The Dead Can Wait (20 page)

When he went downstairs Sutton was in the kitchen and offered him sausages and eggs. Coyle hadn’t realized he was hungry. But the smell made his saliva flow and he asked for eggs, sausages and some bacon and black pudding if they had it. Homemade, Sutton assured him.

‘Where did the bombs fall?’ he asked the landlord.

‘On the earl’s estate, so I heard,’ was the reply.

Coyle thought of Watson, out there directly under the German bombs.

‘It’s a big piece of land,’ said Sutton, noticing his concern, ‘with a lot of trees and very few houses. I doubt there will be casualties, if that’s what you are worried about.’

‘Well, I hear they get lucky sometimes, those Zeps.’

‘Yeah. But mostly they get unlucky. Two eggs enough? And how many sausages?’

‘Two.’

‘I’ll give you three, just in case.’

Afterwards, Coyle went out to the car with his bag and, as was his habit, gave the vehicle a quick once-over. It didn’t take long to spot the pool of water under the front end. He checked the hoses and clips, but they were fine. The radiator had burst.

He went back in and explained his dilemma to Sutton. The landlord paused from enjoying his own breakfast. ‘I don’t know much about cars. What d’you need?’

‘A new radiator. Failing that, someone who can solder the radiator core.’

Sutton looked dubious. ‘If it was a horse, now, Dingle could do something at the smithy. But a radiator . . . delicate, is it?’

Coyle nodded. ‘Can’t be fixed on an anvil.’

‘That’s what I was thinking. There’s a garage in Thetford. I could send a lad over on Beezer, the horse. How big is it?’

Coyle traced the size with his hands. ‘But it’s heavy.’

‘So’s Beezer. I can get it over this morning. See what they say.’

Coyle could think of no alternative, apart from abandoning the car. And that felt disloyal. It was a good little motor.

‘If they can fix it today, I’d pay double.’

Sutton laughed. ‘Don’t tell him that. He’ll charge you four times what the job’s worth. Need a hand getting it out?’

‘No, I’ll be fine. Might need to borrow some tools. Spanners an’ screwdrivers an’ the like.’

‘There’s a shed out back. Got most things in it.’

‘Any coveralls?’

‘Aye.’

‘Put it on the bill.’

Sutton smiled. ‘I already have.’

Coyle collected the tools and the protective clothing from the shed and set about removing the radiator. He leaned over the bonnet of the Vauxhall and undid the clips holding the top and bottom hoses and the bolts that secured the radiator to the chassis. He lifted it away and inspected the damage to the honeycomb of cooling channels. There were three splits in all, two of them quite small, but the third catastrophic. It needed a proper repair.

He put the radiator down and straightened, feeling a twinge in his back. He walked out from the rear of the pub, under the arch and into the village. As he stretched and windmilled, loosening the muscles in his back, he took in the location of the pub for the first time. It sat in a small, well-tended green, between two of the four roads that radiated from the circle of grass. Opposite was a chapel, dating from the eighteenth century so the stonework proclaimed, a cluster of small shops and the village hall. Behind the pub, up the lane, was the blacksmith’s, and that was it. The rest was a collection of cottages, some clapperboard, the rest all pink stonework and climbing wisteria.

Not even a post office
, he thought, as he watched the postman arrive, parking his bike and walking his round, knocking on each door, chatting with the occupant. Coyle was about to go inside and wash his hands when he felt a familiar prickle on his neck. He automatically looked around for Harry, check he was safe. But he wasn’t.

Idiot
, he almost shouted at himself. Whatever and whoever was behind the attack on Major Watson, it was to prevent him coming here, to this part of the world. Which might mean that the people behind it were here, under his nose. Harry’s killers – perhaps not the ones who pulled the trigger, but men in the same employ – were likely to be in the vicinity.

He strode back into the pub to tell Sutton that, even if the radiator came back today, he might just be staying on for a little while, such was the charm of the village.

After breakfast, Watson took Hitchcock from his basement quarters and up to the music room, where a Blüthner piano and Mrs Gregson awaited him. The whole way he had his hands clasped over his eyes, keeping out the light. Watson guided him to the piano stool, sat him down and stood back.

‘Can you pull the curtains, Mrs Gregson?’

She swished the drapes across until the room was grey.

‘It’s darkened now,’ said Watson.

A dozen heartbeats passed before the patient took his hands away from his face. He blinked rapidly, as if the light was still too bright. Then he lowered the lid of the piano over the keys. He sat there, rigid as ever, staring straight ahead.

‘You get any sleep?’ Watson asked Mrs Gregson.

‘No thanks to you,’ she said with a sly grin. ‘It’s a long time since I saw a dawn like that. Or, indeed, any dawn. Not since . . .’

‘Since?’

Mrs Gregson turned her attention back to Hitchcock. ‘It looks as if he doesn’t want to play today, Major.’

‘Perhaps not.’ He looked around the room, with its piles of sheet music and busts of eminent composers, not to mention the view onto the garden. The air was perfumed with burning sticks, which released an aroma of oriental spices. ‘But it is a somewhat more pleasant environment for Lieutenant Hitchcock than his basement. Will you stay with him?’

‘Of course.’

‘And talk to him? You’d be surprised how many men miss the sound of a woman’s voice.’

‘Even mine, Major?’ She fluttered her eyelids like a music-hall turn.

‘Even yours, Mrs Gregson. I hope not to be too long.’

‘Are you going to tell them about what we did this morning?’

He was shocked at the thought. ‘No. None of their business.’

Outside, he found Levass waiting for him, along with one of the estate cars and a driver.

‘Good morning, Major. Lieutenant Booth sends his apologies. He is detained after last night’s bombing raid. Quite exciting, eh?’

‘You could say that,’ said Watson sourly. ‘But for four dead men.’

Levass’s face drooped. ‘Yes, of course. My apologies. Thoughtless of me. You heard it was destroyed, though? The raider.’

‘Good,’ was all Watson could offer. He didn’t want to dwell too much on men being consumed by flaming gas thousands of feet above his head. Another barbarity of a war that specialized in them.

Levass held open the door and Watson climbed into the rear of the Albion. The Frenchman slammed it shut and came around the other side.

‘Area D,’ he said to the driver.

Levass leaned back and offered Watson an Elegantes. He refused, not wanting a cigarette to spoil the taste of his breakfast.

‘Sir . . .’ Watson began.

‘You were wondering what a Frenchman is doing here on British soil? With British secrets.’

‘I was indeed,’ Watson admitted.

‘This project is being run jointly with my department in Paris. You know that inventions, they seem to come to people in clusters, as if a eureka moment strikes two, three, four, five at the same time?’

‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ admitted Watson.

‘No, forgive my English. But there are several people who claim the idea for the electric light. Yes? And the telephone. And the internal combustion engine. It is as if God beamed down the possibility of a whole new idea to be picked up in many places. Well, that has happened here. A chain of causation that led, inevitably, to our weapon. In France, in England and in America. But not, as yet, not Germany. As far as we are aware.’

‘God must truly be on our side,’ said Watson.

Levass guffawed at this, missing the sarcasm. ‘I am certain of it, Major Watson.’

God doesn’t pick sides
, Watson thought. It was highly likely that even now Germany was developing its own secret super-weapon in a setting not dissimilar to Elveden.

Levass banged on the glass screen and the driver engaged the gears. The car swung around the gardens and headed down the grand drive of Elveden Hall, before turning off onto a newly laid gravel track that cut towards a line of poplars.

They passed through them, and a wilder straggle of trees, before the road, now a dirt path, rose and they came to a small crest, where Levass instructed the driver to halt.

They were looking over an open area of what had been arable land, a space the size of a dozen rugby pitches. Watson sat up, examining the once-familiar zigzag and castellated shapes and the curlicues of barbed wire for the second time that day. It didn’t look any prettier than it had when he came here at dawn with Mrs Gregson, and the sight still made him sick to his stomach. The afterglow of breakfast was replaced by the imaginary stench of latrines and death.

‘Yes, Major. Welcome to France.’

Welcome back to hell
, he thought. Watson stepped out of the car, thankful for the breeze on his face. He knew his blood pressure had gone up: he could feel the glow on his cheeks. Ahead of him was a re-creation of the trench system that blighted Belgium and France; a series of Allied trenches, the wire, the awful no man’s land, and then the enemy trenches, complete with machine-gun nests. It was eerily deserted, no sound or sight of men.

‘It’s based on Loos,’ said Levass. ‘Your Royal Engineers oversaw the Pioneer Corps who constructed it.’

But Watson wasn’t listening. He was staring once again at the large, rhomboid, garishly painted riveted metal object at the edge of the clearing, lying at a strange angle, its front apparently having collided with the trunk of an oak, which had been pushed out of the perpendicular. Behind the machine were two wheels that looked to have been taken from a gun limber, but were twisted and smashed.

‘So that’s a land ironclad?’ he asked.

The Frenchman nodded. ‘You know H. G. Wells then? He was almost as prescient as Verne. But they are not called that – the machines have been through various names. Landships. The Wilson Machine. But now we call them tanks.’

‘Tanks?’ It seemed such a small, insignificant word for this great steel beast that had disrupted so many lives, including his own. He had expected the greatest secret of the war to have a more exotic or intimidating title.

‘Yes. A clever spy could infer what they might be from the term “landships”. “Tanks” is neutral. It confuses anyone who overhears careless talk. You see the writing on the side?’

‘HMLS
Genevieve
?’ he read. ‘What’s a HMLS?’

‘His Majesty’s Land Ship. One of Churchill’s naval ideas we haven’t yet abandoned. Now look further along.’

Watson peered. ‘It’s Cyrillic?’

‘Yes. It says “With Care to Petrograd”. Most of the workers building them think they are riveting mobile water tanks for the Russian Army.’

Watson supposed that, with its solid iron sides and riveting, it did look like a giant cistern.

‘That one’s what they call a female. Carries machine guns, rather than the male, which will carry six-pounder naval guns. When they all arrive.’

‘How many is “all”?’

‘That depends who you ask,’ said Levass.

‘How long has this been in development?’

‘The tank? Eighteen months, perhaps.’

As he had when he had first laid eyes on it in the glimmer of dawn, Watson tried to imagine such a monster actually crawling over the land. He could see the revolving treads that were designed to rotate around the periphery of the side panels and thus propel it forward, but he couldn’t quite picture it.

‘What’s it doing over there against the tree?’ Watson asked.

‘It’s where it ended up afterwards. Out of control.’

‘After what?’

‘After,’ said Levass somberly, ‘every man inside went insane.’

For the first time in many months, Watson climbed down a ladder and found himself below ground, feeling the familiar chill of excavated earth as he descended. Levass followed, slowly, citing a painful instep from his gout. As he touched the bottom Watson instinctively braced himself for the slop of liquid earth, the scrabble of rats and the smell: the all-pervading stink of putrefaction and sweat.

But there had been no slaughter here, no shells, no gas, no men living like benighted moles in dugouts for weeks on end. This ground had never shaken with a barrage or been raked with machine-gun fire that shredded sandbags and men alike. It was like a museum reconstruction of a Roman garrison or a Viking village – they could show what it looked like, but not how it smelled or felt. It was all too sanitized.

Watson waited for Levass to join him and, after Levass had poured a quantity of bicarbonate on his tongue and washed it down with water, they walked along smooth, unstained duckboards.

‘This is the quickest way to cross to the tank,’ Levass said.

Watson knew that wasn’t true. Levass wanted to show off their trenches.

‘How long have you had gout?’ he asked.

‘Five years or more. It hardly bothers me now I take the powder. Just the pressure on the insole reminds me sometimes. I had to give up riding. The stirrup, you see. That’s why I welcomed the tank so much – the iron horse, without a saddle or stirrups. So, Major, do you like our little playground?’

Watson shook his head but didn’t answer, too busy spotting omissions in the diorama. There was no fire step, no sniper positions, no saps built out into no man’s land. The genuine trenches and the cubbyholes were always full of boxes and cans, some full of ammunition, others from the last delivery of hot food or drinking water. This wasn’t a walk through a trench, it was a stroll in the park.

As he climbed up another ladder and the morning sunshine stroked his face, Watson realized that the soil was all wrong. He stood and brushed his coat; the dirt came off as a fine powder. Sand. In Belgium, from Ypres down to Plug Street and beyond, the clay-rich earth had liquefied to a stinking, gluey mud that was at times as much an enemy as the Germans.

Watson looked out across the reconstructed no man’s land, feeling horribly exposed even though he knew no German was looking at him through a telescopic sight, salivating at the thought of adding an officer to his tally. He had left it behind for good, but he was under no illusion – no man’s land lay there still, far more horrible and blasted than this construct, a ribbon of darkness meandering across the heart of Europe. If this machine could breach that desolate strip without costing the lives of hundreds for every yard gained, then it might be worth him solving this mystery after all. Perhaps Churchill had been right.