The Danger of Life

by Ken Lussey

  Sergeant Potter said, ‘Even if our man was a private in 1940, sir, he might have been commissioned since.’

  ‘That’s true, Sergeant, which is why we will be discreetly checking every officer present to see how many of them fit the description.’

  ‘I obviously don’t know the figures, sir,’ said Lieutenant Dixon, ‘but it seems to me that a fair proportion of the population might turn out to be blond and blue-eyed. As you say, the broken nose might or might not be a help, and I don’t think we can attach any significant to the “piercing” eyes. The man had just killed and was about to try to kill again. His eyes were likely to be reflecting the stress of that.’

  ‘Again, that’s true,’ said Bob. ‘But let’s give it a try anyway.’

  Lieutenant Colonel White had taken more convincing and for a while Bob thought the man was going to refuse to cooperate. In the end Bob won him round by reminding him that, since he was the senior officer present, the responsibility for what took place would be Bob’s, and that he was more than happy to justify himself to Lieutenant General Gordon, to Commando Group H.Q. and to Combined Operations H.Q. if any questions were asked. It was marginally more subtle than issuing a direct order to the lieutenant colonel, and White appeared to appreciate being left room to back down relatively gracefully.

  It had then taken longer than Bob was happy about to assemble the men. White’s comment they were lucky that none of the trainees were on long runs or out in the mountains didn’t really help. Men were forming in three ranks along the sides of the irregularly-shaped parade ground set amongst the Nissen huts and other buildings. Bob stood with Lieutenant Colonel White, Monique and Lieutenant Dixon at the north eastern corner of the parade ground. The daylight was fading, and Bob hoped they had the time to complete the process.

  ‘What are we looking at, Edward?’ asked Bob, as the roll calls began.

  ‘Over here, to our right, are the men who came to Achnacarry on the 3rd of October as what we call our Number 3 Intake. They are volunteers from across the British Army and are here on our standard five-week course. When they finish the course, those who are successful will be posted as replacements to various commandos. 417 men arrived to start the course. We are now down to around 350, with the others having returned to their units. They are divided into two training commandos run by members of my staff.’

  ‘And on the other side?’ said Bob, gesturing towards the slightly smaller number of men lining the southern and south western sides of the parade ground.

  ‘Those are the men who took part in last night’s assault landing. They form the Scots Guards detachment and 24th Guards Brigade detachment, both taking part in short courses here. They are due to leave tomorrow. Between them they came with 288 men and sixteen officers, and a much higher percentage has stayed the course. And to complete the picture, the men at this near end of the parade ground are my staff. As we agreed, the 200 men and thirteen officers who are being trained to join 10 Commando are not present. Most arrived in Achnacarry on Thursday, after the first murder and your people have spoken at length to the twelve who were here on Wednesday night. They are, in any case, not British, and you tell me we are now looking for someone who is. The roll calls should be completed quite quickly, and the officers will then produce lists of the men who fit the description you provided.’ White paused for a moment, surveying the scene developing before them in the evening gloom. ‘You know, Bob, I doubt if there’s ever been a larger identity parade in history.’

  ‘Funny you should say that, Edward. I was just thinking about something I read while studying for my sergeant’s exams in the City of Glasgow Police, back in 1937. One of the first identity parades we know about took place in the 1820s after soldiers of the 1st Regiment of Life Guards opened fire without orders on a mob in Oxford Street in London and killed two men. The entire regiment was lined up to see if witnesses could recognise the soldiers who fired the fatal shots.’

  ‘Did it work?’ asked Lieutenant Colonel White.

  ‘It failed to lead to any prosecutions, if that’s what you mean,’ said Bob.

  ‘Well let’s hope that we do rather better,’ said White. ‘We don’t have much daylight left. Hello, what’s this?’

  While the process continued amongst the main bodies of men lining the long sides of the parade ground, Captain Sanderson approached from the formation at the near end.

  The captain came to a halt and saluted. ‘Sir, Sergeant Mallory isn’t present on parade. No-one knows where he is.’

  Lieutenant Colonel White surprised Bob by swearing, loudly, before catching himself and apologising to Monique.

  She smiled. ‘I’ve heard worse, Colonel.’

  The lieutenant colonel turned to Bob. ‘He’s someone I should have thought of as soon as you described the man you are looking for. He’s one of my fieldcraft instructors. He teaches the arts of living off the land, camouflage, stalking and so on. The thing is, he fits the description of the man you are looking for quite well. Blond hair, blue eyes, medium height. I’m not sure I’d call his nose “badly broken”, but it’s certainly not the shape that nature originally intended.’ White turned to the captain. ‘Clive, can you mount a search of the camp for him? It’s possible there might be a good reason for the sergeant not being present, but either way we urgently need to find him. Bob, I think you and I need to look at his service record.’

  Lieutenant Dixon waved an arm to take in the parade ground. ‘Sir, do you want to carry on with this process, or stop it?’

  ‘Let’s press on here,’ said Bob. ‘Can you collect the lists of possible matches from the officers and bring them back into the office? And remember to look at the officers themselves. With any luck we know who our man is now, but remember that many of these men are leaving tomorrow, and we are never going to get another chance to complete this process if Sergeant Mallory turns up with a twisted ankle somewhere.’

  Sergeant Potter, Petty Officer MacDonald and Private Jenkins were still in the main administration office, poring over the lists they had generated.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Lieutenant Colonel White, ‘I hope you haven’t disordered our records so much we can’t find someone. We need to see the service record for a member of my training staff, a Sergeant William Mallory.’

  Sergeant Potter looked up. ‘The name rings a bell, sir. He was one of the first I was able to identify as definitely having been in the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium. Hang on a minute.’

  He walked over to a pile of papers on a desk and shuffled through it. ‘Here we are, sir. We know he was at Dunkirk because he was mentioned in dispatches. He was a private at the time. Apparently, he saved the lives of three men in his platoon as the Germans closed in on the troops still on the beaches. He was serving with the 2nd Battalion of the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment, which formed part of the 10th Infantry Brigade.’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ said the lieutenant colonel. ‘I think that gives us a prime suspect, Bob, don’t you? If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and see what we are doing to find him before it gets completely dark. Just our luck to be looking for a man whose particular area of expertise is staying hidden.’

  Bob looked around after Lieutenant Colonel White had left the room. ‘I think that perhaps we should put this exercise on hold for the moment. Is it possible to put the documents back where they belong without losing track of where you are?’

  ‘As I said earlier, sir, I’m not sure there’s much else for us in the paperwork. We’ve got our lists, and any further refinement is going to have to be done with home units. We can return the paperwork to the state we found it in, though it will take some time.’

  At that point Lieutenant Dixon came in with several pieces of paper. ‘We’ve got fairly long lists of men who fit the “medium height, blue-eyed and blond” description, sir. The list of those who also have an obviously broken nose is rather
shorter. It’s just one man, a corporal in the Scots Guards, but he and his officer both assure me that his nose was fine until the boxing tournament, or whatever they call it, that took place here the night the first victim was murdered last week. I’m no expert, but there are probably a few others with older nose injuries that are not what you’d call “obvious”.’

  Bob took a deep breath. ‘Look, let’s call a halt. If Mallory is our man, then this exercise has been a success in flushing him out. If he’s not, then the departure of two of the courses tomorrow will make life even more difficult, but at least we have our lists.’

  ‘If the men on these courses are still suspects, sir, shouldn’t we hold them back?’ asked Lieutenant Dixon.

  ‘Let’s hope I don’t have to make that decision,’ said Bob.

  Having sent three of his team to have a meal, Bob went with Monique and Lieutenant Dixon to find Lieutenant Colonel White and see how the search was progressing.

  ‘Not well’ would have been a fair summary.

  Bob had found it difficult to know how to respond to Monique since their argument. It was difficult to see how their relationship, such as it had ever been, could possibly recover after the things they had both said.

  Michael had privately asked him if everything was alright. Bob realised that it must have been obvious to everyone in the team that everything was far from alright, though he replied with some platitudes that probably gave the lieutenant an eloquent commentary on the true state of things.

  Bob was simply finding it very hard to talk to Monique. Even in a work setting, in the company of others, he had to make a conscious effort not to exclude her, and he only did so to try to shield the rest of the team from the awkwardness he felt. She didn’t want to be at Achnacarry, and he didn’t want her there. He just wished she’d leave.

  Bob knew that for her part, Monique had made an effort to help Michael and the rest of the team, and her contribution was appreciated. Bob couldn’t question her professionalism. It was just that the dark vacuum that their relationship had become was in constant danger of sucking the life and enthusiasm out of everyone around.

  It was a huge relief to Bob when, over a slightly strained dinner with Monique and Michael in the officers’ mess, she said that she would have to catch the train to Glasgow from Spean Bridge the next morning. There were arrangements that needed putting in place that she couldn’t leave to anyone else. After checking they couldn’t be overheard, she talked to Michael enthusiastically about how the plan to fake the sabotage of the Hillington factory was progressing.

  Bob was less happy to hear this was to be only a temporary reprieve. Matthew Sloan had agreed to her travelling to Glasgow in the morning but had instructed her to return to Achnacarry by the end of the day, again in a departmental car. He didn’t want to release the leverage he had on MI11’s investigation until it had reached a conclusion. Monique would only have a few hours at the far end, but, as she told Michael, that ought to be enough to achieve what she wanted.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Bob, Lieutenant Dixon and Petty Officer MacDonald arrived at the end of the White Bridge shortly after 8 a.m. the next morning, where they parked the staff car. The sun was not yet up, but the sky was becoming lighter and it looked like being a fine morning. The military police guard on the pier on Loch Arkaig had been strengthened overnight at Bob’s suggestion, and their passes were checked before they were allowed onto the boat. Lieutenant Colonel White had also placed a guard on the near end of the White Bridge to check on any movements out of the training centre towards Loch Arkaig. Bob remembered what he had been told about the river being fordable and wondered how effective the guard would be.

  Dixon and MacDonald busied themselves removing the tarpaulin covering the boat. Bob had asked Sergeant Potter to remain at Achnacarry to work with Private Jenkins to help restore the staff records to a usable condition.

  ‘Do you think they’ll find Mallory, sir?’ asked Petty Officer MacDonald.

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Bob. ‘Lieutenant Colonel White is planning to intensify the search this morning and mount sweeps across the area. ‘The thing is, Mallory apparently knows the area like the back of his hand and is said to be highly skilled at keeping himself hidden and living off the land.’

  ‘Someone will see him sooner or later, sir,’ said Lieutenant Dixon.

  ‘More immediately, how sure are you that you can get this boat started, Andrew?’

  ‘I checked the fuel when we found it on Saturday, sir, and as you can see I’ve laid on more.’ The petty officer gestured towards a 5-gallon jerrycan standing on the pier. ‘And they’ve yet to make a boat I can’t operate.’

  MacDonald was as good as his word and it was only a short time later that they found themselves approaching Eilean Loch Airceig from the south east.

  ‘Can we go all the way around?’ asked Bob. ‘That way we can get a feel for the place and spot any signs of recent disturbance.’

  Circumnavigating the island only took a couple of minutes. ‘It’s not what you’d call big, is it, sir?’ said MacDonald.

  Bob said, ‘It looks to me to be roughly oblong in shape, measuring perhaps 35 yards from east to west, and perhaps 40 yards from north to south. I suppose if it’s partly artificial, they’d not have wanted to have to make it any larger than necessary. Archibald Cameron suggested the best place to land was on the south side. Can you see anything?’

  They landed on a stony beach. The island turned out to be as heavily overgrown as it had looked from the lake, but faint traces of an old path led north through the undergrowth. ‘I’m guessing that leads to the chapel, sir.’ said Lieutenant Dixon as they stood on the shore. ‘What are we looking for? Caskets of gold coins?’

  ‘That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’ said Bob, leading the way. ‘To my mind we are looking for anything that doesn’t fit, anything that indicates recent activity or disturbance.’

  It didn’t take long for the three men to conclude that no-one had visited the island recently.

  ‘That’s disappointing, sir,’ said Lieutenant Dixon.

  ‘Do you want to try the smaller island, sir?’ said Petty Officer MacDonald, pointing to a piece of tree-covered ground that barely rose above the surface of the loch a short distance to the south west.

  ‘While we are here, we should,’ said Bob. ‘Archibald Cameron said it was called An t-Eilean Beag. It looks only a few yards across.’

  Petty Officer MacDonald was able to tie the boat to a tree on the second island.

  ‘I can’t see this taking very long,’ said Bob.

  ‘Was that the sort of thing you had in mind, sir?’ The petty officer stood, pointing to a spot near the centre of the tiny island.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Bob.

  ‘It looks like a piece of camouflage netting covering something,’ said the Petty Officer.

  ‘Careful,’ said Bob. ‘Remember the sort of man we are dealing with.’

  ‘It looks safe enough,’ said Andrew, holding back the camouflage netting. It had been covering three 5-gallon jerrycans, just like the one they had loaded on the boat at the pier. There was also a collection of tools lying on the ground next to them.

  ‘What have we got there?’ asked Bob.

  ‘Just the sort of thing any self-respecting treasure hunter would need, sir. A pick-axe, a long crowbar I imagine you could use for levering rocks out of position, and two shovels.’

  Bob looked down at the collection. ‘I think this rather proves that wherever the Loch Arkaig gold is hidden, it’s not on either of these islands. If I’d hidden the gold here, the very last thing I’d then do is leave all my equipment here, to draw attention to this end of the loch. And the amount of fuel suggests our murderer was planning, or had undertaken, one or more trips in the boat to the far end of the loch.’

  ‘The lack of evidence of recent activity on the l
arger island supports that view, sir,’ said Lieutenant Dixon. ‘On the other hand, this island is a very handy place to leave your kit if you are busy digging somewhere further along the loch. There’s a lot of stuff here for one person to move around at Achnacarry without drawing attention to themselves. I wonder if it was activity on this island that Captain Bell saw, and which caused him to walk to the pier? Despite the trees it’s possible to see right across the island, and anyone hiding that lot would have looked suspicious to someone at the head of the loch with good binoculars.’

  The lieutenant’s reference to ‘one person’ brought to the fore a thought that had been nagging away at the back of Bob’s mind. ‘Hang on a minute. What does the fact there are two shovels here tell us?’

  ‘I see what you mean, sir,’ said the lieutenant. ‘It would leave one man rather over-equipped. The presence of two shovels suggests we are dealing with two treasure hunters.’

  ‘Exactly, Doctor Watson,’ said Bob. ‘Which probably means that Captain Bell was killed by two men, not one.’

  The lieutenant said, ‘Perhaps we need to let Lieutenant Colonel White know he’s looking for two men and that one of them may still be going about his normal business at Achnacarry in the belief no-one knows about him?’