A Study in Murder (39 page)

While he stood, stooped and stiff, two men had approached and begun setting up a hand-cranked camera. They intended to record his humiliation. ‘Will you tell them to stop?’ he asked
Kügel.

‘This is not my show any longer.’ He pointed into the strengthening light, where a sleek black limousine was approaching from the direction of a barracks. ‘It is Von Bork and
Admiral Hersch’s.’

‘I can make it worth your while.’

‘How?’

‘I can tell you who is behind the whole enterprise at the camp.’

‘You’ve told me. Lincoln-Chance.’

‘No. I haven’t.’

Kügel stamped his boot into the snow. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I have only just come to what I feel is the correct conclusion. It was someone invisible.’

‘You are talking rot, my friend. First the dead come calling, then an invisible man.’

‘Get them out of here and I’ll tell you.’

‘Hey,’ said Kügel, waving his arms, as he approached the film men. ‘
Haben Sie etwas Respekt. Geben Sie dem Mann etwas Privatsphäre. Er braucht Zeit, sich zu
rasieren, und auf einigen frische Kleidung.
’

Watson hoped he was right. A shave and a change of clothes would be most welcome. He stroked the stubble on his chin. And a trim of his moustache. And a cup of tea.

The limousine had pulled to a halt and a familiar figure with an unfamiliar grin was getting out. Von Bork.

‘So,’ asked Kügel impatiently, aware that he was about to lose his prisoner, ‘what do you have for me?’

‘I kept wondering who poisoned the three at the séance. Who spiked the drink with cyanide? Who better than the man who looked after the rec room? The man who could get the hooch?
The man who suddenly appeared in the tunnels to help nurse me. Harry Kemp.’

‘Who?’

‘The lad who was cradling me after you shot me.’

‘Him? An orderly?’

‘Precisely. A servant. Invisible.’

Kügel looked doubtful, as if he couldn’t quite believe that a non-officer could operate such a Machiavellian scheme. ‘He is just a common soldier. A private.’

‘Is he? Could a common private have recovered my boots from Lincoln-Chance? And he recognized Latin, I am sure, when it was spoken as I was leaving the camp. He said his Latin wasn’t
so good. Not that he didn’t know any. How many Boots or grooms have even a smattering of the classics? And he told me he didn’t speak German, yet he understood well enough when Steigler
told him, in that language, that a certain inscription might be appropriate. And Steigler called him Harry – yet how would a man like Steigler know a servant’s Christian name? No, the
lad was no servant.’

‘An imposter? An officer all along?’

Watson nodded. ‘In a strange way, the orderlies have more freedom than the officers. They come and go as they please around the camp. And think on this. The orderlies and the officers have
separate
Appells
. A man, an officer could actually appear at both, and wouldn’t be missed.’

‘I’ll be damned.’

‘Let’s hope so.’

Before Kügel could reply, Watson heard his name being called with something approaching delight. ‘Major Watson! At last! I was beginning to give up hope. I am sure you would like to
freshen up before our little event gets under way.’

Von Bork’s gratified smile was so wide, so full of victory, that it left Watson in no doubt the identity of the man he expected to get in return for him. Von Bork was about to net Sherlock
Holmes.

‘Why are we here?’ Nathan asked.

Mrs Gregson gave a petulant shrug and looked out of the car window, over towards the bridge. She knew that she had been behaving badly since Miss Pillbody’s escape, that she was mourning
the loss of her prisoner more than she was the two murdered men, but she couldn’t help it. All that planning and effort . . .

‘I’m sorry,’ said Nathan. ‘But you know what I said was true. They wouldn’t exchange me for Watson. What do I know that would be of value? And it would be treason
to hand over a serving intelligence officer.’

‘I know, I know, don’t snap your braces, Robert. It was just a moment of madness, pointing the shotgun at you like that. It is I who should apologize. Besides, you are probably right
– you don’t know much that they don’t know already.’

‘I’m beginning to think you really must have feelings for Major Watson. Feelings you could never have for me. I’m curious to meet the man who can melt your cold
heart.’

‘Don’t get your hopes up. It isn’t about his appearance, Robert.’ And, she added to herself, there was no telling what the months of imprisonment had done to him
physically.

She watched a figure approaching the bridge, swinging a bunch of keys and levers on a chain. She couldn’t hear, but he looked to be whistling. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Eight thirty,’ said Nathan after consulting his pocket watch. ‘I don’t think it’s going to get much lighter.’ He peered at the sky, as dull as oxidized zinc
plate.

‘No, probably not. And I think that man there, in the blue, I think he is the bridge operator. It’s the man who shouted at me to get off it.’

Sure enough the man stopped to one side of the crossing and used a key to open the metal control box.

‘Come on,’ Mrs Gregson said, opening the door of the car.

‘Where are we going?’

‘To the bridge.’

‘Why?’ sighed Nathan. ‘What’s the point?’

‘To be there when Sherlock makes his move.’

‘And?’

‘We improvise.’

A sniper is like a god. Sitting on high, deciding the fate of the humans who move across the earth, oblivious to how easy it would be to snuff out their lives. Like the workman
scuttling over the snow to his buttons and switches at the bridge, unaware of the crosshairs coming to rest on his body, then moving up to the head, then back again. Or the cameramen gathering on
the other side, somewhat closer to the shooter than the workman, more vulnerable as they fussed over their wooden boxes and portable lighting rigs. Or the officers clustered around the limousine,
the pair in leather coats laughing and stomping their feet, the third glum and withdrawn.

But none of those was the target. This god had only one in mind, to be plucked out of this life and propelled into whatever the next held.

There was a movement, caught from the corner of an eye, from the Dutch side. The visual field of the telescopic sight swung across the bridge and river, the image on the lens blurring as it did
so, before coming to rest and back into focus. A touch on the ring to sharpen it a little. Ha. The show was beginning.

The noise from the bridge carried to the tower. The low squeal of moving parts being spurred into reluctant motion. The hiss of a piston. The span looked to judder along its length as the folded
section began to move as cables tensioned, hydraulics pumped and pulleys spun. The pivoting section was moving out over the water, ready to reconnect Holland and Germany.

Now the crosshairs moved onto the land, pausing on each person in turn: the participants in this drama and the spectators who had wandered over from the café. Each one a hair-trigger pull
away from sudden death.

Just one shot in this rifle. What a pity.

The sniper moved the graticule once more. Ah, yes. There. That one. Then, the sniper’s mantra, spoken softly on the slowly exhaled breath:
Target acquired
.

By the time Watson returned from the barracks the snow had stopped, the clouds had thinned and a low sun, its glow muted by a haze, had appeared. Watson was out of the car,
flanked by Hersch and Von Bork. He had shaved, bathed and been given a change of clothes, but it all felt very superficial. He required a far deeper cleansing after what he had witnessed at the
camp. The activities of Lincoln-Chance, Father Hardie, Feldwebel Brünning and young Harry Kemp had mined the depths of depravity. He was certain he was right about the boy. He had deduced the
lad was a spy, sent to keep an eye on him, but not that he was most likely a ringleader. That had come to him only when he had been half delirious with exhaustion in the car.

‘Shall we?’ asked Von Bork.

Watson surveyed the scene before him. Beyond the wire border fence, the bridge was slowly cranking into its closed configuration. The cameramen had taken up position near to where the moving
span would eventually touch the German bank. The cameras – two of them – were pointing in his direction, their operators’ hands on the handles, ready to start cranking when he
began the long slow walk towards his freedom. Other film men were clustered around them, one with a megaphone, others holding stalks with lights on them, although he suspected the newly arrived sun
made them unnecessary.

Von Bork consulted his watch and then peered across the river, apparently unhappy with what he could see.

‘I do hope this isn’t a waste of time,’ said Hersch.

‘He’ll be here,’ said Von Bork with as much confidence as he could muster. ‘Let’s go to greet the bridge when it completes its journey.’

He placed a hand in Watson’s back and the three of them moved forward, followed a few yards behind by four border guards, each with a Mauser rifle at the ready. A larger contingent of
troops was deployed around the striped pole that marked the border, some four hundred yards from the riverbank. On either side of the pole and its hut the frontier fence began, stretching off over
what had once been Dutch soil. The two Germans and their escort walked through the gap in the fence where the pole lay in its cradle, and carried on down the gently sloping no man’s land to
the bridge and the cameramen, who had now begun to turn their handles with an even, steady motion.

Watson, too, now scoured the crossing at the Dutch side of the river. But he could see no sign of his old friend. There was a car drawn up and, emerging from it, a man and . . . a woman.

The moment of identification caused him to stop in his tracks and both Hersch and Von Bork had taken a few strides before they noticed that they had outpaced their ‘parcel’.
‘What is it?’ asked Von Bork. ‘Watson?’

He could see that flame-coloured hair flying like a red flag as she reached up and removed her headdress. The sight of her caused palpitations in his chest, generating a touch of vertigo as his
heart faltered.

Watson quickly decided it was best not to give anything away to the Germans, to show no potential weakness. ‘I simply . . . can’t quite believe I am so close to going
home.’

‘Well, you are,’ said Von Bork. ‘Although from what I heard from Kügel, it was a close-run thing.’

Watson nodded. ‘My own people nearly got me.’

‘How ironic would that have been?’ asked Hersch.

‘Yes. I’m wondering how I’m keeping my sides from splitting.’

‘Come along,’ said Von Bork. ‘We have a rendezvous.’

Watson walked slowly to catch them up. ‘He won’t come, you know.’

‘Who?’ Hersch asked.

‘The man you hope to swap me for.’

‘Ah. You have managed to work it out, have you? I think you underestimate his affection for you, Dr Watson,’ said Von Bork. The ‘doctor’ was stressed, to remind him of
days before the war, of the bond Watson and Holmes had once shared. As if he needed any help with that. It was burned into his very being. Even when they were apart, Holmes was an integral part of
his thought processes. That, he now fully appreciated, was what the voice in his head was. The little part of him that would always be Holmes, that would always try to think like Holmes. So not, in
one sense, an imposter at all, just a gift from a friend.

It was Hersch’s turn to put a hand on his back to propel him forward. ‘We’ll soon see, won’t we?’

‘He won’t come,’ repeated Watson.

At least, not in any way you’ll be expecting.

Moments earlier, Mrs Gregson had opened the door of the car, stepped out into the sunshine that was busy melting the snow. Now Nathan had emerged and was moving around the
bonnet towards her. ‘You have your pistol to hand, Robert?’ she asked him.

He tapped the pocket of his coat, feeling the weight of the Webley as it shifted. ‘Of course.’

‘And you know what to do if need be?’

‘I do. Just a flesh wound.’

‘Just a flesh wound,’ she repeated, although she was well aware that a bullet in any part of the body had serious consequences. Especially for an older man like Sherlock Holmes.

She exited and stood for a moment, looking at the bridge and its operator as moving metalwork swung the last few yards to its resting place.

Across the bank on German soil she could see dozens of people, both civilians and soldiers, but there was only her and Nathan to represent the Allies, and the bridge operator for the Dutch,
along with a few of his fellow countrymen some way down the bank who had come out from the café to watch the proceedings. So little happened hereabouts she would imagine that the swing
bridge closing was a big event.

She moved across the snow-speckled ground, scanning up and down the river in case she had missed something, but this was a peculiarly featureless stretch of countryside, the only building of
note a black tower some distance to her right, and that appeared to be situated on the German side of the water.

As she reached the threshold of the bridge, where the heavy wooden planks began, she pulled off her headdress and shook her hair free. The red cascade of loose curls was her signature, the one
thing she could be sure Watson would recognize from across the span of the crossing.

Was that him? There was a man over there, flanked by two Germans in shiny leather greatcoats and senior officers’ caps. Behind them, a quartet of riflemen. That must be Watson, although he
seemed diminished, but then he would be, after his ordeal. Tentatively, she raised a hand, hoping for a signal of recognition back. The man’s arms remained at his side.

‘Wait here. I have to secure the bolts.’

It was the bridge controller who had spoken, coming past her at a walk that was almost a run. As he went the strides seemed to lengthen with the urgency of his task, and the man who had seemed
hunched into his working man’s jacket appeared to add an inch or two to his height. And he had spoken in English.