The Dead Can Wait (22 page)

‘I doubt it,’ said Cardew. ‘I mean, the engine exhaust isn’t nice, but it doesn’t cause insanity.’

Watson moved over and examined the vertical exhaust tubes, shining his torch on each in turn.

‘Found something?’ Cardew asked excitedly as Watson lingered.

‘Only that I wouldn’t want to be in here for twenty-six miles.’ Or, indeed, one. ‘How were the men discovered exactly? I mean in what position and where?’ Watson asked.

‘Most of them were on the floor curled up in balls. Like this.’ Cardew put his arms over his head.

‘Hedgehogging, they call it at the front,’ said Watson. He’d seen men frozen in that position for days, unable or unwilling to come out and face the world. ‘And they were alive?’

‘You could call it that.’

‘And how long did it take them to die?’

Cardew’s face looked pained at the memory. ‘God, it was terrible. I never knew that there really was a death rattle until . . . I mean, the noise in the throat . . .’

‘I know,’ said Watson gently. ‘How long?’

‘Some died within minutes, most an hour or two. The MO hung on for hours. And then there is Hitchcock. Last of them alive.’

‘And who declared them dead?’

‘Nobody,’ said Cardew. He gave a half-hearted laugh. ‘It was bloody obvious.’

‘Deaths still need to be officially recorded. Along with probable cause.’

‘Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? We don’t know the cause, probable or otherwise. And Captain Trenton, the MO, was on board monitoring conditions and performance. He died. So he was hardly in a position to fill out forms.’

Watson ignored the young man’s sarcasm. He knew he appeared like an old-fashioned stickler for bureaucracy in the engineer’s eyes. ‘And the other doctors that were brought in?’

‘Well, as I understand it, they couldn’t establish a cause of death . . .’

‘So there is no death certificate?’

‘No,’ said Cardew. ‘I do believe the families will be informed they died in action—’

‘Good grief, man, that should have been done by now,’ said Watson, pinching the bridge of his nose, wanting to be out of this stinking sweatbox. He realized the heat, the claustrophobia and his own tiredness were making him irritable. But the crew’s families might be posting letters and making up parcels for men who no longer needed them. It would be a shock when they realized they had been writing to corpses. He owed it to them to solve this mystery as quickly as possible. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not your fault, I know. I’ll sort out the formalities.’

Cardew lowered his voice to a whisper, so Levass couldn’t hear. ‘Listen, Major, you have to understand that this is being done at breakneck speed. Some would say too fast. The original plan was a thousand tanks, French and British, in one decisive hammerblow. Then, one hundred and fifty, British only, which didn’t please Levass and now . . . we’ll have a few score at best.’

‘And that’s not enough?’

Cardew took a deep breath and his face closed up, as if he was uncomfortable with the truth. ‘They will work, sir, but only if deployed correctly. And that is with overwhelming surprise. You get but one chance at that. As you said about the SMK bullets, sir, and I was impressed that a man of . . .’ He cleared his throat.

‘Of my age?’

‘Of your background knew about them. The truth is, sir, as I said, the whole thing is being rushed.’

‘Rushed how?’

A seam of anger was laced through the reply. ‘The quality of the workmanship and materials, the design, the engine power, the armour thickness, the training of the men, their safety and . . .’

‘And what?’

‘They’ve concentrated so much on building complete tanks to show off to their visitors, there are no spare parts. I don’t know if you know much about engineering, sir, but I would estimate that fifty per cent of these machines will have mechanical problems at some point. They’ll need spares. We haven’t got any.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Watson said. And he was. Not about the spares. But that young men were being rushed into harm’s way without adequate support. The sad fact was that this was nothing new in this war or any other.

‘Let’s concern ourselves with what happened inside . . . what was her name?
Genevieve.
The tanks won’t be going anywhere or surprising anyone if they kill their crew every time the hatches and visors come down.’ Cardew nodded his agreement. ‘So, I’ll need some lights in here, good lights. Can you manage that? And a boiler suit, or some kind of protective clothing.’

‘Yes, sir. The tankmen all wear overalls, so we have plenty of spares.’

‘Excellent. And I’ll fetch my magnifying glass.’ Watson looked around at the now-empty space, and heard its anguished ghosts calling him in harsh, metallic tones. ‘Something terrible happened in here, Cardew. And we’re going to find out what.’

It was late afternoon by the time Watson had finished with the inside of the tank. When he finally emerged, his face was covered in grime, his eyes red from squinting through the magnifying glass, his throat dry and his stomach rumbling from a missed lunch. Lieutenant Booth, the intelligence officer, was waiting for him, standing alongside Cardew and Levass.

Levass handed Watson a flask of water and he took three big gulps.

‘Well, Major,’ Booth asked. ‘What do you make of our
Genevieve
?’

Watson shook his head to show he wasn’t answering questions.

‘Can you get me a crew list?’ he asked Booth.

‘Of course.’

‘Did the dead men have anything in common? Background? From the same town or village?’

‘No,’ said Booth. ‘We draw from all over, all classes. All we ask is they be mechanically-minded.’

‘But you can get me the personal records of the deceased?’

‘Of course. I’ll have them sent to your room.’

Watson turned to Cardew. ‘There is a bullet hole in the engine.’

The engineer nodded glumly. ‘Yes, I am afraid your patient took a pot shot at it when it happened.’

‘Hitchcock? Why didn’t you tell me? I asked if there was anything unusual. Isn’t a man shooting his own engine quite strange?’

‘Major,’ objected Booth, ‘the whole scene was quite strange. And quite traumatic. The bullet was the least of it when it happend.’

‘Has it damaged the engine?’ Watson asked Cardew.

‘I’d have to take off the valve cover and check the valve springs and the pushrods. But not too much, I suspect.’

‘So it could be repaired relatively quickly?’

Cardew shrugged. ‘I would imagine a day or two at the most.’

‘Can you see to it, please? And the wheels at the back?’ He pointed at the twisted steering device.

‘We can scavenge a new set from another tank. Though they are proving worse than useless. A good driver can steer with just the tracks.’

‘Then get me a good driver,’ Watson replied.

‘What do you want to do, Major?’ Booth asked.

‘I’m going to fix up
Genevieve
and then we are going to take her back out over there.’ He pointed at the phoney no man’s land. ‘With all hatches closed.’

‘You won’t find many men keen to do that, Major,’ said Levass with a chuckle.

‘Well, I shall lead by example,’ said Watson, stripping off the boiler suit.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Booth.

Watson slapped a hand on the side of tank. ‘Once
Genevieve
is repaired, I’m going to take her out for a spin.’ He let that sink it for a second. ‘Anybody fancy joining me?’

Watson decided to walk back to the house alone, to have some thinking time. In truth, he was hoping that a voice in his skull would lay out the solution for him and he could get out of this place with its brutal death machines once and for all. But Holmes, or his mental simulacrum, was silent as he crunched along the pathway between the trees, the sun on his neck.

‘You stupid bloody berk!’

The spat insult made Watson spin round, looking for his abuser, but there was nobody there he could see.

‘Show yourself!’ Watson demanded.

‘—calling a berk? Berk yourself.’

That was a second voice. Gruffer than the first. It was a conversation of sorts.

‘—gasper. You tight git.’ A raucous laugh.

Watson stood stock-still, his eyes shut, letting all his other senses turn down like the wick of a lamp while he concentrated on his hearing. It took more than a minute, his breathing shallow, the beat of his heart loud in his ears until he had it. The disembodied sounds were drifting through the trees like smoke, coming from his right.
Well, you can follow smoke,
Watson thought,
by using your nose,
and determined to try something similar with his auditory faculties.

He set off, away from the path, pushing through a dense undergrowth of fern, nettle and bramble, frequently losing the telltale snippets of chatter and then stopping, until, like a bloodhound of sound, he picked up the trail once more and plunged on, heading due west.

‘Have you seen his wife? Ha.’

‘Oi!’

The trees grew closer around him. The sunlight barely penetrated sections of it and Watson shivered at the sudden chill as he crossed a gully, dry at that time of year, and scrambled up a sandy bank, grasping at exposed roots for support.

‘Game of football?’

‘—ckin’ likely.’

Now the talk was louder, clearer, coming from over to his left. He skirted through a thicket of hornbeam. Now he could smell cigarettes. There were men ahead.

‘I’d like to give him a boot up the backside. No, I would. He suggested I join this new unit. More pay. Special conditions. Oh, yeah, very special conditions.’

‘You’d rather you was over in the trenches, would you? Our Alf came back last year, one leg missin’. Won’t talk about it even now. But the nightmares . . .’

‘Yeah, well, all I’m saying is we should be doin’ something.’

Watson kept his breathing shallow as he moved closer. Beyond the close-packed trunks he could see a rhomboid shape, parked just on the edge of the wood. Another tank, albeit one without the side sponsons. The voices were coming from in there.

Then he heard another one, whispering in his ear. Only this time, the hot breath told him it was a real person at his shoulder. ‘Do not utter a sound, Major Watson. If you know what’s good for you, you will come with me right now!’

Bradley Ross and Nora Pillbody sat in her garden, shadows lengthening around them. On the face of it, they were taking tea, their conversation low and polite. In reality, they were plotting their next move as a newly formed confederacy of German spies.

‘Has Booth been around?’

‘Briefly, this morning,’ said Miss Pillbody. ‘He was distracted. I sense some sort of emergency.’

‘Caused by us?’ Ross asked. He was looking at Miss Pillbody in a new light. Before that night in the woods, the thought of the sexual conquest of Miss Pillbody had been detached, academic. Now, though, he felt genuine excitement about the thought of taking her. He could see that the schoolteacher had been a cleverly constructed mask, a layer of thick paint, like a kabuki performance. Now he could detect the cracks, the little betrayals of her cover that he hadn’t noticed before. But, then again, he hadn’t imagined her pulling the pins from hand grenades and blowing men’s heads off before.

‘Are we the emergency?’ he repeated.

‘I doubt it. The Zeppelin raid, perhaps. They’ll be worried that Elveden was the target, don’t you think? I doubt our little pantomime will be discovered.’

‘Tell me, Miss Pillbody, do you always carry Mills bombs with you?’ he asked.

Miss Pillbody took a dainty sip of her tea. ‘Never when I teach school, no,’ she said, deadpan. ‘At other times, it is an excellent way to confuse any pursuers. You should try them. Lieutenant Booth says, if he can get away he wants me to go picnicking with him tomorrow. He made it clear he would prefer it if you didn’t come along this time.’

‘He’s circling the prey, is he?’

Miss Pillbody raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I don’t think the roles of prey and predator have been fully assigned yet. Do you?’

‘How so?’

‘We are going about this the wrong way. Sneaking around in that estate, trying to snatch a guard, it is far too risky. And who is to say that if we got one, he would understand what they are doing? A mere guard?’

Ross nodded. ‘Good point.’

‘But Booth certainly knows what is going on,’ she said. ‘As any intelligence officer would.’

‘True.’ Then he understood. He almost felt sorry for Booth. ‘You are hoping for some pillow talk?’

She wrinkled her nose at the thought. ‘Not at all. When Booth comes here tomorrow, I want you waiting for him.’

‘And?’

‘And we’ll go with your original plan. We’ll torture the truth out of him.’ She waited while this sank in. ‘More tea?’

Claude Levass led Watson away from the echoing voices and the sponson-less tank that he had observed.

‘Really, Major, you should not be prying. I saw you swerve off the path earlier and I thought, what is he up to now? Those men can tell you nothing. If you listened to anything they said, you would know that.’

‘But the voices,’ protested Watson. ‘Those disembodied voices – they come from that tank, yet they seem to echo through the forest.’

Levass helped him negotiate the gully once more. ‘I should have explained. The tanks without the sponsons on, the open-sided ones we train in? They have a very strange acoustic property. The voice is projected, thrown hundreds of yards away, like some variety trick. The crews use them to smoke in sometimes and their voices drift through the trees. Between you and me, Major, that’s how Swinton and the others found out the men were planning on cracking open the hatches during trials – even a whisper can carry for hundreds of yards. The men, they spy on themselves!’

Watson nodded. ‘That explains it.’

‘Explains what?’

‘The voices I could hear at the lodge. They seemed to be outside my window. It was unsettling.’

‘You get used to it. Why didn’t you ask me? You didn’t think it was part of our work here, did you?’ Watson said nothing, feeling slightly foolish. His imagination had run away with him a little. ‘It is just a by-product as we say in industry. My car is just through here,’ Levass said, indicating a snaking path through to the right. ‘I sent the driver back, so you will have to take your life in your hands with my driving.’