The Unquiet Grave

by David J Oldman

  ‘So you’ve a wife,’ she said, stirring in the milk powder. ‘And here’s me thinking you and the army tart you brought with you to Kilburn might be having a thing together. Or maybe you are?’

  ‘Susie?’

  ‘ATS Blake, I seem to remember she was. And too sharp for her own good. I saw her looking at my nail varnish and said to myself, “Rose girl, you’ve slipped up there.”’

  ‘She thought there was a man in the flat, too. That’ll have been Dermot Kavanaugh, I suppose.’

  ‘Now you don’t want Diamaid to catch you calling him Dermot,’ Rose advised, sipping her tea. ‘Diamaid Caomhánach it has to be or he’s likely to blow your head off. Especially if it’s coming out of an English mouth.’

  ‘Dónol Casey told me he’d changed his name. I heard he’s a desperate character.’

  ‘Casey the publican? Friend or no friend, Diamaid won’t like to hear he’s been blabbing.’

  ‘Well I’m not telling him,’ I said. ‘Are you?’

  She smiled again. ‘You’re a cool one, Captain, and no mistake. But Diamaid didn’t change his name. He just says it the way it’s supposed to be said.’

  ‘When he’s not Diamaid Caomhánach is he still posing as Major Hendrix?’

  ‘No,’ said Rose, ‘he had a good run in that part but I told him he was pushing his luck thinking of meeting you as the Major. Grieving widows and sad little girlfriends are one thing, but I told him a British army officer was a horse of another colour. I said if you knew where Billy was I’d get it out of you quicker than his play acting would.’

  ‘You’re not bad at play acting yourself.’

  She beamed at me. ‘Well, it’s decent of you to say so, Captain. I’ve always thought I had a little talent in that direction, treading the boards so to speak. It’s how I met Billy, after all.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me Willy O’Connell was an actor?’

  ‘No, and we’ll call him Billy if it’s all the same to you. I never liked “Willy”. Too many connotations of little boys, if you know what I mean. And Billy was no little boy, Captain, I can assure you of that.’

  ‘What was he if he wasn’t an actor?’

  She glanced wistfully at her cup. ‘Ah, Billy could have been anything. But it was his nature to be nothing much at all. It was Diamaid Caomhánach who brought him along to our little theatre group at University College. That’s Dublin, Captain. I’m a university girl, now would you have thought that?’

  ‘I’m sure you could have been anything, Rose,’ I replied, echoing her own words.

  ‘Are you flattering me, Captain, or like Billy suggesting I could be nothing much at all?’

  She waited but I wasn’t about to fall into any of Rose’s girlish traps.

  ‘A theatre group? Is that where Diamaid got his taste for acting?’

  ‘He’s a better actor than he is a writer, I’ll say that. He’d written a play and was looking to our group to put it on for him.’

  ‘I thought he was a poet.’

  ‘That’s the blabbing publican again, I suppose. Well, Diamaid had tried his hand at poetry but between you and me, he was no hand at it at all. He could recite a ballad, beautiful and no mistake, particularly with a drink or two inside him. But penning it himself wasn’t a talent the good Lord blessed him with. And his play wasn’t any great shakes, either. I’ve always said you can forgive a man for being ugly if he’s got the streak of an artist inside him, but poor Diamaid doesn’t have even that. Just the ugliness. Billy now, he was beauty.’

  ‘So the blabbing publican told me,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I don’t blame him for that. One for attracting the girls was Billy. And the boys, too, only he was the kind never to notice the fact. Just as well or he wouldn’t have spent so much time in Diamaid Caomhánach’s company.’

  ‘You mean...?’

  ‘Let’s just say Diamaid’s preferences are more Oscar Wilde that William Butler Yeats. Not that he could afford to try anything on with Billy when they were boys. Billy’s mam brought him up with strict ideas about that sort of thing. Well, you talked to the priests, I’m told, and they always say it’s a mortal sin.’

  ‘So the blabbing publican keeps in touch, does he? Where is he now? Diamaid, I mean. In the car?’

  Rose’s red lips curled in a smile. ‘No, I told him I would see you on my own. Do things my way. Much more pleasant and less messy. If you know what I mean?’

  I thought I did and didn’t care to think too long about it.

  ‘And you think I know where Billy is, is that it?’

  She dropped her eyes again.

  ‘Well, I’m thinking he’s dead,’ she said softly. ‘And I’m thinking you think he’s dead, too.’

  ‘Yes, I think he’s dead,’ I said, looking at the brown waves of her hair. ‘I never told you but Billy’s ID discs were found on the body of a dead German. Taken as a souvenir, probably. So if one of the bodies found by the carrier wasn’t Billy then he’s somewhere near. A lot of men were killed during Operation Jupiter. That was the name of the operation he was on. Did you know that?’

  Rose looked up, eyes moist, and I wondered if it was play-acting like the rest.

  ‘We found out a lot. Diamaid had all the details Billy had sent his mam——the regiment he’d joined and the name he was serving under. The name of the little waif of a girl he couldn’t get out of his head.’

  ‘Dónol Casey said Billy told him he was thinking of joining up when he came home to Ballydrum for his mother’s funeral. Not that he was already in.’

  ‘Now you shouldn’t listen to publicans, Captain. They’re an unreliable breed. Billy was already in the army by then. Though that wasn’t the sort of thing you’d blab about in Ireland. They gave him leave to bury his mam.’

  ‘You did well tracking him,’ I said. ‘And the other men’s families. Always one step ahead of me.’

  ‘Well, we had a good start and you just had my letter.’

  ‘Whose idea was that?’

  ‘Diamaid’s. We’d got so far but no further and he thought if you lot knew anything more you might tell Billy’s poor orphaned sister and put the dowdy little Irish woman out of her misery. But I knew it was a risky game. You’re a suspicious lot, you English. Too shifty for your own good.’

  ‘Not like the open-hearted Irish,’ I said.

  Rose laughed. ‘Now I’ll be really sorry if Diamaid decides to kill you, Captain.’

  ‘That’s what he’s got planned for Billy, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, he has. And if he can’t shoot Billy then you’ll have to do. It seems to have eaten in to him and I’m thinking he’ll carry on killing now until someone kills him.’

  ‘Do you want to kill Billy too, Rose? What’s eating into you? Not jealousy over dead Cathleen?’

  ‘No, not the girl. And if you know our real names you must know he betrayed us.’

  ‘Betrayed Diamaid,’ I said. ‘Not you.’

  ‘No, not me. Not in that sense anyway. I think he woke up one morning and saw what sort of man his pal Diamaid had become and worried he’d end up the same. But he shouldn’t have done it and he did, and had to leave afterwards. That was betrayal enough.’

  ‘You couldn’t go with him?’

  ‘And me betray Ireland? Now what sort of patriot do you take me for?’

  ‘I’m not sure how I’d take you at all, Rose,’ I said.

  Her eyes widened suggestively and she laughed again.

  ‘What do you mean, Captain? What would that little wife of yours think if she could hear you?’ She got up, smiling coquettishly, and trailed her fingers along my shoulders as she passed my chair. ‘Or is she one of your demure English roses and wouldn’t take your meaning? We’ve all heard back in Ireland what milksops your English roses are.’

  I stood up and she paused at the door.

  ‘Perhaps Captain,’ she suggested, ‘you should try an Irish rose sometime and see the difference.’ She undid the door latch. ‘And I’ll be
telling Diamaid you believe Billy is dead. Although whether he’ll believe it is another matter. If he does I’d watch my back. He’s a wild one, is Diamaid. A desperate man. He might have been an Irish Villon if only he’d had the knack of the poetry. Maybe then I wouldn’t have looked at Billy O’Connoll. Ugly or not, it might have been Diamaid Caomhánach I loved.’ Her eyes flashed again. ‘For all the good that would have done a girl.’

  24

  July 1st

  I stood at the window after Rose left. Down in the street I heard a car start and drive away. After a while I looked at the clock. It was well past three. I would have to be in the office in a few hours. But I didn’t go straight to bed. Instead I took my revolver out of the cupboard, broke it down and cleaned it. Then I pushed six bullets into the chamber, closed it and slipped it back into its holster. I left it by the bed. I was going to have to change my habits.

  *

  Monday was always a quiet day in the office. After the weekend, coming back to the realities of missing and dead men, of the nature and the casualties of war, it always heightened the contrast between us and everyone else. Out there life had moved on. Slowly, perhaps, but things were changing. Men and women were out of the services and although life was hard with the rationing and the shortages and the other consequences of the war, there was a sense that they could see their way ahead. Us? Well, we were still looking backwards, picking over the horrors. Still immersed in what most other people were trying to forget.

  For my own part I felt quite buoyant. Some sort of resolution with Penny had been achieved and, as long as I didn’t fall through some unexpected thin ice, it looked as though I was going to be a married man again. It was what I wanted——at least, I think it was——and it promised to be an island of stability in an otherwise unstable future. Walking into the office, however, soon took the shine off of my optimism.

  I was late, but even so the place felt more subdued than was usual for a Monday morning. I detected an air of coolness between Susie and Peter who, having had to work closely together, had achieved a greater degree of interaction than was required by the rest of us. But their exchanges sounded terse and brittle. I glanced at Stan to see if he had detected it, but he merely stared back morosely and said:

  ‘You fixed Ida up with a job, then?’

  ‘Yes, lucky really. Penny’s aunt was looking——’

  ‘Domestic service?’ he bit back scornfully, as if I’d forced Ida to join the Waffen SS. ‘She’s better than that.’

  ‘It’s hardly indentured,’ I told him, wondering why it put his back up. She told me she needed work. She can always pack it in if something better turns up.’

  ‘That’s not likely the way things are, is it?’

  I was about to say, if that were the case, it was as well she had any sort of job at all, but his sullen expression told me to drop it.

  ‘She’s moving in there,’ he persisted.

  ‘What, into Julia’s house?’

  ‘Parker, is that her name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s moving in there.’

  I picked up a handy file and pretended to look through it. I supposed after all the trouble he’d gone to in finding Ida somewhere to live, he’d expected a little more gratitude from her. Moving into Julia’s house would put a crimp in his being able to drop by, no doubt. Not that I blamed Ida; who’d want to live in a semi-derelict hovel when they could live in Belgravia? Even if it was in domestic quarters. Stan wouldn’t see it that way, of course, and had obviously made his mind up to blame me. As if Ida didn’t have a mind of her own. What did surprise me was that Julia had acted so quickly. But if Ida suited her, I assumed she wasn’t about to risk losing the girl by letting her out of her sight.

  I hoped finding a new place for Penny and myself to live would prove as easy. It wasn’t going to, of course. Decent flats in London were hard to come by and getting more expensive by the month. I would have to start going through the ads in the evening papers and visiting letting agents and it occurred to me that I might have enlisted Susie in the task if she hadn’t been sitting stiffly erect in her chair and looking about as approachable as an irritable Medusa.

  I turned towards my own office, glancing at the file in my hand and realizing it was a breakdown of Operation Jupiter casualty figures, the dead and the missing. Peter had compiled it from numbers supplied by the relevant battalions and reading through it brought me back to the matter in hand.

  The Second Battle of the Odon, as those operations to the south and west of Caen were coming to be known, had been especially brutal. Some men Peter had spoken to who had had experience of the trenches on the western front in the Great War had even compared it to that horror. The number of casualties showed how desperate the fighting must have been. The assaults on Hill 112 and the Château de Fontaine, and the house to house fighting in Éterville and Maltot had been particularly fierce.

  With the figures in front of me in black and white I had to ask again what was so special about Kearney’s carrier? The area was littered with knocked-out armour; burnt-out tanks and M10s, and all the other paraphernalia of mechanized warfare. Even though we hadn’t come across another, I suspected even finding a body with a bullet in the back of the head wasn’t an isolated instance.

  I dropped the file next to the report I’d written for Jekyll the day before and was about to ask Jack to type it up for me when I saw him sitting motionless in front of his Remington staring at a blank sheet of paper. He was making no effort to despoil its virginal purity.

  ‘What’s the matter? Muse deserted you?’

  He pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘Got a letter this morning notifying us of the exhumation.’

  ‘What exhumation?’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to know.’ He passed me the letter. ‘It’s from the Home Office.’

  There were two sheets. The first was from some Home Office department and dated June 26th stating that the avocat général’s office in Caen had acceded to a request for the exhumation of a body. A cemetery and plot number followed. It then noted that a copy of the avocat général’s reply had been enclosed and that copies of both had been forwarded to Colonel Jekyll’s office.

  I looked at the other sheet. ‘It’s in French,’ I said.

  Jack threw me one of his long-suffering looks. ‘I noticed that. I got Peter to translate it for me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It says what the other letter says. That the Caen advocat general’s office, or whatever it’s called, has agreed to the exhumation of the remains of one Claude Pellisier, originally buried at the Château de Hêtres and since re-interred.’

  ‘Who requested an exhumation?’

  ‘I assumed you did,’ Jack replied petulantly. ‘Without telling me.’

  ‘But I haven’t got the authorization for that.’

  ‘I know that. But you know what you’re like for cutting corners and getting round things...,’

  I didn’t know any such thing but now was hardly the time to argue the toss about it.

  ‘Then I get a phone call asking if I got the letter——’

  ‘Jekyll?’

  ‘That’s what I assumed,’ said Jack. ‘But no.’

  ‘No what?’

  ‘Not Jekyll. This was some geezer called Bryce.’

  ‘Bryce? Who’s Bryce?’ And although the name sounded familiar I couldn’t for the life of me place it.

  ‘Search me,’ said Jack.

  ‘Bugger,’ I said. ‘What was he, army?’

  ‘Didn’t give a rank.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask? Did he sound army?’

  ‘You mean did he order me around? No. But he left a number. Wants you to get back to him. Says you’ll know why.’

  ‘Why should I know why? You sure that’s what he said?’

  ‘His very words,’ said Jack, reaching for the phone. ‘Want me to call him?’

  I thought for a moment then said, ‘No. Chain of command. Get onto Jekyll’s office
and see if he’s there. If not, find out where he is.’

  Jack pulled the blank paper out of the Remington and with great deliberation screwed it into a ball and dropped it into his waste basket.

  I looked at the letter from the Home Office again. June 26th had been the middle of the previous week. I didn’t suppose that Jekyll would have got his letter any sooner than we got ours and even if he had he had been in Scotland and wouldn’t have seen it until he returned. It was just the sort of thing guaranteed to bring him storming up the stairs to our office——unless Jekyll had ordered the exhumation himself.

  The only reason for an exhumation that I could think of was that someone suspected the body wasn’t Claude Pellisier’s after all. And if it wasn’t, the chances were it belonged to William Kearney. I doubted Jekyll would have asked for an exhumation given his orders to hurry things along; besides, as far as I knew, he didn’t know anything about Pellisier, not unless Coveney had told him. So, assuming the French weren’t conducting their own investigation, that just left Ben Tuchman. When we spoke the previous evening he told me it was accepted that the body found at the Château de Hêtres was that of Claude Pellisier. So either the exhumation was nothing to do with him or he wasn’t telling me everything. Of the alternatives, I couldn’t help but favour the latter. According to the man from the 4th Battalion of the Wiltshire Regiment Stan had spoken to, the body had been badly burned. What with that and having spent two years in the ground here and there since, I found it surprising there was going to be much left to work with. I wasn’t a forensic pathologist, though.

  While Jack rang Jekyll’s office, I lit a cigarette and tried to remember where I’d come across the name Bryce before. It had been recently, I was sure, and I wondered if it had anything to do with Ireland.

  Jack put the phone down and shook his head. ‘Not been in his office since last week.’

  There were other numbers where we could sometimes reach Jekyll so I told Jack to try them.

  The thought of burnt bodies sent me back to our file on Dabs and the carrier and I sorted through it for the crew’s medical files. The blood group of both Burleigh and Dabs was recorded as O-positive——the most common grouping——while Arnie Poole’s blood was B-positive. That group was found in less than 10 percent of the population. This information had been stamped on their ID discs. But because the discs of Poole and Burleigh had been found on the floor of the carrier, not on the bodies, which body was which had been determined by the 7th Hampshires Orderly Room through blood tests prior to final burial.