Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

If so, why didn’t he tell me he was leaving?

Did his uncle sneak in, grab him, steal him away?

Sounds dramatic, and I don’t believe a word of it.

I check the front door. It’s locked. There we go.

It’s crazy, I know, but I go back through all the bedrooms, look in the wardrobes, under the beds. I check everywhere, but he’s definitely not here.

I’m feeling uncomfortable.

I get my things together.

I’m not hanging around here.

I’m going home.

8:00 p.m.

Outside, the traffic’s busy.

Across the road, I see a face I recognize.

James.

He’s wearing that screwed-up expression, the one I’d never seen until I mentioned his father.

He’s standing by the curb, an older man in a long raincoat by his side.

I raise my hand, wave.

James stares right through me.

I shout to him.

The man in the raincoat thinks I’m shouting at him.

I can’t say whether James is pushed in front of the bus, or whether he steps in front of it.

The impact is swift and brutal.

He never had a chance.

I wet myself.

After the shock passes, I remember the man in the raincoat.

But he’s gone.

The bus has stopped.

The street is silent.

Nobody moves.

We’re frozen like this, like a painting, and I wonder if James still has that expression on his face.

Nights were always the worst, and in I winter they lasted from dusk at about four o’clock until dawn again toward eight the following morning. Sometimes star shells lit the sky, showing the black zigzags of the trenches stretching as far as the eye could see to left and right. Apparently now they went right across France and Belgium all the way from the Alps to the Channel. But Joseph was only concerned with this short stretch of the Ypres Salient.

In the gloom near him someone coughed, a deep, hacking sound coming from down in the chest. They were in the support line, farthest from the front, the most complex of the three rows of trenches. Here were the kitchens, the latrines and the stores and mortar positions. Fifteen-foot shafts led to caves about five paces wide and high enough for most men to stand upright. Joseph made his way in the half dark now, the slippery wood under his boots and his hands feeling the mud walls, held up by timber and wire. There was an awful lot of water. One of the sumps must be blocked.

There was a glow of light ahead and a moment later he was in the comparative warmth of the dugout. There were two candles burning and the brazier gave off heat and a sharp smell of soot. The air was blue with tobacco smoke, and a pile of boots and greatcoats steamed a little. Two officers sat on canvas chairs talking together. One of them recited a joke-gallows humor, and they both laughed. A gramophone sat silent on a camp table, and a small pile of records of the latest music-hall songs was carefully protected in a tin box.

“Hello, Chaplain,” one of them said cheerfully. “How’s God these days?”

“Gone home on sick leave,” the other answered quickly, before Joseph could reply. There was disgust in his voice, but no intended irreverence. Death was too close here for men to mock faith.

“Have a seat,” the first offered, waving toward a third chair. “Morris got it today. Killed outright. That bloody sniper again”

“He’s somewhere out there, just about opposite us,” the second said grimly. “One of those blighters the other day claimed he’d got forty-three for sure.”

“I can believe it,” Joseph answered, accepting the seat. He knew better than most what the casualties were. It was his job to comfort the terrified, the dying, to carry stretchers, often to write letters to the bereaved. Sometimes he thought it was harder than actually fighting, but he refused to stay back in the comparative safety of the field hospitals and depots. This was where he was most needed.

“Thought about setting up a trench raid,” the major said slowly, weighing his words and looking at Joseph. “Good for morale. Make it seem as if we were actually doing something. But our chances of getting the blighter are pretty small. Only lose a lot of men for nothing. Feel even worse afterward.”

The captain did not add anything. They all knew morale was sinking. Losses were high, the news bad. Word of terrible slaughter seeped through from the Somrne and Verdun and all along the line right to the sea. Physical hardship took its toll, the dirt, the cold, and the alternation between boredom and terror. The winter of 1916 lay ahead.

“Cigarette?” the major held out his pack to Joseph.

“No thanks,” Joseph declined with a smile. “Got any tea going?”

They poured him a mugful, strong and bitter, but hot. He drank it, and half an hour later made his way forward to the open air again and the travel trench. A star shell exploded high and bright. Automatically he ducked, keeping his head below the rim. They were about four feet deep, and in order not to provide a target, a man had to move in a half crouch. There was a rattle of machine-gun fire out ahead and, closer to, a thud as a rat was dislodged and fell into the mud beside the duckboards.

Other men were moving about close to him. The normal order of things was reversed here. Nothing much happened during the day. Trench repair work was done, munitions shifted, weapons cleaned, a little rest taken. Most of the activity was at night, most of the death.

“ ‘Lo, Chaplain,” a voice whispered in the dark. “Say a prayer we get that bloody sniper, will you?”

“Maybe God’s a Jerry?” someone suggested in the dark.

“Don’t be stupid!” a third retorted derisively. “Everyone knows God’s an Englishman! Didn’t they teach you nothing at school?”

There was a burst of laughter. Joseph joined in. He promised to offer up the appropriate prayers and moved on forward. He had known many of the men all his life. They came from the same Northumbrian town as he did, or the surrounding villages. They had gone to school together, nicked apples from the same trees, fished in the same rivers, and walked the same lanes.

It was a little after six when he reached the firing trench beyond whose sandbag parapet lay no-man’s-land with its four or five hundred yards of mud, barbed wire, and shell holes. Half a dozen burnt tree stumps looked in the sudden flares like men. Those gray wraiths could be fog, or gas.

Funny that in summer this blood-and-horror-soaked soil could still bloom with honeysuckle, forget-me-nots, and wild larkspur, and most of all with poppies. You would think nothing would ever grow there again.

More star shells went up, lighting the ground, the jagged scars of the trenches black, the men on the fire steps with rifles on their shoulders illuminated for a few, blinding moments. Sniper shots rang out.

Joseph stood still. He knew the terror of the night watch out beyond the parapet, crawling around in the mud. Some of them would be at the head of saps out from the trench, most would be in shell holes, surrounded by heavy barricades of wire. Their purpose was to check enemy patrols for unusual movement, any signs of increased activity, as if there might be an attack planned.

More star shells lit the sky. It was beginning to rain. A crackle of machine-gun fire, and heavier artillery somewhere over to the left. Then the sharp whine of sniper fire, again and again.

Joseph shuddered. He thought of the men out there, beyond his vision, and prayed for strength to endure with them in their pain, not to try to deaden himself to it.

There were shouts somewhere ahead, heavy shells now, shrapnel bursting. There was a flurry of movement, flares, and a man came sliding over the parapet, shouting for help.