I almost hit him – would have done if Chuffy hadnt grabbed my arm – not cos I didnt believe him – but cos I felt it were my fault – trusting him. Just as well I didn't connect as Cap Evenlode the adjutant showed up just then – dont know what hed seen but he gave us an old fashioned look. Word is he dont much like Gertie – typical stuck up family – likely thinks the Grindals are trade – and when he took Gertie aside with him to make his report I bet he gave him a rollocking too about controlling his men. But I didnt have time to worry about that – I was listening to a voice shouting somewhere out towards Glencorse – nothing unusual in the Salient – the air was full of voices calling screaming sobbing – it was the mud – once you were wounded and by yourself you soon got stuck fast – stretcher bearers did all they could but it often needed half a dozen men to pull one out – God knows how many died that might have been saved if they could have made it to a dressing station – so when I said – Listen – thats Steve – they all thought I was being delirious – but I knew that voice – and besides now he was calling my name – Pete – Pete – so I didnt stop to think but went back out of the trench before anyone could try to stop me. I wer-ent being brave – I just knew I could never go back to Kirkton and tell the usual lies about him dying like a hero if Id left him to a long slow drowning in that mud.
I had a piece of rope coiled round my waist – that was one thing wed learned in that first attack on Sanctuary – Jammy had managed to scavenge a whole coil while we were in rest – and everyone in the platoon got a length – and I had a field dressing pack – those apart I had nowt – I hadnt even bothered to bring my bondook – I wasnt going out there to kill anyone – but there were plenty who had other ideas.
From time to time a flare went up from either side making me think of the shepherds in the field when glory shone around. It were like that glory too – meaning that for a short while you saw everything perfectly clear, then darkness came rushing back worse than before and I had to lie still till I got my night sight back again. But oh the sights I saw under that floating white light – wed fought back and forth over this ground for more than a week and there was scarcely a shellhole I looked into in search of Steve that didnt have its occupant. Desperate now to find Steve even if only to know for certain he were dead I turned corpses over – and sometimes they were men I knew – and sometimes they were men their own mothers would not have known – but none was Steve.
Id not dared call his name for fear of letting Fritz know I were out here – but in the end anything were better than slithering endlessly through this hell so I yelled his name – and discovered that even a man at the extreme of fear can still be made to jump when a reply came back so close it seemed almost in my ear. I turned my head and peered into the gloom of a deep hole – after a while something moved down there – a darkness moving against a darkness – then a tiny gleam – a sliver of whiteness – gave me a point to focus on – it was an eye – and as I looked a face formed around it – and Steves voice said – You took your fucking time.
Gertie said you and the sarge had bought it – I said – He could be right – said Steve – he certainly is about the sarge – Oh shit – I said – Where is he Steve? Wheres Jammy? – I think Im standing on him – he said.
By now I could make out he were in a bad way – never mind what wounds he had – the left side of his head lay on the surface of the mud and of his body only his right arm and shoulder were still not covered. I threw him the end of my rope and he grasped it in his hand then twisted it round and round his wrist till it were held tight and I started to pull. The piece of ground I was lying on was full of debris so it provided a firmer base than anywhere else Id crawled that night – but not even this advantage could give me enough purchase to haul him free – and all his struggles to help himself did was sink him deeper.
Its no good, Pete, he said – Im a goner. Tell Mary she can play around all she likes now but if she doesn't do right by little Steve I’ll come back to haunt her so help me God.
Wed never talked of it before but I knew then that he knew what all the lads from Kirkton knew – that his Mary wasnt exactly saving herself for her heroes return.
I said – Don't talk daft – I’ll get some help – well soon have you out of there – And he said – For God's sake dont leave me like this – put a bullet through my head before you go. Cant do that – Isaid – I came out without my bondook – Thats a hanging offence – he said – why dont you get some practise in? I’ll put this rope round my neck and you heave on your end and see if youve got enough strength to strangle me.
God help us – I dont think he was joking – but before I could decide what to do – and what I would have decided I’ll never know – another flare went up and by its light I saw that God had taken the power of decision away from me. On the far side of the shellhole four German soldiers were crouched – three with rifles and one – the officer – with a pistol pointed straight at me.
I thought of running – and I thought of surrendering – and I thought of Alice and Ada and Kirkton – and while I was thinking of all these things I held up the end of the rope and pointed at Steve and said – Mein Bruder.
I didnt know the German for cousin and maybe if I had it wouldnt have been so effective – but Bruder made them pause just long enough for the officer to say something. The expected rattle of gunfire didn't come – Slowly the flare faded – I remained quite still – where would I run to? – and when I got my sight back they were at my side.
I think they checked that I had no weapon – just a medical pack – perhaps they thought I was a noncombatant stretcher bearer or something like that – perhaps the officer had a brother in the trenches – he was young – same age as our Gertie Id say – with the sunken shadowed eyes that mark all of us whove been too long at the Front – what else is there to say about him? – Nothing – and everything – I wouldnt recognize him if I met him in the street – but I wish him well and safely home – for he spoke again to his men and they took the rope from me and began to pull – and slowly Steve came out of that dreadful hole.
I think there may have been a moment when he wondered whether to take us prisoner – words were spoken – the officer looked from me to Steve who was lying semiconscious at my side – and I would guess he said that taking us back with them was likely to prove a lot more dangerous than leaving us to our own devices.
Whatever – he spoke to me in English – the one phrase – Good luck – then they moved off – and Steve and I were by ourselves without a care in the world except how the two of us – one wounded – one exhausted – were to get back to our trenches without getting drowned – blown up – or shot by either side.
But get back we did – and by one last miracle almost to the very point where Id slipped over the top. Dawn was lightening the east and the lads were on stand to – so I risked a shout which was less of a risk than being taken for a sneak attack – and a few moments later I was drinking a mug of tea while Steve was being stretchered to the rear.
It were funny – when news reached the remnants of the platoon that he should be OK though hed got a Blighty one he quickly changed from poor bastard to lucky bastard. What really caught the lads interest was our encounter with the Huns – as word got around about this – I found men from other platoons were coming up to me and asking me about it – out here we never hated the Hun like they do back home – too much sense that hes in the same bleeding boat – and this story of mine mebbe set them dreaming that somehow wed do out here what clearly they couldnt do back there and strike our own private peace.
I didnt know how I was going to react when I saw Gertie – or how he was going to react when he saw me. The way Steve told it he could have genuinely believed Jammy and him were both dead – so I gave him the benefit of the doubt – and he looked me straight in the eyes and said how glad he was hed been wrong about Steve – and how sad he was about Jammy – then he told me to sew another stripe on as he was recommending I g
ot made up to sergeant in Jammys place.
Only once did I let my control slip – back in rest again I was sorting out the days Orders with him when he said – Word of advice sergeant – go easy on spreading tales about friendly Huns – adjutant must have heard something – told me very pointed this morning that fraternizing with the enemy is regarded very seriously back at Base.
I said – Fraternizing? – They saved our fucking lives!
– And he said – Exactly – so how do you feel about shooting Germans now? – And I said – Them Germans?
– If I knew it was them Id not shoot – in fact theres a lot of our own lot back at Base Id sooner shoot than any of them Germans! Gertie said – For Christ sake Peter be careful what you say – you know how they feel about agitators just now – anyone else hears you talking like that and youre in real trouble – mutiny trouble – weve got to do our duty – follow orders – theres no other way – dont you see?
Well hes right of course – and the brass are right – and that German officer was right – and Im right too – and if every buggers so bloody right why arent we all back home moaning about the price of ice cream on a Bank Holiday instead of being stuck in the middle of this stinking mud hole where everythings so fucking wrong?
Why? Why? WHY?
The rain was slackening off just as it had slackened off early in September all those years ago, to be replaced by a gusty wind drying up the ground and with it any hopes that the brass might decide that the fixture was rained off. Not that, on past performance, there'd ever been much chance of that anyway.
Pascoe looked up at the trees, almost leafless now in November, but still tall and shapely with all the latent promise of spring's renewal in the supple swaying of their boughs. As he looked, his inward eye which was the curse of solitude stripped them of everything till they were mere black lifeless stumps. Through Glencorse and into Polygon. Every small advance doing nothing but put a few more yards of ravaged ground between you and whatever mockery of peace remained to the rear. And after Polygon, with the winter rains settling in, weeks more of the endless crawl through the yellow mud up the shallow ridge where stood, or rather lay, the ruined village of Passchendaele.
Pascoe forced himself back to the present by looking at his watch till at last the time registered. What had Pottle said? A window between four and five?
That's what I need, thought Pascoe. A window, nice and high, looking out across a sunlit pastoral landscape.
He was getting the sun at least. The storm had over-taken him and was moving east. Westward the dying sun rimmed the horizon with red and the sky was clear. Could be a frost tonight, he thought. Always something to look forward to.
He started the engine and went in pursuit of the retreating clouds.
Part Three
POLYGON
I have a Garden of my own,
But so with Roses overgrown,
And Lillies, that you would it guess
To be a little Wilderness. i
Edgar Wield looked out of the frost-crazed kitchen window as he waited for the kettle to boil and recalled his certainties of an endless Indian summer just a couple of mornings earlier.
Never bet with a farmer about weather, a woman about weddings, or a miner about whippets. Where did that bit of homely advice spring from? Someone who knew his stuff so it couldn't have been a CID sergeant.
He was passing through an uncharacteristic period of self-doubt, swinging between suspicion that he was wasting his time with his blind-man probings of TecSec and certainty that he was missing something as obvious as a drunk at a church fete. Curiously this doubt didn't make him unhappy. These last few months he had spent living in Corpse Cottage in Enscombe had relaxed and released him somehow, bringing the whole spectrum of emotional coloration within his reach for the first time in more years than he cared to remember. And if at one end dark self- doubt was the price he had to pay for bright self-awareness at the other, then that was OK. More than OK, a real bargain.
The kettle was boiling. He mashed the tea, some odd Chinese blend that Edwin insisted on. It was, he had said rather sniffily, an acquired taste. So, Wield had pointed out, was the strong stewed stuff he preferred – acquired through years of no choice – and he saw no cause to brag about that.
So they danced and fenced and sometimes fought around each other, every encounter a learning process, most outcomes leaving them a little bit closer.
He set the tray with two china mugs, a fresh-sliced lemon, a bowl of sugar, and carried it upstairs.
Edwin Digweed was sitting up in bed reading. It sometimes seemed to Wield that where'er his partner walked, old books immediately crowded into a shade. He looked suspiciously at the pile on the bedside table. It appeared to be at least three volumes higher than the previous morning. Digweed's second-hand and antiquarian bookshop in the village was often quite audibly groaning beneath the weight of words piled high on every surface. When he'd moved out to Corpse Cottage, the books had rushed in to occupy what had previously been his living space above the shop, like water into a foundering ship. This was the one uncrossable line Wield drew. Books on bookshelves he didn't mind. But books on sills and stairs, in kitchen cupboards and bathroom cabinets, under sinks and over wardrobes, books breeding books in every nook, cranny and empty space, was not his idea of interior decoration. A good book might be the precious Iifeblood of a master spirit, but that didn't mean you wanted to drown in the stuff.
'You're up early,' said Digweed. 'Bad conscience?'
'Not so's you'd notice,' said Wield climbing back into bed. 'Just this TecSec thing.'
His first impulse when he and Edwin had joined forces was to continue what had been his iron rule for twenty years – to keep his professional and private lives completely separate. But he had discovered in himself a great weariness for living out of compartments, so he had started talking about his work, not even making a big thing about confidentiality. In his experience a man you needed to swear to secrecy was the last person on earth to share anything with.
He didn't tell everything, but if anything was so adhesive that the drive up the valley of the Een didn't wash it off, then he felt Digweed was entitled to know. Not that his partner gave any sign of feeling this was a right worth demonstrating over, his interest frequently being engaged by elements that were peripheral if not eccentric.
'Wanwood,' he had said when Wield first aired his obsession (for so he acknowledged it to himself) about TecSec. 'After Wanwood Forest, no doubt. Let me see.'
And yet another book had appeared to be pored over before being discarded on one of the rampant piles.
'Yes, here we are. Wanwood House, originally a hunting lodge in the royal forest of Wanwood which in medieval times stretched from Mid-Yorkshire almost as far south as Doncaster. Given with land by Henry Seven to Sir Jeffrey Truman for loyal service at Bosworth. Family prospered during next three centuries but went into decline in eighteenth. House currently ruinous – and this was written, let me see, in 1866. What does it look like?'
'The house? Big and square. Like an old railway station.'
'Victorian, you mean? Probably a nineteenth-century rebuilding. And you say the woodland surrounding it has been ripped up for security reasons? One of the last remnants of the old forest of Wanwood? My God, that's really criminal!'
But occasionally Digweed's long-submerged training as a lawyer surfaced and he expressed a proper forensic interest.
'Ah yes,' he said now, putting a thin slice of lemon into his tea and wincing histrionically as Wield shovelled sugar into his. 'Your intuition. Or to put it another way, your irrational unsubstantiated gut feeling. How do you intend to proceed?'
'Don't know. Another go at Patten maybe.'
'What about his partner?'
'Captain Sanderson? No, Mr Dalziel's getting the dirt on him.'
'I see. Class divide. Sergeants investigate sergeants, captains are left to the brass.'
Wield laughed.
'Don't t
hink either Sanderson or Fat Andy 'ud thank you for lumping them in the same class,' he said.
'No. Now I bring your great leader to mind, or at least as much of him as I can cram into my fairly elastic imagination, I see what you mean. By "have another go" do you mean electrodes on genitals or just the wet knotted towel?'
'Psychological pressure we call it when it doesn't leave marks,' said Wield.
'Really? Fascinating. We really must consider bringing out a small booklet of police definitions. Now don't look offended.'
'I wasn't. And how would you know?' said Wield. 'Any road, this must be a big bore when you've got a book on early American presses in your hand.'
'No, honestly, far from being bored, I'm fascinated. Let me prove it. It seems to me that two things occurred which, if connected, may give body to your somewhat ethereal suspicions. Firstly, the man Patten joined the firm. Secondly, the firm got its first substantial contract, working for ALBA.'
'And if there's no connection?'
'Then I should concentrate on helping old ladies across the road.'
'Well thanks a lot,' said Wield. 'That's a big help. No, I mean it.'
'You mean you mean to be kind rather than satirical, perhaps. But I'm not finished. Once engage the attention of Sherlock Holmes and he applies the full might of his intellect to even the most trivial of details. A detail which may or may not be trivial seems to me to be the matter of what Patten was doing in the months between pouring his severance pay into the pockets of the bookmakers and becoming Captain Sanderson's partner.'
'Yeah, I know. In fact I think I said that to you myself,' said Wield.
'Hoity toity,' said Digweed. 'Yes indeed you did. But what you said was that you'd like to know what possibly nefarious activity Patten had got up to which earned him enough money to buy in. I think perhaps you ought to be asking why he should want to buy in? Or perhaps why Sanderson would want to let him buy in? Or even whether indeed he bought in at all in the strictly financial sense?'
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