On Dangerous Ground

‘Administered an hour ago. I gave it to him myself.’

‘Aye, but she wouldn’t give me a cigarette.’ Jack Tanner opened his eyes. ‘Is that no the terrible thing, Doctor?’

‘Now, Mr Tanner,’ Sister Agnes reproved him gently. ‘You know that’s not allowed.’

Jackson leaned over to check the tube connections and noticed the scar on the right side of the chest. ‘Would that have been a bullet wound?’ he asked.

‘Aye, it was so. Shot in the lung while I was serving in the Highland Light Infantry. That was before Dunkirk in nineteen forty. I’d have died if the Laird hadn’t got me out, and him wounded so bad he lost an eye.’

‘The Laird, you say?’ Jackson was suddenly interested, but Tanner started to cough so harshly that he almost had a convulsion. Jackson grabbed for the oxygen mask. ‘Breathe nice and slowly. That’s it.’ He removed it after a while and Tanner smiled weakly. ‘I’ll be back,’ Jackson told him and went out.

‘You said the daughter lives in Queens?’

‘That’s right, Doctor.’

‘Don’t let’s waste time. Send a cab for her now and put it on my account. I don’t think he’s got long. I’ll go back and sit with him.’

Jackson pulled a chair forward. ‘Now, what were you saying about the Laird?’

‘That was Major Ian Campbell, Military Cross and Bar, the bravest man I ever knew. Laird of Loch Dhu Castle in the Western Highlands of Scotland, as his ancestors had been for centuries before him.’

‘Loch Dhu?’

‘That’s Gaelic. The black loch. To us who grew up there it was always the Place of Dark Waters.’

‘So you knew the Laird as a boy?’

‘We were boys together. Learned to shoot grouse, deer, and the fishing was the best in the world, and then the war came. We’d both served in the reserve before it all started, so we went out to France straightaway.’

‘That must have been exciting stuff?’

‘Nearly the end of us, but afterwards they gave the Laird the staff job working for Mountbatten. You’ve heard of him?’

‘Earl Mountbatten, the one the IRA blew up?’

‘The bastards, and after all he did in the war. He was Supreme Commander in Southeast Asia with the Laird as one of his aides and he took me with him.’

‘That must have been interesting.’

Tanner managed a smile. ‘Isn’t it customary to offer a condemned man a cigarette?’

‘That’s true.’

‘And I am condemned, aren’t I?’

Jackson hesitated then took out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Just as we all are, Mr Tanner.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Tanner said. ‘Give me one of those and I’ll tell you about the Chungking Covenant. All those years ago I gave the Laird my oath, but it doesn’t seem to matter now.’

‘The what?’ Jackson asked.

‘Just one, Doc, it’s a good story.’

Jackson lit a cigarette and held it to Tanner’s lips. The old man inhaled, coughed then inhaled again. ‘Christ, that’s wonderful.’ He lay back. ‘Now, let’s see, when did it all start?’

Tanner lay with his eyes closed, very weak now. ‘What happened after the crash?’ Jackson asked.

The old man opened his eyes. ‘The Laird was hurt bad. The brain, you see. He was in a coma in a Delhi hospital for three months and I stayed with him as his batman. They sent us back to London by sea and by then the end of the war was in sight. He spent months in the brain-damage unit for servicemen at Guy’s Hospital, but he never really recovered and he had burns from the crash as well and almost total loss of memory. He came so close to death early in forty-six that I packed his things and sent them home to Castle Dhu.’

‘And did he die?’

‘Not for another twenty years. Back home we went to the estate. He wandered the place like a child. I tended his every want.’

‘What about family?’

‘Oh, he never married. He was engaged to a lassie who was killed in the London blitz in forty. There was his sister, Lady Rose, although everybody calls her Lady Katherine. Her husband was a baronet killed in the desert campaign. She ran the estate then and still does, though she’s eighty now. She lives in the gate lodge. Sometimes, she rents the big house for the shooting season to rich Yanks or Arabs.’

‘And the Chungking Covenant?’

‘Nothing came of that. Lord Louis and Mao never managed to get together again.’

‘But the fourth copy in the Laird’s Bible; you saved that. Wasn’t it handed over to the authorities?’

‘It stayed where it was in his Bible. The Laird’s affair after all and he not up to telling anyone much of anything.’ He shrugged. ‘And then the years had rolled by and it didn’t seem to matter.’

‘Did Lady Katherine ever come to know of it?’

‘I never told her. I never spoke of it to anyone and he was not capable and, as I said, it didn’t seem to matter any longer.’

‘But you’ve told me?’

Tanner smiled weakly. ‘That’s because you’re a nice boy who talked to me and gave me a cigarette. A long time ago, Chungking in the rain and Mountbatten and your General Stilwell.’

‘And the Bible?’ Jackson asked.

‘Like I told you, I sent all his belongings home when I thought he was going to die.’

‘So the Bible went back to Loch Dhu?’

‘You could say that.’ For some reason Tanner started to laugh and that led to him choking again.

Jackson got the oxygen mask and the door opened and Sister Agnes ushered in a middle-aged couple. ‘Mr and Mrs Grant.’

The woman hurried forward to take Tanner’s hand. He managed a smile, breathing deeply, and she started to talk to him in a low voice and in a language totally unfamiliar to Jackson.

He turned to her husband, a large amiable looking man. ‘It’s Gaelic, Doctor; they always spoke Gaelic together. He was on a visit. His wife died of cancer last year back in Scotland.’

At that moment Tanner stopped breathing. His daughter cried out and Jackson passed her gently to her husband and bent over the patient. After a while he turned to face them. ‘I’m sorry, but he’s gone,’ he said simply.