The Dead Can Wait (26 page)

While he was waiting for it to rattle its way to the usual running temperature he lit a Woodbine. What was the next move open to him? He had to get his mother out of harm’s way. Because he knew what their next ploy would be. They would get a message to him telling him they had his ma. That she was safe and well – for the moment. And would stay that way, if he turned himself in to stand before a tribunal. A fair hearing, they would say. And they’d give him that before they shot him in a ditch, making sure it was in the face so as to deprive his mother even the comfort of an open coffin. Well, he imagined there was at least one of the Daly brothers who had been denied that privilege too. Only fair. An eye for an eye, literally.

Coyle gave the repair the once-over and, satisfied, turned off the engine. It would get him back to London. Then a train to Liverpool and a boat back home. Would they be waiting for him? Probably. But he had learned a few tricks over the past few years. Gibson had been very adept at changing his appearance. He had used Salvatore, an Italian barber in Clerkenwell, who could transform a man with a fresh haircut, a trim of the moustache, some hair dye if required. It would be worth what he charged.

Coyle closed the car door and walked through the archway to enter the pub. He would tell the landlord he was leaving and settle his bill, maybe have a pint and a pie to see him on his way. But what he saw as he approached the entrance to the public bar stopped him in his tracks.

Swinton and Booth were the first to arrive for drinks, which had been scheduled before another informal dinner to discuss the new timetable for deployment of the tanks. They were to be joined by Cardew, Thwaites, Levass and Major Watson. Swinton poured them each a stiff gin from the bottles on the side table.

‘What do you think?’ he asked the intelligence officer. ‘Is it feasible? This new deployment date?’

‘I’m not sure, sir . . .’ Booth began.

‘I think it is.’ It was Cardew, the engineer, dressed for dinner in what passed for the modern way in some quarters: a smart dark blue lounge suit with a collar and tie. ‘Although we will have to work day and night. One team to bolt on the sponsons by night, the crews to train on the tanks during the day, first on the statics, then on the fully equipped ones. We’ll need a very strict timetable if—’

He stopped when he heard approaching laughter and Levass and Thwaites entered. Both men had slight flushes on their cheeks, as if they had started proceedings early.

‘You’ve heard, I suppose?’ Swinton asked them.

‘Heard what?’ asked Thwaites.

‘The tanks deploy in France on September the 1st.’

‘Whose idea was this foolishness?’ demanded Levass, his mood changing in a heartbeat.

‘Haig’s, I would imagine,’ replied Swinton. The commander-in-chief had sent some of his staff from France to watch early tank tests at Hatfield. They had all been most impressed by how the machines crushed or turned aside the barbed wire. ‘Like a rhinoceros,’ one officer had reported. A very slow rhinoceros. ‘Haig and Robertson, his chief of staff, have been lobbying Lloyd George to unleash the tanks as soon as feasible.’

‘To save their faces from the Somme débâcle,’ said Levass glumly.

‘I think you’ll find,’ said Thwaites slowly, not wanting to take that slight from a foreigner, ‘that the whole débâcle was designed to take some pressure off the French. Those Tommies died so that you could regroup.’

Levass nodded his acceptance of that point.

‘And,’ said Swinton, ‘Haig has the backing of Montagu at the Ministry of Munitions. Operation Puddleduck has become Operation Muddleduck.’

‘How many tanks can you deploy in September?’ Levass asked.

‘A hundred or so,’ said Cardew. ‘But not many more. And the crews will be novices. Absolute novices.’

‘And if we waited until the New Year?’

‘Five hundred, perhaps a thousand. More if we had the French ones.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘Imagine that.’

Levass groaned. ‘I can, Cardew. Why, gentlemen, should we use a new weapon at the very end of the fighting season, when the enemy will have time—’

Thwaites interrupted. ‘Well, I for one will be pleased when we can stop skulking around and get some serious discussion about who, exactly, should be in charge of these iron horses.’

Cardew smiled. Thwaites liked to use the term to try to claim dominion for the cavalry over the new steel beasts. Cardew was of the opinion a whole new section was required, a Tank Corps, which could sweep away old horse-bound traditions and start anew. But as a mere civilian, he knew better than to voice opinions about any of the armed services in such company.

‘I will have to inform my department that the deployment of your tanks with ours looks . . . unlikely,’ said Levass. He crossed over and began mixing drinks for himself and Thwaites. ‘I shall send people to the testing ground at the Renault factory and try and whip them along. But . . .’ He shrugged at the hopelessness of the situation.

‘Thank you.’ Cardew accepted a gin and tonic from Swinton. ‘But we really must make sure we solve the mystery of those deaths. Just for morale’s sake. I have repaired the tank’s engine. It runs beautifully.’

‘And you had no ill effects?’ asked Booth.

Cardew shook his head. ‘I kept the front visor and the sponson doors open. But
Genevieve
is ready for the test. I told you a few days, I believe,’ he said to Booth. ‘But it can run tomorrow.’

‘Good. Our Major Watson, he seems to think he is on to something,’ said Levass. ‘We shall see how
Genevieve
performs in the morning.’

‘You’ll stay for that?’ asked Swinton of the Frenchman.

A firm nod. ‘I must. If it happens again . . .’

They all stared into their drinks, contemplating the consequences of losing another crew.

‘Good. You, too, Booth. I want you on site,’ said Swinton.

‘Me?’

‘All hands on deck. Or, in some cases, in the landship.’

Booth looked crestfallen. He threw his drink back. ‘If you’d excuse me, gentlemen, I’ll have to change my schedule. I shan’t be too long, but please start without me.’ He nodded to each man in turn and left the room, boots ringing on the tiles.

A mournful clock tolled the half-hour, followed by the echo of the gong.

‘I say,’ said Swinton, realizing they were now two men short and dinner was fast approaching, ‘does anyone know where Major Watson is?’

Watson groped around in the darkness towards where he had left his bag, careful not to stumble over the trio of bodies or trip on the winding sheets. It wasn’t, he appreciated after a few moments, total blackness in the subterranean rooms. Up top were airbricks that scattered a pattern of stripes, ellipses and circles, thrown by the dying light outside, and there was a round airshaft in the centre of the coned ceiling of the ice room.

‘What are you doing?’ Mrs Gregson hissed, her voice thick with fright.

He tried to keep his own steady. It took all his willpower.
Just the cold,
he told himself. ‘I have a torch in my bag, if I can just . . .’

She heard him rattling around in boxes, bottles of pills and various instruments before he gave a small cry of victory. ‘Here we are.’

The beam was yellow and ovoid, even at maximum adjustment. The Opalite Medi was designed for testing pupil reflex and peering into body cavities, not lighting up cellars. Still, they followed it, as if pursuing a dancing insect, out of the room and towards the steps that led out of the ice house. Mrs Gregson had only a light gabardine mackintosh over her uniform, and she was already shivering. Her teeth did a little castanet chatter before she clamped her jaw shut.

‘Would you like my coat?’ Watson asked.

‘I’m fine. You are making rather a habit of this, Major.’ This was accompanied by a hollow laugh.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, as he shone the light up at the closed doors.

‘The stables in Belgium.’

He remembered being locked in with a horse while chlorine gas poured under the doors. He had been very lucky to survive unscathed. The poor horse hadn’t. ‘You were on the outside then.’

‘I think I preferred that arrangement.’ It came out as a sob towards the end and he stepped in closer. ‘No. Just get us out of here, please. I have a rather unpleasant feeling about this.’

‘It could be an accident,’ he offered, but neither of really them believed that.

Watson moved up the steps and inspected the doors. As he suspected, they had been bolted from the outside. He banged a fist on one of them and shouted, but it felt like the space behind him simply gulped away the sound.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ll just have to wait.’

‘For what?’

‘People know I’m here.’

‘Who?’ she asked.

‘Thwaites, for certain. He was in my room when I examined the files and I told him I had to look at the bodies. And I cleared it with Booth. One of them will be along soon enough. Dinner is in half an hour or so. I’ll be missed.’

Mrs Gregson made a strange noise in her throat. It was, he realized, a doubting sound.

‘What?’

‘Surely whoever knows you were here could be the one who locked the door in the first place.’

She’s right, you know
.

‘Not now, not now,’ Watson muttered.

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing. Just that you could be right,’ he conceded. ‘Still, at least there is no gas this time.’

He had barely finished speaking when, from somewhere deep below came the sound of rusty metal breaking free of its resting place, the grind of ancient gearing, and the sudden rush of water. The temperature around them dropped within seconds as a prolonged gurgling came from the main ice storage room.

They were being flooded.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Coyle knew his memory for faces did not match that of Gibson: he had been able to recall a fleeting profile in a crowd from five years ago. But Coyle’s abilities were good enough for him to be certain that the man he had seen walk into the off-sales section of The Plough – which he knew simply led into the public bar – was someone he had seen before, across an interview table. He told himself this as he fetched his pistol from the rear of the car, placed it on the front seat within easy reach, and waited for the man to come out.

A Dutchman, he recalled, although no name came along with that piece of retrieved information. He and Gibson had spent a long time looking at foreign nationals through late 1914 and early 1915, paying the more suspect ones a visit. The latter group often included arrivals from the Netherlands and Sweden. They were neutral but it was relatively easy for a German to pass as a native of those countries. Then there was South Africa; again, an Afrikaans accent could mask a spy’s imperfect English.

But no, this blond fellow had definitely been Dutch. Was a journalist of some description . . . no, a
newsreel
man. So what was he doing lurking on the edge of one of the most sensitive areas in the whole of the United Kingdom? As he thought about it, Coyle felt his thumbs prickle. He recalled the last time that had happened, out on the street just before Gibson had died.

Five minutes passed, the length of half a cheap cigarette. A few locals went into the pub – elderly labourers mostly, and a woman bent and gnarled by the fields – all using the entrance a few feet along from the one the Dutchman had taken. Two rather better-dressed men emerged from the lounge bar and looked him up and down. One raised his bowler in greeting.
What
, he thought,
if the
Dutchman has gone out of a rear entrance?
There was one, he knew.

Coyle reached into the front of the car for his gun, thrust the pistol into his belt and buttoned up his jacket. He needed to check. A dozen long paces took him to the door. He pushed inside and slowed, giving himself time to take in the faces that turned towards him. Yellow smoke glazed the air and the boards were sticky under his feet. The patrons were either sitting at tables around the edge or, mostly, standing in clumps before him, pints resting on enormous beer casks. The drinkers smelled of sweat and rough cloth, with notes of wet dog and fresh sawdust.

The Dutchman was over at the bar, close to the small section reserved for off-sales – by law it should have been partitioned off, but most country pubs paid less than lip service to such regulations. The man had a pint in his hand, a bottle of brandy on the bar in front of him, and was laughing at something Fred Sutton had said.

Coyle pushed his way through the crowd, his eyes fixed on the Dutchman, who seemed oblivious to him. He used his left hand to flick the single button on his jacket undone, just in case. The coat flapped open.
But there will be no trouble
, he told himself.
Just a few questions
.

So why were his thumbs screaming that this was something altogether different?

It was Sutton who caused the balloon to go up. His eyes locked onto Coyle coming though the crowd and he raised a hand. ‘All done, Mr Coyle?’

The Dutchman swivelled his head, froth lying on his upper lip like cuckoo spit. His eyes widened when he saw Coyle, who could almost hear the cogs turning in the man’s brain as he, too, tried to place the face of the man bearing down on him.

Coyle barged a drinker’s elbow as he passed by. Beer slopped and he half heard a grunt of protest. The man grabbed Coyle’s sleeve. It was his gun arm.

His quarry saw the pistol in Coyle’s belt as the jacket yawned open. He slammed the pint down on the counter and reached for his own weapon.

Coyle used his left hand to push the aggrieved drinker back into his friends. He knew what the movement of the Dutchman – Alberts, that was it, Dirk Alberts – meant. But Coyle had been slowed, knocked slightly off balance by the sleeve-grabber. The Dutchman had an automatic in his hand. The landlord was shouting in his ear, reaching for him, but he was ignored. The weapon boomed, the sound bouncing off the low ceiling, deafening all in the room.

Coyle felt himself pushed backwards, bodies falling onto him as he went – diving for cover or wounded, he wasn’t sure – but the breath came out of him in a great roar like an eruption. There was a second shot, and he was aware of a pain across his shoulders and someone leaping over the mass of men on the floor.