Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

He stopped, then said, abruptly, 'Do you know about how Harry died, Bartram?'

'Yes, I think so. Tresham Brabourne told me.'

'My boy was il. In mind and body. He'd been treated for shel-shock and for dysentery. He'd not long been back from sick leave. Do you know what condition he was in when they arrested him, Captain Bartram?'

Laurence thought he detected a slight tremor in Somers' voice.

'He was very distressed, I think.'

'The official report says he had discarded part of his uniform,' said Somers. 'He had taken off his Sam Browne and his tunic. They argued that he was trying to hide the fact he was an officer. His CO said Harry had been jittery beforehand. They'd been close to a shel burst. The men dispersed into foxholes. Harry had blood and bone fragments on his uniform, on his face. Another man's blood and bone. A witness had seen him rubbing at his jacket, spitting on a handkerchief, like a mother wiping her child's mouth. Another junior officer, a bumptious young subaltern, Liley'—he spat out the name—'told him to pul the rump of his group together and continue the march forward. Harry told him that he didn't have to take orders from him. It was a schoolboy spat—not the stuff of heroes, but neither was it desertion.

'Harry turned on to open land and walked away towards HQ. There was no protection and constant German sheling. It was hardly the act of a man running for safety. If anything, it was suicide. The other subaltern reported his disappearance the next morning but by that time Harry had come in, half dressed. There'd been sleet al night. He'd got lost, disoriented. He'd spent the night half naked in the mud. He had to be treated for exposure.'

Somers came to a halt. He looked tired, Laurence thought, although he stil held himself erect. They sat, almost companionably, their knees only inches apart.

'My whole career was about making correct military decisions.' Somers shook his head disbelievingly. 'I was a soldier myself, damn it. Some of the men were animals: looting, pilaging, making brutal assaults on each other—worse, on the local population. Rape. Murder. They'd have hanged in England and we despatched them just as soundly overseas. Hard men. A hard life. Swift justice, often as not. But we gave even them a hearing.'

His legs were set wide apart, his fingertips splayed deep into the arms of the chair.

Laurence was about to speak, but Somers stopped him again. It was as if he was anxious that he might lose track if he was interrupted.

'I imagine Brabourne told you about the sergeant—Tucker?'

Somers didn't wait for a reply.

'He was a buly and, Emmett believed, a rapist, probably a murderer, who found entertainment in an execution. If anyone should have been before a firing squad, it was Tucker. The minute it was done, Tucker should have got the men out of sight and marched them away. This is the army. Executing soldiers is nothing new.

There's a procedure for al these things. But Tucker wanted to relish it. Harry's suffering, the soldiers' suffering and Emmett's destruction.'

'Tucker was kiled.'

Somers nodded. 'Vermin,' he said. 'Emmett had already tracked him down. Gave me the details of his whereabouts. But the Tuckers of this world enjoy violence and degradation. Why should Tucker repent? I didn't have to shoot him. He was so drunk that he put up no kind of fight. I did little more than destroy his face as he destroyed my son's, then I roled him into the canal. He deserved worse.'

Somers' confirmation that he had kiled a man was delivered so matter-of-factly that it took some seconds for it to sink in. It had long been obvious what Somers was leading up to but it was so hard for Laurence to absorb that a deadly curiosity now overwhelmed the enormity of what he had been told.

'The police officer in London?'

'Mulins? Yes, of course.'

'And Byers?' he asked, slowly. 'In Devon?'

'Yes.'

'It was your revenge for your son?' said Laurence. 'That was why?'

Outside the window, on the other side of the tidy hedge, lay a smal London street where darkness had falen. Across it, under the streetlight, two women walked by and their animated chat was quite audible through the window. Laurence thought the room seemed too ordinary to contain the man in front of him.

'Yes,' said Somers, finaly. Then he repeated himself, 'Yes. Wasn't that enough?'

Wasn't that enough? Leonard Byers had said that the last time Laurence had seen him. It was an epitaph for the whole grim mess. He waited for the other man to colect himself.

'Tucker died too easily,' Somers went on. 'Corporal Byers, too: a man more used to making beds and heating an officer's canteen than putting his life on the line. Your friend Captain Emmett said Byers was fussing about his wet feet while they were waiting to shoot my son and then he walked up to my boy, a condemned man within seconds of death, and tore off his badges. It was simply an act to humiliate him. Gratuitous.'

He was white-faced.

'As for Inspector—late Assistant Provost Marshal—Mulins, he was a cold, hard man who believed the worst of everybody. From my committee work I know that more men, whether guilty or simply unfortunate, were ensured of capture, arrest or execution under Mulins' aegis than any other. Although I took enormous risks in shooting him in broad daylight, so close to Scotland Yard, it was worth it. I was never worried for myself but simply that I would be prevented from finishing off my work.'

Laurence could hear his own breath. It sounded uneven and he hoped it wasn't audible to Somers. The last time he remembered feeling like this was in France.

He shifted slightly to ease the pressure on his spine. Somers' revelations were exactly what he had feared, yet could never possibly have expected from a man of his standing.

'You wanted to remove everyone involved in your son's death?'

'Of course not.' Somers looked surprised. 'I accept military necessity. I only ever wanted the guilty to be punished. There were six officers of the court martial.

Despite sentencing my son to death, they recommended mercy on account of his age. For this, I spared the four who had survived the war: Ryecraft, Vane-Percy, Goose and O'Shea.'

Somers recited their names effortlessly, ticking them off on his fingers. How many times had he gone through the case papers, Laurence wondered? He doubted whether even Brabourne would have known the name of every member of the board.

'Harry's CO—a chap caled Gooden, whose evidence damned Harry—died in an accident on the grouse moor on the opening day of the season in 1919.'

Somers smiled, without showing his teeth.

'Shot by a keeper. Presumably in error. My only targets were Emmett, Tucker, Byers, Mulins, Liley and General Hubert Gough. Al, bar Gough, are now dead. The Honourable Ralph Liley—the subaltern who had been so eager to condemn Harry, simply from spite and dislike—lived conveniently close to my home. We knew the family slightly, though of course he had no idea of my link to Harry. I folowed him for a while, observing his habits. Watched my quarry settle back into the comfortable life he'd led before the war. Liley took a regular train from our local station. It was the most natural thing in the world to join him, talk to him on the platform and then push him under the incoming train. These things are never quite straightforward: he fel too far out and the train merely cut off his legs rather than kiling him outright. But I jumped down on to the tracks and was able to tel him why he was dying, before help came and he bled to death. I was the unknown hero of the hour.'

Laurence found it hard to process what he was hearing. How long had he been here, listening to a man who should have been the sanest of individuals, and whose demeanour and tone were indeed utterly reasonable, talking of madness?