Where God Does Not Walk E-Book

Luke McCallin

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: A Gregor Reinhardt Novel
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 815

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGERTHE WESTERN FRONT, JULY 1918. Lieutenant Gregor Reinhardt is in a stormtrooper battalion on the Western Front. When one of his subordinates is accused of murdering a group of officers, and then subsequently trying to take his own life, Reinhardt begins to investigate. He soon begins to uncover a conspiracy at the heart of the German army, aimed at ending the war on the terms of those who have a vested interest in a future for Germany that resembles her past. The investigation takes him from the devastated front lines of the war, to the heights of society in Berlin, and into the hospitals that treat those men who have been shattered by war. Along the way, Reinhardt comes to an awakening of the man he might be. A man whose eyes have been painfully opened to the corruption and callousness all around him. His calls to duty, devotion to the Fatherland and to the Kaiser, begin to ring increasingly hollow... 'A gripping, original thriller' Sunday Times 'Irresistible... McCallin once again combines authoritative characterisations with an incisive picture of a dangerous historical milieu'Financial Times 'Sharp, fast and very enjoyable'NB Magazine

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR WHERE GOD DOES NOT WALK

‘Gripping and taut – a real page turner’ – William Ryan

‘This book is worth reading just for its visceral evocation of trench warfare, but there are also complex characters and a labyrinthine murder mystery to enjoy. And all beautifully written’ – David Downing

‘A weighty war novel whose mystery reflects the synergy between the political and personal’ – Kirkus

THE ASHES OF BERLIN

‘Let’s not mince words: historical thrillers don’t come any better than The Ashes of Berlin’ – Financial Times

‘Reinhardt is a terrific creation’ – Times

‘Sunday Times Crime Club name The Ashes of Berlin their Star Pick for December reads’ – Sunday Times

‘A compelling, addictive narrative that had me turning the pages into the small hours. Superlative’ – CJ Carver

‘What makes the book terrific is the humanity and hope that shine through even the darkest of scenes’ – Herald

‘Luke McCallin has skilfully crafted an atmospheric and gripping tale set amid the ruins of a war-ravaged city that feels wholly authentic. Historical fiction at its best’ – Howard Linskey

‘An absolute revelation for fans of authentic historical fiction… McCallin’s writing is sharp and beautifully observed, at times graphic, dark, brooding and raw’ –Crime Review

THE PALE HOUSE

‘Very well written and wonderfully descriptive’ – Mystery People

‘In March 1945 Captain Gregor Reinhardt finds himself back in Sarajevo after a two-year gap’ – Our Book Reviews

‘[A] well-executed sequel … Readers who can’t wait for Philip Kerr’s next Bernie Gunther novel will find much to like.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘A multi-layered tale of war, political upheaval, and fragile hope.’ – Kirkus Reviews

‘A very engaging thriller series. Reinhardt is both tough and thoughtful, and it’s impossible not to get drawn into his emotional depths and root for him. The cast is full of sympathetic characters, the worst of villains, innocents, and everyone in between. The setting is engaging, the characters complicated, and the plot inspired.’ – Historical Novel Society

THE MAN FROM BERLIN

‘An extraordinarily nuanced and compelling narrative’ – New York Journal of Books

‘A good, fast-paced, engaging read full of surprises as well as a more serious meditation on war, loyalty and the complexities of the former Yugoslavia itself’ – We Love This Book

‘I’m reminded of Martin Cruz Smith in the way I was transported to a completely different time and culture and then fully immersed in it. An amazing first novel’ – Alex Grecian

‘From page one, Luke McCallin draws the reader into a fascinating world of mystery, intrigue, and betrayal’ – Charles Salzberg

‘Reinhardt’s character is compelling, as complex and conflicted as the powers that surround him … I look forward to the next Gregor Reinhardt mystery’ – Historical Novel Society

For my great-great-uncles

2nd Lieutenant Alfred Brooksbank Pearcy (1895–1976)

5th Battalion, the Yorkshire Regiment (‘The Green Howards’) wounded in action on the Somme in September 1916

Corporal Herbert Staines (1896–1968)

Army Service Corps invalided out of East Africa, and who regaled my father with stories of spending a night in the bush by his broken-down lorry…

Private Michael Walsh (1898–1964)

Irish Guards wounded in action in March and August 1918

And

Patrick and John Walsh

Brothers, born in 1892 and 1896

Both killed in action in 1916

Two of many whose stories have now been lost

Dramatis Personae

IN THE 17TH PRUSSIAN FUSILIERS

Gregor Sebastian Reinhardt, a young lieutenant

Sergeant Rudolf Brauer, in Reinhardt’s company

Captain Bodo Gelhaus, second-in-command of the 17th and Reinhardt’s company commander

Colonel Tomas Meissner, commanding the 17th

Sergeant Willy Sattler, a man of the 17th with left-wing convictions

Voigt, Diekmann, Degrelle – the ‘Three Musketeers’, close to Sattler

Rosen, Topp, Olbrich, Lebert – the ‘Cossacks’, survivors of the Russian campaigns

Lieutenant Marcus Dreyer, quartermaster

Lieutenants Otterstedt and Tolsdorf

Corporal Klusmann, an old soldier

IN THE 256TH DIVISION

Major-General Octavius Hessler, commanding the 256th

Colonel Otto Wadehn, his deputy

Captain Gabriel Augenstein, Hessler’s aide-de-camp

Doctor Oscar Blankfein, chief medical officer

Doctor Dessau, divisional medical officer

Lieutenant Uwe Cranz, a Feldgendarme

AT MÉRICOURT

General Muhlen-Olschewski, Colonels Kletter and Trettner, Major Edelmann, Doctor Januschau, and Frydenberg – men invited to a secret meeting

Count Constantin Semyonovich Marcusen, a flamboyant Russian, a deserter from the Russian Expeditionary Force

Fyodor Kosinski, his manservant, a man of few words

Winnacker, Frydenberg’s manservant

ELSEWHERE

Johann and Kirsten Reinhardt, Gregor’s parents

Madame Saubusse, proprietor of a brothel in Metz

Claudine and Adèle, two prostitutes

Major Eduard Neufville, an investigator from Supreme Headquarters

Inspector Matthias Ihlefeldt of the Prussian political police

Professor-Doctor Carl-August Veith, a noted expert on mental trauma

ACROSS THE LINES

Adjutant Augustin Subereau, a French gendarme

Part One

The Burned Child Dreads the Fire

1

THE WESTERN FRONT, NEAR THE VILLAGE OF VIÉVILLE-SUR-TREY, NORTHWEST FRANCE, MID-JULY 1918

They came for Reinhardt as he was sleeping, the door crashing open on a confusion of men and voices that snapped him awake. A shadow loomed over him and he lunged for the Mauser atop the chest by his bed, only to have a hand clamp down painfully on his wrist.

‘Lieutenant Reinhardt?’ Someone shone a torch down on him.

He blinked the light from his eyes, turning his head away. A sense of wide shoulders, light glinting on the rim of a helmet. ‘Get that bloody light out of my face.’

‘Lieutenant Reinhardt?’ the voice asked again, the hand pressing down harder.

Reinhardt took his other hand out from under his pillow, moving slowly, and pushed, firmly. The light flicked away, the hand lifted from his arm. Reinhardt saw a Feldgendarme – a military policeman, a sergeant, built like a beer barrel – standing over him. The policeman was blinking down at the little Jäger pistol Reinhardt had pushed into his groin. The sergeant lifted the pressure on Reinhardt’s hand, and stepped back carefully.

‘Apologies for waking you,’ said a lieutenant, stepping into view.

‘Make it sound like you mean it,’ Reinhardt said as he shifted himself up and swung his legs out of bed, lowering the pistol and levering the safety catch down against the grip. Behind the lieutenant stood two more Feldgendarmes, and Sergeant Brauer. ‘What time is it?’

‘Not far off three in the morning,’ answered the lieutenant.

‘For Christ’s sake, Lieutenant.’ Reinhardt tossed the pistol on his pillow and collapsed back onto his bed, an arm across this face. ‘Who are you, and what do you want?’

‘Lieutenant Uwe Cranz, Feldgendarmerie. You are the commanding officer of Private Willy Sattler?’

Reinhardt hauled himself back up, paused as he began threading his arms into a shirt. ‘What’s he done now?’

‘“Now”?’ Cranz repeated.

‘Willy Sattler? A one-man committee to end the war…?’

‘Private Sattler’s accused of murder, Lieutenant. It’s no joking matter.’

‘Murder?’ Reinhardt repeated. ‘Who?’

‘Never you mind that.’

‘What d’you mea…?’

‘Private Sattler was confined to quarters, wasn’t he?’

‘Who told you that? What’s going on?’

‘Lieutenant Otterstedt told us and told us where to find you.’

‘He did? That officious little…’ The rest of Reinhardt’s words were swallowed as he levered the shirt over his head, and as Sergeant Brauer coughed loudly. ‘But…?’

‘Be quiet, and answer my questions, Lieutenant Reinhardt. Things’ll go faster that way.’ Cranz looked barely older than Reinhardt, and he looked like a competent enough man. But his uniform was spotless next to the filth that creased Reinhardt’s where it was draped over the chair by his bed, and Reinhardt could not help feeling that twist of contempt that the infantry had for those who fought the war at the rear. Besides, however irrational it was, Reinhardt felt the urge to needle him. And Otterstedt, when he got his hands on that creep…

‘Yes, Private Sattler is confined to quarters.’

‘What was he confined to quarters for?’

‘Insubordination.’

‘Private Sattler was a pioneer in your platoon, is that right?’

‘Yes. What do you mean “was”?’

‘You answer my questions, Lieutenant. Not me yours. A pioneer. Familiar with explosives, demolitions, things like that?’

‘Things that go bang, Lieutenant. Exactly,’ said Reinhardt, unable to keep the contempt from his voice.

‘I’m starting to see where Private Sattler got his attitude.’

‘Look, Cranz, if you don’t start answering my questions…’

‘It would be easier to show you, Lieutenant. Get dressed.’

‘What I’m… trying to do…’ said Reinhardt, hopping from one leg to the other as he pulled his trousers on. ‘Will you at least tell me what has happened to Sattler?’

‘Private Sattler has taken his own life. And the lives of several Feldgendarmes.’

Reinhardt paused as he swung on his jacket, one hand patting his pocket for the letter from home. ‘What? Why?’

‘Because he had just blown up a house full of officers, Lieutenant.’

The house had once been something grand. A manor house, perhaps, the seat of a landed family with roots and tradition, but that was all over now. The house had been blown open, a great crack like a triangle with its point in the ground running across one of its walls. The front door had been blown off its hinges, and the forecourt was covered in shards of glass and stones, some furred with mortar.

Reinhardt turned where he stood in the house’s forecourt, the smoke of his cigarette spiralling up and away from him. The coming dawn shaded the eastern horizon with a band of lemon, but the moon still hung clear as a coin in a sky with a clean sprinkle of stars. Beneath it all, the edges and angles of the world lay softened beneath a blanket of mist.

The house was part of a wider farm complex, a centuries-old tangle of buildings, sheds, barns, and walls that clotted the land to the east of the village of Viéville-sur-Trey. The whole farm had been given over to a training range where the stormtroopers practised their tactics and ran training courses for the officers and sergeants. There was a mock trench network to be assaulted or defended, there were walls to climb, obstacles to overcome, ruins to navigate, cover to be sought and used. There were storehouses, workshops, and armouries. There was a firing range. It was all quiet, though. The Feldgendarmerie had closed the place down, guards posted at the entrances.

This house had stood alone in the shelter of a copse of old trees. It was at the end of a strip of road of hard, packed mud that wound up from the farm proper, through unkempt vines that still kept their rows in sad tangles, and down which ran a pair of ruts like train tracks. Reinhardt knew the house as a place where the officers among the stormtroopers had heard lectures, conducted tabletop training exercises, taken a little rest when it was offered. It had had a comforting feel to it, the walls weathered smooth, and the massive beams of the rooms showing the varnished shine of centuries. The house had come through the war relatively unscathed despite having been occupied first by Frenchmen, then Germans, then French again, and now Germans once more. Artillery spotters had once nested in its roof when the front lines had been closer, as the house stood on a slight rise, the countryside unfurling in all directions around it.

From beside the front door, Lieutenant Otterstedt peered at him over the flat tops of his spectacles. The operations officer looked like the provincial schoolmaster he once was and was aptly suited to the work he did. He had ten years on Reinhardt, but the same rank, and that had to rankle. ‘About bloody time, Reinhardt.’

‘I came as quick as I could, seeing as you asked so nicely. Why are you here, anyway?’

‘Duty officer, Reinhardt. You might remember there is such a thing.’

‘Vaguely. What’s going on, then?’

‘Your man finally cracked, is what happened.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Come to express a morbid fascination at your man’s handiwork?’

‘I might express such fascination if I knew what the fuck everyone’s so quick to blame him for,’ Reinhardt snapped. Otterstedt blinked, voices fell silent. With Otterstedt, it was better to get your hits in quick and sharp, Reinhardt had found, else he would not stop with the drip, drip of his little acidic comments.

Otterstedt flushed. ‘Bad blood will out, Reinhardt, that’s what they say.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Bombing’s a terrorist thing. An eastern thing. A Bolshevik thing. Didn’t all you easterners get all close and personal to that?’

‘What’s that mean?’ he asked again, lighting a cigarette.

‘It means all you easterners brought bad habits with you. We had none of this before you arrived.’

Reinhardt blew smoke straight at Otterstedt. ‘What does that mean?’ he repeated, slowly, holding the other man’s gaze. ‘“You easterners.” I’m “from the East”. Do you see me throwing bombs around, other than at the French? Sergeant Brauer is “from the East”. Shall we call him over?’

Otterstedt paled. ‘I’m sure… sure there’s no need, Reinhardt.’

‘How about Colonel Meissner?’ Reinhardt continued. ‘Shall we ask the colonel for his political opinions?’

Otterstedt blinked, and it seemed he regained himself. ‘Quite. The colonel, yes. I’m sure… sure that won’t be necessary, Reinhardt.’ He smiled, a quick flash of his teeth. ‘Rumours are flying,’ Otterstedt finished, weakly.

There was not much to see inside, Reinhardt saw, as he and Brauer followed Otterstedt and Cranz. Something like a bomb had indeed gone off inside, in the big kitchen area, which had been the centre of the house. It had been a comfortable room, running almost the length of the building. A huge stone fireplace had warmed it, and the thick stone walls had kept out the cold in winter and the heat in summer. It was a shambles now, a sprawl of smashed furniture, the remains of the kitchen’s long table of heavy wood scattered like a broken shipwreck. There was blast-damage on the walls, and the big timbers of the ceiling had had their darkness of centuries scored off.

The place stank of smoke and fire, and of explosives, and enough blood had been spilled here that its iron tang was plain. Dark stains daubed the floor and walls, blood and viscera that had congealed into smeared streaks, bubbled and whorled so that the light broke glittering across them. Beneath the stench of the blast and blood was a souring smell of spilled alcohol, incongruously homely. Several crates of wine had been upended, some of the bottles lying smashed in dark puddles.

‘Quite the scene, wouldn’t you agree?’ Cranz asked.

Reinhardt exchanged a quick glance with Brauer. Cranz radiated satisfaction, a rigid sense of pride in his profession, but he had not seen many battlefields if he considered this ‘quite the scene’.

‘Olbrich?’ Brauer called. ‘Any ideas?’

Brauer had sent for Olbrich when the word came in. He was one of the pioneers in Reinhardt’s company – combat engineers, experts in demolition and explosives. A former coal miner, Olbrich was a wide, heavy man with hands like shovels and, like so many men of his size, he was a slow and gentle man, careful with his strength.

‘It’s all a bit confusing, sir, and you never can tell for sure. Something went off there, sure enough,’ he said, pointing at a blackened rosette in the flagstone floor. Everything seemed to have been blown apart and away from there, left like the wrack of a high tide across the floor and up against the walls and the corners.

‘Think you can tell what it was that did this?’

Olbrich’s mouth twisted as he marshalled his words. ‘Could be a bomb.’ Cranz scoffed, but Olbrich ploughed on. ‘Could be a demolitions charge of some sort. But, like I said, sir, you can never tell for sure. Won’t be able to tell until all this is cleared up a bit, and we’ve a bit of time to go over it. Start picking up fragments and whatnot.’

‘Fragments, eh?’ Otterstedt said. ‘They’re all over the place. Good luck making sense out of them.’

‘You would be surprised, Otterstedt, what sense you can make out of a place like this, if only you know how to look, and if only you want to.’

‘I say, Reinhardt, what are you implying?’ Otterstedt spluttered. ‘It’s pretty obvious what happened, and it’s pretty obvious who did it.’

‘If you say so,’ Reinhardt said, dismissively, ignoring the bloom of red on Otterstedt’s face. ‘Does it look like Sattler’s work?’ he asked Olbrich. The pioneer ducked his head down, hunching away from Otterstedt, looking miserable. He had not been close to Sattler, but a comrade was a comrade, alive or dead. ‘It’s fine, Olbrich. Whatever you say stays with us,’ Reinhardt said, with a meaningful look at Otterstedt and Cranz.

‘Yes, sir. I can’t really tell, sir. I mean…’ He hesitated, then picked something off the floor near the wall. ‘Sattler did like to work with these,’ he said, a handful of shrapnel balls the size of marbles in the bowl of his palm. ‘He’d put them round a shaped charge, rig it to a pressure plate.’ Olbrich poured the shrapnel into Reinhardt’s hand, and his palm shivered around the sudden cold contact and weight of them. He rolled them in his hand, clacking them quietly.

‘There you are, then,’ Cranz said, triumphantly.

‘But… but I don’t think that kind of charge would’ve been the best for in here. Pressure charge’s got to be triggered. Someone’s got to walk on it. We leave ’em in trenches, under floorboards and the like. In here…’ Olbrich shrugged.

‘What, man? Make sense, for goodness’ sake!’ Otterstedt snapped.

‘He’s making sense,’ Reinhardt snapped back. ‘You’re not listening, and you betray your ignorance…’

‘Sir,’ Brauer coughed.

The three lieutenants faced off, Reinhardt white with anger, Otterstedt and Cranz red with humiliation. Reinhardt took a deep breath, inclined his head. ‘My apologies, Cranz. Otterstedt. Go on, Olbrich. What makes most sense?’

‘Me, if I were doing it? I wouldn’t leave a pressure charge. Too obvious. It’d be a delayed-action fuse, sir. Set a timer to a charge.’

‘Well, there you are, then,’ Cranz said again, his voice tight. ‘A charge on a timer.’

Reinhardt sighed, gave a small nod at Brauer’s warning glance.

‘More than one,’ Reinhardt said. Olbrich nodded.

‘Walk us through the setup, Olbrich. Best you can,’ Brauer said.

Olbrich’s eyes roved. ‘I don’t know what this place looked like before…’

‘Big table in the middle of the room,’ Reinhardt said. ‘Chairs down each side. Old furniture, like that dresser, down the far end.’

‘Right. My guess… there was one bomb under the table, and a second one in that dresser. Get a spread to the blasts. Look. Blast pattern there on the floor,’ he said, a little less apologetic as he warmed to his narrative, ‘which goes up,’ his finger waved across the damage to the roof, and then at the splintered remnants of the table, ‘and there,’ he said, pointing at a big wooden dresser, the front of which had been blown clear through and off.

‘Cross fire,’ Brauer nodded.

‘What does this mean?’ Cranz asked, confusion in his voice even if he was trying his best to hide it on his face.

‘One bomb exploding up under the table, and a second across it,’ Reinhardt said to Cranz. ‘Two blast waves. Vertical, and lateral.’

The Feldgendarme nodded, his face clearing.

‘Christ, it must’ve been a charnel house in here,’ Brauer muttered.

‘It was,’ Cranz said, any of the earlier triumph gone from his voice.

‘Surprising anyone got out at all,’ Reinhardt said, quietly.

‘We know it takes all sorts, sir,’ Olbrich said. ‘What takes one man can leave the man next to him standing tall. And if the charges were shaped, and if there was a blind spot in the blast wave, or you were in the right place, it’d go right past you instead of through you.’

‘Sattler worked with delayed-action fuses as well, didn’t he?’ Reinhardt asked. Brauer and Olbrich nodded, the pioneer looking ever more unhappy. ‘But then, so did most pioneers, am I wrong, Olbrich?’

Olbrich shook his head, not looking any happier. ‘No, sir. But… we each of us has our own way of doing things. And well…’ his mouth twisted.

‘Well, Private? What does this look like?’ Otterstedt demanded, querulous triumph back in his voice. Even Cranz, who seemed like a by-the-book man, looked like he was becoming annoyed with Otterstedt’s carping officiousness.

‘I can’t say with certainty this is Sattler’s work, sir,’ Olbrich nodded. ‘The setup’s standard. What we’re trained to do. The materials, too. I seen… I seen him do this before. Last year. He rigged a bunker in a similar way, left some surprises for the Russians.’

Reinhardt began a slow turn around the room. He nosed his boot through the bottles on the floor, most of them smashed. Brandy. Cognac. White wine from Alsace in tall, slender bottles. Good stuff, he fancied.

‘Who did you say was meeting here, Cranz? Officers?’

‘That’s all I’ve been told, yes.’

Reinhardt peered at him over his shoulder. ‘You haven’t asked?’

Cranz’s mouth moved. ‘I haven’t been told, and I have not seen fit to inquire further. At this time.’

Reinhardt picked up a bottle of Mosel, 1911. He had no idea if it was a good year. Behind the cabinet, a piece of metal on the floor caught his eye. It was long and jagged, a wickedly turned splinter from a larger shell, about the length of his forearm. Blood had dried along half its length.

‘That is where the count was wounded,’ Cranz offered.

‘Could we tell if any material is missing from stores?’ Reinhardt asked.

‘You mean any munitions Sattler worked on?’ Brauer shook his head. ‘Doubt it. The armoury doesn’t have much of an inventory when it comes to these kinds of things.’ Brauer moved closer. ‘What are we doing, sir?’ he asked quietly.

‘Helping the Feldgendarmerie,’ Reinhardt answered softly.

He held the shell splinter between his fingers, let it rock back and forth like a pendulum, feeling its awful weight, fancying he could feel the potential of it ebbing away. Whatever work it had been designed to do, it was done. It was inert, now, an object at rest, its only future to corrode away. He shivered, but it was only partly from the cold, and dropped it on the floor where it rang heavily, slumping over to one side.

‘Let’s have a look at where they found Sattler.’

‘Trip wires, sir. For sure,’ Olbrich said. He pointed out the three blast holes. The approach to the workshop was between two high stone walls. The trip wires had been placed midway down the passage, low to the ground. ‘The blasts were angled up,’ he said, pointing at the fan-shaped spread of white flecks on the walls where stone and brick had been chipped away. The walls were covered in scattered daubs of something dark that had dried and dribbled down the pitted rock surface. In the confined space, with bodies pressing up one against the other, the carnage must have been great.

‘I don’t remember three explosions. More like one big one,’ Cranz said. For a moment, Reinhardt felt sympathy for the Feldgendarme. It was his men who had been killed here.

The workshop itself was a cluster of tables and shelves and equipment bins inside what looked to have been a milking shed. It had a slatted wooden door that had been smashed off its hinges, the light breaking unevenly across and through its broken pieces into the workshop. The tables were all thick lengths of wood, into which time and sweat and the industry of generations of men had sunk, darkening their undulated planes. At one of them, a stool lay on the floor, and something dark had seeped into the riven pattern of the wood’s natural seams.

They stood around the scarred worktable like explorers with the dark stain of Sattler’s blood like a map of terra incognita between them. Reinhardt’s finger traced along the tabletop, dipping into a small hole. He twisted his little finger in, pulled it out, something almost like pitch clinging to the whorled ridges of his skin, so like the seamed aspect of the wood. He searched across the table, finding a length of wire that he worked into the hole, and levered out a bullet. It was a little damaged by being lodged in the table, but it still held its shape, metal glinting through a hardened curd of blood.

‘Poor sod,’ Reinhardt muttered.

‘Poor sod?!’ Otterstedt gasped. ‘How can you even think that after what he’s done?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, stop being such an old woman, Otterstedt.’

All present came to attention as Captain Gelhaus walked in. The captain was a squat man, heavy through the chest and waist, with a full head of thick, black hair. ‘Two bombs go off, a few men get killed, what’s the fuss? Happens every day in this war.’

‘But, sir,’ protested Otterstedt.

‘“But, sir,”’ mimicked Gelhaus. ‘Go back to pushing your papers.’ Gelhaus’s eyes were often filled with a sardonic glint at the war around him. But they were hard, now, and they stayed heavy on Otterstedt until the lieutenant reddened.

‘You mean…’

‘I mean yes, go. Thank you for finding me. But go.’ Gelhaus watched Otterstedt out the door, nodding to himself. ‘Insufferable man,’ he muttered, shaking his head. ‘That’s where you found Sattler?’ he asked.

‘He was dead at the table. He had shot himself in the head.’

‘You found a pistol?’

‘A Mauser C96. Like yours,’ said Cranz, pointing at the stormtroopers.

‘Mine’s a Luger, Lieutenant. Field artillery special. But spot the difference at the business end. Did you hear the shot?’ Cranz shook his head. ‘Funny way to do it,’ Gelhaus murmured, catching Reinhardt’s eye.

‘I cannot understand suicides,’ Cranz said. ‘So much drama around something that should be so simple.’

‘Well, when it’s your time, it’s your time,’ said Gelhaus. As Reinhardt had done, Gelhaus wormed his finger into the hole in the table and inspected what came out flaked on his fingertip. ‘Doesn’t matter how it comes,’ he said, almost to himself. His eyes drew back, focused. ‘That from Sattler’s guard?’ Gelhaus asked, pointing to a corner of the room. There was a rosette of blood high on the wall.

Cranz nodded. ‘His body was found there. We think Sattler must have shot him earlier in the evening, when the guard came on his rounds.’

Reinhardt rubbed his fingertips together, the blood flaking off. ‘How did you know to come here, Cranz?’

‘Sattler was seen.’

‘Who saw him?’

‘People at the meeting.’

‘Who?’

‘You’ll find out later, if you find out at all.’

‘You mean you don’t know.’

Gelhaus chuckled as Cranz blushed.

Reinhardt felt a stab of pity for the Feldgendarme. ‘I am sorry for your men, Cranz,’ he said. ‘What else can we help with?’

‘Nothing, I believe. I have what I need. I understand there will be a meeting later this morning. You should make yourself ready for it and, I presume, speak with your commanding officer. You might also want to make yourself more presentable. That uniform…’

‘…is the uniform of a serving German officer, Lieutenant,’ said Gelhaus. ‘It’s good enough. What else can you tell us?’

‘That is it. After we found Sattler, we busied ourselves with helping the evacuation of the wounded.’

‘Thank you, then. I am at your disposal should you need anything else.’

‘Yes, you are,’ Cranz nodded, his face brick wall blank again. He glanced among the stormtroopers, as if suspecting he was being made light of, or fun of, but then inclined his head to Reinhardt. ‘My men will escort you away.’

‘I will escort him, Lieutenant,’ Gelhaus said. ‘I want a look around as well.’

2

Reinhardt led Gelhaus back to the Méricourt farmhouse. The captain peered in and around, muttering as he crouched to one knee by the dresser, running his finger around its blackened edges. His face was heavy-cheeked. He often had something of the hunting dog about him, all morose expression, jowls, and lidded eyes, but he brightened as he spotted the bottles on the floor. He picked up one of brandy, muttering happily as he held the label to the light, then plucked up another of brandy. Reinhardt hesitated, then picked up the Mosel he had seen earlier. Gelhaus nodded approvingly, then gestured Reinhardt outside into the clean morning air, over to a car parked in front of the house. Gelhaus did not so much walk as roll, all the movement seeming to come from his hips. He rooted around in a leather valise, coming up with a corkscrew. He tossed it to Reinhardt.

‘Open that,’ Gelhaus told him, giving him the brandy. He went back to searching in his valise and set two tin cups on the bonnet of the car. ‘And don’t be telling me it’s too early. It’s never too early, and you look like you need one. At least. And at last,’ he smiled, as Reinhardt got the cork out of the bottle. ‘Pour.’

Bodo Gelhaus was a strange man to Reinhardt. He was the 1st Company commander but was essentially Colonel Tomas Meissner’s second-in-command and commanded half the battalion. That a captain was second to a colonel, that Reinhardt as a lieutenant had command of a company, spoke to the huge losses the Germans had taken since March. Gelhaus was popular enough with the men, and he was a brave man. His medals and reputation spoke to that, and Reinhardt had seen him under fire. He was a Western Front veteran, nearly three years in the field artillery. When the battalion had arrived in France, Gelhaus had been transferred to them, his job to help get them acclimated to the trenches and to share the experience he had. He was garrulous and funny, generous with his time and a good officer, but there was a ruthless streak to him. It was there in the Iron Cross on Gelhaus’s tunic, in his sense of humour, the way he handled bad news, and in the way he just seemed to let life wash over him, never seeming to think very far ahead.

Gelhaus sat down on a bench outside the house, grunting against the swell of his gut. ‘You’re longer dead than you are alive,’ Gelhaus toasted him. He knocked his drink back, poured another. He lit a cigarette. ‘Smoke if you wish, Lieutenant,’ he said, as he waved smoke away, then leaned back to cross his booted feet at the ankles. He closed his eyes and sighed.

‘How was Metz, sir?’

Gelhaus’s eyes slitted open, and he yawned. ‘Tiring, Lieutenant. It’s tiring playing those violins.’

‘Violins, sir?’

‘I forget you’re as pure as the driven snow, Reinhardt. Violins. Ladies of the night. Prostitutes. Even though you pay them, you have to warm them up. Dinner. Drinks. Dancing. More drinks. Make those French ladies forget you’re a German. More drinks to make ’em forget they’re Alsaciennes, and as good as any German.’ He yawned, hugely. ‘And to think what I could’ve been waking up to… Next to the posterior of the aptly named Madame de la Levrette… Got a backside you could break a battalion on.’ He yawned again, and a smile curled across his mouth. ‘Not shocking you, am I?’

‘Not at all,’ Reinhardt protested.

‘Had your wicked way with the fairer sex, have you?’ Gelhaus asked, as he poured another drink. He glanced up to see Reinhardt’s colour rise. ‘Too young to be a suitor. Don’t see you as a paying customer. It must’ve been a tumble in the hay somewhere, right? A flaxen farmer’s daughter, was it? Russia, it must’ve been. I’ve not seen any sign you’ve diddled a Frenchie.’

It had been Russia, and she had not been a farmer’s daughter, but she had been flaxen. The daughter of the man in whose house they had been billeted for a while in Vilna. An important man, Reinhardt and the other officers billeted there had been told. An ethnic German, a pillar of his community, upstanding in church, a man for the future. Reinhardt never knew who caught whose eye, who reeled who in, the girl or him. The first time had been quick and sticky and bloody, both of them aghast at what they had done. But then it had happened again, and again. Tangled assignations, fumbling and thrusting against each other in strained silence, the thrill of taking this girl beneath her father’s roof, the things she whispered in his ear.

Her name was Sophie.

No one before.

And no one since.

‘Here,’ Gelhaus said. He handed over a picture postcard. A woman, wearing almost nothing, smiling lasciviously over her shoulder. ‘What do you think?’

‘Quite… impressive… impressive posterior.’

‘Quite the prude, Reinhardt,’ Gelhaus laughed. ‘That’s why they call her Madame de la Levrette.’ Reinhardt nodded, not understanding. ‘Keep it. Pay her a visit one day. We’ve got to see Hessler.’

‘Hessler?’ Reinhardt yelped, wincing as he heard himself. He wound himself back in, back from thinking of Sophie, of her knees hiked around his shoulders, the way she had of laying her head to one side, how she stifled her moans into the folds of her dress.

‘Major-General Hessler to you, young man. Yes, that old fire-breather. He’s of the oft-stated opinion that, and I more or less quote: “If discipline were only left to those able to mete it out in the conditions closest to where the infraction took place and in those conditions most conducive to ensuring its meritorious effects, then our armies would be in a situation of far greater efficaciousness.” What do you think? Nothing, of course. You keep a politic silence, as befits a very junior officer in a very large army.’ Gelhaus smiled, but Reinhardt could see and hear the ruthlessness in him, running through his words and off his expression like something caustic. It brought out a cold sweat, and it brought the lice alive in the seams of his clothes at the small of his back. ‘Hessler I’m sure would dearly love to shoot someone for this. He’d shoot a lot of men if he could. Rather like the French and British apparently do. Did the Russians do the same? He’d dearly love to have shot Sattler. He might still try to shoot people Sattler was close to; his friends, for example. You ask me, which you haven’t, Hessler’s looking for a scapegoat to pin this on. So is Wadehn, his equally fiery but just a bit pickier deputy commander.’

‘You sound like you know them.’

‘Of them, Lieutenant. Them and their type. Them and their type have reduced units like ours to being commanded by men like you and me. Not always a bad thing, mind you. But I digress and ramble. I’m just hearing about what happened last night.’

‘Only just hearing?’

‘It may have escaped your attention, Lieutenant Reinhardt, but I was otherwise occupied last night, and counted on being otherwise occupied today until that wretch Otterstedt tracked me down. I’m supposed to be on leave. So, yes, I’m just hearing. What do you know?’

‘You saw the room. There were two bombs. Shaped charges.’

‘Always have to appreciate a professional job. Go on. More thoughts?’

‘Who was in that meeting? Was the Colonel there?’

‘The Colonel was not there, no. He had leave, like me. I don’t know if Otterstedt tracked him down, but I imagine he did, so he should be here presently. As to who actually was there, that, my dear boy, is a good question. But I do know who organised it.’ Gelhaus’s eyebrows went up as he looked at Reinhardt, and he flicked his chin up once or twice. ‘No guesses? Everyone’s favourite storyteller…?’

‘Marcusen?’

‘None other! Count Marcusen. The fantabulist supreme.’ Gelhaus knocked back his drink, gestured at Reinhardt’s. ‘He’s wounded, but alive. I swear, that man has more lives than a cat. Drink up. You know how he’s been running around since he came across the lines, making a nuisance of himself, claiming his rights, talking nonsense about who knows what is happening on the other side.’

‘Marcusen is a windbag. Everyone said so.’

‘Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, Reinhardt. Maybe he did have something to say. Maybe his stories fell on the right ears.’

‘On brass and braids,’ Reinhardt murmured.

‘What’s that?’

‘Something Sattler used to say. Brass and braids. Officers. Senior ones.’

Gelhaus smiled, spitting a bit of tobacco off his tongue. ‘“Brass and braids.” I like that! Did I ever tell you my fondest memory of this war, Lieutenant? It was seeing two generals dead in the same shell hole. Funniest fucking thing I ever saw. Last year, at Vimy. The Canadians were on that ridge so fucking fast, half our men were still at breakfast, and those two generals were out for a morning ride or whatever men like them do. What do they call those things, Reinhardt? Those morning rides.’

‘I don’t know there’s a name for them, sir.’

‘Yes, there is. A constitutional. Isn’t that it?’

‘That’s one’s first trip to the toilet, I believe, sir.’

Gelhaus guffawed. ‘First shit of the day! And the Canadians dumped a big one on them! By the way, Hessler was at the meeting. Barely a scratch on him, I hear. So was that rather effete aristocrat he keeps around. The aide-de-camp. What’s his name?’

‘Captain Augenstein.’

‘The very one. I hear he was found hollering in a corner with someone’s guts all over his face. Had to be smacked quiet.’

‘So there are witnesses to the bombing?’

‘Yep.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Hospital somewhere, I imagine.’

‘The château?’ Reinhardt asked. Gelhaus shrugged. ‘And the dead?’

‘In the ground, I’d imagine. Look, enough talk about the bombing. Hessler will go over it. Tell me about Sattler. He was a strange one,’ Gelhaus said. ‘An officer, demoted to the ranks.’

‘He wasn’t a proper officer,’ Reinhardt said, then regretted it, remembering what Sattler had said to him the day he had been commissioned. ‘It was a wartime commission. I… I recommended him. In Russia. Meissner approved it.’

‘He’d a funny way of showing his appreciation. He assaulted you, didn’t he? He was on a charge if I’m not mistaken.’

You’re not mistaken, Reinhardt thought. He was one of your subordinates. Did you even know who he was? he wondered.

‘Assault. On me. Reckless endangerment of his men. Consorting with the enemy. A tribunal demoted him, gave him a month’s confinement to quarters, pay and leave docked.’

‘That’s lenient.’

‘It might’ve been worse, but Marcusen spoke up for him.’ And I…? Reinhardt thought. Could I have done more…?

‘Lenient, for sure. From what I remember, he got you all into hot water.’

From what you remember…? But then, Reinhardt thought, it took a lot to get Gelhaus’s attention. ‘Unless there are a thousand dead before breakfast, don’t bother waking me,’ Gelhaus had once said, and Reinhardt believed it. Anything less – such as what got a lieutenant demoted to the ranks – simply did not register. Such, Reinhardt was learning, was only part of what the Western Front could do to your mind.

‘He did. But we were alright, if shaken up. And… he did not mean badly.’ Reinhardt hesitated, wondering how to explain this, and not finding the way. Gelhaus had not been there.

‘“Did not mean badly” won’t cut the ice with Hessler. Something like “I ought to have exercised a spot of summary justice” might go down better.’

‘I thought about it. Seriously considered it.’ Reinhardt meant it as a joke, a half-hearted one, but Gelhaus nodded.

‘Would’ve saved some lives later,’ Gelhaus said, quietly.

‘Ifs and buts, sir.’

‘Like I said. That won’t cut any ice with Hessler if he decides to get into you for this.’

‘What I’m trying to say… what I would say is Sattler is… was… troublesome, but he was not trouble. If you see what I mean. He always had something to say about something. Always very conscious of his rights. Very socialist. Always on about working-class solidarity. “A rifle’s a weapon with a worker on both ends.” That kind of thing. He hated being an officer, but he knew his duty. And he would not let down his comrades.’

‘Charming. Just the sort of person Hessler would like to have shot. I’m afraid the evidence from Méricourt does not look good for him. Booby traps. The kind some of our chaps are taught to make. The kind we’re trained to leave behind on raids. You know who makes them?’

‘Pioneers,’ Reinhardt said quietly.

‘And Sattler was…?’

‘A pioneer. But he’s not the only pioneer we’ve got.’

‘No, but he was a pioneer with a particular skill set and… how shall we say this? He has “prior”. That was what you said at his disciplinary committee, wasn’t it?’ Reinhardt flushed red and nodded tightly. ‘Drink up, Reinhardt. Where were we? Yes, a pioneer. With prior. And a pioneer with access to the house. And a pioneer with an apparent grudge against Marcusen.’

Reinhardt looked in his cup, and then slugged it.

‘Good lad,’ Gelhaus said approvingly, his cigarette waggling in the corner of his mouth. ‘No more for you, or they’ll smell it on your breath.’

‘Who?’

‘The Colonel. And Hessler and Wadehn, of course.’ Reinhardt blinked. He had forgotten. His stomach clenched, then began a slow churn. Gelhaus grinned, as if he knew exactly what Reinhardt was feeling. He heaved himself upright and tossed a stiff-bristled brush at Reinhardt from his valise. ‘Have a go at brushing down that uniform, get it in some kind of shape to be presentable in. I hear Wadehn’s a stickler for appearance. You can open that nice bottle of Mosel afterwards, if you survive, of course. You’ve got an hour. And you need a word with your men. And Reinhardt? Put that photo away now.’

3

‘What are we doing, sir?’ Brauer asked, again.

The road was iron-hard, mounded down the middle. Reinhardt walked as fast as he could, the white cord of his officer’s sword knot swaying and bouncing against his thigh where it hung next to the big Mauser holstered at his hip.

Brauer walked with him as Reinhardt headed out towards the Saulnier farm, where Reinhardt’s company was billeted, a spread of old buildings around which the Germans had accreted tents and lean-tos and huts to house a company of men and their equipment. The buildings stood in a smeared expanse of beaten earth, grass and weeds clinging to the roofs and lining the edges of walls.

‘What did Gelhaus have to say for himself?’ Brauer asked, when Reinhardt said nothing. He was a short man, lean as a whip. Almost the same age as Reinhardt, Rudolph Brauer was more than a head shorter, the result, he once joked, of a lifetime of growing up poor and half-starved in Berlin’s working-class suburbs. So poor and hungry, his parents faded away and died when he was still a boy, leaving him to take care of the sister and two brothers who had survived past infancy. At least, he would usually say, in the army you went out with a full stomach, and as stormtroopers ate better than most, being a stormtrooper was just fine with him.

‘Captain Gelhaus, Sergeant,’ Reinhardt said. He glanced at Brauer, who had a prim turn to his mouth as if he knew that touch of insolence would get a reaction from Reinhardt. ‘I don’t know why you don’t like him.’

‘Not my place to like him or not, sir,’ Brauer said flatly.

‘Yet it’s clear you don’t. Why?’

‘Honestly, sir?’ Reinhardt nodded. ‘Men like him don’t care for much anymore and men who don’t care for much haven’t much interest in whether they stay alive. Or whether those around them do.’

‘He got us through Michael and Gneisenau.’

‘If you say so, sir.’

‘Oh, come on, Brauer, out with it!’

‘There’s just something about him, sir. Something of the Jack the Lad. I knew blokes like him growing up in Berlin. They’re the ones with all the answers. Quick to light your smoke, or crack a joke, but scarce when the trouble starts.’

‘Hardly, Sergeant. That Iron Cross says different,’ Reinhardt answered, but his mind turned over what Brauer had said. He respected both men and, although no one had, it was as if someone had asked him to choose between them.

‘And he’s got that saying. “Tombstones in your eyes.” Says he can see them when he looks at us. Gives a man the chills to hear that from his officer.’

Gelhaus did say that. Sometimes. Reinhardt had never liked it, but it was not his place to reproach his Captain.

‘And very honestly, you got us through Michael and Gneisenau, sir.’

‘We all got each other through,’ Reinhardt replied, embarrassed.

They walked on in silence.

‘Sorry I couldn’t stop the chain dogs waking you like that,’ Brauer said after a moment.

‘They lost men. It’s understandable they’d be agitated. Who’d they speak to?’

‘More like a lot of shouting and shoving.’

‘Who’d they shove and shout at, then?’

‘The men in Sattler’s platoon. Asked where they were last night. Where Sattler was. Rosen took a bit of a rollicking. He was out last night,’ Brauer said as Reinhardt looked to him to continue. ‘The Sabbath, sir. Rosen was with his rabbi.’

‘Ofcourse,’ said Reinhardt. ‘That wasn’t enough for the Feldgend-armerie?’

‘Might’ve been, but they still went after him.’

‘How are the rest of the men?’

‘A bit shocked. A few of them are angry.’

‘The usual suspects?’

‘The Three Musketeers,’ Brauer said, nodding.

Reinhardt felt eyes on him as he approached Saulnier. From the farm’s windows, from the deep shadows in one of the open barns, from behind the flaps of tents. There were so damn few of them. This platoon was one of three in the company Reinhardt commanded, and the three of them together could muster about seventy men if they threw the sick in. Three months ago, there would have been about three times the number but Operation Michael in March, and then Gneisenau in June, had gone through them like an avenging wind. Of the men who had come west from Russia at the end of 1917, there were no more than a handful left, and one of them had been Sattler.

‘Let me see them. And anyone else you think I should. Who was on duty last night?’

‘Corporal Klusmann.’

‘Him first, with the logbook.’

The men from Sattler’s platoon – about twenty men, not counting the sick and wounded – were waiting in one of the farm’s courtyards. Klusmann stood them at ease as Reinhardt stood in front of them. So early in the morning, they were in various states of undress, all lowered brows and hunched shoulders, arms crossed and hands beneath armpits. Pipe and cigarette smoke hazed the air where men from the other platoons sat or huddled together, some of them with mugs of coffee in their hands. A group clustered around a commissary wagon, from behind which rose the tall frame of Lieutenant Marcus Dreyer. He carried a mug of coffee and, even on the smooth ground, he looked like he might fall over at any time. Reinhardt held his breath for the coffee and Dreyer’s dignity as the quartermaster lieutenant stalked across the courtyard like an egret.

‘Morning, Reinhardt,’ Dreyer said, offering Reinhardt the mug. ‘I hear you’ve had a rough awakening.’

‘You could say that,’ Reinhardt replied.

‘Well, all’s well here. The men are all fed and watered,’ Dreyer said.

‘They aren’t bloody horses!’ Reinhardt snapped.

Dreyer paled, and Brauer took a shifty step. Reinhardt wished his words back, but he was in no mood to coddle Dreyer. The man was a good quartermaster, none better, but he had a way of… just… lurching about and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Reinhardt turned his back on him and instead ran his eyes over a group of men in front of him. Feldgendarmes had clearly roughed some of them up, a couple showing bruises to their faces and eyes. Three of them in particular.

The usual suspects.

Voigt, Diekmann, and Degrelle.

The Three Musketeers.

‘Morning, sir,’ said Diekmann. ‘Nice of you to drop by.’

‘You can shove that attitude right now, Diekmann,’ Brauer growled, as Reinhardt shook off his maudlin mood. It came on him more and more often, and he had a tendency to fade away from himself when it did.

‘We can make allowances for the occasion,’ Reinhardt said, holding Diekmann’s eyes, before Klusmann cleared his throat. ‘One allowance. One time.’

‘Oh, ignore him, sir,’ called Rosen, from where he leaned against a wall, watching. He was one of the few still left from Russia, a tall man with dark red hair. ‘His breakfast went down the wrong way.’ He said it cheerfully, but his eyes struck sparks with Diekmann’s, and his right cheek and eye were bruised and swollen.

‘The Feldgendarmerie do that to you?’ Reinhardt asked, walking over.

Rosen nodded.

‘I’m sorry about that. How is your rabbi?’

‘Well enough, sir.’

Reinhardt was very nervous. He often was in front of the men and was thankful for the presence and support of those he knew he could trust. Rosen was one. Topp and Olbrich two more, Lebert a fourth. All four of them stood nearby, not far from Brauer, as if to support him. Two or three more were scattered around the yard. Brauer called them the cream of the crop. They called themselves the Cossacks. All Eastern Front men. Like Sattler had been.

‘The logbook, sir,’ said Klusmann. He was an older man, but still hard-edged, and his eyes were framed in a boxer’s heavy skin. The book showed Sattler logged out yesterday morning on his way to Méricourt for the day, but not logged back in. Reinhardt flicked back through the book, noting Sattler’s late return to barracks every day the past ten days as he eked out his punishment with extended hours at the range.

‘Anyone from battalion come yet?’ The corporal shook his head. ‘No one?’

‘Lieutenant Tolsdorf popped round,’ Klusmann said, meaning the other lieutenant in the company. Tolsdorf was a year or two older than Reinhardt, a sour man interested in very little that was not right in front of him. A lot of the men liked him because he asked nothing of them.

‘Anything untoward happen last night, Corporal?’ Klusmann shook his head. ‘No fighting? No talking out of turn?’

Klusmann flicked his eyes at the three men standing behind him, but shook his head to all of it. ‘Nothing, sir. Calm and quiet. The lads drank a bit after supper. Games of cards. Some music. Most turned in early.’

‘Everyone was here?’

‘Can’t swear to it, sir, but seeing as there’s no curfew and Sattler was the only one on a charge, he was the only one whose movements we were noting.’

‘You seen his quarters?’

‘Chain dogs tossed it, sir. Took away some things. Newspapers, mostly. That socialist stuff he reads. Books. There wasn’t much to take.’

‘Anyone get in there before them?’

‘No way to know.’ Klusmann’s eyes did not stray this time, but they may as well have turned to the three men standing behind him.

‘I’m sorry for Sattler,’ Reinhardt said to them. They said nothing, flat faces, flat eyes. ‘Do you have any idea what happened?’ Nothing. ‘Did he say anything to you?’ Nothing. ‘Did you have any idea he might do something like this? Any idea why he did it?’

‘Chain dogs already asked those questions,’ Degrelle said. He was a ferrety-looking man, all eyebrows and needle nose. ‘How’d you think we got these shiners?’

‘I think the word you’re looking for is “sir”, Degrelle,’ Brauer growled.

‘I imagine you got those shiners by not being able to give a Feldgendarme a straight answer to a straight question,’ said Reinhardt. ‘Like now. Any idea why he did it? Voigt?’

‘You think he did it, sir?’ After Sattler, Voigt could usually be relied upon to question an order, state an opinion, demand his dues. He was similar in manner to how Sattler had been. Truculent. On the edge of insubordination. And like Sattler had been, he was a big man, long-limbed, heavy-fisted.

‘It seems he did something.’

‘’Cos the chains dogs said he did?’

‘Because there’s a big hole that looks like one he might’ve made,’ said Brauer.

Voigt blinked at Brauer, then turned his eyes back to Reinhardt.

‘You think he’ll get a fair hearing, sir?’

‘He’s dead, Voigt. I don’t think it matters much.’

‘Matters to us, sir. It’ll matter to his missus.’ That was Diekmann, squat and round, a hairline barely a finger’s width above his brows. Diekmann had not been in the East, had not shared any of their experiences there, had never fraternised. But he had some of the same socialist views and had lapped up what he had heard and stuck fast to Sattler, Voigt, and Degrelle.

‘Let’s leave it to military justice to sort it out, shall we?’ Reinhardt winced inwardly as he said it. It sounded trite. It sounded like words from another era.

‘Yes, sir. You think he done it, sir?’

‘I’ve no idea. What do you think?’

‘I think he was a strange old bird, was Sattler. He was one of you lot once.’

‘I know.’

‘’Course you do, sir. You was the one that made him an officer. But he never forgot who he was, or where he came from.’

‘I know,’ said Reinhardt again.

‘Whatever he was – officer or private – he came through a lot with us.’

‘I know,’ said Reinhardt, feeling the simple truth of it.

Maybe it was that Reinhardt agreed with him, maybe it was the simple weight of his words, but it seemed to put Voigt at a disadvantage. The man’s mouth worked. ‘Remember that, then, sir. Remember that when they take his reputation apart.’

‘Stop badgering the Lieutenant, Voigt, and answer his questions,’ said Brauer.

‘I think there’s not much time for the likes of us when the braids and the brass get together, sir.’

‘That’s not an answer, Voigt,’ said Reinhardt.

‘It’s all the answer I have, sir.’

‘Voigt, if you know something… if any of you know something,’ Reinhardt said, ‘you tell me.’

‘’Course we’d tell you, sir,’ Voigt replied, and Reinhardt bristled at the insolence in the man’s eyes.

‘You can trust me.’

‘’Course we trust you, sir,’ Voigt’s words falling flat and heavy.

‘Right, then you’ll be wanting to give me Sattler’s journal.’

‘Journal, sir?’ asked Voigt.

Reinhardt took a slow step forward, for the first time feeling he was on solid ground. ‘Like you said, Voigt, we went through a lot, Sattler and I. We go back. Back to before he knew you. And all the time I knew him, he wrote in a little journal. Every day. Without fail. The Feldgendarmerie don’t have it. So someone’s got it. I don’t mind who has it, just so long as it makes its way to me, eventually.’

‘Why, sir? Assuming we know anything about it.’

‘I don’t know what’s in that journal, but I can imagine, and I can imagine how what’s in it will be taken out of context. Besides, there might be a clue in there as to why he did what he did, if,’ Reinhardt said, raising a hand to forestall Voigt’s protest, ‘if he actually did it.’ Reinhardt held the three of them with his eyes. ‘So, we understand each other? You want him protected? Sattler’s journal, my hands, before the end of the day.’

Viéville-sur-Trey was an old village at the centre of a network of farms like Saulnier and Méricourt, most of which had long since been abandoned and which were now used to billet the officers and staff of Reinhardt’s battalion, and of the other regiments that made up the division. Other than a cobbled street that ran straight through the village, east to west, there was not much more to it than a bakery, a town hall that had doubled as a school, a few houses with dreary frontages, the doors marked with signs in Gothic script showing which officers were billeted inside, or which offices were to be found there, and a small church in front of which stood a mournful statue of the Virgin to which a few flakes of blue paint still clung.

Even so early, the village crackled with the news of the bombing. The only inhabitants left from before the war were those who ran the few bars and restaurants that catered to the officers, all closed at this hour. The women in the brothels were from elsewhere, it was said. There were two of those, one for the officers, just off the main street, and one for the men in one of the farms outside the village. He passed the officers’ one as he came down the street. It had a small balcony over the entrance, where the Madame was wont to take a cigarette. She was up there now as he came past, her hair a quite unnatural shade of red. She said nothing as he went by, her eyes hard as nails.

Reinhardt caught the eye of some of the officers he knew, nodding to familiars, saluting those senior to him. None of them spoke to him, indeed conversation seemed to dry up as he approached, and he felt he bore some mark, like the mark of Cain. He kept his pace steady, though, and his head high. He had nothing to blame himself for, but he knew how easily reputations could become besmirched. He knew he was on the verge of becoming known as ‘that’ officer.

The unlucky one.

He ignored the looks, and the whispers, and thought about bombs in houses, about training ranges, and about Private Willy Sattler.

A troublemaker.

A trench lawyer.

Conscious of his rights.

Querulous with authority.

But quite the organiser…

4

TWO WEEKS PREVIOUSLY…

By the time Reinhardt heard of the desertion, it was all but over.

The first he heard of it was from a breathless messenger who burst into his dugout and told him that one of the artillery observation posts to the rear was on the line with an urgent request for clarification.

‘Clarification of what?’

‘Frenchmen in no-man’s-land, sir.’

Reinhardt grabbed his gas mask and helmet and scrambled up the steps of his dugout. A shouted order to Brauer had the ready squad assembling, and he ran back to the signals station to speak to the artillery spotter himself.

‘You’ve got Frenchmen across no-man’s-land, Lieutenant,’ came the scratchy voice of the spotter over the telephone.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that, Lieutenant. Less than five minutes ago. A rather large group. They belted across no-man’s-land like hares.’

‘They’re in our trenches?’

‘Yes. I’m not seeing much. Some movement around Grid C9. Hard to tell what’s going on. I’m not seeing any flares, so no assistance has been requested. I don’t know if your men have already been overrun or not. We’re standing by to cover, but if I don’t get clarification from you within the next few minutes, my standing orders are to put down fire on that zone.’

‘Wait, just wait!’ said Reinhardt. ‘I’m going myself. Stand by for flares.’

‘Five minutes, Lieutenant. Green or red, I’m watching. By the way: it might be nothing, but there’s smoke rising from the French lines.’