The Dead Can Wait (25 page)

Somewhere close by, I believe.

At the sound of his old friend’s voice, Watson sat down on one of the empty coffins. He closed his eyes, imagining himself deep in an armchair in front of a crackling fire, the fumes from his cigarette blending with the smell of woodsmoke and that of Holmes’s pipe. The great detective was leaning forward in his armchair, occasionally stabbing with the stem of his briar, his eyes glinting as they sometimes did when his brain examined a problem, turning it over, letting the light play on every aspect, the way a Hatton Garden jeweller might assess a gemstone.

Why do you say that?

It would be a brave man who would run these roadblocks with seven bodies on board a vehicle.

True.

Did you examine the rocks?

Not yet, Holmes. They were quite substantial, though.

I would look to the ornamental gardens. A rockery, perhaps?

Yes.

And the ground outside the ice house. For marks of dragging.

Why?

One man would have to drag a body. Two would carry.

I suppose.

Now, think. Burying seven bodies in haste. Is that feasible?

I doubt it.

So put yourself in this body-snatcher’s place. Where would you dispose of the bodies?

Watson started as the cigarette burned his fingers. The room at Baker Street dissolved to nothing, retreating to that corner of his brain where it was always the 1890s and the streets resounded to the sound of hoofs on cobbles and the cry of costermongers. The sudden cold on his face made him shiver. It was just a trick of an ageing mind, of course, but the echo of these timeslips normally left him with a contented afterglow. Not here. Not when, snapped back to real life, he remembered his friend was not a well man, and had been abducted and taken far from his old haunts to his little cottage, but a prisoner of the very government they served. That was the imperative drive behind solving the murder: finding Holmes. He stood and stamped his feet and watched his breath condense before him.

The lake, of course. That was what the voice in his head had been getting at. The easiest place to dispose of bodies, if they could be weighted properly. More rocks, for instance.

He could imagine insisting the body of water was dragged. Swinton, he suspected, would claim it was a sideshow, something that could wait until the tanks had been deployed. Perhaps he was right. Even a few days in the water might destroy whatever physical evidence the bodies could give him.

Watson walked out into the stone-flagged corridors that led to the other rooms. In the furthest one he found the four victims of the Zeppelin air raid. They were laid out under white sheets, which had soaked up a significant amount of blood. This time he crouched, gingerly, wary of his knees, and pulled back one of the covers. He gave an involuntary gasp. The young man had suffered a terrible injury to his chest, the ribs imploding, driven back to the spine, leaving a mess of lung and heart on the surface. The second had lost most of his head and upper torso, a stub of the severed spine protruding at a strange angle. This man had a large, corpulent belly, suggesting he had been somewhat older. The third was a stomach wound, again the flesh simply torn away to expose the poor lad’s innards.

‘No air raid did that.’

At first he thought the voice was his phantom companion returned.

‘Look at the blast marks.’

He stood and turned to face Mrs Gregson. ‘What are you doing here? Writing a report for Winston?’

There had been cross words in the garden, because Watson had clearly disapproved of Mrs Gregson’s subterfuge. No good, he felt, ever came of spying. On the other hand, he was somewhat conflicted because without her agreeing to work for Churchill, he might never have seen her again and certainly would not have received the news about Holmes being on Foulness, no matter how vague her sighting. He had confessed to her the underhand methods Churchill had used to get him to Elveden and why the man was not to be trusted. She had hardly seemed surprised.

‘Major Watson,’ she said now, her voice whip-sharp, ‘as we are both employed by the same man, albeit under different circumstances, I find your continued hostility somewhat hypocritical. Churchill plays us all like members of the orchestra. And don’t ask which instruments we are, you might not like the answer. Now, Major, I spent two years looking at every single way that an explosion can destroy the human body. After a while you recognize the various patterns. You have to, as it helps decide whether you can save a man. Those explosions were small, concentrated and occurred at very close quarters. There, look.’ She pointed. ‘The shrapnel.’

Using the tweezers from his bag, Watson reached into the chest of the boy who had suffered the flattening of his ribs and extracted a lump of greyish metal. Mrs Gregson stepped in as he held it up to the bare bulb.

‘That’s not from any HE shell I have ever seen,’ said Mrs Gregson. ‘Nor incendiary, I think.’ She looked down at the bodies, which although horribly mutilated, showed little signs of charring apart from blast damage. ‘It looks like a handle or a lever.’

‘From what?’

‘If I was a betting woman, I’d say a grenade.’

Watson opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment the lights went out and they heard the ringing clang of the steel doors being closed and bolted from the outside.

Ross rifled through the drawers in the kitchen, looking for implements to carry out their plan. After an elaborate charade of saying goodbye, he had returned to the cottage via the rear entrance. Miss Pillbody had drawn the curtains, so no prying eyes could see she had company – male company – for the evening.

‘Would you care for something to eat?’ she asked. ‘I have some cold ham.’

‘Later,’ he said, turning to face her. ‘Torture him how, exactly?’ Miss Pillbody gave a sweet smile. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never tortured anyone. Have you?’

Ross considered this for a moment. He had beaten men to make them talk, but they had broken easily. Booth was an intelligence officer. Surely he would require more persuasion than a fat lip and a couple of missing teeth. ‘But you have blown up men with grenades.’

A delicate little shrug. ‘That was actually my first time. Needs must.’ Ross rubbed his forehead. He wasn’t quite sure what he had got himself into with this woman. ‘Are there any tools in the house? Pliers or some such?’

‘Not that I have found. There are knives. Blunt knives.’

‘I just think we need something that will put the fear of God into a man.’ He gave an involuntary glance at the dolls. ‘Something to show as much as use.’

‘I can’t think of anything like that.’

He pointed up at the top shelf of the dresser, which contained her collection of large-headed dolls that stood, staring glassy-eyed into the room. ‘We could always frighten him with those. Jesus, they’re ugly.’

‘They are
autoperipatetikos
,’ she said, irritated by his ignorance. ‘Walking dolls. My father used to buy me them, then my husband. Now, I collect them.’

‘Oh.’
Hideous things
, he thought, but kept it to himself. His own father had collected African ceremonial masks, which had been equally creepy. ‘Do you have any more alcohol? I could do with a drink.’

‘There’s nothing but that sherry. Miss Pillbody wouldn’t keep anything else in the house. I was always partial to kirsch in my old life. I don’t think it is her tipple, though, do you?’

‘No. I’ll have the sherry, then.’

Ross sat at the kitchen table, and watched her sort out two small glasses of the sticky amber-coloured liquid. He felt a weariness in his bones. Too many late nights, too much creeping around, too many bodies in a short time. Soon they would have another on their hands.

She sat down and pushed the glass towards him. He took a mouthful and swallowed, grimacing at it went down, leaving a medicinal aftertaste.

‘Now,’ Miss Pillbody said with resolve, ‘stop being so agitated. We have to apply logic here. Time is short. Obtaining the information from Booth is simply the best available option we have. If he won’t talk, we’ll snatch ourselves someone who will. Then you can get out of here.’

‘What about Thetford aerodrome?’

‘New orders,’ she admitted. ‘I am to stand down. After the loss of the ship, the Zeppelin raids are being suspended pending fresh tactics.’

She must, Ross appreciated, have a way of communicating with her superiors. Radio? Pigeons? He doubted she would tell him. ‘Such as?’

She gave a long sigh. ‘They won’t tell me that, of course. But I hear the
Fliegertruppen
has been given permission to raid London with conventional aircraft. Perhaps the time of the Zeppelin is coming to an end. But I have been given clearance by my superior to try to ascertain what is going on at the estate.’

‘What about their spy in there?’

A shrug. ‘Perhaps there isn’t one. Perhaps they consider a two-pronged approach the best option. Perhaps he has been caught and shot.’

‘What will you do then? If we break the secret of Elveden? Could you stay here?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about me. If all goes well, I shall stay on as Miss Pillbody for a while longer. But if we expose ourselves, I’ll slip into another life. I’ll have done my duty. I will have avenged my husband.’ She took another sip. ‘If not quite in the way I envisaged.’

A robin started up outside the window, singing as if its life depended on the volume of noise it could produce.

Ross took another small amount of the sherry. ‘I’m sorry. I just . . . I never have, I don’t think . . . loved anyone. I’ve hated plenty of people in my time. It’s hate that drove me here.’ He looked down at his glass and laughed. ‘Jesus, what’s in this stuff ? I thought it was gin that made you melancholy.’

She put her head to one side, as if examining a strange specimen for the first time. ‘Just so you know . . .’ she began.

‘What?’

‘I thought about killing you last night.’

It was said so matter-of-factly, as if she were talking about pulling a weed from the garden, that he actually shuddered. ‘Why?’

‘I thought it would be neater. But then I thought, what if it somehow leads back to me? After all, we’ve been seen together. I didn’t want anyone prying. So, I decided best not.’

He laughed. ‘I’m glad.’

‘You know, so am I.’ She finished the sherry. ‘That really is filthy stuff, isn’t it?’

‘Yup.’

‘I think you should slip out the back way and perhaps go and buy us a bottle of something from the pub. I’ll do that ham with some potatoes and some greens from the garden.’

‘How domesticated.’

‘And while you are there, visit the blacksmith. He’ll still be in the forge. Ask if you can hire a pair of tongs; say you are having a bonfire or some such and don’t want it to get out of control. And a pair of pliers to remove nails from the wood. He won’t care; the money’ll just go down his throat.’

He stood. It seemed like a plan, of sorts.

‘And Ross?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just in case you are wondering. If it ever becomes expedient, I will do it.’

‘What?’

‘Kill you.’

He couldn’t help but snort at that. ‘Jesus, woman, you know how to put a man at ease.’ He was still suppressing a snigger when he slipped out the rear, disturbing the vocal robin as he went.

After he had gone, Miss Pillbody washed up the two glasses and placed them in the draining rack, put the empty sherry bottle out in the bin and went to the dresser. From there she selected three of the best carving and boning knives, and set about putting a serious edge on them using a whetstone. The noise released a distant memory of the squeals of pain and the smell of hot blood that filled the sheds when her grandfather let her watch the workers castrate the bulls on his estate. Which gave her an idea.

TWENTY-SEVEN

In the courtyard of The Plough, Coyle bent over the Vauxhall, rebolting the radiator, telling himself to slow down. His haste had already cost him the skin on his knuckles. He had found the letter from his mother and reread the line that should have leaped out at him earlier.

‘I had to get Marie Coughlan to read your last one to me. They say it’s the cataracts . . .’

He had been so thrown by the word ‘cataracts’ he hadn’t paid enough attention to the name of the woman reading letters to her. Marie Coughlan, née Daly. The sister of the two men shot in a warehouse by one Donal Coyle. They always said the Brotherhood finds you sooner or later. Three dead men on a cold warehouse floor in Liverpool had to be paid for. So they had moved a Daly into his mother’s orbit, playing the very long game. And it was true, for years his letters were from no place specific, often given to other agents to post while he and Harry Gibson were on their travels. Anyone looking at the postmark might think him a particularly aimless nomad or a confused travelling salesman. The contents of the letters were deliberately vague as to his location. But lately, blinded perhaps by the fever of homesickness, by the fatigue of a life of subterfuge serving a government that wasn’t his own, he must have become careless. And somehow they had picked up his trail. Normally the Brothers would try a snatch, but he flattered himself that they might have thought that too risky. Donal Coyle was a hard man to take alive, at least he hoped so. But he could imagine that the next piece in the newspaper Marie Coughlan would love to read to his mother would be a detailed description of his execution, left to die on the rich men’s pavements of Mayfair. He made a note to get a message to Major Watson, to tell him his life was not in danger. Not from roving assassins, anyway.

Coyle finished with the bolts and clipped on the hoses of the cooling system. Using a watering can, he filled the radiator slowly, squeezing the rubber pipes to ease away any air bubbles. When it overflowed he wiped away the excess and examined the radiator core for leaks. He couldn’t see any. He got down on his hands and knees, looking for drips. None. But Coyle knew rad repairs failed under pressure and he put on the cap to seal the system, cranked the engine and let it run.