Dancing with Artie (Thaddeus Hunloke Book 1)

by Pete Heathmoor

“Here...,” was the simple word that escaped Hunloke’s chapped lips where his own cigarette dangled lethargically. He didn’t rush but allowed his hand to waver in silent offering until the smoke from the proffered cigarette attracted Conway’s attention. Hesitantly, the cigarette was accepted and Conway clambered unsteadily to his feet. He inhaled deeply on the white stick of tobacco, his abject sobbing all but dissipated.

  “I’m sorry...” The statement hung in the misty air.

  “The first body is always the worse... Admittedly, they don’t smell like that all the time. He’s a few days old. At least it’s not summer. No bloody blow flies...”

  Conway admirably coughed back his rising gorge. “No, I didn’t mean that... I meant sorry for being me...” He stared absently at a distant Douglas fir, its top swallowed up by the voracious fog.

  Hunloke found no suitable words to offer; instead, he drew heavily on his cigarette and fought the urge to cough.

  “I’m bloody useless,” continued Conway, “no, that’s not true. I’m good at what I do. It’s just that... It’s not what I was supposed to do..." He paused to compose his thoughts. "I was called up for the Navy... They wanted me to take a commission. I couldn’t do it. I deliberately got a doctor’s note to flunk the medical so that they wouldn’t take me. The Army took me on in a clerk’s role... Someone saw I was good at juggling paperwork and I somehow ended up with CSDIC. The truth is... I’m a bally coward. A chicken, yellow livered wretch... Men die and I play at filing.”

  Hunloke coughed, followed by a stifled laugh.

  “It’s not funny!” bellowed Conway, devastated by the sound of Hunloke’s apparent mirth. “It’s not funny!”

  “Of course it’s bloody funny,” suggested Hunloke dryly. “No bastard says ‘bally’ anymore, I doubt even the bloody Gray mob say it!”

  “You’re damn well laughing at me!” shouted Conway angrily.

  Hunloke surprised himself with his restrained response; it certainly wouldn’t have been his reaction prior to arriving in Derbyshire. “Of course I’m laughing at you, you stupid sod! How would you like me to react to your confession of cowardice? Offer you a medal?” challenged Hunloke mildly.

  “Do you want me to return to London?” asked a pale Conway quietly.

  “And why would I want that, Brian?” asked Hunloke evenly. “Because you’re a self-proclaimed coward?”

  “If you like...”

  “Running away again, lieutenant? What is there to be afraid of here?” The senior officer continued after a demonstrative silence. “You go to London when I say so, and not until... Clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes what?” spat Hunloke.

  “Yes... Sir.”

  “That’s better, lieutenant.”

  “I’ve been having dreams, really vivid dreams...” Conway’s confession came from left field, halting Hunloke’s mechanical reaffirmation of the military pecking order. “More than vivid really, like I’m there...” Hunloke peered at Conway’s right profile and wondered if the tall pine tree held some special attraction for the handsome lieutenant. “You’re going to think me pathetic... There is a beautiful girl named Connie. We sleep together, which is rich, because I’ve never done it...”

  Hunloke inwardly cringed at his subordinate’s admission but allowed the younger man to carry on with his intimate disclosure. “She’s married to a chap named Tommy. We meet in various places around the house and do... You know... Do... It.”

  “Sounds like a fun dream to me, Mr Conway. Better than the ones I have...,” replied Hunloke deprecatingly.

  “I saw her grave yesterday, Connie... And his... Tommy. They were real people.”

  “Of course they were real people. They were Grays. Only Tommy isn’t buried there, he’s in pieces rotting somewhere in Belgium.”

  “How do you know?” asked a stunned Conway.

  “Poppy told me. The first night I was here, like you, I had a chinwag with one of the late Grays.”

  “What did she want? The same...?” Conway thought it perfectly natural to talk about the dead with such immediacy.

  “No, I spoke with Tommy. He wanted me to shoot him in the leg so that he wouldn’t have to go back to the front.”

  “And did you?” asked Conway, finding the courage to glance enquiringly at his captain.

  “Of course not, he was a curry and whisky inspired bloody hallucination!” declared Hunloke without conviction.

  “No, I mean in the vision, did you shoot him?”

  “No, I didn’t...,” Hunloke suddenly felt foolish discussing a dream with the lieutenant, despite the lucidity of the memory. “I don’t know why I’m talking to you about a bloody dream...”

  “But it’s more than a dream, isn’t it? It’s a message,” insisted Conway earnestly.

  “What from the other side? I reckon a ghost has better things to do other than to tell you it’s time you lost your cherry? Christ, Brian, I’m a bloody atheist, which precludes me from believing in ghosts. The bloody dead can’t hurt you! Only your fellow man can do that, or in your case, your own self-doubts.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what war does, Brian? It makes us too bloody introspective. Me, me, me. Okay, we say we fight for our mates. In reality, we fight for ourselves; to maintain whatever dignity we have left, which includes love and friendship. We’re all scared. Scared of dying, petrified of dying a virgin, scared shitless of letting down our mates. Scared of our superiors and most of all, terrified of ourselves. You say you’re a coward for not wanting to join the Navy. Well, I guess you’re right, it’s not something I condone. Would I have gone if called up? Sure I’d have gone, because I wouldn’t have had the guts to say no to the bastards. It’s easier to do what you’re told; even when you know it’s wrong. There are hundreds of men scurrying around London avoiding conscription, thousands around the country. I don’t rightly care what you did. In my company, you’re a first lieutenant in the CSDIC. In my company, you fight with a pen. You might not win the MC but you’re doing your bit for the King.”

  “You’re not ashamed of me?”

  “Jesus Christ...! There’s a dead major in there and I’m telling you now, no matter what any idiot country quack might say, he was killed by the hand of man. And you’re asking me if I’m ashamed of you?”

  “Well, are you?”

  “I told you, no! You know who I’m ashamed of?

  “Who...?”

  Me...”

  “You? You hold the MC.”

  “Hah, they give that to a prat who’s stupid enough to try and get himself killed. And that’s the shame of it... I didn’t die. I came home a lauded cripple. My shame is that I left three quarters of C-Company across the water and had the audacity to rule myself out of future events.”

  “That’s not exactly the same as what I did.”

  “No, it isn’t. But you’ve a chance to atone for your guilt. I’ll likely never will... A shit soldier, lousy husband and absent father. Too late now for my wife and son... You know, Poppy Gray had it right. She said we forget to live, blame all our shortcomings on the war...” Hunloke paused reflectively. “Do me a favour...”

  “What?” asked Conway cautiously.

  “Do what you’re good at. Go back to the house, ring the camp and tell them what’s happened. Ring the local plods; tell them to get someone up here pronto.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Freeze my arse off and make sure that no one touches the crime scene,” declared Hunloke. “And Brian...?”

  “Yessir?”

  “Have a word with Christine alone.”

  “A word...?” Conway looked at Hunloke with a confused, boyish intensity.

  “Tell her she’s not to leave. I’ll speak to her later.” Conway threw Hunloke a look of bemusement but wasn’t allowed to voice his query. “Just tell her how you feel about her. I think you’ll find she’s more than ready to listen. She isn’t going to tell you to sod off. There is a war
on, you know...”

  There is a general fallacy about wartime Britain that bureaucracy vanished for the common good of the war effort. Similarly, it might be thought that everyone pulled together for the benefit of the nation as a whole.

  By 1944 alone there were reported to be over 2,000 industrial stoppages in Britain for better pay and to campaign against worsening working conditions. The 8th Army were known to support the workers’ right to strike in their newsletter, claiming their reason for fighting was to maintain the workers’ rights at home. Perhaps Jimmy Baldwin’s socialist propaganda wasn’t far from the truth.

  With regard to bureaucracy, some dropping of red tape requirements were put in place but it wasn’t something that Thaddeus Hunloke experienced that day.

  The police were reluctant to become involved in a death on what was effectively a designated Army camp. As far as they were concerned, it was a case of suicide. They decreed it was a military matter. The military, after a flying visit, pronounced that the matter should be left in the hands of the CSDIC officers who were already present, especially as Captain Hunloke was an experienced detective, technically still an active member of Scotland Yard. Thus, it fell to Thaddeus Hunloke to investigate the death of Major Beevor.

  That may sound a simple explanation. The reality of the situation was that it took most of the day for each service branch involved to pass the buck down the line to the Buffs captain.

  Hunloke wasn’t sure why he rescinded his order to have Christine Baldwin removed from his service. He hoped that Conway would speak to her. Although he would not admit that their experiences at Flash House were anything but dreams, he was sentient to the aura the house exuded. He was already aware that he was making odd decisions and that the events transpiring around them were leading them a merry dance.

  The freezing fog failed to lift and Honeysuckle Cottage remained colder than Flash House’s subterranean iceless icehouse. The smell of the late and decaying Major Beevor still pervaded the cottage regardless of his removal and the ventilation provided via open front door and windows. Hunloke quickly acclimatised to the odour and wondered why visiting officials turned their noses up when they entered the house to inform him this really was his ‘show’.

  He sat wrapped in his greatcoat and stared at his brown leather gloved encased hands resting on the sister armchair to the one that witnessed the death throes of Beevor. The time had finally come to put aside the doubts and machinations that he believed Flash House fed upon with mischievous if benign intent.

  He thought and pondered upon his situation. Despite his remonstrations, he was pleased to have been given the responsibility of investigating Beevor’s death. It was the one clear-cut aspect of the unfolding events of the past week. The affair of the escape prisoners, the murder of Bonhof and Etherington, the shooting of two escaped POW’s, and the disappearance of two more, all seemed vague and insubstantial.

  It occurred to him that Henry Mills reminded him of a certain assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, a man who Hunloke knew to be in the pocket of a gang of black market operatives. The evidence he had presented was refuted by senior officers. The dirty assistant commissioner was beyond reproach. He was an untouchable. Mills possessed a similar assuredness. Hunloke had no idea of the provenance regarding the information he was being drip-fed by the furtive Mills.

  From that day forward, he avowed to play the game by his rulebook. He had his own small team, which he would now run as a small unit of investigating officers, not a group of troubled servicemen and woman with emotional issues. Perhaps they had been cobbled together by an unseen hand because of those very limiting personal liabilities. Was the reason for the selection of the three of them into a cadre simply due to their perceived short fallings?

  If that was the case, someone had made a very big mistake.

  Chapter 19 - The War Room.

  Thursday, 30th November 1944.

  The meeting took place in the library a week after the arrival of Thaddeus Hunloke and Brian Conway in Derbyshire. That evening after dinner, Hunloke banked up the fire with coal, an extravagant act according to Poppy Gray. Hunloke was sick of being cold. He had spent a freezing day at Honeysuckle Cottage and had only thawed our after his second hot bath of the day, without Poppy Gray having to make any mention regarding body odour. It dawned on him that the cold dulled his thought processes and similarly, the battledress blouse seemed to channel his thinking along linear, military lines.

  That evening, he shocked the party whilst at dinner in the refectory by insisting that they change out of uniform. As they were not actually going to be seen in public wearing mufti, Hunloke failed to see that they were committing any offence.

  The reality of the situation was that changing entirely out of uniform was impractical. Certainly, from Hunloke’s standpoint, there had been few members of the Gray family who broached his six feet plus height. Poppy took great delight in rummaging through the house that still possessed clothes from previous generations of the family who appeared to throw nothing away.

  Hunloke was fitted out with the wardrobe of William Gray, the absent Master of Flash. Gray was a few inches shorter in the body than Hunloke but a pair of tan Oxford bags fitted well enough. Thus, with a thick V-neck sweater and a tweed woollen jacket, Captain Thaddeus Hunloke resembled a pseudo country squire.

  Conway was easier to dress, being of a similar build to Poppy’s husband, Edward. Christine, only a little taller than Poppy, had no difficulty in fitting into a skirt owned by Poppy, plus a blouse and cardigan combination.

  The transformation was more than sartorial. After laughter and good-natured jibes concerning their respective appearances, the atmosphere in the library was a good deal less regimented than it had thus far felt.

  Carey Gladwin, despite remonstrating that she had no role to play in the investigation, agreed to attend the meeting. She stared thoughtfully at Hunloke. It was the first time she had seen him out of uniform. His deportment was far less rigid; his body lithe and supple. Despite his hideous facial scar, he looked much softer and less intimidating.

  It was such an effect that Hunloke was striving to engender. Christine and Conway were not regular soldiers. They were civilians pressed into uniform and compelled to behave in a manner contrary to their true natures. Tonight, he wanted them thinking as civvies, not constrained by military protocol, an atmosphere that he was very much aware of having been guilty of fostering.

  “This evening, ladies and gentleman, we’re off duty, which includes Carey. Any washing up will be performed by Brian and Christine before lights out,” stated Hunloke, perched on the edge of the library desk.

  “We civilians don’t say ‘lights out’, Artie,” insisted Poppy.

  “Quite right, I stand corrected...,” replied Hunloke magnanimously. “However, just to be clear, I’m still in charge, not you, Poppy Gray.” Hunloke smiled softly.

  “I have no egotistical aspirations, of that I can assure you.” Poppy was smoking in the high back chair closest to the fire alongside Carey Gladwin. She smoked in a most effete way, the cigarette posed, cocked behind her hand as if deliberately pointing at someone behind her.

  Hunloke glanced at Conway and Christine. They relaxed upon the sofa and the surreptitious, interlocking looped fingers did not escape his attention. All the furniture faced Hunloke’s desk in a semicircle. “We are now in charge of investigating the death of Major Charles Beevor. For the record, Carey and Poppy have agreed to help out with the enquiry.”

  “What record?” enquired Poppy, “no one appears to be taking notes? Shall I write something down?”

  “No, I was speaking figuratively. This is an informal chinwag,” stated Hunloke.

  “It doesn’t feel very informal to me, I feel like I’m at school,” bemoaned Poppy.

  “We’re treating the death as suspicious then?” asked Conway.

  Hunloke instantly made his reply. “Yes, until a post mortem confirms otherwise. I have seen similar bodies. He look
ed to me as if he had been poisoned.”

  “Might it not have been suicide? You said there was no sign of a break in...” Carey posed the question, her left eye flitting nervously around each face in turn.

  “I don’t think it was suicide. Someone closed his eyes,” stated Hunloke with surety. He then addressed the room at large. “You may not appreciate the way I work as a captain and you may have issues with the way I operate as a detective inspector. All I ask is that you follow the line of reasoning and offer your own opinions, which are no doubt as equally valid as mine. All I have is the benefit of experience.”

  He paused before proceeding. “Rule number one in any investigation. Nothing is dismissed as being mere coincidence. Everything is related by varying degrees of separation and relevance. Rule two. There is no such thing as a stupid question. Rule three. Opportunity, means and motive. Means, we presume poison. Opportunity, by a person who knew or had easy access to the major. As Carey mentioned, there were no signs of forced entry at the cottage. Motive. Now that’s the difficult one. But following the lines of reasoning that nothing is coincidental, the events at the camp may well be significant.”

  “So where do we start, sir?” asked Conway.

  “In the morning, Brian, you begin a full background check on Beevor. Get hold of his personnel records and build up a picture of who he was. Use your contacts in London to open doors if necessary. Secondly, do the same for Major Mills.”

  “What about the investigation into the SS prisoners?”

  “That can wait a few days. They aren’t going anywhere. Concentrate on Beevor and Mills.”

  “But if Mills is MI6, it will be like tracking down a ghost,” offered Conway.

  “Use your contacts, Brian. Charm ‘em, bully ‘em, blackmail ‘em. Just find something tangible we can go on.”

  “Is this Mills a suspect?” asked Christine. She remained floating on cloud nine. Her life had taken such a turn for the better that she hardly dared contemplate the implications less it proved to be a fleeting daydream. Now she felt like she was participating in a Sherlock Holmes film, except that Hunloke was certainly no Basil Rathbone.