At Some Disputed Barricade_ A Novel - Anne Perry [39]
Geddes and Bill Harrison helped Joseph carry Northrup to the table in the first aid post. He would be buried close by, probably tonight. Precious transport had to be kept for the wounded.
He thanked them and Harrison remained behind. “Can I help you, sir? Tidy him up a bit?”
“Thank you,” Joseph said. It was a grim task, but he had done it so often it was almost mechanical now. Such decencies really were for those left alive who would know, a rather pointless exercise in humanity, as if it could make any difference. Northrup was beyond help, and no one else cared. It was a pretense that in the seas of blood each death was somehow important. The whole of the Western Front was strewn with broken bodies; many of them would never be found. He had presided at burials where there was little more to identify than a handful of dog tags.
Still he accepted the offer, and together they straightened his uniform, took off the worst of the mud and washed his face. Northrup looked frightened. There was no resolution or peace in his pinched features.
“Reckon as he saw it coming, don’t you, sir?” Harrison asked with a touch of pity. Perhaps now that Northrup could do no more harm he felt free to treat his weaknesses with humanity.
Joseph looked down at the corpse. He closed the staring eyes. “Yes,” he agreed. “It looks like it.”
“Poor devil,” Harrison said bleakly. “Is there anything else I can do, sir?”
Joseph found his throat dry, his hand trembling a little. “No, thank you. This is just routine. I’ll have to go and tell Colonel Hook, but I’ll make Northrup look a bit better first.”
“Yes, sir.” Harrison saluted and left.
When Joseph was certain he had gone he looked again at Northrup’s face. Even with his eyes closed, the fear was still there, ugly and painfully naked. How long would it be before Harrison realized that Northrup could not possibly have seen the sniper? Any German must have been at least five hundred yards away from where they had found Northrup’s body. Had Northrup simply panicked under fire? Please God that was it!
Please God? Did he think God was listening after all? Joseph had wanted Northrup removed before he killed any more men with his arrogant stupidity, but not this way!
He slid his hand under Northrup’s head and felt the exit wound. The bone was splintered, hair matted with blood and brain. There was no point in trying to wash it off. Simpler to bandage it briefly, decently. Make him look whole.
He took off the tin helmet and washed that clean. He stared at it. There was no scar, no mark on the metal where the bullet had exited. Where was the bullet? Fallen out onto the ground, or inside his clothes?
The answer was obvious but he still resisted it. There must be another explanation.
Deliberately, methodically, he examined the rest of the body. There were no other injuries on him, except for a chafing at the wrists. It was not much more than red marks and a little broken skin, as if he had been firmly tied, but not harshly.
Joseph knew it before he forced himself to accept it. Old memories flooded into his mind of finding another body and bringing it back, and then realizing it was not a casualty of war but murder. That time he had at first assumed a German soldier had held the dead man’s head below the water. This time he knew straightaway it was his own men who had killed Howard Northrup. But now, two years and thousands of deaths later, Joseph would be a great deal more careful what he