The First Casualty (21 page)

‘Why there?’

‘France, Inspector Kingsley. The night troop train to France. You’re on it.’

‘And I am free until then?’

‘Why wouldn’t you be?’ Shannon said easily. ‘You’re a captain in the RMP. We have no authority over you. But I wouldn’t go making any more trips to Hampstead if I were you. That was a very foolish trick you played.’

Kingsley was surprised, and inwardly most embarrassed. He had always trusted himself to know when he was being followed and yet Shannon, or at least his people, seemed to have shadowed him in complete anonymity.

‘The special constable?’ Kingsley asked.

‘Yes. One of ours. I recruited her myself, as it happens.
Lovely
girl. Thought I ought to have your house watched, but I couldn’t believe it when I read her report this morning. Did you really break in?’

Kingsley was pleased to realize that they had at least not shadowed him all the way from Folkestone and right across London, but had only picked him up at his house.

‘I’m afraid I did. Don’t worry, I was not detected. I should not like to drag my family into the world you inhabit.’

‘Your ex-family.’

‘My family, Captain.’

‘Well, can’t blame you really, wanting a last look. Mrs Beaumont is certainly a cracker. Absolutely gorgeous hair, eyes, fabulous top shelf. You’re a lucky man — or at least you were.

Kingsley’s blood ran cold.

‘You’ve met my wife?’

‘Oh yes. Held her hand and told her you were dead, old boy. Not surprised you miss a filly like that. Still, your misfortune will no doubt some day be another lucky fellow’s gain, look at it that way. She’s fair game now, old son…Steady on,’ Inspector, crowded place and all that. Wouldn’t want to cause a scene.’

Kingsley had raised his hand to strike Shannon, but now he lowered it.

‘You’ve been to my house?’

‘Popped in before following you to Folkestone. Only decent thing to do, I thought. She took it well, but was obviously pretty shaken.’ Shannon smiled unpleasantly. ‘Glad I was there really…You know, when a girl’s upset what she needs is an experienced and sympathetic shoulder to cry on.’

Kingsley leaned forward until his face was close to Shannon’s.

‘If ever you were to lay a hand on her…’

‘Oh do come on, old boy. Just making small talk.’

‘I’d kill you.’

‘Fine talk for a pacifist.’

‘I am not a pacifist. I believe killing can sometimes be justified and would consider myself perfectly justified in killing you,’ whether you’d personally hurt me or not. Remember that, Captain Shannon.’

‘Oh, yawn yawn
yawn
. Nothing more embarrassing than nice fellows pretending to be nasty. I’d stick to snooping if I were you,’
Captain Marlowe
. Leave killing to professionals.’

‘Captain Shannon, as with most things in life you’ll find that the gifted amateur who is
really inspired
to do the job will always triumph over the paid professional.’

THIRTY-FIVE

A show, then off to France

Kingsley decided to take a good long walk. It had been a heavy and rather alcoholic lunch and he knew that he would soon be cramped in a train for many hours. First of all, he strolled along the Embankment watching the traffic on the Thames, and then all around the streets and alleyways of Waterloo. There was an afternoon music-hall concert advertised at the Old Vic to give some distraction to the hordes of troops milling about the area who were awaiting entrainment back to France.

Kingsley bought a cheap ticket to stand at the back and went inside.

The songs were mainly the old ones to which everybody could sing along: ‘The Old Kent Road’,’ ‘Any Old Iron’, ‘When Father Papered the Parlour’, even the ancient and creaky ‘Come Into The Garden, Maud’. The audience sang along lustily with the girls on stage.

‘
It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go
,

It’s a long way to Tipperary to the sweetest girl I know!
’

All of the songs were familiar to Kingsley. Agnes and he had loved to visit the music hall. She in particular was very fond of popular music, and bought all the sheeted scores from the street vendors outside the theatres so as to play the songs at home on her piano.

Then a pretty soubrette came on and announced ‘In The Twi Twi Twilight’. This was too much for Kingsley and he left.

He missed Agnes dreadfully. In some ways he took comfort from the fact that the investigation he had agreed to undertake must be conducted beneath the shadow of the guns. What witnesses there were would be soldiers engaged in battle, and the mysterious missing officer likewise. If Kingsley was to find them he must needs go into battle too, or at least do his work in the midst of it. That appealed to Kingsley in his current mood. He was going to France in the pursuit of truth, a cause to which he had devoted his life, and if he were to lose his life in its pursuit then perhaps that was so much the better. No one would mourn him; those with a mind to were already doing so. He had no future and no past. Why not fall in the war that had ruined everything?

Kingsley met Shannon at the appointed location and, in an upstairs room, was given his new identity papers, travel documents and French money.

‘Have a nice trip,’ Shannon said. ‘Do send us a postcard if you solve the case.’

‘Remember what I said,’ Kingsley said quietly.

‘My dear fellow, London is full of skirt. I really have no need to pursue it as far as Hampstead Heath. And speaking of skirt…’

Kingsley and Shannon had descended into the public bar and there, across the crowded room, stood a young nurse from Charing Cross Hospital.

‘I told you I’d pop back and grab one,’ Shannon explained. ‘Vera! You found your way here all right, I see.’

‘Yes,’ I did,’ said the nurse, clearly delighted to see Shannon. It wasn’t a comfortable thing for a woman to be alone in a pub, particularly one near a mainline station.

‘Well now, what
shall
we do with our evening?’ Shannon said with a charming smile, putting his arm around her. ‘Oh, this is Captain Marlowe,’ by the way, Vera. He’s just leaving. Off to France, eh? Poor you, and I get to take a ravishing young lady to dinner and a show.’

‘Oh,
stop!
’ said Vera, her eyes shining.

Kingsley felt sorry for the girl but there was nothing he could do. At least she was older than Violet. He could only hope that, as Shannon himself would put it,’ she knew the score.

Kingsley left the pub and, shouldering his kitbag, made his way to the great entrance of the station. It was awash with civilians, packed four deep on the pavement and spilling over on to the street. It was always like this when a big push was on in France. Kingsley recalled two or three occasions when chases he had been involved in were thwarted as the prey ducked in amongst the crowds of gawpers who waited about to watch the wounded being bussed out of the station. Kingsley knew from conversations he had had with Tommies that no soldier appreciated the attentions of sightseers.

‘They thinks as how just because they chucks a few fags at us that they’s doin’ their patriotic bit, boostin’ our morale with a cheer an’ all, but they ain’t. They ain’t doin’ it for us, they’s just curious an’ lookin’ for a cheap thrill. Probably goes ‘ome afterwards thanking Gawd it ain’t them sittin’ there all bandaged up and bleedin’ like a bunch o’ fuckin’ mummies in a jam factory.’

Kingsley pushed his way through the crowd and into the station. Pandemonium reigned. The arrival of a large transport of wounded had clashed with the impending departure of a couple of trainloads of Tommies bound for the front. Kingsley got his back up against one of the numerous stalls providing a French money exchange to ‘officers and men in uniform’, and smoked a cigarette before attempting to board his train.

It was jam-packed but at least there were seats. He wedged himself into a second-class compartment in which a dozen other officers were lodged and tried to sleep. It was impossible; he was too uncomfortable, and his mind was racing with thoughts of Agnes and George and the case that he must investigate.

Nonetheless, this first part of the journey turned out to be luxurious in comparison with the Channel crossing to Boulogne, which was unpleasant in the extreme. On its previous trip the boat had carried horses, of which the army employed many thousands. A small effort had been made to clean the ship for its human cargo but in reality all this meant was that the horses ‘straw had been swept over the horses’ shit.

The crossing was a rough one, with high winds and driving rain, and there was mass seasickness. In the crowded conditions, the smell of vomit mixed with horse manure was not one any of the men on board were ever likely to forget. Despite the enormous number of casualties it had taken, the British army had continued to grow throughout the war, partly because the Royal Army Medical Corps was getting better and better at patching up the wounded and sending them back to the front. Millions of men were now under arms and it seemed to Kingsley as if all of them were on the same boat as him.

On arrival in Boulogne, any romantic illusions that new recruits might have harboured about experiencing a little of France were soon shattered, as they were moved directly from the boat to the railhead. And if the boat had been vastly more uncomfortable than the train from Waterloo, then the train from Boulogne was to prove far worse than the boat. The train which Kingsley’s movement order directed him towards was quite the longest he had ever seen: forty carriages. Thirty-six of them were horse trucks, or, to be more precise, horse or human trucks because, like the boat, the trains were used to carry both. Each truck bore the legend ‘HOMMES 40. CHEVAUX 8’.

‘Is that forty men
or
eight horses or forty men
and
eight horses?’ Kingsley enquired of a harassed railhead marshal.

‘Very funny, sir. I wonder ‘ow many times I’ve ‘eard that one.’

It had actually been a genuine question. Fortunately, further investigation showed that the army did not expect the men to travel with the horses. It was difficult to be thankful for this small mercy. There were four trucks reserved for officers but a brief inspection revealed that these were not much better than the horse trucks; many doors were missing and although there were seats they were wooden, badly in need of repair and already grossly overcrowded. Kingsley was of course an officer, but he had discovered on the boat that ordinary soldiers hated military policemen in a way that only criminals hated civilian police. His red tabs and cap had marked him out instantly and he had decided to remove them, along with his badges of rank, until they were required. Kingsley was anxious to learn something of the mind of the soldiers amongst whom he must conduct his investigation and he was unlikely to learn anything if he was treated as a leper.

He decided to throw in his lot with the enlisted men and climbed aboard one of the troop trucks. It was without furnishing of any kind, unless a sprinkling of straw could be considered furnishing. The only distinguishing feature was a great burn mark in the middle of the wooden floor, where at some point freezing soldiers had clearly improvised a little central heating. Large signs warned against this practice on pain of imprisonment.

‘Is it always this spartan?’ Kingsley asked a man crushed next to him, whose weathered face suggested he was a veteran of the trenches.

‘Always. Never changed, not since 1915 at least, when I first come here. Always cramped, always crap.’

Kingsley could hardly believe that this was how the British Empire treated its heroes. Men who were travelling willingly towards probable death in the service of their country were packed into horse trucks. The only blessing, he reflected, was that the journey would be a short one, for it was less than a hundred miles to their destination. He made this point to the man beside him.

‘You’ve had an easy war so far, mate, haven’t you, if this is your first go up the line?’

‘I confess that it is.’

‘Well, settle down, my greenhorn pal. Settle down for a long trip.’

The train lurched forward about three or four yards and then stopped. There it rested for several hours, during which the men remained packed into the trucks. Eventually it moved, although only at walking pace, and after a mile or two it stopped again. So began a process of crawling and stopping that continued for the following eighteen hours.

‘It’s always like this,’ the old hand beside Kingsley assured him. ‘I was in transit three days once. That’s thirty miles a day, not much more than a mile an hour. We don’t move no faster than Wellington’s lot did. Mind you, when we gets there we dies a lot bleeding faster.’

THIRTY-SIX

A communal interlude

Once during one of the endless halts a discussion developed about the war’s origins, amongst a group of men who were taking the opportunity of a predicted sixty-minute stop to empty their bowels. Kingsley had never defecated in front of anyone before but the men he was travelling with — all experienced soldiers and comrades of old — thought no more about it than if they were pissing up against the same wall.

‘You needs a bit of time to take a shit,’ Kingsley’s companion advised him, ‘leastways you do on army rations. You need time to ‘ave a smoke and relax a bit, get things moving, so to speak. Time to let it drop comfortable and finish off neat. Nothing worse than hearing the whistle blow an’ having to pinch it off all in a hurry and ending up with an ‘orrible sore arse and flies buzzing round it. Good army tip that, mate, take it from a bloke who’s already long overdue a bullet. Look after your arse. Always make sure you’ve got time to do the right thing by your arse.

The train had halted in a pleasant field. The rain had stopped and all up and down the track fires were lit, fags rolled, pipes filled, tea brewed, a scratch made in the ground with a bayonet and the whole army settled down for a shit.

Kingsley joined the group that had formed around his new friend. Fifteen or so men, grouped by a fire, squatted down with their trousers round their ankles, some leaning forward on their rifles for support. The men chatted idly, as if they were in the pub. Kingsley, who had expected to feel self-conscious, found it curiously convivial. Everybody smoked, of course, and Kingsley drew contentedly on his Players Navy Strength, listening as the talk turned to the origins of their current misery.

‘The question I always asks is, why did anyone give a fuck about this bleeding Archduke Ferdinand what’s-his-face in the first place?’ one fellow said. ‘I mean, come on, nobody had even
heard
of the cunt till he got popped off. Now the entire fucking world is fighting ‘cos of it.’

‘You dozy arse,’ another man admonished,’ ‘that was just a bleeding spark, that was. It was a
spark
. Europe was a
tinder box
, wasn’t it? Everyone knows that.’

‘Well, I don’t see as how he was even worth a spark, mate,’ the first man replied. ‘Like I say, who’d even
heard
of the cunt?’

A corporal weighed in to settle the matter.

‘Listen, it’s yer Balkans, innit? Always yer Balkans. Balkans,’ Balkans, Balkans. You see, yer Austro-Hungarians — ’

‘Who are
another
bunch we never gave a fuck about till all this kicked off,’ the first man interjected.

‘Shut up an’ you might learn something,’ the corporal insisted. ‘You’ve got your Austro-Hungarians supposed to be in charge in Sarajevo but most of the Bosnians is Serbs,’ right, or at least enough of ‘em is to cause a t’do.’

‘What’s Sarajevo got to do with Bosnia then?’

‘Sarajevo’s
in
Bosnia, you monkey! It’s the capital.’

‘Oh. So?’

‘Well, your Austrians ‘ave got Bosnia, right, but your Bosnians are backed by your Serbs, right? So when a Bosnian Serb shoots — ’

‘A Bosnian or a Serb?’

‘A Bosnian
and
a bleeding Serb, you arse. When this Bosnian Serb loony shoots Ferdinand who’s heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, the Austrians think, right, here’s a chance to put Serbia back in its bleeding box for good, so they give ‘em an ultimatum. They says, ‘You topped our Archduke so from now on you can bleeding knuckle under or else you’re for it.’ Which would have been fine
except
the Serbs were backed by the Russians, see, and the Russians says to the Austrians, you has a go at Serbia, you has a go at us,’ right? But the
Austrians
is backed by the
Germans
who says to the Russians, you has a go at Austria, you has a go at us, right? Except the
Russians
is backed by the
French
who says to the Germans, you has a go at Russia,’ you has a go at us,’ right? And altogether they says kick off! Let’s be having you! And the ruck begins.’

‘What about us then?’ the first man enquired. The rest of the group seemed to feel that this was the crux of it.

‘Entente bleeding cordiale, mate,’ the corporal replied. ‘We was backing the French except it wasn’t like an alliance — it was just,’ well, it was a bleedin’
entente
, wasn’t it.’

‘An’ what’s an entente when it’s at home?’

‘It means we wasn’t obliged to fight.’

‘Never! You mean we didn’t have to?’

‘Nope.’

‘Why the fuck did we then?’

‘Fuckin’ Belgium.’

‘Belgium?’

‘That’s right,’ fuckin’ Belgium.’

‘Who gives a fuck about Belgium?’

‘Well, you’d have thought no one, wouldn’t you? But we did. ‘Cos the German plan to get at the French was to go through Belgium, but we was guaranteeing ‘em, see. So we says to the Germans, you has a go at Belgium,’ you has a go at us. We’d guaranteed her, see. It was a matter of honour. So in we come.’

Kingsley could not resist interjecting.

‘Of course it wasn’t really about honour,’ he said.

‘Do what?’ queried the corporal.

‘Well, we’d only guaranteed Belgium because we didn’t want either Germany or France dominating the entire Channel coast. In the last century we thought that letting them both know that if they invaded Belgium they’d have us to deal with would deter them.’

‘But it didn’t.’

‘Sadly not.’

‘So what about the Italians, an’ the Japs, an’ the Turks, an’ the Yanks, eh? How did they end up in it?’ asked the original inquisitor.

‘Fuck knows,’ said the corporal. ‘I lost track after the Belgians.’

For a while conversation lapsed as the soldiers concentrated on their bowels.

‘You lot make me laugh, you really do,’ said a man who had not spoken yet, a thoughtful-looking fellow in steel glasses who up until then had been staring at a book whilst he did his business.

‘Oh, that’s right,’ the corporal sneered, ‘cos you’d know better, wouldn’t you, Price?’

‘Yes, I would, Corporal. I most certainly would. This war, like all bourgeois wars, is the inevitable result of capitalism.’

‘Oh Gawd, here we go.’

‘A bayonet is a weapon with a worker on both ends.’

Kingsley had heard this Socialist slogan before and had always thought it rather neat.

‘War creates new markets and generates new investment,’ Price continued. ‘It also provides a nice distraction to idiots like us who might otherwise notice that we live in a constant state of near-starvation while the owners of the means of production are too fat to get out of their Rolls-Royce cars. War is the last stage of the capitalist cycle and as long as we have capitalism we’ll have wars. If you want to get rid of war you’ve got to get rid of capitalism.’

‘What, and there wouldn’t be wars if your lot was running things?’

‘Course not. Why would there be? The workers of the world are all comrades. Truth is, you’ve got more in common with Fritz and his mates having a shit just east of Wipers than you have with your own officers.’

Some men protested at this and angrily warned the Socialist to shut his mouth. Others looked more thoughtful.

‘You are a Marxist then, my friend?’ Kingsley enquired. ‘It’s just common sense. Why work for a boss when you can form a collective and work for each other in mutual cooperation?’

‘What if people don’t work?’

‘They don’t eat. To each according to his needs, from each according to his means.’

‘More like ‘What’s yours is mine and what’s mine’s me own’,’ the corporal sneered.

A warning whistle blew and it was time to leave socialism and the origins of war behind. Men began grabbing clumps of leaves and grass to clean themselves with, grateful for the rain that had fallen, for it aided their ablutions enormously.

Back on the train Kingsley asked the Socialist if he had any views on the death of Viscount Abercrombie.

‘What, you mean apart from being happy that there’s one less aristocratic parasite to leech upon the working man?’

‘Yes, apart from that.’

‘I heard he didn’t die in battle. That he was shell-shocked. Maybe he killed himself, who knows. One thing’s for certain, the army has something to hide.’