Dunster (24 page)

My problem is legal and business mixed, so it should be up your street. Mike's away, getting her mother into a home at the moment, so if you could motor down here tooty sweet, say Thursday morning, we could go up to the Old Huntsman for a ploughman's after our chinwag.

I would be much obliged if you'd say nothing about this to my daughter, Beth, her husband – or anyone else, come to that. I'll keep an eye skinned for you around midday.

Sincerely

Jonathan Blair (Major, Retired)

This unexpected letter, in spiky, unpractised handwriting, much crossed-out and clearly the result of considerable thought, had arrived in an envelope marked
PERSONAL AND EXTREMELY PRIVATE.
In Spite of Jaunty's instructions, I took it to Justin Glover, whom I had seen a number of times since our first conference, feeling in need of a certain amount of advice myself.

Robbie Skeffington had plunged us into such a hot certainty at the start of the case that the time was bound to come for cooler feelings and I found our solicitor in a state of increasing apprehension. ‘The key witness,' Justin told me, ‘is obviously going to be Major Blair. If he goes into the witness-box and says Sir Crispin commanded the operation, we can only attack him on the grounds that he's trying to save his son-in-law's pocket. Robbie'll do that with wonderful brutality, of course. But it may not be enough to destroy the old boy's evidence. It's something we ought to be worrying about.' Then I showed Justin Glover the letter and he said I'd better go and find out what it was all about, as it might do some good and he didn't see why it should do any harm.

So I left Muswell Hill and Lucy around dawn and at exactly a quarter to twelve I passed the gallows on which the notice Blair Cottage swung and drove down the rutted path to the stable yard and the house sitting uncomfortably among the gravel. I parked and got out of the car as the baying started and the task force of assorted dogs leapt for my genitals. It was like old times.

The back door was open. I stood on the step and rang the bell, which made a loud, high-pitched buzz and produced no Major. I waited and then crossed the threshold into the kitchen, setting off a hysterical reaction in the dogs who leapt, yelped, barked and bounded as though I were an escaped axeman who had called to murder Jaunty. I did my best not to give these animals the satisfaction of seeing how nervous their welcome made me. I had come a long way on an important mission and I was determined to complete it.

The house was as cold as I always remembered it, as though the dark furniture, the shiny lino and the dun-coloured wallpaper gave off their own particular chill. The kitchen floor was well stocked with boots, slippers, dog bowls and the small mess of a half-trained puppy who had been over-excited by my arrival. There was a plate on the table which had held bacon and eggs, a half-full packet of Mother's Pride and an almost finished mug of Nescafe. The number of dirty dishes in the sink testified to the time it had taken Mike to get her mother into a home.

I went through the kitchen into the hall. Most of the interior doors were open. I saw Jaunty's office, with the bureau bulging as ever with papers, some of which had floated to the floor. On the carpet, handy for the sitting-room sofa, there was a whisky bottle, a glass and a saucer full of the butts of small cigars. I went to the foot of the stairs and, having no desire to inspect Jaunty's bedroom, I called into the shadows, ‘It's Progmire!', which seemed, in that empty house, rather a foolish thing to say.

There was no answer and I went out towards the stable yard. The dogs were delighted to see me leave the house and their clamour sank to sullen growls as they returned to the kitchen. Only the old black lurcher, who had slept throughout the excitement on a patch of blanket beside the cooker, trotted out after me.

The long, mournful faces of silent horses peered over half doors, looking as though they had been waiting a long time for some attention and had become resigned to the lack of it. But there were some signs of activity around the stable yard: a bucket filled, a hosepipe pulled out and the door of the tack room swinging open. The big lorry stood with the ramp ready for a nervous horse to be induced to step inside. It was then that I first heard a faint and distant sound, a weak hint of thunder but more metallic and not so far away. One of the lorry doors left open was banging, I thought, and not shutting properly. And then it came again, closer and more insistent. But what attracted my attention was the lurcher whining.

It had left me to go up the ramp and it was standing looking into the shadows, making sounds of distress. There was straw on the floor of the lorry and the darkness smelt of horse piss. I was about to turn away, drive down to the pub and try phoning later, when there was a fainter boom and a weaker rattle. It seemed to come from in front of me. I could see more clearly now and there was a short ladder propped up against what looked like a pair of large cupboard doors over the back of the driver's cabin. There was no mistaking it now, the rattle of the bolted metal, and over the lurcher's concerned whining the faint sound of a human voice in panic.

I have never – I don't suppose many people have – rescued from a coffin someone who has narrowly escaped being buried alive. All I can say is, the experience can hardly have left its victim in worse shape than that in which, on that quiet morning, I found Major Jaunty Blair. He emerged from his tomb, where saddles and horse blankets and other bits of equipment were stored, wild-eyed and grey with terror. His forehead was shiny, his wispy hair soaked with sweat and plastered to his head, his hand, as he grabbed my arm, strengthened by an accumulated frenzy of terror. It took him a long time to summon up the will to be helped down the ladder. Then he stumbled into the open air, coughing and spluttering as though he had forgotten how to breathe.

‘Thank God you came, Progmire! Thank God for you! Always a friend.' The Major looked up at me, trembling with gratitude, rather like one of his dogs, I thought, who had been cruelly treated. ‘Always had this horror. Rat in trap. Locked in. Bloody tank. Hot as hell. Tank on fire. Locked bloody in! Saw them everywhere. Tanks full of dead geezers.' He was nursing his arms and his elbows, as though they were bruised as he had thrown himself against the door, struggling for freedom. He talked breathlessly, in bursts like random gunfire. As he got to the end of the ramp he vomited.

I did a great deal for Jaunty that day. I cleaned him up. I helped him to the sofa where he stretched out. I soothed him with whisky and hot tea. I made him baked beans on toast, which he said was all he could face for lunch. I was there to find things out for Cris.

The incident itself remained a mystery. Jaunty said he had been going to take his horse Montgomery to a local show where he would be ridden by a whipper-in to parade the pack of hounds. He had collected the saddle and various accoutrements and was putting them in the space over the driver's cabin, which he mysteriously called the luton. As he was doing this, some bloody fool must have come into the lorry, shut the luton's door and bolted it from the outside. Perhaps they thought that was funny. They might have thought the war in the desert bloody funny, and being trapped in a tank a real hoot, being suffocated in a red-hot box fucking entertaining. At this point Jaunty became incomprehensible and had to be brought back to a serious consideration of the problem with whisky.

Who could have done it? Fiona was the girl groom, he told me. She was meant to come over and help with the transport of Montgomery. She was a sensible girl most of the time. Worked long hours for the love of horses and didn't keep bothering him for more money like some of the more mercenary little bitches. God only knew who was rogering Fiona at the moment. Could be one of the hunt servants. Could be some mad joker with a bloody warped sense of humour who'd never seen the inside of a tank or gone soldiering. Could be ... Yes. He had Fiona's telephone number. It was on a bit of paper pinned to the wall of the office.

So I went off to ring Fiona, who sounded sensible, shocked and totally puzzled. She was going to come with someone called Charlie Riggs and drive Montgomery over to the show in the lorry, but that wasn't planned to happen until two o'clock because Jaunty was having lunch with a visitor from London. That was me, wasn't it? She didn't really know why Jaunty should have been putting things in the luton around midday. She'd been with Charlie Riggs all the morning, riding across the moor. She'd never known him to be capable of a practical joke, let alone the cruel one which had terrorized Jaunty. There is only one other thing worth recording about this conversation. During it, I was looking out of the office window and I saw a red Cortina come bumping down the lane and into the stable yard, where the lorry was still standing with its back down. The car stopped, turned round slowly and then drove back past the house towards the main road. For a moment I had a clear view of the driver, an old man with broad shoulders and the look of a bald emperor. It was a face I knew I had seen before but, on that extraordinary afternoon, I couldn't remember where.

After I had spoken to Fiona I went back to my patient and told him what she'd said. He shook his head and lay in silence, staring up at the ceiling, until I reminded him that I had come not to rescue him but because he had sent for me.

‘Don't know what to do. That bloody geezer of Beth's. Must have got the wrong idea. Something I said to him. Got hold of the wrong end of the stick.'

I said I was glad to hear it. I was careful not to sound hopeful too soon.

‘Poured brandy into me. Got me talking. About the old days. About the war and so on. Up there among the Eyeties.'

I said I knew he'd done something like that.

‘Now I hear he's causing trouble for your boss. For old Cris Bellhanger. A bloody good geezer I went soldiering with. Is he causing trouble?'

The old man lay in riding breeches with his boots off, the sleeve of his sweater disintegrating and his shirt open to display the white hairs on his chest, his face a slowly relaxing mask of fear.

I said yes, and that Dunster was causing trouble.

‘So many bloody fools about nowadays. Is he still on about that business of the church?'

Yes, I told him, that was what he was on about still. It was the understatement of the year. ‘Did you tell Dunster that Cris had said to you, “We must say the Germans did it”?'

‘Can't remember all I told him exactly.' Jaunty shook his head. ‘But the Germans did do it. We all knew that. German captain in charge gave the order.' The cold house suddenly seemed warmer, the dark sitting-room filled with sunshine. He held out his empty glass but I didn't refill it, not being sure of him yet.

‘How do you know that?'

‘Didn't I tell you?'

‘Never.'

‘I ended up in Austria. Major Blair, Allied Administration. Stamping out the black market-bits of it, anyway. Sorting out war criminals. That's where I found out who did for those poor devils who went to church. Bad idea, going to church.' He gave a ghastly sort of a smile. ‘Can be extremely dangerous.'

It all sounded so simple. Too simple perhaps, but I didn't want to ask questions that might throw doubt on what was Cris's clear defence. What Jaunty had said was already enough for me to fill his glass again, but I still wanted to know something. ‘So was the German officer put on trial?'

‘We never quite caught him. Slippery bugger. Got away with it. Well, all it needed was a promise to fight communism, plus a big slosh of money. In the proper quarters. None of it came my way, I have to tell you. Not a dollar for Jaunty. Not that I'd've taken it. I'd have had the geezer tried and shot. Might feel differently now. Much water under the bridge. Gallons of bloody water!'

Some of it still didn't fit, particularly the bit that had once led me to suspect the Major himself.

‘When you took me out to dinner, that night at Dandini's ...'

‘Super place, isn't it? Go there a lot, do you? Now you're a bachelor again?' The whisky had done a remarkable job: there was a flush on his cheek-bones and the small, yellowish eyes he turned on me were glinting, is that smashing girl still there? That little Tracy?'

‘You told me that an old man isn't responsible for what he did when he was young. You said he was quite different then, different fingernails and teeth and so on.'

‘I remember,' the Major nodded. ‘Yes, I remember saying that. Too bloody true.'

‘So no one should be blamed for what they did years before.'

‘Right! That's what I said.'

‘Who were you thinking of when you said that?'

There was silence. He looked back at the ceiling. For the first time since I had rescued him from the tomb he seemed almost relaxed.

‘Was it the German captain?' I suggested.

‘That's right, Progmire. You've got it. Spot on!'

‘Why were you worried about him?'

‘I keep my ear pretty close to the ground – or I did in those days after the war. When I was in the Allied Administration. And after.'

‘What did you hear?'

‘Rumours.'

‘What sort of rumours?'

‘About our Kraut friend who did the job at Pomeriggio. Finally got away to England. We've given him hospitality, that's my belief, for all these years.'

There was a question I felt it dangerous to ask, all the same I asked it. ‘What else did you hear about him?'

‘Well. He changed his name, of course. Arrived here as Lewenstein. Now goes under the name of Llewellyn and runs a large garage somewhere in the Cardiff area.'

‘And his fingernails have changed?'

‘You've got it, Progmire. Spot on. After all these long years, let him rest in peace.'

‘But you did say ...' – I took my final risk – ‘that if Dunster unearthed the true story it would be a disaster for all the family?'

Another car had driven up and the dogs were barking in a muted sort of way, as though it were a formality they had to go through even for friends. The Major was still examining the ceiling carefully. ‘Of course,' he said at last, it would have been extremely awkward for me if Dunster had told that story. After all, I knew where the German was and I never told anybody. I want your advice, Progmire. That's why I asked you here. Should I ... Should I tell them now?'