‘God’s my witness. I saw them, man. He even had his arm around – Get away from this window – Maria’s coming.’
Without haste, so as to arouse no comment from Andrea or Miller, they turned and walked unconcernedly towards the table and sat down. Seconds later, Maria entered and, without looking at or speaking to anyone, crossed to the fire, sat by Petar and took his hand. A minute or so later Mallory entered, and sat on a palliasse beside Andrea, who removed his cigar and glanced at him in mild enquiry. Mallory casually checked to see that he wasn’t under observation, then nodded. Andrea returned to the contemplation of his cigar.
Reynolds looked uncertainly at Groves, then said to Mallory, ‘Shouldn’t we be setting a guard, sir?’
‘A guard?’ Mallory was amused. ‘Whatever for? This is a Partisan camp, Sergeant. Friends, you know. And, as you’ve seen, they have their own excellent guard system.’
‘You never know – ‘
‘I know. Get some sleep.’
Reynolds went on doggedly: ‘Saunders is alone over there. I don’t like -‘
‘He’s coding and sending a short message for me. A few minutes, that’s all.’
‘But -‘
‘Shut up,’ Andrea said. ‘You heard the captain?’
Reynolds was by now thoroughly unhappy and uneasy, an unease which showed through in his instantly antagonistic irritation.
‘Shut up? Why should I shut up? I don’t take orders from you. And while we’re telling each other what to do, you might put out that damned stinking cigar.’ Miller wearily lowered his book of verse. ‘I quite agree about the damned cigar, young fellow, but do bear in mind that you are talking to a ranking colonel in the army.’
Miller reverted to his book. For a few moments Reynolds and Groves stared open-mouthed at each other, I then Reynolds stood up and looked at Andrea.
‘I’m extremely sorry, sir. I -1 didn’t realize -‘
Andrea waved him to silence with a magnanimous hand and resumed his communion with his cigar. The minutes passed in silence. Maria, before the fire, had her head on Petar’s shoulder, but otherwise had not moved: he appeared to be asleep. Miller shook his head in rapt admiration of what appeared to be one of the more esoteric manifestations of the poetic muse, closed his book I reluctantly and slid down into his sleeping-bag. Andrea ground out his cigar and did the same. Mallory seemed to be already asleep. Groves lay down and Reynolds, leaning over the table, rested his forehead on his arms. For five minutes, perhaps longer, Reynolds remained like this, uneasily dozing off, then he lifted his head, sat up With a jerk, glanced at his watch, crossed to Mallory and shook him by the shoulder. Mallory stirred.
Twenty minutes,’ Reynolds said urgently. Twenty minutes and Saunders isn’t back yet.’
‘All right, so it’s twenty minutes,’ Mallory said patiently. ‘He could take that long to make contact, far less transmit the message.’
‘Yes, sir. Permission to check, sir?’
Mallory nodded wearily and closed his eyes.
Reynolds picked up his Schmeisser, left the hut and closed the door softly behind him. He released the safety-catch on his gun and ran across the compound.
The light still burned in the radio hut. Reynolds tried to peer through the window but the frost of the bitter night had made it completely opaque. Reynolds, moved around to the door. It was slightly ajar. He set his finger to the trigger and opened the door in the fashion in which all Commandos were trained to open doors – with a violent kick of his right foot.
There was no one in the radio hut, no one, that is. who could bring him to any harm. Slowly, Reynolds lowered his gun and walked in in a hesitant, almost dreamlike fashion, his face masked in shock.
Saunders was leaning tiredly over the transmitting table, his head resting on it at an unnatural angle, both arms dangling limply towards the ground. The hilt of a knife protruded between his shoulder blades: Reynolds noted, almost subconsciously, that there was no trace of blood: death had been instantaneous. The transmitter itself lay on the floor, a twisted and mangled mass of metal that was obviously smashed beyond repair.
Tentatively, not knowing why he did so, he reached out and touched the dead man on the shoulder: Saunders seemed to stir, his cheek slid along the table and he toppled to one side, falling heavily across the battered remains of the transmitter. Reynolds stooped low over him. Grey parchment now, where a bronzed tan had been, sightless, faded eyes uselessly guarding a mind now flown. Reynolds swore briefly, bitterly, straightened and ran from the hut.
Everyone in the guest hut was asleep, or appeared to be. Reynolds crossed to where Mallory lay, dropped to one knee and shook him roughly by the shoulder. Mallory stirred, opened weary eyes and propped himself up on one elbow. He gave Reynolds a look of unenthusiastic enquiry. ‘Among friends, you said!’ Reynolds’s voice was low, vicious, almost a hissing sound. ‘Safe, you said. Saunders will be all right, you said. You knew, you said, You bloody well knew.’
Mallory said nothing. He sat up abruptly on his palliasse, and the sleep was gone from his eyes. He said: ‘Saunders?’
Reynolds said, ‘I think you’d better come with me.’ In silence the two men left the hut, in silence they crossed the deserted compound and in silence they entered the radio hut. Mallory went no farther in the doorway. For what was probably no more in ten seconds but for what seemed to Reynolds to an unconsciously long time, Mallory stared at the dead man and the smashed transmitter, his eyes bleak, it face registering no emotional reaction. Reynolds mistook the expression, or lack of it, for something else, and could suddenly no longer contain his pent-up fury.
‘Well, aren’t you bloody well going to do something about it instead of standing there all night?’
‘Every dog’s entitled to his one bite,’ Mallory said mildly. ‘But don’t talk to me like that again. Do what, for instance?’
‘Do what?’ Reynolds visibly struggled for self-control. ‘Find the nice gentleman who did this.’
‘Finding him will be very difficult.’ Mallory considered. ‘Impossible, I should say. If the killer came from the camp here, then he’ll have gone to earth in the camp here. If he came from outside, he’ll be a mile away by this time and putting more distance between himself and us every second. Go and wake Andrea and Miller and Groves and tell them to come here. Then go and tell Major Broznik what’s happened.’
‘I’ll tell them what’s happened,’ Reynolds said bitterly. ‘And I’ll also tell them it never would have happened if you’d listened to me. But oh no, you wouldn’t listen, would you?’
‘So you were right and I was wrong. Now do as I ask you.’
Reynolds hesitated, a man obviously on the brink of outright revolt. Suspicion and defiance alternated in the angry face. Then some strange quality in the expression in Mallory’s face tipped the balance for sanity and compliance and he nodded in sullen antagonism, turned and walked away.
Mallory waited until he had rounded the corner of the hut, brought out his torch and started, not very hopefully, to quarter the hard-packed snow outside the door of the radio hut. But almost at once he stopped, stooped, and brought the head of the torch close to the surface of the ground.
It was a very small portion of footprint indeed, only the front half of the sole of a right foot. The pattern showed two V-shaped marks, the leading V with a cleanly-cut break in it. Mallory, moving more quickly now, followed the direction indicated by the pointed toeprint and came across two more similar indentations, faint but unmistakable, before the frozen snow gave way to the frozen earth of the compound, ground so hard as to be incapable of registering any footprints at all. Mallory retraced his steps, carefully erasing all three prints with the toe of his boot and reached the radio hut only seconds before he was joined by Reynolds, Andrea, Miller and Groves. Major Broznik and several of his men joined them soon after.
They searched the interior of the radio hut for clues as to the killer’s identity, but clues there were none. Inch by inch they searched the hard-packed snow surrounding the hut, with the same completely negative results. Reinforced, by this time, by perhaps sixty seventy sleepy-eyed Partisan soldiers, they carried out a simultaneous search of all the buildings and of woods surrounding the encampment: but neither encampment nor the surrounding woods had any secrets to yield.
‘We may as well call it off,’ Mallory said finally.
‘He’s got clean away.’
‘It looks that way,’ Major Broznik agreed. He was deeply troubled and bitterly angry that such a thing should have happened in his encampment. ‘We’d better double the guards for the rest of the night.’