No Ordinary Killing Read online

  No Ordinary Killing

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Two

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Part Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Epilogue

  The Eddie Dawson Novels

  Copyright

  No Ordinary Killing

  Jeff Dawson

  In memory of my dear Dad, who gave me my love of history.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Magersfontein, Cape Colony – December 11th, 1899

  Finch had heard that the dead could dance. Strung along the length of the wire, the vanguard of the Black Watch conspired for one final, macabre reel – their loose limbs jerked by the lashing rain and the thud-thud-thud of the artillery shells, which still shook the living to their core.

  Ahead, on the rim of the Boer trench, a Highlander had been ensnared in an upright stance, kilt apron flapping, arms flung up at the moment of heroic sacrifice. The poor bastard’s feet hovered inches off the ground, as if frozen at the start of his heavenly ascent.

  In the pale moonlight, against the interminable rumble, the potshots came – the crack of Mauser accompanied by a heart-stopping zing off the rocks. The marksmen, sensing movement, still sought to thwart the spectral Caledonian advance.

  “Miles, are you there?”

  Finch’s voice broke out of its whisper – a yelp of frustration at the sloth of his accomplice.

  “Miles?”

  The bile, the fear, was acrid in his throat. He hugged the hard African ground, took a handful of the red surface run-off and smeared it on his face, his hands, anything that might catch the light. His heart beat so loudly it tattooed in his ears.

  “Miles,” he hissed, raising himself on his elbows. It was hard to control the tremors.

  He twisted to his left, scanning the terrain behind, the direction from whence they’d come. He was soaked, exhausted, achingly cold. His bloodied knees, protruding through the rips in his britches, were numb to sensation.

  “Miles. Where are—?”

  “Doctor, here. Over here.”

  Finch turned right. Private Miles crept over, dragging the stretcher behind him.

  “Get down! For God’s sake. Get down!”

  The private complied, way too casually.

  Crack-zing. Crack-zing. Crack-zing.

  The shots were coming close.

  Finch cast a sideways glance. The skinny, spotty, adolescent was unfathomably blasé about the death that circled them.

  On the horizon, ten miles away, the blade of the Kimberley arc light stabbed vertically, flashing coded Morse off the scattered clouds. It was broadcasting its defiant message, no doubt – that it held fast, its citizens unbowed. Though the truth, Finch knew, was probably very different.

  “Sir. Any Boojers?”

  “Miles. Shut up.”

  His voice nearly snapped again. He was pretty sure they had found what they were looking for.

  “There,” he said, the wonder being that he’d discovered it at all.

  The doctor propelled his 6ft frame by his forearms, dragging his own body alongside that of the casualty. He rubbed the dirt off the embroidered shoulder badge. The mounted St George of the Northumberland Fusiliers was just discernible. It was the lieutenant they’d been looking for, lying face-up, moaning faintly.

  So sodden and battered, so caked in battlefield grime was he, there was no time for a diagnosis. That he was still breathing, after all these hours, was all that mattered – still wheezing, no rattle yet in the back of his throat.

  The lieutenant saw the canteen attached to Finch’s webbing belt and made a faint gesture. Finch unhooked it. Clumsily he unscrewed the cap. His hand shook so much that it clattered. He pressed it to the wounded man’s lips.

  “Easy, chum,” he soothed. “Small sips.”

  They would have to drag him, pulling the stretcher along like a litter. It would require a big physical effort, keeping low all the way. Their own lines were half a mile back – half a mile over rocks, craters and cadavers. And with Boer bullets pinging at them.

  Finch’s legs were jelly, almost paralysed, like they used to be before the starter’s gun in his days as a youth steeplechaser. Only worse. Much, much worse.

  Finch motioned towards the stretcher, towards Miles. Jesus, did he have to spell everything out?

  Miles pondered, then scraped it along the ground, nonchalant. They took the man between them – Finch’s hands under the armpits, Miles grabbing the legs – and heaved him onto the canvas. He groaned again.

  The increasing boom-boom-boom was stirring the Afrikaners now. Finch could hear murmurs, the shuttle of rifle bolts not 50 yards away.

  According to military convention, artillery fire was a softening-up exercise, prelude to an advance – another pointless advance.

  More visceral than the thunder of a tropical storm, the sheer volume of a barrage could break a spirit as much as a body. But they knew Brother Boojer now. Brother Boojer would simply dig in and bear it.

  Zing, zing, zing.

  They could feel the heat of the bullets, the lead ricocheting around them. The clang of Finch’s canteen was no different to the rattle of the tin cans that the Boers had hung on the tripwires. There would be other Tommies out there, Finch guessed – scouts probing, snipping the wire. The Boers were laying on their customary hospitality.

  “Over there! … Miles. Move it!”

  The stretcher was abandoned as they hauled the casualty off it and into the lee of a fallen cavalry charger – bloated, capsized, its rancid grey entrails spewed across the veld.

  The wap-wap-wap of bullets into the horse’s hide confirmed that they’d been spotted. They pulled themselves in tight. At some point they’d have to make a dash – the sooner the better.

  The beating in Finch’s ears was deafening now, his breathing so fast, so shallow, he thought he would suffocat
e. The top of the carcass was being sheared off. Chunks of putrefied flesh rained down. If the Boers kept this up …

  “Miles. Listen to me.”

  Crack-zing, crack-zing.

  Miles was elsewhere.

  “Miles!”

  “Sir.”

  They were huddled together, knees pulled in under their chins, the wounded lieutenant folded around their shins.

  “Miles!”

  Finch put his palms to the infantryman’s cheeks and yanked his face round. He looked him straight in the eye.

  Crack-zing, crack-zing, crack-zing.

  “We’ve got to get out of here. See there …”

  Thirty yards back, an upturned ox cart.

  “We go. Keep low. Zig-zag. You got that?”

  “Sir.”

  He nodded.

  “And him …”

  Finch patted the lieutenant.

  “… He comes with us. You hear? Absolutely imperative.”

  There was no disguising Miles’ disdain.

  “Orders!” Finch stressed.

  The doctor reached inside his tunic and pulled out a small hip flask. He took a deep, deep breath and steadied his hand. He offered it to Miles.

  “Talisker … Special occasions.”

  Miles wrinkled his brow.

  “Whisky,” Finch spelt out.

  “Don’t like whisky, sir.”

  Finch swigged and passed it over.

  “You do now.”

  Miles complied, then pursed his lips. Finch could feel the boy shaking too. And a smell. He’d voided his bowels. He was scared, human, after all.

  “Don’t make no sense, doc.”

  The flat accent – northern mill town – made him seem lost, alone. His bottom lip was trembling.

  “What?”

  “All this.”

  “Miles. We’re hiding inside a dead horse with a bunch of mad Dutchmen trying to kill us. We’re in Africa in summer and it’s freezing. None of this makes any bloody sense.”

  The private issued a nervous chuckle.

  Crack-zing, crack-zing, crack—

  In an instant, Miles was jolted forward, thrown face down into the dirt.

  “Miles!”

  The soldier moaned and rolled over. He hugged his left shoulder.

  “Fuck, sir.”

  There was pain in his voice. He began hyperventilating.

  “He nicked me. The fucking …”

  Finch hauled him in. He put the flask to Miles’ lips again.

  “This hooch is older than you, Miles. You’ll be cultivating quite a palate.”

  Finch fumbled for his penknife, slit the soldier’s sleeve and did his best, in the dark, to examine his young charge, gently feeling around for the black hole of a wound. There was blood, but, mercifully, no sign of entry – no damage to bone or artery. The slug had just grazed.

  “One to tell the grandchildren about, Miles. You’re a lucky chap. And so is the future Mrs Miles.”

  Miles grimaced.

  “Don’t tell me there’s no sweetheart …”

  He helped the private up into a sitting position, the suffering etched deep into his young face. Finch wrestled his small medical pack over his shoulder and rummaged for a patch of gauze. He motioned for Miles to press it to the wound.

  “Lucy, sir.”

  “Pretty name.”

  The lad was fighting it. He was doing well.

  “And you, sir?”

  He bound the gauze with a length of bandage, deftly ripping it with his teeth and tying off the ends, a handful of dirt applied to darken the white.

  “That would be a long tale, private. Too long to hang about here for.”

  He nodded to Miles to drink again.

  “One for the road, then heave-ho. Think you can manage?”

  Miles passed the whisky back. He wriggled up onto his haunches, trying not to let Finch catch him wince as his weight fell on his wounded arm.

  “On your count, sir. On your count.”

  A remote pop, way on high, changed everything. For a brief moment, time stood still, the battlefield frozen, its combatants rooted to the spot. For just a fleeting second, their world was illuminated – they, themselves, lit up like music hall stars.

  Ahead, so close you could almost touch them, in blinding, eye-straining detail were the bearded features of the Boers ‘neath their floppy bush hats, the bristle of rifles along the lip of their rough-hewn trench, running between the rounded, rubbled kops. Amid both parties lay the mess of corpses.

  Off to the west, Finch saw a knot of crawling infantrymen. He was right. They had not been alone.

  The flare went out; the darkness resumed, pitch black in an instant. And then came the screech and whistle overhead as a volley of shells flew towards their foe, the roar of the howitzers dispatching them riding in sonic delay from some way behind the Front.

  To an almighty din that surpassed all else, so loud that your eyeballs vibrated, the ground warped and buckled and earth was thrown up, great geysers of soil vomited into the air, the gravel showering down.

  Digging deep within himself, Finch scooped up the lieutenant and swung him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.

  Miles couldn’t hear the doctor, but Finch yelled out anyway.

  “Run, damnit. Run!”

  Chapter Two

  The black shape of the field hospital eventually hove into view. Outside, two Indian porters – Hindus, skinny, barefoot – were waiting with a stretcher.

  Finch eased himself over the splintered tailboard.

  “I’m afraid you wouldn’t pass muster at the officers’ mess,” boomed a voice behind him.

  “What the hell, sir? We went out there under a truce,” Finch spluttered. “A medical mission. White flag—”

  Major Cox gave a discreet cough and bade Finch follow, his immaculate brown boots crunching a path across the gravelly dirt.

  The Afrikaner cattle ranch had been stranded the wrong side of the border, a few miles west of the Free State. Requisitioned by the Royal Army Medical Corps, it was serving well in its new guise – modest but solid, preferable to canvas.

  Finch hobbled after his superior, making heavy weather of catching up. From the barn, with its corrugated iron roof, he could hear the lowing – not of beasts but of men, casualties from the afternoon assault, their pain a constant, ambient dirge.

  Cox ducked after the major under a dewy awning. In a jerry-rigged ante-chamber, an adjutant sat at an upturned orange crate, prodding at a battered typewriter in the halo of a hurricane lamp, a Morse tapper set to one side.

  In the outhouse behind it, Cox stooped through a doorway, lit his own lantern and hung it from a hook in the beam of the low ceiling. A worn green baize card table served as his desk. A canvas cot, with regulation blanket neatly folded, ran under the window.

  “Brandy?” he offered.

  Finch shrugged, feigning nonchalance.

  Cox set two enamel mugs on the table all the same and, from somewhere, produced a dusty bottle of Santhagens.

  “Transvaal armagnac.”

  He uncorked it, poured two generous measures, and tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially as to its provenance.

  In one letter home, Finch had recorded his first impression – that on civvy street Cox would have made a slick businessman. He looked the part – the belly, the shining leather, the sleek hair, the oiled moustache.

  Cox was going to make him wait – the theatre of superiority. There were two canvas chairs. Cox took the one behind the desk and gestured for Finch to sit before it.

  There was a low distant rumble, like far-off thunder – the Royal Navy guns wheeled up from the south. The biggest, ‘Joe Chamberlain’, could send a shell five miles, or so they said.

  Cox’s cup vibrated against the bottle, a high-pitched rasp that sounded like a bumble bee.

  “Spent a whole day pounding the hills only to discover the blighters have dug themselves into the ground.”

  “I’m
no strategist, sir, but sending neat squares of men to march at a heavily armed trench in the middle of the day does not appear the most prudent fighting tactic.”

  Some of the Highlanders he’d tended in the field were still clutching lengths of knotted rope, tied off at 6ft intervals, the means by which they could maintain perfect formation, right up to the last.

  “You’re right,” came the touché. “You’re not a strategist.”

  Until recently, medical personnel had not been given leave to dress up in khaki, still less trusted with a corps formed in their honour. That Cox, a cavalryman, had been seconded to oversee a bunch of fey medics seemed a lingering source of resentment.

  “What the hell were the brass thinking, sir? Us, the Boers. We were treating the wounded. Together. They were helping us for God’s sake. Then the bloody artillery start shelling, right in the middle of it. We’re stuck out there. No provisions, no weapons, nothing. Sitting ducks.”

  “It was unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate? I was there for five hours. Shot at for five hours …”

  Finch slumped back. It was hard not to drift away. He ran his hands through his hair. It was thick for a man of 40, at least his Italian barber flattered him. He was in decent shape too, if maybe half a stone for the worse. But he was no soldier. That was for the kids; the obedient, unthinking kids – kids like Miles.

  “The private … Lancashires. I’ll see that he gets commended. And you—”

  “I’m not after a bloody medal.”

  Cox shot Finch a look, then softened.

  “Ingo,” he said. “I’m grateful.”

  There followed a perfunctory raising of mugs, a clink and a silent, savouring sip.

  Finch had never known tiredness like it. It gnawed at the muscles round his eyes and scrambled his thoughts such that the words that slurred out of his mouth did not necessarily correlate to the ones forming in his head.

  “Your casualty … the lieutenant?” asked Cox.

  “Bruised, battered. He’ll be okay.”

  “Did he talk?” Cox added.

  “Talk?”

  “You know, say anything?”

  Laid out on the sacking on the floor of the cart, the lieutenant had groaned periodically, then began muttering in a delirium.

  “A day’s worth of African sun can do terrible things to a man.”

  “Nothing coherent? No names, orders?”