The Unquiet Grave

by David J Oldman

  I’d brought the report I had of the carrier with me, the account of two burned bodies and a third nearby with a bullet in his head. I didn’t show it to her. I asked if she could remember her brother ever mentioning Robert Burleigh or Arnold Poole.

  ‘Were they friends of Billy’s?

  ‘They were part of the carrier crew. Four of them. The other man’s name was Joseph Dabs.’

  ‘Carrier?’

  ‘Bren gun carrier. It’s what they call the kind of vehicle your brother commanded.’

  ‘One of the officers I spoke to told me they found some bodies——’

  ‘Burleigh and Poole,’ I said.

  ‘And the other man...Dabs?’

  ‘Joseph Dabs. They found his body close by.’

  ‘But not Billy,’ she said. ‘So there’s a chance...’

  ‘That he wasn’t killed?’ I finished for her. ‘It seems unlikely.’

  I was about to tell her that her brother’s ID discs had been found on a dead SS soldier, but at that moment Rose bowed her head as if the emotion had become too much. Susie sat down and reached a hand across the table but Rose jerked hers back.

  ‘Thank you Captain,’ she said, looking at me rather than at Susie.

  I gave her a sympathetic look and asked if her brother happened to speak French.

  ‘French?’ she said. ‘No, not Billy. French wasn’t the sort of thing we learned in Ballydrum. He could speak a little of the Gaelic, though even that wasn’t encouraged when we was children. Why would you be asking, Captain?’

  I told her it wasn’t important and that we’d be in touch if we found anything further. Then we left. Once on the street I asked Susie what she thought.

  ‘About her?’ she replied, as if she thought I might be asking her opinion of the flat’s decor. ‘Difficult to say. She didn’t like having me there, did she?’

  I laughed. ‘She probably took you for a wicked girl from the big city.’

  ‘Poor little Irish peasant? I don’t think so. I grew up in a village so I know what goes on behind the hedgerows.’

  ‘Do you? You’ll have to tell me sometime.’

  ‘And I think Rose is hiding her light under a bushel.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Nail varnish.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t notice.’

  ‘Just traces where she’d removed it. You were too busy looking into those big Irish eyes. Where did she get it, I wonder? It’s not easy to find these days.’

  ‘Ireland, I suppose,’ I said.

  ‘Ballydrum?’

  ‘Why not? It’s where she comes from.’

  ‘County Wicklow? Up in the mountains? Is that likely?’

  ‘Do they have mountains? She probably passed through Dublin. Maybe she got it there.’

  ‘Country girl out on a spree,’ said Susie. ‘And I’ll tell you another thing...she wasn’t alone, either.’

  ‘Alone? What do you mean?’

  ‘There was someone else in the flat.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The ashtray on the sink was full of cigarette butts and one had only just been put out.’

  ‘Perhaps they were Rose’s,’ I suggested.

  Susie shook her head. ‘If she smoked that much she’d have nicotine on her fingers. There was just the nail varnish.’

  ‘It’s her cousin Patrick’s flat,’ I said. Perhaps he was there.’

  ‘Then why not show his face?’

  ‘Maybe he doesn’t care for the British like the rest of the family.’

  ‘Bloody odd place to come and live, then,’ said Susie.

  ‘Or maybe she’s got a boyfriend and didn’t want him drooling over you.’

  ‘Or let him see Rose doing the drooling? No offence meant, Captain, if you take my meaning...’ Susie mimicked in a bad Irish accent. ‘And didn’t you think it odd she didn’t have to ask what rank you were?’

  ‘I told her.’

  ‘No, you just told her your name was Tennant.’

  ‘People recognise uniforms these days,’ I said. ‘There’s been a war.’

  ‘Not in County Wicklow there hasn’t.’

  ‘Well, the Troubles, then,’ I said. ‘Ireland was full of British soldiers. That’s why her family——’

  ‘She’d be too young to remember,’ Susie interrupted. ‘Unless she learned how to tell one soldier from another at her Mam’s knee, of course.’

  I was beginning to see why Jekyll had told me to bring Susie along. I had been in the police——the uniformed branch admittedly——but not many of the detectives I’d known had been as shrewd as Susie.

  *

  It was after six and the pubs were open and I asked Susie if she fancied a drink. She had a date, though, and was going home to get changed. It was Friday and she was going dancing. We took a bus back to Edgware and I put her on the tube.

  I’d only been thinking of a drink. I had never made any sort of approach to Susie before——the atmosphere of a small office is claustrophobic enough without adding the complications of extraneous affairs. I knew she’d gone to the pictures once or twice with Peter although didn’t know if it had gone any further; they made an odd couple I couldn’t quite reconcile. Stan had always shown more of a fatherly interest in her than anything more libidinous and Jack was married with two children. That didn’t necessarily preclude interest in other women but I’d met his wife and Jack was too smart a man to upset a woman who looked to be a tougher prospect than the Wehrmacht had ever been.

  On a whim I went up the West End and walked around for a while. It was June and wouldn’t get dark for another three hours yet. The theatres were opening and so were one or two restaurants that catered for the early dinner crowd. I thought I’d try a pub I used to know in Soho. I hadn’t been there since before the war when a detective-sergeant I’d known had used the place to meet his snitch. It had a narrow bar that ran the length of the room with coloured mirrors behind that advertised the sort of beers and tobaccos you could no longer get. There was a small alcove at the back where the DS had used to sit, unseen by the rest of the customers. I wasn’t sure it would still be there but I turned the corner into Broadwick Street and saw it across the road.

  The place looked shabbier than I remembered, although that was hardly surprising as it now had a timber buttress angling into the road shoring up the wall. Inside felt like walking into the pantry of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Dust coated most surfaces and cobwebs hung in the corners of the few cracked mirrors that still remained. I looked around and then at a barman I didn’t recognise and walked out again. After that, it seemed to me that even the lights in the West End had a sort of second-hand glow about them, as if they’d been rescued as a job-lot from the demolition of a far smarter place.

  I stopped off at another bar and paid too much for a gin and French, then compounded the folly by having a second. I’d always thought that there were two kinds of drunks: those that were born to it and those who had to work at it, having to practise until they got the hang of the thing. I had tried at times to be the second kind but had never managed it. I had always found that the hour or two of airborne equilibrium drinking gave was never worth the following hours of down-to-earth misery. And it didn’t matter how long I practised, I never got past feeling like shit in the morning. So, a couple was as many as I generally had and after those I walked to the tube and rode the train home.

  Which was just as well because when I got there my wife was sitting on the stairs waiting for me.

  4

  I’m not sure which of us was the most surprised.

  She looked at my uniform. ‘You’re a captain?’

  My promotion had come through the last time I’d seen her but I’d been in civvies. I walked past her and unlocked my door, illogically hoping that she wouldn’t smell the drink on me. She followed into the flat.

  I put the kettle on to boil as she stood in the doorway watching.

  ‘I phoned your office.’

  I w
iped out two cups and put them on the table.

  ‘They said you’d left early to see a woman.’

  The kettle boiled and I made the tea, deciding I’d answer if she ever got around to asking me a question. I heard her sigh with exasperation.

  ‘Are you involved with someone?’

  I imagined the improbability of my being involved with the dowdy Rose Kearney. Susie would be another matter but I didn’t think Jack would have mentioned her. I turned around. Penny had taken a step into the room and had crossed her arms. She’d taken off the jacket she’d been wearing over her jumper and skirt. I thought if you gave her a pair of hiking boots she’d look quite the country girl. She’d been a WREN during the war but had been demobbed over a year and had gone to live with my mother and brother in the Cotswolds. And she was looking well. Maybe it was the country air in Gloucestershire, or perhaps she and my mother had latched on to some farmer and had first dibs at his butter and eggs. I wondered which of the two was the more likely, although that probably depended upon the age of the farmer. It wasn’t just cynicism on my part; the war had played hell with everyone’s morals. I’d seen what it could do in Berlin where some people were willing to do almost anything to maintain a tolerable existence. It hadn’t been that bad here, of course, but you couldn’t blame people for making the best of things. And after all, perhaps it was only the air.

  ‘I saw her to tell her that her brother wasn’t coming back from France,’ I said.

  It wasn’t an answer to her question but Penny was never one to bother about details.

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘No. Would you like some tea?’

  She seemed about to snap out a refusal then sighed again and pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat at the table.

  ‘Can’t we at least be civilized about this?’ she asked.

  ‘When did you come up to town?’

  ‘This afternoon. A friend was driving up for the weekend and offered me a lift.’ Adding, just in case I was wondering about the friend, I suppose, ‘I’m staying with Aunt Julia.’

  ‘And how is Aunt Julia?’

  ‘She’s well.’

  We had lodged with Penny’s Aunt Julia after we’d married. Perhaps lodged wasn’t the right word as Julia had a house in Belgravia. It was where I had met Penny shortly after the outbreak of war, when the blackout afforded all sorts of new opportunities for criminals and Julia’s house was one that had been burgled. The street was on my beat and I had been the first to respond. Julia hadn’t thought much of her niece taking up with the policeman investigating the robbery. Ours had been one of the proverbial whirlwind romances, owing much to the atmosphere of those days when one didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. Our families weren’t exactly on the same rung of the social ladder but, unlike Penny’s parents, Julia had relented sufficiently after we married to allow Penny and I to stay with her until we got fixed up with a place of our own. On the condition I didn’t leave my bicycle on the front steps, that is.

  Actually, I knew Julia was well because I’d been to see her after I’d got back. I was concerned that she might have suffered during the bombing. I found her polite, as was the way with her class, but somewhat frosty. She hadn’t changed much but I had. The frostiness hadn’t bothered me.

  ‘I’m getting a lift back Sunday afternoon,’ Penny said.

  I considered that, whether it was simply information or if there was more to it.

  ‘There’s no sugar, of course.’ I put a cup of tea in front of her and she looked up at me.

  ‘I’ve given it up.’

  ‘Sweet enough?’

  ‘Don’t be like that.’

  ‘How’d you want me to be?’

  I sat down. I’d only seen her twice since I’d got back and still wasn’t quite used to the fact that she looked older than when I’d left for North Africa. There were lines on her face I didn’t remember and she wore her hair differently; it was shorter now and waved. I preferred it as it was but then I preferred a lot of things as they were.

  ‘How’s George? And my mother?’

  She spooned powdered milk into her tea and played with the teacup without picking it up. ‘They’re well. I’ll give them your love.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

  She sat watching me. ‘Do you still mean that?’

  That made me smile. I couldn’t help it. She looked at me uncertainly, as if wondering if she should smile, too.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve forgotten what it was. What did you want to know?’

  ‘If you’re involved with anyone?’

  ‘Why?’

  She sipped at her tea, as if she needed time to answer. ‘George wants to marry me.’

  ‘Oh? Your idea or his? His, I suppose. At least it’ll keep you in the family. Mother will appreciate that.’

  ‘Harry...,’

  ‘What is it you want me to do? Arrange something? A dirty weekend in a dirty hotel? Well, if George is prepared to stump up for the private detective and the photographer...,I used to know the going rate for that sort of thing but I’m a bit out of touch, I’m afraid.’

  She looked at me, a hurt expression on her face and tears starting in her eyes. I should’ve stopped. I don’t know why I didn’t. I was quite calm.

  ‘Will he supply the tart as well? Only I don’t think Rose Kearney will fit the bill——’

  ‘Rose Kearney?’

  ‘She’s the one with the dead brother. Irish Catholic, and I’ve got an idea they don’t go in for that sort of thing. Besides, I only met her this afternoon and I’m not sure how she’d react if I suggested it. We’re not on first name terms yet.’

  She got up then and left without saying anything else. I stayed at the table and finished my tea. I could have handled it better; I wasn’t angry with her——I’d got past that——and I wasn’t even angry with my brother George. Who knows, in his place I might even have done the same thing. Perhaps it was in the blood. My mother thought so——if for a different reason. As far as she was concerned I’d done the deserting. Just like my father, I’d gone off to war when I didn’t have to. Something in the blood. She’d never forgiven my father for getting himself killed and not coming back, leaving her with two small boys to bring up. She hadn’t forgiven me for not doing the same. I’d come back. As far as she was concerned it would have been more convenient all round if I hadn’t.

  *

  Saturday morning, over a breakfast of tea and cigarettes, I went through the notes Jack had made. Robert Burleigh had also left a wife and two children. The address was down beyond the Commercial Docks towards Deptford. I took the District and Metropolitan tube to Surrey Docks. It was still early and mist was rising on the Thames, swirling in the eddies where the current ran round a sunken barge and some moored boats. Through the mist the sun turned from grey to pink and then a primeval red, giving the river a savage cast. A few rusty ships were in, loading or unloading, but there wasn’t the bustle there had been before the war. There seemed a lethargy lying over everything like a patient who hadn’t yet pulled himself out of a depression. Some shattered warehouses left gaps in the waterfront, tangled shrubs and weeds growing up through the rubble. Barges were moving down Limehouse Reach, their broad prows pushing through water like syrup, the chug of their engines heavy on the morning air.

  I had to ask directions and got lost more than once in streets where empty and derelict houses looked indistinguishable from occupied slums. When I finally reached the right road I found a terrace that truncated above a crater like a gravel pit that stretched down to the river. Children were clambering over the rubble, throwing stones in pools of stagnant water. On the other side of the road a terrace stood, bookended by the remains of houses that had gone, plaster, brickwork and wallpaper still hanging in recesses like the flaking skin left by some disease.

  Two women stood on a doorstep talking. Dressed in housecoats, one, with a scarf wound like a turb
an round her head, was thin and rangy and now and then punctuated her conversation with asides bellowed across the road at the kids in the gravel pit. The other woman, the stouter of the two, had a small girl hanging onto her dress and another, an older boy with a grimy face and a mop of dark hair, standing in front of her. He was staring at me as I approached, as if I had just parachuted down out of the blue June morning.

  ‘I’m looking for Mrs Edna Burleigh,’ I said to the women.

  The thin one looked at the stout one who raised her chin a couple of inches, pointing it at me.

  ‘I’m Edna Burleigh. It’s about my old man again, is it?’

  I identified myself and she led me into the house, pushing the little girl ahead of her, threatening to trip her mother up. The boy tagged on behind, muttering something I couldn’t catch except the word ‘mister’ that finished every sentence. Edna Burleigh ushered me into a room that held a cheap table on a threadbare rug and two armchairs of faded plush. Dark grease stained the back and arms. A couple of pictures hung on the walls, faded prints of Edwin Henry Landseer’s Highland stags in heroic poses. The distempered plaster on the rest of the walls had pickled with damp and turned blotchy where it had been scrubbed clean. The air had the cloying staleness of a cellar.

  She must have noticed the expression on my face because she said, ‘You can’t keep it dry. Goes black. Mould...and the vermin... Pity Jerry didn’t blitz the ‘ole buggerin’ street.’

  She pointed to one of the armchairs then beat at the upholstery with her hand as if wanting to knock it into a different shape.

  ‘Sit yourself down and I’ll put on some tea. You’d like a cup of tea, wouldn’t you?’

  I told her not to use her ration on me but she stomped off down the hall anyway and I could hear a clatter of pans from the end of the house. The two kids stayed in the doorway, the girl with her nose running and her thumb stuck in her face, and the boy just staring at me. I smiled at them but it made no difference.

  ‘You a pilot, mister?’ the boy finally asked.

  ‘No. I’m in the army.’

  I suppose he was disappointed because he didn’t ask anything else, just looked.