The Redbreast(24)
blanket, and followed Edvard outside. The stars
twinkled above them, but the night sky was
growing paler in the east. Somewhere he could
hear terrible sobbing. Otherwise it was strangely
still.
‘New Dutch recruits,’ Edvard said. ‘They arrived
yesterday and are just back from their first trip to
no man’s land.’
Dale stood in the middle of the trench in an odd
pose, his head tilted to one side and his arms away
from his body. He had tied his scarf round his chin
and his emaciated face with closed eyes in deep
sockets made him look like a beggar.
‘Dale!’ came the sharp command from Edvard.
Dale woke up. ‘Show us.’
Dale led the way. Gudbrand could feel his heart
pumping faster. The cold bit into his cheeks; he
still hadn’t managed to freeze out the warm,
dreamlike feeling he had brought with him from his
bunk. The trench was so narrow that they had to
walk in single file, and he could feel Edvard’s
eyes in his back.
‘Here,’ Dale said, pointing.
The wind whistled a hoarse tune under the rim of
the helmet. On the ammunition boxes was a body
with its limbs splayed stiffly out to the sides. The
snow which had drifted into the trench had left a
thin layer on top of the uniform. Sacking was tied
round the head of the corpse.
‘Fucking hell,’ Dale said. He shook his head and
stamped his feet.
Edvard didn’t say a word. Gudbrand reckoned he
was waiting for him.
‘Why haven’t the corpse-bearers collected him?’
Gudbrand asked finally.
‘They did collect him,’ Edvard said. ‘They were
here yesterday afternoon.’
‘So why did they bring him back?’ Gudbrand
noticed that Edvard was eyeing him.
‘No one on the general staff knows of any orders
to bring him back.’
‘A misunderstanding?’ Gudbrand said. ‘Maybe.’
Edvard flicked a thin, half-smoked cigarette out of
a packet, turned away from the wind and lit it with
a cupped match. He passed it on after a couple of
drags.
‘The men who took him maintain he was put in
one of the mass graves in the Northern Sector.’
‘If that’s true, shouldn’t he be buried?’
Edvard shook his head.
‘They aren’t buried until they’ve been burned.
And they only burn during the day so that the
Russians can’t take advantage of the light. And at
night the new mass graves are open and unguarded.
Someone must have taken Daniel from there.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Dale said again, taking the
cigarette and inhaling greedily.
‘So it’s really true that they burn the bodies,’
Gudbrand said. ‘What for? In this cold?’
‘I know that,’ Dale said. ‘It’s because the ground
is frozen. When the temperature rises in
springtime, the earth pushes bodies upwards.’ He
reluctantly passed on the cigarette. ‘Last winter we
buried Vorpenes a long way behind our lines. In
the spring we stumbled across him again. Well,
what the foxes had left of him at any rate.’
‘The question is,’ Edvard said. ‘How did Daniel
end up here?’
Gudbrand shrugged.
‘You had the last watch, Gudbrand.’ Edvard had
screwed up one eye and turned the cyclops eye on
him. Gudbrand took his time with the cigarette.
Dale coughed.
‘I walked past here four times,’ Gudbrand said,
sending on the cigarette. ‘He wasn’t here then.’
‘You could have gone up to the Northern Sector
during your watch. And there are sledge tracks
over here in the snow.’
‘Could have been left by the corpse-bearers,’
Gudbrand said. ‘The tracks are over the last boot
prints. And you say you walked past here four
times.’
‘Hell, Edvard, I can see it’s Daniel over there
too!’ Gudbrand exploded. ‘Of course someone put
him there, and probably using a sledge. But if
you’re listening to what I’m saying you must be
able to see that someone brought him here after I
passed for the last time.’
Edvard didn’t answer; instead, visibly annoyed,
he ripped the final couple of centimetres of the
cigarette out of Dale’s pursed mouth and stared
disapprovingly at the wet marks on the cigarette
paper. Dale picked the shreds of tobacco off his
tongue and scowled.
‘Why in God’s name would I bother with
something like this?’ Gudbrand asked. ‘And how
could I possibly drag a body from the Northern
Sector over here without being stopped by
patrols?’
‘You could have gone through no man’s land.’
Gudbrand shook his head in disbelief. ‘Do you