Free A Study in Murder by Robert Ryan

when his ship struck a
mine en route to Russia some six months later. ‘Or are you in cahoots with Winston again?’
    ‘No, I haven’t seen either Holmes or Churchill since last year when we collared Miss Pillbody.’
    ‘Then I can’t imagine what favour MI5 could do for you, Mrs Gregson.’
    She took a sip of her Sangaree and gave a tired, lopsided smile. Pitt had proved such a disappointment – he hadn’t even managed to get her assigned to the Red Cross in Belgium
– but she had high hopes for Nathan. ‘Oh, you’d be surprised what MI5 could do for me, Robert.’

ELEVEN
    Watson’s German escorts bundled up the body of Sayer and placed it in the cab, so at least he wouldn’t have to look at the poor chap. He had shouted himself hoarse
when he had reached the lorry, yelling in the face of the driver and the young guard. They remained impassive. They repeated the same phrase over and over again. ‘
Er versuchte zu
fliehen.
’
    Watson knew what it meant. He was trying to escape. To flee the scene. That would be the official report. Shot while trying to escape.
    Eventually, tired of his histrionics, they had pushed Watson into the back of the Horch and the truck had set off again, heading north-east on smaller roads now, the sun falling in the sky, the
temperature dropping with each kilometre, or so it seemed to Watson as he shivered in the rear.
    Why had he done it? Why had Von Bork ordered the death of an innocent man? Possibly because some of his own agents had been executed in England. Unfortunate to face trial after the declaration
of war with Germany, two of his men, Hollis and Steiner, had been hanged as spies. Watson, Holmes and even Vernon Kell of the Secret Service Bureau had objected, on the grounds that Great Britain
had agents on the Continent and, if caught, they would now face the same fate. But public opinion – in a country brought up on the jingoist espionage fictions of Le Queux and Erskine
Childers, and egged on by the
Mail
and the
Express
– had demanded the rope for the fifth columnists.
    Watson, though, doubted the murder of his servant was a simple tit-for-tat. No, Sayer was a last-minute addition to the transfer to Harzgrund. But he suspected it was no part of Von Bork’s
plan for Watson to arrive at camp with a friend – for that was what Sayer had been – and an ally. Von Bork had wanted Watson to suffer. And suffer alone, without solace.
    Two can play at that game.
    ‘Yes, they can,’ Watson muttered to himself in reply. But he knew better than to dwell on what might be, on the glimmer that some revenge might be visited on the German. Such a
concept might nurture some people, provide sustenance, but Watson knew it could equally turn corrosive. He had seen first-hand in the trenches how an ancient grudge could lead to a morbid dementia,
a case that ended with yet more deaths out in no man’s land, at least one of which he was responsible for. And now, poor Sayer . . .
    ‘Zigarette?’ asked Gunther, the older guard.
    Watson scowled and uttered an oath at him. The German shrugged, to show it was his loss, and lit up. The smoke drifted over and Watson almost regretted his hasty reaction. But he couldn’t
just flick away the crime that had been committed. It wasn’t water under the bridge, not with Sayer wrapped like a mummy in the front of the truck. It was murder, not war. He would write a
report at the first opportunity. Surely, when this madness was over, there would be a reckoning for such callous actions away from the battlefield?
    One dead man among millions? Do you think they will care? Can anyone afford to care?
    It was flat, unsentimental and it was very likely the truth.
    ‘I will care,’ Watson said out loud, his voice thick with venom. ‘I will damn well care.’
    The pair of guards exchanged glances that showed they thought he had taken leave of his senses. The younger guard said something under his breath and laughed and Watson felt a murderous