The First Casualty

by Ben Elton

  ‘What sort of soldier doesn’t have a gun?’ George enquired. ‘A rather poor one, I suppose,’ Shannon answered. Agnes rang for the maid and asked her to take George to his nanny. When the boy had gone she took a moment to collect herself.

  ‘I’m sorry, Captain Shannon. Forgive me, but there must be some mistake. My husband is in prison.’

  Shannon reached across the tea things and patted her hand. He was a strikingly handsome man with what seemed to be a genuinely sympathetic manner.

  ‘No, he’s not, Mrs Beaumont. He’s dead. Shot while trying to escape. I’m so very sorry that on top of all your trouble you should be burdened with this.’

  For a moment it seemed almost as if Agnes’s distress would overwhelm her, but then she looked puzzled.

  ‘Why…why have you come with this news, Captain? Why is this an army matter? Douglas had nothing to do with the army. That’s why he was in prison.’

  ‘I’m with, well…I’m with what you might call intelligence. Whilst in prison your husband was contacted by Irish nationalists. We do not believe he told them anything but we had to look into it. I was on my way to the prison to interview him when he attempted to escape. In his way your husband was a brave man; personally I admired him. I volunteered to bring you the news immediately since it will without doubt be in the evening newspapers.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain. Thank you for that.’

  Once more Captain Shannon patted her hand.

  ‘Thank you, Captain,’ she repeated.

  ‘If there is ever anything I can do…anything at all.’

  Agnes stood up.

  ‘I think that George and I shall manage very well together, Captain. And I have my father.’

  ‘Of course.’ Captain Shannon rose to leave. ‘Well, goodbye, Mrs Beaumont.’

  ‘Mrs Kingsley, I think, Captain,’ Agnes replied.

  TWENTY-TWO

  A journey to Folkestone

  ‘Shot dead while escaping. Not many men have taken that route out of Wormwood Scrubs.’

  ‘Yes. And still fewer have been shot dead while escaping and survived.’

  Once more Kingsley found himself listening to disembodied voices whilst he lay wounded, although this time he was not in a strange bed but in a motor car, a big one, and well upholstered — perhaps a Daimler, he thought, or a Roller, judging by the leathery smell and the big, heavy, dependable sound of the engine. Kingsley’s head ached more than he would have imagined it possible for a head to ache, and the bumpy movement of the car made him feel sick. Nonetheless he was clearly alive, which, considering what he remembered of events when last he had been conscious, seemed to him a considerable bonus.

  ‘Exceptionally brave fellow,’ the first voice said. This voice came from his right, and it appeared to Kingsley that it belonged to an older man. ‘To stand there and face it like he did.’

  ‘I don’t know so much about brave,’ the man on Kingsley’s left argued. ‘Intelligent certainly, intelligent enough to see that he was done for. He could either run or stand, same result both ways. Bang. Cheerio. Ta-ta. Goodbyeee. He knew that. Less trouble to stand, I’d say. Is that courage? I don’t know. Does a dog that gets hit by a stick show courage?’

  ‘Well, I hope I show as much bravery if ever I find myself facing a pistol at point-blank range.’

  Kingsley wanted water desperately but decided that he would not yet alert the speakers to the fact that he was awake. Something very strange was occurring and Kingsley thought he might learn more if the men were not aware that he was listening. ‘Poor fellow had a hell of a night, eh?’ the man on Kingsley’s right said. ‘How long do they say before he’ll be operational?’

  ‘Well, the good news is Castle says his ribs aren’t broken after all, despite what the prison sawbones said. So it looks like we’ll be able to get him to the front far sooner than we’d feared.’

  ‘Not bad for a dead man, eh, Shannon?’

  ‘Yes, not bad at all,’ the man called Shannon replied. He had a more brutal, arrogant tone than the older man, a tone that Kingsley did not much like.

  ‘We won’t know for sure, of course, until a decent doctor’s taken a look at him but I must say he seemed pretty fit to me.’

  Kingsley attempted to take stock. Who were these people? How had he come to be in their car? What could they possibly want?

  He considered their voices.

  He had heard voices like theirs many times before. Languid, relaxed voices, effortlessly confident and commanding. Kingsley had been listening to these voices all his life, voices that simply assumed the authority which men who spoke in different accents had to earn. Kingsley remembered those voices from his youth, when his grammar school rugby team had faced one of the nearby public schools. When some progressive-minded headmaster from Harrow or Winchester had thought it proper that his boys should mix briefly with the sons of the next class down. Kingsley and his friends had to hide their jealousy as a horse-drawn charabanc arrived from the station full of adolescent boys who spoke as if they owned the country. Which of course they did, or would do when their papas died.

  So, these men who had taken possession of him were upper class and English.

  What else could he discover? The back of Kingsley’s hand was resting against the older man’s trouser leg. Kingsley struggled to discover what type of cloth it might be. The back of the hand is not a sensitive instrument of touch, particularly if the owner is fearful to move it, but Kingsley thought that the material was thick and roughish. This was not the sort of fabric that would normally be used to make the trousers of men who spoke in voices such as the ones he had been listening to. Unless, of course, the material was khaki…And they had spoken earlier about getting him to the front.

  Had he been kidnapped by the army? It was an extraordinary thought.

  ‘Do you think he’ll cooperate?’ the older man was saying.

  ‘Oh yes, I think so,’ Shannon said. ‘After all, what choice does he have? He’s dead already, or so the world believes. Nothing to stop us popping him off for real, after the fact, so to speak.’

  Kingsley struggled to make sense of what they were saying. There was something that these arrogant, supercilious men wanted him to do. Somehow they had spirited him from gaol by faking his death and now they were casually discussing killing him in earnest if he refused to cooperate with them.

  ‘I think that Inspector Kingsley will weigh all the options, apply his famous logic, add a dash of that derring-do for which he has also been so rightly celebrated and come round to our way of thinking. What do you say, Inspector? Am I right?’

  It was a shock but Kingsley managed not to flinch. Was it a trick? Or did Shannon really know that he was conscious?

  ‘Inspector, I have been listening to your breathing. I considered it before you regained consciousness and I am considering it now. I asked if you thought that you might come round to our way of thinking.’

  Kingsley attempted to open his eyes but realized that there were bandages across them. For a moment he feared that his eyes had been damaged when they shot him. But they did not feel damaged. It seemed more likely that he had simply been blindfolded.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea what your way of thinking is,’ he whispered. ‘But if you are the man who shot me in the head with something that did not kill me and has left me wishing I was dead then you are clearly mad. So no, sir, I doubt that I shall come round to your way of thinking.’

  ‘That’s a shame. It was a bullet made of rubber, by the way. I constructed it myself actually, tested it on stray dogs. Killed three before I got the consistency right. Wanted something that would lay you out, bust the skin enough to look convincing to a casual onlooker but leave you fit to fight another day. Worked a treat, though I hate to crow. You went down like a sack of coal, all the guards saw it happen, that appalling old drunkard they use for a doctor pronounced you dead on my say-so and here you are. A dead man with a splitting headache.’

  ‘Why?’


  ‘We need you.’

  ‘Why do you need me?’

  ‘All in good time.’

  ‘Does the world think that I am dead?’

  ‘My dear fellow, what on earth would have been the point of constructing such an elaborate fiction if we were not to make it public? Of course the world thinks you are dead. You were shot while trying to escape from prison.’

  ‘And you arranged for that escape?’

  ‘Ah-ha, the penny drops.’

  Now Kingsley understood the reason behind the ridiculously easy manner in which he had made his way through the prison.

  ‘Are you the SIS? The Secret Intelligence Service? ‘

  ‘Not supposed to talk about that sort of thing, old boy…’

  ‘Kell’s men or Cumming’s?’ Kingsley insisted, and for the first time Shannon seemed to lose the tiniest degree of his irritating sangfroid.

  ‘I must say you are well versed, Inspector.’

  ‘Not really. Your secret service isn’t as secret as all that, you know. An awful lot of chattering goes on in the pubs and clubs around Whitehall.’

  ‘Well then, Cumming’s,’ Shannon conceded, whereby Kingsley knew that he was dealing with the foreign section of military intelligence. This confused him even more. He had assumed that anything they might want from him would involve domestic counter-intelligence. He was after all a policeman, not a soldier.

  ‘Then you have gone to a great deal of trouble for nothing, Mr Shannon,’ Kingsley said, ‘for I will not be a part of this war. Not in any capacity, secret or otherwise.’

  ‘Well. We shall see, eh? Discuss it tomorrow when you feel a little better, eh?’

  ‘I shall not join your war.’

  ‘We do not intend to ask you to. Not join it, just trot along beside it for a few days.’

  ‘Does my wife believe that I am dead?’

  ‘Of course. She was the first person we told. There is a proper process to these things, you know. We’re not without human decency, old boy.’

  ‘Damn you!’

  ‘Well, there’s gratitude.’

  ‘And my son?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about him. He’s four, isn’t he? Good time to lose a father, hasn’t had the chance to get too attached. Besides, it only puts him in common with thousands of other little boys across the country, doesn’t it? Good heavens, there’s precious few lads about the place these days who haven’t lost their father. He’d have felt quite the odd one out with you above ground.’

  Kingsley struggled to master his emotions.

  ‘Sir,’ he said finally, ‘I do not like your tone. You have clearly preserved my life for a purpose, please do not make the mistake of thinking I am grateful.’

  ‘What on earth makes you think I’d value the gratitude of a malingering, traitorous toad like you, Kingsley? Quite frankly, you make my skin crawl. Agnes Beaumont could have done so much better. Perhaps she will.’

  ‘Don’t you dare mention my — ’

  ‘Oh, do put a sock in it, you two,’ the older man interrupted. ‘We’ve miles to go and I can’t stand bickering.’ After that none of them spoke and soon the older man could be heard snoring. Then, despite his racing mind and his anguish at the thought of his family being so deceived, Kingsley himself fell into a fitful sleep.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Expressions of sympathy

  Agnes Kingsley knew that she would not sleep that night.

  For months the silver tray upon which were deposited the cards and notes that had once arrived throughout the day had lain empty. Now, in a bleak pantomime of the life she had once led, the tray was full again. Today, however, the cards were black-edged and the notes contained no jolly invitations to parties and soirées as of yore when the Kingsleys had been a fine catch for any hostess; now the cards carried no more than brusque expressions of sympathy. Curt and cold. The London in which the Kingsleys had once moved observed the niceties — there was, after all, a code — but the disgraced family remained unforgiven.

  That was not why Agnes wept. Once, she had thought that the niceties mattered but now she recognized that they did not. She shed no tears that day for her loss of standing or for the indifference of people she had thought of as friends. Instead she wept for her son, whom she had just told that his daddy had gone to heaven. And she wept for herself and for the loss of her husband. She had believed him lost to her months before but this day’s news had taught her that in her heart she had not truly lost him at all.

  Until now.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Captain Shannon

  Perhaps they had drugged him or perhaps it was just the physical and emotional exhaustion but Kingsley did not recall any more of that confusing car journey or indeed its end, and when he finally awoke once again he found himself in yet another strange bed. How many more times, he wondered, was he to regain consciousness in a new and unfamiliar environment? This one at least was considerably more comfortable than the previous ones. The linen was crisp and the room smelt very clean.

  ‘Why don’t you try opening your eyes?’ said the voice which Kingsley remembered as Shannon’s. ‘We’ve removed the bandages.’

  Slowly Kingsley opened his eyes. The light that smashed brutally into his retinas seemed to redouble the pain in his head.

  ‘Where am I?’ he asked.

  ‘In a safe house.’

  ‘As I came to I heard ships. The window is open and I smell salt on the breeze. Have you taken me to France?’

  Shannon laughed.

  ‘No, no. But we are by the sea. At Folkestone.’

  ‘Ah, Folkestone.’

  Kingsley knew, as any well-connected police officer might know, that much of the apparatus of British military intelligence was centred at Folkestone — as, indeed, were the secret operations of a number of the Allied powers, the French, of course, but also the Belgians and, it was rumoured, the Russians, although whether the tottering Kerensky government was still sufficiently in control to consider spying on its western allies was highly dubious.

  Now that his eyes had adjusted he was able to look at the man who had taken him prisoner. He had known in the car that Shannon was the younger of his two captors but he had not expected him to be quite so young. He could scarcely have been more than twenty-five. It was the voice which was deceptive. That effortless public-school tone scarcely changed in a man from twenty to sixty.

  ‘You’re young to be a captain,’ Kingsley said.

  ‘Young man’s war, this,’ Shannon said cheerily. ‘Not many fellows get a chance to grow old.’

  Kingsley got straight to the point.

  ‘I don’t know what you want, Captain, but whatever it is, you have come to the wrong place. I have told you that I will not work for your war. I also told you that I suspect you have gone to a great deal of trouble for nothing.’

  ‘Look here, why don’t you get up, have a bath and then we can have lunch, eh? I expect you could use a walk?’

  Kingsley had longed for a bath, and for some fresh air. ‘Actually, I should like a walk very much, particularly as I suspect you will shortly be returning me to Wormwood Scrubs.’

  ‘Can’t do that, you’re dead. They’re going to bury you this morning, confines of the prison and all that. Something of a disgrace, I fear. Your wife has declined to attend. Good thing really, considering they’re burying a coffin full of sand.’

  ‘You find it easy to be flippant about the ruination of a man’s life, don’t you?’

  Shannon smiled.

  ‘As a matter of fact I do, old boy. A few whiffs of gas plus a dead comrade or ten and a fellow quickly learns not to give a damn about very much at all. Besides which, I didn’t ruin your life, Inspector. You ruined it, by being such a pompous prig. We just brought a sequence of unfortunate events to a neat conclusion. I thought we might eat down on the seafront. There are one or two quite good hotels.’

  ‘Aren’t you fearful that I will be recognized? I may not be Lord Kitchener but I have b
een in the newspapers. Being dead, I should hate to give an old lady a heart attack.’

  ‘Oh, I think you’ll be fine, old boy. That beard of yours is coming along nicely, you have a bandaged forehead and I brought you these.’

  He handed Kingsley a pair of thick, horn-rimmed spectacles. Kingsley’s eyesight was excellent but these were fitted with clear glass.

  ‘You were a dapper sort of cove, weren’t you?’ Shannon continued. ‘I’m afraid that the Secret Service doesn’t run to much of a costume budget. When you’ve bathed you can put these on.’

  The clothes that he gave to Kingsley were not remotely of the standard that he was accustomed to. Shannon was right in that Kingsley had always been rather elegant in his dress and would never have dreamed of wearing the shabby tweed suit that was now presented to him.

  Having washed and dressed, he surveyed himself in the mirror. It was true, he was extremely unlikely to be recognized. He could scarcely recognize himself in the dowdy, bearded, bespectacled fellow who stared back at him and he was fairly confident that nobody else would either.

  Thus emboldened, he and Shannon walked out together.

  It had not been much of a summer and despite the fact that it was still August, what summer there had been was almost gone. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a bad day for a stroll, particularly viewed from the perspective of a man recently sprung from prison. The air was chilly but the skies were blue. The sun shone, it was bracing and Kingsley realized how much he’d missed the open air.

  Together he and Captain Shannon strolled along the Promenade. Shannon turned many female heads as they went, looking splendid in his uniform, with his medal ribbon, his swagger stick, his polished Sam Browne belt and riding boots. He sported a small, rakish Douglas Fairbanks moustache and impeccably brilliantined hair, on which his cap was perched at a jaunty angle. He had bought a toffee-covered apple from a stall and was munching it ostentatiously as he strolled along. In Kingsley’s view, Captain Shannon was a cocky, showy bastard but not a man to be underestimated. Beneath that smooth exterior Kingsley sensed the soul of a violent man.