By the time Watson returned from the barracks the snow had stopped, the clouds had thinned and a low sun, its glow muted by a haze, had appeared. Watson was out of the car, flanked by Hersch and Von Bork. He had shaved, bathed and been given a change of clothes, but it all felt very superficial. He required a far deeper cleansing after what he had witnessed at the camp. The activities of Lincoln-Chance, Father Hardie, Feldwebel Brünning and young Harry Kemp had mined the depths of depravity. He was certain he was right about the boy. He had deduced the lad was a spy, sent to keep an eye on him, but not that he was most likely a ringleader. That had come to him only when he had been half delirious with exhaustion in the car.
‘Shall we?’ asked Von Bork.
Watson surveyed the scene before him. Beyond the wire border fence, the bridge was slowly cranking into its closed configuration. The cameramen had taken up position near to where the moving span would eventually touch the German bank. The cameras – two of them – were pointing in his direction, their operators’ hands on the handles, ready to start cranking when he began the long slow walk towards his freedom. Other film men were clustered around them, one with a megaphone, others holding stalks with lights on them, although he suspected the newly arrived sun made them unnecessary.
Von Bork consulted his watch and then peered across the river, apparently unhappy with what he could see.
‘I do hope this isn’t a waste of time,’ said Hersch.
‘He’ll be here,’ said Von Bork with as much confidence as he could muster. ‘Let’s go to greet the bridge when it completes its journey.’
He placed a hand in Watson’s back and the three of them moved forward, followed a few yards behind by four border guards, each with a Mauser rifle at the ready. A larger contingent of troops was deployed around the striped pole that marked the border, some four hundred yards from the riverbank. On either side of the pole and its hut the frontier fence began, stretching off over what had once been Dutch soil. The two Germans and their escort walked through the gap in the fence where the pole lay in its cradle, and carried on down the gently sloping no man’s land to the bridge and the cameramen, who had now begun to turn their handles with an even, steady motion.
Watson, too, now scoured the crossing at the Dutch side of the river. But he could see no sign of his old friend. There was a car drawn up and, emerging from it, a man and . . . a woman.
The moment of identification caused him to stop in his tracks and both Hersch and Von Bork had taken a few strides before they noticed that they had outpaced their ‘parcel’. ‘What is it?’ asked Von Bork. ‘Watson?’
He could see that flame-coloured hair flying like a red flag as she reached up and removed her headdress. The sight of her caused palpitations in his chest, generating a touch of vertigo as his heart faltered.
Watson quickly decided it was best not to give anything away to the Germans, to show no potential weakness. ‘I simply . . . can’t quite believe I am so close to going home.’
‘Well, you are,’ said Von Bork. ‘Although from what I heard from Kügel, it was a close-run thing.’
Watson nodded. ‘My own people nearly got me.’
‘How ironic would that have been?’ asked Hersch.
‘Yes. I’m wondering how I’m keeping my sides from splitting.’
‘Come along,’ said Von Bork. ‘We have a rendezvous.’
Watson walked slowly to catch them up. ‘He won’t come, you know.’
‘Who?’ Hersch asked.
‘The man you hope to swap me for.’
‘Ah. You have managed to work it out, have you? I think you underestimate his affection for you, Dr Watson,’ said Von Bork. The ‘doctor’ was stressed, to remind him of days before the war, of the bond Watson and Holmes had once shared. As if he needed any help with that. It was burned into his very being. Even when they were apart, Holmes was an integral part of his thought processes. That, he now fully appreciated, was what the voice in his head was. The little part of him that would always be Holmes, that would always try to think like Holmes. So not, in one sense, an imposter at all, just a gift from a friend.
It was Hersch’s turn to put a hand on his back to propel him forward. ‘We’ll soon see, won’t we?’
‘He won’t come,’ repeated Watson.
At least, not in any way you’ll be expecting.
Moments earlier, Mrs Gregson had opened the door of the car, stepped out into the sunshine that was busy melting the snow. Now Nathan had emerged and was moving around the bonnet towards her. ‘You have your pistol to hand, Robert?’ she asked him.
He tapped the pocket of his coat, feeling the weight of the Webley as it shifted. ‘Of course.’
‘And you know what to do if need be?’
‘I do. Just a flesh wound.’
‘Just a flesh wound,’ she repeated, although she was well aware that a bullet in any part of the body had serious consequences. Especially for an older man like Sherlock Holmes.
She exited and stood for a moment, looking at the bridge and its operator as moving metalwork swung the last few yards to its resting place.
Across the bank on German soil she could see dozens of people, both civilians and soldiers, but there was only her and Nathan to represent the Allies, and the bridge operator for the Dutch, along with a few of his fellow countrymen some way down the bank who had come out from the café to watch the proceedings. So little happened hereabouts she would imagine that the swing bridge closing was a big event.
She moved across the snow-speckled ground, scanning up and down the river in case she had missed something, but this was a peculiarly featureless stretch of countryside, the only building of note a black tower some distance to her right, and that appeared to be situated on the German side of the water.
As she reached the threshold of the bridge, where the heavy wooden planks began, she pulled off her headdress and shook her hair free. The red cascade of loose curls was her signature, the one thing she could be sure Watson would recognize from across the span of the crossing.
Was that him? There was a man over there, flanked by two Germans in shiny leather greatcoats and senior officers’ caps. Behind them, a quartet of riflemen. That must be Watson, although he seemed diminished, but then he would be, after his ordeal. Tentatively, she raised a hand, hoping for a signal of recognition back. The man’s arms remained at his side.
‘Wait here. I have to secure the bolts.’
It was the bridge controller who had spoken, coming past her at a walk that was almost a run. As he went the strides seemed to lengthen with the urgency of his task, and the man who had seemed hunched into his working man’s jacket appeared to add an inch or two to his height. And he had spoken in English.
No, it couldn’t be.
‘Holmes!’ she hissed. ‘Holmes, wait.’
The man looked over his shoulder, just a glance, but those piercing grey eyes told her she was right. He broke into a faster pace but she was after him.
Target moving.
She could sense the consternation at the other end of the crossing. One of the German officers had taken a step onto the as-yet-unsecured bridge, which oscillated under his weight. He, too, had perhaps appreciated that Holmes had been in plain sight this whole time.
‘Sherlock, wait, please,’ she pleaded.
‘Stay out of this, Mrs Gregson,’ he growled. ‘I know what I am doing.’
‘I am glad one of us does. Wait, damn you!’
Target in crosshairs. Trigger tensioned. Wind zero.
Younger and fitter than Holmes, and driven by a deep desperation, she reached him before he was halfway across.
‘Mr Holmes—’
He pushed her away and she turned back to Nathan. ‘Robert. What are you doing? Shoot him! Shoot his legs!’
But Nathan stood rooted to the spot next to the car, his pistol still in his pocket, as if frozen into inaction.
Take the shot.
The crack of a high-powered rifle echoed over the flat landscape, the sound reaching those around the bridge some moments after its bullet penetrated the flesh of the upper arm, found the collar bone and was deflected downwards, severing the pulmonary artery as it went, ploughing through soft lung tissue until it nicked the aorta, causing the chest cavity to fill with blood, before it punched its way out between the ribs, leaving its victim to crumple down onto the wooden surface of the bridge.
A volley of shots followed from several directions, the bridge’s metalwork sparking and flashing with the ricochets. Most of the onlookers, feeling the air about them snap and crackle, flung themselves down to the ground but two witnesses to the assassination, one from either end of the bridge, broke into a sprint.
In that moment, few noticed that the waters of the Meuse next to the German bank had started to bubble and boil as a glistening black shape emerged from its muddy resting place.
The two figures collided close to the centre. There was a brief tussle and the pair of them pitched sideways. Their balance gone, Holmes and Watson fell through a gap in the iron latticework of the bridge and, still intertwined in a desperate embrace, plunged into the icy waters of the river below.