Gunner Kelly Page 9

  This was when I knew him—

  The confirmation of his guess so quickly warmed Benedikt, rousing his confidence and his interest—

  This was when I knew him, as far as a subaltern officer in action on his gun-position ever gets to know his Commanding Officer, whose place is either at Regimental Headquarters or with the infantry most of the time; we never had a regimental officers’ mess within range of the enemy; and as far as a temporary officer in a regular regiment of artillery dared to know his superiors—

  This hadn’t been written, either: it had been taped or taken down in shorthand from someone long afterwards … someone highly literate and discerning, with a trained mind and memory, recollecting not only his memories of long ago, but also the facts and impressions which a young and inquiring mind had soaked up in combat, to fit him for his ‘temporary’ career.

  Papa had been just like that.

  He looked up at Colonel Butler. “Who wrote this, Colonel? Or can’t you tell me?”

  Butler gazed at him with a hint of approval, as though he understood what lay behind the question. “I don’t suppose it matters if you know, Captain. At least … let’s say it’s one of our most distinguished and enlightened High Court judges. Somebody I’d like to come up before if I was innocent—and not if I was guilty. Okay?”

  He was a fine-looking man, and dressed well in a horsey sort of way. In wet weather in action he wore breeches and riding-boots with his battledress blouse. His nickname … though not to anybody as junior as I …was ‘Squire’—he had served once, some time, with the son of one of his tenants, who called him that instead of ‘sir’, and the name stayed with him. In fact, they said that between Dunkirk and the Tunisian campaign he spent every leave down on his estate in Duntisbury Chase, so it wasn’t inappropriate… . But I know that all the regular officers, who in our regiment occupied all the captaincies and above at the beginning of the Italian campaign … they all thought very well of him, as a horseman and a gentleman, as well as professionally—the old-fashioned order, if you like—and the other ranks worshipped him. As for the subalterns … and by now they were entirely temporary officers … they trusted his calm competence, and responded to him as … as an elder brother, perhaps— quite terrifyingly exacting in the line but always friendly.. .. It isn’t true to say that we would have died for him, because you don’t think of it like that—you may have to die, it’s always a possibility, because that’s the nature of war, but no one wants to. But he was the closest one I came to who might have made me think like that, if the choice had been put to me. Which it wasn’t, thank God! Where was I, though? It’s the facts you want—Montecassino, yes … Well, the regiment performed quite adequately there, and when they gave him his DSO we were all well-pleased for him, even though some of us had been a bit miffed in the past because all the gongs went to the regulars, by custom, because they needed them professionally, and we were going back to civilian life afterwards, and wouldn’t need such things… . But when he got it we were perfectly content—and he made it plain, of course, that he regarded it as a form of congratulations to the regiment for doing its job properly.

  The last sheet came to him.

  But he didn’t get any more promotion during the war, as I recall—because he was already quite young for his rank, the way the army conducts its arcane affairs …But there were the divisional reunions, and I used to see him there, off and on, and from below the salt we all watched his progress, the way one does … I think he was a brigade major in one of the few undisbanded divisions in ‘46, and then he was a half-colonel again, as GSO I in the British Army of the Rhine—we cracked a bottle of champagne over that, I do remember … In fact, that’s when we realised where he’d been at one stage, between campaigns—on one of the short war-time courses at the Staff College … Which shows that they’d got some sense—and that legged him up to Brigadier General Staff eventually, and finally Major-General as Second-in-Command, BAOR—missiles, and things, which he was quite bright enough to handle … But that would have been when Duntisbury Chase was pulling him away, with his retirement coming up—CBE, naturally … though we would have voted for a K—a knighthood … But then that never was Maxwell style: do your duty and keep a gentlemanly profile—’fear God and honour the King‘—and make sure everyone below you is all right, that was his style … Also there was some family trouble—daughter and son-in-law killed in a smash somewhere… never met his wife, bit of an invalid—blissfully happy marriage though, they say … But there was this little granddaughter they were bringing up—something like that, anyway… . That’s all—I’m not going to pronounce on the manner of his passing, because that may conceivably become my business one day, and I shall reserve my views on that until then, just in case.

  He handed back the full collection to the Special Branch man—or, as he noticed when the man replaced them in the folder, perhaps not the full collection.

  “Yes, there is more.” Colonel Butler had observed his glance at the folder. “There is the recollection from an aged general, whose GSO III he was, and a letter from a headmaster, on whose board of governors he served, who knew him well more recently, and a conversation in the Eight Bells which was taped ten days ago surreptitiously by a plain-clothes detective, not long after his death—the local taxi-man talking to the local ne’er-do-well, with occasional mumblings from his retired groom, who could think back as far as his father and his uncle. But they all simply confirm what the judge said in their own different ways.”

  Behedikt nodded. “He was a well-respected man.”

  “More than that. Perhaps a glance at the first page of what the Vicar said at the funeral might help you. Andrew?” The Colonel paused. “Did you meet the Vicar on your tour, Captain?”

  “No sir.”

  “Aye … well, it’s too small to maintain a clergyman of its own now, the village. But it’s a Maxwell living, and the old General paid out of his own pocket for a retired priest to look after the parish.”

  Most of you, who today fill this little church which he loved, in this place which he loved and shared with us, will have known our dear Squire too well for any words of mine to be necessary. Some of you grew up with him, and knew him as a boy and a young man; some of you served with him in the war, and afterwards; some of you, the younger members of this congregation, were privileged to be his friends in his later years.

  There are, however, a few who are here today in our midst in their official capacities, discharging their duties, to whom our Squire can only be a name, albeit an honoured one. It is to them that I say … that we who knew him are not here to mourn, but to give thanks for his life, which enriched ours, and to pray not only for him, but also—as he would have wished—for God’s mercy andforgiveness on those who must one day stand before the Judgement Seat to account for their actions—

  “You don’t need any more. Except to know that he went on for another page about the perfection of God’s justice, and the imperfection of man’s, and the uselessness of bitterness and anger. He’s a sharp old bird, is the Vicar, I rather suspect.”

  Benedikt looked at him questioningly.

  “He’s not in on it, but he might have sniffed trouble, is my guess,” said Colonel Butler simply. “Because what they plan to do is to get the man who put the bomb in the old General’s car to Duntisbury Chase, and then deliver him to that Judgement Seat themselves.”

  “You know this?” Benedikt felt a small twinge of anger. “You have known this all along—since the beginning?”

  “I first heard about some of it a very short time ago. I learnt a bit more about it yesterday. Enough to go to your Major Herzner, who owes me a favour.” If the Colonel had noticed his anger, it didn’t bother him. “But I haven’t been rock-hard certain until this evening, if that’s what you want to know, Captain.”

  Suddenly there was no room for anger, there were too many questions in his head for that.

  “Aye—” The Colonel forestalled him “—and now yo
u’ll be asking why I didn’t go straight down to Duntisbury and ask Dr David Audley what the hell he’s playing at, eh?”

  That—among other things—

  “Instead of which I let you take your chance?” Butler shook his head. “I tell you one thing, Captain Schneider—whatever David Audley’s playing at, it won’t be murder. And it certainly won’t be acting as an accessory to a teenage slip of a girl and a bunch of farm labourers—least of all when he’s given someone his private promise that he’ll look after her. He’s a tricky blighter, if there ever was one, but that isn’t his style.” The grizzled head shook again. “You weren’t in any danger.”

  Benedikt recalled the Wiesbaden Kommissar’s print-out on Audley: whatever his failings the man had an intuition for mischief like a bomb-sniffing dog for explosives.

  “But someone is in danger, Colonel.” Obviously the Colonel trusted the man up to a point, but only up to a point. “Who was it who set the bomb under General Maxwell’s car?”

  For a moment the Colonel looked at him in silence. “They haven’t the slightest idea. They don’t know who—and they don’t know why.”

  “They?”

  “The Anti-Terrorist Squad,” said Andrew. “Their inquiries are proceeding—officially. But the truth is, they’re at a dead standstill.”

  “And your inquiries?”

  Andrew looked at the Colonel, and not too happily, Benedikt thought.

  “Do not exist—for anyone else’s consumption. Not yet.” The Colonel’s features hardened. “And we know no more than they do. As yet.”

  It was easy to see why the Chief Inspector wasn’t altogether happy. “Except that Dr Audley is in Duntisbury Chase?”

  “Dr Audley is on leave, Captain.”

  “Writing another book,” murmured Andrew. “He writes books.”

  On feudalism, remembered Benedikt. And perhaps Duntisbury Chase was at present not such an inappropriate place for him to be, in which to study a text-book example of its survival in the 19805. But that was not why he was there.

  He had come to the real question at last. “But in Duntisbury Chase they know—they know who and why. That must be so, Colonel.”

  “Happen they do. Or someone in there does—aye.”

  But perhaps … but happen … that was really not so surprising, thought Benedikt. Peasants the world over kept their own counsel, close-mouthed, rejecting outside interference in their affairs; and if there was a secret in the Chase, the people of the Chase would be more likely to know it than any outsiders, even outsiders with all the resources of the British intelligence and police agencies.

  It was not what they knew, but what they proposed to do about it, and what that signified, which was so startling.

  “And … whoever it was … they know he’s coming to them—”

  “Right!” Colonel Butler pounced on him before he could finish. “They know he’s coming to them! And the Vicar preached to deaf ears: it’s good, old-fashioned Old Testament vengeance for them, and no messing around. But that won’t do for David Audley, Captain—do you see?”

  Knowing the man was everything—in this case, reflected Benedikt. Colonel Butler was known to be a stickler for the book, army-trained, which was the antithesis of everything that was known about Dr David Audley. But each was an intelligent and successful officer, and if the Colonel was now consciously and deliberately breaking every rule in his own book there had to be an over-riding reason for it.

  “Looking after the girl—that’s what he promised to do, so that’ll be what he’ll be doing. But there’s got to be more to it than that.”

  Not knowing the man was the problem. Benedikt ran the film of his memory, marrying it to the print-out: Audley striding away across the field, super-confident—over-confident?—in his old clothes … the scholar built like a boxer: in good shape, but physically past his prime—too old for the ring, too old for field-work … for guarding a girl—or a secret—from a professional, with a village of unprofessional peasants at his back?

  Then he knew what was coming.

  “I don’t want to spoil whatever he’s doing. Because it’s my guess that he’s seen something that they haven’t seen—it depends how far he is into their confidence, but acting as a bodyguard doesn’t suit him any better than acting as an accessory to murder. I don’t want to spoil it—but I don’t want to leave it to chance, Captain. I need to know what’s really happening in there.”

  He knew exactly what was coming. And it would be better to meet it as a volunteer than to wait for the order which would be couched as a request, from one ally to another.

  He shrugged. “Major Herzner has lent me to you for a week, Colonel. I could go back … But if Dr Audley has contacts of his own … I do not resemble Dr Wiesehöfer very closely. So I do not think my cover will last so long—always supposing that it has survived this afternoon.”

  “Forty-eight hours, at most—if you go back,” said Chief Inspector Andrew. “He’ll have to get back to Germany. Herzner’s got it buttoned up here.”

  “No.” Butler shook his head. “Forty-eight hours is too much—it’s making pictures we’d like to see. And with Audley you don’t make pictures. We’ll go for another cover.”

  “Another cover?” Benedikt couldn’t conceal his disappointment. It wasn’t that Colonel Butler’s lack of confidence in his Roman roads disappointed him—it was good that the Colonel preferred to plan for the worst, rather than the best. But anything which reminded him of Papa had its own special virtue, and the gentle study of small irregularities in the ground for signs of the passing of mighty Caesar’s legions had recalled happy memories of the old man’s boyish enthusiasm, and his own happiest days.

  “Don’t worry, Captain! I have a cover much closer to your real skin in mind.” The Colonel misread his face. “But I won’t send you naked back into Duntisbury Chase. And I won’t forget what you are doing for Her Majesty’s peace, either.”

  It was an old-fashioned way of expressing gratitude, thought Benedikt—it was like granting him a Mil Eliot zu Ruhm und Sieg battle-honour of his own. Indeed, it was almost embarrassing … except that it gave him an insight into Colonel Butler which the Kommissar had not printed out.

  “And I’ll give you something better than that.” The Colonel became matter-of-fact again. “I’ll tell you what I particularly want to know which shouldn’t be too difficult to find out.”

  He was almost diverted from his concentration on what Butler was saying by the change in Chief Inspector Andrew’s expression, which graduated in that instant from proper subordinate interest to equal concentration.

  “Yes, sir?” What the Colonel was giving him now was something new to the Chief Inspector also.

  “I told you no lie when I said that we don’t know much more than what the Anti-Terrorist Squad knows—other than what we know about Audley being there, of course.” The Colonel bridged the huge gap effortlessly. “But what you’ve told me— the fact that you confirm what we’ve suspected … that helps me to see it through Audley’s eyes. And because of that I can see a lot more than I saw before.”

  The Chief Inspector’s face confirmed his impression: he was in on a new picture of what was happening in Duntisbury Chase.

  “Unfinished business. That’s the only thing which could bring back the bomber to Duntisbury. So the bomb didn’t do the job … and he’s dealt with bombers before—and bombs— Audley has. I should have thought of that before, too!” Butler castigated himself for his error.

  Bombs—

  Benedikt had dealt with bombs, too: bombs were the dirtiest killing method, because no matter what the bombers said—and even when they said it honestly in their hearts—bombs were in the end indiscriminate, counting the risk to the innocent passerby as incidental to hitting the target; and while that might have to be a harsh necessity in war, in peace—in Her Majesty’s peace—

  “Unfinished business,” repeated Colonel Butler.

  In peace, bombers were the dirtiest
killers, never taking the face-to-face risks—killing the bomb-disposal men when they failed to hit their targets—

  The chasm opened up at Benedikt’s feet, which he was trained to avoid: Why shouldn’t the bastards be killed like mad dogs? What was so wrong with what the ‘slip of a girl’ and the peasants of Duntisbury Chase planned to do?

  “What unfinished business?” Andrew addressed his superior more sharply than he had done before.

  “Kelly, of course. Gunner Kelly, man!” Butler snapped back at him.

  “Kelly—?”

  “He should have gone up with the car—with the General.” Butler reacted to the snap harshly. “You’ve been telling me that from the start, damn it! Loyal Gunner Kelly—wasn’t he distraught when they tried to talk to him? Wasn’t he so sick that he couldn’t even go to the funeral? Maybe he thought someone was going to take another shot at him! Or maybe he was busy doing something else, perhaps.”

  “But—”

  “But he was with the General in the war? And he’s been back with him for the last four years?” Butler stabbed a finger at Andrew. “But where was he in between? And what’s more to the point… where is he now?”

  The Chief Inspector said nothing, and the Colonel encompassed them both. “If you think about what we know, that the Squad doesn’t know—Audley maybe knows … is that it isn’t finished, what happened in Bournemouth—and Gunner Kelly should have been finished there, with the General.”

  Pause.

  “So what I want to know—from you, Andrew—is the life-story of Gunner Kelly, from Connemara or wherever, until the day he didn’t drive the General’s car a fortnight ago.”

  Pause.

  “And what I want to know from you, Captain Schneider, is whether Gunner Kelly is in Duntisbury Chase now—because he’s supposed to have gone away for a holiday somewhere, but I think he is there … And if he is there, I want to know what he’s doing there.”