Comes the Dark Stranger

He glanced up at her quickly, and his face was completely expressionless. ‘I’m sorry about that, but I’m afraid I’d no choice.’

There was a moment of silence and she frowned. ‘No choice? What on earth are you talking about?’

He got to his feet and moved past her until he was almost standing under the curtain of rain, and his eyes looked out across the garden into the past. ‘I’ve been in an institution for the past six years, Miss Faulkner. They only released me three days ago.’

Her breath hissed sharply between her teeth, and he continued, without turning round. ‘Just after your brother was killed I was wounded myself. Shrapnel in the brain. The Chinese got most of it out, but there was one tiny fragment they couldn’t touch. It gradually induced progressive amnesia. By the time I was repatriated, I couldn’t remember my name. Couldn’t even look after myself properly.’ He shrugged. ‘They put me into an institution. There was nothing else they could do. Any operation was out of the question.’

He was conscious of her hand on his arm, and when he turned, the dark eyes were warm with sympathy. ‘How terrible. But you said they released you a few days ago?’

He nodded briefly. ‘That’s right. I fell downstairs a month ago and sustained severe concussion. Apparently the shrapnel moved. After nearly seven years of living in a fog, I woke up in hospital one morning feeling as good as new.’ He grinned somberly. ‘The only trouble was that it was June 1952 as far as I was concerned. They had to fill me in on quite a few things.’

There was sudden understanding in her voice. ‘I see it all now. The last thing you remember was Simon being killed in the fighting before you were wounded yourself. That’s why you came today. To tell us about it.’

He dropped his cigarette into a puddle of water and watched it fizzle out, a slight frown on his brow. After a while he sighed, and turned and looked directly into her face. ‘You’re right except for one important fact.’

She frowned in puzzlement. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

He leaned back against the window and said calmly, ‘I mean that you’ve got it all wrong, Miss Faulkner. You see, your brother wasn’t killed in action.’

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There was a look of complete astonishment on Laura Faulkner’s face. For a moment she stared blankly at him and then she frowned. ‘I’d prefer to discuss this in complete privacy. I’ve put my father to bed, but he’s perfectly capable of walking in on us at any moment.’

Shane nodded, and she led the way across the room and out into the hall. They passed along a narrow corridor into the kitchen, and she picked up an old raincoat and threw it carelessly over her shoulders.

‘I’m afraid you’re going to get wet again,’ she said, and opened the back door.

The garden fell in several terraces to a low stone wall and a large, wooden hut raised several feet above the ground on stilts. Laura Faulkner ran along the path, her head lowered against the rain, and Shane followed her. They mounted a flight of steps leading to the platform on which the hut was supported, and she opened the door and led the way in.

The far wall of the hut was one great glass window that looked out over a deep valley, through which the river ran towards the town. The view was magnificent. As Shane walked forward there was a menacing growl, and a superb black Dobermann, sprawled across a divan by the window, raised its head and regarded him suspiciously. Laura Faulkner spoke softly to the animal, and threw her raincoat on to a chair.

There were paintings piled untidily in every corner of the room, and a half-finished landscape in oils stood on an easel by the window. Shane lit a cigarette and nodded at the paintings. ‘Do you make a living doing this?’

She laughed lightly. ‘No, this is a hobby more than anything. I’m a free-lance industrial designer. Anything from furniture to materials.’ She pushed the dog to one side and sat down on the divan. ‘But we haven’t come here to discuss how I make a living. You were saying something rather startling about my brother.’

He nodded. ‘What exactly were you told by the War Office when you received news of his death?’

She shrugged. ‘That he’d been killed in action in June 1952. On the Yalu River, I think it was.’

Shane took out his notebook and opened it. ‘Do these four names mean anything to you?’ he said. ‘Adam Crowther, Joe Wilby, Reggie Steele or Charles Graham?’

She shook her head, a slight frown on her forehead. ‘No, I don’t think so. Should they?’

He put the notebook back into his pocket and shrugged. ‘They were all with your brother when he died, and they all happen to live in Burnham.’

She frowned again. ‘But isn’t that rather a coincidence?’

He shook his head. ‘When the Korean war started, the Government asked for volunteers. The day that happened, I was sitting in a small bar in a back-street near the university. That’s where I first met your brother. I’d just been sacked from my job as a copy-writer with a Manchester advertising firm, and I was passing through Burnham on my way to London. Simon and I started buying each other drinks, and by the time that announcement came over the radio we were both half-drunk. He was fed up with his job, and I didn’t have one, so we went down to the recruiting office together.’

‘And they accepted you in that state?’ she said incredulously.

‘Not only us but a dozen more,’ he told her, ‘and all from Burnham. We were drafted into the same infantry regiment.’

‘And you and my brother stuck together all the way through?’

He smiled slightly and unbuttoned his shirt-cuff. When he pulled back his sleeve she saw a green-and-red snake tattooed on his forearm together with the legend: ‘Simon and Martin – friends for life.’

Something suspiciously like laughter appeared in her eyes, and her lips quivered. ‘Wasn’t that rather juvenile?’

He grinned. ‘To tell you the truth we were drunk that time as well. We had shore leave in Singapore. It was the last stop before Korea, so …’ He shrugged. ‘We had to be carried back to the ship. When we came to next morning we had a snake each.’

‘And what happened after that?’ she said.

He shrugged, and lit another cigarette. ‘Nothing important. Just the usual things that happen in a war. The front-line, death and violence. Of course the climate didn’t help. It’s inclined to be cold in Korea during the winter.’

She nodded soberly. ‘I believe so. But how did my brother actually die?’

He ran his fingers through his hair, conscious of a faint ache behind his forehead, and frowned slightly as if remembering was an effort. ‘A big push was scheduled for our sector of the front. Six hours before the attack was to begin I was sent forward with a patrol consisting of Simon and the four men I mentioned earlier. We were to check on the minefields across the river.’

‘And what happened?’

He shrugged. ‘We were ambushed. One moment we were advancing through the night, the next they were swarming all over us. We didn’t fire a shot.’

‘And what did they do with you?’ she said.

He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and leaned back against the wall. ‘There was a small Buddhist temple not far away. It was the headquarters of a Chinese intelligence officer named Colonel Li.’ As he spoke the name, his throat went dry and beads of perspiration sprang to his brow.

She leaned forward in alarm. ‘Are you all right?’

He nodded. ‘I’m fine, just fine.’ He moved past her and stood looking out of the window. ‘Colonel Li was an insignificant-looking little man with thick glasses and a club foot. Somehow he’d got wind that the attack was coming, and he wanted to know when. So he started to work on us.’

Laura Faulkner’s eyes widened. ‘What do you mean – started to work on you?’

He shrugged. ‘I should have thought you would have been reasonably familiar with the mediaeval trappings that go with interrogation of prisoners in this delightfully civilized age we live in.’

Her eyes were shadowed and she nodded soberly. ‘I see. Go on, please, and don’t try to spare my feelings. I’d like to know exactly how it was.’

Shane twisted his mouth into a tight grin. ‘On the first floor of the monastery there was one large room which had previously been the Abbot’s. Colonel Li used it for interrogations. Leading from it was a narrow corridor which contained five cells. The monks used to use them as a penance. He made us strip mother-naked in his office, and then had us locked into the cells. Charles Graham and I shared. The others had one each.’

She seemed to find difficulty in speaking. After a few moments she managed to say, ‘And what happened then?’

He shook his head. ‘We needn’t go into details. He came for us, one by one, that club foot of his sliding along the stone flags of the corridor. He tried for three hours, and nobody would talk. Finally he brought Charles Graham back to my cell and told me he was going to start again, only this time he was laying it on the line. Each man would be asked once to speak. If he refused, he would immediately be taken outside and shot.’

‘He must have been insane,’ she cried in horror.

Shane shook his head and said calmly, ‘No, he wasn’t insane. I don’t even think he derived any conscious pleasure from what he was doing. He was no sadist. That’s what made it worse. He was so unbelievably cold-blooded about the whole thing.’

He took out another cigarette and rolled it between his fingers in an abstracted manner, and she said, ‘And this was how Simon died?’