‘I’m sure you could,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘You did give them the lorry, though, didn’t you?’
‘I did not,’ Winfield said, ‘but only,’ he continued, slightly shamefacedly, ‘because I didn’t have one.’
They wouldn’t have liked that, Blackstone thought — they needed a lorry, because they were about to steal a coffin.
‘So what happened next?’ he asked aloud.
‘Beefy started blustering about how, if I didn’t come up with a lorry in the next five minutes, he’d have my stripes. So I told him that none of the lorries I had in the garage would be roadworthy for at least three or four hours — which was quite true. And that made him really hit the roof.’
It would have, Blackstone thought, because Soames knew — as did the other two — that if they lost three or four hours, the coffin might well be on a ship bound for England by the time they reached Calais.
‘While Beefy was throwing a fit, Sly was looking around him,’ Winfield continued, ‘and that’s when he noticed the ambulance. “Is that roadworthy?” he asked, and when I told him it was, he said, “Fine, we’ll take that.” Skinny didn’t like the idea at all. He said they couldn’t take the ambulance, because it might be needed for injured men. But Sly just smiled, in a nasty way, and said that given what they wanted to use it for, an ambulance would be perfect.’
And so it had been, Blackstone mused — because who would have thought twice about seeing them load the coffin into an ambulance?
‘So you let them take the ambulance?’ he said.
‘I did,’ Winfield admitted. ‘And, thank God, it wasn’t needed for anything else while they were using it.’
‘Would you be prepared to sign a statement outlining what you’ve just told me?’ Blackstone asked.
Winfield’s bonhomie melted away immediately.
‘No, I’m not sure I would,’ he confessed. ‘It’s one thing to chew the fat with a like-minded soul over a couple of brandies, but it’s quite another to put what we’ve been talking about down in writing.’
‘You don’t seem like the kind of man who’d want to see someone get away with murder,’ Blackstone said.
‘Is one of them a murderer?’
‘Yes.’
Winfield nodded. ‘It’ll be Beefy,’ he said.
‘Why do you say that?’ Blackstone wondered.
‘Because Skinny’s too frightened to kill anybody, and while Sly might want somebody dead, he’s too smart to do it himself.’
‘Are you the kind of man who’d want to see a murderer get away with it?’ Blackstone asked.
Winfield shrugged again. ‘If you’d said that to me a year ago, back in England, I’d have been insulted that you even needed to ask. But life’s a lot cheaper out here, isn’t it? Every Tommy mowed down by machine-gun fire is being murdered — and not by the bloke firing the gun, but by the General who sent him out to certain death. And that General’s never going to pay for his crime, now is he?’
‘No,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘He isn’t.’
‘Besides, if Beefy killed somebody, Beefy will get away with it — because he’s an officer.’
‘It was an officer he killed,’ Blackstone said.
‘You think he was the one that topped that Lieutenant Fortesque?’ Winfield gasped.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, you could knock me over with a feather,’ Winfield said. ‘I’d never have thought he’d have murdered one of his own kind.’ He fell silent for a whole minute. ‘But, when you think about it, it doesn’t really make any difference if it was a brother officer he killed, does it? He could have wiped out half a dozen of them, and his regiment still wouldn’t admit he was guilty — because that would mean admitting that he wasn’t exactly the paragon of virtue that all officers are supposed to be.’
‘It’s more than likely that you’re right,’ Blackstone conceded reluctantly, ‘but there’s just a chance it will turn out differently this time — and isn’t that worth taking a gamble on?’
‘Maybe for you,’ Winfield told him. ‘But I’ve got my girl waiting for me back home — and even if I can’t walk down the aisle a hero, I do at least want to walk down the aisle.’
‘Once you’ve made your statement to me, you’ll be safe,’ Blackstone promised him.
‘If I make a statement to you, you’ll use it as part of your case against Beefy,’ Winfield said. ‘And when your case falls apart — and it will — you’ll go home, and I’ll still be here.’
‘You’ll be safe,’ Blackstone repeated. ‘Whatever happens to my case, you’ll be safe.’
‘Oh, they won’t kill me, if that’s what you’re talking about,’ Winfield agreed. ‘But they’ll find some way to punish me — they’ll have to, if only as an example to the rest of the poor bloody infantry of what happens when you cross the officer class. So they’ll trump up some charge against me, and I’ll spend the next ten years of my life in the glasshouse.’
‘It doesn’t have to happen that way,’ Blackstone said stubbornly.
‘That’s just how it will happen,’ Winfield insisted. He looked Blackstone squarely in the eyes. ‘Here’s what I’ll remember of this little meeting of ours if I’m asked: I’ll say you wanted to know if I remembered three officers asking me for a vehicle of some sort, and that I told you that it was strictly against regulations for any officer to take a vehicle without official permission.’
‘Even though everybody knows it happens?’
‘Even though everybody knows it happens! And I’ll add — if I’m pushed — that I considered it an insult to all the officers serving on the Western Front that you’d even ask the question, because they’re fine upstanding men who would never even think of doing such a thing.’ Winfield shook his head, sadly, from side to side. ‘Sorry, Mr Blackstone, but that’s the way things are.’
NINETEEN
There were only two sorts of people he kept coming up against in this investigation, Blackstone thought dispiritedly, as he walked back to the village.
On the one hand, there were those who believed that it was impossible for an officer to have been a killer — and that included not just the officers themselves, but also those outside the officer class, like Corporal Johnson, who had fully accepted the ruling class myth.
And on the other hand, there were people like Sergeant Winfield, who could be persuaded to accept that such a thing might just be possible, but had embraced another, equally damaging, myth — that officers were above the laws which applied to ordinary folk like him.
‘But officers are as likely to commit a murder as anybody else, and they’ll swing from a rope as well as the next man,’ Blackstone said aloud — and with fresh resolve. ‘I know that for a fact — and I’ll prove it, if it’s the last thing I do.’
As he approached his billet, he was not in the least surprised to see the young soldier waiting impatiently outside his door. It would, in fact, have been a surprise if — fired up with enthusiasm for the investigation as he was — he hadn’t been there.
‘You’ve been gone a long time,’ Mick complained, as the policeman approached him.
Blackstone grinned. ‘Well, you know what it’s like once you’re at the seaside — you find it difficult to tear yourself away.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that. I’ve never been to the seaside myself,’ Mick replied, perhaps a little sadly.
Of course he hadn’t. The chances were that, before he’d come to France, he’d never wandered more than three or four miles away from the house in which he was born.
Blackstone glanced quickly up and down the street. There was no one else in sight — no witnesses to report what the Scotland Yard man and the private soldier did next.
‘You’d better come inside,’ he said.
Once they were through the door, he was expecting Mick to immediately start babbling out the gossip he had picked up from the other members of his platoon, but instead, when the boy did start talking, it was about himself.