The Oeuvre

by Greg James

  “Because we have our contacts in the black market. For a price, they let us know of their transactions with deserters. None of them have heard of or seen Reinhart. We can safely assume, I think, that he is still in our midst.”

  “But what if he’s not?”

  “Then we’ll find another deserter, or a conchie, to pin the murders on.”

  It was quiet in the office after Maygrave and Cutter left.

  Thwaite sat in his chair, looking at the framed photograph of his wife, Judith, on his desk, looking at her smile and the nutmeg brown of her eyes. Thwaite thought about what he had done today, what he had agreed to do.

  He reached out and placed the photograph of Judith face down.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The people at the party had been picked out from the highest streams of London society, glittering king salmon, prized by whichever hostess was able to attract them to her table. This evening, that hostess was Lady Walton. Cargill couldn’t remember what she was a Lady of, but it didn’t matter, she had an excellent cellar judging by the flinty Chablis he was enjoying. He usually preferred a more buttery Meursault but the day’s events hadn’t left him in the mood for indulgent beverages. He wanted something that cut him as he drank, giving some edge back to his senses. The conversations swam along without him, Cargill was happy to be left out, human company was all he desired this evening, not interaction. The closeness of other people, living people, was enough.

  The idea of spending the evening alone filled him with dread, his guest was sending these terrible visitations to him, he was sure of that. Well, he was damned if he was going to face them sober and with an empty stomach. I might as well take what comforts I can, he reflected as he ate. The dinner was very good, smoked soft-shelled crab served on a bed of asparagus and creamed potatoes. It went down wonderfully with the wine. A war might be on but Lady Walton was not letting the side down when it came to entertaining her guests.

  “The best way to combat the Hun is to feed ourselves well so we can show him what-for,” Lady Walton pronounced.

  Though every man and woman at the table was well aware that the chance of their coming face-to-face with a Hun soldier was very remote. It was those who could not afford soft-shelled crab and Chablis that were enjoying such a dubious ‘honour’.

  “What is to be done about it?” asked a goatish man called Stokes. “This war. The blasted Germans. What is to be done?”

  A horse-faced Duchess replied, “I’m sure it will be done with soon. By Christmas, in fact. Our brave Tommies will see them off.”

  “Bah! They’ve been saying Christmas since 1914,” Stokes retorted, “And then nothing was done. Our men got out of their trenches and played football with them. Football, blast it! There’d’ve been none of that nonsense if I had been there with my old boys. We’d’ve have rushed them in a scrum, sent them packing. Whoop! Bang! Goodbye Fritzy!”

  A murmur of approval and a feminine pattering of hands rose around the table as the old man warmed to his theme.

  “What those young ruffians in the trenches need is a strong hand to keep them in line. None of this fraternising business, letting them carry off their wounded. Death or glory, that’s what it should be out there. Send them over the top and keep sending them over until the bloody Hun is beaten back to Berlin’s gates. Get the cavalry in! Moping about in trenches will get us nowhere. The Kaiser will bankrupt the country and that’ll be the Empire all gone. We’ll have nothing, none of us, is that what you want to happen?” Hectic streaks of red were colouring his cheeks, traces of spittle edged his mouth.

  The men at the table roared, “No!” raising their glasses in salutation. The women shook their heads in time, faces firm with overly-powdered conviction.

  “And that’s what you think war is, is it?”

  The voice came from the far end of the table. It was cultured, young and plummy but it had an edge to it, carved from the cynicism that comes with undue pain.

  A late arrival, Cargill guessed. He’d come in late, a quiet spectre, seating himself out of the way, not wishing to draw attention to himself.

  A convalescent, invited as a charitable favour, perhaps?

  Cargill had a feeling that Lady Walton would extend no more such favours once this man was through speaking.

  “Courageous charges. Blood and thunder. The fallen hero’s glory. Dulce et decorum pro patria mori?” the speaker was spitting out the Latin words as if they were poison. “Is that what you think war is about?”

  Stokes was still on his feet, “I do.”

  He was not going to back down. He was not going to take this kind of talk from a young pup. The lad may have been brave out there, in the field, but he should not think that allowed him to take on so, talk back to his betters like this.

  The young guest got to his feet and circled around the table’s end, presenting himself in the light. Yes, he was a convalescent from the Front. His all-blue uniform identifying him as such, as did his face.

  A face that was not a face.

  It was a mask, its electroplate tinted to the colour of flesh and one of the eyes was an oval of painted glass. Cargill was amazed at the detail in it, individual flecks of blue in the iris, veins drawn into the white. The other eye, the living one, moved from one person to the next, watching them take in what they were seeing. The mask was crowned by tufts of boyish hair; there were traces of a once-youthful brown in it but most of it was gone to a shocking white. He wanted them to see what he was, what war had turned him into.

  No-one moved, spoke.

  The eyes of Stokes were trembling in their sockets.

  “Would you like to see the true face of war, sir?”

  There was silence, not a word in response was said. The masked guest reached up, his hands were shaking, not wanting to but needing to do this. He undid the fastenings, the mask came away. There were no gasps of horror, no cries, no sobs, no outrage, silence continued to hold sway. They saw his one eye and the stitched-over hollow where its fellow should be, noseless nostrils and a lipless mouth. The pale places where skin would never grow back. The scarified necklace of ruined tissue decorating his throat. Wires holding together a jaw once shattered by a woolly-bear’s concussive blast.

  Stokes remained speechless.

  The mask was put back into place.

  Its wearer then departed, without a word.

  “Young bounder!”

  Lady Walton’s dinner came to an end and the men retired to the lounge for port and cigars. Cargill’s stomach complained as he poured large glasses of Reserve Port into it and then swallowed flavoursome lungfuls of pungent cigar fumes.

  “The nerve of him, speaking back to me like that.”

  Stokes was in the grip of belated fury, desperate to make up for his earlier silence. The other gentlemen kept their own council, letting him vent his bitterness, offering the occasional approving mumble when he appeared to need it. “If I so much as catch sight of him, I will chase him down, d’y’hear me? Chase him down and thrash him until he’s dead before me.”

  “George, the young man was a convalescent. Can you not let it go?” one of his companions said.

  “Clearly disturbed. I’d vouch for that. Not in his right mind. You can’t hold a grudge against the unsound, Stokes,” said another.

  “Can’t I? You just watch me,” Stokes replied. “You just watch me.”

  Cargill was watching him, seeing what no-one else could; a blood-robed grey maggot with a black head crawling its way out of Stokes’s left ear.

  *

  Shutters were down and lights were out. Cargill felt giddy as he wove his way down the moon-lit street. He’d had too much wine, too much port and too many cigars, far too much of everything, but he had needed it.

  He felt good, fulsome even.

  A cry jolted him out of his self-absorbed haze.

  It came again, then again.

  Then, sounds of effort, the dull echo of blows being dealt out.

  A man was bei
ng beaten. In a severe fashion too, judging from the sharpness of the cries. Cargill approached an alleyway. The sound was coming from within. Pain was being inflicted with considerable relish.

  He went into the darkness, shivering as it embraced him.

  Stokes was standing over a body, kicking it good and hard in the stomach. It was twitching, knees drawn up in defence, there was a glinting at Stokes’s feet, just visible in the faint light. The convalescent’s electroplate mask, torn from his face, dashed to the ground. The painted eye crushed into grains by Stokes’s heel.

  Cargill gasped, retreating a step from the sight.

  “Who’s there?” Stokes bawled. “I’ve dealt with this bastard tonight, I’ll deal with you too!”

  Cargill gurgled in the back of his throat.

  I should help, thought Cargill, I should stop him, he’s drunk, out of his mind.

  “Cowards and turncoats, the lot of you. We’re surrounded by them. Everywhere they are. Show yourself, man!”

  Stokes stormed out of the shadows, into the light of the moon, showing his face. A haemorrhaging mask of maggots and weeping matter, undulating, glistening darkly. There was much blood on the teeth in that face.

  Teeth without a mouth.

  Cargill took to his heels, fearful tears stung his eyes, his breath huffing out from smoke-choked lungs. Behind him, he heard a dreadful scream, the convalescent. The scream stopped short. Cut off.

  Cargill screwed his eyes shut, not wanting to think what could have happened back there, what Stokes must have been all along. His guest in a stolen skin. Watching over him all this time.

  Not looking where he was going, Cargill ran straight into a lamp post and a blinding, black thundercrack burst across his brow.

  He fell and remembered no more for a time – until light, warm as matured whiskey, filtered into his consciousness, bringing him round. With a gibberish mumble, Cargill righted himself in his study chair. He clapped his hands tight around the arms of it, feeling the smooth, polished wood. Blinking, he looked at the grandfather clock in the corner. It was chiming three in the morning. Rubbing the back of his neck, he wondered how he had got here. Who brought me home?

  Had it all been a vicious dream, brewed up in his brain?

  A ring of fire burned around his crown, starting from where his forehead had struck the lamp post.

  A very palpable hit, he thought as he nursed his head.

  He was not alone. The air in the room was stirring, bringing the rich smell of rot to Cargill’s nostrils.

  “What more is it you want? Why do this to me?”

  A hand fell on Cargill’s shoulder, glancing down, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the blood dabbling it. Three of the fingers hung loose, so broken. Stamped on. Ground down into deformity by Stokes. No, not Stokes, his guest. There was a clattering on the desk. Cargill flinched from it, the snarled remnants of the electroplate mask, discarded and useless, its empty eyes and mouth twisted into mangled misery. Then, the voice of the convalescent, dry with death, was there, whispering into his ear.

  “We be the echo.”

  Then, it was all gone, like a passing thought.

  Alone, Cargill began to weep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Ten Bells was heaving, people clotted the space around the bar. The air was stale and beer-soured. Cutter closed his eyes, listening to the hubbub of the people around him.

  “What’ll it be, Alf?”

  “One more of those and you’ll be on the floor.”

  “Oh, you cheeky devil! I’ll see you later when I get off.”

  “No treating, mate, sorry. S’the law, these days. One each and that’s y’lot.”

  Cutter had done well for a former hobbledehoy; looting people’s baggage, pinching money from tills, that’s what he had done once upon a time, him and his brother, Barry, until they got caught.

  Everyone gets caught someday.

  Fatherless and motherless, the brothers were sent to The Spike; the casual ward of the workhouse. It was full to the brim with half-mad dossers, some of whom had served in wars, the Crimean and the Boer, but in the Spike they were picking oakum for King and Country, subsisting on a diet of oatmeal skilly and mouldy meat scraps. Billy and Barry were not there for long.

  The Spike was a place where old men went to die.

  The two boys were sent away to the Scratchman Home. Cutter would never forget that place. The early mornings, freezing baths, sit down, stand up, shut up, sleep with your legs straight. Cook, carry and kiss all arses clean, not a speck of dust or a smudge of dirt was allowed within the hallowed doors by the Mother. If you wet the bed in the night then god fucking help you.

  Bill remembered when he had done that. Standing, trembling, before the Mother, telling her about the bad dream, idiot enough to forget the rules.

  No talking was the first rule.

  No talking back, the second rule.

  Bill could see her now. Her face pinching white, hands grabbing him by the scruff of his neck, bending him over, baring his backside. Then, the ridges of the cane whistling down.

  whack-crack-rack!

  whack-crack-rack!

  whack! whack! whack!

  Raw stripes, rose-red. His pasty arse cheeks tearing open under her relentless assault. Hot tears ran from his eyes, hot blood ran down the backs of his legs. He was taken to the nurse to be patched up, then he was put to bed and starved for the rest of the week.

  Number Six would learn to behave himself. That’s who he was back then. There were no names in that place. Numbers, that’s all they were, too poor to be worth naming, too lacking in moral character to be allowed an identity. If it hadn’t been for Barry, Bill didn’t think he’d be here now. Barry didn’t make it but Bill did, grew up, took the surname Cutter. It had a ring to it, it travelled well, even before he got his reputation.

  He was waiting for Russell in the Ten Bells, they were going to start the search for Reinhart tonight. He couldn’t wait. Reinhart was all he thought about these days. From the moment he got up in the morning until he lay down to sleep, always on his mind, that cunt. Cutter picked at the scabs on his face making them bleed afresh. No-one came near his table, they knew him around here, what he was like. His ears picked up the chattering of women on a nearby table. He didn’t like being in the company of women. Women were what was wrong with the world, everything else made sense to him. They got in his way, confusing him, making him unsure of himself, just like the Mother of Scratchman House.

  One of the chattering girls was looking at him, catching his eye. She was pretty. Her hair was sort of mousey in colour, maybe prematurely grey. Her skin was only slightly tinged by jaundice. Not been in the factories for long, he guessed. Her looks would have to be patched up with powder and rouge soon enough. She smiled at him.

  Cutter saw himself blinding her, drawing a hot knife across her eyes, then peeling off her clothes, then setting about her arms and legs, tearing away strips of skin to reveal the protean mutton underneath. Her face and his speckling with a wine-red spray. Her body wriggling, her sightless head slapping stupidly from side to side. He cut off a breast, tossing it away, a bleeding gift, an offering to the city and the rats of her back-alleys, his scabrous witnesses.

  Then, drawing a revolver, one shot to the head.

  An ugly miss cleaving her mouth in twain, leaving a ragged channel, a cleft palate. Her brains laid out in a scrambled egg smear, not dead yet, still twitching, this moaning ruined thing. Begging, probably. He soils her. He bites her. He suckles, mewling, on her remaining tit, until she stops her awful puppet-jerking, becoming still. Maceration and bruises settle splotchily into riven flesh.

  Soon, it will go bad and then as black as the rats that will gnaw the bones clean. Cutter slowly came back to himself, the rancid fantasy dissipating as his erection wilted.

  The girl was gone.

  She had seen how he had been looking at her.

  A body pushed through the hubbub towards him, the red stripes m
arking him out even if Cutter didn’t know the weasely face. Russ stopped and saluted his Sergeant, “Got him, sir. Found out where the bitch who scratched you up lives.”

  Cutter’s lips peeled back from his gums and he necked the lingering dregs of his pint in one fluid motion. The last bitter bite of booze feeling good against the back of his throat. He got to his feet, snapped his cap on, and slapped the Private on the arm, “Let’s go get the cunt.”

  *

  Virginia gulped down a sob, she adjusted her grip on the glass shard, held it steady, held it firm and then drew it neatly down one wrist and then the other. Dark fluid spat out. She withdrew the glass from the quietly gushing wounds, watching the scarlet flowers blooming in the bathwater. She dropped the glass onto the tiles, it clattered, a piece of her mind went out with that sound, another light out. Her spasming fingers were as numb as sticks. Ropes of hair plastered her forehead, she rocked back and forth in the bath, bleeding so much it stung. Her soles slipped and slid against the sloshing interior. Her breathing was torn and urgent. She urged the pain through her shuddering body as her face became a white mask. Her eyes were hollow aching holes, whooping gasps escaped her lips. The unerring pulse of agony was a gravity drawing her in. Everything went white and empty, then grey, then a black wind was blowing, somewhere, nearby. Memories went flickering by, dying out before her eyes. Old colours and candle flame, she tried to catch them, to know them one last time.

  “Arthur ... ”

  But the black wind was too strong, too quick. It snatched them all away, snuffed them all out, her hands held onto nothing. They were covered in so much blood.

  Her parents stood there, watching it all, she looked to them and saw them as they truly were, echoes that walked, masks worn out. Smiling plain demented. They took off their masks, showing her what was waiting. The endless play of the Grey, of its entropy upon them, its mortal puppets, tugging their fraying strings, and then what came after; the dark and cold of the gravelands.