Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

'The farm hadn't been properly run in the war. Couldn't get the labour, it was al girls and old men. Didn't buy in new animals, let a few bils go unpaid. Couple of bad harvests, didn't keep the repairs up to scratch and it's an old place, needs work on it al the time. After the war, for al the talk, nobody gave a...'

He seemed to struggle to find a respectable word.

'Nobody cared if a tatty little farm went to the dogs. Stupid thing is, neither of us had to fight. We were needed at home. Essential work, they caled it. But to tel the truth, I was bored and wanted to see the world.' He frowned. 'Which I did. And we both thought that girls would be al over a man in uniform. Which they weren't. And once I'd joined up, then Jim wasn't going to be left behind in the mud at Combe Bisset. Went to find some nice foreign mud of his own. Come Christmas, he just signed on the line. Went in as a private, came out with his stripes. Uncle looked like he could carry on with the lads we'd got, but then he fel off a roof he was fixing and his leg was never right, and of course eventualy the younger lads were itching to get into uniform too.'

'Your uncle?' The conversation had moved a long way from where Laurence intended it to go but he wanted to gain the young man's trust and Byers seemed wiling to talk about his family catastrophe.

'Yes. That's what made it worse. The old man had been pretty wel bedridden since Jim'd got back. But he liked to sit in a chair by the window upstairs. He saw it al.'

'The death?'

'The murder.'

'He saw the person who did it?'

'He did that. Though a fat lot of help it's been. Man in a hat and a coat. That's only half the population, then. Arrived by car probably, though left it out of sight.

My uncle said he heard it but never saw it. He'l have been right about that: his eyesight's not great but his hearing was always spot on. So it was a man with the nerve to drive within earshot of the house and to see off our dog, and she's a nasty bit of work. A man who carried a gun and didn't hesitate in using it at close range. Twice.'

'Twice?'

'Once in the chest and then a second, head shot, once he was on the ground. The police said the first shot would have done for him. He can't have known anything. The second was just to make sure.'

'How extraordinary,' said Laurence. 'Did the police have any ideas at al who it might have been?'

'No. I mean, Jim'd never been anywhere, excepting after he joined up. We were brought up on the farm. Both his parents died when he was very young. My father died of lockjaw when we were boys. My uncle looked after my mother and both us cousins in return for her keeping house. She passed on just before the war.

Anyone Jim knew, I knew. I'd have known if he'd got into any kind of trouble. We had the same friends, got into the same trouble—but only the schoolboy kind: scrumping, girls, playground knuckle fights. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to Jim until the day somebody came al the way out to the farm and shot him.

Nothing to nick, either. No reason to it.'

'What kind of gun was it?'

'Not a shotgun. A pistol. Kils him, then blows his face off,' Byers said bitterly.

Laurence was surprised. When Byers had spoken of a final shot to the head, he'd been thinking of a single bulet, a military coup de grâce.

'They might of got his tyre tracks,' Byers was saying, 'and had some hope of tracing the car, the major says, but the police and the local doctor had driven backwards and forwards down the same track by the time those clods thought of it. Mashed into nothingness, it was. But what did they care? Single man, mucky farm.

Probably thought he'd been after some other yokel's wife.'

'How dreadful for your uncle.'

'Yes. It was. He comes down the stairs on his ... on his behind, must have taken him for ever. Got himself out in the yard. Found Jim, but there was nothing he could do for him and no way he could get help. Lucky he didn't die of cold, poor old man. Didn't have an obliging bone in him but he didn't deserve that. The girl found him—the one who did the milking. Him and the dog sitting in the muck, and then Jim's blood splattered al over the yard. But it did for him realy, the old man. The farm was sold. The money that was left after the creditors had their take went to pay a widow in town to look after him in her home. Me and Enid didn't see a penny of it,' he added defensively.

His face softened. 'Funny thing is, when the police first came, I thought, just for a minute, that Jim'd done it himself. Topped himself. He was that fed up. So, just for a minute there was a queer kind of relief that he hadn't. Mind you, I wasn't the one who had to find him. The old man wasn't beyond covering up a suicide: that generation, you know, and a bit on the religious side. He could of made up cars and strangers, but not the gun. Jim had a shotgun—crows and rabbits—but it was stil back in the house. Didn't have it with him so obviously wasn't expecting any trouble. Hadn't been fired for a while, the police said.'

Laurence's head was buzzing. 'Do the police think the assailant knew your uncle was there as wel?' he asked.

'God knows. Local man would of known, but anyone else—probably not. Bastard was taking a risk but then he was carrying a loaded gun. Not so much of a risk if you've got a strong stomach and more of us around now have seen some sights would've turned us before the war.

'A few days earlier a man came into the pub in the vilage. It's a mile or so's walk from our farm. It was early and nobody much was in there but he had a half of cider. Kept himself to himself but was pleasant enough. Might have been useful information if the landlord didn't help himself to his own spirits al day. Al he could remember was the man spoke like a gentleman and asked where the farm was. And he didn't even remember that for a week. The stranger took himself off. Where he went, if it was him, for the next day or so, who knows? If he had a car, he could of gone anywhere. But I'm certain Jim had no more idea than I do why anyone would want to kil him in the first place.

'You'l be thinking he might of got involved with something in France I don't know of Leonard Byers rushed on. The circumstances were obviously stil bothering him. 'The major got me to see a senior policeman friend of his. But he was realy just doing it as a favour for the major. Smal fry, me and Jim, but people wil do al sorts for the major.' He looked almost proud. 'A London policeman. Mulins. Turned out I'd sort of met this Mulins when we were both in France. He thought Jim had got mixed up with some bad lads there. But Jim didn't get into any funny business. We weren't close like we once were, but he would stil've told me if anything was realy wrong. He just said his time out there was mostly uncomfortable or frightening. He said it was his duty and, like al duty, boring but unavoidable.'

Laurence nodded. Byers' assessment was wel observed. He was also relieved that he was talking so freely, although most of the time he avoided eye contact.

'I would of known if he'd been caught up in anything so odd that someone would've come hunting for him over two years after the war ended. After al, he was hardly in hiding, was he? He wasn't scared. He was right back where he started. He didn't expect anything to happen, not ever again. That was his gripe. I don't suppose we'l ever know. Too careful, too planned, Mulins said, for a homicidal maniac. Everyone knows us down here. Whoever it was, he wouldn't have got that far without being clear precisely who he was about to shoot. And he did get right up to him. Looked him in the face. Perhaps Jim knows the answer but he's past teling.'

Awkwardly Laurence asked, 'Would you like to go for a beer or something? The major's quite happy for you to take time away...'