‘Back to being a grown-up.’

She took off a glove, and wiped her eyes, giving her bravest smile. Their breaths pooled and mingled in the chill air. He was aware of the sappers watching. They could be two lovers parting. Ridiculous, he knew, but the thought cheered him. He leaned in and kissed her forehead, as chastely as he could. ‘I shall be back tomorrow.’

A distant rat-tat of machine-gun fire sounded, way south, towards Churchill’s HQ. A Very flare arced up, burning like a lonely firework. There was a ragged volley of shots, then silence and blackness once more.

A vast darkness lay over the land ahead, cloaking three enormous armies, and men drawn from across the globe, all preparing for more killing and maiming. A locomotive’s whistle hooted a desolate warning, but Watson couldn’t tell from which side of the lines it came. It didn’t matter; it sounded lonely and scared, whichever army it served. It was like despair made tangible. As if in response to the sounds of war, an enthusiastic nightingale started up – his lusty song doubtless a result of trying to compete with the guns – reminding everyone who could hear that the natural world was still out there, and fighting back, despite man’s best efforts to annihilate it completely from this part of the earth.

‘Be safe, Major.’

‘Just in case, I’ve left some letters—’

She put a finger to his mouth. It felt incredibly warm against his chilled lips. ‘Shush. They’ll be there when you get back.’

She removed the digit, leaving a tingling afterglow. ‘They are on the washstand in my room. Just the two.’

‘I can guess who gets one.’

‘You don’t have to think too hard,’ he admitted. Holmes would want to know he had a good crack at finishing the case.

‘You can rip it up when you get back. Tell him yourself. And the second?’

‘It’s for you.’

‘Me? Why—’

‘No, it’s your turn to be quiet. There’re a few favours in there, Mrs Gregson. I can’t think of a better person to ask.’

Mrs Gregson’s mouth worked but no word came. What kind of favours? Is that all there was? She oscillated between disappointment in the workaday explanation and relief that there might not be more in there, no matter how small. But in the end, she simply felt touched. She reached up and put a hand to his cheek. He didn’t recoil.

‘Then you can do me a favour in return.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Call me Georgina.’

He tried to answer, but there it was again. The finger to the lips. ‘Next time we meet will do just fine, Major Watson. Now go.’

She watched him walk to the hut where sappers sat, show his armband and point east, towards the front. There was a moment’s discussion before the men shrugged and got to work. The pair strapped a stretcher between two of the hanging supports, which were shaped like upside down ‘L’s, and stood back to let him on. Watson clambered aboard stiffly, although she could tell he was making an effort to seem sprightly. One of the sappers threw a switch, there came the whine of a motor and, after a single jerk to overcome the machinery’s inertia, the cable began to run, taking a prone Watson up towards the hostilities.

As its solitary occupant rattled and clanked off into the darkness and the cable descended into the dark slit of the protecting trench, Mrs Gregson shuddered. As if someone had walked over her grave, as the saying went. Major Watson was a remarkable man. She wished she had known him when he was younger. She remounted the bike and kick-started it to life, unable to shake the terrible sense of foreboding that had descended upon her.

The first crater they came to was rank, the water in the bottom slimy and green. Even in the weak moonlight, they could see gas bubbles forming. Something was decomposing beneath the surface. Man or beast, it wasn’t clear. A rat the size and shape of a rugby ball was scurrying around the edges of the fetid pool.

‘Best push on,’ said de Griffon quietly.

Private Farrar looked longingly over his shoulder, back to the tumbled wire of his own lines.

‘Come on there, Farrar,’ said de Griffon in hushed tones. ‘Think about the leave this’ll earn you if we come back with a live one.’

‘Sir.’ The voice that came from the blackened face was tiny and devoid of any enthusiasm. The deal they had struck earlier no longer seemed such a bargain, out here in no man’s land. At any second, they knew the sky could burst into revealing light and machine guns spit in their direction. The sense of vulnerability had tightened their sphincters and loosened their bladders. Farrar thought he might vomit.

‘Now,’ hissed de Griffon, waving them on with his revolver. ‘Let’s be going.’

They slithered through the icy mud to the next depression in the ground and rolled into it. It was then that Tugman had his first seizure. ‘Jes . . .’ he started. De Griffon’s hand clamped over his mouth.

‘For God’s sake, man,’ said de Griffon. ‘You trying to get us killed?’

But Tugman had begun to thrash, he held his hands up, which were bending into claw shapes and apparently causing him fierce agony as they did so. His eyes, wide with fear, coupled with the boot polish on the face made him look like a music-hall minstrel.

‘What the fuck’s the matter with him?’ Moulton, a boy of barely eighteen, asked in a terrified hiss.

Tugman began to groan and his feet lashed out, as if he were cycling. De Griffon grabbed the ankles.

‘Look, you two, I want you to move over there to . . .’ He took off his cap and risked poking his head above the rim of the crater. Steel helmets were avoided: there was a danger of them clashing, and any metallic noise was a magnet for enemy fire. ‘. . . that fallen tree there. See it? Good cover. Just watch for trip wires or booby traps, OK? I’ll take Tugman back and join you shortly.’

‘Shouldn’t we all go?”

‘Don’t get windy on me. You two go on.’

The two younger men looked doubtful. They exchanged glances. De Griffon pointed his revolver at the pair. ‘Now. If we go back empty-handed now, we’ll be strapped to gun limbers by dawn.’

The two men knew that, whereas they might face such a fate, it was unlikely the captain would suffer Field Punishment Number One. The blame for any failure would fall onto them, the lowest of the low.

‘’Ow you gonna get ’im back, sir?’

‘How do you think? Over my shoulders. I’ll be back before you know it. Now move.’

He watched the pair take their rifles and move off as if Satan himself was at their backsides. He laughed to himself at that. Satan was at their backsides, if only they knew it.

De Griffon turned his attention to Tugman. From his belt pack he took out the billiard ball he had purloined from the dugout. Then he put his gloved fingers in Tugman’s mouth, forced the teeth apart and rammed the ivory sphere home. With his cravat, he fashioned a gag, which went around Tugman’s head and fastened at the front. When the soldier struggled he punched him.

He leaned in very close, his lips next to the left side of Tugman’s head, his breath warm and cloying in his ear. ‘Now, let’s see how that holds up.’

He withdrew the man’s short trench-raid knife from its sheath and plunged it up to the hilt into Tugman’s thigh. His body arced in a spasm of agony, but hardly any sound came from the mouth. Tears welled out, skittering over the layer of boot polish on his cheeks.

‘Good enough.’

Machine-gun fire, some way to the south.
Dat-dat-dat.
Some other poor bastards out there, no doubt.

‘It was the rum, of course. The poison usually takes an hour or so to have an effect. You had quite a dose. So we haven’t got long. I’m going to tell you a story. Ready?’ He twisted the knife handle and Tugman thrashed. ‘Ready? Good. Then I’ll begin.’

‘What do you mean, he’s gone?’ Watson demanded.

Major Tyler shrugged. They were in the dugout recently vacated by de Griffon. Watson lifted a cigarette end from the makeshift tin ashtray. It was still warm to the touch. ‘He can’t have been gone very long. Why didn’t you detain him?’

‘As soon as I got your message, I tried to call the forward trenches,’ said Tyler, a remarkably young man for his rank, who spoke with the merest hint of Lanky burr. ‘But the Germans have severed the telephone lines. Absolute bloody fiasco. Engineers trying to sort them out now. So, I sent young Fairley here to put him into custody.’ He indicated a fresh-faced fop of a subaltern who was wearing a fashionable Yeltra trench coat and a pair of Harrods War Comfort knee-high boots. He was having trouble complying with the King’s Regulation that stated the upper lip must not be shaved. What was under his nose could hardly be described as a moustache. ‘But de Griffon had already left on a grab mission.’

‘A what?’ Watson asked.

‘To grab one of the enemy. More, if possible. We need to know why they have such good Intelligence about our movements. Patrols like that go out quite often. Volunteers. Which are in short supply. So, when de Griffon offered . . .’

They paused as a trench mortar round detonated nearby, dislodging dust, sand and straw from the roof of the bunker.

‘That’s just to stop us sleeping,’ said Tyler. ‘A way of keeping us disoriented. So, you can reckon on Captain de Griffon being back by dawn.’

No, he couldn’t, thought Watson. ‘His name isn’t de Griffon.’

‘So you said. Really, it’s quite a story you have there, Major Watson.’

He had to agree with that. ‘It is. I assume he hasn’t gone out on this patrol alone?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Tyler. ‘Lieutenant Fairley, do we know the make up of the raiding party?’

‘Sir,’ said the subaltern in his high, fluting voice. It was as if it hadn’t broken yet. ‘Quite a small one. Just the four. The captain, Corporal Tugman and Privates Farrar and Moulton.’

Watson groaned.

‘What is it? Do you know these men?’ Tyler asked.

‘Not at all. Not personally. But I tell you, when he comes back, if he comes back, he’ll be alone.’