We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [40]
“I didn’t know,” Harrison said unhappily. “They’re on guard duty, and they resent it. They’re only slightly injured and they want to be pressing forward with the rest of the regiment.” He gave a slight, rueful smile. “We’ve been telling them to go and kill Germans for the last four years, Chaplain. Some of them hated doing it so much they were almost paralyzed at the thought of deliberately blowing another man’s body to pieces, even if he was German. They look just like us, walk and talk, have homes, parents, pet dogs, things they like to do.”
He was obviously distressed, his disgust running deep, but he refused to evade the issue. “I’ve had to punish men because they couldn’t pull the trigger, and I hated doing it. I’ve seen hundreds of men aim high, on purpose. And I’ve seen those who didn’t, and the nightmares they’ve had afterward.”
He shook his head. “We gave medals to the ones who could do it without flinching. They were ordinary men when they came here, bakers and blacksmiths, bank clerks, farm boys, bus drivers. A lot of them have lost brothers, friends, even parents at home from the bombings.” His voice dropped. “Wives have been unfaithful over the long years alone, sweethearts have found someone else. It hurts. It doesn’t seem fair to punish them now for being what we’ve made them into.” His gray eyes looked steadily into Joseph’s with an honesty that would not flinch or accommodate. “I’ll speak to them, but I’m not going to punish them, sir.”
Joseph admired his loyalty, stubborn though it was, and perhaps technically wrong. He could understand it, and he knew that from Bill Harrison he should even have expected it.
“What if it takes us awhile to find this man?” he asked aloud. “Closed up here like this, these incidents could get worse, especially since he got away with it this time. I know that what someone did to Sarah Price was bestial, but that isn’t the reason for this, it’s the excuse. Next time someone may be critically injured, or even killed. Then we will have to charge whoever did it with murder, because beating to death an injured and unarmed prisoner is murder, Bill. You know it, and so do they. So do the Germans, incidentally.”
Harrison stood very stiffly, shoulders square. “I’ll talk to the men, Chaplain. I won’t let that happen.”
“Good.” Should he trust him? What if the violence did break out again, and this time Schenckendorff were killed? He dare not say anything. The Peacemaker had eyes and ears in all sorts of places, followers who were often good men, idealists whose dreams were more passionate than their understanding of human nature. They killed for another man’s vision, and Joseph could not afford that. They were so close. This was the last hand to play against the Peacemaker, win or lose.
It was not Harrison’s honor he didn’t trust; it was his wisdom, his ability to see evil where he had a right to expect it would not be.
CHAPTER
FOUR
It was Judith’s turn to be questioned by Jacobson. She had known it would come, and tried to prepare herself for it. He was speaking to all the women, asking them where they had been at the time of Sarah’s death and which of the men they could account for. Had anyone seemed troubled recently, or had they noticed anyone behaving peculiarly? It was the obvious thing to do, but Judith was still uncomfortable when she was ordered to enter the tent that had been hastily put up for him. Someone had found a table, two chairs, and a box for him to keep his papers in. There was a duckboard floor, but it was bitterly cold.
Judith went in and closed the flap behind her. She stood to attention, not out of any particular respect, but because it marked her as part of the army and was a tacit statement of unity with the others. He was civilian, even if he was employed by the military police for this specific crime.
“Thank you for coming, Miss Reavley,” he said without expression. He pointed to the wooden chair opposite