The Wages of Desire

by Stephen Kelly

  “I take it that the men’s and women’s quarters are kept separate.”

  “Of course, though they take meals at the same time, to keep things simple.”

  “Was Miss Aisquith’s status as a conscientious objector known to others in the camp?”

  “As far as I know, yes. It’s not the kind of thing that is kept secret. It’s part of her official record.”

  “Did anyone object to her stance—perhaps someone who has lost a relative or loved one in the war?”

  “Well, there was some grumbling, I suppose, as there normally would be in such situations, but nothing that would lead you to believe that someone here might want her dead. If there was, I should think I’d have heard about it.”

  “Do you know of anyone, specifically, who voiced objections to Miss Aisquith’s attitude toward war service?”

  “I’m afraid not, no, Chief Inspector. Frankly, you’d be better off asking Mr. Taney—George Taney—such questions. He’s the main contractor on the job here; he’s a builder from Southampton and has more direct contact with the workers than do I. We’re not wasting prime military bodies on the construction of this place, you see. Nearly all of the work is being done by the less desirable conscripts—by women and by men who are either too old for combat service or who are at the low end of the fitness scale—along with civilians employed by Taney. All of them can handle a shovel or an axe well enough. Corporal Baker, who escorted you here, and I are the only regular army people on the site. My job is administrative—to see to it that the work is done correctly and on time and budget.”

  Walton likely kept a well-organized and up-to-date filing system in his tent, Lamb thought. Meanwhile, he’d not bothered to post a guard at the camp’s entrance and had been unaware that one of the people for whom he was responsible had for several hours been lying dead with a bullet wound in her back three-quarters of a mile away. Walton didn’t even seem to have known that Ruth Aisquith was absent from the camp.

  “We have taken possession of Miss Aisquith’s body in order to perform an autopsy,” Lamb said. “And there will be an inquest into the cause of her death. But we will coordinate that with the correct military authorities.”

  “Yes, of course,” Walton said.

  “I also must ask you, Captain Walton, if you were aware that Miss Aisquith had left the camp this morning.”

  “I was aware, yes, though I assumed that she had returned by her usual time.” He raised his chin slightly. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have assumed.”

  “She left the camp this morning with your permission, then?”

  “Yes. Everyone who works here is allowed a certain amount of leave. When she first arrived here, she told Mr. Taney that her grandmother was buried in the cemetery in Winstead and asked his permission to visit the grave on occasion. He in turned asked me, and I approved it. I saw no reason to reject her request. She was not troublesome in any way, as I said. She went into the village a couple of mornings a week and always returned by the proper time—seven thirty A.M.”

  “Did she give you her grandmother’s name?” Lamb asked.

  “No. And I’m sorry to say that I didn’t ask. Perhaps I should have.”

  “Does the name Mary Forrest mean anything to you, sir?”

  “No, I’m afraid it doesn’t.”

  “How about Lila Tutin?”

  “No.”

  Lamb didn’t know quite what else to say to Walton. The captain seemed to have ceded much of his command of the camp to George Taney.

  “Where can I find Mr. Taney?” Lamb asked.

  “I’ll have Corporal Baker take you to him.” Walton summoned Baker and ordered him to escort Lamb and Wallace to where Taney was working. “If I can be of any more assistance, you only need ask,” he told Lamb.

  “I’ll want to see whatever files you have on Miss Aisquith and to search her billet. We’ll also want to question the employees here.”

  “You have my permission.”

  Lamb wondered how much weight Walton’s permission actually carried.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said. Then he and Wallace followed Corporal Baker in the direction of George Taney.

  EIGHT

  LAMB AND WALLACE REJOINED VERA AT THE CAR. LAMB POINTED to the two women toiling in the field whom they’d passed as they’d entered the farm. Thus far, the two were the only women any of them had seen about the place.

  “Why don’t you try those two while I speak to Taney,” Lamb told Wallace. “They would have billeted with Aisquith.”

  Wallace gazed in the direction of the women. “Right,” he said.

  Lamb found George Taney directing a green lorry that was backing up to the pile of stone rubble the workers had removed from the foundation of the farmhouse. GEORGE TANEY. BUILDER AND CONTRACTOR. SOUTHAMPTON was printed in white letters on the lorry’s door. Taney was a well-built man, close to six feet tall, with brown, close-cropped hair and tanned, sinewy arms protruding from the rolled-up sleeves of a green cotton work shirt.

  “Stop it there!” Taney shouted at the lorry driver. He gestured to a waiting trio of men in denim clothes who began to shovel the debris into the back of the lorry. Nearby, a half-dozen other men continued to toil in the rectangular space that once had formed the basement of the house. Taney noticed Baker approaching with Lamb and stepped away from the ruckus to meet them. Taney nodded at the corporal. “Baker,” he said.

  “Police want a word with you, Mr. Taney,” Baker said. He nodded at Lamb then abruptly departed without saying anything more, leaving Lamb with the distinct impression that Baker didn’t like Taney and probably resented having to take orders from a civilian.

  Lamb showed Taney his warrant card and introduced himself. He detected no surprise or concern in Taney’s eyes at the sudden appearance of a policeman. He thought that Taney must have known by then that Ruth Aisquith was absent and yet he’d apparently said nothing about this to Walton. Taney possessed a domineering physical presence that some people—including, perhaps, Walton—likely found intimidating, Lamb thought. Taney wiped grime from his hands on a yellow rag then vigorously shook Lamb’s hand.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  Lamb decided not to dawdle with Taney. He wanted to see if Taney expressed genuine surprise or shock at the news of Ruth Aisquith’s death. “Are you aware that Ruth Aisquith is dead?” he asked.

  Taney’s face clouded. “Dead?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid so. She was found shot to death in Winstead just a few hours ago.”

  Taney didn’t answer for several seconds. He glanced at the surroundings, as if he’d lost something small and personal and knew that the bloody thing had to be somewhere nearby, he’d only just been holding it. He looked again at Lamb, as if he expected to find what he was searching for in the spot where Lamb stood but instead had found something different and unsuspected.

  “Shot?” he said.

  “Yes,” Lamb said. “Someone shot her in the back as she was visiting the cemetery by the church there. I take it you knew she was absent this morning.”

  “Yes,” Taney said. “Yes, I knew she was absent.” He became silent again, as if thinking—trying to remember: Where did I leave the bloody thing? Even so, his seeming confusion and sudden vulnerability—which Lamb thought might be genuine—did not lessen his commanding presence.

  “Did her absence not concern you? I’ve just spoken to Captain Walton and he had no idea that she was missing from the camp.”

  Taney shook his head slightly. “Well, he wouldn’t, would he?”

  Lamb repeated his question: “So Miss Aisquith’s absence didn’t concern you?”

  Taney sighed heavily. He seemed to be trying to regain his composure. “No—no it didn’t,” he said. “I had given her the entire morning as leave; she wasn’t due back to the camp until after ten.” The time was a little past noon.

  “Why did you give Miss Aisquith such generous leave this morning?”

  Taney stood straighter.
He looked directly down at Lamb, who believed that Taney was attempting to overawe him—to do what he’d done to Captain Walton and, perhaps, everyone he met.

  “She’d earned it,” he said. “She’d worked very hard the past week. And she liked to go into the village and pay her respects to her late grandmother. She normally went into the village very early and returned in time for breakfast and the start of the workday. Yesterday, she asked for the extra time and I granted it.”

  “Did she tell you her grandmother’s name?”

  “No.”

  “Did she have living relatives in Winstead or mention the names Mary Forrest or Lila Tutin?”

  “No.” Taney’s face clouded slightly again, as if he’d just remembered the topic of their conversation. “You say Ruth was shot?” he asked. “But who in bloody hell would shoot her?”

  “I thought that you might know, sir.”

  “Me? Why would I know?”

  “You are as good a person as any. You were her boss.”

  Taney’s face reddened slightly. He seemed to be getting angry; Lamb guessed that he’d learned to be free with his anger—that others rarely insisted he rein it in. “I barely knew her, other than from what she did here, on the job.”

  “Why did she want the extra time this morning?”

  “I think she intended to buy a few things in the shops.”

  “What sorts of things?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I assume you knew that Miss Aisquith was a conscientious objector,” Lamb asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you approve of conscientious objection?”

  “I’ve no complaint as long as it’s actually based in religious belief. I’ve no use for people who use it as an excuse for shirking their duty.”

  Lamb thought that Taney could have followed Ruth Aisquith into Winstead, shot her to death in the cemetery while the village and work camp still mostly were asleep, then returned to the camp without anyone knowing. The fact that he remained a civilian—along with the manner in which he seemed to have wrested control of the camp from Walton—would allow him nearly complete freedom of movement. His motive might have been that he despised Ruth Aisquith as a shirker, but Lamb doubted that. If Taney killed her, his motive likely was that she’d sexually spurned him. He thought that George Taney didn’t much countenance being spurned. But he was merely guessing, of course, playing the odds. Behind Taney, the men continued to load dusty wheelbarrow loads of broken rock into the lorry.

  “Do you know of anyone here who objected to her stance on war duties?”

  “No.”

  “What did Ruth Aisquith do here?”

  “Same as the other women—light duties, laundry, cooking, clearing brush, fetching and carrying. Someone has to do it, and there simply aren’t enough men now. We have six women working here.”

  “Did you frequently allow her extra leave?”

  Taney glanced back at the men wheeling the broken rock to the lorry, as if signaling that he was growing impatient. He turned back to Lamb. “No,” he said. “This morning was the first time. But as I told you, she had earned it by working harder than most.”

  An empty lorry like the one that was backed up to the rock pile was coming up the dirt entrance road toward them. Taney turned toward the foundation of the farmhouse and whistled shrilly. The men who were working there looked up in unison. “Head off that lorry, Jenkins,” Taney ordered. “The other one’s nearly finished.” The man named Jenkins nodded, dropped his shovel, hopped out of the foundation, and began to jog toward the lorry.

  Taney turned back to Lamb. “Is that all, then?” he asked. “As you can see, I’ve work to do.”

  Lamb thought it odd that Taney suddenly had concluded that heading off a lorry was more important than discovering as much as Lamb was willing to tell him about Ruth Aisquith’s death. But people showed their shock and grief in unique ways. Either that, or Taney felt no actual shock or grief.

  “That’s all,” Lamb said. “For now.”

  Wallace lingered for a moment by the car with Vera. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the bonnet. He’d begun smoking a year earlier, as a substitute for drinking, which he’d sworn off, partly to save his job and—he’d eventually come to understand—probably his life. In hindsight, he was able to see how close he’d been to falling into a kind of abyss. Despite the effort he’d put into hiding his drinking—and the success he’d believed he’d had in that—he hadn’t fooled Lamb, who’d picked up on his distress.

  Then he’d bollixed an assignment and found himself in Superintendent Harding’s doghouse. Lamb had pulled his arse from that sling and, in the process, presented him with a kind of ultimatum grounded in common sense. Lamb had made it clear that if he slipped too deeply into a bottle he would lose his job, and if he lost his job, he would find himself in the thick of the war. And it was Lamb who’d backed his application for deferment from conscription on the grounds that he was needed for police work. He was glad to have kicked drink and, yet, at the same time mourned the fact that being sober seemed to have drained him of some of the swagger and charm he’d long depended on to see him through. He couldn’t help but feel that, over the past year, he’d somehow become softer.

  As he leaned against the car, smoking, he wondered about the deferment. Earlier, Built had made a point of bringing up the death of Nate Goodson, Winstead’s former bobby, making obvious reference to Wallace’s protection from combat duty. Now, he’d found out that Ruth Aisquith had been a conchi. None of it seemed to him just, or fair, or to make any sense. At that moment, the world seemed to him to contain two basic types of people: those who did their duty by the country and those who didn’t. Some who didn’t had excuses for taking a pass, including himself, though his excuse was beginning to seem less and less legitimate as the war continued. He didn’t agree with conscientious objection. The threat from Germany was too real to merely object and turn away from it, as if the bloody war didn’t interest you. And yet, for some reason, Ruth Aisquith seemed to have had a change of heart—as he now seemed to be having. Or maybe she’d just discovered that she didn’t much fancy prison.

  In the spring of 1940, his first cousin—the youngest son of his mother’s oldest sister—had been killed in France while waiting to be taken off at Dunkirk. Alan had been killed on the beach, waiting his turn to get aboard one of the transports home, by a pilot in a lone Messerschmitt who had shown up briefly one morning and strafed the beach a single time. Alan had been supremely unlucky—one of those who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his death had crushed the boy’s mother. He’d sent his condolences to his aunt, of course, but what bloody good were condolences? Wallace wondered if Nate Goodson had met a fate similar to Alan’s—if his death had been freakish and spectacularly unlucky.

  He knew that some of those who had qualified for an occupational deferment from conscription declined the pass and enlisted. He admired their courage and questioned his own. In the beginning, he had told himself that he could not go into the service because he struggled with drink; he now sometimes worried that going into the war might reignite his problems with liquor. And yet he had never been able to fully dismiss from his mind the idea that his unwillingness to enlist and take his chances with the others amounted to cowardice, purely and simply, and that his concerns about drink were nothing more than a cover for that cravenness. Although he understood and accepted, in an intellectual fashion, the argument that the country needed its policemen to remain on duty at home, he had once or twice in recent months considered quitting the police force to join the army, though he’d always drawn back in the end. Now, with his latest deferment due to expire in little more than a month, Wallace had begun debating with himself anew about whether he should make the leap—to make himself available for combat, for probable death or mutilation.

  He leaned against the car for a moment, deep in thought, silently finishing his smoke.

  Vera moved next to him and
asked for a cigarette. Earlier, when her father had ordered Wallace to interview the two women in the field, she had been surprised to feel a twinge of jealousy that the women were soon to become the temporary possessors of Wallace’s full attention, while she once again stayed behind with the car.

  Wallace turned to her, frankly surprised, and smiled. “Since when do you smoke?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. A while.” She returned his smile. “I’m of age, you know.”

  He wondered if Lamb knew that his daughter smoked and if giving Vera a cigarette was out of line. He didn’t want to be caught corrupting the chief inspector’s daughter.

  “My father won’t mind,” Vera said, as if she’d read his thoughts.

  “All right, then.” Wallace fished a cigarette from the packet and lit it for her. She took her first puff like a pro and blew the smoke into the air in front of them.

  “You’ve done this before, then,” Wallace said.

  “Did you think I was lying?”

  “I suppose not.” He smiled again.

  “You were thinking that, because I’m the chief inspector’s daughter, I couldn’t possibly smoke. Is that it?”

  That was it exactly—or, at least partially. He thought that, in some way, it might be hard to be Lamb’s daughter. Lamb was one of those men whose favor other people sought. Besides that, he possessed an uncanny ability to root out other people’s secrets.