Small Wars Page 16

  The heat of all the men, in their stiff uniforms but sweating underneath them, thickened the atmosphere quite quickly and the smell of Greek cigarettes mixed with the air. Tumblers of water, glinting, were arranged next to a jug in the middle of the table and were untouched. There was a thin white cloth over the jug, with beaded edges to stop it slipping, so that no flies could get into the water but flies circled and landed and circled all through the hearing.

  The colonel asked the questions, and occasionally spoke in an undertone to his adjutant, who was the only man seated, and held a fountain pen, although he did not write.

  Francke was sent for; he came in under guard. He stood opposite Hal and the colonel, flanked by privates.

  Hal tried to see something in Francke that perhaps he might have seen before. He pictured him hitting the women’s faces, holding their hair to keep their heads still, as Davis had described. He imagined him kicking the Greek man as he lay down, and saw him on top of the women. He remembered, suddenly, that it had been Francke who had ransacked the old couple’s village house that day. He remembered the bayoneted bedding, smooth oil on the tiles and the olive-wreath plate in pieces. He had known Francke was dangerous. He ought to have checked him. He ought to have done something.

  Colonel Burroughs began to question Francke, with Hal’s notes held firmly in front of him, referring to them.

  Francke had decided confidence and bluster would get him through. His answers were bold, almost swaggering:

  ‘Reasonable force, I’d say, sir – only reasonable. But we had to stop them, didn’t we?’

  ‘No, sir, there was women there, but we never touched ’em.’

  ‘I saw him coming for me and I shot him – he was coming at me, sir.’

  And on.

  After Francke, it was Private Miller’s turn. He, too, apparently, had only the vaguest recollection of any women present and didn’t remember Davis being there either. He had seen Francke shoot the man, though, ‘And thank God he did, sir, ’cos if he’d got to him he would’ve killed him, sir.’

  Hal was facing the room, with Davis at about a forty-five-degree angle to him. He allowed his eyes to move left until he could see his expression. Davis was agitated; his mouth was working, biting his lip or the inside of himself. Hal wanted to reassure him, to communicate his amusement and dismay, but he kept a neutral expression.

  Then it was the turn of one of the RMP sergeants. Yes, he said, there was a body, recovered from the house on Starsis Street, and yes, the bullet had gone through the head, but the range from which it was fired was impossible to tell without a more detailed post-mortem. The body had been sent to Nicosia: the morgue there had chilling facilities, the one in Limassol was just a marble-lined basement.

  Burroughs asked about the alleged victims, where they were, and if statements had been taken. The sergeant was regretful: there were rumours in Starsis Street, but all their best efforts had not discovered any women prepared to come forward.

  ‘Neither of the women?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Nobody who knows them?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Davis gave his evidence. He kept his answers short and simple; Hal was pleased with him. The silence in the room grew heavier as they moved from the account of the street, and who was with him, ‘Lieutenant Grieves, sir, Private Francke, Private Miller…’to the getting down of the men in the doorway, ‘I would say excessive force. Kicking. A torrent of blows –’ to the appearance of the women. Once inside the house, though, his story changed.

  At the first false note, Hal felt his head jerk up a half-inch, alerted to the difference. He had read the notes over and over. He had heard, exactly, what Davis had seen; two or three times in life and innumerable times in his head ever since. This was different.

  ‘The room I had entered was to the left. There was a curtain over the door. I heard struggling.’

  Heard. He heard struggling. Hal shifted his head slightly to look Davis full in the face. His eyes were locked with the colonel’s. The question and answer between them drew out, a protracted rally, a slow screwing-down of detail.

  ‘So you were in the other room?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What exactly did you see?’

  ‘I saw an attack.’

  ‘Did you see Private Miller’s face?’

  ‘Not exactly. I knew it was him.’

  ‘At what angle were you standing?’

  ‘It’s hard to say.’

  ‘Behind the curtain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a curtain.

  ‘Were you in this “other room” all the time?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Just…watching?’

  ‘No. I was conducting a search for weapons, sir.’

  He was conducting a search.

  ‘You say here – you “heard” the rape?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Can you explain to me what a rape sounds like?

  The room was getting hotter and a thin trickle of sweat moved slowly down Hal’s temple, then his cheek, from the inside of his cap where the leather band pressed on his head. Davis’s eyes did not leave the colonel’s face. Hal stared at him, willing him to return his look, but even when he was dismissed, turning – with uncharacteristic accuracy, in fact – to leave, he didn’t glance at Hal once.

  Another RMP sergeant who had attended the scene was summoned.

  Colonel Burroughs asked him if he had visited the house, whom he had seen there, and if he had spoken to the women.

  ‘Couldn’t persuade them to talk to us, sir.’

  It seemed the re was no witness to the alleged rape and murder but Lieutenant Davis, and no physical evidence at all – except the body of the young man, on its way to Nicosia.

  And then it was time for lunch.

  Burroughs and Hal lunched together at Burroughs’s house, by an open window. with a white cloth on the table and their caps on the ledge beside them. Evelyn wasn’t at home. The view from the back of the house, from the window, was wide and bright.

  Hal was silent, trying to organise his thoughts, trying harder to keep his temper.

  ‘Well. Quite a morning,’ said Burroughs, putting his napkin on his lap.

  They were brought chilled cucumber soup with bread rolls and there would be roast lamb and boiled potatoes afterwards.

  ‘Yes, it was,’ Hal began, ‘quite a morning. Look, sir, Davis has –’

  ‘It’s a very tricky business. Particularly a rape. Very hard to get anywhere.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but that’s not –’

  ‘It’s always very hard to get concrete evidence in a case like this.’ The colonel was hungry, and making quick sawing movements with his knife on his bread. ‘And, you know, Hal, there’s a brothel on every other corner in Limassol. For a lot of the men, raping one or two of them is rather like shoplifting. They just don’t see it like you or I might.’

  ‘It’s not bloody shoplifting.’

  ‘Voice down. Calm down.’

  Burroughs’s tone was the tone you’d stop a charging dog with, and make it cower.

  ‘Now, look, Hal, I don’t know what business you had bringing this to me at all.’

  ‘You saw my notes, sir.’

  ‘Yes – what were you thinking? I can’t take this business any further. A lot of hearsay. Davis is obviously completely unreliable. I’m only glad he spends most of his time with the SIB. Not the sort of fellow –’

  ‘No! He was perfectly clear before. Perfectly. He’s changed his story.’

  ‘In twenty-four hours? Pretty poor memory. Seems to me you should have made sure what sort of a witness, what sort of a chap he is, before stirring up all of this. Well, quite frankly, Hal, it’s a mess, and I’m very disappointed indeed. You’ve dragged everybody through the mud. I don’t need to remind you it was your company who behaved like a gang of thugs on Monday night –’

  ‘Following your orders!’

  ‘What did
you just say to me?’

  Hal was cornered by honesty and sought to free himself. ‘Sir,’ he frowned, ‘the arrest and questioning of what amounts to half the population of the town was a – tall order. It was bound to result in some loss of discipline, I think.’

  Silence. Colonel Burroughs smiled coldly. ‘A loss of discipline is never “bound” to happen, Hal,’ he said quietly, ‘and you, as an officer, ought not to accept it so easily.’

  Then, very calmly and with precise movements, Burroughs began to eat his soup. Hal was quite still, absorbing the sting. When Burroughs put his spoon down, his voice was friendly again. ‘Also, don’t forget, there’s the shame of the women to be taken into account. It’s very shaming for them. Particularly these Orthodox women.’

  Hal brought his eyes back to meet the colonel’s pale look.

  ‘I need to have at least a reasonable hope of convictions,’ said Burroughs. ‘The purpose of these hearings is to establish whether or not that’s likely. A court-martial, for any of these men, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, Hal, would be an absurdity. Their overzealous questioning, and the use of violence, can be dealt with at company level. Obviously the death of the man is a quite different matter, and will be approached with all proper seriousness. I’ll review Francke’s position myself, in light of what will, no doubt, thanks to your rashness, be a very nasty scandal indeed.’

  Colonel Burroughs took a sip of water, then looked back at Hal. ‘Now, shall we have some wine, or do you think we’ll nod off this afternoon? It’s terribly hot in there.’

  Chapter Nine

  Lawrence Davis wasn’t surprised when his batman came to tell him Major Treherne wanted him.

  The hearings finished for the day at half past four and Davis, after going back to his quarters to change, had walked up on to the cliff-top and then made an uncomfortable slithering descent to the tiny cove next along to the east from the one below Episkopi. Sweat and tears of rage mixed with the dirt on his face. He had undressed on the small beach, and swum in the sea. He swam quite far out, to look back at the coast.

  He had floated in dark salty water that was a deep blue. He reminded himself of the vastness of the globe and the breadth of human experience in an attempt to calm his misery. Being one of a billion ants didn’t comfort him today, though, not with the memory of the bare-faced lies he had told.

  The sun had begun to go quietly down behind the hills as Davis dried himself and dressed. Then, back at his quarter, his batman found him. Major Treherne wanted him immediately, and he was ‘in a rare temper, sir’.

  Hal was in a rare temper. He met Davis at the outside door to his office – had been waiting there, in the deepening night, for him, barely able to control himself. ‘What the fucking hell are you playing at, Davis?’

  He turned and strode ahead of him, putting on the lights, with Davis following, reluctantly, until they reached his office. Once inside, he shut the door firmly, and the adjoining one to Mark Innes, too, even though there was no one but themselves in the building.

  They faced one another. Davis couldn’t hold Hal’s look, and dropped his gaze, blinking with anxiety.

  ‘Explanation,’ said Hal.

  ‘I don’t know what you –’

  ‘No. Explanation.’

  Silence.

  Davis began, and his voice was weak. ‘I was persuaded that the good of the regiment would not be served by the public – what I was told would be the very public trial of Grieves and of all of them. That vilification –’

  ‘You were “persuaded”.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it had nothing to do with your own good? The good of the regiment is uppermost in your mind, is it?’

  ‘I –’

  ‘And your reputation as a liar, as well as a toad, are you persuaded that will do you any good with your fellows and subordinates?’

  ‘Well, I – well, no, but I’d pretty much burned my bridges in that department anyway. I’m pretty unpopular –’

  ‘And you thought you’d burn mine too?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Never mind. Persuaded. By whom?’

  ‘My superiors.’

  ‘Special Branch? Major Eggars?’

  ‘Yes, sir. All of them. They seemed all to be in on it. They said just on my say-so the case would never get anywhere.’

  Silence.

  ‘The witnesses, Davis, the victims,’ said Hal, very slowly, ‘did anybody go and talk to them?’

  Davis seemed to shrink away. ‘We…’

  ‘Speak up!’

  ‘Yes. Last night.’

  ‘You went to the house on Starsis Street last night? You sought out those women, and “persuaded” them, too? And then just went ahead with the whole thing today –’

  Suddenly Davis broke, appealing to him. ‘I had to! I was following orders! They made it clear I had to! We didn’t threaten them. Nothing like that! What good would it do? Making those poor women talk about it –’ He stopped abruptly.

  Hal walked over to his desk. He stood with his back to Davis for a long moment, then turned to face him. ‘Lieutenant Davis, it could not be said of you that you are a man of conviction, could it? It could not be said of you that you are morally courageous. You are, in fact, a cynical, self-serving coward. Would you say that was true?’

  Davis’s face began to break up. A sixth former, disgraced. ‘Sir –’

  ‘You have sacrificed what you know to be right to save your own skin, haven’t you, Davis, with no thought but for yourself?’

  ‘I was following orders, sir.’

  ‘You were following orders?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Not good enough. All right. Dismissed. Go.’

  When Davis had gone, Hal, alone, paced his office back and forth, sifting, shifting and reshifting things in his mind, finding order, making patterns, moving and re-moving. Then he stopped, picked up his cap and left.

  ‘Kirby, the colonel’s house.’

  ‘Sir.’

  He let Kirby go at the end of the road, walked fast up to the house on his own, and rapped hard on the door.

  The African servant answered, just as before, but this time the colonel was visible, coming down from upstairs. He dismissed the man and stood in the doorway himself. He hadn’t been expecting visitors; he was in a pale blue short-sleeved shirt and shorts. He looked older. His hand rested on the door. ‘What is it, Hal?’

  ‘I need to speak to you, sir.’

  ‘Can’t it wait?’

  ‘No,’ angrily. Then, ‘Just for a moment.’

  ‘All right.’

  They were out on the terrace again, but there were no drinks offered this time. Hal walked away from Burroughs, in the open doorway, stopped and turned back to him. ‘I want you to tell me how much you know about this,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Hal modified his tone. ‘Are you aware, sir, of the situation?’

  ‘Situation?’ Burroughs asked drily.

  ‘This Starsis Street business, the victims have been – intimidated.’

  ‘Intimidated?’

  ‘Told not to come forward. The Special Branch have been over there, sir, and the RMPs too. Did you know that?’

  ‘Hal, I think you should go home. You ought to calm down.’

  Hal spoke quickly, the words falling out of him: ‘I can’t believe you don’t know about it. This must have come from you.’ There was a reckless release in being able to say what he wanted. ‘This whole mess, this cover-up came from you. There’s no other way of putting it.’

  ‘This is highly inappropriate.’ Burroughs walked towards him. ‘I don’t like your tone. Am I to take from these questions that you are accusing me of something?’

  ‘I just want to know!’ He knew he was shouting. He walked away, in a small circle. Then, close to the colonel, he said in a low voice, ‘This wasn’t some infraction of the rules to be overlooked and indulged –’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know
that?’ The colonel kept his voice almost to a whisper and his face had turned a deep red, his pale eyes shining out of it and fixed on Hal’s face. ‘Do you think I’m unaware? I’m disgusted with it, Hal, but what am I to do? Am I to drag us all through the mud?’

  ‘Just them! Grieves. Miller. Francke. Just them!’

  ‘There is no “just them”!’

  ‘Rape and murder – hear me? Rape and murder!’

  ‘Yes, and murder is a hanging offence. Even murdering a wog.’

  ‘Then Francke should hang.’

  ‘He should hang, should he? And have the world know about it? You’d throw us all to the dogs for your principles?’

  ‘Not my principles…’ Hal searched for the truths he’d never challenged ‘…not just me, the civilised world. You aren’t above that.’ Hal went at him in his anger. ‘You have no fucking right!’ and the older man, retreating, put his foot out to steady himself, lost his balance and stumbled, one foot slipping off the edge of the terrace onto the uneven grass.

  Hal, appalled, grabbed his arm to steady him, but Burroughs pulled from his grip in outrage. His normally dry, narrow lips were wet with spit. ‘I won’t have this!’

  Hal was standing crooked – half turned to help Burroughs, half backing off – his hands trembling with shock at himself, the sight of his superior, pulling away from him, the strange jumble of words and actions that had left them like this, in disarray. He put both hands up to wipe his face, then down to his sides and stood like that, in the cataclysm of his insubordination, eyes down, for a long moment. When he raised them, he said, as he must, ‘I have to apologise, sir.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I spoke out of turn, sir. I’m sorry.’

  Burroughs allowed the silence to settle over them. Hal’s eyes were wet, oddly hot. He thought of Davis, breaking up the way he had, his cowardly, trembling fear, and understood it.

  At last, Burroughs spoke. ‘We’ll say no more about it,’ he said. ‘I hope you know you can speak freely to me, Hal. Within the proper boundaries.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Regarding this matter, and in answer to your question,’ continued Burroughs, ‘I did indeed ask others to speak to Lieutenant Davis. If I need to, I will speak to him myself. I should accept some blame, too, that I allowed matters to get this far. Military law is as rigorous as civilian law, Hal. It requires more evidence than the accusations of one man to put others on trial.’