The '44 Vintage (21 page)

It was a sweet-rotten smell, not the dead-cow smell, which was foul enough, but something different and fouler which caught in the back of his throat. He breathed out carefully through his mouth, grateful that there was nothing in his stomach; it wasn’t that he hadn’t encountered this particular death-smell before—it was very much a Normandy-smell—but rather that here, beyond the killing ground, it had caught him by surprise.

“Yeah …” Winston sniffed again, crouching down behind a tree as he did so. “Which way, d’you reckon?”

“Must be somewhere ahead,” said Audley.

“Yeah …” Winston peered to the left and right, and then moved silently across the pine needles to sink down beside Audley. “Gimme the gun, Lieutenant, and I’ll go take a look.”

Audley surrendered the Sten before Butler could think of protesting, but then caught the American by the arm. “Not you, Sergeant—I’ll go.”

“Aw—come on, Lieutenant!” Winston tried to shake off the hand. “You’re the brains of the outfit.”

Butler came to a lightning decision: they were both equally unsuited to scouting, the heavily built engineer sergeant and the large dragoon subaltern, and it was high time he justified his own existence as something more than the useless walking wounded. He ran lightly across the plantation to a tree near Audley’s. “Sir”—the trick was not to give them time to argue, so he started to move again as they turned towards him—“cover me—“

The thick carpet of pine needles deadened his footfalls as he zigzagged from tree to tree, heading for the only gap he could see in the thicket ahead. Beyond the gap and in the chinks in the thicket he could see the bright sunlight unfiltered by overhanging greenery: it was like looking from a cool, shadowy room into the open, where nothing was hidden from sight.

There was a thin scatter of brambles, weak and straggling for lack of direct light, among the last trees of the plantation. Their trailing ends plucked at his battle dress, but without the encumbrance of the Sten he had both hands free to part them without making any sound. As he did so the stink of dead flesh thickened horribly around him, filling his nose and his mouth and his lungs. It seemed to grow worse with every step he took, until suddenly he knew with absolute certainty that all his care in making a silent approach to the track was unnecessary: whatever there was out there, it was long past listening to anything— nothing alive and breathing could endure to hang around within range of this smell, which begged only for the mercy of a burial detail. He would stake his stripes on that.

The sunlight lay three steps ahead of him. Only as he was in the act of taking the third, when it was really too late to draw back, did it occur to him that he was staking more than his stripes on his sense of smell.

Twenty yards down the track, half hidden in the undergrowth on the other side into which it had been driven, was a German lorry. Behind it, farther down, was another vehicle—a decrepit-looking truck—surrounded by several smashed-open ammunition boxes, and beyond that what looked like a civilian car with its touring hood half raised, its doors hanging open. Like the lorry, they had both been driven off the narrow track into the overgrown verge. The track itself stretched away beyond them, open and deserted, and so silent that he could hear the buzz of insects.

“Butler”—Audley was crouching in the shadow at the edge of the plantation—“can you see anything?”

A big dragonfly flew across the bonnet of the lorry, hovered for an instant in a flash of iridescent blue, and then set off fearlessly down the line of vehicles. Butler watched it settle on one of the splintered boxes. His eye came back to the lorry again: its windscreen was bullet-scarred. He beckoned to Audley. “It’s all clear,” he said.

Audley stepped out through the thicket into the sunlight, stared for one long moment at the abandoned vehicles, and then pushed his pistol back into its webbing holster.

Sergeant Winston appeared at his shoulder, wrinkling his nose against the smell. “Jesus! Looks like someone’s been picking off the stragglers, eh?”

Audley looked at him quickly. “The stragglers? Yes—I see … you mean the French Resistance?”

“Can’t be anyone else this far south of the river. Our patrols didn’t tangle with anyone.” Winston walked towards the lorry, pointing to its pock-marked side. “That’s sure as hell not nice, and it’s not point-fives either, so it’s not an air strike—those babies punch bigger holes than that. This is small-arms stuff did this.”

“Uh-huh?” Audley had circled warily round to the back of the truck as the American was speaking. He raised his hand towards the bullet-torn canvas flap.

“Hey, hold on, Lieutenant,” Winston cautioned him, grimacing. “The way it stinks here, maybe what’s in there’s better left alone, huh?”

“Oh … yes.” Audley stared at the flap for a moment, then dropped his hand, wiping the palm against his trousers as though the nearness to the lorry had contaminated it.

They moved on to the truck which had carried the ammunition boxes. It was a bit like a box itself, with an old-fashioned, home-made look about it which reminded Butler of the ancient vehicle which the scouts had hired to transport the troop and its equipment to the Lake District for that last camp before the war.

Winston ran a professional eye over it, shaking his head in wonderment. “Man—they sure are scraping the bottom of the barrel,” he murmured.

Audley stepped up onto the runningboard and peered into the high, open cab. There was a sudden buzzing sound and a cloud of flies rose into the air—great bloated obscene things the size of young wasps.

Audley shied away from them, jumping back onto the grass with an exclamation of disgust.

“What’s the matter?” said Winston quickly.

“Nothing.” Audley blinked and shook his head. “Just blood.”

“
Blood?
”

“Dried blood … four, five days old.” Audley went on shaking his head. “Just… it just reminded me of s-s-something, that’s all.”

Beyond the truck and the shattered boxes lay a big BMW motorcycle. Winston pounced on it eagerly.

“Now this is more like it”—he heaved the machine upright—“aw, shit—the goddamn thing’s smashed to hell!” He let it fall back into the grass. “Front fork’s snapped, handlebars twisted—like it ran smack into something.”

“Indeed?” Audley bent over the motorcycle. “Yes, I think you’re right… .” He straightened up, staring back the way they had come and then forward at the last vehicle, the civilian car. “You know there’s something funny about this little lot—something decidedly queer …”

“Funny?” Winston stared at him.

“Yes. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha.” Audley nodded, studying the line again. “I thought it was a straightforward ambush when I first saw it—took it for granted. But you know … it isn’t an ambush at all.” He shook his head emphatically. “These things were all shot up somewhere else, I think—and then they were brought here and dumped.”

Winston frowned, first at Audley, then at the vehicles, then back at Audley again. “How d’you figure that, Lieutenant?”

Audley pointed at the ground behind the ancient truck. “See the tyre tracks in the earth there?”

Butler followed the pointing finger. Weighed down by its load, the truck had pressed deeply into the verge where it had left the hard-compacted surface of the track.

“Sure, but—“

“The ground was damp when they ran it off the road.” Audley pointed back towards the lorry. “But that didn’t dig into the ground, and it’s a lot bigger and heavier than this one. And that isn’t the only thing—“ He gestured at the tyre-ruts again. “See how the grass has sprung up. That’s what I first noticed about the lorry: the way the grass and the weeds had recovered. Which means they’ve both been here for several days, maybe a week or more, as well as being parked at different times.”

Butler shifted his attention to the motorcycle. That, after all, had been what had started Audley’s detective process. So the decisive clue must be somehow connected with it, and the best way of proving his own powers of observation was to spot it before Audley had time to reveal it first.

To his joy the clue was obvious.

“But the motorbike’s only just been ditched here,” he said eagerly, pointing to the clear line of crushed grass which marked the machine’s route from the track to its last resting place. “And there’s no sign that it crashed here, either.”

Audley grinned at him. “That’s exactly it, Corporal—spot on! In fact it can’t have been here for more than a day, I’d guess.”

“Aye, sir …” Butler stared down the track. The young officer’s pleasure at his own cleverness was a bit comical—he could imagine how it might annoy his superiors and make him a figure of fun among his NCOs and troopers. The very fact that he would often be right and one step ahead of the field—as he had been in the barn the night before —would make matters worse, not better. That was what Colonel Sykes had meant when he had observed that Mr. Audley was perhaps too clever for his own good: the function of second lieutenants was not to be clever but to obey orders and lead their men and be killed. At least, that was their function in the Lancashire Rifles, as laid down by the adjutant. Those who were capable of more than that were expected to hide their light under a bushel, and that was obviously a lesson Mr. Audley hadn’t learnt.

And yet, and yet… and yet even though under the young officer’s innocent self-esteem there was also a suggestion of typical bloody-minded public-school arrogance—he hadn’t learnt that lesson because such lessons didn’t apply to him—there was a challenge. Rank meant nothing to David Audley: only the man who could outthink him was his superior officer.

“Aye.” He looked Audley in the eye. “And we’re close to the road, that means.”

The confirmation was there in Audley’s face: the recognition that Corporal Butler was something more than cannon fodder.

“What d’you mean?”

Winston started towards the civilian car. “He means nobody rode that goddamn bike here—not with a broken front fork. They pushed it.” The last sentence was delivered over his shoulder as he reached for the clips on one side of the car’s bonnet. “Which means … we’re close to the goddamn road.”

“Oh …” Audley looked chagrined. “You’re right—and I should have thought of that.”

“Hell, no! What you should have thought”—Winston threw back one half of the bonnet with a clang—“is whether I can get this thing going. Because if we’re going to catch up with those sons-of-bitches we’ve got to have wheels under us.” He glanced quickly at Butler. “Check the gas, Corporal—the tank’ll be round the back somewheres.”

On second thought maybe the American’s practical common sense was going to be of more use than Audley’s powers of deduction, decided Butler.

“Do you think you can?” said Audley excitedly. “By God—d’you think you can, Sergeant?”

“I dunno, but I’m sure as hell going to try.” Winston frowned at the engine. “It shouldn’t be too difficult … if the battery’s okay … and if there’s—now what the fuck is that, for God’s sake? Oh, I get it … yeah, I get it—the last time I tried this, Lieutenant, my pa kicked my ass so hard I couldn’t sit down for a week.”

“Indeed? And why did he do that?”

“It was his car… . But whether it works with a kraut car …”

“It’s a French car actually, I rather think.”

“Yeah? Now if there’s gas—“

Butler skipped guiltily to the rear of the car. There was the filler cap, sure enough—but how was he expected to discover whether there was any petrol in the tank?

Winston lifted his head out of the engine. “Any luck?”

There was a strong smell of petrol, in as far as any other smell could be called strong in the presence of the one from the back of the lorry.

“There’s petrol in the tank,” he said hopefully. “I can smell it.”

“Yeah … there’s petrol this end. But whether there’s more than a smell …” Winston looked at Audley. “So we give it a try, Lieutenant?”

Audley shrugged. ‘What have we got to lose?”

Winston smiled, his ugly face suddenly transformed, even though it was a rueful smile. ‘Well, I guess if you don’t know then it’s too late to tell you. But … okay—here we go!”

Butler crossed his fingers. He didn’t know what Winston meant, but he knew that Americans were wizards with machines.

The engine whirred—coughed—whirred again, coughed again, fell silent. Hope faded.

“It’s no good?” said Audley.

“Hell no! One more try and I think we’re there—“

“
No
!” said a new voice behind them.

For a fraction of a second Butler was aware that all three of them had frozen, Winston with the wires he had loosened in his hands, Audley and himself foolishly gawping into the engine at the magic the American was about to perform. It flashed through his mind that they had been behaving as though they were the last three people in the world, with all thoughts of caution blotted out by the prospect of pursuing the major. They had been caught as defenceless as babes-in-arms —babes without arms.

He turned round slowly.

Dreh dich langsam un—?

“
Nous sommes des amis
,” said Audley. “
Je suis un officier anglais
.”

There was not one, but three men facing them—and now a fourth stepped out of the bushes farther down the track, to cover them with a machine pistol.

“That I can see—fortunately for you.” The speaker was a slightly built man wearing a pale grey double-breasted suit which looked too big for him. He carried no weapon, but in the circumstances he didn’t need to: the men standing on either side of him were armed to the teeth, cross-bandoleered complete with German stick grenades in their belts. And somehow the cloth caps which they wore made them even more dangerous-looking: Butler had the strange feeling that they were his enemies no less than the Germans—that they were primed and ready to shoot down anything in uniform, grey or khaki or olive drab. All it needed was one word from the little man in the double-breasted suit.

The Frenchman’s eyes flicked over them, lingering momentarily on Audley’s black beret and on Sergeant Winston. Finally he came back to Audley.