The Unquiet Grave

by David J Oldman

  I was satisfied that both 4th Wilts and 7th Hampshires Orderly Room had done everything they could in identifying Poole and Burleigh. Of the other two, Joseph Dabs had been identified visually as well as by discs but there’d been nothing of William Kearney found at the scene to ID. His discs, of course, had been found later on the body of SS-Unterscharführer Otto Vogel. According to Kearney’s medical files, his blood group was A-positive——not quite as common as that of Burleigh and Dabs but still found in over 30 percent of the population. Up till then, though, we hadn’t had a body to compare the record with. Now it seemed we were going to get one.

  Going back through the notes from Stan’s interview with 4th Wilts, I began to wonder how the ID discs belonging to Poole and Burleigh had ended up on the floor together. It seemed entirely possible that the cords holding the discs around their necks had burned through in the carrier fire, although if that were the case I would have expected the discs to have lodged in what was left of their clothing or fallen into their laps. They might have become dislodged when 4th Wilts had removed the two bodies from the carrier, of course. But since the reason men wear discs in the first place is for accurate identification in case of death or——in the case of injury——the necessity for a blood transfusion, those charged with the work of handling bodies and the marking of graves are as meticulous as possible. And even assuming the discs had fallen onto the floor of the vehicle, the configuration of carriers and the compartmentalized seating arrangements, made the chances of them ending up in the same place improbable.

  That left the possibility that the discs had been taken off the bodies at some point and not replaced around the necks but just tossed back into the carrier. And if this is what had happened, logic suggested——since the discs had been through the fire——that the burning of the bodies had been deliberate.

  Jack put the telephone down again. ‘No go,’ he said.

  I took an address book out of the desk drawer and tossed it to him. ‘Try his flat.’

  Going back over it again, it seemed to me that the only circumstance I could think of that would fit the facts was that Poole and Burleigh had either been already dead, but not burned, when the ID discs were taken off their bodies, or they were not dead but had perhaps been taken prisoner. In either case the discs had to have been put back in the carrier before it was destroyed——which now looked like an act designed to obfuscate. Peter had suggested the weapon used was likely to have been a Panzerfaust——literally a “tank fist”——a single shot recoilless anti-tank weapon, or the smaller Faustpatrone; possibly even the carrier’s own PIAT. All were portable and could be operated by a single soldier. Whatever had destroyed the carrier, the unpleasant conclusion drawn from this latter scenario was that if Poole and Burleigh were prisoners before their discs had been taken off them, then they had been killed in cold blood before being burned. This meant that not only Dabs’ death had been a war crime but their deaths as well.

  Jack banged the telephone receiver down with a finality that suggested he was sick of using it. ‘Want me to try his club?’

  The clock on the wall stood at 12.30, nearly lunchtime. The frosty atmosphere next door hadn’t thawed appreciatively so I decided to try the Army and Navy in person.

  ‘Give them a ring. Have him paged and if he’s there tell them to let him know I’m on my way.’

  *

  At the Army and Navy Club the man on the desk frowned, remembering I suppose that he had already received a phone call on the subject. He told me they had paged the colonel without result and didn’t believe he had come in since. Nor did he appear willing to check further. Under other circumstances I might have puffed myself up and made my uniform more conspicuous; but uniforms didn’t impress at the Rag being their bread and butter, so I merely asked for Jekyll to be paged again. He wasn’t keen but, after all, they were there to do as they were told. While one of the boys trawled through the various rooms calling out for Jekyll once more, I hung around the lobby.

  Colonel G walked in while I was waiting.

  ‘Harry?’ he said, obviously surprised. ‘I didn’t know you were a member?’

  I threw him a salute. He might have been off-duty and there for lunch but I was still hard at work. He touched a finger to his cap in return but was in the process of taking the thing off anyway.

  ‘I called your office, sir, but they said they hadn’t seen you.’

  ‘I got back late last night. Thought I’d have a spot of lunch before going into the office. You might as well join me now you’re here. Was there something in particular?’

  I gave him the letter concerning the exhumations and well as what I had on the men’s blood groups.

  ‘We received it this morning. If you haven’t been to the office, you won’t have seen your copy yet.’

  He read it quickly, including the French. His face, grim at the best of times, seemed to solidify like setting cement.

  ‘Who ordered the exhumation?’

  ‘I thought that might have been you, sir.’

  ‘Have you been back to them?’

  ‘I thought it best to consult you first, sir. Corporal Hibbert’s been ringing round trying to find you.’ I was about to add that we’d had a phone call on the matter from someone called Bryce, then thought better of it. If Jekyll hadn’t ordered the exhumation, in his present mood I didn’t want to complicate matters.

  He read the letter again, grunted with what could have been irritation or merely hunger pangs, then stomped off still clutching it. Towards the dining room, I assumed, and having been invited to lunch I followed meekly behind.

  Jekyll told a steward he wanted a table and stopped at the bar for a whisky and soda. The barman looked at me so I asked for a brandy. I hoped it might settle my stomach. Once the drinks were in our hands I tentatively began to outline the conclusions I’d come to earlier concerning the confusion over Poole’s and Burliegh’s ID discs, laying the onus heavily on the 25th SS-Panzer Grenadiers as I did so.

  ‘One of the oddest things,’ I added as casually as I could as I finished, ‘is that the château where the carrier was found belonged to a friend of my wife’s family. A man named Claude Pellisier. Sir Maurice Coveney was his brother-in-law.’

  I watched for a reaction but if he’d been connected to a seismometer it wouldn’t have registered a ripple on his whisky and soda.

  ‘I am aware of that.’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘Of course I knew, Tennant,’ he snapped. ‘Why do you think I was with Sir Maurice at your aunt’s house the other evening?’

  ‘Right sir,’ I said, wondering why, if he knew, I’d had to find out for myself. I tried to recall what I had overheard them talking about. I couldn’t, but did remember something else. Coveney’s secretary had been there. His name was Bryce.

  The steward told Jekyll a table was ready and asked if he would like to choose his wine. Jekyll asked what they were serving at lunch and then, ordering something I’d never heard of, we followed the steward into the dining room. The table was by the window overlooking the street. Down below us traffic roared by as if petrol had just gone off-ration.

  Returning with the wine the steward uncorked the bottle and dashed a little in Jekyll’s glass. He ran his beak over it, sniffed and sampled it and told the steward to serve it. I took a sip and wondered why people bothered with the ritual. But then I’ve never paid what that bottle probably cost and decided Jekyll was entitled to a little theatre for his money.

  A bowl of thin soup arrived and I sifted my spoon through it looking for something substantial.

  ‘Obersturmführer Franz Müller,’ I said, breaking a bread roll in half and wondering if it was the last I’d see if bread went on ration in a couple of weeks. ‘25th SS-Panzer Grenadiers. His platoon was at the Château de Hêtres around time Dabs was shot.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Jekyll. ‘Richter’s diary.’

  ‘Unfortunately Müller hung himself in his POW camp. I’ve requested a copy
of his file but I’m told it’s unavailable.’

  The empty soup bowls were taken away and two plates of indeterminate meat and vegetables took their place.

  ‘What about Richter?’ Jekyll asked, poking an exploratory fork at the meat and looking mildly surprised when it didn’t fight back.

  ‘We still haven’t established in which camp he’s being held. As soon as we do, I’d like to interview him. Under the circumstances I’d like to hold on to my report for a couple more days.’

  Jekyll grunted once more. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Nothing concrete,’ I said.

  He seemed preoccupied and, after we had danced around the subject of the carrier and its crew for a while longer, I considered whether or not to tell him of Kearney’s IRA involvement. But I couldn’t really see there was much more mileage in that angle so I decided there was no point in pursuing it.

  Jekyll asked about the team back at the office and how ATS Blake was shaping up. In an attempt at humour, I said shaping up was the least of Susie’s worries. But my wit proved as weak as my soup and Jekyll, obviously not amused, became uncommunicative. We finished lunch more or less in silence and in the end I left him to his brandy and his coffee in the club lounge. Outside, despite the petrol fumes, I found the atmosphere easier to breathe.

  *

  I spent the rest of the afternoon enquiring of letting agents for anything available at a rent I could afford. As the general consensus seemed to be, not much, I started to figure how long we could manage if we used the money I’d been sending Penny, and which she said she hadn’t spent, to subsidize the rent. With luck, we might swing a year before it ran out and I thought that by then something else might turn up. What I didn’t factor in was the allowance she got from her father as I’d still just as soon starve in a garret than be beholden to Reggie Forster.

  As a principle, that was all well and good, except I couldn’t see Penny happily starving alongside me. Nevertheless I marked off two or three flats to take a look at then dropped by the office before going home.

  The atmosphere wasn’t any better than the one I’d left in Jekyll’s club. I was going to ginger up Jack to find out in which camp Richter was being held but found he had already bailed out, leaving some poor excuse behind him to cover his retreat. I left a note about Richter on his desk then followed his example. Stan threw a last accusatory glance in my direction as I left and, getting back to my flat, I thought I’d better check to see if Ida really had moved out. Her door was ajar and so I walked in. She’d left the room clean——or as clean as it was possible to get it which was a damn sight cleaner than she’d found it——and seemed to have taken little more than her battered suitcase with her. The bed and the stove and the few other bits and pieces Stan had taken the trouble to find for her lay abandoned, leaving the room looking like the set of a failed stage play. Poor old Stan had backed the production but had lost his investment, left in the dark when they’d switched off the lights.

  I was still wondering what I’d say to him in the morning when I heard a noise behind me. I don’t know if I really expected to see Caomhánach there but I was almost as surprised to see it was Sam, the housebreaker from the floor above.

  ‘She’s gone,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Found a job,’ I told him.

  ‘I thought I might have that cupboard if no one else wants it.’ He gestured to a small cabinet with a Formica top and sliding glass doors that Stan had found for Ida.

  ‘I’m sure that’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘Ida won’t need it.’

  ‘No,’ said Sam.

  ‘You know they’re pulling this place down?’

  ‘Yeah. I got the letter.’

  ‘What about the old girl at the top of the stairs?’

  ‘Mrs Randall? She’s going to her niece in Sussex.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said. ‘Mrs Randall.’ I’d been there for almost six months and hadn’t even learned her name. ‘You fixed up?’

  ‘Got a few irons in the fire,’ he said. ‘You?’

  ‘Looking into it.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, rubbing his hands together and making a move towards the cabinet.

  ‘Need a hand?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I can manage.’

  And since I assumed he was used to moving property out of one place and into another, I left him to it.

  25

  I telephoned Penny that evening. Once past my mother, I told her I had made enquiries with several agents and had a couple of flats to view.

  ‘Do you want to come up and look at them with me? We’ll have to be quick because they don’t stay empty long.’

  I could tell by her tone she was prevaricating. ‘I can’t get away at the moment.’

  ‘You haven’t told them yet.’

  ‘I’ve got to pick the right time,’ she said.

  ‘Right for who?’

  ‘Whom,’ she said.

  She had always done it, corrected my grammar. At first it had amused me. After a while it had worn thin and she had made the effort to stop herself doing it.

  ‘I don’t see the problem,’ I said.

  ‘You wouldn’t. You don’t like them.’

  ‘They’re my family,’ I said. ‘My prerogative.’

  ‘Speaking of families,’ she said, ‘a man came to see me about Mummy and Daddy.’

  For a moment she sounded like a little girl but just then I didn’t find that endearing.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I suggested, without thinking first and putting a foot straight through the ice, ‘the Labour government have decided to make everyone who left the sinking ship renew their citizenship before they’re allowed back.’

  ‘That’s a hurtful thing to say!’

  I’d deliberately not called them rats but I suppose that’s what she thought I was thinking.

  ‘I’m only joking,’ I said. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘To know if they’d sold the house or had bought any other property. Stupid questions like that. He asked if I knew when they were coming home.’

  ‘I thought they’d rented the house out.’

  ‘They decided not to.’

  It was a big place in central London and had come through the war unscathed. Rather like Reggie Forster himself.

  ‘I suppose it’s just bureaucracy,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t see what business it is of anyone else’s.’

  ‘You know what this government is like. They probably want to make sure your father pays all his taxes.’

  ‘It’s criminal,’ she complained.

  ‘No, not paying them is criminal,’ I said. ‘And if they’re coming back he’d better get used to the fact.’

  When she didn’t reply I said:

  ‘These flats then? What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You’d better look at them by yourself, Harry. You know what I like.’

  I might have remarked that there’d been a time when I did but I’d done enough damage for one evening and was running out of change anyway. I said goodbye and hung up. I started back up the stairs then changed my mind and went out.

  It wasn’t late although with the present run of poor weather we’d had, the heavy overcast and drizzling rain, it seemed more like autumn than a summer evening. I walked around aimlessly for a while then went into a cinema. The main feature was And Then There Were None with Walter Huston and Barry Fitzgerald, the man who often played the part of an irascible priest. I’d missed the first half but went in anyway. The girl in the ticket booth smiled at me and said I could go in cheap since I’d missed so much. The film was about a group of people stranded in a big house on an isolated island getting themselves killed one by one. About ten minutes in I realized it had been made from an Agatha Christie book I’d read. I couldn’t remember who’d done it, only the trick of how, and I couldn’t concentrate anyway. My mind wandered back over my conversation with Penny and I began to think she was having second thoughts about living with me again. Then I wondered why anyone would contact h
er about her parents. I couldn’t help thinking about Diamaid Caomhánach and his pretending to be Major Hendrix and wished I’d asked Penny what the man had looked like.

  Ugly according to Rose, but there were many kinds of ugly. If it was Caomhánach wanting to get at me for some imagined offence I’d caused him——other than the obvious offence of being an English army officer——I didn’t want him near Penny. I decided to ring her again and get a description. Then it occurred to me that if it wasn’t Caomhánach but a genuine enquiry about Helen and Reggie Forster, whoever the man was might have been to see Julia, too.

  As I got up to leave there were just two of them left alive on the island, the young girl and a man, attracted to, and yet wary of each other. They were scrambling over the rocks on the beach unsure of their footing. Like me and Penny, I couldn’t help thinking. Like Penny and I.

  It was dark and gone ten when I reached Julia’s house, late for a call but I rang the bell anyway. Ida answered.

  ‘God!’ I said, ‘she hasn’t got you working at this hour, has she?’

  For a moment Ida looked as if she was going to cry.

  ‘It’s all right, really,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t mind. I had the day off yesterday.’ She let me in then said, ‘They’re in the sitting room. I’ll announce you.’

  Tuchman was with Julia. They were sitting side by side on the sofa. Tuchman got up and we shook hands. Julia looked less welcoming.

  ‘Harry,’ she said in that usual tone of hers.

  I apologised for calling so late and glanced at the door to make sure Ida had closed it behind her.

  ‘The girl needed a job, Julia,’ I told her, ‘not a prison sentence.’