Hornet’s Sting (56 page)

“Wait a moment, Pax,” Cleve-Cutler said. “Have some more rum.”

When Lacey arrived with his pad and pencil, the C.O. said, “Start at the beginning. Start with the crash.”

Paxton thought hard. “Couldn't find the damned chocolate. Found Griffiths, though. Poor Griff. Found the Very pistol. Shot the old man . . . No. Wrong.” He sipped his rum. He was looking better; the skin around his cheekbones was pink. “Choked him. That's right. I had to strangle him because his neck was so small that I couldn't get his boots on.” Lacey's pencil raced across the page. “Anyone can do it,” Paxton said. “It's easy. I wanted to strangle the Vickers crew, but they had big feet. So I used the bayonet on them. Soon shut 'em up. Soon stopped their nonsense.”

He talked for several minutes, always in the same hoarse whisper; and then suddenly fell asleep.

They went into Dando's office.

“Something godawful happened,” the doctor said. “He didn't dream all that.”

“He's hellish keen on strangulation, isn't he? Makes me believe he's done a bit. Eh? Is it as easy as he says?”

“Never tried,” Dando said curtly. “Don't know.”

“Give me your notebook,” the C.O. told Lacey.

“It won't mean anything to you, sir.” Lacey handed it to him. “I use my own private shorthand.”

“Well, I'm going to burn it on my own private bonfire, so we're even. Have some rum, Lacey. You look like a piece of boiled cod.”

An orderly tapped on the door. Mr Paxton would like to talk to the major.

When he went in, all the colour had gone from Paxton's cheeks and he was frowning hard. “Smuggler's Boy,” he whispered. “How did he get on? Colonel Bliss said ...”

“Gay Crusader won the Derby, Pax. Smuggler's Boy came nowhere.”

“Pity.” Paxton winced slightly. The eyelids came down.

* * *

Lacey went back to the orderly room, and found the adjutant chatting with Captain Lightfoot. “Here he is,” Brazier said, “back from the wars. Well, I'm off to inspect the gun crews. No rest for the wicked.” He took his blackthorn stick and went out.

Lightfoot sat at a desk and opened his briefcase. “I am here to take your statement,” he said. “Are you, or have you been, in possession of five thousand American dollars belonging to the late Duke Nikolai?”

Lacey put his head on one side and thought about it. He had been bullied by the adjutant, and snubbed by the C.O. He worked hard for the good of the squadron, and his worth was not recognised. Now he was being chivvied by the A.P.M. Would it never end? Rot the lot of them. “I'm sorry, sir,” he said. “Under the Official Secrets Act of 1911, I cannot answer your question.”

It was Lightfoot's turn to think.

“Are you saying, sergeant, that you have, or you had, the money, but your possession of it is an official secret?”

“No, sir. What I'm saying is that anything I might say about that money, assuming it exists,
might
be in breach of the Act.”

“Might?
Don't you know when you're breaking the Act?”

“If I answer that, sir, then you will know that I am covered by the Act. Such information could be construed as officially secret. Therefore I cannot reveal that fact to you, sir. My answer, whether it be yes or no, would contravene the Act, always assuming it applied.”

Lightfoot reviewed the idea. “So you're telling me that you can't even tell me whether or not your actions are subject to the Official Secrets Act.”

“They might be, sir, or they might not. If they
were
subject to the Act, and if I revealed as much to you, then you would be in possession of a secret and I would be guilty of telling you.”

“So you can tell me nothing.” Lacey frowned.

“It's not as simple as that, sir. To tell you nothing might imply that there is nothing to tell, whereas —”

“Yes, yes, sergeant. Let's go back to first causes. When did you sign the Official Secrets Act?”

“If I were to answer that —”

“I know. I know. But for every lock there is a key. If you signed the Act, somewhere there must be a superior officer who was responsible for your signing. Who is he?”

“Always assuming such an officer exists —”

“Yes, I know all that. Please, let's take it as written.”

“Hypothetically then, I should have to ask such an officer for permission to reveal his identity, because ...” Lacey shrugged.

“Because it would be covered by the Act,” Lightfoot said flatly. Lacey nodded. “Which you may or may not have signed.” Lacey looked noncommittal. “So I'm wasting my time.”

“That's not for me to say, sir.”

Lightfoot closed his briefcase and stood up. “Sergeant,” he said, “you make a fool of the army at your own peril.”

The best answer was silence. Lacey said, “We live in perilous times, sir. We must gird our loins and baffle our foes.”

That was a mistake. Lacey realised how bad a mistake it was when Lightfoot stood quite still and stared at him. He sat down and unlocked his briefcase. He took out a sheet of paper and read it. Lacey
felt blood tingling in his fingertips. It was a strange sensation and he did not enjoy it.

“I don't go looking for trouble,” Lightfoot said, “but if it comes looking for me, I am ready to meet it. This is a report from the brigade quartermaster. You sent him two hundred pounds of jam, labelled raspberry, actually plum. Those labels were forged. Printed in France. Stuck on the tins in France. I believe you were responsible, and I can prove it. It's not the only illegal extravagance originating on this squadron, nor is it the largest. I intend to investigate them all.”

This time Lacey had the sense to be silent. Lightfoot left.

Fifteen minutes later, the adjutant came in. Lacey was watching a cup of tea grow cold. “Gone, has he?” Brazier said. “Good.”

“You could have helped me, sir,” Lacey said. “You know how to handle the A.P.M., you've got rank. Why did you leave me alone?”

Brazier hooked his thumbs in his tunic belt and rocked comfortably on his heels. “The Japanese have a saying, sergeant. It goes like this:
The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”
He went into his room. The door banged shut.

Lacey unlocked a filing cabinet and took out bundles of chequebooks. He began burning them in the stove.

* * *

“How did you know?” Dando asked.

“Felt it in my water,” Woolley said. “Got a spirit message from my dead granny, the Cherokee chief Read. it in Old Moore's Almanack. Who cares?”

“Ah, you're right, so you are. There's two drinks left in the bottle.” They finished the rum.

Woolley went back to his hut and stuffed bottled Guinness into his pockets. He walked across the aerodrome and enjoyed the night, which was dry, and the breeze, which was slight. The stars were beginning to lose their glitter: dawn was near. The cookhouse cat, out hunting, came bounding towards him, its tail high as a flag. “Hello, Kitty,” he said. “I see you've heard the good news. China's declared war on Germany. So we can all go home now.” The cat escorted him. “I used to know a girl called Kitty. Wore a size fourteen shoe. She could drop-kick a goal from halfway, and barefoot too.” The cat was
an attentive audience, all the way to Mackenzie's tent. The tent was empty. This was no surprise. The Nieuport had gone.

Woolley lit the oil lamp and immediately attracted a large moth. It blundered about so much that he took his hat and knocked it into a corner. The cat trapped it and ate it.

“I didn't need that,” Woolley said. “I really didn't need that.” He opened a bottle and drank some Guinness. The cat came over and stood on its hind legs and tried to paw at the bottle, so he tipped a little stout into a bowl. “Finish that and you can have a small whisky,” he said. He lay on the bed and watched the cat develop a taste for Guinness. When he woke up the cat was asleep on his chest and Mackenzie was standing, silhouetted by the dawn.

“What's going on?” Mackenzie asked.

“Don't just lie there, Kitty,” Woolley said. “Explain yourself to the gentleman.”

Mackenzie came in and flopped into a camp chair. He was in his flying kit. His face was as grimy as a coal-heaver's. He found a towel and rubbed at the oil-stains.

“Well, he's gone,” Woolley said. He sat up, and the cat tumbled to the ground. “The major's not in a good mood. Don't go asking him for more pocket money. Big party tonight.”

“Bang goes another piano.”

Woolley took out a bottle of Guinness and looked at it. “Four o'clock in the morning, it was. Dando says that's the fashionable hour to go. God knows why. It's the arsehole of the night.”

“Are you going to drink that?”

Woolley opened the bottle and gave it to him.

“What else did Dando say?”

“Shock. He said it was shock. Sometimes a man gets pushed too far and he can't get back again.”

Mackenzie sipped his Guinness. “Dando doesn't know.”

“That's right. Dando's guessing. Is that lipstick you're wearing?”

Mackenzie nodded. “Stops my lips getting chapped. Lacey got it for me. I have such delicate features, you see. Of course I never notice them, except in the mirror, and then they look ordinary enough. I got another Hun. Is that what you came to ask me about?”

“Confirmed?”

“Probably not. I went rabbiting. Went a long way over the Lines
and hung about until the sun came up. It was dazzling, just like a searchlight. Lit up an LVG two-seater. They never saw me, I was in the glare. What you call a Christian murder. Home for breakfast. Poor sport.”

“I keep telling you, it's not a sport. It's a trade.”

“For you, it is. Not for me. I do it for fun.” He shrugged off his coat and pulled off his boots. Thick socks went with them. He pointed his toes at Woolley. “Silk stockings for warmth. Lacey again. You should try wearing silk, captain. It might get you out of Bog Street.”

“Ah, don't be considerate, it doesn't suit you. You don't give a tiny toss about me.” Woolley took the bottle and had a swig and gave it back. “You don't care about anybody. You're a shit. You get away with it on the ground, but believe me, that's not going to help you when you meet a Hun who's an even bigger shit than you are. Or worse yet, a pack of them.”

“I'll do what I always do.”

“Trust to luck.”

“I charge straight into the middle of them, get so close to a fat Hun that his pals daren't shoot at me, and at that range I can't miss, can I?”

“It's what I said. Trust to luck.”

“It worked for Ball.”

“Oh, bugger Ball. Any stupid sod can give his life for his country. The real trick is to make sure the other bastard does it, not you.”

Mackenzie went to the door of the tent and watched McWatters' flight take off. The Biffs closed up and droned away. “Anyway,” he said, “as long as I knock down the flamers, why do you care?”

“I was an only child,” Woolley said. “Dad always promised me a shit for a baby brother, but he spent the money in the pub, so I had to play with a pound of condemned sausages instead.” He noticed an old, dented trombone lying in the grass, and picked it up.

“The Americans gave it to me,” Mackenzie said. “Ball used to play the violin.” Woolley put it to his lips and blew a sour note, and the cat fled. “I can't do anything with it, but that doesn't matter in the cinema,” Mackenzie said. “It's just pictures.”

“You're not going to listen to what I say, but I'll say it anyway,” Woolley told him. “Don't trust to luck. Luck will always let you down.”

Mackenzie finished the Guinness and returned the bottle. “Refreshing,” he said.

Woolley was wrong; or rather, he was right in a way he had not meant. That afternoon he came back from a patrol in which A-Flight got very briskly Archied. As he touched down, an undercarriage strut collapsed where a shell fragment had damaged it, and a wingtip ploughed into the field. The propeller hacked up lumps of turf and smashed itself to stubs. This dragged the nose down and the entire machine cartwheeled.

The rescue team got there very fast. The engine had been driven back, and Woolley was pinned in the cockpit. There was a heavy stink of petrol. They got him out by the vigorous use of axes and crowbars, not knowing that his feet were trapped. Both ankles were broken.

Dando packed him off to hospital. “Nothing very serious,” he said. “Don't play the fool and you'll be back in a month or two. By then all this insanity at Wipers will be over.” Dando was right about the injuries but wrong about the insanity.

Damage nearly total. Objects thrown into air
.

London in autumn had the right kind of weather: grey and cheerless. There was little to celebrate and the winter was nothing to look forward to. Russia was wobbling out of the war. A German and Austrian attack had just smashed the Italian Army. Zeppelins had bombed London yet again. And, as always, Third Wipers was toiling diligently at the business of losing an army in the mud. Sunshine would have been a bad joke.

Instead, London got the kind of greasy drizzle that was never strong enough to wash the smoke from the air. The wetness drifted into Charing Cross station and blackened the platforms so that thousands of bootprints left a brief record of troops in transit, until another train pulled in and fresh boots obliterated the old evidence.

Mackenzie hated it: hated the slick grey wetness, the crowds, the drifting smoke, the squeal and howl of locomotives. His luggage was one valise. He was first off the train, and first to the line of taxis. “Taggart's Hotel,” he said.

“Sorry, guv. These cabs reserved for senior officers only.”

“I'm a major. Acting major.”