Baker gave up all pretence of jollity, and his face immediately darkened.
‘Yes, I suppose, in a way, we are here for a purpose,’ he admitted.
‘And we both know what that purpose is,’ Blackstone prodded.
Baker glanced over his shoulder, and — for a moment — Blackstone thought he was about to run away.
Then the corporal took a deep breath, and said, ‘Shall we go for a stroll, Mr Blackstone? I think I might find this a lot easier if we were on the move.’
The two men walked along the sea front. Across the water — a mere twenty-one miles away — Blackstone could see the White Cliffs of Dover, and found himself wishing that instead of seeing England from France, he was seeing France from England.
They paused to light a cigarette.
‘So what’s this information you’ve got for me?’ Blackstone asked.
Baker looked worried again. ‘You have to promise that if I tell you what really happened to Lieutenant Fortesque’s body, you won’t let anybody know that you got it from me,’ he said.
‘What really happened to it?’ Blackstone repeated, quizzically. ‘What really happened to it?’
‘Promise,’ Baker said urgently. ‘You have to promise.’
‘I promise.’
‘We didn’t lose it,’ Baker said, in a rush. ‘It wasn’t like that at all.’
‘So what was it like?’
‘The coffin arrived here too late to catch the last sailing of the day, so it was taken to the main warehouse, which is where we keep the supplies for the troops on the front line,’ Baker said. ‘Now, that warehouse is crammed with all kinds of good stuff that the Frog wide-boys would just love to nick and sell on the black market, so there’s always a sentry posted outside at night, and. . and on this particular night, it was me.’
‘Go on,’ Blackstone said.
‘I was patrolling the perimeter, like I was supposed to, and at around midnight this bloke came up to me, and asked me for a light. Well, like a fool, I reached for my matches — and that’s when his mate hit me from behind.’
‘You don’t strike me as the kind of man who’d be as careless as to be taken in by a simple trick like that,’ Blackstone said.
‘You’re right, I normally wouldn’t be,’ Baker agreed, ‘but, you see, the bloke who asked me for a light was wearing an officer’s uniform.’
‘Was he, by God!’
‘Anyway, I was out cold for at least half an hour. When I came to again, I had a bump on the back of my skull as big as a duck egg. I had a massive headache, too, but I knew that the first thing I had to do was check the warehouse — and that’s when I discovered that the coffin was gone.’
‘It was stolen?’ Blackstone asked incredulously.
‘It was,’ Baker confirmed.
‘Did the thieves take anything else?’
‘Not a bloody thing.’
Blackstone’s head was reeling. ‘But if what happened to the coffin was that it was stolen,’ he said, speaking slowly and carefully, to make sure he got it exactly right, ‘why was General Fortesque told it had simply disappeared?’
‘The CO said that was to spare the old man’s feelings,’ Baker said weakly. ‘The way he argued it, it would be a blow to the General to learn we’d lost his grandson, but it would have been even worse for him to find out that somebody had snatched him. Besides, he said, we had our own reputation to think of — you don’t end up looking very clever if you lose a coffin, but if you have it taken from right under your nose, you look like a complete bloody idiot.’
There was something about his tone which was not quite right — not quite genuine — Blackstone thought.
‘You’re happy with your CO’s explanation, are you, Bob?’ he asked.
Baker hesitated again.
‘Yes,’ he said, unconvincingly. ‘I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it? We’re policemen — that sort of thing’s not supposed to happen to us.’
‘What do you really think?’ Blackstone persisted.
Baker looked down at the ground.
‘I think the CO was just feeding us a load of old bollocks,’ he mumbled.
‘So what was the true reason that he wanted the lid kept on what had really happened?’
‘I. . I think he did it to protect the thieves.’
‘And why would he want to do that?’
‘Can’t you work that out for yourself?’ Baker asked plaintively.
‘I’d rather hear it from you,’ Blackstone said.
Baker sighed. ‘I think he was worried in case it turned out that the robbers weren’t just dressed like officers. .’
‘. . but were exposed as actually having been officers!’ Blackstone said, completing the thought.
Baker nodded. ‘Officers are like gods. They can do no wrong. Whatever they do has to be right — simply because they’re the ones that have done it.’
‘Unless they do something so horribly wrong that no amount of doubletalk will ever make it seem right,’ Blackstone said. ‘And stealing Lieutenant Fortesque’s coffin was so horribly wrong that, whatever happens, it can never be admitted that the thief was an officer.’
It just had to be the work of the three musketeers, he told himself — it was the only reasonable explanation — but what possible reason could even they have had for wanting the body?
Blackstone paced furiously up and down for several minutes. He did not look across the water at his beloved England again. He did not even seem to notice the other pedestrians, who had to jump out of their way to avoid him.
Why would they have done it? his quick brain demanded. Why, why, bloody why?
He came to a sudden halt.
Perhaps they hadn’t stolen the body at all — because there’d been no body to steal, he thought.
Perhaps there’d been something else in the coffin — something which, if it was discovered by anyone else, would ruin them all!
‘I think I’d like to see the warehouse where the incident occurred,’ he told Baker.
‘I was afraid you’d say that,’ the corporal replied gloomily.
New experiences were raining down on Lieutenant Warren with such force and regularity that he felt he was in an almost permanent state of confusion.
Only a few months earlier, he had been one of the golden boys of his minor public school. He had been head of his house and the captain of cricket. The world had seemed simple, clear and predictable.
Then, suddenly, he was not a boy at all, but a man. And, as if that were not a big enough jump to make, he was an officer — and there could be no doubt about that, because the pip on his epaulette said so.
Now he was in France, amid a scarred and battered landscape which seemed a million miles from the immaculate green cricket pitch on which he felt so at home. He was billeted with officers who drank like fishes, and talked of doing to women things that he considered both revolting and near impossible. And he was in daily contact — though usually that contact was mediated through an NCO — with the enlisted men who made up his platoon.
He did not understand the common soldiers at all. They appeared to view everything through very different eyes to his own — to embrace a reality which was quite alien to the one he had long accepted as indisputable.
And if that was true of the English soldiers, it was even more extreme in these four Welshmen, who he was leading along the trench.
They were short, heavy, dark men. They moved with their heads slightly bowed, and in a manner which suggested they were passing between close invisible walls. Occasionally, one would whisper to the others in an incomprehensible language, but apart from that, they were silent.
When they reached the large white X which had been marked on the wall of the trench, Warren called a halt.