Page 13 of No Man's Land

The war dead were accorded much less dignity, Josef reflected. Except that Winchester had covered the face of the dead boy; it had been the first thing Josef had liked about the man.

“Give us a little space to work, please, sir.” The ambulance woman was talking to Winchester, hustling him back a step or two as she lifted the stretcher.

“I say,” said the man in the tall top hat. “Hardly appropriate work for ladies.”

“Oh, don’t be so Victorian, Percy,” Winchester replied, his gaze still fixed on the blanket-covered body.

“All right then, that’s your lot, ladies and gents,” said the policeman once the women had loaded the body into the back of their ambulance.

The crowd began to disperse, but Josef hung back, glad now for the fog, and watched as Winchester and his friends set off along Piccadilly towards the Ritz. Odd that Winchester just happened to be passing when this body had been found.

Odd to the point of incredulity.

Before the mist swallowed them whole, Josef set off after them. He kept his distance, lurking as far as the concealingfog would allow. But when they’d left the policeman and the rest of the onlookers behind, he risked calling out, “Captain Winchester.”

Winchester’s steps faltered, but he didn’t stop. Neither did either of his friends.

“Winchester!” Josef called, louder this time. Too loud not to be heard, but still Winchester didn’t react. “Hey, I’m talking to you, mister!”

After a few more steps, Winchester slowed, paused, and then turned around. He regarded Josef with such blank incomprehension that for a moment Josef wondered whether he’d somehow been mistaken. “Are you addressing me, sir?”

A man could injure himself on the sharp edges of that cut-glass accent.

“You know I am. That body—”

“I say.” The short man—Percy?—stepped forward like an aggressive little spaniel. “Who the devil are you?”

Josef spared him a disparaging glance. “My name’s Shepel. Captain Winchester and I—” he glanced at Alex, “—served together. In Flanders.”

Percy gave a haughty look down the length of his narrow nose. “I don’t know who the devil you think you’re talking to, man, but there’s nobody here of that name. You have the honour of addressing Lord Rafe Beaumont.” When Josef didn’t react, he added, “Brother of the Duke of Chester.”

Well, well. Josef met Winchester’s gaze. “Funny. You look the very spit of the captain.”

Winchester’s expression remained entirely expressionless, save for a slight tightening around his eyes. Perhaps he feared Josef was about to expose the sordid truth of their liaison. “An honest mistake, I’m sure,” he said, and touched the brim of his top hat.

“Good evening,my lord.”

Winchester didn’t answer, giving only the scantest nod acceptable.

Percy turned and began to walk away, the Indian gentleman taking a longer look at Josef before following. Winchester brought up the rear, swinging his cane with an angry swish. Josef watched the fog swallow each one in turn, chilled by more than the dank night.

Stupidly, he felt disappointed.

If he’d imagined meeting Winchester again in London—and, alright, perhaps he had imagined it once or twice—their meeting had involved considerably more warmth and fewer clothes than this chilly encounter. Certainly not a cold dismissal. Or the discovery that the man went by more than one name. But Josef supposed that was no surprise if, as he already suspected, Winchester worked for the Intelligence Corps.

He was mulling over that, and what it might mean that Winchester had shown up at the scene of tonight’s discovery, when the man himself returned. Half lost in the fog, he was little more than a dark shape in the shifting shadows as he said, “It’s a wretched night to be out, Mr Shepel. If I were you, I’d stay safely by the fire. The forecast is shocking.”

With that strange meteorological advice delivered, Winchester turned and disappeared into the night, leaving Josef alone on the street. Alone but fired up, every journalistic instinct alight, as though he’d plugged himself into an electrical socket.

Something fishy was going on. Winchester—or ‘Lord Beaumont’—was in it up to his nutmegs. And Josef was going to find out what the hell ‘it’ was.

It never occurred to him that he might come to wish he didn’t know.

Chapter Five

Contrary to Captain Winchester’s advice, Josef did not go home and sit by the fire. Instead, he hopped on the tube to Westminster, then pegged it over to St Thomas’s Hospital.

He didn’t beat the ambulance, but it was still there when he arrived, idling outside the hospital. An ambulance train must have just arrived at Waterloo Station because a fleet of Red Cross vehicles were pulling up at the hospital—St Thomas’s having hundreds of beds set aside for the wounded—and while the critical patients were being admitted, nobody had time for an old dead vagrant. So the ambulance was waiting.

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