The Return of Captain John Emmett (29 page)

'The colonel let it go. He refused to release the men for possible identification by the girl's mother, because that would merely confirm what Tucker had already given them: that he'd been at the farm in the preceding week. Emmett tried to take it further up the chain of command but the CO was getting increasingly fed up with the whole business and what he was beginning to consider as questioning his orders. Not long after, the Somme goes up and one dead French girl pales into insignificance beside fifty thousand British casualties on day one.'

Brabourne stopped again. He chewed on a matchstick.

'I have to say, it all sounded pretty circumstantial. I don't think there was ever a case, but Emmett was certain Tucker was the man, together with his faithful sidekick. And things changed between him and Tucker from then on, he said. Perkins stayed out of Emmett's way as far as possible but Tucker was always
in
the way, always hovering this side of insolence, but challenging him in subtle ways, always making things difficult. You know how it was? A good NCO and your problems were halved. With a bad one, life became hard: messages didn't get passed on, maps were out of date or dropped in the mud. Telegraph lines were damaged. Men were unavailable when Emmett needed them. Always small things, but they disrupted the running of the company and made Emmett's life thorny.

'Then, a month or so later, there was an outbreak of pilfering. Tobacco, sweets, small change—but causing trouble. There was bad feeling and some suggestion that a young soldier was being picked on as a possible culprit. Emmett and another subaltern decided to do a spot check of accommodation. Tucker was excluded from all this by virtue of rank; indeed, he was part of the checking. No sign of the stolen goods, but in his chum's knapsack there was a comb—a woman's hair comb. Ordinary, cheap thing, gilt, but Emmett said there was something distinctive about it.'

Brabourne closed his eyes for a second.

'I know. It was a unicorn. The pattern. Just like the one missing from the dead girl. Emmett thought it even had her initials on it. It was on the list the gendarmes had given him. He said Perkins was obviously shocked to the core. Swore blind he'd never seen it before. Tucker suggested to him that he might have bought it for a lady friend back home and the man eventually agreed. But Emmett said it was well worn. He knew the colonel thought he'd simply got a down on Tucker and it wasn't enough.'

'What about the corporal?'

'Tucker was naturally devious—Emmett thought he'd planted the comb to keep his friend in line—but he sensed Perkins was frightened and out of his depth. Over the next couple of weeks, Emmett kept Perkins in sight. By now the man looked haunted, and he and Tucker were no longer the mates they'd always been. In fact, Emmett thought he was trying to avoid Tucker. Then, right out of the blue, Perkins asked to speak to Emmett privately. Tucker was out of camp. The corporal wasn't specific but he hinted that it was to do with the murder. Perhaps he was going to confess; perhaps he thought he could turn King's evidence.'

'Didn't he say?'

'No. Emmett, who is off up to HQ, says he'll see him the following afternoon. But Tucker gets back earlier than expected—perhaps he didn't trust his old friend. The following morning, they're repairing trenches when, oh so conveniently for Tucker, you might think, there's a collapse and his chum dies unpleasantly but without a word. Emmett is sent off to the regimental first-aid post and then hospital, and the CO is killed within weeks.'

'I hadn't realised,' Laurence began. 'I knew about the individuals involved in the trench fall. A man called Bolitho told me. An officer. He was there.' He recalled Byers' sense that Tucker had let his friend die. 'But Tucker rescued John. Why would he do that if John had wanted to tie him to a murder?'

'God knows. Game playing? Power? Perhaps he was being watched too closely to finish him off when the fall didn't kill him. Emmett, of course, thought that the whole episode was about Tucker trying to murder him. And he was near as certain that Tucker had engineered Perkins' death. It wouldn't have been hard. Those old trenches were pretty unstable. But, of course, his accusations were in danger of sounding like paranoia. He kept the comb, the only evidence of the rape, in his pocket all the time. He said one day he would show it to the girl's mother for identification. But it would only have tied Perkins to the murder and he was dead. He showed it to me. I have to say, you needed to know what you were looking for to see any initials.'

'But John didn't mention a Bolitho?'

Brabourne shook his head.

'Being trapped was John's nightmare.'

'That fits,' said Brabourne. 'The good criminal mind is adept in sensing the weakness of others. Perhaps that was all Tucker intended—to torment rather than kill, and, by getting in there for the rescue, to have all the pleasure of watching Emmett suffer.'

'I think I know how the story went on from there,' said Laurence, as Brabourne put his feet on the desk. 'John was injured. Sent to hospital. His battalion took heavy casualties. John went home until he was declared fit for active service again and then, finally, in 1917, his path and Tucker's crossed again.'

Brabourne shook his head and tapped his ash just short of the ashtray. 'With the subtle addition that Tucker had officially saved your friend's life.'

They both lapsed into silence. Laurence looked over Brabourne's shoulder to the window, trying to gauge the time by the light outside.

'Did you know that in John's account of the accident—if it was an accident—in the trenches, it was a Captain Bolitho who saved his life?' Laurence asked.

Brabourne shook his head. 'I can't swear to it but he didn't actually talk much about the incident at all, except to explain how Perkins ceased being a danger to Tucker. You have to understand that for Emmett it was all about the French girl's murder.'

'He left him some money. Quite a lot,' said Laurence after a short pause.

'Tucker?' Brabourne looked astonished.

'No. Bolitho.'

Laurence allowed this to sink in for a moment.

And Byers,' Laurence said, more cautiously, 'seemed uneasy about the lead-up to the execution.'

It wasn't the whole truth but he wanted to let Brabourne tell him about Byers himself.

But Brabourne just looked blank. 'Byers?' he said. He seemed puzzled. But after a few seconds' thought, he seemed to realise what Laurence meant. 'Cutting off the badges? Poor man.'

Laurence wasn't sure whether he meant Byers or Hart.

'I imagine he thought he was supposed to for some reason,' Brabourne said. 'He wasn't a chancer of any sort. Emmett should have stopped him, of course.'

After a moment's further thought, Laurence asked, 'The article you did on the murder: the policeman? Did you think then that it could be connected to Hart or Tucker or John?'

'It honestly never entered my head. I didn't even put two and two together when the story first came in. I mean, I knew he'd served in France. I suppose it's odd that there are no leads and that it was so efficiently and coolly done. But if you want the truth, to start with I thought Mullins would have been on the take and had crossed some criminal bigwig. If there's anything that didn't fit, I suppose it's that, in military life, Major Mullins had a reputation of acting right by the book. A very tough man. I would have thought corruption would have been anathema to him.'

'Your piece said he was "mutilated"?'

'Newspaper dramatics. The second shot got him in the face. Very nasty. As much for onlookers as for Mullins, who could hardly have cared by then. Personally, I'd rather there wasn't a connection,' he went on thoughtfully, 'as the numbers of those present at the time of Hart's death seem to be diminishing rapidly.'

'Byers is well.' Having said that, Laurence was still nagged by the fact that Leonard Byers' cousin had been murdered.

'But his cousin was shot in the face. Like Mullins.' Brabourne indicated the papers on the floor.

Laurence nodded. He could see that Brabourne's newspaperman instincts sensed a connection. 'Perhaps you'll find the link,' he said. 'In the meantime, I'll let you know how I get on with Tucker.'

'Yes. Do. And be careful. I don't want to be running a piece on another mysterious but violent demise.'

Brabourne felt in his waistcoat pocket. More cigarettes, Laurence assumed, but instead he brought out a fine fob watch and opened the case.

'I'm going to have to...'

Laurence jumped up. 'I'm really sorry, I keep returning and seem to have tried to extract from you an entire history of the war. One thing seemed to lead to another.'

'That's the joy of my job,' said Brabourne. 'Connections. So many things do seem to link together so often.' He tapped the watch and turned it so that Laurence could see it. It was old and handsome.

'It was my grandfather's. He fought at Balaclava. Mind you, although I'm very attached to it it's not much good for actually telling the time.'

He smiled broadly, giving off the boyish energy that Byers had commented upon. He tapped it again, then started rummaging through one of the piles on his desk. Several leaflets and loose sheets slipped to the floor but he seemed unbothered.

'Take this.'

He handed Laurence a magazine. It had stark red and black print on the front and a title,
Post-Guard: The New Review.

'Myself, I've given up writing poetry in favour of photography. If I get a lucky break I'd like to move into film. Movement: speed, machines, that's the future. But for now...' He gestured around him extravagantly. 'This might pay for my dreams. Really I'm better on murders, but I do bring out this periodical in my free time. It's subscription only and we haven't got it going regularly but one or two of the wordsmiths in the copy of
Constellations
that you've got are in my mag too. Writing very different stuff now, of course. None of that morbid sentimentality: summer, lilac, ancient warriors. None of that, thank God. Do you remember Frances Cornford on Brooke? "A young Apollo, golden-haired,/ Stands dreaming on the verge of strife,/ Magnificently unprepared/ For the long littleness of life." I mean, Brooke was hardly unprepared. He was at King's, Cambridge, for heaven's sake. And no innocent, one hears. And he worshipped the heroic littleness of life, clutching his Homer closer than his gas mask. I've nothing against the dead and nothing against Cornford: "the long littleness of life"—lovely line. Wish I'd written it. She was in love with him, of course, wasn't everybody? Perfect poetry. Means nothing and so everything. That's why people like it. Not everyone could cope with Sassoon.'

Laurence, who had known Sassoon at school and hadn't liked him much, didn't want to say so.

'There's still a taste for that sort of thing, of course.
Nostalgic de la guerre.
But not in this.' Brabourne tapped his magazine. 'This is
not
for everybody.' He looked proud. 'Not sure we've got the title right—it was supposed to be a pun on avant-garde.' He made a face. 'Picking up where Kandinsky and Co. left off.'

Laurence hoped he looked intelligently non-committal.

'I put two of Hart's in pride of place and there's one of Emmett's too. Of course we're not making a profit yet, but he deserved to be published. We're getting reviews.' Brabourne looked worried. 'I hope his sister won't mind. If a miracle occurs and the public suddenly develops a passion for proper poetry, then we'd pay his heirs, of course.'

They shook hands. Laurence walked down the stone stairs and out on to Fleet Street. Away from the heavy air of ink and machine oil and paper, London smelled light and cold. There was heavy traffic: trams and cars held up by a brewer's dray unloading near St Bride's. He looked up the street towards St Paul's and then up at the sky.

Sometimes he was not sure whether he was more disoriented by all that had altered or by how much had not. The view he had now—of the pale, graceful lines of St Bride's and then the uncompromising dome of the cathedral, rising grey above the City—was little changed since Wren built them. That, at least, was permanent. And yet this was also the street from which the great business of the nation's newspapers had told the modern world how it was changing.

As he walked back towards Aldwych, he turned on impulse towards the Temple church, almost hidden in its peaceful square. Finding no one else inside, he sat for a while, watching the faint sunlight warm the stone effigies of the Knights Templar.

Having arrived at the station well before the train to Birmingham was due to leave, Laurence paused outside to look at the war memorial. Had it been here the last time he passed? Similar monuments were suddenly appearing everywhere, but the bare earth around this one suggested it had been unveiled only in the last few weeks. New roses, just a few dormant winter stalks and thorns, had been planted around it. For a second he tried to imagine his own name being chiselled out by a busy mason. But what place would have claimed him as its son and remembered him in death?

He went inside to the ticket office. The steam hanging over the platforms was mirrored in miniature above the large tea urn at the station café, where he sat at a corner table, clutching a cup of tea while he waited for his train. Strong and sweet, it was bitter with tannin. He held it more to keep warm than to wake himself up. He'd brought
The Times
to read and Brabourne's
Post-Guard.
He was just rereading one of Hart's poems when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned round to find Charles standing there, with an identical copy of
The Times
under his arm, the brim of his hat pulled down low, a dark paisley scarf round his neck and the rest of him swathed in a vast tweed coat that must have belonged to his grandfather.

'How the hell...?' Laurence began, but swiftly realised that he was neither particularly surprised nor unhappy to see Charles. Had he hoped for this when he'd left his message? His smile acknowledged the possibility.

'It's good to see you.'

'Well, I wasn't having you setting out on a solitary encounter with Sergeant Tucker, old chap.'