Into Battle

by Michael Gilbert

  Robert Dujardin reported to Luke that evening. He said, “It’s a rare pair of pigeons you’ve got your sights on, my boy. The husband is a dwarf, but an immensely powerful one. He used to do an act in the circus, holding by his teeth to a trapeze and swinging a girl from each hand. His wife is a fitting mate. The grenadier, they call her. Six feet high and broad in proportion, with a moustache that wouldn’t shame your Guards Brigade. I would say that with this pair your motto should be ‘Handle with care’.”

  Harper, who was present, supported him. He said, “I’ve had reports, from time to time, that they might be the town end of a smuggling racket of some sort. But no positive proof of this. And even if it is true, we’d have no authority to act against them unless we could show that their criminality was connected with the army. We could, of course, have the shop watched, very discreetly—”

  Dujardin said, “I noticed a pharmacie on the opposite side of the road. That is a lucky chance. A pharmacien will always cooperate with the police. He requires two licences: one for the shop, one for his practice. It would be very easy to close him down. The mere threat of trouble would be sufficient. I will have a word with him.

  “Short notice,” said Luke. “But could you possibly fix it for me by Friday midday? Tuesday and Friday are the important days.”

  “Pas de problème,” said Dujardin.

  He was as good as his word, and by midday on Friday, Luke was occupying a chair on the first floor of the pharmacie of Dr. Lasalle. He had slipped into the shop by a back door and had been escorted upstairs by the doctor.

  “If you place your chair just so,” he said, “the curtain will mask you from any direct observation. If you want anything further, you have but to ask.”

  When he had taken himself off, there was nothing for Luke to do but sit still. He thought about long hours spent in observation in other places. A doorstep in a stinking back alley in Whitechapel; a hole in the ground on Plaistow Marshes; on top of a tree on Gilkicker Point. Sometimes comfortable, sometimes hideously uncomfortable. He had repeated to himself many times Fred Wensley’s dictum: “The secret of success in police work is continuous observation.” It had become part of his own creed.

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon and he was nearly asleep when the truck arrived. It slowed as it reached the Serpolet shop. Gunner Whitehouse was driving, with Bombardier Light sitting beside him. Whitehouse was handling the big truck very skilfully. He stopped it just past the entrance to the alleyway, swung it in a tight half circle, and backed it. The alley, which sloped down toward the river, was so narrow that it was barely wide enough to admit the truck, and when it stopped, only the top of its canvas cover was visible.

  The two men got out, opening the doors with some difficulty, squeezed past, and went out into the street. They sat down at one of the tables in front of the café. Old customers, evidently: the waiter had glasses of wine in front of them almost before they had settled in their chairs.

  Luke was now able, for the first time, to get a good look at Gunner Whitehouse. He had the same brick-red face as Sergeant Major Forgan but none of the lines of worry. A simple soldier, who did what he was told?

  While they were drinking, Luke kept his glasses focused steadily on the truck. It was so parked he could see nothing directly, but he did, once, see the top of the canvas cover move, as though something was being done behind the truck and out of sight. But that was all.

  Half an hour later, Light paid the bill. The two men edged their way back into the truck, which drew out into the street and drove off.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Luke was left with two questions, neither of which he could answer with any confidence.

  There was no breath of wind, but the canvas had moved. He was sure of that. Who had moved it? Even more curious, since there was more than adequate room at that point for the truck to park in the street, why the tricky manoeuvre of backing it down the alley?

  Clearly, the next step was to examine the rear part of the shop. A glance into that back room might answer a lot of questions.

  There was no formal curfew, but most people were in bed by midnight, and it was through empty streets, at one o’clock the following morning, that Luke approached his objective. He had marked out a line of approach through the builder’s yard. It involved climbing a fence to get into the yard and another to get out, and it brought him to the back of the shop without coming out into the open.

  When he got there, he found that the windows of the back room had been painted over on the inside – surely a curious precaution for an honest shopkeeper? Luke had anticipated this difficulty and had brought with him his pocketknife, which was furnished with a diamond-topped glass cutter. He reckoned that he could cut out a small and inconspicuous piece in the corner of the glass and shine his flashlight through it.

  Before he could start, things began to happen.

  There was a rumbling growl, and a dog hurled itself at him. Luke swung around and launched a savage kick that rolled the animal over but failed to discourage it. Then he took to his heels. He went head first over the first fence, like an athlete crossing a bar, and rolled as he landed. The dog made no attempt to emulate this feat but contented itself with barking furiously.

  By now neighbouring windows were being thrown up. Luke, feeling every sort of fool, scuttled across the yard on hands and knees and climbed the fence on the other side.

  He realised that he had not only made a fool of himself, he also had committed the error of not using his resources properly. Next morning, he made contact with Pepin by the simple expedient of stationing himself in full view at the point where he had first met him. Ten minutes later the call of “Pleezeter meecher” signalled the arrival of his assistant.

  Pepin listened impassively as Luke spoke. Could he find a point behind the clothing shop from which he could see without being seen?

  Yes.

  Could he get into observation there at midday next Tuesday?

  Yes.

  And report what he had seen by coming to this same place on Wednesday morning?

  Yes.

  “So that’s that,” said Harper. “Your informant – I’m assuming he’s reliable—”

  “Unorthodox, but in my view perfectly reliable.”

  “Says that he saw Serpolet removing two cases and a dozen odd bottles from the back of the truck and taking them to his shop. And you’re suggesting that this is a regular occurrence?”

  “Every Tuesday and Friday.”

  “How long do you think it’s been going on?”

  “The RHA took over the liquor store three months ago. If Light got busy right away he could have made twenty-six deliveries.”

  “Even if he didn’t, it adds up to quite a lot of liquor. All stored in that back room, I suppose. And sold for cash to people ostensibly coming in to buy clothes.”

  “With a payoff to Light – and to the driver, if he was in it, too.”

  “I think he must have been,” said Harper. “I suppose he might just have been doing what Light told him.”

  He thought about it. Then he added, “It’s going to be tricky, but I’ve always found that the best way with a tricky setup is to go straight through the middle of it. And the quicker the better. We can dress it up as a health and hygiene inspection. You’d better come, too.”

  On the following morning, Harper stationed two of his men at the back of the shop, marched the other four up to the door, and sounded a tattoo on it. This produced Madame. She was dressed in a scintillating green bed gown and had pointed green slippers on her feet and her hair in curlers. The total effect was of a sleeping dragon aroused from its lair.

  When Harper pushed in, she tried at first to bar the way, and then retreated, screaming. Her husband came bounding down the stairs and added his shouts, a bass undertone to his wife’s treble. The few words that were thrown in suggested that Harper was the illegitimate offspring of a diseased hyena and a glandered jackal.

  As for Madame, sh
e wasted no time on words, took a further deep breath into her substantial lungs, and continued to scream.

  The door at the end of the passage was locked.

  “Quick as you can,” said Harper to his assistant, who was carrying a sledgehammer. Two blows broke open the door. They looked in. The room was lined, from floor to ceiling, with shelves, and on all the shelves were boxes and bottles.

  “Thank God I brought two trucks with me,” said Harper. “We shall need both of them.”

  Luke noticed that neither the dwarf nor the grenadier was showing any signs of doing what an honest shopkeeper whose store was being rifled would surely have done: going for outside help. The woman’s screams and the man’s bass accompaniment were collecting spectators, who seemed more amused than hostile. One of the men said, “If any of that stuffs for sale, I’ll make you an offer.”

  Harper ignored him. He was too busy to waste time on chat. His six men and Luke had formed a chain and were manhandling the boxes and bottles along it. In a surprisingly short space of time, the back room was stripped.

  Ignoring the Serpolets entirely, Harper said, “We’ll take all this stuff to my headquarters.”

  When they saw he was going, the dwarf and his mate fell silent.

  Perhaps, thought Luke, they are wondering what to do next.

  Not an easy question.

  “Not an easy question,” said Major Yapp.

  Seemingly recovered from his indisposition, he had come around, at Harper’s invitation, bringing the camp adjutant, Captain Edwards, with him. The drinks were arranged around the walls of Harper’s office. The cases had been built into a rampart, crowned by a frieze of bottles.

  During the ten minutes since Yapp had arrived, Luke’s mind had been performing a series of unexpected somersaults. Their starting point had been the deceptive effect of nicknames. If you were lumbered with a surname like “Yapp,” he thought, the juvenile humour of the officers’ mess would immediately christen the young officer “Bonzo” or “Doggy” or “Pup”. And when he had been addressed in this manner long enough it would be easy for outsiders to assume that he was a person of no consequence.

  What surprised Luke was that Yapp was clearly in command of the situation and that Harper, Edwards, Dujardin, and even the intolerant and outspoken Longhorn were waiting on his lead.

  “When you think about it,” he said, “there are two quite distinct problems. The first, and the simplest, is what to do about the Serpolets. I call it a simple problem because, in fact, there’s nothing one can do.”

  He looked at Dujardin, who nodded agreement.

  “Any steps against them would have to be taken by the French authorities. If they did move against them, they might argue that the drinks had come into their possession legitimately. Not a point they can take too far, however, since I assume that the bottles are marked?”

  Edwards said, “The ones I’ve had time to examine were, sir. It’s a small imprinted ‘g.s.’ on the label. Difficult to spot, but clearly there when you look for it.”

  “They would therefore be asked where they got it from. Not an easy question for them to answer. At the moment I think it’s a stalemate. They will wait for us to move. If we don’t, they’ll sit tight. They won’t be too unhappy. They’ve lost their stock, but I’d guess they’ve made a lot of money. So let’s forget them for the moment and think about the more important end of the problem.”

  He paused to collect his thoughts. Then he said, “I understand that the only person who actually saw the stuff being removed from Bombardier Light’s truck – with or without the cognizance of driver Whitehouse – is a witness who would be unlikely to stand up to cross-examination.”

  “He’s a young Alsatian,” said Luke. “Doesn’t speak much English yet. I don’t fancy he’d be keen to give evidence. He’s got every reason to hate the Germans, but that doesn’t mean that he wants to feature publicly as an informer for the English. If we forced him into court, I think he’d just keep his mouth shut.”

  “Right,” said Yapp. “That’s the situation. Until we can prove that all this liquor came from the store they were meant to be in charge of, we can do nothing effective about Light or Whitehouse. Next point, then: How do we get that proof?”

  He looked around, but no one had any suggestions to offer.

  “Come, gentlemen,” he said with a smile. “It’s not as difficult as all that. A little simple mathematics should produce the answer. When we took over, we signed for the drinks in the store, and since I had to sign the chit, I can assure you that I checked it carefully before I did so. New supplies have come in, monthly, from the Royal Army Service Corps. They may not be the most warlike of soldiers, but there’s nothing wrong with their bookkeeping. That gives us the plus side. Now for the minus side. Two deliveries a week for thirteen weeks. Beer and soft drinks go to the Naval Army and Air Force Institute. As far as spirits are concerned, there are only six authorised recipients: the two officers’ messes, the sergeants’ mess, the hospital, the convalescent centre, and, by special arrangement”—he smiled at Harper—“your headquarters.”

  Harper nodded.

  “So these are the six recipients. In each case, a man will have signed for the drinks received. A responsible man. The mess secretary, the hospital and convalescent camp social service workers, and in your case …”

  He looked at Harper. It was Longhorn who said, “In our case, the mess sergeant.”

  “Excellent. Then all we have to do is to instruct Bombardier Light to visit these six persons, in turn, and to obtain from each a statement of the drinks he signed for since the RHA took over: there should be no difficulty about that. Such records are always carefully kept. Our data are now complete. ‘X’ for the original contents of the store. ‘Y’ for the R.A.S.C. deliveries. ‘Z’ for the outward deliveries. ‘X’ + ‘Y’ - ‘Z’ must be the amount now in stock. And any discrepancy must be the result of leakage. Right?”

  “The only thing I don’t understand,” said Longhorn, “is why you propose to ask Light to obtain these figures. Won’t that simply alert him to what we’re up to?”

  “Certainly. I hope it will not only alert him, but also alarm him. He cannot falsify the statements. We shall, of course, have made copies of them ourselves. He is not a strong character, and as he sees the figures failing to add up and the net closing around him, he may feel inclined to shift some of the blame from his own shoulders.”

  “You mean,” said Harper, “that Sergeant Major Forgan might be involved.”

  “Indeed, he might have organised the whole operation.”

  The others could not tell from the tone of voice in which he said this whether he was serious or not.

  Chapter Eighteen

  And so, as September crawled toward October, this curious little campaign continued, a campaign whose object was to discover who was extracting and selling wine and spirits from a government store; a minuscule affair, not to be compared with the campaign that was rolling forward a few miles away, where French general de Castelnau was attacking with two armies on a front of fifteen miles between Reims and Verdun and where the British, under Sir John French, prepared to launch their largest attack so far, with six divisions, at Loos. A campaign in which the gains would be small and the casualty lists, on both sides, appalling.

  The casualties in the battle of Le Touquet were on a smaller scale.

  The sergeant in charge of the German prisoners had arranged with Bombardier Light to carry into the store three truckloads of cases received that morning from the R.A.S.C. He had half a dozen of his men, lined up and ready, at the place outside the store that had been agreed. Light, as so often, was late, which gave the sergeant food for thought, as he compared the slackness of his captors with the promptness and discipline of their prisoners.

  He had been entrusted with a key to the building but not to the individual storerooms. After waiting for fifteen minutes, he had used it to open the outer door and had walked down the central passage to
the office at the end. Here he had found Bombardier Light. He was sitting behind his desk, with an army revolver clasped in his hand. The number and the enthusiasm of the flies around him suggested that some time had elapsed since he had used the revolver to blow the top of his head off.

  “So that’s that,” said General Foxley. “Good marks for Yapp. He said that the culprit would break under the strain, and broken he has.”

  “Does that mean,” said Harper, who had brought the news, “that we acquit driver Whitehouse of any part in the operation?”

  “Not proven, I think.”

  “I find it hard to believe that he could have gone out twice a week, for three months, left his van in exactly the same spot, taken his drink at the same table, and driven home suspecting nothing.”

  “Difficult to prove that he didn’t,” said Foxley.

  “And why in the world didn’t he complain of being made to back his van down a steep and narrow passage when he could so much more easily have parked it on the road?”

  “Our men are conservatives. They’re used to doing stupid things at the same time and in the same place every day. It’s a way they have in the army …”

  The smile with which Foxley accompanied this declaration of his faith persuaded Harper that he was not going to move the general. Of itself, this did not worry him. He had no particular reason for wanting to see Whitehouse penalised. What was making him uneasy was something more general.

  The news of Light’s suicide had, of course, got out. That was to be expected. What was hard to explain was just why it should have had such an explosive effect. Maybe it was the weather – a broiling and unseasonable Indian summer; maybe the powder was dry and only awaiting the spark. Whatever the reason, the discomfort caused by the news was almost tangible. Officers, going to bed, had started taking their revolvers with them.