So Schneider put his foot down then—
It was the same tableau he had seen once before, but with differences out of a nightmare.
The farm tractor and its hay-bale-loaded trailer were slewed across the road, out of the same gateway. But now a pale blue Metro was nosed against it, driver’s door wide. That was one difference.
Inconsequential things: the Metro’s engine was still running. . . one of the gate-posts leaned out of true, beside a buckled fence, from yesterday’s charade—
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Blackie Nabb stood up from where he had been squatting beside the body on the verge. And, in the same movement, his shot-gun came up to cover Benedikt. And death brushed across him, light as a cobweb, as he faced the man in the long moment which it took to lift his empty hands.
Inconsequential things: the dead man’s legs—how did he know the man was dead?—stretched out of the tall summer grass into the road—old scuffed leather boots, hob-nailed with iron studs.
Benedikt found his voice. “Miss Rebecca sent me.” The words sounded foreign.
Blackie Nabb made a sound in his throat. “Too late.” He eyes left Benedikt’s face for an instant. “Over there.” The shot-gun lowered slowly.
Benedikt moved cautiously. There was a silenced Heckler and Koch pistol in the road, lying beside the Metro’s toy-like nearside wheel. Then he saw Kelly.
“He is dead?” More foreign words.
“I dunno. An‘ I don’t much care, neither.” Blackie’s voice was matter-of-fact.
Benedikt looked at him.
“Down by the stream, we were.” Blackie drew breath. “An‘ the message come—to stop ’un. An‘ Old Cecil drove the tractor, an’ I sets on the back. We got ‘ere just before ’im.”
There were sounds in the distance.
“‘E says to Old Cecil ’Open up the road‘ . . . An’, for an answer, Old Cecil just gets off the tractor.” Another breath, almost a sigh.
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“An‘ ’e says again, ‘Open up the road’. An‘ Old Cecil says ’No‘.
An’ then there’s this . . . like a thump, as I was a-comin‘ round the side.” He looked straight at Benedikt. ’“E didn’t give ‘im no chance. An’ I didn’t give him none, neither.”
Benedikt went to where the shot-gun blast had blown Kelly, on the opposite verge. Blackie must have been very quick to have got that shot in like that, against an expert; and, more than that, because with killing it needed will as well as reflexes. But the old soldier’s training must have reinforced the poacher’s instinct in that instant, so Kelly had been unlucky at the last when he was almost clear.
He knelt down beside the man. The blast had taken him midway, and not spread much, but there was a lot of blood. The unmarked face was grey-white, and old. He thought. . . old men shouldn ‘t die like this—
And then the eyes opened suddenly, and the chest moved, blowing a bubble of blood.
“Captain.” Kelly looked up at him, expressionless as Blackie.
“Ahh . . .”
With a wound like that ... it was hard to tell if there was nothing to lose—or anything to gain?
Nothing to gain of value now, he estimated coldly. Only curiosity was left now.
He bent a little closer. “Why did you kill them?”
Kelly gazed at him. “Told you. Personal matter.”
That wouldn’t do. “No . . . Alloysius.”
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Just as suddenly as they had opened, the eyes were no longer without expression. “Ahh . . . You knew?” Now they were sharing curiosity. “How long?” Almost a frown now.
Truth? “Minutes.” Truth. “The long gun—the 17-pounder . . . The Old General wasn’t there, he was away sick at the time. So you lied. But you had no reason to lie ... Or you weren’t there yourself, either . . . And that made me think of other things ...” Yet—what other things? wondered Benedikt. Because it still didn’t add up.
“Ahh . . .” The frown was smoothed away. “True story, though—
Michael’s story . . . Had to be Michael, for you . . . little mistake—
big mistake. Clever—too clever.” Almost imperceptible nod.
“Michael always said . . . Jerries clever.” Against the odds the voice was stronger. “Forgot that.”
And, even more strangely, the voice was no longer Irish, but had no country. “It was Michael who was killed?”
Another tiny movement of the head. “Bad luck. Both going . . .
running . . . Spotted one of them—can always tell . . . bastards . . .
Michael had talked of going to the Squire—safe with him ... I went instead.”
And that was where it didn’t make sense. “And he accepted you?
As Michael?”
“Michael?” Aloysius Kelly closed his eyes, and for a moment Benedikt thought he had lost him. “Ahh ... I was Michael—
Michael Kelly . . . 834 Gunner Kelly, sir!” Another frothy bubble expanded, bigger than the rest. “Best troop in the battery, best battery in the regiment, best regiment in the brigade, best brigade dummy1
in the division, best fucking division in the whole fucking army!
834 Gunner Kelly, Sir! ”
He still couldn’t believe it. “The Old General accepted you as Michael?”
The eyes opened. “What?”
“He-accepted-you-as-Michael?”
“Accept me? The Squire? Never!” There was blood at the corner of Kelly’s mouth. “Told you true . . . told him true . . . not all of it, of course—couldn’t do that. . . But told him I was done with it—their lies, my lies—over and done with for ever, and no going back in this world . . . Told him a lie—told him Michael had gone back to Ireland, where he’d be safe—not him they were after, only me—
couldn’t tell him about Michael . . . Asked him if I could lay up for a few days, till I got my breath back.”
More blood now. What had the newspapers said about Michael Kelly’s death? An accidental explosion of petrol in a garage? And nothing about a victim, of course ... all hushed up. . .
“He was a man, he was—the Squire. ‘If Gunner Kelly’s safe in Ireland,’ he said, ‘then you be Gunner Kelly safe in England—how about that, then?’ ” Impossibly, Aloysius Kelly was moving one hand, as though to touch Benedikt. “How about that, then—834
Gunner Kelly—the Squire and Gunner Kelly—the bastards’ll not forget them so quickly, not now—”
Then the blood came with a great rush, choking him.
How we put all that together is according to taste, I suppose, Jack!
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So far as Captain Benedikt Schneider is concerned, the fact that he knew every detail of the Old General’s military career only demonstrates once again how thoroughly the BND does its homework— thanks, presumably, to the Wiesbaden computer. But even so, his catching the one mistake Kelly made— that 17-pounder lie which the real Gunner Kelly wouldn’t have told—
marks him as someone speciaclass="underline" young Schneider has that rare gift which is better than a good memory, the wild faculty of plucking truth from untruth.
For his part, he maintains that the lie sparked all his subconscious suspicions into consciousness. I had fed him my doubts about Aloysius