Dead Man's Land Read online

  He managed a tired smile. ‘Good night,’ he repeated and was half out into the chill night air before he turned and asked: ‘Where is Brigade for this section of the line?’

  ‘Plug Street. Or Ploegsteert, to be more correct. At a place called Somerset House. Not its real name, of course.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. The naming of every inch of the country with familiar landmarks was just another example of homesick men trying to make sense of a world gone mad. ‘Sleep well.’

  As he pulled at the tape to let the tent flap fall closed, Watson saw Sister Spence reaching for the telegram concerning her brother, no doubt hoping that in the past few hours the words had magically rearranged themselves into a less devastating message.

  NINE

  Staff Nurse Jennings put a brave face on having to share with the new arrivals. She had wondered if Sister Spence had engineered it deliberately, but in fact, being the only nurse with a bell tent all to herself, and a large one at that, it was the logical solution to the problem of the unexpected VADs.

  ‘This is me,’ she explained, after she had lit the lamp. ‘So if you want to choose one of those two . . . Sheets might be a little damp, I am afraid. If I’d known you were coming . . .’

  Miss Pippery hesitated, waiting for Mrs Gregson to make her selection, but she simply placed her valise on the nearest of the cots. ‘This will be fine.’

  ‘We aren’t staying more than a week,’ said Miss Pippery. ‘We’ll be out of your hair then.’

  ‘So you’ll be here for the top brass?’

  ‘What top brass?’

  ‘Field Marshal Haig and entourage. A surprise visit next Friday. Except they told us about it a week ago. They want it to be a nice surprise. With no surprises.’

  ‘Lots of extra scrubbing?’

  Jennings sighed. ‘And painting. Lord, it’s getting cold. Look, there are two hot-water bottles over there. And hot water at the wash station. It might help take the chill off the beds.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Miss Pippery brightly, picking up the ceramic cylinders. ‘And shall I get you one?’

  Jennings shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’ve got the energy to undress fully.’

  Miss Pippery left and Jennings took off her cape and began to unbutton her dress. ‘She’s nice.’

  Mrs Gregson nodded.

  ‘And your Dr Watson.’

  ‘Yes, he’s sweet,’ Mrs Gregson agreed.

  Jennings frowned. ‘He’s a little more than that. I mean, he’s a very good doctor, too. Worked like a man half his age tonight.’

  ‘Hh-mm.’ Mrs Gregson was only half listening. She was busy admiring the slight body that had emerged from under the rough dress and petticoats. ‘How on earth do you stay so slim?’ she asked.

  Jennings looked down at her embarrassing layers of grey, overwashed underwear. ‘By never stopping moving? Skipping every other meal? Being too exhausted to eat? And thank you for being tactful. Skinny is what you meant.’

  ‘You think so?’ Mrs Gregson had pulled down the top of her own dress and she flexed her right arm and squeezed the muscle with her left hand. ‘No, this is what I am talking about. Nothing but beds to make and bodies to shift. I’ve developed arms like Bombardier Billy Wells. The boxer,’ she added, when Jennings looked blank. ‘Look at yours.’

  The nurse pinched the flesh of her own arm, which was as thin as a child’s in comparison. ‘Under-nourished, my mother would say.’

  ‘Svelte is the word you are looking for.’ She yawned. ‘Excuse me.’

  Jennings did the same and put a hand over her mouth. Her expression took on a serious cast. She glanced at the entrance, to ensure they were quite alone. Even so, she lowered her voice. Canvas was precious little barrier to careless talk. ‘I was brought up in Didcot, you know.’

  ‘Really?’ Mrs Gregson asked, puzzled at the sudden swerve in subject matter.

  ‘It’s near Sutton Courtenay.’

  Mrs Gregson’s skin grew even paler in the lamplight. ‘Oh.’

  ‘You were big news around there.’

  ‘I should imagine I was.’

  ‘Local papers were full of it. Very rare for them to send a reporter up the Old Bailey.’

  Mrs Gregson yawned once more, as if the subject was boring her.

  ‘The Red Devil Case we called it—’

  Mrs Gregson spun round and grabbed Jennings’ upper arm, squeezing so that her fingers met. It felt like a chicken leg to her, a limb that could be snapped just as easily.

  Jennings winced. ‘Sorry, that was insensitive.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ Jennings said, truthfully. What had possessed her to be so crass and forward? ‘Not thinking straight.’

  ‘The thing is, Staff Nurse Jennings, Alice knows nothing of all that. Nothing about Red Devils and Sutton Courtenay. Nothing.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I would very much like to keep it that way.’

  ‘Of course. But could you return my arm, please?’

  They heard Miss Pippery approaching with the hot-water bottles. Mrs Gregson let her grip slacken. ‘Do you understand what I am saying, Staff Nurse Jennings?’

  Jennings wriggled her arm free. There were scarlet marks where fingers had dug into flesh. ‘Please don’t worry, Mrs Gregson.’ She rubbed at her skin. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’

  Perhaps so, thought Mrs Gregson, but which one?

  TEN

  The star shell had arced over from the British lines and was now intent on defying the laws of gravity. It hung there above no man’s land like a low-slung celestial body, burning with a fierce luminosity that failed to diminish as time ticked by. The ruined countryside was washed in its cold silvery light. It was as if someone had turned the moon up to full power. The merciless brilliance threw shadows of deep, impenetrable blackness. From their respective trenches, spotters on both sides scanned the landscape for movement.

  Bloch lay immobile, knowing that to any observer he would appear to be just another ridge in the churned earth. Unless he moved a muscle: the slightest stirring in this tableau might register with a skilled watcher. His eyes were squeezed shut; he must not yield to the temptation of staring at the light. Eventually the artificial star began to head earthwards and as it did so, the chemicals fuelling its brief life became exhausted, and slowly the world returned to shades of grey. The shell landed with a soft thud and gave a last, dying splutter.

  Bloch stayed frozen for another minute. Then ahead of him he saw three figures rise from the ground and start forward towards the British lines. This was his escort, his very own raiding party, a Patrouillentrupp, experts in crossing no man’s land at night. They wore leather arm-and-knee patches, and soft-soled ankle-boots and puttees rather than noisy jackboots. Bloch admired and trusted them enough to put himself in their hands for this section of the journey.

  As they moved off, he pushed up into a crouch and followed. The star shells were a double-edged sword. They were excellent for spotting motion within the field of their glare; but afterwards the watchers had impaired night vision for anything up to twenty minutes. Having escaped detection under its spotlight, it actually made the infiltrator’s job easier.

  In Bloch’s head were two vital pieces of information. One was a detailed map of the British trenches, from the square-toothed shape of the fire and support trenches, the winding communication trenches, through to the machine-gun strongholds and the wavelike curves of the reserve trenches. The second item he kept at the forefront of his mind, picked up by a forward listening post earlier, was that night’s password. ‘Unicorn.’ Lux had made him practise it, until he had perfected a growl that hid his German accent.

  The trio ahead went down again onto the earth and he followed suit. In a sudden burst, they scuttled rapidly like four-legged cockroaches until they were at a British ‘sap’, a forward observation trench dug out past the wire right into no man’s land. These advanced posts were usually temporary, abandoned once the oth
er side knew about them. Using this would get him under the British wire and into their lines proper. He was beckoned forward to join the raiders as they slithered to the edge of the dugout.

  ‘Unicorn,’ one of his companions hissed, then added in flawless English. ‘We got us an Allyman.’

  ‘Come on then, let’s have ’ee.’

  It was all over in a few seconds. The two British observers were subdued with blows from trench clubs. Bloch was given a greatcoat and a cap to put over his own uniform. He peered down into the darkness of the excavation. His mental map told him it would take him to a fire trench, then a communication trench, which would in turn deliver him to a relief trench and then almost to the walls of the ruined church. The chances of his being stopped were slight. If he was, however, now he had put on the British khaki, he would be shot as a spy. That was not an unusual risk: captured snipers were often executed out of hand anyway.

  Bloch shook each of the three Germans’ hands in turn, popped up the greatcoat collar and set off. The two groggy Tommies were revived, gagged and bundled out of the sap at bayonet point, a precious bonus from the incursion. Lux would have great pleasure adding to the sum of his already considerable knowledge about British deployment.

  As he set off along the rough-walled trench, Bloch put his hands in his greatcoat pockets and found a crushed packet of ten Black Cat cigarettes, with four left. If he met trouble, that would be his first course of action. Offer a smoke.

  But although he passed a few shallow dugouts and heard whispered conversations or smelled tobacco from within a number of them, they were mainly closed off with crude gas curtains and nobody challenged him. In one open dugout he saw two soldiers running candles over the seams of their clothing, killing lice. They were too intent on their bug hunt to look up. He smiled to himself. He knew how futile it was and that somewhere behind him, two Germans were performing exactly the same parasite hunt. They were the same army, really, separated by a few hundred metres, a language and a Royal family. In truth, not even the latter.

  Away from the firing trenches, he came across the latrines, separate for officers and men, a series of lime-washed pits accessed down a short cul-de-sac from the main trench. He held his breath. They smelled no better than the German ones.

  Within twenty nervous minutes he was out of the trenches and inspecting the interior of the church, empty save for the unseen rats that scampered and darted through the rubble covering the floor. He looked up in the yawning space above and could just make out the wooden platform of the belfry in the spire. He would be invisible up there. There was one slight problem that Lux hadn’t anticipated.

  The wooden stairs leading up to it had been blown away by shellfire.

  TUESDAY

  ELEVEN

  Watson awoke with a start, a formless feeling of apprehension gripping him. His heart was running fast, like an ungoverned motor, and there was a film of sweat around his neck. He knew he had been dreaming, but when he tried to focus on it, the images evaporated like smoke, leaving only a residue of unease. He was aware that someone else was in the austere monastic cell that was his billet. He shuffled up on the straw palliasse, just as the shutters were thrown back. He blinked in the thin beam of grey light. He was expecting Brindle, but the figure at the window was shorter. But then, everybody was shorter than Brindle.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Sorry to startle you, Major. Your orderly volunteered for the burial party. Asked me if I would mind bringing you your tea. We didn’t get a chance to meet yesterday. I’m Caspar Myles.’

  It was the American who had been in the reception tent, the one dressed in golfing attire. Today, Watson could see he had on a sleeveless sweater over a shirt, collar and bow tie. He also had on a pair of wide flannel trousers that would have told even a casual observer that he was not British.

  He put the tea on a side table. Then he picked up Watson’s pistol, which from old habit he kept close to him. ‘Jeez, what’s this relic?’

  ‘It’s my old service revolver,’ Watson said testily.

  ‘Really?’ Myles weighed it in his hand. Watson noticed that the knuckles on his right hand were abnormally large and swollen, compared to those of the left. ‘Tell you what, Major. Why don’t we just put some wheels on it, hitch it to a limber and a team of horses and tow it to the front. Make a great howitzer.’ He laughed as he put it down. ‘Only joshing you. Look, it’s almost eight. I wondered if you’d like to join me on the rounds here?’

  Watson tried not to be upset by the man’s lampooning of his old faithful companion. ‘Of course. I’d be delighted to. But tell me, Dr Myles, what is a Harvard man doing in a CCS?’

  The American looked taken aback for a second. ‘Who told you I was a Harvard man?’

  ‘Nobody. But you are from Harvard?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said with pride. ‘Part of the All-Harvard Volunteer Medical Unit. But—’

  ‘Your ring. The three open books spelling “Veritas”.’

  Myles looked down at the signet ring on the little finger of his left hand. ‘Of course. Stupid of me.’

  ‘A colleague of mine once made a study of American college symbols for a monograph, with particular reference to secret societies.’

  ‘This war is my secret society,’ Myles laughed. ‘My parents think I’m studying in Switzerland. We volunteers didn’t have to enlist, so there was no official notification for them to discover. That means no rank, hence . . .’ He pointed down at his clothes. ‘But, you know, you guys need surgeons and I’m a damn fine one.’

  Watson smiled at the brash confidence of youth. The man was not yet thirty. He had a long, unlined face, a well-trimmed black moustache and a disarmingly direct stare. His hair was oiled and side-parted. He smelled of Bay Rum. He was probably something of a swell back home.

  ‘I’m sure you are. And I’m certain we Allies are very grateful for your volunteering, when it’s not your war.’

  ‘It felt like it was. Bayoneted babies, raped nuns, executed civilians, torpedoed liners, poison gas . . .’ He tailed off. ‘Yes, I know some of that is exaggerated. But I think it’s a just war. A good war.’

  Watson was no longer certain that the word ‘good’ could be applied to any war. But the Von Bork business, back before the outbreak of hostilities, when Holmes had infiltrated a spy ring operating throughout England, had convinced Watson that there was a cabal within Germany that had very real, expansionist plans for subjugating Europe and controlling the Channel. A ‘just’ war? Perhaps. Necessary? Yes.

  ‘I had personal reasons, too,’ said Myles.

  They must have been powerful personal reasons indeed, Watson reasoned. By volunteering, doctors and nurses and ambulance drivers sacrificed their American citizenship. It was little wonder he hadn’t told his parents the truth.

  Myles gave a lopsided grin and clutched his chest. ‘Broken heart, in case you’re wondering. Shall we say ten minutes downstairs?’

  ‘Best make it fifteen,’ Watson said. ‘Takes a while to unseize the old joints these days.’

  ‘Fifteen it is. Rounds, then breakfast.’ He bounded to the door and stopped with it half open. ‘John Watson, right?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘The writer?’

  It was a while since anyone had made the connection. His rank of major seemed to have swallowed whatever little fame he had achieved as a chronicler back at home. ‘I have written, yes.’

  ‘Boswell to Holmes’s Johnson?’

  ‘That has been said, yes. Although it is quite flattering to my efforts. I merely chronicled what my friend and colleague—’

  ‘Oh, that English false modesty. Take some credit, man. Can you honestly tell me you brought nothing to the table but mere reportage?’ The grin returned, wider than ever when Watson failed to answer. ‘Tell me, Major, there was one thing that I always wanted to know. What was The Repulsive Story of The Red Leech? I remember reading that as a kid and imagining all sorts of things.’

  As a kid? Wa
tson thought. Yes, Myles would have been a child when it was mentioned in passing in The Golden Pince-Nez. ‘It was a misprint.’

  ‘Misprint?’

  ‘It should have said “red beech”. A type of tree.’

  Myles looked crestfallen. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I just let it pass. The thought of a giant annelid seemed to fire readers’ imaginations rather more than a gruesome murder under a tree that is native to New Zealand.’

  ‘Right. That’s, um, disappointing.’ The American stroked his moustache with thumb and forefinger. ‘You know I—’

  ‘Wish you hadn’t asked. I very rarely say this, but perhaps some mysteries are best left unsolved. A little mystique is no bad thing. Omne ignotum pro magnifico.’

  That normally batted off any more questions about The Singular Affair of the Aluminium Crutch, The Home Secretary’s Purse or The Pursuit of Wilson, the Notorious Canary-Trainer, or any of the other unpublished accounts from the Baker Street Years he had been foolish enough to dangle before the readers.

  Myles nodded. ‘True. Of both literature and women, I suspect.’ He winked. ‘So, fifteen minutes, Major. Oh, and if you don’t mind, it’s what you fellows call mufti for my rounds.’

  All but the powerful aroma of his Bay Rum left the cell and Watson threw back the blankets, swung his legs over the side of the bed and took a sip of the black, lukewarm over-sweetened tea.

  Watson didn’t like deceiving, but Holmes had agreed with him at the time that The Repulsive Story of The Red Leech was one for which the world was not yet prepared. Perhaps Watson had been reluctant because the villain turned out to be a respected member of the Harley Street community, a doctor who had perverted the practice of hirudotherapy into a hideous form of torture. No, let the American think it was a misprint. No harm done then.

  The image of the bloated bloodsuckers they had discovered in the basement laboratory unsettled him and he now recalled his dream and shuddered. It was of an aeroplane, engine sputtering, spiralling out of the sky and hitting the earth, its wings, as fragile as a mayfly’s, folding into the fuselage under the impact. Then the screams, the figures running towards the twisted wreckage as a whorl of black smoke rose heavenwards . . .