Blackstone and the Great War

by Sally Spencer

  Why hadn’t he gone straight back to his billet – as the plan dictated that he should?

  It had all seemed so simple and straightforward when they’d been discussing it earlier.

  ‘When do I start following him?’ the man had asked.

  ‘When he’s finished watching the company march out of the village,’ the other had replied.

  ‘He might not be there.’

  ‘He will be.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I can be sure because I understand him. He’s at least as much an actor as he is a policeman, and he won’t be able to resist the opportunity of showing us that he knows everything.’

  Panic!

  ‘He doesn’t know everything, does he?’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t – in point of fact, he’s on the wrong track entirely – but he thinks he knows.’ The other had paused for a moment. ‘Once he’s sure we’ve all left, he’ll go back to his billet.’

  ‘He might not.’

  ‘He will. He has nowhere else to go. And anyway, he’ll want to catch up on his sleep.’

  ‘Do I follow him all the way back to the billet?’

  ‘No, he’d be bound to notice that. Just stay with him long enough to make sure that’s actually where he’s going—’

  ‘You said that was where he would definitely be going. You said he had nowhere else to go!’

  ‘—and then give him time to get into bed and fall asleep.’

  But Blackstone hadn’t gone straight back to his billet.

  Instead, he was just standing there next to the limber, pressing his hand against its large wheel, almost as though he were thinking about moving it.

  ‘I need help,’ the man told himself. ‘I can’t do this alone.’

  And then he let out a gasp of relief as the detective abandoned the limber and started to walk towards the street which led to his billet.

  Blackstone lit the oil lamp first, and a cigarette which he promised himself would be his last of the day.

  If he only knew what Charlie Fortesque had done that was so wrong, then he’d also know why the young man had been killed, he mused.

  And if he knew that, he would also know – with absolute certainty – who the murderer was.

  He walked over to the window, and looked out at the street. There was only a pale moon overhead, and the cobblestones the street was made up of were barely distinguishable from each other.

  He was glad the moon was so weak that night, because there were no shutters on his window – though, from the evidence of the iron hooks embedded in the walls, there once had been.

  He wondered what had happened to the shutters, and guessed they had most likely been taken down and used for firewood. It seemed a waste that something which had probably been painstakingly crafted, by a man who had spent years learning his trade, should meet such an inglorious end, but then war was wasteful – war was about nothing other than waste – and he certainly did not begrudge the poor soul who had removed them the little warmth it would have brought him and his family.

  He was surprised though, when he reached for the catch to close the window, to find that that was missing, too. Why, he wondered, would anyone have gone to the effort of removing something which, once removed, could have been of so little practical use.

  He moved the oil lamp closer to what was the stump of the catch. It had been sawn through, probably with a hacksaw blade, and since the ragged edge still glinted, it was likely to have been done fairly recently.

  He took out his cigarette packet, placed the remaining two cigarettes in his pocket, and doubled the packet over. Next, he closed the windows, and jammed the cardboard packing under the edge of one of them.

  ‘That should hold them well enough,’ he thought, as he crossed the room towards his bed.

  And then, as if eager to point out his folly, a sudden gust of wind from the street sent the two windows banging open before he had even had time to remove his jacket.

  He thought about going back to the window, and making a better job of wedging it shut, but there didn’t seem to be much point. If some passing girl wanted to climb through the window, throw herself on the bed, and ravage him, then she was more than welcome. And if some passing thief thought his lucky day had come, then he was in for a disappointment, since – apart from a second-hand suit, a shaving kit and some faded underwear – there was nothing much to steal.

  Blackstone stripped down to his long johns, blew out the lantern, and climbed into bed.

  ELEVEN

  The town was dead. The streets were empty.

  The enlisted men were all in their tents, playing cards, seeking silent self-relief under their blankets, or turning fitfully in a sleep which was filled with dreams of destruction.

  The officers were in their billets, drinking whisky and telling each other – with varying degrees of conviction – that they were damn lucky to have a war come along just now, so they could show their true mettle.

  And the whores lay still and sore in their beds, calculating how much money they had made that day – and how many more brutal embraces they would have to endure before they could afford to get the hell out of this place.

  The man made his way along the same street which Blackstone had gone down half an hour earlier.

  He was breathing heavily, and recognized that this was a result not of exertion, but of fear.

  But why should he be afraid now, he asked himself?

  He had been as brave under fire as most of his comrades. He could contemplate the possibility – the probability – of his own death on the battlefield without undue terror.

  So what made this so different?

  He wondered if it was because – despite the assurances he’d been given – there was a part of him which considered this to be a dishonourable act.

  Yet how could it be dishonourable? Hadn’t they all agreed it was necessary – that even if it brought his own disgrace, he would be acting for the general good?

  He drew level with Blackstone’s billet, and gasped at what he saw. He had known the windows would not be locked – that had been taken care of earlier in the day – but he had not expected them to be wide open.

  What did it mean? How should he interpret it? Was he being led into a trap, or had fortune chosen to smile kindly on him?

  He had been carrying his weapon in his fist, but now he stuck it into his webbing, to give himself a free hand.

  He had only to step through the window, and he would be seconds away from completing his mission.

  He was dreading what lay ahead, but at least, he consoled himself, it would soon be over.

  They have made camp at the end of a long and punishing day’s march in the Hindu Kush. Sergeant Blackstone posts sentries around the perimeter, tells his corporal to wake him up in two hours, then takes out his blanket and settles down gratefully in front of the fire.

  He falls asleep immediately. It is a deep sleep, free from dreams of both his mother’s slow death in the East End slum they shared, and the horrors he has witnessed during his time in Afghanistan. It is so calm and peaceful that he might almost be dead.

  But though his mind has almost completely closed down, there is one tiny part of it – allied with his senses – which is sentry duty, and it is this small part which alerts him to the smell.

  It is the odour of a man – and a man whose habits and diet are totally alien to his own.

  Later, he will learn that the sentries he posted are all dead, but for now, as he slowly reaches under his blanket for his bayonet, all he knows is that there is an intruder in the camp.

  The same breeze – which had treated Blackstone’s cigarette packet wedge with such disdain earlier – wafted over his sleeping form now, and brought with it a reminder of that night in the Hindu Kush.

  But this was not Afghanistan, he told himself, suddenly wide awake – and the smell of nervous sweat which was filling his nostrils emanated not from the body of a Tajiki tribesman, but f
rom a man born much closer to home.

  He could just make out a vague shape by the window – which must have been the intruder’s entry point. He wondered what weapon his attacker – and he had no doubt this man had come to attack him – would use.

  Not a gun! If he’d had a gun, he would have opened fire by now, spraying the bed with bullets. If he’d had a gun, it would already be all over.

  A knife, then? Or perhaps a club?

  But he could not use either of them effectively unless he had enough light to see what he was doing.

  He would have brought a flashlight with him. He would have his weapon in one hand, and his flashlight in the other. And that was good, because he would have two things to think about, instead of just one.

  If I was in his place, Blackstone thought, I would get as close to the bed as I could, then I would lift my weapon high in the air, and switch on the flashlight – aiming it at my victim’s eyes. And the second that the flashlight found its target, I would swing the weapon with all the force I could muster.

  The attacker – still no more than a malevolent black shape – slowly and carefully crossed the room.

  Blackstone began counting to himself.

  One . . . two . . . three . . .

  At seven, he calculated, the attacker would switch on the flashlight, at eight he would swing his weapon, and at nine there would be a dull thud as bones cracked and brains turned to mush.

  Four . . . five . . .

  The intruder had now reached the foot of the bed, and was coming around the side.

  Six!

  The beam of light cut through the darkness, hitting Blackstone squarely in the eyes.

  Too soon – far too soon – Blackstone thought, as a bright yellow ball bounced up and down in front of his eyes.

  The intruder had panicked, and switched on the flashlight before he was in the right position to launch his attack. And yet his very incompetence was working to his advantage.

  Blackstone twisted his body round, and lashed out blindly with his legs. He felt the soles of his feet make contact with the other man’s chest, and heard – though he could not see – his assailant catapult backwards, and crash heavily against the wall.

  Pain shot though his left ankle – which had taken most of the impact from the kick – and the yellow ball still bounced before his eyes. But he knew that he had to follow through quickly, whatever state he was in – had to hope that the eyes would clear and the ankle would hold him.

  The ankle betrayed him – giving way the moment he put any weight on it. He tried to compensate, shifting his weight to the other foot, but he had already lost his balance, and fell clumsily on to his attacker.

  The assailant screamed, then wiggled out from underneath and crawled on his hands and knees towards the open window.

  Blackstone made a grab at the fleeing man’s leg, but the man was already out of reach.

  The attacker struggled awkwardly to his feet, half-jumped, half-fell, through the window, and landed heavily in the street outside.

  Blackstone’s ankle issued dire warnings of what would happen if he attempted to follow, and knowing it would be pointless to attempt to defy it, he was forced to just lie there, and listen as the intruder hobbled clumsily up the road.

  ‘Bugger it!’ he said – and wondered if he could reach his cigarettes.

  Five minutes had passed since the attacker had fled. For the first two minutes, Blackstone had lain where he had fallen, massaging his ankle. For the next two, he walked cautiously up and down the room, ignoring the pain and ordering the ankle to behave itself.

  On the fifth minute he lit the oil lamp, and got his first look at the weapon which the attacker had been carrying. It was a tent mallet, heavy enough to drive metal stakes into frozen ground, and therefore more than adequate for the task of rendering him dead.

  If the intruder had stayed – instead of running – there was every chance he would have prevailed in their struggle, Blackstone told himself.

  An East End bully-boy, used to this kind of fighting, would have known that instinctively, but this man was not a professional thug, and so had lost his head at the first signs that things were not going exactly to plan.

  Blackstone continued to walk up and down the room. He would have a slight limp in the morning, he guessed, but – with any luck – he should hardly be noticing his ankle by the afternoon.

  ‘They wanted you out of action, Sam, which means you must be getting somewhere in this case, even if you don’t realize it yourself,’ he said, as he hobbled. ‘That’s good. That’s very good.’

  He paused for a second.

  ‘But I wish they’d found some other way to send you that message, because, really, Sam, you’re getting too old for this kind of thing,’ he continued.

  He was talking to himself again, he noted – but after what had just happened, a padded cell was starting to sound like an appealing prospect.

  TWELVE

  The train was slow – very, very slow – and the driver – for some perverse reason of his own – had insisted on stopping at every little country station en route, so that by the time it finally pulled into Hadley Compton, Archie Patterson had almost given up hope of ever reaching his destination.

  Yet as annoying as the train had been, he watched it pull out of the station with some regret. It was, after all, his only real link to civilization, and seeing it go was suddenly like saying goodbye to an old and trusted friend.

  There was only one other person on the platform – a porter with sleepy eyes and a ragged moustache.

  ‘Where can I get a taxi?’ Patterson asked him, speaking slowly, since he believed that was what you had to do, if you wished these country people to understand you.

  ‘A taxi?’ the porter repeated, as incredulously as if Patterson had just requested a blue and pink spotted elephant which was fluent in French. ‘Whatever would youm want a taxi for?’

  ‘I want to go somewhere,’ Patterson said patiently.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Hartley Manor.’

  ‘That be no more than a mile from here,’ the porter told him. ‘Youm can walk it easy.’

  ‘I’d prefer to take a cab,’ Patterson said firmly.

  ‘Ned Tottington’s got a taxi,’ the porter said. ‘Him don’t use it much, on account of him can’t see too good – but him got one.’

  ‘And where can I find Mr Tottington?’

  ‘Siddington Derby.’

  Patterson sighed. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean by that.’

  ‘Him live in Siddington Derby,’ the porter said, pointing vaguely out of the station. ‘It be five miles that way.’

  ‘And how do I get there?’ Patterson asked. ‘No, don’t tell me, let me guess – I have to walk.’

  ‘That’s right,’ the porter agreed.

  Patterson left the station, and found himself plunged into a perfect bucolic scene. Birds were singing in the trees which lined the lane, with what seemed to him to be excessive cheerfulness. Cows stood munching away with slow contentment, in fields of unbelievably green grass. Insects chirped, butterflies fluttered, and bees buzzed – and it all made Patterson feel slightly uneasy.

  The pace of the countryside was altogether too leisurely for his liking – he found the purity of the air unnatural, and the softness of the sounds grating. He had only been away from London for a couple of hours, but already he was yearning for the hustle and bustle and the soot-clogged atmosphere. And though he considered himself a fair-minded man – one who could see all sides of the question – he was finding it hard to imagine why anybody would choose of their own free will to live anywhere but in the big city.

  He walked on, glancing over his shoulder occasionally for any signs of homicidal yokels wielding pitchforks or wild snorting bulls bent on his destruction. The railway porter’s idea of a mile seemed to be greatly at variance with his own, he realized, and it was three-quarters of an hour before he reached the ornamental gates of Hartley Ma
nor.

  ‘Bloody countryside!’ he said to himself, in disgust.

  This wasn’t the easiest job Sam had ever given him, he thought, as he approached the manor. For a start, General Fortesque probably wouldn’t like the fact that he was there under what – strictly speaking – could be called false pretences. Nor would he care for some of the questions that needed to be put to him.

  So whatever way he looked at it, the whole business could turn out to be distinctly sticky.

  ‘You’ll cope all right, Archie,’ he told himself cheerfully. ‘You’re a jolly fat man – and everybody always trusts a jolly fat man, don’t they?’

  Once the butler had gone into the study to announce his arrival, Patterson took the opportunity to examine himself in the full-length mirror in the corridor, as he supposed everyone waiting there must do.

  If the face grinning back at him was anything to go by, he was not displeased by what he saw. So perhaps he was a little too heavy, he thought, but his clothes fitted his rotund shape perfectly, and if he were inconsiderate enough to lose any weight, it would mean his poor wife staying up, night after night, altering them. Besides, losing weight would probably involve exercise, and while it was all very well for people to say – as they often did – that exercise never harmed anyone, his aching feet were witness to the fact that that was patently untrue.

  The butler reappeared in the doorway.

  ‘The General will see you now,’ he said, before turning again and announcing – in a most unconvinced voice – ‘Chief Superintendent Archibald Patterson.’

  Patterson stepped into the study, and caught his first sight of the General.

  The old man was sitting in a bath chair, and a heavy blanket covered his knees. He was frail – very frail – and though he was still clinging on to life, it seemed as if he was only doing it by his fingertips.

  ‘Yes, it is almost a miracle that I’m still breathing,’ the General said, reading Patterson’s expression. ‘Please be seated.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you to spare me the time,’ Patterson said, taking the proffered seat.