James Benn - The Rest Is Silence

“Give me a minute,” I said, kneeling at Wiley’s side. Tom moved off, giving me privacy to pay my last respects. It was a cop’s respect I gave him, checking his pockets for anything that might give me a clue as to what he was up to. Nothing. I unbuckled his life vest and looked for anything that might have been secreted inside. Again, nothing. Stenciling proclaimed the vest PROPERTY OF THE US NAVY, but that was it.

Nothing. Which was odd. A lot of guys didn’t carry wallets, since they carried their IDs around their necks and Uncle Sam didn’t care about driver’s licenses. It was nothing but another thing to lose when you shipped out. But most usually carried cash, maybe a money clip, or a picture of a wife or sweetheart in their breast pocket. Peter Wiley had none of that. No wristwatch, ring, or even a pencil, which I wouldn’t have been surprised to find on an artist.

I removed the bulky vest and laid it under his head. He was past caring, but it seemed wrong to let it drop to the ground. As I did so, my fingers felt a bump at the base of his skull. I turned his head, brushing aside the hair to reveal a sizeable bruise.

“What did you find?” Tom said, stepping closer.

“Looks like he hit his head at some point,” I said. “It might have knocked him out.”

“Might have killed him, too. He had a life jacket not one of those belts that turned fellows upside down. Would have been a mercy, since he wasn’t found soon enough. Cold water will kill you sure as a bullet, but not as fast.”

“Or maybe he went into the water unconscious,” I said. “Or was hit by debris once he was in. Hard to tell.”

“Impossible,” Tom said. “And it hardly matters, does it? Sorry, but I didn’t know the lad, so he’s only another corpse now. I don’t mean to sound heartless, but there are plenty of poor souls here we could cry over. We’ve a job to do, haven’t we?”

“Yeah, we do. I need to have a word with Major Dawes before we go. Wait in the jeep if you want, I won’t be long.”

I found Dawes and waited while he finished checking a patient. As ordered, he didn’t speak to the man, simply checked his wound and left a nurse to re-bandage him. I asked Dawes to look at Wiley’s body, and we went to the tent.

“What am I looking for?” Dawes asked as we stood over the body.

“What killed him,” I said. “There’s a sizeable lump on the back of his head.” He knelt and felt the skull, turning the neck each way.

“Without opening him up, I couldn’t say for certain, but it doesn’t seem to be a fatal wound. Could easily have knocked him out and left him with a concussion. But if there was bleeding into the brain, that would be deadly.”

“Can you tell if he drowned?” I asked. “Water in the lungs?”

“It’s not really definitive, unfortunately,” Dawes said. “When a drowning victim first takes in water, the vocal cords can constrict and seal up the air tube. Ten percent of the time this seal holds until the heart stops. So water in the lungs tells us that the person was alive at the time of immersion, but the absence of it confirms nothing.”

“Does the condition of the body tell you anything at all?” I asked.

“Why? What’s so special about this man?” Dawes asked, not unreasonably, since we were surrounded by dozens of dead men.

“He’s not supposed to be here,” I said.

“No one was supposed to die out there,” Dawes said. I didn’t bother to explain, waiting for him to continue. “Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet, although the cold water can slow that process. Some of the boys who were brought in first are stiff already.”

“I was told the temperature in the Channel waters was around forty-five degrees,” I said.

“That would do it,” Dawes said. “Here’s something interesting.” He had pulled one of Peter’s eyelids fully open.

“What?”

“Do you see the line?” He pointed to the eyeball, and sure enough, there was a horizontal border between a clear area of cornea and a cloudy one. “Water keeps the eyeball glistening. When a body comes out of the water, the eyes are lifelike, but the cloudiness sets in with exposure to air.”

“Everyone I’ve seen has cloudy eyes,” I said.

“Not those two,” Dawes said, pointing to the bodies that came in with Peter Wiley. I looked, and he was right. Their eyes were clear. “They’ll start to cloud up soon, but that’s how a drowning victim’s eyes initially appear.”

“Then what’s with the line on Peter’s eyes?” I asked, beginning to understand.

“I’d wager he died out of the water with his eyes partially open. The air dried out the exposed portion.”

“What if he died from the blow to his head during the torpedo attack, and went into the water shortly after?”

“There probably wouldn’t be enough time for the pupils to dry,” Dawes said. “Even with the life vest on, his head would naturally fall forward into the water, and the action of the waves would keep his face and eyes soaked. But once the drying takes place, there’s no reversing it.”

“So how long was he dead before he went into the water?” I asked.

“Impossible to tell, really,” Dawes said. “Depends upon conditions. Humidity, condition of the tear ducts, a whole host of variables that makes it difficult to say anything other than he likely did not go into the water alive. Perhaps he fell and died from the blow, or complications, some hours before the attack. I can’t really say. Sorry.”

“Can we get this body to a morgue and keep him in cold storage?” I asked. “Maybe you could perform an autopsy.”

“Normally, yes,” Dawes said. “But with the security precautions in place, I don’t know. I’ve heard talk that all these bodies are going into a common grave very soon. What I can do is write up a report on what we’ve found, in case you need a statement. And I’ll try to get him to the morgue at the field hospital.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m going to radio this in to my boss, see if he can do anything. You’ll need to go over this with Constable Quick, too. It may involve the local police.”

I sent Tom to be briefed by the doctor and went to the radio tent. I radioed a quick message to Harding, saying that Peter Wiley was among the dead, under suspicious circumstances, and we needed his body on ice. I gave Major Dawes as the contact and said he was writing up his findings.

“A mystery on top of a tragedy,” Tom said, shaking his head as he got into the jeep. “What do we do now?”

“I’ve notified Harding,” I said. “We should head to the next Casualty Clearing Station and try to wrap things up. Then we need to determine which LST Peter Wiley was on.”

“When he wasn’t supposed to be on one at all,” Tom said. “Might be tricky, that.”

“There has to be someone in charge of who was allowed on board,” I said, “outside of the major units assigned to take part in Operation Tiger. Wiley was on his own. There has to be a list of observers, anyone who wasn’t assigned to any major formation.”

“Any idea why he wanted to go? He must have had a pressing reason if he disobeyed orders to do so.”

“Perspective,” I said. “When we talked about it, that’s what he said. But it was almost like he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. He clammed up right after that.”

“Maybe he meant a painter’s perspective?” Tom suggested. “Or he could have been thinking about a different viewpoint on things. Some incident at Ashcroft House, perhaps, that he wanted to get away to think about.”

“Could have been either,” I said as we drove through the guard’s station and left the ramparts behind, the old iron cannon zeroed in at our backs. “And speaking of artwork, where is his painting gear?”