‘What do you mean?’
Watson ignored him. ‘Lieutenant Fairley, how did they get out into no man’s land?’
‘Through a newly dug sap, sir. Engineers do the dig after dark. They run out under wire. Only good for a night or two before some Fritz sneaks over and lobs a concentrated charge in. That’s six stick grenades tied together. We do the same with theirs, mind, with Mills bombs. Up until then, there’s a ladder, up you pop and there you are. The famous no man’s land. If you want to be out there, that is. I’ve done it a few times. That’s enough for me, I can tell you.’ He giggled and cast an anxious eye at Tyler, but his commanding officer didn’t react to the admission.
‘Can you show me?’ Watson asked.
‘I suppose so, yes, sir.’
As Fairley pulled the gas curtain aside, a tardy thought struck Tyler. ‘Major Watson?’
‘Yes?’
‘One thing.’
The ground shook and heaved beneath them and for a moment Watson felt giddy. His ears popped as he opened his mouth to speak.
‘That’s a mine detonating,’ said Tyler, brushing off his shoulders the debris that had fallen from the ceiling. ‘I know it felt near but it could be hundreds of miles away.’
Watson had heard that British miners were tunnelling under the German lines and vice versa, the idea being to blow each other to kingdom come with no warning. ‘You were going to ask me something?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Tyler. ‘If de Griffon isn’t his real name. What is?’
‘I’ve had a lot of names in my time. I was Harry Legge for a while. Fond of that one. That could have been a good life. Nice cars, willing maids who didn’t mind a bit of upsie-daisy. I even did the cook, the old bat, just to keep her happy. Very popular man was Harry Legge. Thing is, I was there to get rid of Stanwood. Arthur de Griffon. Bimmy, as they called him. Now, originally I intended to go and do it quick. But then, I thought, why not make him suffer? After all, my mother suffered for years and years, didn’t she? I was having fun in the house. Real fun. So I poisoned him nice and slow. You don’t get the strange grin if you administer it over time. That only happens when you are in a hurry. Like here. Do you know what it is? This poison? My auntie discovered it when we were in Italy. The Sardinians used to use it for the ritual killing of the elders, people who had outlived their usefulness. Are you listening, Tugman?’
He tweaked the handle of the bayonet and the eyes popped back open. Tugman nodded.
‘It’s an extract of the water dropwort. Latin name
Oenanthe crocata
. Although Aunt Bess added her own little twist. Oleander, such a pretty flower, so lethal. Then, to cause the fitting, an extract of
nux vomica
. The three alkaloids together . . . well, I don’t have to tell you. Ah, the shitting the pants. Whoo, what a stink. That’s the oleander. I used a little more of that in your tincture. So, once the old man died . . . he was one of the hooded men in the Trolley Woods, wasn’t he? Although my Aunt Bess told me the song is wrong. It happened in the spinning room. No matter. Seven men in hoods took one young, frightened woman while the other was forced to watch. When they had finished they scratched seven lines on her breasts, one for each of them. Anyway, the old man finally died. I think it was the effort of trying to tell the doctor that I’d done it. Like with you, I waited until he had lost the power of everything till I whispered in his ear who I was. That’s the important thing. You have to know why you are dying. Otherwise, where is the justice? Where is the satisfaction?’
De Griffon unscrewed the lid of his hip flask and took a swallow. ‘No, don’t worry. This is the good stuff. Two flasks, you see. Just have to be careful to remember which is which. So, where was I? Yes, the old man expires, horribly, and then an opportunity presents itself. The son, Charles, whom I had no issue with, was killed not far from here. Lady Stanwood is bereft. They’ll be coming for Robinson next. Well, they would be if he wasn’t soft in the head. But nobody knew that. The shame of his being a simpleton had been kept from all but a few family members and loyal staff. He was harmless but, as you might say, daft as a brush. So Harry Legge had an idea. The de Griffons could pull a lot of strings up north. Harry would volunteer for the Leigh Pals as Robinson de Griffon. Over two years, he’d learned how to act posh. It was easy.’ Well, a slight exaggeration. It had taken a while to create the hard carapace of privilege that members of such families developed from birth. ‘And the Pals – all the men from the mills. There was a good chance I’d be able to get a few of the hooded men. I knew their names by now, of course. ’Cause some of them boasted about it. Wasn’t hard to discover who had been there under the canvas sacks.
‘So, Lady Stanwood would put it about that Harry had been injured – and badly scarred – rolling a car on the estate. And Robinson was going up north, where nobody knew him, to volunteer. He’d been there only once, as a child. At the end of the war, we were to swap back, and Harry gets a big fat stack of cash for his troubles. Nice cottage on the estate. Worked perfectly. It was a shame about Caspar Myles. Old friend of the family. I got cocky. Thought it amusing to carry on the deception. After a chat, though, he knew something was wrong. I made a few errors, apparently. I could see he was puzzled. So, I invited him to come for a drink. Whisky and water dropwort. Well, time moves on. I see I have to draw things to a conclusion.’
A rattling was coming from Tugman’s throat, squeezing its way past the billiard ball and the gag. The first grand mal took hold and his back arched.
‘You must have been what, Corporal, fifteen or sixteen when they told you they were going to teach those Trueloves a lesson? That you’d be one of the seven who violated poor Anne Truelove just for asking for the same money as the men. She lost her mind, you know. Never really spoke again. But she didn’t lose the baby. Bess saw to that. Bess, whom Anne had nobly saved from the same fate. Let you all have your way, while the little sister watched. Aunt Bess used to tell me that story over and over again. She’s dead now. But I promised her I would find the seven and make them suffer. I know, you’re thinking that young Moulton and Farrar, they weren’t there. No, but their fathers were, weren’t they? One of them’s gone now and the other has the Monday fever, the brown lung. But imagine what Moulton’s mother and Farrar’s parents will feel when they get a letter from me, describing how their sons died whimpering cowards? And how I’ll tell the whole town. I will take their names and make them laughing stocks. Don’t worry, I’ll be telling Farrar and Moulton all this before they die. In fact, their first symptoms should be occurring now. I’d best go.’
With some difficulty he pulled the blade free of the flesh, ignoring the blood that pulsed out in its wake. He took Tugman’s hand and, using the point of the blade, etched a roman numeral on it. Five. Just two to go and he could rest easy. He rooted in Tugman’s top pocket and found what he was looking for. ‘Cigarette?’
He masked the flame and the glowing tip while he lit it, and then forced the Woodbine into the corner of Tugman’s mouth. The corporal began to shake his head. Trying to dislodge it. But Johnny Truelove grabbed him by the waist and, staying low himself, lifted him clear of the edge of the shell hole.
The bullet came within two seconds, a small thump as it entered the skull, and Tugman slumped down dead.
‘Just like Lieutenant Metcalf. Give him my best.’
Truelove extinguished the cigarette and waited for a few minutes before he scrambled out of the shell hole and propelled himself on his belly towards the two men sheltering behind a fallen tree.
Ernst Bloch swore under his breath and broke cover. He crabbed over to where Schaeffer, his spotter, and Lothar were lying under their netting. ‘You fucking idiot,’ he hissed.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Lothar. ‘That was a clean shot.’
Bloch put himself in the younger man’s face. ‘That was a ruse. Or something. Who lights a cigarette in no man’s land? Only someone who wants to commit suicide. Let’s move, now.’
‘Why?’
‘Before a grenade drops on our heads. Never trust an easy shot. It might even have been a dummy head. Even if it wasn’t, I’d wager it wasn’t an officer.’
Lothar mumbled to himself. Perhaps not an officer, but a good clean kill. And not easy, not without that fancy night sight that Bloch had. The sharpshooter, he thought, was just jealous. Still, he had been warned at the sniper school about dummy bodies out on no man’s land and a host of little deceptions to lull you into revealing your hiding place. Best be cautious. It was how you stayed alive, they said. ‘All right, do we go back or take up new positions?’
Bloch watched as thicker clouds shrouded the moon. The night was still young. And something, ruse or not, was happening out there. ‘New positions.’
Watson was standing on the filthy wooden ladder, looking out over no man’s land, when he saw the briefest muzzle flash. For a second, he thought he was dead, having taken a step too far. He fell back into the wet, newly excavated sap, and slipped onto the duckboard that covered the bottom. His hand sank into the yellowish mud that caked everything as he tried to steady himself. As it went in he felt something hard to his touch. Bones. They were everywhere, glistening and protruding from the walls. This wasn’t a trench; it was an open-topped ossuary.
With some effort, Watson extracted his hand from his glove, then recovered the glove itself and shook the glutinous clumps from it. ‘You all right, sir?’ Fairley asked, shining his blackout torch with its slit-like aperture onto him.
‘Yes. Fine,’ Watson said, feeling anything but. There was a gurgling at his feet. Freezing water was seeping into the trench. Soon it would be an ankle-deep slurry. And they hadn’t been exaggerating about the stench of the front line or the size of the rats. He swore you could have saddled some of the ones he had seen darting from the water or scurrying along the duckboards.
‘Sniper,’ Fairley said with a frown. ‘That was a Mauser, I believe. They might be having a little trouble out there.’
Watson struggled upright and brushed himself down. ‘More than you can imagine.’
‘I can imagine a great deal out there,’ he said, with a slight tremor in his fluting voice. Watson realized just how very young he was. ‘The army can train you for almost everything. Except what it’s like to be frightened day and night.’
He said it without self-pity. It was, Watson knew, absolutely true, fear was a long-term, almost subliminal companion on any front line. Watson was touched he would dare to confide such a thing to him. ‘Rugby was it, Lieutenant?’ This was a wild guess.
‘Winchester, sir.’
‘Very good. Always reassuring to have a Wykehamist at your back,’ Watson said.
The lad brightened at that. Complimenting his old school was a surefire way to gain a subaltern’s trust.
It was icily cold in the trench, but Watson shrugged off his greatcoat and handed it to the lieutenant. He didn’t need the bulky item restricting his ease of movement out there.
Fairley took it with a puzzled expression. ‘What are you doing, sir?’
Watson unclipped the top of his holster and took out the Colt .45 automatic that poor old Caspar Myles had presented to him. He pressed the button and dropped the magazine. Full. But he had no spare. Seven rounds would have to suffice. ‘Going to try and stop him, Lieutenant.’
‘The captain? Stop him doing what?’
‘Murdering any more people.’
Fairley looked taken aback. ‘Are you serious, sir?’
Watson realized how ridiculous he must look to the youngster. An old man about to go ‘over the bags’ and charge into one of the most lethal few yards of ground on the planet. A flutter of fear began in his stomach, as if a small bird were trapped in there. ‘Completely.’
‘Right.’ The lieutenant folded the greatcoat in the crook of his left arm. ‘If you must go, sir . . .’
‘I must.’
With his free hand, Fairley scooped a fistful of wet soil from the sides of the excavation and smeared it all over Watson’s face.
‘In the absence of a balaclava.’ He stepped back and examined his handiwork. ‘That’ll give you a fighting chance.’
‘Thank you, Lieutenant.’
‘And keep your gloves on. Hands show up out there, too. And hold on.’
Fairley disappeared for a second, leaving Watson shivering in the brutal cold radiating from the excavated earth and the water ascending his legs in increments. At least, he hoped that’s what the shivering was from.
Fairley returned with a Very flare pistol.
‘No, really,’ Watson said, balking at the size of the barrel.
The lieutenant unbuttoned the major’s tunic and shoved it inside. ‘Take it from one who spent a whole night and day out there once. Hiding among the dead men. There’s a red flare in it. Not white. In this section of the line, red means “Man fallen. Come and get me.” You fire that, someone’ll try and reach you. At least we’ll know you are alive and out there.’
‘Thank you, Fairley.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’ll try not to be that much trouble.’
Fairley took the hand. ‘That would be jolly kind, sir. I wish I had a tot to give you. Helps no end.’
The last thing Watson wanted was alcohol. ‘I’ll manage.’
The lieutenant looked over his shoulder. ‘Go on, sir, there’s someone coming. Probably wondering who is raiding the sap supply locker. They might not be as accommodating as me about the flare, sir. Might think you’ve taken leave of your senses.’
Watson put a foot on the first rung of the ladder and waited until the moon was masked. The jittery bird in his stomach had returned to its perch and a strange calmness had come over him. ‘They might be right, young Fairley. They might be right.’
As if in agreement, lighting up the blackness behind him and cracking open the sky, the British guns began firing.
De Griffon almost ran headlong into Moulton coming the opposite way. Any noise of their progress across the mud was masked by the new barrage, and both had taken the chance to make rapid progress on all fours.