The Reckoning (17 page)

He gestured to the newspaper lying on his blotter. It was a copy of the
Daily Telegraph
– the same paper, as it happened, that Madden had read on the train coming up from Highfield. Although the headlines were upside down he remembered them:
Killer strikes again: Lord Lieutenant murdered. Yard at a loss.

‘Is there no way of stopping him?'

‘We're doing all we can, sir.' Billy kept his voice calm. ‘But, to be frank, we still don't know who he is, or why he's doing this. I'm hoping you can help.'

Edward Gibson shook his head in frustration. He pushed the newspaper aside, revealing one of the leather-bound diaries that he had shown them on their earlier visit.

‘It's all in there,' he said. ‘The stuff I told you about. But God knows what it means. Ozzie had his own way of expressing himself.'

‘Can you tell us first where your brother was when he wrote these entries?' Madden spoke for the first time.

‘At a supply depot near Arras.' Gibson took a moment to reply. It seemed he was trying to compose himself. ‘Does the name mean anything to you?'

‘Certainly. It was an important military centre during the war, one of the main Allied supply depots, which probably explains why your brother was there.' Madden spoke in the same even tone Billy had employed. ‘He was in the Army Service Corps, wasn't he?'

‘Do you mean that you remember him now?' Gibson's face lit up.

‘No, I'm afraid not. I went down to Lewes with Inspector Styles. We saw a photograph of him in uniform. I recognized the badge on his cap.'

Gibson grunted. His disappointment was plain. ‘Were you ever there yourself?' he asked.

‘In Arras? Several times. There were rest areas for units withdrawn from the line nearby. But, as I say, I've no recollection of having met your brother.' He frowned. ‘These entries you mentioned?'

‘Ah, yes . . .' Gibson lowered his gaze to the diary in front of him. He opened it at a place that he had marked with a strip of paper. ‘This one covers the year 1917 and the entries are all for the month of June. Ozzie's unit crossed the Channel in April of that year; they were stationed at Boulogne. But towards the end of May he was posted to Arras, where he remained for two months before being invalided home.'

‘He was wounded?' Madden was surprised.

‘Oh, no. Nothing of that sort.' Gibson smiled wistfully. ‘I think the closest Ozzie came to any action was hearing the sound of shellfire. The front was only a few miles off. No, he picked up an eye infection, which the army doctors couldn't cure, so in the end they sent him back to a hospital in England and, when he got better, he was posted to a depot in Folkestone. He never went back to France.'

He picked up the diary.

‘You can look at this, of course, but you won't make much sense of it unless I do some explaining first. Long before he went to France, Ozzie had got into the habit of using his own kind of shorthand in the diaries, partly because in the course of time they became more like aides-memoires than anything else, and partly to frustrate his wife, who I'm sorry to say had no scruples about invading his privacy. Luckily I can understand
some of it, because we used to send postcards to each other in the same kind of language when we were boys. NG – no good. NBG – no bloody good. That sort of thing. You'll see what I mean.'

Gibson paused. He squinted down at the book.

‘There's really nothing in the Boulogne entries to interest you, so I'll pick it up when he gets to Arras. He'd been there for about a fortnight – we're at 3 June now – when he makes an entry I don't understand at all:
BS.
That was Ozzie's term for a bombshell.
Stuck with FGCM. Bloody hell! Why me?'

He glanced questioningly at Madden, who nodded.

‘Go on.'

‘There was nothing further for a few days, then on 8 June he writes:
Off to Sandybags tomorrow, but how? Transport? I'll be NBG and they'll know it. Keep thinking someone's made a mistake.
There was nothing the following day, but it sounds as though he may have been travelling. Then, on the 10th:
Oh, hell. Even worse than I expected. GG running show.
' Gibson looked up again. ‘The GG was our name for the piano teacher our parents inflicted on us one summer when we were boys. She used to whack our hands with a cane when we made mistakes. We called her the gargoyle, GG for short, and later on it came to mean almost anyone Ozzie took a dislike to – his first bank manager, for example.' Turning back to the diary, he continued: ‘
GG read riot act. Huge row. Fire and brimstone. Told no option, so that was that. Oh, hell!
The day after that he's back in Arras and his only entry reads:
Feeling rotten. Nothing to be done.
Then there's a gap of three weeks with no relevant entries. But on 2 July he writes:
Just heard re Sandybags. It's the CCCBBB, as expected. Damned shame. Rotten business all round.'

He laid the diary back on the desk and then, almost as an afterthought, slid it across the blotter to Billy, who reached for it.

‘
CCCBBB
?' Billy peered at the page with a frown.

‘Oh, that?' Gibson put a hand to his brow. ‘It's from
The Mikado.
Gilbert and Sullivan. Ozzie knew all the lyrics. “The cheap and chippy chopper . . .”?'

He saw Billy's look of bafflement.

‘“Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block.”
CCCBBB
. It was Ozzie's way of saying something was over and done with.'

He shifted his gaze to Madden.

‘You see the problem? It's plain he was bothered about
something
. But how to make any sense of what he wrote . . .'

Glancing at Madden just then, Billy had a shock. His old chief's face had paled. He was staring at nothing. It took the sudden loud bray of a car's hooter in the street below to bring him out of his trance, and only then did he turn his head to look at Gibson.

‘Did your brother never tell you he served on a court martial?' he asked.

‘
A court martial?
' The solicitor's astonishment was unfeigned. ‘No, he never said a word about it. Is that what all this means?'

‘
FGCM
. Field General Court Martial. They could be held anywhere: in a schoolroom, or a farmhouse, or a Nissen hut – any place that was handy. The name “Sandybags” refers to a village called Saint-Bertrand in the Arras region. The troops used to make up their own names for towns and villages. Like “Wipers” for Ypres.'

He spoke in a dead voice.

‘I'm not surprised your brother felt a mistake had been made in naming him to the board. It wasn't usual for an officer from a support unit to serve on a court martial.'

‘What about all that other stuff, though?
Huge row . . . Fire and brimstone . . . Told no option
? What does it all mean?'

Madden put a hand to the scar on his forehead. ‘Well, as you say, your brother was simply making notes. He was giving some
kind of account of the proceedings, at least as they had struck him. He seems to have felt bad about the whole business, particularly the outcome.'

‘The outcome?'

‘The accused man was found guilty and sentenced to death.'

Gibson reddened. ‘I see no mention of that.'

‘It's implied, though. When your brother says there's no option, he means that he had to go along with the guilty verdict. And then, a few weeks later, he hears the news and it prompts him to say it's a rotten shame and a bad business all round.'

‘What news?'

‘That the man had been executed: shot by firing squad.'

The bluntness of his words seemed to shake Gibson. Unable to speak, he sat with his gaze fixed on Madden.

‘
CCCBBB
. It was all over, you see. Finished and done with.'

Still wordless, the solicitor held out a hand to Billy, who passed the diary back to him. He stared blindly at the open page.

‘I see how it reads . . . or could read.' He spoke finally. ‘But you can't be sure, can you? It's only your interpretation, after all.'

‘No, it's more than that.' Madden's voice was heavy with regret. ‘I happen to know that the man they shot was named Ballard. James Ballard. He was in my company.'

He saw the light of comprehension come into Gibson's eyes and nodded.

‘Yes, I was there too.'

‘But what are you suggesting? That whoever shot Ozzie, and these other men, is somehow connected to the soldier who was found guilty at that court martial?'

Edward Gibson sat blinking in his chair. The blood had drained from his normally pink cheeks.

‘I believe that to be the case. It's the only explanation.'

It had taken Madden some moments to compose his reply, and Billy saw that the revelation had left him as shaken as it had the man he was addressing. Nevertheless he managed to continue speaking in a reasoned tone.

‘He's very likely a blood relative, someone with a close tie to Ballard.'

‘For pity's sake! We're talking of something that happened thirty years ago.'

‘Yes, but it's only
that
that makes it seem incredible.'

‘What on earth do you mean?' the solicitor challenged him.

Billy saw his old chief hesitate.

‘Let me put it like this,' he began. ‘Considering the way many of those courts martial were conducted, it wouldn't have been surprising if some member of an executed man's family had sought revenge at the time, for what might have seemed a gross injustice. I'm not saying it would have been a balanced or even a justified reaction; but I can see how he might have fixed on the members of the court martial as being guilty of judicial murder.'

Madden paused, frowning.

‘What I don't understand is how the killer got hold of the names of his victims. The records of those courts martial – the ones that resulted in executions – have been sealed since the end of the war.'

‘And you think this is what happened with Ozzie?' Gibson seemed not to have heard Madden's last words. His eyes were glazed and his breathing had grown short. ‘That some lunatic has decided to settle old scores, decades later?'

‘It would seem so, yes.' Aware of the other man's distress, Madden kept his voice calm. ‘As you know, we've been trying to find a motive for your brother's murder and at the same time search for any connection between him and me – something that could explain that letter he began writing with my name in it. Now it seems we've found both.'

Again he hesitated.

‘You say Oswald had an eye infection?'

Gibson nodded.

‘The president of that particular court martial was a major. He had two junior officers with him, and I remember one of them had an eye-patch. That may be why I didn't recognize Oswald from the photographs you showed me. As it happened, I didn't pay much attention to him. He was silent throughout the proceedings.'

‘What about the third officer?' It was Billy who put the question. ‘Was that Singleton?'

‘It must have been.' Madden turned to him. ‘I saw a picture of him in one of the papers after he was shot, but it didn't ring a bell. Mind you, it was blurred and he had a mortar board on his head. It looked like an old school photograph.'

‘How does Drummond fit in?'

‘One of the witnesses at the trial was a young medico called by the prosecution. He testified to having examined Ballard and found him fit to stand trial: this in spite of the fact that Ballard hadn't said a word throughout the proceedings and seemed barely aware of what was happening. I can't swear that the doctor was Drummond. I don't remember the name and I've never seen a photograph of him. But it seems likely now that it was.'

‘And what were
you
doing there?' Gibson found his tongue at last. He had been sitting silent, seemingly stunned by what he had heard. ‘I take it you weren't part of this court?'

‘No, I was what was called “the prisoner's friend” – his defence counsel, if you like. Ballard was charged with desertion, a court-martial offence. I was a lieutenant at the time and it was the normal practice to give the job of defending an accused man to a junior officer from his own company or battalion.'

Breathing heavily still, Gibson stared at him. He seemed unable to grasp what he'd heard.

‘Judicial murder, you said. Is that really a fair description? And could Ozzie have possibly been held responsible for it?'

‘I'll stand by those words, particularly with regard to that court martial.' Madden looked steadily at him. ‘But as far as your brother was concerned – no, I don't hold him to blame for what happened.'

‘There's no need to spare my feelings, Mr Madden.' The solicitor's tone was bitter. ‘He was part of the court, wasn't he? He was one of the judges.'

‘True. But a junior officer, under the thumb of a man who came there determined to get a guilty verdict.'

‘You mean the court president?'

Madden nodded grimly. ‘He was a major in the Royal Artillery, a brute and a bully. He ran the proceedings like a kangaroo court. I discovered that early on when I tried to cross-question one of the prosecution witnesses and he cut me off, on the grounds of irrelevance.'

‘But surely he had no right to do that.' Gibson scowled. ‘I would remind you that I'm a solicitor. I'm perfectly familiar with court procedure.'

‘Unfortunately he had every right.' It was Madden's turn to sound bitter. ‘Or, rather, there was nothing to stop him – no higher authority present and no qualified officer in attendance who might have pulled him up on points of law. The trial was entirely in his hands.'

He saw the look of disbelief on Gibson's face.

‘I know this is hard for you to grasp. Again, let me try and explain.' He got to his feet and began to pace up and down. ‘First, you have to understand how these so-called field courts martial differed from peacetime, when there would have been a legally trained officer, a judge-advocate as he was called, present to advise the court. During the war, trials could take place with as few as three officers sitting, and none with any legal
training. It was the president of the court, the senior officer, who ran the proceedings from start to finish.