A Study in Murder, page 6
Von Bork walked to the Puch, threw a leg over it and kicked away its stand. Before he could operate the starting lever, Watson said: ‘I have one question, Von Bork.’
‘Yes?’
‘What tobacco do you smoke?’
Von Bork examined the enquiry, looking for a trick or a hidden barb, but could find none. ‘Tobacco? I have a taste for Latakia, although it is rather hard to find except in Berlin these days. Why?’
I’ll be damned, Watson thought. ‘No matter. I just collect such facts. You never know when they might come in handy.’
‘Well, if it’s a present you are thinking of,’ Von Bork smirked again, ‘my birthday is in December. If you should live that long.’
The sudden roar the engine smothered the possibility of any further conversation, and Von Bork manhandled the bike round, gave the throttle a quarter-turn and disappeared down the path through the trees. Watson wondered if the German could feel the imaginary daggers he was throwing him penetrating that expensive leather riding coat.
‘I am sorry,’ said Gunther in his halting English.
‘It’s not your fault . . .’ Watson began, then stopped himself. ‘Sorry for what exactly?’
The sound of the rifle shot zigzagged through the woods, ricocheting off the trunks until a blurred version of the report reached their ears. Watson didn’t wait for permission, he began to sprint as fast as his reluctant body would carry him, back to the road.
They’ve shot Sayer, said the voice in his head.
And, because his phantom friend had been right about the Latakia, Watson knew this was true too.
TEN
At first the diners on that Friday evening in the Savoy’s River Room thought it was thunder, but that was simply the initial ignition, which did indeed sound like a low rumble in the heavens. The noise of the second, more powerful blast came half a minute later, followed almost immediately by a strange sickly orange glow, as if the sunset had gone into reverse. The percussion wave arrived while many customers had vacated their tables and moved to the windows – which had not yet been fitted with their blackout panels – to see if this was a German Zeppelin attack or an early sortie by the new German bombers the papers were talking about.
The glass simply shuddered to begin with, the reflected light from the restaurant’s electric lamps dancing and shimmering as the panes distorted. And then they imploded, showering guests with shards that sliced through cloth and skin. The screams of wounded patrons and staff almost drowned out the third explosion, which unseated the few remaining sections of glass, sending them spinning across the room like a magician’s knives.
Mrs Gregson was fortunate. Seated on the far side of the restaurant’s small dance floor, she was peppered with the finest of glass particles, one of which entered her eye, causing stinging and irritation. Her dining companion, Robert Nathan, a senior member of the Wartime Constabulary, was blown backwards off his chair and cracked his head, but soon struggled to his feet.
Mrs Gregson rose and picked her way through a scattering of shattered glass, broken crockery, cutlery, half-eaten dishes and bottles of wine busy glugging their contents onto the Savoy’s carpet. She could see the bright blooms of fresh blood on some individuals over near the windows, but she could tell that a significant proportion of the people on their feet were simply dazed.
‘I need everyone who is uninjured – I repeat, uninjured – to go through to the foyer,’ she shouted over the moans and groans that that were now replacing the shriller screams that had filled the room in the immediate aftermath of the detonations. ‘Now, please, in an orderly fashion. Perhaps any staff could stay and help? Thank you.’
Still that unnatural light washed over the river outside, lending the Thames a hellish cast. ‘Those who are able to walk, but are wounded, I want you over on the left. Next to the bandstand. Please . . . we need access to the more seriously injured, so if you can move away . . . Mr Nathan, can you please make sure the house physician is informed at once that we have casualties and that ambulances have been called?’
There were, she knew, only six ambulance stations in the whole of London, and it was likely they would be deployed to the site of the explosion. ‘And get the doormen to commandeer some taxis,’ she added.
Nathan, who was facing up to fifty, but still fit – his pig-sticking and cricket regime in India had ensured that – didn’t question Mrs Gregson, but vaulted the low railing behind him and walked briskly to the main foyer. She heard his voice booming out, issuing orders rather than requests, as if addressing his servants in Calcutta.
She looked around the damaged room. ‘Maître d’ . . . maître d’?’
‘Yes, madam?’ The Frenchman stepped forward. He had a razor-thin cut along his cheek, running down to the corner of his moustache, but there was little evidence of blood. His previously oiled-down hair, though, was sticking up at crazy angles, like a chimney sweep’s brush.
‘Ah, there you are. I’ll need clean napkins and tablecloths in lieu of bandages for the moment. And any first aid kits from the kitchen.’ She addressed the room. ‘Does anyone have any medical training? Anyone? No?’ She lowered her voice. ‘Right. Just me then.’
She had reached the first of the prone figures, an elderly lady who appeared unconscious, with a nasty gash on her forehead. Her dress had ridden up, revealing her undergarments and Mrs Gregson quickly made her decent. The woman still favoured antiquated tight corsets and panic had made her breathing dangerously constricted. Mrs Gregson set about loosening the woman’s stays, using a discarded steak knife to rip through the material and laces. The woman groaned.
As she worked, Mrs Gregson signalled to a waiter. ‘That man over there needs a tourniquet at the top of his arm. Can you do that? I’ll be over in a second.’ The bindings free, she turned the woman on her side. Using a napkin extracted from a holder on a nearby table, she dabbed at the blood along the hairline. There was a triangle of glass embedded in there and she carefully extracted it, mopping up the welling blood that oozed from the wound.
The lady’s eyes fluttered open. ‘George.’
‘I am sure George is fine. And so are you. Just hold this in place, can you? Thank you. I’m sorry about your clothing. But you’ve been lucky. But I’d wear looser corsets from now on, though.’
Mrs Gregson looked up at the waiter trying to treat the man with blood running down his fingers and a large fragment of glass in his forearm. ‘No, cut his jacket sleeve before you tie the tourniquet . . . Oh, let me do it. No, madam, do NOT touch your face. You will cause scarring. Don’t let her touch her face. Where is that blasted house doctor? Look, this is how you tie a tourniquet . . .’
An hour later the Savoy staff were sweeping up the debris in the River Room and glaziers were boarding up the glassless frames. Nathan took Mrs Gregson to the American Bar for a stiff drink. Nobody seemed to mind that her dress was spattered in blood or that Nathan’s evening dress was askew. In fact, the Sangarees were on the house.
‘At least if I spill some, it won’t show,’ she said, holding up the red-wine cocktail.
‘You were magnificent in there,’ said Nathan with undisguised admiration. ‘I can think of no man who could have coped better and a great number who would have done a damned sight less.’
She couldn’t quite untangle the compliment and she let it pass. ‘It was just like old times,’ she said, with a shudder, thinking of the months when every day was a stream of constant horrors at the Casualty Clearing Stations.
‘Is your eye all right?’ he asked, leaning forward. ‘It’s frightfully bloodshot.’
‘I think there is something behind the lid. I can feel it when I blink. I’ll irrigate it when I get home.’
The manager of the hotel approached them, gave a little bow, and said: ‘I thought you might be interested to know, the damage was caused by an explosion at the Silvertown munitions factory. The blast ignited a gasometer in the Greenwich Peninsula.’
‘But that’s miles down river,’ said Mrs Gregson.
‘We were unfortunate. The explosion seems to have funnelled straight down to us. Nearby buildings are unscathed. Somerset House has a few cracked panes, that’s all, apparently.’
‘There will be a serious number of casualties,’ said Nathan glumly. ‘Explosion of that magnitude.’
‘I assume so. But there is no news of that yet. I won’t detain you. I just wanted to thank you again for your efforts. If there is anything we can do . . . I’d like to have madam’s dress taken care of . . .’
She waved the suggestion away, not wanting a fuss. ‘No, it’s fine. It’s not the first blood I’ve seen.’
‘Mrs Gregson nursed on the Western Front,’ Nathan explained. She didn’t bother to correct him that she’d been a VAD, an auxiliary, rather than a nurse.
‘In which case, at least some luck was on our side in that you were dining with us. I insist you return for dinner at your convenience as my guest. It’s the least we can do.’
‘We will, thank you,’ said Mrs Gregson.
When he had left them, Nathan said: ‘Well, I’d like to come again if you would.’
‘At some point, perhaps. But there was a favour I was about to ask you, Robert. Before Silvertown exploded.’
‘Personal or professional?’
‘Professional.’
A shadow of disappointment crossed Nathan’s features. ‘Really? I thought you’d given up all the life of skulduggery now Holmes has retired once more.’
Nathan had met Mrs Gregson in London in the aftermath of the Elveden affair, when she had been Churchill’s spy in the unit that was secretly developing the tank. Nathan had helped in the hunt for Miss Pillbody, the German agent who had murdered her way across Suffolk and Essex. Although his official title was as a member of the Wartime Constabulary, in fact he was with the secret service, mostly charged with uncovering Indian seditionists at home and abroad. He had thwarted a plot by anti-Raj agents to kill Kitchener, only for the field marshal to die when his ship struck a mine en route to Russia some six months later. ‘Or are you in cahoots with Winston again?’
‘No, I haven’t seen either Holmes or Churchill since last year when we collared Miss Pillbody.’
‘Then I can’t imagine what favour MI5 could do for you, Mrs Gregson.’
She took a sip of her Sangaree and gave a tired, lopsided smile. Pitt had proved such a disappointment – he hadn’t even managed to get her assigned to the Red Cross in Belgium – but she had high hopes for Nathan. ‘Oh, you’d be surprised what MI5 could do for me, Robert.’
ELEVEN
Watson’s German escorts bundled up the body of Sayer and placed it in the cab, so at least he wouldn’t have to look at the poor chap. He had shouted himself hoarse when he had reached the lorry, yelling in the face of the driver and the young guard. They remained impassive. They repeated the same phrase over and over again. ‘Er versuchte zu fliehen.’
Watson knew what it meant. He was trying to escape. To flee the scene. That would be the official report. Shot while trying to escape.
Eventually, tired of his histrionics, they had pushed Watson into the back of the Horch and the truck had set off again, heading north-east on smaller roads now, the sun falling in the sky, the temperature dropping with each kilometre, or so it seemed to Watson as he shivered in the rear.
Why had he done it? Why had Von Bork ordered the death of an innocent man? Possibly because some of his own agents had been executed in England. Unfortunate to face trial after the declaration of war with Germany, two of his men, Hollis and Steiner, had been hanged as spies. Watson, Holmes and even Vernon Kell of the Secret Service Bureau had objected, on the grounds that Great Britain had agents on the Continent and, if caught, they would now face the same fate. But public opinion – in a country brought up on the jingoist espionage fictions of Le Queux and Erskine Childers, and egged on by the Mail and the Express – had demanded the rope for the fifth columnists.
Watson, though, doubted the murder of his servant was a simple tit-for-tat. No, Sayer was a last-minute addition to the transfer to Harzgrund. But he suspected it was no part of Von Bork’s plan for Watson to arrive at camp with a friend – for that was what Sayer had been – and an ally. Von Bork had wanted Watson to suffer. And suffer alone, without solace.
Two can play at that game.
‘Yes, they can,’ Watson muttered to himself in reply. But he knew better than to dwell on what might be, on the glimmer that some revenge might be visited on the German. Such a concept might nurture some people, provide sustenance, but Watson knew it could equally turn corrosive. He had seen first-hand in the trenches how an ancient grudge could lead to a morbid dementia, a case that ended with yet more deaths out in no man’s land, at least one of which he was responsible for. And now, poor Sayer . . .
‘Zigarette?’ asked Gunther, the older guard.
Watson scowled and uttered an oath at him. The German shrugged, to show it was his loss, and lit up. The smoke drifted over and Watson almost regretted his hasty reaction. But he couldn’t just flick away the crime that had been committed. It wasn’t water under the bridge, not with Sayer wrapped like a mummy in the front of the truck. It was murder, not war. He would write a report at the first opportunity. Surely, when this madness was over, there would be a reckoning for such callous actions away from the battlefield?
One dead man among millions? Do you think they will care? Can anyone afford to care?
It was flat, unsentimental and it was very likely the truth.
‘I will care,’ Watson said out loud, his voice thick with venom. ‘I will damn well care.’
The pair of guards exchanged glances that showed they thought he had taken leave of his senses. The younger guard said something under his breath and laughed and Watson felt a murderous urge come over him, alien and terrifying in its intensity.
Not now, Watson, not now, said a soothing voice. All in good time.
Good time? Would he know a good time ever again? Would anyone? The very concept seemed to have been swept away from Europe in a slurry of mud and blood. Watson pulled his coat around him, arranged the pillow on the bench, lay down and closed his eyes, letting the swaying of the truck lull him into a fitful, angry sleep.
It was dusk when Watson was jerked awake by a poor gear change. They were climbing and the Horch was struggling with the incline. The driver was working hard with throttle and gears to take the sweeping bends. From the tail of the truck, Watson could see the lights of villages below. What he couldn’t see was many trees. This mountain appeared to be denuded of vegetation.
Gunther had unwrapped a length of sausage from a cloth and he sliced off a chunk and held it out to Watson. After a moment’s hesitation he took it. Accepting the earlier cigarette would have served no purpose other than to show weakness, but a sausage – even one he discovered was mostly sawdust – would help keep his strength up. And, even without knowing what Von Bork had in store for him, he was sure he would need all his reserves to survive.
The altitude made his ears pop and now his breath showed within the truck. He shivered. A sensible man would ask for Sayer’s coat and gloves and the contents of the kitbag that lay next to his own, strapped in place with thick webbing against the cab’s bulkhead. But decency prevented him from doing so. Probably he would be refused anyway. In Germany, as in most countries affected by the war, clothing was strong currency, and the guards would split the garments between them. He patted his coat to make sure those socks Sayer had given him were still there.
‘Not far,’ said the young German with the missing fingers. ‘Soon.’
Watson ignored him. As if he was in any hurry to reach Harzgrund.
The brakes gave a squeal of alarm, and Watson slithered along the bench once more. The Germans clung on to the tailgate, swearing loudly, and the lorry skewed across the road before it came to an undignified halt. The engine was still chugging when the driver appeared at the rear and began to declaim in rapid German. Apart from the fact he was far from happy, Watson could barely make out a word from the man’s thick dialect.
The older German managed to calm the driver down and he lowered the tailgate and slid out into the gathering night. Watson could see the first stars appearing in the deep blue sky.
The guard reappeared. ‘Wir müssen von hier zu Fuß.’
The young man used two fingers to make the universal sign for walking. ‘We must make foot,’ he said.
‘How far?’ Watson asked, struggling for the translation. ‘Wie . . . wie weit?’
A shrug. ‘Zwei Kilometer.’
‘Warum?’ Weariness meant his German failed him. ‘What’s going on? Is there a blockage on the road?’
Fingerless grabbed Watson’s kitbag from the webbing holder and tossed it down onto the ground. ‘Come.’
Watson climbed out into the sharp night air. Cold rose up from the earth to greet him. Somewhere in the far distance a dog yapped, audible over the grumbling engine. Others offered a howling rejoinder. He imagined German shepherds, bad-temperedly patrolling the corridor between two walls of wire.
He ran on the spot a little to get his circulation going and walked around the side to see what the trouble was. The road was rutted beneath his feet and he stumbled on one of the ridges. Heavy traffic had passed this way, corrugating the surface. Watson steadied himself and peered ahead. The road, a sandy ribbon of grit, curved out of sight but the lorry’s feeble headlamps had picked out a metal sign on a steel pole, with the camp’s name written on the plate in gothic script. But there was another rectangle tied beneath it, this one wooden and makeshift. There was no mistaking its intent, even if you didn’t understand the single word, Fleckfieber, for it was adorned with a crudely daubed red skull and crossbones. In fact, Watson did, for once, know that term. He knew it in several languages and it made his already shivering body shake that little bit more. Fleckfieber.
Typhus.
