The First Casualty (31 page)

He put every ounce of calm and clarity into his command and it had the desired effect; even the Germans seemed to stop for a moment.

‘Mills bomb, sir!’ a trooper said, presenting himself as the fighting around them redoubled.

‘Thank you, soldier.’ Kingsley took one of the man’s explosives. ‘Now kindly oblige me by blowing up that end and I shall blow this.’

The trooper understood what he intended.

‘Yes, sir!’

‘Throw it just beyond the fighting,’ Kingsley shouted, ‘into the fellows beyond. Steady now. One-two-three, throw!’

Together he and the trooper pulled the pins on their bombs and hurled them into the crowded trenches just beyond the fighting. There could be no doubt what the result would be: at least half a dozen more dead bodies blocking the way and a lengthy moment of panic and bloody confusion. Two almost simultaneous explosions signalled the last chance for the British to make an escape.

‘Raiding party withdraw!’ Kingsley shouted. ‘Fall back in good order!’

‘Sir! The captain!’ It was the trooper who had thrown the other bomb, reminding Kingsley that Edmonds was still alive.

Kingsley looked down at the seriously wounded officer.

‘Never mind me. I’m done for. Get our fellows back,’ Edmonds said.

But Kingsley was not sure that Edmonds was done for. The bayonet wound was midway down his trunk, and Kingsley reckoned there was a good chance that the blade had gone in between the heart and the stomach, missing both those vital organs.

‘All right. Up with him,’ Kingsley said, ‘over the parapet.’

Together he and the trooper were able to manhandle the captain’s bleeding body up on to the ridge of the parapet. The German trench was so well constructed that it provided firm walls for them to scale. Others in the British troop saw what they were about and covered them from above. Once clear of the trench, Kingsley was able to shoulder Edmonds in a fireman’s lift.

‘You spread the wire, Private,’ he ordered. ‘I shall carry him through.’

The British withdrew through the German wire, leaving about a third of their number behind them along with five times as many Germans. Kingsley was able to get Edmonds halfway back at a stooped run, blundering from waterlogged shell hole to shell hole, before the Germans in the trench behind him had recovered sufficiently to begin firing. After that, more star shells went up and he and the men around him had to fall on their faces and crawl the rest of the way on their stomachs, creeping now from hole to hole, dragging their wounded with them, waiting ten or fifteen minutes between each move until finally they reached the safety of the British line.

The violence of the raid had been clear even from afar and medical orderlies were waiting to tend the wounded. Kingsley was happy indeed to unload Captain Edmonds from his back and place him in the care of a stretcher party. Edmonds could no longer speak for loss of blood but he squeezed Kingsley’s hand and gave him a weak thumbs-up before he was carried off.

Kingsley was a vain man and he knew that he had done exceptionally well, but he took no pride or pleasure in Edmonds’s thanks. The truth was flooding in on him with horrifying clarity. He had joined the combatants, he had fought in the war. The thing for which he had sacrificed everything and thrown his life away to avoid had happened anyway. In vain could he argue to himself that he had killed in self-defence; if he had not been there, he would not have needed to defend himself. He had been pursuing evidence certainly, but for what? A murder trial? There was only one defendant facing the death sentence, while he had personally killed four men in his first moments in the trench. He had ordered the tossing of the Mills bombs. He himself had thrown one, thrown a high explosive into a metre-wide mud corridor packed with men. How many had he killed with that single action? Six at least, perhaps more. How many had he maimed?

Kingsley staggered along the trench, sickened by the realization of what he had done. He had killed at least ten Germans. The majority of servicemen would not kill anything like so many in their entire service, and he was a
conscientious objector!
The perverted irony of his position filled him with horror.

Just then a soldier scurried up behind him and called respectfully for his attention.

‘Sir? Please, sir? If you please, sir?’

Kingsley turned wearily.

‘You got us out, sir. You saved half the troop. Without you we’d have been slaughtered for sure.’ It was the soldier who had supplied him with the Mills bomb. ‘I hope you won’t mind me saying as how I shall never look at a copper in the same way again.’

Was this some comfort? Kingsley wondered. Some moral salvation? It was true that he had played the crucial role in saving the Tommies who had made it back. There had been many capable men on that raid but no one else with the authority to order a retreat. Could Kingsley find some comfort in his actions in bringing the party home? He had killed Germans, he had saved Britons. He had done so whilst defending himself and in the pursuit of criminal evidence.

But try as he might, he could not argue that his conscience was clear. Looking at it from whatever angle, he still emerged a hypocrite. Having lost everything on a point of principle he had then tossed that principle aside in his desire to be a good detective, and probably also to prove his own courage to himself. Whether he saved Hopkins from the firing squad or not, the blood of at least ten Germans, innocent conscripts in a wicked war, would always be on his hands.

FOURTY-THREE

Further investigations

Back in the reserve trench,’ Kingsley sat for a long time on an upturned ammunition box. He thought hard about chucking it in. Returning immediately to England and facing whatever fate might await him. Slowly, however, he began to change his mind. The element that influenced him most was the same one that guided all his steps. Logic. After all, the Germans were dead; what possible use could there be in abandoning his investigation because of them? He had retrieved the evidence, in what was definitely a fine bit of police work. If he did not use it, the men he had killed would, in a way, have died in vain. The bullet in his pocket had been fired by the weapon currently assumed to have killed Viscount Abercrombie. It was his duty as a policeman to ascertain if it had.

Such were the musings of a man who knew in his heart of hearts that he could never abandon an investigation. Once he had the bit between his teeth, it simply was not in his nature. And so, instead of heading back to England, he set off to seek out Abercrombie’s commanding officer, the colonel whom he had seen address the audience after the concert party the night before.

Kingsley had already learned that when he wasn’t in the front line Colonel Hilton made his headquarters in a ruined farmhouse a mile or so behind the guns. Wearily he trudged back up the Menin Road until he found what he was looking for. It was now nearly dawn and the colonel had just had news of the trench raid. To his surprise, therefore, Kingsley was greeted like a hero.

‘Good God, man! You brought the platoon home!’ Hilton said, saluting him. ‘Saved the life of one of my finest officers. Tophole bit of soldiering. Absolutely splendid effort! I intend to recommend you, Captain. No! I shan’t hear another word about it. I absolutely intend to recommend you in dispatches. If last night’s show ain’t worth a gong then I should like to know what is. Why, I’ve been told your blood was so up you were
tearing the very innards
out of the enemy, hacking him open with a hatchet! Now
there’s
an example to set. I always say to the chaps, if you’ve got no ammo and your bayonet’s broke,
bite
the bastards! Eat his Hun head off! And there’s you organizing an orderly withdrawal under heavy fire, calm as y’please,
and
ripping Boche hearts out with your bare hands to boot.’

‘Actually, sir, I was retrieving evidence,’ Kingsley replied.

‘Eh? What’s that?’

‘I am investigating the death of Viscount Abercrombie.’

‘Abercrombie? I thought it had been established that he died in action? ‘

‘Oh yes, sir. It has. Nonetheless, I am looking into it.’

‘Oh. I see,’ the colonel replied with a knowing look.

‘The gun Captain Edmonds was using once belonged to the viscount. It is believed to have been the weapon which killed him.’

‘In action,’ Hilton added.

‘Yes, sir, if you wish, in action. I need to know for sure whether it was, so I was attempting to retrieve the gun. In the mêlée, however, the gun was lost and I was forced to retrieve one of the bullets it had fired instead.’

Kingsley reached into the blood-caked pocket of his greatcoat and produced, with a small flourish, the bullet he had removed from the body of the fat German cook. Despite all his doubts and the terrors of the previous few hours, Kingsley was still Kingsley and his vanity and sense of theatre were now getting the better of him. He could not resist playing up to the drama of the moment and was gratified to note that the colonel and others present were open-mouthed with surprise and admiration.

‘Well, I’m
jiggered!
’ the colonel said finally. ‘That is as rum a bit of business as I can recall in twenty-five years of soldiering. Do you mean to say that while you were taking part in a trench raid, killing hordes of Huns and beating a damn fine retreat, you were also
conducting a police investigation?
’

‘Yes, sir. I was.’

‘Well then, I think it’s high time we drank your health.’

Hilton pushed Kingsley into a chair at his map table.

‘No fizz, I fear, but we have a tolerable cognac. Probably better in weather like this anyway. We were just about to have a snort. Mornings are our evenings, don’t ye know. We’re all owls these days.’

Kingsley accepted a glass of brandy and also some toasted cheese that the colonel’s batman was preparing. Just then a soldier appeared at the farmhouse door, announcing that there was a private who wished to see Captain Marlowe. It was Cotton, Captain Edmonds’s batman.

‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir, I followed you back,’ he said. ‘Been tryin’ to catch you all the way but you certainly can travel. We thought as how you ought to have a bit of this, you know, just for fellowship.’

The man opened up a small oilskin parcel to reveal a generous slice of fruit cake.

‘The captain’s got a Blighty, sir, and they say he’s going to live,’ thanks to you. And all the boys wanted to say as how we’re very grateful and we swears we’ll never call coppers what we usually calls ‘em ever again.’

‘And what do you usually call them, Private?’ the colonel demanded.

‘Cunts, sir.’

‘Ha ha! Good man! Well done! Although personally I’d say they were the opposite, because while I can’t normally
abide
a military policeman I’ve never met a cunt I didn’t like! Well done, Private. Carry on.

Kingsley took the cake from the little batman.

‘Thank you, Private Cotton. I am very touched.’

The slice of cake was sufficient to be sub-divided and went down very well with the cognac and cheese, just as Edmonds himself had said it would. When the little victory feast was over, Kingsley said that he would be obliged if he could ask the colonel one or two questions.

‘Of course, of course. Fire away.

‘When did you last see Abercrombie alive?’

‘I visited him at Beaurivage two days after he was invalided back.’

‘That was very good of you, Colonel. Do you visit all your injured officers?’

‘Well, one tries, you know, one tries. Besides, he was most concerned about his leather case — it had been with him in the forward trench and he wanted it back, so I took it with me.’

‘Do you know what was in that case?’

‘Well, papers, I suppose.’

‘You did not look inside?’

‘Good lord, Captain! What a suggestion. I say, you peelers do have a horrid view of people. As if I’d go fossicking about in another chap’s kit.’

‘Only blank paper was found in his room when he died.’

‘Well, perhaps that was what he wanted. Blank paper. I’ve known stranger things, believe me. Fellahs who are convinced they’ve painted bloody great canvases and it turns out to be two dots and a splodge. Shell shock is very delusionary.’

‘Yes, that’s true, I suppose,’ Kingsley conceded, ‘although he was not thought to be suffering very severely.’

‘He probably wanted to write more poetry.’

‘No poetry was found, and the staff nurse there, a woman named Murray, claims that he’d given up on poetry anyway.’

‘Hmm. Well, he certainly has now.’

Hilton drained the last of his cognac.

‘It’s a bad business all round but look here, Captain,’ I really do need to turn in now, battle going on and all that. We’ll be back in the thick of it again soon, no doubt. Is there anything else I can tell you?’

‘No, not at present, Colonel. Thank you for your time and also for the meal.’

‘Well, thank
you
for bringing the raid home. I meant what I said, you know. I’m mentioning you in dispatches. You, sir, shall have a medal.’