Blackstone and the Great War
( Inspector Sam Blackstone - 3 )
Sally Spencer
Sally Spencer
Blackstone and the Great War
ONE
The troop ship docked in Calais just after darkness had fallen, and the passengers were quickly disembarked and herded, in a ragged column, towards the nearby railway station.
Once they caught sight of the train which would take them to the railhead, some of the young soldiers put on a spurt, so they would have their choice of seats, but Sam Blackstone did not follow their example. Like the old campaigner he was, he took his time, knowing that, even at this stage of the game, it was foolish to expend energy when there was no need to.
The train smelled of damp, sweat and general neglect, but considering that most newly arrived enlisted men were transported to the front line in cattle wagons, Blackstone thought, even a dilapidated third-class carriage was an unexpected luxury.
Not that unexpected luxury should be taken as a sign of things to come, he mused, as he walked along the corridor. In the eyes of the military command, ordinary soldiers were, and always had been cattle — brave, well-disciplined cattle, it was true, but cattle nonetheless. And if, on this particular occasion, they were being treated with a little more dignity than usual, that was probably because the authorities had, with typical inefficiency, failed to secure the kind of transportation that they would normally have used.
When he found a seat at the end of the train, the carriage was already occupied by seven young men.
No, not young men at all, he corrected himself, as he sat down.
They were boys!
As the train lurched, and then slowly chugged out of the station, Blackstone ran a professional policeman’s eye over his travelling companions.
The boy sitting directly opposite him was a prime example of an East End hooligan, he noted. The lad was neither broad nor tall — the diet of the poor rarely fostered such growth — but he had the hard, knotted muscles of someone who had been introduced to physical labour at an early age. His head was bullet-shaped, and looked too small for his body. He had narrow eyes, a jagged scar ran down one cheek, and his teeth — already rotting — would be all but gone by the time he had reached his mid-twenties.
Blackstone had noticed the boy twice before. The first time had been at Dover, where he had been strutting up and down as if he owned the place. The second time had been on the ship, and by then the lad had lost his self-assurance and was leaning over the side, spewing his guts up. Now, on their third meeting, on dry land again, he seemed to have regained his cockiness.
‘Course, the Huns have had it easy so far,’ the boy was telling the lad next to him. ‘Up to now, you see, they’ve only had to deal with professional soldiers, and you know what they’re like, don’t you?’
‘No, what are they like, Mick?’ his friend asked.
‘Time servers,’ the boy said confidently. ‘The thing about them is, you see, they joined the army because they didn’t have nothing better to do with their time, and now they’ve found themselves caught up in war, they’re playing it safe and keeping their heads down.’
Idiot! Blackstone thought.
The boy was like so many young men who came from the Whitechapel area. He thought he was tough, and no doubt he was handy enough with a fist in a drunken Saturday night fight at his local boozer. But he had no idea — no real idea at all — of what war was actually like.
‘Yes, you’ll see,’ Mick continued. ‘Once the Huns find themselves up against lads with something about them — lads with a spirit of adventure — they’ll all turn tail and run for home.’
There’d been eager young recruits just like him in the Afghan Campaign — Flash Harrys who weren’t going to be intimidated by a little brown man who lived in a mud hut and carried an ancient rifle. Oh yes, there’d been more than enough of them — and all their arrogance had gained them had been unmarked graves, thousands of miles from home.
Mick stopped talking to his friend and turned his gaze — suddenly full of hostility — onto Blackstone.
‘Have you got a problem, Grandad?’ he asked aggressively.
‘No problem at all,’ Blackstone replied evenly.
‘Don’t lie to me, you old bag of bones,’ the youth said. His expression changed, now more puzzled than angry — though the anger was still there. ‘What are you doing on this train, anyway?’ he continued. ‘Why are you filling a seat with your rotting carcass when it could have been taken by a fighting hero?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Blackstone said.
But it wasn’t — it was a very short story, which hadn’t even begun to be written three days earlier.
As he had walked up the long, elm-lined drive to Hartley House — an impressive ancestral pile which could probably date its origins back to the days when Good Queen Bess was still a girl — Blackstone had found himself wondering, not for the first time that day, why General Sir Michael Fortesque VC, who he had not seen for over thirty years, should have summoned him.
It was true that Fortesque and he had been close comrades in Afghanistan — or, at least, as close as an orphanage-raised sergeant and an Eton-educated captain ever could be — but the Second Afghan War was now long consigned to the history books, and it seemed unlikely that Fortesque should suddenly have felt the need to reminisce with one of the poor bloody infantry.
He had almost reached the front entrance when a footman, dressed in full livery, suddenly appeared and blocked his path.
‘Yes?’ the footman said, running his eyes disdainfully up and down the visitor’s second-hand suit.
‘I have an appointment with the General,’ Blackstone replied.
The footman sniffed. ‘You’re the inspector from Scotland Yard?’ he asked, incredulously.
‘That’s right.’
The other man turned the idea over in his mind for a few moments, and then seemed to decide that — however amazing it might be — Blackstone really was what he claimed.
‘The servants’ and tradesmen’s entrance is around the side of the house,’ the footman said curtly. ‘Follow me.’
‘I think I’d prefer to enter the house through the front door,’ Blackstone told him.
The footman sniffed again. ‘That’s out of the question.’
‘Is it?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Of course it is.’
‘I see,’ Blackstone said, then he turned smartly and began to walk back the way he had come. ‘Please be so kind as to tell the General I called.’
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ the footman demanded, in a tone which was both annoyed and incredulous.
‘To the railway station,’ Blackstone said, over his shoulder. ‘It’s where you have to go, if you want to catch a train.’
‘But the master is expecting you.’
‘I know.’
‘Wait!’ the footman shouted, and now, as Blackstone widened the distance between them, there was a note of panic in his voice.
Blackstone stopped and turned again. ‘Yes?’
The footman swallowed hard.
‘If you’d care to follow me, sir, I’ll conduct you to the front door,’ he said, forcing each word out of his mouth with considerable effort.
‘That would be most kind of you,’ Blackstone said graciously.
A large and ornate mirror hung in the corridor outside General Fortesque’s study, and though Blackstone rarely took the opportunity to examine his own appearance, he did so now.
The man who stared back at him bore a superficial resemblance to the man he thought himself to be. Both were tall (over six feet) and had tight, sinewy bodies. Both h
ad large noses, which could have been Middle Eastern, but weren’t. Yet the man looking out of the mirror seemed older than the man who was looking into it. He seemed, in fact, to have reached that point in middle age in which he was teetering on the edge of being old.
Blackstone shook his head, as if, with that one gesture, he could also shake off his little remaining vanity. He had never expected to reach his middle fifties, he reminded himself. Nor had he particularly wanted to, because the older a man got, the longer the shadow of the workhouse became. But he had survived — despite Afghanistan, despite the hazards of working in the Metropolitan Police and the New York Police Department — and so, he supposed, he was stuck with life and might as well make the most out of it that he could.
The study door opened, and the butler appeared.
‘Sir Michael will see you now,’ he said, in the deep booming voice of an Old Testament prophet.
The room overlooked the driveway, and the General was sitting in his bath chair by the window. When the butler had turned the chair around, Blackstone could see for himself that Fortesque was a mere husk of the man he had once been.
The General raised his hand in feeble greeting, and said, ‘It was good of you to come, Sergeant.’
Blackstone grinned. ‘I wasn’t aware I had any choice in the matter,’ he said. ‘If I’d refused, you’d only have contacted the Commissioner of Police, who would then have made what started out as a request into a direct order.’
The old man returned Blackstone’s grin with a weak one of his own. ‘Yes, as decrepit as I am, I do seem to have some influence left,’ he said. ‘How’s life been for you since we last met, Sam?’
‘I have no complaints,’ Blackstone told him.
Not true! said a tiny irritating voice at the back of his mind. You do have regrets — and most of them concern women.
‘You must be approaching retirement,’ the General said.
‘It’s around the corner,’ Blackstone agreed.
‘And how will you manage, once you’re no longer earning a wage?’
‘I’ve got a bit of money put by,’ Blackstone said.
But not enough — not nearly enough — because for most of his working life, half his wage had gone directly to the orphanage in which he himself had been brought up.
‘I had a grandson,’ the General said, changing the subject. ‘He was my pride and joy.’
Blackstone, noting the past tense, said nothing.
‘He was killed on the Western Front, just a few days ago,’ the General continued.
Blackstone nodded gravely. ‘War’s always been a terrible thing, but from what I’ve heard, this one makes the one’s we fought seem like a bit of harmless sparring,’ he said. ‘God alone knows how many of our young men will die on the battlefield before it’s finally over.’
‘Charlie didn’t die in battle,’ the General said, and there was a deep anger in his voice now. ‘If he’d been cut down doing his duty, I could have borne that. It would have been hard for me, yes, yet no harder than it has been for generations of my family who have gladly made the sacrifice. But he was never given the opportunity to give his life for his country — he was murdered.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Blackstone said — and so he was.
‘I want you to find his killer,’ the General said.
‘You want what!’ Blackstone exclaimed.
‘I want you to find his killer,’ the General repeated.
‘The military have police of their own.’
‘So they do. And they’re usually very good at their job — but that job doesn’t include tracking down murderers.’
This was insane, Blackstone thought.
‘I’m a civilian, now,’ he protested. ‘I have been for over a quarter of a century. The military would never brook my interference.’
‘Of course they will, if I ask them to,’ the General said, with an absolute certainty. ‘Besides, you’ve always had a strong belief in your own self-worth, and you’re unlikely to allow any man in a fancy uniform to intimidate you.’
Blackstone walked over to the window, and looked down at the spot on which he’d been standing only a few minutes earlier.
He chuckled, and said, ‘I thought you might be behind it.’
‘Behind what?’ the General asked innocently.
‘Behind the little charade when I first arrived. It was you who told the flunkey to bring me in through the servants’ entrance, wasn’t it?’
‘Is that what you really believe?’ the General asked, curiously.
‘No, not when I stop to think about it,’ Blackstone admitted. ‘You’re much too subtle for that. So you didn’t tell him to treat me like a piece of offal — but you knew that he would!’
Fortesque smiled. ‘I’ve always known how the men who served under me would react in any situation. A good commander has to — because there are no second chances in war. And Hopwood — that’s my “flunkey’s” name — has a very high opinion of himself, and fondly imagines that, one day, he’ll be the butler at one of the finest houses in England.’
‘But he won’t?’
‘Of course not. A butler in the making doesn’t need to act as if he’s superior — it’s enough for him to know that he is.’
‘So you arranged the little skirmish with Hopwood to see whether or not I still had fire in my belly,’ Blackstone said.
‘I had to be sure,’ the General replied. ‘Thirty years is a long time, and men change. But you haven’t lost your fire, Sam, and that’s why I want you go to the Western Front as my representative.’
‘I don’t even know how the modern army works,’ Blackstone protested.
‘And that’s why I want you to go to the Western Front,’ the General repeated, and now his voice was so firm that, if Blackstone had closed his eyes, he could easily have imagined he was talking to a much younger man. ‘I could ask your superiors to order you to go — and they would. I could offer you money — and, indeed, if you bring my grandson’s murderer to justice, I will give you five thousand pounds. But I did not call you here to either threaten or bribe you.’
‘No?’ Blackstone asked, sceptically.
‘No,’ the General said. ‘I asked you here so that I could plead with you — as an old comrade I would have given my life for back then — to do something which might perhaps ease an old man’s suffering a little. Will you do this one thing for me, Sam?’
‘I’ll do it,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘You haven’t left me much bloody choice, have you?’
The old train continued to rattle and groan. The young soldier was still staring angrily at Blackstone.
‘You shouldn’t be here at all,’ Mick said. ‘Matter of fact, when we stop again, I’m going to throw you off.’
‘You should save your rage for the enemy,’ Blackstone told him. ‘And even then, you should have it under control.’
‘Or maybe I won’t even wait until we stop!’ Mick said, infuriated by his calmness. ‘Maybe I’ll throw you off right now.’
‘I wouldn’t do that if I was you,’ Blackstone advised.
‘Oh wouldn’t you?’ Mick scoffed. ‘Well, you’re not me, are you? I’m a young man, and you’re just a useless old fart.’
He stood up, and reached across for the lapels of the old fart’s jacket. Blackstone grabbed his wrist, found the pressure point, and squeezed tightly.
Mick’s face went white as he fought the urge to scream, but it was already a losing battle, and as Blackstone maintained the pressure and forced him to his knees, the young soldier gave a gasp of pain.
‘The first thing you need to learn is never to get into a fight unless you absolutely have to,’ Blackstone said. ‘And the second is that if you do get into a fight, never underestimate your enemy.’
Mick was biting his lower lip, and searching in vain for the strength to fight back.
‘I’ll let you go if you promise to sit down and be quiet,’ Blackstone said. ‘Do you promise?’
Mick nodded
his head. ‘Yes,’ he said, in a wheeze.
‘I’m telling you all this for your own good,’ Blackstone said, as the boy returned to his seat and gingerly massaged his wrist. ‘With the attitude you’ve got now, you won’t last a day at the Front.’
But even as he spoke the words, he knew Mick probably wouldn’t listen. That was the trouble with lads like him. And that was why — though they didn’t even realize it — they were already walking dead men.
TWO
At a speed which would have made a lethargic snail ashamed, the train chugged through the flat French countryside.
The view from the window offered little in the way of distraction. Occasionally, there would be a gnarled old peasant leading a nag which was all skin and bone. Once in a while, the train would pass through a small station, and offer a brief glimpse of the village, battered by war, which lay beyond it. Other than that, the locomotive could have been travelling through a land which the world had quite forgotten.
This total lack of any sort of drama — this absence of anything to fire the gung-ho spirit — soon began to have an effect on the young soldiers, and their animation drained away, to be replaced by a kind of bored stupor.
That was what war was like, Blackstone thought, observing them. It could be excruciatingly painful, and it could be bowel-movingly terrifying. It could even — when you realized that there was a good chance you were not going to die that particular day — be a joyous experience, an orgasm of relief. But mostly, as these lads were starting to discover, it was mindlessly boring.
They reached the railhead — a shabby little station which, pre-war, would have been lucky to see a dozen passengers a day — as darkness was falling. A couple of the boys stood up with obvious relief that the cramped journey was finally over, and stepped out into the corridor to stretch their legs, but a bellow from one of the sergeants posted there soon had them scurrying back to their seats.
Another half an hour passed painfully slowly before the sergeant opened the door.
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