by Roland Moore
Chapter 10
The next day, Private First Class Joe Batch woke early. He was still under observation in the medical wing of the barracks. The first face he saw was that of Captain Harry Cosallo sitting by his bedside and reading some reports.
“How you doing?”
“Okay, thank you, sir.” Joe sat up in bed. The cut on his forehead felt taut and itchy under its dressing. It must be healing, Joe thought, idly.
“I need to know everything about the men who ambushed you.” Harry said.
“Okay,” Joe said, pushing himself up to a sitting position.
“What accents did they have? Did you recognise their accents? I mean they must have spoken, right?”
Was Harry suspicious? Did he not believe the story? Joe knew he had to tread carefully. He had to close down any possible suspicions. But then, part of him thought the officer might just be ‘box ticking’: asking questions so he could fill the report, when they both knew the truth. After all, Harry had sanctioned what he’d done, right? But until he knew that for certain, he had to play safe; he had to walk the line and say what was expected. Say what they both wanted to hear.
“They didn’t speak much.” Joe spoke slowly, wondering if he’d mentioned if the men had spoken or been silent before. He couldn’t remember, so he hoped that saying this covered him both ways. “Irish accents!” he exclaimed, as if remembering this key fact.
“Irish?” Harry leaned forward on his seat. Some Irish nationals, keen to unify their country, had been involved in Hitler’s war. But ambushing an American Army truck seemed a bold and risky move, beyond what they had previously attempted. “I’ll have to inform the British War Office. They might have more questions.”
Joe nodded, inwardly pleased that doubt seemed to have been replaced by enthusiasm on Harry Cosallo’s part. But then he guessed that any bone he threw would be caught by the Captain. Joe suspected that Harry wanted him to complete his mission in getting a confession from Tucker about the Panmere Lake attack. They both knew that, even if Cosallo wasn’t saying it. The captain rose from his chair with Joe guessing that he was going off to make a phone call to the War Office.
“Sir?”
Harry turned at the door.
“Permission to go off base and see my girl, sir?”
“Granted,” Harry replied, leaving the room. Joe swung his legs off the bed. But he had no intention of seeing Iris. She wasn’t even his girl, but Cosallo didn’t know that. He was going to see Frank Tucker. Cosallo had probably guessed, but like everything he was doing, he seemed to sanction it even if he didn’t say it outright.
Joe stopped by the mechanic’s shop and lifted a small crowbar from one of the soldier’s toolkits. He’d need that to lift the manhole cover to retrieve his hidden rucksack containing the gun. He left the base and walked the same route he had driven in the truck. When he reached the crossroads with the tyre tracks in the grass, he checked that the coast was clear. Then he crossed to the manhole cover in the middle of the road and lifted it with the crowbar. He removed his rucksack from inside, briefly checked that the handgun and ammunition were still there and slipped it onto his back. As he went to replace the manhole cover, he contemplated throwing the crowbar into the sewer, but then realised that it might be a valuable additional weapon. He slid it into his rucksack, kicked the manhole cover shut with his foot and set off back to Helmstead, a man on a mission.
Iris ducked under a branch and looked into the trees. She could make out Frank in the distance. He’d finished fixing the feeding trough in the fields and was checking traps in the forest that bordered Hoxley Manor. She crouched down and squeezed through the foliage. It didn’t take long for Frank to look up and spot her crashing through the undergrowth towards him.
“Blimey, it’s a good job I’m not trying to catch a rabbit.” Frank laughed.
“Sorry, Frank.” Iris batted a bramble away from her face as she emerged into the clearing.
“What are you doing out here?”
“We’ve got a problem with the tractor.”
“That old relic,” Frank said, sighing in frustration. “Come on, then, let’s finish here and then go and take a look. Help me with these, could you?”
He handed Iris a couple of empty, closed traps. She collected them up and started to follow him towards a small outbuilding located in the trees. The red-brick structure was the size of a small bedroom, complete with a pointed roof. From a distance, Iris always thought it looked like a cottage in the forest. In reality it was used for storage. Frank opened the door and took the traps from Iris, placing them inside. He noticed that she had a small smile playing on her face.
“Why are you smiling? Has Esther changed her mind about sending you away?”
“No,” Iris said. “But she will.”
“You sound very confident, Miss Dawson.”
“I am.”
“Do you want to tell me why?” Frank hung the traps on hooks along the inside wall. “I mean, I hope you do stay. In fact, I even tried to talk Fred round, but he wasn’t having it.”
“No, I’m confident because Evelyn is going to come to her senses.”
Frank went to argue, so Iris revealed the reason she believed everything would be all right.
“She needs the map. So to get it, she’ll give me the note that sent John and Martin on a wild goose chase. And with that note, it proves that she wanted to get them away so she could get into Shallow Brook Farm.” It all seemed straightforward when she said it like that.
Frank locked the door of the outbuilding and pocketed the key. “I hope you’re right. But I can’t see her messing things up with Fred on your account.”
“Don’t you see? Marrying Finch isn’t her goal. Her goal was getting the map.”
Frank winced as he contemplated Iris’s words and worked out the logic of what she was saying. “I suppose it could work and you could stay and -”
He trailed off, the words unfinished. Iris noticed that he was looking past her, his mouth agape. Slowly, Iris turned around to see what had stopped him in his tracks.
Joe stood a few feet away, dressed in his uniform with a bandage on his head and his rucksack on his back. He was staring intently at Frank Tucker as if Iris didn’t exist. In his hand was a gun. He had it pointed straight at the gamekeeper, sunlight bouncing off its barrel.
“Joe?” she said, confused. “What are you doing?”
Joe ignored her.
“It’s time to confess,” Joe growled.
A crow cawed loudly in a nearby tree as the gamekeeper raised his hands in the air. Iris noticed that he was watching Joe keenly, perhaps trying to pre-empt his every movement and the likelihood of him shooting the gun. Joe glanced towards Iris, seeming to notice her for the first time. His nose wrinkled in irritation as if to say, what was she doing here? Iris noticed that Frank was motionless, biding his time, knowing it was safer to let Joe make the next move.
“What are you doing here, Iris?” Joe barked, his voice sounded wounded and upset, as if her presence had personally betrayed him. “You shouldn’t be here!”
“Nor should you, son,” Frank ventured, testing the water.
Joe flashed an angry look, turning his full attention back to Frank. Joe slid the rucksack off his shoulder to free up his shooting arm. Iris watched as the rucksack fell to near Joe’s feet. It made a dull metallic thud as it hit the forest floor. Whatever was inside, it was heavy. Knowing she had to help Frank, Iris wondered if it held something that might be useful as a potential weapon.
“Why are you here, son?” Frank continued.
“Shut up, traitor!” Joe shouted.
He indicated for Frank to get down on his knees. Frank stayed where he was, his hands raised in surrender.
“Think about what you’re doing,” Iris shouted.
“I am thinking!” Joe said. “Get down on the ground. Now!”
“We can talk about this. Rationally, like adults,” Frank said.
“Down. Now. O
r I’ll blow your head off where you stand!”
Frank glanced with concern at Iris, and slowly did as he was instructed. He went down on his knees and Iris could hear his joints click. Then, she glimpsed the water on the ground as it blotted into the knees of his trousers. Was this how it would end for him? She couldn’t let that happen.
“You were in the square,” Joe growled. “You heard me talk about Panmere!”
“Yes.”
“You admit it?”
“But I can’t have been the only one who heard you!”
Iris piped up. “You were telling me! Why couldn’t I be the spy, eh? I heard it too. That could make me the spy, couldn’t it?”
Joe looked confused. For the first time, he trained the gun on Iris.
“No, Iris, don’t,” Frank warned.
Joe winced as he took this in. She realised that he was struggling to process the possibility. Yes, she had been the one he’d told, but he’d been so convinced that Frank was the traitor, he’d glossed over that. Was he now really thinking she could be the traitor? Could Iris be a spy?
But Iris watched as the gun went back to Frank.
She guessed it suited him to focus on Frank. Frank had been lurking in the shadows when he was speaking. Frank could have all sorts of unpatriotic political views. Even if they weren’t outright fascists, there were British people who saw merit in the Nazi ideas of improving the economy through employing business leaders to government. What if Frank yearned for a different type of control for Britain, a way of making it prosperous again?
“You were there, man! I saw you there,” Joe said, seemingly convinced.
“But you might have mentioned it another time. To someone else.” Frank was losing his cool, losing his control. Iris knew that there was no denying that he was feeling slightly worried now. If he couldn’t talk his way out of this, was he convinced that Joe would kill him? Iris knew that they were too far from the farm for anyone to come to their rescue, too far for them to run for help, even if they could get away. Iris wished that Frank had been out vermin-hunting because at least he would have had his shotgun nearby. And that would have given him a fighting chance. But as it was there was nothing that she could think of to end this dreadful confrontation. As she tried to clear her head, she listened as Frank tried to reason with Joe, stalling for time.
“You’re upset, son. Upset because of how many of your men were killed.”
“Don’t tell me how I feel. You hear me?”
“I’m not. Just saying I can appreciate what you’re going through. We’ve all lost people in this war.”
“Yes, we’re all on the same side!” Iris shouted, her throat feeling raw.
“Admit what you did,” Joe said, lowering his voice. Now he wasn’t shouting, it felt less of a threat and more of a confessional. It felt worse. Iris knew that things would end soon, unless she thought of something. But what could she do? She took a step forward, her face showing panic and anxiety, tears keen to well up in her eyes.
“Please, Joe …”
“Stay back,” Joe said, waving the gun in her direction. Iris took a hasty step backwards. Satisfied that she was no threat, Joe brought the gun round again to train on Frank, who was looking up at him, one eye still swollen from their fight the other night. Frank shrugged and sighed, and Iris saw him wilt as if something had died inside him. It was the dreadful acceptance that this was the day he would be killed, after all the battles he’d endured, all the times he’d lived through. So many lives. Iris saw him dropping his hands to the ground, where his hands scrunched a handful of leaves up in frustration. Joe pressed the barrel of the gun against Frank’s forehead.
“Frank is a good man,” Iris stammered, her voice higher than usual, tremulous and scared. “He’s a good man. Please, he’s a good man.”
As arguments went, it wasn’t the most persuasive, but Frank smiled his appreciation at her. Thanks for trying. She’d given him a nice send-off if nothing else. “If you do this, you let her go. You hear? She had nothing to do with this.”
“It’s you I want.”
Frank nodded, with grim finality. He turned back to his executioner and looked him in the eye. Joe looked calm, controlled and confident. She thought that Frank would have had more hope of escaping with his life if Joe had been nervous, or angry. But Joe had obviously thought about this a great deal. Iris assumed he thought he was doing the right thing and that there was no doubt in his mind.
She had to say something else. She had to try.
“Shooting him will make you feel better, about those men who died. Your mates.” She spoke slowly, deliberately, but in barely more than a hushed whisper. “It’ll help you get over that. But it won’t last long, because the real collaborator, the real person who told the Germans, he’s still out there, isn’t he? And sooner or later, he’ll betray you again. Because someone else must have known.” Iris paused, trying to think of how to sum up her thoughts. And then it came to her. “When that happens, you’ll realise that what you did today didn’t need to be done. That gamekeeper didn’t need to die.” Her voice cracked with the last few words.
Joe didn’t acknowledge the words with anything more than a single blink of his eyes. He unlocked the safety catch on the gun and pushed the barrel harder against Frank’s head. “Thanks for trying,” Frank whispered to Iris, his eyes wet with tears.
“Confess,” Joe hissed.
“I can’t.”
“Okay …” Joe straightened his arm and his finger went to press down on the trigger. Iris knew that words had had no effect, so she did the one thing she could do under the circumstances. She launched herself at him. Seeing her coming, instinctively, Joe took a step away, pushing himself off balance as the gun fired. The flash of flame and the bullet flew inches past Frank’s ear, the bang deafening him. Joe arched his body back as Iris threw herself towards him, knocking her around the face with the gun barrel. She crashed to the forest floor, but not before she’d managed to grab the rucksack.
Joe arched his body back towards Frank, but he was hopelessly off balance. Frank saw him coming, even though he couldn’t really hear him. Iris fumbled inside the rucksack, hoping that it would be some kind of weapon. To her bemused delight, she found the crowbar.
Joe’s back was facing her as he levelled the gun at Frank. From the ground behind him, Iris gripped the crowbar and brought it up as hard as she could into Joe’s groin. Crump! The American doubled over in pain and fell into a gasping heap. He retched on the ground, twisting in agony, spittle falling from his gaping mouth.
Frank staggered over to Iris. His world was a fuzzy, distorted haze as a monotonous high-pitched whine filled his ears. He couldn’t hear himself ask Iris if she all right. It sounded like a muffled, distant radio, but he hoped the words sounded like he intended. He could hear the noise as he tried to shake her awake. He couldn’t hear the noise of Joe slowly recovering. Iris looked alarmed and Frank realised that she was looking behind him. Frank turned round and punched Joe as hard as he could in the face. Joe’s nose shattered and blood sprayed across his face as he went down again.
Frank took Iris’s hand and told her to run. She bolted from the clearing. Frank checked that Joe wouldn’t immediately follow. The American was clutching his nose and whimpering on the ground so Frank staggered off after Iris.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” he shouted.
The two of them ran breathlessly through the trees, with Frank glancing back from time to time to see if they were being followed. After a few minutes, he couldn’t see anyone, so they kept on running, crashing through branches and thorns in a desperate attempt to get away. Fragments of sound started to return to Frank’s ears. He could hear the muffled sound of the undergrowth being trampled, the distorted sound of his breathing, all through thick cotton wool. As he passed a large silver birch, Frank stopped behind it, swinging Iris round so that both of them were obscured by its thick trunk.
“Is he following?” Iris asked. By the
way he screwed up his face to concentrate on her words, she assumed his hearing had been affected by the gunshot. After a moment’s delay, Frank shrugged. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“We must have lost him,” she panted. “If he was even following.”
“You gave him quite a whack in the crown jewels!” Frank laughed, his voice sounding nearly normal again.
“We have to get to the police. They’ll know what to do.”
“Yeah, but there are a good few miles of fields and forest between us and the police station.” Frank said.
“Not to mention a soldier with a gun,” Iris added. “I guess we have to keep going.”
“Come on, then.” Frank said, moving away.
But suddenly, a bullet smashed into the trunk, sending some of the silver bark flying away in the explosion. Frank and Iris darted off deeper into the trees as another shot rang past them. Joe must be close! They knew that they had to keep running, running for their lives. They burst through some undergrowth, the brambles trying to snag them, and tumbled down an incline in a clearing. Iris scrambled to her feet and helped Frank to his, then they ran across the mud to reach the next clump of tree cover.
They raced along a ridge and Iris glanced to her left. She could see a building in the far distance. “Hoxley Manor is across the road up ahead. If we can get there …” Frank said.
“The soldiers will help us?” Iris said, not quite believing that finding more soldiers was the answer to their prayers. What if they all wanted to kill Frank? But Frank seemed to think it was a good idea and he was already thundering on through the trees. And as she didn’t have a better idea, Iris decided to keep following. The two of them raced into a dip in the forest as the trees began to thin, the canopies of leaves allowing more sun to reach the heathers on the ground. In the distance, Frank could see the driveway of Hoxley Manor. There was a US Army truck parked up, with some soldiers smoking around it. They were too far away to help. Iris knew they had to get out of the woods and cross the road before the soldiers had a hope of hearing their shouts for help.
