A Study in Murder (9 page)

Von Bork glanced across at the rococo villa that stood on the lakeshore to his right, its lights blazing with profligacy, as there was only him and his host – plus the servants – in
residence. But Admiral Hersch was not one to let the privations of war affect him too much. As a senior commander in the
Nachrichten-Abteilung
– Naval Intelligence – Hersch was
well aware of how much the Allied blockade was strangling the country, how the shops of Berlin mainly displayed hundreds of square metres of dust. But he didn’t believe in sharing the
suffering of the Kaiser’s subjects. Hersch insisted that men like himself needed to be kept in tiptop condition to win this war. He and his team required their full vigour to outfox the
British and the French. So, tonight Von Bork was expecting a table full of sausages with no barley and sawdust makeweight filling, the best pork knuckle, oysters, foie gras, brandy and cigars.

Von Bork could see Hersch standing on the jetty, his bulk silhouetted by the electric lights behind him. Broad of shoulder, with cropped steel-grey hair, he was still attractive to women, with
his unlined face and square jaw, despite being well into his fifties. The duelling scar on his upper left cheek did little harm, either. Nor did the signet ring that proclaimed him a member of one
of the oldest Prussian families, albeit some moves away from the main bloodline. He had a wife – although God alone knew where she was kept – but more often than not he squired a young
widow on his arm, consoling her for her loss in one way or another.

‘Are you going to stay out there all night, man?’ boomed Hersch, his voice skimming over the water. ‘We have company arriving.’

Von Bork slowed and began to dig his right oar deeper into the water, turning the vessel towards where his former spymaster stood. Hersch had been one of the more understanding of his superiors
when Von Bork had returned from England in shame. He alone had thought there was only a little chagrin in being outwitted in the game of spies and spying by a man like Holmes. Von Bork suspected
Hersch would have kept him on, but back then he lacked the influence the war years had given him. So he’d reluctantly cut Von Bork adrift, left him to work his way up through the backwater of
a bureau concerned with POWs.

Meanwhile, Hersch had created the Sie Wölfe, a group of female assassins and spies, which he had released across Europe. True, their losses had been comparable in percentage terms to
officers on the Western Front, but many had gleaned valuable information. There were those in the old guard who abhorred the use of women in war, especially in espionage, but the results had
silenced them.

As Von Bork drew level with the wooden pier, Hersch stooped down and grabbed the craft, steadying it while Von Bork climbed out, the exposed areas of his body steaming in the night air like a
racehorse in the winner’s enclosure.

‘Don’t overdo it now, Von Bork,’ said the admiral with a grin. ‘Lottie has sent us some girls. Their car should be here shortly. Save a little energy for
yours.’

Lottie was the best-known, most expensive madam in Berlin. This was something else reserved for those in the upper echelons. An air of stiff, unyielding morality held sway in Berlin. Dance
halls, cabarets and brothels had been closed. It was considered poor form to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh while Germany’s young men died in their thousands. But Hersch was convinced
that, as with a good diet, men of power needed their relaxations.

The admiral tossed a towel to Von Bork and secured the scull to a cleat with its bow-rope.

‘You know, it’s good to see you again,’ Hersch said as Von Bork towelled himself dry, as if the thought had only just occurred to him.

‘You too, sir.’

‘Lukas, please. Just for tonight.’

Von Bork nodded, knowing he would never actually allow himself such familiarity. They began the walk back to the villa.

‘I had my cryptographers take a look at those letters of yours.’

Von Bork stopped rubbing at his arms. ‘And?’

‘Nothing. No code that we know of. I suggest we let them through and examine what comes in return from Holmes and this Mrs Gregson.’

‘Yes. Good idea.’

Hersch put a hand on Von Bork’s shoulder. ‘You know, we have discovered of late that a lot of the information you got for us in 1914 was, in fact, quite accurate.’

A liveried footman was waiting at the bottom of the stone steps that would take them up to the mansion’s driveway. He held a silver salver, with two large balloon glasses, each containing
two centimetres of Obstler. Von Bork dropped the towel at the man’s feet and took one of the glasses, waiting until Hersch had his before he raised a toast and drank. The aroma of distilled
apples and pears warmed his sinuses.

‘Excellent. Sorry, you were saying?’

‘Well,’ said Hersch as they ascended the staircase. ‘You were told that the information you had gathered had been falsified. In fact, only a small proportion of it had been.
Most of it was, in fact, pure gold, had we known it at the time.’

‘Good grief.’ Von Bork had to be careful not to squeeze the glass so hard it shattered. ‘Why was I not told this sooner?’

‘Because, my dear Von Bork, we had no way of knowing what was the truth and what was a fabrication. Your adversary threw all of the documents into doubt.’

‘The bastard.’

‘Come, you have to admire the cunning of it. Did you not wonder why the British let you go free with war on the horizon? Why Sherlock Holmes spelled out that the reports you had purloined
suggested the battleships were a little slower, the guns a little less powerful, than in actuality?’

Hersch laughed, but Von Bork had no inclination to join him. The liquor, so refreshing a moment ago, seemed to curdle in his stomach like week-old milk.

‘In fact, the weapons were exactly as described in many cases. He was merely indulging in hyperbole. Playing games with our minds.’ He shook his head in what might have been
appreciation.

‘So my . . . my exile, my humiliation, was for naught?’

‘Well, not entirely. Holmes had fooled you, hadn’t he? Wormed his way into your inner circle. No, Von Bork, he had the better of you.’

‘I wish he were here for me to put a bullet between his eyes.’ Von Bork tossed back the last of the brandy and left the glass on the balustrade of the steps up to the house. He could
hear the distant purr of an engine. The girls were coming. Suddenly, the night ahead seemed like an ordeal.

Hersch slapped him on the back. ‘Come now. All is not lost. You have this Dr Watson to torment.’

‘Watson?’ Von Bork hissed. ‘The Judy to his Mr Punch? He had very little to do with the case, he was . . . a chauffeur. Oh, he’ll have basked in his friend’s glory
all right. One day he’ll get equal credit for fooling the German spy.’ If he lives that long, he added, without voicing the thought. ‘But you must have read his stories about
their adventures – Watson was only ever a lapdog.’

‘Lapdogs have their uses.’ Hersch cocked an ear, now aware of the approaching vehicle. ‘Hear that? Hurry, we must get changed. You really don’t want to greet our
companions looking or smelling like that, do you?’ He began to take the steps up to the column-flanked entrance two at a time. One of the fancy doors swung open, to reveal yet another
servant, this one a scrawny, aged specimen with a pronounced stoop, ready to welcome them.

‘Wait. How do you mean?’

Hersch paused. He turned and began unbuttoning his tunic, impatient to change out of his uniform. ‘You have your white tails with you? Tonight is not a military affair.’

‘No,’ Von Bork admitted. ‘I was not expecting—’

‘No matter.’ Hersch pointed a finger at the servant and ordered him to fetch some suitable clothing for their under-prepared guest. The man looked Von Bork up and down, like an
undertaker appraising a future client, and disappeared.

‘Sir,’ Von Bork insisted. ‘Useful how?’

Hersch frowned, tired of the game now, aware that tyres had turned onto gravel, the final stretch of the drive. ‘I would have thought that was obvious, Von Bork. You are in charge of
trading prisoners. You offer Dr Watson in exchange.’

‘For whom?’ he asked.

Hersch tutted at the man’s lack of insight. ‘For Mr Sherlock bloody Holmes, of course. Now, do get a move on.’

Watson awoke shivering and itching, the taste of metal in his mouth, a succession of horrible images still stalking through his brain. Sayer was there, stuck and bleeding out
in no man’s land, as if he were a genuine casualty of war. Fantasy. But as he came back to reality he recalled clearly the sight of him crumpled on the ground at a godforsaken roadside.
Murdered in cold blood. All too factual.

He threw back the coarse blanket in anger and took in his surroundings once more. He had arrived in darkness, weary and footsore, and well after the camp had finished serving its meals, so had
been allowed to keep a tin of bully beef to eat. Everything else of value had been confiscated by the camp guards upon his arrival. He had been assigned an area at the far end of Hut 7, part
surgery and examination room and part bedroom, separated from the dozen other men by what looked like an offcut from a large, threadbare carpet. This makeshift curtain gave a modicum of privacy to
the patients, he supposed, but also reduced the amount of heat that reached him from the hut’s pot-bellied stove.

It wasn’t much of a surgery. A medicine cabinet, an eye chart and an illustration of the circulatory system were fixed to the walls. There was a desk, a lamp and a set of chipped and
rusted weighing scales. From what he had seen of the inmates he didn’t need that ancient machine to tell him that most prisoners were malnourished. A cabinet of drawers and cupboards filled
with a jumble of medical instruments and dressings completed the inventory. Oh, for a good, efficient nurse. Oh, he thought, for Mrs Gregson, she would soon whip this into shape.

A image of her formed in his mind’s eye, sitting on a bed in Belgium, a steaming mug of tea in her hand, head thrown back in laughter as she told tales of her days competing in motorcycle
hillclimbs with Miss Pippery, or of the foolishness of her superiors or the cheekiness of her patients. The mental picture warmed him almost as much as that stove might have done, yet at the same
time left him with a hollow feeling low in his abdomen.

He scratched again, aware that he had picked up some lice. The mattress, no doubt. He prodded it. Not even straw. Wood shavings. That was going to be a battle. The typhus sign had suggested that
fighting the lice would be a priority. It was lice that carried the fearful disease, that much was known. But there was no cure, no vaccine. Constant delousing was the only possible defence.

He swung out his legs, pulled on his trousers and looked for his boots. He remembered taking them off and placing them at the end of the bed. Yet the Trenchmasters were nowhere to be seen.
Instead, he found a pair of old hobnailed artillery boots, one of them broken so that the toe had peeled back, as if it were grinning at him. Still in his stockinged feet he threw back the heavy
curtain, intending to bawl out his fellow inmates.

But the hut, and its row of bunk beds, was empty, except for two orderlies, hastily tucking in blankets and folding and packing away discarded pyjamas and slippers.

‘Where is everyone?’ Watson demanded.

The two men, both sallow-faced and unsmiling, barely glanced at him and went back to their work.

Watson was not a man to pull rank, but the insolence inherent in that behaviour, and the events of the previous day combined to create another surge of rage. ‘You will stand to attention
when addressed by an officer! Damn your eyes, you look at me or you will be on a charge after I’m done with you.’

Fists clenched, he took a step forward and if they thought that a man twice their age in stockinged feet suggesting he could thrash the pair of them was a ridiculous proposition, they
didn’t show it. Both sprang to taut attention and faced forward, expressions blank.

‘Names?’

‘Parsons, sir.’ This one was the older and taller of the two, his skin badly marked by smallpox.

‘And you?’ Watson pointed to the shorter of the pair, a ruddy-faced lad with ginger hair and freckles.

‘Wallace.’ A beat. ‘Sir.’

‘Where is everyone?’

‘
Appell
, sir.’

‘
Appell
?’ he said. Roll calls were sacrosanct at camps, as integral to the rhythm of the day as prayers in a monastery. ‘Why wasn’t I woken?’ Not to mention
why he wasn’t woken with a cup of tea, as had been the normal routine with Sayer.

The orderlies exchanged furtive glances. ‘We was told not to,’ said Wallace.

‘By whom?’

‘Rather not say, sir.’

Missing an
Appell
could earn a prisoner a week’s solitary. Someone wanted him to get into trouble. ‘Really?’ Watson pointed at his unshod feet. ‘And do you know
anything about a missing pair of Trenchmasters?’

Their heads shook in unison, far too eagerly for his liking. ‘No, sir.’

‘All right, we’ll talk about this later. Get on with your work. You’re my orderlies as well, are you?’

‘Well, we do this hut,’ admitted Parsons. ‘So I suppose so.’ He didn’t sound very enthused about the prospect.

‘How does
Appell
work here?’ There were several ways of organizing a prisoners’ parade and it varied from camp to camp. ‘Alphabetically or by hut?’

‘By hut,’ Parsons admitted.

‘By hut, sir,’ Watson corrected.

‘Sir.’

‘Hut 1 on the far left of the parade ground, in order to Hut 20 on the right,’ offered Wallace. Parsons looked at him as if he had just given out the King’s telephone
number.

‘In groups of?’ The Germans liked to break the lines up to make counting easier.

‘Five, sir.’

‘And each hut holds how many men?’ Wallace made to speak, but Watson snapped his fingers. ‘You, Parsons. You answer me. How many?’

He let out a sigh, resenting his silently insolent routine being disturbed. ‘Most huts contains four bunkrooms like this one . . . sir. Each with at least a dozen men. Sir.’