The Dead Can Wait (3 page)

‘Cancelled,’ said Booth, bluntly.

‘And if I need anything from the schoolhouse at a later date?’

The lieutenant and his corporal exchanged glances. When he looked back at her she felt something icy on her neck and the hairs prickled to attention. ‘I’d make sure you take everything you need today. If you come back here, Miss Pillbody, you will be shot on sight.’

THREE

The editor’s eyes widened when he saw the person standing before him. ‘Next!’ he had called and into his office had marched a remarkable sight, a woman, all red hair and leather, dressed as if she was about to tackle the hill climb at La Turbie. Her face – striking enough, but frumpled with fatigue, it seemed to him – showed the dusty outline of goggles. She had clearly ridden a motor bike to the offices of
Motor Cycle Gazette.

She took off her gloves and held out her hand. ‘Mrs Georgina Gregson.’

He took it. ‘Daniel Samson.’

‘Really?’ The editor was in his forties, balding rapidly, with rheumy eyes and protruding teeth. He looked nothing like the lantern-jawed motor cyclists he liked to portray in his publication. This was hardly surprising, as he didn’t actually ride himself.

‘Yes. Really. How can I help you, Mrs Gregson?’

She unbuttoned her coat as she sat down and took from an inside pocket a cutting clipped from
Motor Cycle Gazette.
‘I have come about this advertisement.’ She placed the scrap on the blotter in front of him.

He examined it for a second before he burst out laughing.

‘What is so amusing?’ she asked.

‘You have been outside in the corridor for some time?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you have seen your fellow applicants?’

She looked over her shoulder, as if the door were transparent. There were, indeed, several others who had answered the same advertisement, although few as qualified as she was, she suspected. ‘Indeed.’

‘And did you notice anything about them, Mrs Gregson?’

‘Well, for the most part, their hands are too clean.’

This wasn’t the answer he was expecting. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Some of the fingernails are too clean; they’ve never touched an engine in their lives. Some are just too smooth. The palms and fingers, I mean. Not a callus between them. No manual work of any description, I fear. There is a chap out there called Collins I spoke to. He’s a likely one. Look at his knuckles. He’s used a spanner or two.’

‘Ah, my point exactly. He’s a chap. And you aren’t.’

‘How terribly observant of you, Mr Samson,’ Mrs Gregson replied coolly.

‘The position is open only to men.’

She pointed at the advertisement. ‘It doesn’t say that.’

‘It does.’

‘No, it doesn’t, Mr Samson,’ she almost growled.

He snatched up the advertisement and read it. ‘It says: “As part of important war work, we are looking for persons with mechanical and engineering skills, preferably with a knowledge of petrol engines and motor cycles.” See?’

Mrs Gregson leaned forward. ‘No, I don’t see. Where does it say “Men only”?’

Samson gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘It says “persons”.’

‘I’m a person,’ she said. ‘Ask anyone.’

He pushed back in his chair. He wanted this bothersome woman gone. He knew her sort. They did have a page in the magazine penned by ‘Motorcyclatrix’, who was really Lady Rose Penney, but that was just a sop to the ladies who wrote in complaining that their sex was under-represented in the pages. Mrs Gregson was no doubt one of those who wanted to feminize the pursuit. If they had their way, the sport would become the motorized arm of
The Lady.

‘Well, it’s obvious we aren’t talking about women. Knowledge of petrol engines . . .’

‘I drove ambulances for a year at the front, Mr Samson. I can strip down a Daimler as quickly as the next person. I have rebuilt my Rudge twice. Would you like to inspect my fingernails?’ She thrust her hand forward.

‘That won’t be necessary, Mrs Gregson. Look, I admire you for wanting to do war work. But there is much you can contribute in other fields. You drove ambulances, you say? What about becoming a nurse? Pretty woman like you—’

‘I’m done with that,’ she snapped. She didn’t feel inclined to offer any further explanation as to why she hoped never to see the inside of a hospital ward – or an ambulance – ever again. Like many medical staff who had been at the front, it was the sounds and smells that stayed with her. It seemed the brain could somehow consign the images of the mangled and the dying to some dark recess. But a loud bang would make the heart race, as if it heralded an artillery barrage, and even the most innocuous of scents was sometimes transformed by a mysterious alchemy into the tang of carbolic and the sweet decay of flesh.

‘I can’t help you, Mrs Gregson.’

She was exasperated now. ‘But I understand engines, Mr Samson. I love motor cycles—’

‘I’m sorry. My hands are tied.’

‘Why? Because of my gender?’

‘It doesn’t help matters,’ he said, a smirk flickering under his moustache.

She stood and buttoned up her Dunhill coat, her fingers shaking with barely suppressed fury. ‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we? I shall find out exactly what is required for this war work and make damned sure’ – she paused to enjoy Mr Samson’s flinch at the profanity – ‘that I get a bash at it.’

With this she turned on her heel and left the room, making sure the door nearly burst through the frame as she slammed it behind her.

Samson picked up the receiver of the Kellogg Interoffice phone and pressed ‘Call’.

‘Shall I send the next one in?’ asked Mrs Beasley at the other end.

‘Is it a male?’

‘Yes. I’m very sorry about that woman, Mr Samson. I did warn her, but she was most . . . insistent.’

‘Not to worry, Mrs Beasley.’ He was certain that his secretary was no match for that flame-haired harridan. ‘But ask the next candidate to wait a second, will you?’

He opened the drawer of his desk and took out a notebook. He quickly found the emergency number he had been given by the government department that was using his paper to recruit the ‘mechanically minded’.

Samson hesitated. The woman might just be full of hot air. If she wanted to do her bit, she could always get a job on the omnibuses. Perhaps he should have suggested that. And yet, she didn’t strike him as one who would flit like a butterfly from project to project. More like a terrier that would worry at a bone until it was splinters.

He glanced at the page of the notebook with the telephone number on it. Samson’s hand had been shaking when he scribbled it down but it was still legible. Mrs Beasley would have made this Mrs Gregson fill in a contact form, so her address would be out there on her desk. Therefore, he could tell the man at the other end of the telephone where she lived if need be. What would he do to her? Put the fear of God into her probably. As he had Samson.

‘Report anyone suspicious,’ the dour man had said. ‘Or who might cause trouble.’ What was the expression he had used? ‘On pain of death’, that was it.
Call us, no matter how trivial, on pain of death
. A figure of speech. Wasn’t it? Although the portly little man who had delivered it hadn’t looked or acted like someone who used words frivolously. Mr Grover, he had called himself. A ‘servant of the government’ was all he would offer by way of identification. The mere memory of those eyes of his, fish-cold, projecting a not-so-veiled threat, made Samson’s mouth dry.

For a second he almost felt sorry for Mrs Gregson. But self-preservation was the stronger instinct. He picked up the telephone and waited for the operator. Whitehall 0101. Once he made the call to that number, Mrs Gregson would no longer be his problem.

Major Watson’s patient was sitting at one end of the gymnasium, which was located in the wing of the former school, now designated a ‘special’ ward. The doctor stood in the doorway, a nurse hovering one step behind him, and he took some time to observe the soldier before he made his presence felt. The young man, a captain, was dressed in pale blue overalls, which marked him out, so he had heard a nurse say, as ‘one of the barmy ones’. He was at a table, looking down at it, as if reading a newspaper in a library, but there was nothing to be seen other than scuffs and scratches in the wood. Whatever he could see on that surface was visible only to the captain. The man’s right leg was pistoning up and down, and his upper body was folded in upon itself, arms crossed over chest, hands gripping the opposite bicep, the whole torso rocking back and forth almost imperceptibly. There was noise, too, a hum from the back of the throat, low and constant, as if he was trying to block out some other sound.

The doctor knew from the notes that the lad had suffered from ataxia, the inability to move, a total paralysis with no physical cause anyone could discern. There was also aphasia, the loss of speech. He also knew that, in a strange way, he was responsible for this boy’s condition.

Just seven months previously, in the trenches of France, Watson had helped make the captain a hero, a burden that had led the lad to this ‘special’ unit in Wandsworth Hospital, designed to deal with those who had been damaged by the war in ways the authorities were only just beginning to grasp. The captain had been variously classified as ‘emotional’ or ‘Not Yet Diagnosed (Nervous)’. Neither truly suggested the severity, or strangeness, of symptoms such a broken man could display. The machinery of war had not killed this one, just chewed him up in its fearsome, unrelenting cogs.

The doctor turned to the nurse at his shoulder. ‘I’ll be fine by myself.’

‘Are you sure, Major?’ the nurse asked.

‘Captain Fairley and I are old friends.’

At that moment the damaged man looked over at him, the head wobbling as if on a spring as it turned. He stared across the scuffed parquet floor of the gymnasium at the figure standing in the doorway, but there was no recognition in the gaze. Just another quack, he would be thinking – if he was thinking at all, the doctor appreciated – with his damn-fool questions and exhortations to pull himself together.

‘Hello, Captain Fairley,’ Watson said, his voice thin in the cavernous space.

There was no reaction from the patient.

‘Mind if I join you?’

The slap of his leather soles on the wooden floor sounded like timpani as he crossed to the table, where an empty chair faced the soldier. He pulled it out and asked permission to sit. When there was no response, he did so anyway. Then he waited.

‘Congratulations on the promotion,’ he said eventually.

Fairley still studied the desk. When they had met, Fairley had been a mere second lieutenant. Then he had saved Watson’s life out in no man’s land. Good news from the front was in short supply, so Fairley’s story had grown in the telling and retelling. Percival Philips of the
Express
had written about ‘The Unsung Hero Of No Man’s Land’, making sure he was unsung no more, and Reuters had gone with with ‘Angel of Mud’. There was a medal. In the months since his brave action, Fairley had become something of an expert on that blasted strip of land between the lines, and had been transferred to an intelligence role and promoted. But while mapping ‘the wire’ and the German forward trenches, something had happened to Fairley out there, reducing him to this palsied wreck.

‘Captain, you do remember me, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘Major Watson. Dr Watson, as was. We met near Plug Street.’

A jolt ran through the man, as if he had been subjected to the electrotherapy that they administered to the worst of the shell-shocked. Watson saw life flicker in the eyes.

‘You recall that night?’

‘Aye. Major Watson, is it?’ Fairley repeated, with an intonation that bore no resemblance to the one he had used when Watson had last talked to him. Then, he had spoken with the cultured, educated tones of a Wykehamist, an alumnus of Winchester College. This voice sounded . . . well, it sounded Scottish.

‘Yes, Captain. You’ve had a pretty rough—’

He didn’t get to finish the sentence. With a newfound agility, Fairley leaped, panther-like, across the table, and Watson crashed backwards to the floor under the momentum of the flying body, thumping his head on the wood. Watson’s vision tunnelled as he felt the weight of the man on his chest, squeezing his lungs, and, a second later, the long, bony fingers of a madman closing around his throat.

FOUR

Rumours were swirling around London like particles from a dust storm. The wind blew particularly strongly through the HQ of the Foreign Press Association, which was based in a grand town house just off St James’s Square. Bradley Ross stood at the FPA’s bar, beneath the gilded ceiling, hoping some of the nuggets of gossip circulating in the room might lodge about his person. He needed a good story, soon, or they would pull him back to New York. He didn’t want to go just yet. His father was still smoothing feathers ruffled by his incident with the young caddie at the golf club. All sorts of dire retribution had been promised, but, as always, money did the trick. A few more months and it would all be forgotten. Meanwhile, he needed that story.

It shouldn’t be difficult. There was a war on, after all. Yet the British were spinning out so much red tape and baffling obfuscation, he felt like he was drowning in lies and half-truths and, in some cases, sheer fantasy.

‘You going to the dinner tonight?’

Ross turned to see an unfamiliar face. ‘The Savoy? No.’

It was a charity event, men only, and Ross knew it would be dominated by Gabriel de Wesselitzsky, the flamboyant president of the FPA and a man who was, Ross felt, in the pocket of the British. He could think of better ways to spend the ten shillings that the dinner would cost.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Ross. He prided himself on never forgetting a face but he could not quite place this one. It belonged to a hefty fellow in his thirties, with broad shoulders, blond hair and a wide, friendly face. He was in full evening dress, with a striking emerald shirt stud that flashed and flickered in the light. ‘You’re with . . .?’

‘Movietone. Dirk Alberts.’

Ross thought he might have misheard. ‘Dick, was it?’