Free The Bee's Kiss by Barbara Cleverly Page B

was it, sir?’
    Joe was unapologetic. ‘Yes. Couldn’t help noticing you were favouring your left leg . . . when you thought no one was looking. War wound, I take it?’
    ‘It comes and goes, sir.’
    ‘For example it comes when you think you are unobserved and goes when you’re up for a medical?’ Joe enquired with an interested smile.
    Armitage’s eyes glinted and his chin came up in defiance. ‘All right, so you can get me sacked for disability . . .’
    ‘And deception.’ Joe was not prepared to let this go. ‘I remember every recruit has to make a statement about his physical condition as well as prove it in the medical examination. And the three months’ training is no cakewalk. I’m surprised that you managed to pull the wool over so many eyes for so long, Armitage.’
    ‘So am I,’ he admitted. ‘And I can tell you it was bloody painful! But there were some good fellers who knew when to look the other way. Five years ago, the force was desperate for a certain calibre of recruit and in all other ways I fitted the bill. I’ve had no complaints. My record is a good one, you’ll find when you’ve time to check it. Perhaps you already have, sir?’
    Joe was silent for a moment, wondering exactly what he had uncovered and what action he should take.
    ‘There’s a telephone in reception. One call should do it, Captain.’ The voice was icy and resigned.
    The use of his old army rank was the only appeal the man would allow himself, though it was potent in itself, Joe recognized. He was too proud to allude to the many favours he’d done Joe over the months they’d fought together; it was bad form for survivors of the war to mention their experiences even to those who’d shared them. For men of his generation, four years of life – if you could call it that – were edited out of conversation. But not out of memory. Joe remembered the cups of weak tea proffered with a smile and an encouraging quip, the last drops of the sergeant’s rum ration swirling muddily in the bottom of his dixie. ‘Sippers? Naw! Go, on – finish it! You’re the barmy bugger who’s going over the wire. I’ll keep the next ration safe. Be here when you get back, sir.’
    And the life-saving shot of raw spirit was, indeed, there waiting for him but much more. Still fifty yards short of the trench and a grey dawn breaking, he’d been spotted. Rifle bullets cracked around him as he wriggled on elbows and belly, following the intermittent shelter of a tuck in the land. A bullet through his shoulder, exhausted and drained of any will to go on, Captain Sandilands had slumped on to his face on the earth waiting for death.
    ‘Fucking sniper!’ Bill’s voice growled suddenly in his ear. ‘Overdone it this time, though! We got a flash of him when he started having a go. Lads have got him in their sights. Listen! That’ll make him keep his bloody head down – if it’s still on his shoulders! I think we could break for it now. You okay?’ And strong hands had hauled and pushed and rolled him the rest of the way back to shelter.
    ‘Perhaps I’m one of those fellers who know when to look the other way? It’s a skill I learned from a past master of the art in India,’ said Joe.
    They watched in companionable silence as the constable swarmed fearlessly up the fire escape. ‘Tell me, Bill, did you ever stop counting those minutes?’ Joe asked quietly.
    Armitage responded at once to the allusion. Perhaps it had been in his mind also. ‘Funny thing that. The counting had become so engrained I missed it when it all came to a stop. It kept me going. We all had to find our own ways of getting through.’
    Joe was remembering the iron gleam in the sergeant’s eye as he fired a captured enemy machine gun at a row of German infantry emerging from their trench only yards away. They’d been sitting ducks for the raking gun. When, finally, the pitiless racket stopped and no more figures came on towards them through the smoke Joe had