Chapter Thirty
Thirty
Maunston sat six and a half miles almost perfectly due south of Erlsley city center.
The main London road led there, neatly bisecting what had once been Maunston’s market square.
On the almost-empty nighttime streets—in common with most cities since the Unbinding, Erlsley put itself to bed early—it would, Mikey Collier swore, have taken mere minutes to get across town and arrive.
Aye, well we’re nae daein’ that, was Crammond’s response.
Instead, they stuck to darker secondary thoroughfares, passing shuttered frontages and darkened alley mouths at a quiet putter, winding painstakingly through sleeping residential neighborhoods, threading odd turns and diversions into a patchwork approach that brought their chances of being seen down near absolute zero.
Duncan sat up front with Collier, who handled the big Vauxhall D-Type with the casual assurance of a man at a much-loved hobby, rarely needing to brake for corners, meshing gears with scarcely a sound, steering as if he were under no more constraint than the pilot of a motorboat out on Lake Windermere.
“Yeah, staff driver in France for a while,” he told Duncan cheerily as they drove.
“D-Types there, too, but with the old tourer body. Those roads, man! And always with some stick-up-the-arse colonel on your shoulder, telling you to hurry up, dammit! Lives are at stake! I mean, this? Compared to that shambles, this is a fucking doddle!”
Crammond had called him a boy and, fair enough, Duncan estimated Collier was still not yet out of his twenties.
But there was a familiar quietness to him around the eyes that conveyed a greater sense of age—you saw it a lot in the men who’d come back—and his shock of thick black hair was shot through with thin streaks of gray.
For all that, he was quick with a grin and a handshake, and seemed to enjoy talking about his experiences in the war, no matter how grim.
“…parked up by this tree in some village, Wulverjem, Wulverghem—they had a munitions dump there, but Fritz hit it and the whole place blew. So my officers were out to inspect the damage, wandering about making fucking hem-hem noises like there was anything they could do, and I’m sat there in the driving seat, just staring holes in the horizon, like.
Suddenly, I get this hand, it comes down on my shoulder, pretty hard, and I’m thinking blimey, that’s a bit bloody familiar, innit, so I look round—and it’s just a fucking hand!
That’s all it is. Severed halfway up the forearm, all torn up and bloodied, you could see the bone everywhere.
But it still had the cuff of a uniform on it, you believe that? ”
Duncan nodded, unsurprised. “From the tree, right?”
“That’s right! I look up at the branches and fuck me, there’s bits of men and uniform draped up there like Christmas decorations.
When the dump blew, it must have torn a dozen men apart and flung them up there.
Hand just chose its moment, like, dropped on me.
Tell you, if there’s a God, he’s got a sick fucking sense of humor.
Anyroad, you can bet I slammed it in reverse and got out from under that tree pretty fucking sharpish.
Didn’t want my officers coming back, getting in the backseat and sitting down on some poor bastard’s spleen!
Give ’em something to really hem-hem about. ”
He barked a laugh, eased the big Vauxhall left into a downward slope and a curving avenue of well-appointed Victorian semis.
Short driveways and gardens behind neatly kept hedges, upper bay windows curtained against the night.
An ornate street sign announced Wardle Drive.
Duncan took the map from the dashboard, applied torchlight to it.
“Bottom of this one, and then right,” said Collier inconsequentially.
He’d glanced at the map before they started, seemed to have committed the route to memory.
“ ’bout a mile after that. I’ll bring you by the pub.
Crammond says it’s all boarded up these days, and from the map, it looks like they’ve got a yard out back.
See if we can’t park in there. Puts you three corners and a couple of hundred yards from the rozzer shop. That close enough?”
Duncan nodded. He put the torch away, herded his skittering thoughts into some kind of order.
Whatever was in his blood burbled cheerily to itself.
The Vauxhall rolled out into the crossroads at the bottom of Wardle Drive, bent right as promised.
A couple of minutes later they rattled into the drab, deserted thoroughfares of Maunston.
Deader than yir granny’s minge on a Monday night, Crammond had put it with his customary elegance.
Watching the boarded-up, paint-peeling frontages glide past, it was hard to fault the Glaswegian’s assessment.
A couple more turns through the ghostly streets and they pulled up alongside a rambling corner pub whose weather-faded sign announced The Victoria Arms in barely legible scrolled lettering above a picture too faded and peeled to make out.
Past the run of boarded-up windows, a tall wooden double gate closed off what was presumably the yard.
“Right, let’s get those open,” said Collier.
He slid off the driver’s bench and got down, left the engine running.
Banged on the Vauxhall’s side panel as he walked back.
Duncan followed suit, joined him at the rear.
They dropped the tailgate. Arthur shoved up the canvas drop sheet and jumped down, closely followed, somewhat less elegantly, by Crammond.
“Ma fuckin’ erse is sore,” the big Glaswegian grumbled, rubbing the affected area to emphasize the point.
“Could be worse,” said Collier brightly, climbing past him and up into the rear space. “You could be gut shot and riding eight miles of rutted road from a clearing station.”
He reemerged with a pair of long-handled bolt cutters in his hand.
“All right, gents—let’s get off the street, shall we?”
—
There was a rusted chain wrapped around the long iron gate handles, secured through multiple links with a padlock that didn’t look like it had been opened for years.
Arthur held the chain taut and Collier made short work of it with the cutters.
They dragged back the gates—Duncan wincing at the squeal and graunch it made—to reveal a concreted yard beyond.
Clumps of weeds grew high through cracks in the concrete, ghostly in the gloom, but apart from that, the space was empty.
Collier grunted, apparently in satisfaction, ran back and jumped up into the cab of the D-Type.
He drove forward and slightly out into the center of the street, then reversed neatly back into the yard.
From the rear of the ambulance, they took their weapons—the twinned Webleys for Duncan, an American Colt 1911 semiautomatic for Crammond, and for Arthur a gleaming Lee-Enfield cavalry carbine that he clearly cherished as if it were a loved one.
Arthur and the Glaswegian both donned the closed-face balaclavas they’d brought with them, leaving only their eyes visible in a strip the size of a post box slot.
But when Crammond offered a third knitted helmet to Duncan, he shook his head.
“This is a dead man’s face they’re going to see,” he said. “Let them get a good look.”
Crammond rolled his eyes. “Fuckin’ drama queen.”
“Same goes for names,” Duncan said doggedly. “Go right ahead and name me once we’re in there. I want them to know it’s me.”
“Good fir you. Jist see ye dinnae throw ma name around in thir, but.”
Duncan nodded, brooding for a minute. He looked at the weapons they carried. “All right, so you’ll be Colt. Arthur, you’re Carbine.”
“Delightful.” Arthur, hefting the long gun. “Carbine it is.”
“All tooled up, then?” Collier had jumped down from the driver’s bench again, come breezily back round to the rear. He took the balaclava Duncan had turned down. “I’ll hang on to this if he don’t want it, Billy. Just in case.”
Crammond shrugged and handed the cap over. Collier stuffed it into a pocket.
“I’ll keep the motor running,” he said. “But don’t be too long. Always possible someone hears the noise and comes for a look-see, even out here. Don’t want to break any heads unnecessarily.”
They slipped out of the yard like cast shadows from a searchlight sweep, skulked along the pub wall in single file, and rounded the corner.
The sound of the D-Type’s engine dropped off a chunk almost immediately with the turn, and by the time they’d made fifty yards and the next street corner, you had to strain to hear anything of it at all.
There was a solitary light on behind the barred glass windows of the station, but the blue Police lamp was dead on its bracket over the door, which was closed.
Duncan gestured the others back, stepped up to the heavy wood paneling, and thumped on it with the butt of his drawn Webley.
After the second attempt, he heard movement within, the slow steps of someone coming grudgingly to answer.
Clank of iron as the barred inner gate was opened.
He thumped again, vigorously. Added his voice, urgent but officer urbane.
“C’mon, man! Open up! Orders!”
“ ’Oo the fuck are you?” someone wanted to know through a cavernous yawn.
“Orders from Hardy! We’re to move the Irish bitch! Open up, will you?”
Keys rattled, the lock grated and turned. The door hinged slowly outward.
“Thought Hardy wanted his bloody name kept out of this. Don’t know why—”