James Benn - The Rest Is Silence

“Long as it takes,” McLean said. “What’s your name and unit?”

“Boyle,” I said. “SHAEF.” I handed him my orders, canning the wiseacre routine. He didn’t seem the type to fall for it.

“Let’s talk outside,” McLean said. Once we were in the hallway, he folded his arms across his chest and jutted his chin in my direction. Not the most welcoming posture. “Tell me, Captain, are we working the same beat here?”

“You tell me,” I said. “You’ve seen my orders. They’re from Ike himself.”

“Yeah, pretty impressive,” the Special Agent said. “But they don’t say what you’re investigating.”

“You first,” I said. “General Eisenhower would want it that way.”

“Fair enough,” McLean said, nodding as if he thought the Supreme Commander might have a point. “Operation Tiger. Heard of it?”

“I wish I never had,” I said. “What’s your angle?”

“You first, Captain.”

“Okay. I met Major Dawes at the Brixham Casualty Clearing Station. I was identifying bodies.”

“There were a lot of bodies there, Captain.”

“I didn’t say all the bodies. And that’s all I won’t say.”

He laughed and unfolded his arms. A good sign. “CIC has been ordered to provide security for the aftermath of Operation Tiger,” McLean said. “We got the go-ahead last night to close down the clearing stations. I guess they’ve recovered all the bodies, dead or alive, by now.”

“So your job is to remove all evidence it ever happened,” I said. That seemed right up CIC’s alley. Back in the States, CIC informers had been recruited among soldiers to report on their fellow servicemen, passing along tidbits about politics and lack of enthusiasm for army life. Supposedly they’d halted that program and were now busy preventing sabotage, investigating military personnel given access to classified information, and generally snooping.

“Basically, yes,” McLean said. “Which is what I’m busy with right now. Why do you want to talk to Dawes?”

“It’s about a particular body,” I said.

“That wouldn’t be a naval lieutenant, by any chance?”

“Peter Wiley,” I said. McLean nodded, and I began to sense why Dawes was in hot water. “You were a body short, and you found out Dawes had Wiley here in the morgue.”

“Yeah,” McLean said, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. I could tell he didn’t like the idea of losing a corpse, or being blamed for blowing the cover-up. “The deceased are being buried today, and Brixham was missing one. We checked with the ambulance drivers, and one of them admitted to bringing Wiley here.”

“He’d been ordered to by Major Dawes, who was acting on my behalf. I hope you didn’t send the poor slob to Leavenworth to split rocks.”

“Naw, he’s cooling his heels downstairs. He gave us the major’s name and we were just having a discussion with him about why he stole a corpse. He didn’t mention you.”

“Are you shocked that he didn’t rat me out to CIC? Not everyone caves in to you guys,” I said.

“Easy, Captain, I’m just doing my job. What was so special about Lieutenant Wiley?”

“He wasn’t supposed to be part of Operation Tiger.” I couldn’t talk about him being the eleventh BIGOT. Counter-Intelligence Corps probably was not privy to that security classification. “I asked Dawes to keep Wiley’s body on ice and do an autopsy.”

“Okay, makes sense,” McLean said. I could see the wheels turning. He could wrap this up, take Wiley to wherever they were secretly burying the victims of Operation Tiger, and be done with any suggestion he’d screwed up. “You mind talking with Dawes with us in the room?”

“Promise me he won’t be punished. Him or the ambulance driver.”

“If he was acting under your orders, which were signed by Ike, then there’s no reason for punishment. Same goes for the driver.” We shook on it and went back into the office. He whispered something to the other agent, who pushed himself away from the wall and lumbered out of the room.

“Captain Boyle has explained what you were doing with Wiley’s body, Major Dawes,” McLean said. “We weren’t privy to his investigation, but now our questions have been answered.”

“I’m not in trouble?” Dawes asked me.

“Nope. We have Special Agent McLean’s word on that,” I said, trying to keep any sense of doubt out of my voice. I didn’t want Dawes to get nervous and clam up. “Did you perform an autopsy?”

“Yes,” Major Dawes said. “I was finishing when these two showed up.” His distaste for the CIC men was evident in his tone. “Lieutenant Wiley was murdered, sometime before his ship was hit.”

“Murdered?” McLean said. “You mean someone on board killed him before the Germans attacked?” Dawes ignored him.

“There was evidence of lividity. Blood pooling, you know about that?” Dawes asked me.

“Sure. I was a cop in Boston before the war. That’s when the blood settles to the lowest part of the body after death,” I explained for the benefit of the CIC agents.

“Right,” Dawes said. “In Wiley’s case, the blood settled to his back and buttocks and the rear of his legs. You know what that means.”

“What?” McLean asked, looking back and forth between us.

“It means Wiley was laid out flat on his back after he died. If he’d gone into the water and died from exposure, or anything else, the blood wouldn’t have pooled that way,” I said.

“So he was killed on board,” McLean said, happier now that he understood things.

“Yeah, but on which ship?” I asked.

“No idea,” McLean admitted. “The paperwork is a snafu. Orders changed so many times there’s no way to be sure.”

“Have you checked?” I asked. By which I meant put in hours of boring police work, checking manifests and personnel lists. I could tell from his expression it was a foreign idea.

“We don’t have the time for that,” McLean said, shaking his head.

“There’s something else,” Dawes said. “I think he was burked.”

“Now what the hell are you talking about?” McLean demanded.

“I thought you couldn’t tell,” I said to Dawes, remembering the famous deadly duo of Burke and Hare. A hundred or so years ago they had made good money selling cadavers to medical schools in Scotland. Then they decided to hurry the process along and began murdering people by suffocating them, after giving them drink or drugs. The idea was to sit on the chest of the victim while holding the nose and mouth shut, keeping the diaphragm and ribcage from moving, hastening the moment of death. They got sixteen cadavers that way, then Burke was sentenced to hang and had his name turned into a verb.

“Usually you can’t tell,” Dawes answered. “But there were small fractures on the fourth and fifth ribs, and the soft organs were congested with blood. Not definitive proof, but indicative of the burking method.”

“Captain, please explain what this means,” McLean said, giving up on Dawes. I gave him the low down on burking.

“I’m surprised you don’t know the term,” Dawes said, finally speaking directly to the agent. “It has also come to mean covering things up quietly, suppressing the truth as Burke suppressed breath. It fits your operation perfectly.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” McLean said. “Anything else?”

“Yes. We need the body kept in the morgue,” I said.

“Too late,” McLean said, obviously enjoying himself. “It’s already on its way to the burial site. The location of which I am under orders not to disclose. To anyone.” Now I knew what he’d whispered to his pal, who had left the room in time to get Wiley out of the morgue and into a truck bound for the ground.