A Bitter Wind, page 1
books by the author
Billy Boyle
The First Wave
Blood Alone
Evil for Evil
Rag and Bone
A Mortal Terror
Death’s Door
A Blind Goddess
The Rest Is Silence
The White Ghost
Blue Madonna
The Devouring
Solemn Graves
When Hell Struck Twelve
The Red Horse
Road of Bones
From the Shadows
Proud Sorrows
The Phantom Patrol
A Bitter Wind
The Refusal Camp: Stories
On Desperate Ground
Souvenir
Shard
Freegift
Published by
Soho Press, Inc.
227 W 17th Street
New York, NY 10011
www.sohopress.com
Copyright © 2025 by James R. Benn
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Benn, James R., author.
Title: A bitter wind / James R. Benn.
Description: New York, NY : Soho Crime, 2025. | Series: Billy Boyle World
War II mystery ; 20
Identifiers: LCCN 2025003393
ISBN 978-1-64129-646-5
eISBN 978-1-64129-647-2
Subjects: LCSH: Boyle, Billy (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | World War,
1939-1945—Fiction. | LCGFT: Detective and mystery fiction. |
Historical fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3602.E6644 B58 2025 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20250204
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025003393
Printed in the United States of America
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Dedicated to
Wesley Grace Countiss and Adalynn James Ross
Our two newest great-grandchildren—cousins born five days apart, August 2024.
Every child begins the world again.
—Henry David Thoreau
There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.
—Arthur Conan Doyle, His Last Bow
Chapter One
Christmas Day, 1944
THE BODY WAS still warm.
Warm, but no pulse, I realized, as I felt his neck right below the jawline. He could have been here three minutes or three hours, but what really concerned me was how much time I had left on this narrow ledge. I was hundreds of feet atop a dazzling white cliff, the frigid English Channel launching waves against the rocks below.
I grasped his collar with one hand and pulled as I struggled to keep a foothold in the crumbling chalk. I dug in my heel, but all that did was send a cascade of pebbles and dirt sliding down the incline before they tumbled over the edge beyond the dead man’s feet. I reached out with my free hand to grasp a tuft of grass sprouting from the white chalk, but it came away and threw me off-balance. I tried to dig my fingers into the soil, but nothing offered a solid grip. I felt the body move. Was this guy still alive?
No. The body was deadweight, and I was holding on to it as it slipped away. I was fighting gravity, and it was a losing battle. Small stones clattered below each time I pulled him toward me. The only thing between us and a hard fall was a few strands of rusting barbed wire.
“Billy!” Diana shouted from above. I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw her greatcoat flung my way. “Grab it!”
The sleeve hem was a foot from my hand. Diana gripped one sleeve with both hands. She was lying prone, so I didn’t have to worry I’d drag her over the edge. I pressed my body hard against the sloping ground and stretched out my arm. The greatcoat was almost in reach. I pulled the body closer, my arm quivering against the weight.
“Let him go!” Diana shouted. It was good advice, but I knew I wouldn’t take it. Couldn’t take it, not with the sticky feel of blood on my hand where I had him by the collar. This wasn’t just a random fall. Someone had knocked this Yank on the head and shoved him over.
It was murder. And that was something I couldn’t let go.
I tried again. I jammed my toes into the crumbling grit and dragged the body a few inches more up the incline as I strained to reach the coat, my muscles taut from the effort.
I grasped the sleeve, clutching the wool serge in the palm of my hand. It gave a little, not much, as Diana held tight against the weight of two bodies. I knew she couldn’t pull me, but if I could get up onto the coat, our weight might be spread out enough to keep the ground from falling out from under us.
I took a deep breath and let go, trying for a few inches higher. It worked. I got my shoulder onto the wool serge, the coarse, solid fabric reassuring. I was sweating even as the cold winds blew up the cliff face, and my heart pounded from the exertion. I took a moment to rest. As soon as I relaxed, I felt the body slip. I had a good grip on his collar, but the slack corpse was letting gravity have its way, and his arms were about to slip out of the leather flight jacket. I didn’t have long before that was all I’d take to the top.
“Come on,” I said to my dead friend through gritted teeth. I did my best to bunch up his collar and hold everything in place as I lunged forward and landed a good grip on the open greatcoat, right in the armhole.
“You okay up there?” I gasped out to Diana.
“Yes! You’re getting closer.”
I made another move. I wrenched the body onto the coat and grabbed for the greatcoat collar, feeling the brass buttons dig into my palms. This would work. The avalanche of stones subsided as I pressed my cheek against the rough wool and sucked in air. It was less than a yard to the top, and this last bit was firm. That’s what had fooled me going down: the first two steps were solid, then things started giving way.
I risked letting go of the coat and took the body by the arm and pulled him higher. I maneuvered his head above mine before I had to hold on to the coat again and stabilize things.
“I can almost reach him,” Diana said. “But I’d have to let go of my coat.”
“Hang on,” I grunted. I moved the body up again, using both hands for a few seconds. Now the corpse blocked my view of Diana, but we were getting closer. “Let go, just for a second.”
“All right,” Diana said. “Now.”
I felt the slack as she let go, but the coat stayed put. She grabbed the body with one hand while I hoisted it up. I pushed, she pulled, and in seconds the dead man’s head and shoulders were safely on flat ground.
Without that added burden, I was able to get up onto my knees and crawl the last few feet as Diana dragged the corpse onto the path.
“My god, that was hard,” Diana said. She knelt next to me as I drew in deep lungfuls of air. She grasped my hand and rolled back my sleeve. “You’re bleeding. Are you hurt?”
“It’s his,” I said, and nodded toward the body. “From the back of his head.”
“This wasn’t an accident, then,” Diana said as she continued to check my wrist to be certain I wasn’t injured. Satisfied, she pulled my sleeve back into place and worked at cleaning the blood off her fingers with a handkerchief.
“Not unless he whacked himself on the head as he jumped down the cliff,” I said. “We need to get the police here.”
“There’s a constable in Capel-le-Ferne,” Diana said, and jammed the handkerchief in her trench coat pocket. “He can call in an inspector from Folkestone and watch the body until he gets here.”
“One of us has to stay,” I said as my eyes rested on the lifeless form I’d dragged up the cliff.
“That would be you, Billy,” Diana said, and looked around. “You need to catch your breath, and I know where to find the constable. Watch out, the killer could still be about.”
“That’s good advice,” I said. “Be careful yourself.”
I smiled and Diana took off down the path at a trot. The jeep was only a half mile away, but I worried that the killer was just as close. I stood up and brushed the dirt off my trousers and Ike jacket. I put on the Mackinaw coat I’d thrown off before I climbed down, grateful for the warmth.
Even so, I shivered as I looked down at the body. A major in the Army Air Force, evidenced by the insignia on his leather flight jacket. I straightened his limbs and tried to give him what dignity I could. I fetched his service cap and placed it under his arm.
It was the cap that had first caught our attention. Diana and I had been strolling along, arm in arm, while enjoying the view of the White Cliffs of Dover along the curving shoreline. She’d recently been posted to RAF Hawkinge, an air base outside of Folkestone, and was lucky enough to get a half day off at Christmas. I’d come down from London and met her at the gate, since I didn’t have permission to enter the base. Lots of hush-hush stuff goin
It was a rare sunny winter’s day, with cold wind blowing in from the Channel. That wind had sent the service cap floating up and swirling on a gust before it dropped at our feet. That took us a couple of steps off the path to where we peered down the crumbling chalk cliff face. We thought the guy had taken a tumble too close to the edge. He’d landed on a narrow ledge above barbed wire coils that had probably been strung during the invasion scares early in the war. He was close enough to the edge that we thought he was in danger of rolling off if he came to and tried to get up. That’s what sent me down what looked like a stable path. True enough for the first two steps, but then the loose, chalky soil gave way, and I skidded like Max West sliding into second at Braves Field back in Boston.
I was lucky the pilot halted my momentum. Deadweight came in handy sometimes.
I studied the guy. About my age and height, maybe a touch shorter. Slim, with a firm jaw now gone slack and hazel eyes fixed on the sky. Brown hair, recently cut. I pushed his lower jaw shut and closed his eyelids. It was as much for me as for him. The stunned look of death is never a pretty sight, and it wasn’t a look I wanted haunting me while I waited alone on this windswept path.
The gleaming cliffs had less appeal than they’d had when we started this stroll, and I found myself thinking like a cop. Which is what my job in civilian life had been. Still was, sort of. I looked around at what now was a crime scene. No bloody blunt instrument lying around. No blood spatters that I could see, and not a single indication of a struggle. The only marks on the ground were from Diana and me dragging the body.
I looked at his hands. No bruised knuckles or defensive wounds. He’d been hit low on the back of his head, slightly to the right. A complete surprise. I took a few steps back and imagined walking with the major. A half step back and I take out my weapon—a lead pipe, a sap, or even a solid rock. One hard whack and he’s over the edge. Did the killer count on the fall finishing the job? Did he hightail it out of here without even looking?
No. The urge to look over the cliff’s edge would have been impossible to resist. What did the assailant think when he saw his victim only a few yards away? Was he too frightened to descend? Possibly. Or too smart, maybe.
Who’s to say it was a man, anyway? Many women are capable of striking such a blow. Especially those like Diana, trained by the Special Operations Executive. But any woman angry enough could crack a skull from behind. Whatever the weapon was, it was likely tossed over the edge to be washed clean by the crashing waves.
I knelt by the body even as I told myself to back off and leave it to the local constabulary. This wasn’t Boston. And I was here on leave, visiting my girlfriend after a grueling investigation in France that involved way too many German tanks. But idle hands and all that, and in a moment, I found myself checking for identification. Nothing in the outer pockets. I unzipped the flight jacket and reached inside, rewarded with the crinkle of paper. I withdrew two sheets, folded into quarters.
The wind flapped the papers as I opened them. I held them tight, which left smudged traces of the dead man’s blood. But that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was the word RESTRICTED at the top of each page. The words “Jackal” and “Jostle” were tossed around like someone knew what they meant. I sure didn’t, and I had no idea what the maze of wiring diagrams were for.
But what I did know was that this information was worth killing for.
Chapter Two
I WALKED UP and down the path to stay warm, keeping the body in sight as I wondered what was holding Diana up. Her pace usually left me gasping, so I knew it hadn’t taken her long to get to the jeep. Maybe the constable was out investigating whatever small-time crime folks got up to around here. The village of Capel-le-Ferne wasn’t exactly teeming with villains and thieves, although the Royal Air Force base at Hawkinge, a mile north, meant that the local pubs would do a brisk business. Which meant the occasional fistfight, especially if any Yank flyboys came calling.
“Is that what happened to you, pal?”
I didn’t expect an answer. I didn’t even have a name for the guy so I could ask him nicely. His field scarf was neatly knotted and tucked into his dark brown wool shirt. Even after being murdered and dragged up a cliff, he still looked like the kind of man who took care of himself. His fingernails were clean and trimmed. Shoes buffed to a sparkle. He had a few gray hairs sprouting around his temples. Maybe he was older than most pilots, or perhaps air combat had aged him. Crow’s-feet spread from the outer corner of each eye, an occupational hazard from squinting into the sun to spot Kraut fighters. As curious as I was, I didn’t want to disturb the crime scene, or him, by rummaging around and pulling out his dog tags.
Besides, it wasn’t my case. I was just here to visit my girl before I headed back to France and whatever job my boss at SHAEF had lined up for me. I’d handled plenty of stiffs back when I was a cop in Boston before the war, and to stumble over a murder victim would’ve cinched it as my investigation. But I was wearing khaki, not blue, so I figured I’d spend my time providing the constable a statement, then give Diana a kiss goodbye at the heavily guarded gate to RAF Hawkinge, and be on my way.
IT WAS ANOTHER nice stroll while it lasted.
I spotted Diana walking with a constable as they rounded a bend a hundred yards away. A man in plain clothes trailed the two. I recognized the stooped walk of a flat-footed detective from my old beat back in Boston. His shabby overcoat flapped in the breeze, and he clutched his brown fedora in one hand. The bobby’s helmet wasn’t going anywhere, but that hat could’ve flown across the Channel and gotten to France before I did.
Diana strode with a grim determination that I knew well. She wasn’t happy about something, but then again, it wasn’t the happiest of occasions. As the two cops drew closer, they didn’t look too cheery either.
“Detective Sergeant Henry Ruxton, Kent County Constabulary,” the plainclothes guy said. He stepped in front of Diana and flashed his warrant card without much care for the narrowness of the path. “You are Captain William Boyle?”
“I am. Watch how close you get to the edge, Detective,” I said. I expected him to look down at the cliff or at the body, but he held his gaze full on me, even as he took a step back. He was tall and lanky, with a jutting jaw and narrow, dark eyes that drifted to my hands, where flakes of dried blood were caked around my fingernails.
“Don’t you worry, Captain, I’m a careful man,” he said as he turned to the constable. As he did, he stared deliberately at Diana’s hands, which also bore traces of dried blood, then flicked a look my way. “This is Constable Thomas Sallow. Miss Seaton arrived at the Capel-le-Ferne station just as I did.”
“Captain Seaton,” Diana said. “As I mentioned.”
“Of course,” Ruxton said. “I’m used to the WAAFs running around here in their blue uniforms, but I don’t see many of your sort. Nurses or something, isn’t it?”
“First Aid Nursing Yeomanry,” Diana said. “As I have also already mentioned. I’ve recently been assigned to RAF Hawkinge.”
Diana’s uniform was brown khaki, like the regular British Army kit. But her beret held a red patch with the FANY insignia affixed. It was a cross within a circle, and to those who paid attention to such things, it was a mark of the undercover work many FANY women did with the Special Operations Executive. Dangerous work in occupied Europe.
“Yes, yes, you drive trucks, that sort of thing,” Ruxton declared. Diana rolled her eyes, evidently deciding it was no use setting things straight, to the extent she could, anyway. “You both have blood on your hands, don’t you?”
“As does the body, Detective,” I said. I pointed to the matted blood partially visible at the back of his head. “Although I’m sure you noticed.”
“Captain Seaton said you pulled him up the cliff,” Constable Sallow said as he stepped close to the edge and peered down. At least he respected the three pips on Diana’s epaulets. Sallow was on the short side and had a few years and pounds on Ruxton. He wore a mustache flecked with white and a serious expression at odds with his boss’s blather.
“Yes,” I said. “We thought he might be unconscious. He was close to the barbed wire and could have fallen off the edge if he came to. It was only when I started to drag him by the collar that I noticed the blood.” I held up my hands, the rusty red on full display. Sallow waved his hand at me and I dropped them.
