Sally Spencer: Blackstone and the Great War

Once Huxton had slammed the door behind him, Carstairs sighed and said, ‘You may sit if you wish, Blackstone.’

‘That would have been a most welcome invitation fifteen minutes ago, but now I think I prefer to stand,’ Blackstone told him.

Carstairs nodded. ‘I don’t suppose there’d be any point in offering you a whisky, either.’

‘Not at the moment.’

‘I may have pointed out to Captain Huxton the necessity of cooperating with you,’ Carstairs said, ‘but I certainly wouldn’t want to have given you the impression that I approve of you being here and-’

‘You haven’t,’ Blackstone told him.

‘Kindly do not interrupt,’ Carstairs snapped. ‘I want it clearly understood that I am only giving you my support in this venture of yours because that is what I’ve been ordered to do.’

‘That is understood,’ Blackstone agreed.

‘And you might make both your task and mine a little easier if, as an ex-sergeant, you showed some respect when addressing an officer,’ Carstairs continued. ‘For example, I’d appreciate it if you called me “sir”.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ Blackstone agreed.

‘Well, then?’

‘And if the men heard me calling you “sir”, what would they think?’

‘They’d think it was only right and proper.’

Blackstone shook his head. ‘No, they wouldn’t. What they would think is that everything they told me would come straight back to you.’

‘And so it should. Not that I’m expecting you to report it to me directly, of course.’

‘No?’

‘No — the NCO who accompanies you will file the report.’

‘There won’t be any NCO accompanying me,’ Blackstone said.

‘I’m afraid you’re quite wrong about that,’ Carstairs said firmly.

‘None of you seem to have quite got the hang of what’s going on yet, have you?’ Blackstone asked. ‘I’m conducting a criminal investigation here. I’ll go where I want to go, and talk to who I want to talk to-’

‘That’s out of the question.’

‘-and if there are any restrictions placed on me, I’ll be on the next train out of here, and you can explain to the General Staff why I’ve gone.’

‘I don’t like being threatened,’ Carstairs growled.

‘And I’m not threatening you,’ Blackstone replied. ‘But if I’m to find the guilty man, be he a private soldier or an officer-’

‘The idea that an officer killed Lieutenant Fortesque is quite out of the question,’ Carstairs said.

Blackstone grinned. ‘That’s not what you said to Captain Huxton,’ he pointed out.

‘I have since revised my position,’ Carstairs told him.

Blackstone shook his head. ‘No, you haven’t. You were never prepared to consider it.’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Carstairs demanded.

‘No,’ Blackstone said. ‘I’m calling you a tactician .’

‘And what exactly do you mean by that?’

‘You didn’t want Huxton involved in this investigation, not because you think he’s a fool — which he undoubtedly is — but because you’d already decided I need to be tightly controlled, and he’s clearly not up to the job. That’s why you were baiting him from the moment I arrived. That’s why you pretended to agree with me about the possibility of the killer being an officer — because you wanted him to storm out, just as he eventually did.’

‘Whatever I may have said, and for whatever reason I may have said it, my position now is quite clear,’ Carstairs told Blackstone, in the growling voice of a wounded beast. ‘I consider it unthinkable that one of my officers would contemplate, even for a moment, anything as dastardly as committing a murder.’

‘That’s not quite what you mean,’ Blackstone said.

‘No?’

‘No. What you’re actually saying is that it’s unthinkable that any of the officers serving under you would contemplate killing one of their own kind .’

‘That’s the same thing, isn’t it?’ Carstairs asked, sounding genuinely mystified.

‘Not by a mile,’ Blackstone told him.

Then he reached down for the whisky bottle and poured himself a shot.

‘What the devil. .’ Carstairs exclaimed.

‘You did offer me a whisky earlier,’ Blackstone said, looking him squarely in the eye.

‘Don’t push me too far,’ Carstairs said.

‘I’ll try not to,’ Blackstone promised. He took a sip of his drink. It was malt — far beyond the pocket of a humble police inspector. ‘In my time, I’ve arrested a wide range of people, from the lowest guttersnipe in an East End flophouse to members of the aristocracy in their own stately piles. And the main lesson I’ve learned from making those arrests is that, given the right circumstances, anybody is capable of killing anybody.’

‘That’s preposterous!’ Carstairs said.

‘Is it?’ Blackstone asked. ‘When I reached for your whisky just now, wasn’t there a brief moment when you wanted to kill me?’

Carstairs looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that,’ he said.

‘The feeling might have only lasted a split second, but for that split second, you did want me dead,’ Blackstone told him. ‘There’s no point in denying it, because I could read it in your eyes.’

‘Balderdash,’ Carstairs said, unconvincingly.

‘You wouldn’t have reacted like that if I’d been one of your young lieutenants,’ Blackstone continued. ‘You’d have been annoyed, certainly. You’d have torn a strip off him, undoubtedly. You may even have put him on some kind of punishment parade. But you wouldn’t have felt the rage . And why did you feel it when I helped myself to a drink — because I’m a jumped-up ex-sergeant who refuses to even call you “sir”!’

‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Carstairs mumbled.

‘It’s exactly as simple as that,’ Blackstone contradicted him. ‘If the circumstances are right, anyone can kill anyone. And that’s why I’m here — to find out what those circumstances were.’

‘I want to make one thing absolutely clear,’ Carstairs said, in a tone which was both chilling and resolute. ‘I love this regiment, and if you do anything which affects either the morale of the men I command or the honour of the regiment, I will kill you — and damn the consequences!’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Blackstone said.

Soon, the sun would appear on the horizon behind the German lines, and light would begin to filter down into the trench. For the moment, however, the only illumination that Blackstone and Carstairs had was from the captain’s flashlight, its beam bobbing along the trench floor in front of them — and it was like walking in a tunnel.

‘If you once get lost down here, you can be wandering about for hours, trying to find your way back,’ Carstairs warned.

Blackstone did not doubt it. The trench system was more complex than he would ever have imagined it could be. In addition to the reserve trenches, there were not only the fire trenches — the front line for both armies — but also the relief trenches and countless communication trenches which intersected and criss-crossed each other with bewildering regularity. It was almost like a small town, with its highways and byways, alleys and cul-de-sacs.

As the narrow communication trench joined the much wider fire trench, Carstairs came to a halt.

‘The General’s wasting both my time and yours, you know,’ he said. ‘You’ll never catch your killer.’

‘What makes you think that?’ Blackstone wondered. ‘Is it that you share Captain Huxton’s conviction that he’s probably already dead?’