Audley cocked his head on one side.
‘And - let me guess - someone’s car got itself blown up, maybe?’
Ollivier gave an exasperated grunt, squaring up to Audley.
‘The devil with it! How much do you really know?’
‘Unfortunately just that. Whose car was it?’
‘Turco’s - he ran out of road on the edge of town.’
‘So Turco is no longer with us?’
‘Regrettably - most regrettably - he is.’ Ollivier spread his hands eloquently. ‘Our agent was approaching the car when it exploded - another few metres and he would have been caught by it himself. He was disconcerted - ‘
‘Disconcerted? I don’t wonder!’
Ollivier shrugged.
‘Well… he assumed Turco was still inside. By the time he learned otherwise it was too late.’
‘Hmm ..’ Audley nodded to himself. ‘What sort of explosion was it - bomb or petrol?’
‘Our experts say there were explosives in the car. The explosion set off the petrol.’
Audley’s head continued to bob. ‘I see … so Turco crashed his car and then blew it up, resourceful fellow - two birds with one grenade, so to speak.’
‘Two birds?’
‘That’s right. He caused a diversion to cover his escape and he reckoned on destroying whatever was in the car, which he didn’t have time to take with him. Right, Ted?’
Ollivier regarded Audley with a suspicious frown.
‘You still aren’t being straight with me, my friend, are you? Just how much do you know?’
‘Only what you’ve told me - and I’m having to work damned hard for that.’
The frown graduated to a scowl which creased Ollivier’s face into crumpled brown wrapping paper.
‘Come on, my David - perfide Albion is right! - I didn’t say there was anything in the car. You said it.’
Audley stared back at his friend with one eyebrow insultingly raised.
‘But you didn’t say I had to act stupid - I know you prefer stupide Albion, but we can’t always oblige you, no matter how much we try.’
The eyebrow came down and the voice levelled.
‘Man - you sent us a charred map of the Somme battlefield. A German map, but Lefevre identified it in five seconds flat. A map we captured in 1916, and I give you one bottle of fine cognac to a pint of lukewarm beer that it had “Charles Emerson” on it and you got it out of Turco’s car … and if you trust me, how about damn well showing it, eh?’
Mitchell caught a glimpse of Nikki’s face beyond the Frenchman’s, and wondered whether his own bore the same look of fascinated and inadequately concealed amusement. Obviously Audley and Ollivier were men out the same mould, and nobody, superiors or inferiors, treated them with the same outspokenness as that with which they treated each other. They were probing each other and playing to their little gallery at the same time, and vastly enjoying themselves into the bargain: big, clever children entranced with their game because short of war it was the most exciting game of all.
The barking in the distance reached an angry crescendo, then cracked into frightening yelping and trailed off through whimpering into silence.
‘The map, of course!’ Ollivier’s face uncreased. ‘It is I who am getting slow in my old age.’
‘Too suspicious, certainly. If you’d just come clean for one minute we could do business.’
‘Business?’ Ollivier seemed surprised by the word. ‘What business has your country got in this?’
‘I told you - three dead bodies. Dead Englishmen, and killed in England too - they make it our business, Ted. We’d like to balance our books with a dead Frenchman or two, maybe.’
‘A somewhat… insular viewpoint under the circumstances, if I may say so.’
‘You may say so. But screw your circumstances, mon ami,’ said Audley lightly. ‘The map was in the car, but Turco could have taken it with him without much sweat I should have thought. So was there something else he couldn’t take, then?’
‘The map was in the trunk - how do you say it in English, the boot? - in the boot of the car, and it was blown clear. But you are right, there was something else in there. A weapon.’
‘Surprise, surprise.’
‘An unusual weapon.’
‘Let me guess again. Something to knock down a visiting helicopter, like our Rapier and Blowtorch - or a Redeye - ?’
‘Nothing like that.’
‘Not that new Czech sniper’s SLR?’
Ollivier shook his head.
‘You’ll never guess, not in a million years. Does the names Charles Lancaster mean anything to you?’
‘Charles - Lancaster? Who - ?’
‘Who and what. You are not devotee of la chasse, clearly.’
The Frenchman lifted an imaginary rifle, traversing it at the undergrowth just ahead.
‘Poufl Poufl Two pheasants for the pot - ‘
‘A shotgun.’
‘A shotgun exactly. But not just any shotgun. The Rolls-Royce of shotguns. And this was a most special of the most special.’
‘A custom-built job.’
Ollivier nodded.
‘We took it to a gunsmith in Paris. It was only slightly damaged in the explosion, and still he almost wept. He said the English guns were the finest in the world, and a Charles Lancaster was the best of the finest, better than Purdey or anyone.’
‘He identified it?’
‘Identified? He knew it straight away - it seems there was a Lancaster patent trigger, single action - the recoil from the right barrel cocks for the left - ‘
‘I’m sorry. I meant did he know whose gun it was - you said “special of the special”.’
‘Ah, I see what you mean. He could not, no, but it was a gun made for one man, one of a pair of guns. It had the initials “H.J.V.B.” in silver on the stock and it was numbered “Two” on the top of the barrel flat.’
‘And valuable, I suppose?’
Mitchell circled unobtrusively to get a better view of Audley’s face, warned equally by the shallowness of the question - it was a useless, fatuous question, utterly extraordinary under the circumstances - as by the lack of excitement in the voice. And the big man’s expression only confirmed his suspicion: the one thing he wasn’t going to admit here and now was that officers of the 2.9th Rifles had carried shotguns into battle.
Ollivier shrugged.
‘A matched pair of them now, in good condition - not less than 30,000 francs, possibly a lot more. It is hard to be precise with such things.’
Audley went through an elaborate process of mental arithmetic, staring casually at Mitchell as he did so.
‘That would be, say, £2,500 in real money … was it brand new?’
‘No, it was not. The gunsmith dated it to the turn of this century. About 1903 he estimated.
‘Practically a museum piece,’ said Audley. ‘Not that it matters either way. The obvious thing to do now is to cancel the meeting here. It doesn’t matter who’s coming - get them to some other neutral house of yours.’
‘Impossible.’
‘Nonsense! If somebody’s got something planned for this place it’s the only sensible thing to do.’
‘And admit that we cannot guarantee security in the heart of our own country? That we can spend tens of millions on the latest equipment, and one glimpse of one piece of scum throws us into a panic?’ Ollivier’s tone hardened. ‘If we did that just once there would be no neutral houses - anywhere.’
‘So you ignore Turco?’
‘No. The wasps buzz round the jampot - naturally. So we seal down the lid tighter while we look for the wasps’ nest.’
‘We?’
Ollivier wagged his finger at Audley.
‘You didn’t come over here just to talk to me, my David. You had your plan of action too.’
‘True. And naturally you want to know what it is.’
‘Naturally I must know what it is. Without that you can have no plan any more, onl
y the next boat from Calais.’
‘Well that’s laying it on the line, certainly.’ Audley eyed the Frenchman dispassionately. ‘We tell all or we get the bum’s rush, eh?’
‘Most regrettably - yes.’ Ollivier smiled. ‘I cannot have you stirring the wasps’ nest upon your own - we might both get stung. But I might be prepared to let you help me look for it.’
Audley considered the proposition, slowly nodding to himself.
‘Fair enough, Ted. You’ve got yourself a deal,’ he said decisively.
‘So?’
‘So we find out for you why Charles Emerson had to die. And in return you make sure his killers are paid in full?’
‘D ‘accord.’ Ollivier held out his hand. ‘You and Captain Lefevre will report to me, and to me only, through Mademoiselle MacMahon. Trust nobody else - your side or mine. We trust only each other.’
‘D’accord,’ said Audley.
Like hell, thought Mitchell.
6
THE OLD MEN straggled up the pathway from the coach park in twos and threes, making their slow way towards the notice-boards which marked out the old British front line.
While they had gathered beside the huge pink coach they had chatted and laughed, but now they were silent, almost self-conscious. Indeed, they looked even a little lost, as well they might, Mitchell decided: the neatness of these restored trenches, with their mathematically precise rows of concrete sandbags and clean-cut concrete duck-boards must be as far removed from the Vimy Ridge of far-off memory as the smooth grass, and dark ranks of fir trees which surrounded them. Nowhere, not even the most well-ploughed and cultivated farmlands of the Somme, was further from the reality than this restoration of what had never been.
He watched Colonel Butler work his way from the back towards him, very upright and soldierly in his uniform and a living commentary on his own definition of what made a soldier: he had never looked quite right in any of the civilian clothes he had worn, they had been as false on him as was the uniform on Mitchell. Now he looked himself at last.
‘Over here, sir,’ called Mitchell.
Butler looked around him unconcernedly, nicked a piece of orange peel out of his path with his stick, and made his way into the German trench.
‘Where’s Audley?’ Butler’s eyes clouded at Mitchell’s salute. ‘Belay that - no one can see us here. Where’s Audley?’
‘Up at the Canadian Memorial on the top of the ridge, sir,’ said Mitchell carefully.
‘With the woman?’
‘Yes. We split up because - because that way she can’t watch both of us.’
Butler’s mouth tightened.
‘And naturally she went with Audley - he intended that?’
‘We reckoned she would - sir.’
‘So you want to talk to me, then?’ Butler cut straight to the point. ‘Make it quick then.’
Mitchell swallowed. Compared with Audley’s oblique approaches, Butler’s directness was unnerving.
‘We think we’ve got a lead. If you’ve got any Poachers in the coach I want to check it out with them as soon as possible.’
‘What lead?’
‘Some of the officers carried shotguns in the attack on Hameau Ridge. The French have got one of them, I think - one that was carried by a particular officer.’
‘Which officer?’
‘H. J. V. Bellamy - Second Lieutenant Harry Bellamy.’
‘Bellamy?’ Butler shook his head. ‘I’ve got one 29th Battalion officer, but not - ‘
He stopped.
‘But there was a Bellamy on the War Memorial at Elthingham - a second lieutenant.’
That’s the man. The squire’s son. You’ve got a good memory - ‘
‘Damn my memory. The man’s been dead for half a century.’
‘But he had a particularly beautiful gun, General Leigh-Woodhouse said so.’ Mitchell refused to let himself be outstared. And if this is his gun it’s been round here for half a century too.’
‘So what? He was killed and anyone could have picked up his gun, particularly if it was a good one. What the devil can it tell you now?’
‘I don’t know. But Charles Emerson found something here, and if this gun was it then it told him something.’
‘And if it is?’
‘Bellamy was in “D” Company. That’s the one which went in with the North Berkshires in the first assault - the one that disappeared over the ridge and never came back.’
Butler stared at him in stony silence for an elongated moment.
‘Very well. I can give you two men who reached Hameau Ridge, Mitchell. Captain Faversham - he was a subaltern in “B” Company in ‘16. Wounded on the edge of the wood, but he’ll have known Bellamy right enough … and Sergeant Hayhoe - he was sanitary corporal in “C” Company in the Somme attack.’
‘What corporal?’ Mitchell exclaimed incredulously.
‘Sanitary corporal - in charge of the latrine men,’ snapped Butler. ‘But don’t get the idea that’s funny, because it isn’t, not by a long chalk. Need a good man for that, a man who doesn’t shirk. You can sum up a unit by its latrines just as much as by the shine on their boots. And the sanitary men backed up the stretcher bearers in action out here - Hayhoe won the Distinguished Conduct Medal at Ypres in ‘17 for pulling wounded men out of the mud under fire.’
‘I wasn’t laughing,’ protested Mitchell defensively. ‘But you’ve found nobody from “D” Company?’
He realised as he asked the question that it was a stupid one: by dawn on that autumn day on Hameau Ridge there was no ‘D’ Company. No officers, no sanitary corporals, no riflemen. And even of the rest of the battalion there were only a handful left on their feet, the bewildered conquerors of the Prussian Redoubt. After two more years of war and nearly sixty years of wear and tear they were lucky to have any Poachers to talk to at all.
But Butler was no longer listening to him anyway; he had climbed onto the firestep of the trench and was staring across the huge craters of the fifty-yard strip of no-man’s-land which separated it from the British line.
‘Now’s your best chance to talk to Hayhoe on your own,’ he growled. ‘See the little one over there by the notice-board - the one all by himself? Always keeps to himself when we get to the battlefields and the cemeteries, Hayhoe does. Joins in the talk and the sing-songs in the coach and the hotel, but keeps to himself in the open. You go and talk to him now while I go and get Faversham.’
Mitchell studied the little man narrowly as he walked down the path towards him.
Sergeant Hayhoe, DCM, sometime sanitary corporal … that would be a problem, getting rid of the shit in the trenches when the fighting was static: weeks and months in the same place, going in and out of the line, you couldn’t just chuck it anywhere - and couldn’t do anything with it during daylight. So it would be another part of the busy night routine. It was odd that in all his researches he’d never thought of finding out about so basic and important a fact of life.
Little, but not frail: Hayhoe was wiry and compact, like a jockey, with a shock of badly-cut grey hair above a face weathered red and brown by wind and time, a Hobbit of a man who gave the impression that in his day he’d always been big enough at a pinch.
And a little old man now who took in Mitchell from head to toe carefully with a clear eye.
‘Mr - Hayhoe?’ Mitchell thrust out his hand. ‘My name’s Lefevre - Royal Tank Regiment.’
Cold, bony hand. But the grip was firm.
‘Pleased to meet you.’
Hayhoe nodded easily, the relationships and differences of age, rank, class and occasion all computed and balanced gracefully so that there was room neither for deference nor condescension in the greeting.
‘Goin’ to show us round tomorrow, the Colonel said - right?’
‘I don’t think I’d presume to do that, Mr Hayhoe. I think you know it all better than I do. I thought maybe you’d show me a thing or two, to be honest.’
Hayhoe examined him briefly for s
igns of insincerity, and then showed a couple of yellow teeth in a lopsided smile, shaking his head.
‘Might have done once, one or two places, not now though. Don’t recognise it now.’
He shook his head again.
‘First time I came out again - that was for the unveiling of the memorial at Thiepval, in the old King’s time, King George V -didn’t recognise it then. All gone, what I remember … an’ good riddance, too.’
‘You mean the trees and the grass had come back?’
‘An’ the smell had gone. Always had a good sense of smell I had - still have, too. Wished I hadn’t then, worse than the mines, an’ I never liked them either.’
‘The mines?’
‘Ah, I was in the pits when the war started, an’ glad to be out of ‘em at first, I was. But then it was out of the fryin’ pan an’ into the fire, an’ no mistake.’
He grinned ruefully at Mitchell.
‘I’d of liked nothin’ better than a good deep pit when Jerry was givin’ us what for.’
‘But you joined the 29th Rifles - the Poachers, I thought?’
‘That I did - ‘cause my elder brother did. A keeper on Lord Studley’s estate he was - when he joined up a dozen of us lads from the pit went along with ‘im an’ two others from t’estate.’
‘And they took you - obviously.’
‘An’ glad to. Wanted to make a good showing - an’ the head keeper said he’d rather ‘ave us shooting Germans than his lordship’s pheasants, bein’ as how he was going to be short-handed.’
A genuine poacher, he’d got, Mitchell realised. And of course that must have been how it had worked: if you were losing your young keepers for King and Country it was only common sense to take the young poachers out of circulation at the same time. It was an added irony that the poachers had thereafter taken over the battalion in the popular estimation.
He grinned at Hayhoe.
‘I’ve heard you got yourselves a reputation for a bit of poaching over here - until the Australians arrived.’
Hayhoe grinned back at him wickedly.
‘Arr - the Aussies - Anzacs we called ‘em then - they were the boys! Steal the shine off your buttons, they would. Good lads, though - Jerry was scared of them, I reckon. Don’t blame him.’
Other Paths to Glory Page 18