Dead Man's Land (26 page)

Watson instantly dismissed that train of thought. ‘Captain, when you left me with Shipobottom’s body, did you go straight back to Suffolk Farm?’

‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘I need to establish what you ate or drank or came into contact with prior to your attack.’

‘Well, I was going to ride back immediately – I brought Lord Lockie, my best horse, over – but I was intercepted by Caspar Myles. He invited me for a drink.’

‘Why would Dr Myles do that?’

The captain shrugged to show it was perfectly routine. ‘Well, we’d never actually met before, but he is a friend of the family.’

‘Myles?’ asked Watson, unable to hide his surprise, ‘A friend of the de Griffons?’

‘Yes. I know he doesn’t sound like a Southerner, but his family is big in American cotton. To be honest, I suspect they were Yankee carpetbaggers at the end of the civil war, who grabbed themselves a few choice plantations. So, the Myleses and the de Griffons have been doing business for, oh, half a century.’

‘And you had a drink with him?’

‘Several, in fact there was a lot of gossip to catch up on. Look, you don’t really think—’

Watson raised a hand to prevent any futile speculation. ‘I don’t know what to think at this juncture.’

Mrs Gregson returned, alone. ‘I couldn’t find Staff Nurse Jennings, Major. I did find Sister Spence, who was a little, um, surprised to see me back. Although furious might be a better description. I am to vacate the premises at once. However, she did manage to squeeze out of her pursed lips that Staff Nurse Jennings apparently took the several days’ leave owing to her last night. Sister Spence didn’t seem best pleased about her behaviour.’

Watson didn’t like the sound of this one little bit. The American and Jennings absent at the same time pointed in a direction he didn’t care for. Watson turned back to de Griffon. ‘Has Caspar Myles ever visited the mills?’

‘In Leigh? Yes, as a matter of fact, a few years ago, before he decided to pursue medicine. Major Watson, you are scaring me now. Are you saying my having a drink with Caspar Myles—’

‘Did Myles say anything about where he might be going today?’

De Griffon furrowed his brow trying to remember. ‘No, but he did moan a great deal about the British. Apparently we are a terribly stuffy bunch with no sense of fun. Said he missed the company of Americans and had a mind to go and visit his old chums at the All-Harvard Volunteers sometime soon.’

‘Mrs Gregson, will you please write down every movement that Captain de Griffon here made after leaving Dr Myles. I just need to look into something.’

‘What about Sister Spence? She told me to go and never darken her wards again.’

Watson had already steeled himself to tackle bigger foes than a razor-tongued sister. ‘Leave her to me.’

Watson found Torrance’s adjutant, Captain Symonds, in the main house, in a small anteroom next to the major’s office. He barged in and kicked the door closed behind him. Symonds looked up, his pen frozen in the act of countersigning an order.

‘I am afraid Major Torrance is rather busy this morning, Major,’ he began, once he had recovered from his shock at such a rude entry.

‘It’s not the major I want to see, Symonds, it’s you.’

‘Me?’

‘What had Dr Myles done to disgrace himself?’ he asked bluntly.

‘I’m sorry . . .’

‘When we first met, you were rather keen to steer the conversation away from Dr Myles and the fact he had come here under a cloud.’

‘He’s a fine doctor—’

Watson brought a fist down on the desk and an inkpot toppled over, bleeding a blue-black pool over some papers. Symonds leaped to his feet with an oath and grabbed a sheaf of blotters. ‘Major, for crying out loud. These are important documents.’

Watson swept them off the desk with one brisk movement of his arm. Symonds looked aghast. In fact, he looked as if he would like to convene a firing squad there and then. ‘This is an outrage. Major Torrance said he thought the balance of your mind was disturbed—’

‘It is,’ Watson agreed, enjoying the look of discomfort on Symonds’s face. ‘It is disturbed at how you people can be so complacent. So he is a fine doctor. I hear tell Dr Crippen’s patients spoke highly of him, too. I am sure somewhere there were people who thought Jack the Ripper was a first-class surgeon, such a pity about his other little hobby. Now, what did Myles do?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, there was some unpleasant personal business.’

Watson leaped on the mealy-mouthed word like a big cat onto the back of a gazelle. ‘Unpleasant? Unpleasant? What on earth does that mean exactly?’

‘I don’t know. We didn’t ask for details. The chap was in a bit of trouble. His commanding officer asked if we’d like a doctor, no questions asked. Well, we had to check whether there was any professional incompetence. It turned out there was an incident with a nurse. But you know what these girls are like around doctors. No, perhaps a man your age doesn’t. But I have seen them at work. Bag a doctor and the whole war has been worthwhile to them. If they can’t get a doctor, an officer will do just as nicely.’

Watson felt like taking a leaf from Holmes’s pugilistic handbook and striking the man full on the chin with a left hook, but instead he took a moment to recover his composure. He was still suffering from having donated a fair percentage of his blood volume, and his head was thumping wildly. The last thing he needed was to find himself on a ward, having fainted or worse. ‘Where are the All-Harvard Volunteers based?’

‘Major Watson, if you are going to stir up trouble—’

‘I am not going to stir anything that isn’t there already. We have a man who nearly died last night, poisoned by an unknown hand or agent, plus two who did expire, and we have a missing nurse and a lost American doctor with what Scotland Yard would call “form”. And everything points to them being connected. I just want to know where the Americans that foisted Myles upon you are.’

Symonds took a deep breath, considering whether to answer this madman. In the end, he concluded it was the easiest way to get rid of him. ‘The Harvards are attached to a French base hospital, just southwest of Armentières. A village called Nieppe, across the border.’

‘Right. Thank you.’

‘I shall have to report this to Major Torrance,’ said Symonds to Watson’s back as he left. Watson glanced over his shoulder and gave the man a parting glare. He was surprised to find that he had enjoyed his little moment of madness. He should burst his stays more often.

And he wasn’t worried about Torrance; he had other matters on his mind. Firstly, he had to send a cable to his old friend Dr Anwar back in Egypt. Then, he had two things to collect from the transfusion tent. One was a sample of de Griffon’s blood. The French base hospitals had excellent haematology labs, the country being a great believer in the analysis of bodily fluids of every description. The second was the Colt .45 that Myles had presented to Watson, doubtless never thinking his own gun might be used against him.

He sat in a café in the Grand Square, unable to comprehend the beauty of the buildings. It did not make sense. Here were medieval façades full of elaborate carvings and ornate statues, inlaid with gems and layered with gold, and they were intact. Not a single bullet hole. No shrapnel marks. Ears, noses, fingers, all were present and correct – the stone cherubs and saints appeared untouched and untroubled by war.

It was the same with the people. He was used to seeing faces disfigured with fear, drooping with exhaustion and caked with filth. Here the men and women were clean, composed and calm. True, some of the braver civilians glanced from under their umbrellas at him and his fellow Germans with suspicion or hostility as they hurried by the café where he sat behind the glass windows. But apart from that, with their faces showing little trace of tension, their behaviour positively carefree, clothes neat, clean and pressed, their worries everyday and mundane, he couldn’t help but resent them. Bloch had arrived from a degraded world, where the ramparts of civilization had not only been breached, but pissed on. Perhaps coming to Brussels so soon had been a mistake. He wasn’t healed. Even the quiet was unnerving. It felt odd to admit it, but he missed the noise of the guns.

Bloch ordered a schnapps to go with his coffee, his ragged nerves making him ignore the resolve that said he must be clear-headed when he saw Hilde. Of course, she might not come. Might not have got the telegram. Or been able to get a train. Although those visiting wounded relatives or loved ones at or near the front were apparently given priority on the railways.
Please let her come
, he pleaded with nobody in particular.
Please.

He looked around the café. He was the most junior in rank, but he wasn’t worried about that. Lux had provided him with one of the élite stormtrooper uniforms, which gave him a status well above any of the local
Leutnants
and
Kapitäns
with their fat-arse desk jobs. With the bandage on his face – he noticed that, like the local statuary, very few of the officers bore any signs of combat – and his new outfit, he could affect a swagger that had even the Belgian waiter being attentive.

One of the officers, a
Rittmeister
in the transport corps, caught him staring at his raucous little group of penpushers and fixed him with a challenging stare. He had a bony, haughty face, and one cheekbone sported the kind of duelling scar that Bloch always thought was probably self-inflicted – a nasty shaving accident rather than an affair of honour. Bloch met the man’s gaze, held it, and threw back his schnapps without wavering. The
Rittmeister
scowled and turned back to his friends and their beers. He said something that caused a ripple of laughter. Bloch imagined the man in the cross hairs of the Mauser he had been promised, wondering what the new
Spitzgeschoss mit Stahlkern
ammunition might do to his skull.

‘Ernst?’

Taken by surprise, he almost upset the table when he leaped to his feet. It was Hilde, but a slightly thinner, paler version of the one he remembered, and dressed in black, as if a widow.

He reached towards her cheek and brushed it with his calloused fingers. It was the softest thing he had ever felt. A tightness grew in his chest and he felt close to tears. The beauty of the square had overwhelmed him, the sight of Hilde, Dresden-fragile, dressed in mourning clothes, was almost too much. It was as if she had come to his funeral.

‘Sit down, please,’ he said, signalling for more coffee.

‘Ernst. Your face . . . are you all right? You didn’t say in your telegram you were hurt.’

He touched it, as if he had forgotten all about it. ‘It’s nothing. I mean it will heal. It looks bad now. The doctors were worried you might run screaming when you saw me.’

She touched his hand and he put his other over it to lock it in place, fearing it might be a fleeting touch.

‘Of course not. You still look perfectly fine.’ She took a breath and the next sentences came out in an unseemly rush. ‘Mother did not want me to come. Karl is dead. We buried him just last week. He was shot down. He survived, but his wounds were . . . The plane caught fire when it crashed, just behind our lines. Soldiers ran to him, but . . .’ She closed her eyes, unable to continue.

‘I’m sorry. He was a good boy.’

‘A boy, yes. We are still mourning him. Mother thought it inappropriate for me to come. My father said that to deprive you, a fighting hero, of my company was a disgrace.’

Bloch gave a hollow laugh. ‘Your father was on my side?’

‘He was.’

‘The man who once called me a country bumpkin?’ It was where he had first met Hilde, out in the countryside, two hiking clubs camping on adjacent hilltops in the lovely, endless summer of 1911. ‘I’m shocked.’

She looked pained. ‘The war has changed everything. Even Father.’

He nodded. ‘How is it at home?’

‘Well, there are shortages, of course. It’s not so bad for us, because . . .’

Because your family owns a department store, he almost finished for her.

‘And you? Is it awful out there? I watch the newsreels every week.’ Which newsreels? he wondered. He had never seen an official cameraman at the front. Rumour had it the authorities restaged battles somewhere away from the real fighting with actors, to show the clean, pristine flower of German manhood overwhelming the filthy, rat-like French and cowardly British. Certainly, the footage he had seen at the mobile cinemas in the reserve areas bore little resemblance to his life, to the hours out on that blasted plain of no man’s land or living like a troglodyte in concrete bunkers.

‘Ernst?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, snapping back to the present.

‘I asked you what it was like. Do you have friends? Comrades?’

He fiddled with his fresh coffee. ‘There’s my spot—’ He didn’t want to explain what a spotter did. She knew he was a marksman, that was all. ‘There’s . . . it’s difficult to say.’

‘Have you been in battles? Your letters never mention anything.’

‘Not as such. Skirmishes, I suppose. The letters are censored, you know. For security.’

‘I’m not sure Karl’s were. He used to describe the thrill of flying. The joy of being up in an empty sky. Then the attacks on barrage balloons, the excitement and terror of the dogfights—’

‘It’s different,’ Bloch interrupted. It wasn’t hard to look up from the mud and envy the flyers. And they had little tactical information to give away in letters. As well as something almost admirable, noble to write about. There was nothing noble in his little corner of the war.

He remembered what one of the other snipers had said when he returned from leave:
They don’t understand back home. Can’t understand. Unless you have been in the trenches, it is impossible to believe what it is like. Don’t waste your breath.

‘The war on the ground, I mean. Can we walk?’ He stood, without warning, and put too much money down. ‘Get some air?’

‘It’s raining, Ernst.’

‘Not much. You have an umbrella. I have a raincoat.’

‘If we must.’

The
Rittmeister
looked over at him, then his eyes switched to Hilde as she straightened her dress. They went up and down her body, slowly, taking in every inch. The mourning outfit did little to deter his lasciviousness.