'Butler'—Audley was crouching in the shadow at the edge of the plantation—'can you see anything?'
A big dragonfly flew across the bonnet of the lorry, hovered for an instant in a flash of iridescent blue, and then set off fearlessly down the line of vehicles. Butler watched it settle on one of the splintered boxes. His eye came back to the lorry again: its windscreen was bullet-scarred. He beckoned to Audley.
'It's all clear,' he said.
Audley stepped out through the thicket into the sunlight, stared for one long moment at the abandoned vehicles, and then pushed his pistol back into its webbing holster.
Sergeant Winston appeared at his shoulder, wrinkling his nose against the smell. 'Jesus! Looks like someone's been picking off the stragglers, eh?'
Audley looked at him quickly. 'The stragglers? Yes—I see . . . you mean the French Resistance?'
'Can't be anyone else this far south of the river. Our patrols didn't tangle with anyone.' Winston walked towards the lorry, pointing to its pock-marked side. 'That's sure as hell not nice, and it's not point-fives either, so it's not an air strike—those babies punch bigger holes than that. This is small-arms stuff did this.'
'Uh-huh?' Audley had circled warily round to the back of the truck as the American was speaking. He raised his hand towards the bullet-torn canvas flap.
'Hey, hold on, Lieutenant,' Winston cautioned him, grimacing. 'The way it stinks here, maybe what's in there's better left alone, huh?'
'Oh . . . yes.' Audley stared at the flap for a moment, then dropped his hand, wiping the palm against his trousers as though the nearness to the lorry had contaminated it.
They moved on to the truck which had carried the ammunition boxes. It was a bit like a box itself, with an old- fashioned, home-made look about it which reminded Butler of the ancient vehicle which the scouts had hired to transport the troop and its equipment to the Lake District for that last camp before the war.
Winston ran a professional eye over it, shaking his head in wonderment. 'Man—they sure are scraping the bottom of the barrel,' he murmured.
Audley stepped up onto the runningboard and peered into the high, open cab. There was a sudden Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
buzzing sound and a cloud of flies rose into the air—great bloated obscene things the size of young wasps.
Audley shied away from them, jumping back onto the grass with an exclamation of disgust.
'What's the matter?' said Winston quickly.
'Nothing.' Audley blinked and shook his head. 'Just blood.'
'Dried blood . . . four, five days old.' Audley went on shaking his head. 'Just... it just reminded me of s-s- something, that's all.'
Beyond the truck and the shattered boxes lay a big BMW motorcycle. Winston pounced on it eagerly.
'Now this is more like it'—he heaved the machine upright—'aw, shit—the goddamn thing's smashed to hell!' He let it fall back into the grass. 'Front fork's snapped, handlebars twisted—like it ran smack into something.'
'Indeed?' Audley bent over the motorcycle. 'Yes, I think you're right. . . .' He straightened up, staring back the way they had come and then forward at the last vehicle, the civilian car. 'You know there's something funny about this little lot—something decidedly queer . . .'
'Funny?' Winston stared at him.
'Yes. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha.' Audley nodded, studying the line again. 'I thought it was a straightforward ambush when I first saw it—took it for granted. But you know ... it isn't an ambush at all.' He shook his head emphatically. 'These things were all shot up somewhere else, I think—and then they were brought here and dumped.'
Winston frowned, first at Audley, then at the vehicles, then back at Audley again. 'How d'you figure that, Lieutenant?'
Audley pointed at the ground behind the ancient truck. 'See the tyre tracks in the earth there?'
Butler followed the pointing finger. Weighed down by its load, the truck had pressed deeply into the verge where it had left the hard-compacted surface of the track.
'Sure, but—'
Price, Anthony - [David Audley 08] - The '44 Vintage
'The ground was damp when they ran it off the road.' Audley pointed back towards the lorry. 'But that didn't dig into the ground, and it's a lot bigger and heavier than this one. And that isn't the only thing—'
He gestured at the tyre-ruts again. 'See how the grass has sprung up. That's what I first noticed about the lorry: the way the grass and the weeds had recovered. Which means they've both been here for several days, maybe a week or more, as well as being parked at different times.'
Butler shifted his attention to the motorcycle. That, after all, had been what had started Audley's detective process. So the decisive clue must be somehow connected with it, and the best way of proving his own powers of observation was to spot it before Audley had time to reveal it first.
To his joy the clue was obvious.
'But the motorbike's only just been ditched here,' he said eagerly, pointing to the clear line of crushed grass which marked the machine's route from the track to its last resting place. 'And there's no sign that it crashed here, either.'
Audley grinned at him. 'That's exactly it, Corporal—spot on! In fact it can't have been here for more than a day, I'd guess.'
