No Man's Land

by Reginald Hill

  Denial thought for a moment.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Maggs. ‘But what about that farm, sir? You really fancied that a couple of months back.’

  ‘Yes, I did. But it’s snowing, Mr Maggs. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I could be wrong about that farmhouse and we could waste a lot of time and energy crawling around in the snow. So we’ll just sit here and wait for them to come back, I think.’

  ‘To come back, sir?’ said Maggs incredulously.

  ‘That’s right. If I had got myself a truck, that’s what I’d do. Wouldn’t you?’

  And so they sat and waited and if Sergeant-Major Maggs’s scepticism had not conveyed itself to his men, they would have been a great deal more alert on the night of the second raid and might even have captured all the raiders instead of merely killing several.

  Denial ground the point home, speaking out of a cold anger which took Maggs aback.

  ‘In future you will follow my orders to the letter, Sergeant-Major,’ he said. ‘I have no desire that my men should be killed. Or lost to me in any way.’

  Whether this was an expression of concern or a threat was not clear, but Maggs was relieved when Denial went on to discuss their immediate tactics.

  The blizzard now blowing fiercely made immediate pursuit impossible.

  ‘It’ll likely have frozen them buggers to death too,’ opined Maggs gleefully.

  ‘You think so?’ said Denial. ‘That’s what you’d put your money on?’

  He made it sound like more than money. Maggs thereafter kept quiet.

  From time to time during the day there were lulls in the weather, but every time Denial began to think seriously about setting out, the snowstorm closed in again, and it was not till after nightfall that the winds finally died down and the sky became clear.

  This brought its own problems. The carefully planned flow of military traffic in the area had come to a complete halt during the blizzard. Now it would be starting up again at irregular intervals according to conditions and there was every prospect of tremendous confusion. Avoiding that confusion was the job of the Corps of Military Police – its main if not its only job in the eyes of many staff officers. Denial toyed with the idea of retaining a couple of his men to go in pursuit of Viney and his socalled Volunteers. He certainly had the authority to do it. But the provost department’s hard-won autonomy was still an object of some staff disapproval and not lightly to be exerted on a doubtful priority.

  He sighed deeply. For him to be debating with himself at all meant the priority was doubtful to the point of nonexistence. His first duty was always to war effort. An efficient traffic flow was more important than hunting down a few deserters.

  The snow had damaged communication lines too. In any case, first-hand reports from men he had trained himself were the only satisfactory basis of an efficient traffic plan. Before dawn he had dispatched all his men to check which roads were occupied by what traffic and to report the news back to Sergeant-Major Maggs as soon as possible.

  Now, his sense of duty placated for the moment, he went out to the HQ stables. His small detachment of mounted policemen were all out on traffic reconnaissance, but there was a remount earmarked for his own use, though, being no horseman, he generally preferred the motorbike combination. This morning, however, legs were going to be better than wheels.

  He told himself that all he wanted was a bit of exercise in the cold morning air to blow away the cobwebs of an almost sleepless night. But it was without debate that he set the animal’s head eastward out of Barnecourt.

  The wind had been set in the west during the storm, blowing up the shallow valley, with the result that at first the snow lay thin and the going was easy. But he could see how the drifts built up the further he went and after about a mile as it became increasingly difficult to steer a safe path through the high-piled snow, he let the horse come to a halt.

  Up there another three or four miles was the farmhouse, and another mile beyond it, you were into the Desolation. From what he had seen of the farm buildings, it was going to be a desperate place for that family to winter in, but not as desperate as whatever hole those fierce and tattered denizens of the Desolation occupied. What had Cowper called it in his sad, last scribbles? The Warren. That was it. But rats, not rabbits.

  Perhaps Maggs was right and the winter would do the job for him. He could almost feel sorry for these desperate, desolate fugitives. Then his mind went on further east to that other warren, that other complex of subterranean burrowings which was the front line, and he felt less sorry.

  In any case, what had pity to do with a brooding, amoral, anarchic figure like Viney?

  He was about to turn away when his eye was caught by a mark on the smooth blanket of the snow, a serpentine line as if some giant finger had idly started to trace a pattern and then quickly grown tired. It was about two hundred yards away, snaking out of a little wood whose own close-packed trunks created another blot of darkness against the white.

  He studied the line with his field glasses. It was as if something, or someone, had come down through the wood and ploughed forward a little way further through the deep snow before … before what? Disappearing?

  ‘Come on, boy. Giddup!’ he said, urging his horse forward.

  It took him ten minutes to force his way through to the end of the line. Dismounting a yard or two short with the snow now waist high, he forced his way through the remaining barrier.

  He had been right. There on the ground lay a man, face down. Denial knelt beside him and turned him over. He was still alive, but with his ragged clothing sodden by exertion from within and melted snow from without, even a few hours’ more exposure must surely have killed him.

  ‘Come on,’ said Denial, trying to raise the man into a sitting position. Man! He was more like a boy, with fine pale features and a shock of blond hair. Suddenly the eyelids moved, revealing light blue eyes which regarded him without comprehension.

  ‘Let’s get you out of here,’ said Denial. ‘We’ll soon have you safe.’

  Safe! It was a silly thing to say. If this boy was what he thought he must be, there was no safety where Denial was taking him.

  He managed with difficulty to pull the youth to his feet, but he was a dead weight, supported almost entirely by Denial’s arms round his chest. Even the few steps to the horse were beyond him. He’d have to bring the patiently waiting animal to the helpless man and try to throw him over the saddle.

  Gently he started to lay the slack body down once more. As he did so he heard a noise. Startled, he glanced over his shoulder, looking along the track the boy had ploughed from the woods. He had a couple of seconds to glimpse a figure he had seen only once before but would never forget, huge and menacing and moving at surprising speed. He tried to straighten up and reach for his revolver but with his hands trapped beneath the boy’s armpits, there was never any chance of success.

  A fist like a club crashed against his temple, splitting the skin. The line of darkness through the snow suddenly ran wild and wriggled worm-like into his mind, and he saw no more.

  9

  Viney looked down at the two bodies. Pushing Denial aside, he knelt beside Josh and raisea the boy’s head. The eyes flickered open again, still blank, but the Australian sighed with relief. Reaching into the pack he was carrying, he produced a bottle of spirit and forced some between the blue-tinged lips.

  ‘Come on, son,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’

  His first thought was to use the horse, but the beast was unhappy at being urged to proceed further down this narrow corridor in the snow. It bucked as he lifted Josh on to its back and though the addition of his own weight stopped the bucking, it also made forward motion impossible. He drummed his heels savagely against its sides and it made an effort but he realized that within a couple of hundred yards he would probably have to abandon it exhausted anyway.

  ‘Shanks’s pony for you and me, son,’ he sa
id. ‘For me, anyway.’

  He stooped over Denial to check the man’s condition. He was breathing shallowly. It would make sense to slit his throat here and now, and Viney got as far as gripping the shaft of his knife. But he didn’t draw it. He recognized the face. This was surely the red-cap captain he’d left tied up in the hospital. That mountie lieutenant Fritz had persuaded them to let go, hadn’t he said something about the nurse dying? And the nurse had been this joker’s girl.

  To another man these might have been simply extra reasons for killing him while he had the chance. But Viney’s mind arranged the strangely shaped pieces of the moral jigsaw in a different way. A man whose relentless pursuit was based on desire for personal vengeance he could understand. But one who caught and brought to justice, meaning death, his fellow countrymen out of a sense of duty deserved to have his gut slit open by any right-thinking man.

  He gave Denial the benefit of the doubt. The cold would probably kill him anyway. The clouds were building up in the sky once more as the wind began to reawaken. There would be more snow soon, cover for his tracks, and a pall for Denial.

  He lifted Josh across his shoulders and set off back along the trail he and the fleeing boy had already beaten.

  It was hard going, especially with the extra weight. He marvelled that Josh could have got so far. There was great strength in that slim body and of course he’d had the fuel of a burning emotion to drive him on. Fritz fucking his girl! Christ, there was a turn-up! Many another man’d have stuck a bayonet in his ribs there and then. He imagined himself in the situation and felt a surge of killing rage. Yes, that was right, that was what a man should do. But not him … he could never … There had been another man; there was the child – did it carry his name? He had had a dream some nights ago in which he found the man and rushed at him with his knife. But when he plunged the shining steel at his belly it turned to rubber and folded and bent and he could hear her laughing, derisive, dismissive.

  He suddenly envied Denial back in the snow. Envied him his likely death, envied him his burning, driving need for vengeance. There was something not dissimilar in himself he dimly comprehended, but it lacked that clarity, that simplicity. It was deeper and darker, and the only true object of its drive to destruction was himself.

  He shook the darkness back into its place. It was time to think. To attempt to get straight back to the farm was stupid. It would try his own great strength to breaking-point and in any case he doubted if Josh could survive much more exposure in his present condition.

  But there was an alternative. His mind had kept together when everyone else’s was falling apart in the panic and excitement of that sudden awaking. Even Fritz, that clever, educated Hun, had been acting stupid, dragging on his pants and wanting to rush out after Josh in his bare feet!

  Viney had calmed them down, not with reason, but with a single command which had cut through the confusion like a rifle bullet through cheesecloth. Once he had ascertained what was going on, he had made careful preparation for pursuit. Lothar had urged greater haste.

  Viney continued methodically packing his haversack and said, ‘I’ll probably catch him quick, but there’s always a chance not. Then, what I’m taking here could save his life. What’re you doing, sport?’

  Lothar was busy getting fully dressed.

  ‘I’m coming with you, Viney,’ he said.

  ‘No, you ain’t.’

  ‘No? You aren’t going to stop me!’

  Lothar spoke challengingly, his fist clenched, ready to take his defiance to the utmost on this occasion.

  Viney didn’t even look at him.

  ‘Two reasons,’ he said. ‘One is, I can maybe look after one idiot floundering around in a blizzard, but not two. The other is, it’s you he’s running away from, Fritz. What makes you think he’ll be keen to let you bring him back?’

  He stood up and put his pack on and looked round the lantern-lurid barn. Madeleine, roused from her slumber over her dead son by Josh’s outraged cry, was in the sleeping chamber with a hysterically sobbing Nicole. Hepworth and Evans were standing around with the helpless look of the British male in emotionally fraught situations. Strother had fallen into sleep or unconsciousness, while Coleport sat bolt upright, his face flushed with fever, his eyes wild. But his understanding of the situation was not entirely deficient, for suddenly he cried out in a voice which shocked them almost as much as Josh’s cry in the night,

  ‘One is away on the roving quest,

  Seeking his share of the golden spoil!’

  When he fell quiet Viney had looked at him and said gently, almost affectionately, ‘Yeah, that’s the way of it, Blackie, old son. That’s the way of it.’ And left.

  He had had little trouble in tracking Josh, but he had been surprised by the speed and distance the fleeing man had achieved. Now he was paying the penalty. Exhausted and in despair, his young body no longer had the energy to create enough heat to keep him warm beneath his sodden clothes. Shelter and warmth were necessary. Viney knew there was no building between Barnecourt below and the farm above, but he still strode forward with a purpose which gave strength to his own cold and aching limbs.

  He had not too far to go and his keen instinct for direction had not failed him. Ahead was a huge snowdrift with an angularity of edge which a casual glance would have put down to a freak of nature. Laying Josh gently in the snow, Viney took out the trenching tool he had brought with him and began to dig. In a little while, he struck metal. He had remembered right even though the last time he had been here it had been night with the blizzard blowing and the groans of wounded men in his ears.

  This was where the stolen truck in which the survivors had made their escape had finally ground to a halt in the impossible conditions, leaving Viney to lead them back to the farm by brute force and instinct.

  Some snow had drifted in through the canvas curtain above the tailboard, but this was soon cleared. Big flakes were already beginning a new wind-tossed dance as Viney lifted Josh into the shelter of the truck.

  Now he undid his pack and silently complimented himself on the care of his preparations. First he pumped, then lit a small primus stove and placed on it a tin of soup with holes punched in the lid. While this was warming, he forced another mouthful of spirit down Josh’s throat and then began removing the youngster’s soaking clothes till he was nude, his body slight and defenceless as a girl’s. There were two blankets in the pack. Using one of them as a towel, he began to rub the boy’s skin, at first to get it dry, and then for warmth. He paid particular attention to the fingers and toes which were a dead white. At first he was fearful that frostbite might have set in, but after a while Josh moved and cried out in pain as the circulation began to be restored. Encouraged, Viney poured some of the spirit on to his hands and continued his massage, going over and over the slim, sinewy body till it began to glow.

  Josh now spoke for the first time.

  He simply said, ‘Viney.’

  ‘Who else, sport? Let’s get some of this soup into you.’

  He poured the hot soup into a tin mug and when Josh’s fingers proved still unable to grip the handle properly, he held it to the once more pink lips and encouraged him to drink.

  Josh held the blanket close around his body and began to shake.

  ‘That’s good, son,’ said Viney. ‘When you stop shivering, that’s when the cold’s finally got you, did you know that?’

  This was true. But there was no denying that it was still bitterly cold even in the shelter of the truck. The little primus stove gave out some heat, but not enough and in any case, they would need to conserve its flame for cooking. It would be easy to start a fire. There was a spare jerrycan of petrol in the truck. But that was a last resort as the danger of blowing the whole thing up would be immense. But something had to be done. Now that he was no longer in motion, Viney realized just how wet his own clothes were and how deep the chill had struck into his own bones.

  Quickly he stripped off and gave himself
a shorter, more violent version of the treatment he had just given Josh. Then he wrung out the damp clothing as best he could, but to put it back on would have been counter-productive. Wrapping the towel-blanket round his shoulders, he peered out of the back of the truck. The snow was falling fast now, not such a blizzard as had blown on the night of the raid, but bad enough to make any thought of an early escape impossible.

  He turned back to Josh.

  ‘More soup, son?’ he said.

  Josh shook his head.

  ‘Right. Better get some rest then. We’re going to have to keep each other warm.’

  He took the blanket from the boy’s shoulders and laid it and the other one on the floor. Then he put Josh on the middle and lay down beside him and drew the blankets around them in a cocoon.

  So they lay intermittently in each other’s arms for the next day, separating only for Viney to heat more of their small supply of food or to apply his violent massage to the boy’s feet and hands. Gradually their breathing and their body heat and the occasional lighting of the stove raised the temperature of their shelter several degrees above that outside, but Viney was careful to preserve a good degree of ventilation by opening the flap from time to time and poking a hole through the fresh-piled snow.

  This brought in fresh air but immediately lowered the temperature. Josh protested as Viney did this for the third time and the big Australian looked over his shoulder with a grin, delighted that the boy was recovered sufficiently to register the change.

  ‘We don’t want to suffocate, son,’ he said. ‘Looks like it’s clearing up out there. We’ll be on our way soon.’

  ‘Where to, Viney?’

  ‘Back to the farm,’ said Viney.

  Josh lay back in his blanket and closed his eyes and shivered in a way that was not altogether to do with the cold. Viney dropped down beside him and pulled him close.

  ‘It’ll be right, you’ll see,’ he promised. ‘We’ll just stay long enough to collect the others, then it’s back to the Warren. OK?.’