Read Chapter 9: The Missing Signalman

The knock came at oh-six-hundred, sharp and insistent, the kind of knock that meant bad news had dressed itself in a hurry. Hartley was already awake, staring at the cracked ceiling of his quarters with the matchbook from Café Adler balanced on his chest. He hadn't touched it. Two days gone, one left, and he still didn't know if Brandt was a rope or a noose.

He swung his legs out of bed and opened the door. Corporal Mason stood there, pale as the fog outside, holding his cap in both hands like an offering.

"Sir. It's Hayes. Signalman Hayes." Mason's voice cracked. "He's dead, sir. In his quarters. Looks like—" Mason swallowed. "Looks like he hanged himself."

Hartley was already reaching for his coat.

Hayes' quarters were a narrow converted storeroom off the signal bay, the kind of billet that got assigned to the men nobody wanted to think about. The door was ajar. Two men stood outside, faces blank with the particular numbness that follows a shock. Hartley pushed past them.

The room was small and neat, the way a disciplined man keeps his space when he has nothing else to control. A single chair lay on its side in the center of the room. A length of signal cable ran from the ceiling pipe to a belt loop, now slack. Hayes hung there, head angled wrong, face the color of cold porridge.

No. Wait.

Hartley stepped closer. The body was already down—someone had cut him loose and laid him flat on the floor. That was procedure. But the neck—

The ligature mark was a clean band across the throat. But Hartley had seen hangings before. One in Trieste, a deserter who'd done it properly. The mark sat higher, closer to the jaw. And the eyes—

Hartley crouched, careful not to touch. The bruise was faint, almost lost in the mottled discoloration of death. But it was there. Two small ovals at the front of the throat, just below the Adam's apple. The kind of bruise you got from fingertips, not rope.

He looked up at Mason, who hovered in the doorway like a man afraid of the room itself.

"Who found him?"

"Signalman Price. He came on early to relieve Hayes from the night watch."

"Where's Price now?"

"Being questioned, sir. Commander Morrison's got the orderly room set up."

Hartley stood. His knees cracked. He kept his voice low, so the men outside couldn't hear. "Mason. The diary."

Mason blinked. "Sir?"

"Hayes kept a diary. Every watch, every night, he wrote in it. Small black notebook. He showed it to me once—said he kept a log of his own, separate from the official books." Hartley scanned the room. The desk was bare. The drawer was open, empty. He'd checked it himself when Hayes first joined the team, noting the man's obsessive record-keeping and deciding it was harmless. "It's gone."

Mason's eyes went wide. "Sir, you can't think—"

"I don't think. I look." Hartley moved to the corner, where a mess tin sat by the washstand, half-full of water. The water was still. He looked at it for a long moment, then at Hayes' neck again.

A man who's hanged himself doesn't get finger-bruises on his throat.

"Get me the medical officer. Quietly. And don't let anyone else into this room. Not Morrison, not Finch, not the provost when they arrive. Understood?"

Mason nodded, mouth working. He turned and hurried off.

Hartley crouched again. He'd known Hayes. Quiet man, competent, kept to himself. Night duty was a punishment detail more than anything—men who couldn't fit into the day rotation, or who needed to be watched. Hayes had been neither. He'd asked for night duty, said the dark helped him concentrate. Hartley had thought nothing of it.

Now he thought of the fuse that blew three nights ago. The one that put Hayes on night watch in the first place, on the rotation nobody wanted to check.

And he thought of Brandt's parting words. *Ask yourself why Cole wasn't there when you interviewed Whitaker.*

Cole. Sergeant Cole, his most dependable NCO. The man who assigned the watch rotations. The man who'd told him Hayes requested night duty.

Hartley's jaw tightened. He'd spent the last three days looking for a spy. It had never occurred to him that the spy would be looking back.

He scanned the room one more time. The cot was made with military precision. The Bible on the shelf was a standard-issue King James, and Hartley flipped it open without thinking. Page one hundred and three was dog-eared. Psalm 34. *The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart.*

Hayes had attended services every Sunday. He'd never missed a single one. The chaplain had mentioned it once, in passing, as evidence of the man's quiet faith.

Hartley put the Bible back. If Hayes was broken-hearted, it was because he'd been carrying something heavy. Something he couldn't put down.

The diary would have told him what that was. But the diary was gone, and the man who'd taken it was still walking around in this tunnel, in this compound, breathing the same filtered air as the rest of them.

Hartley stood and walked to the door. The two men outside snapped to attention. He ignored them. He walked down the passage toward the orderly room, his boots echoing off the damp concrete walls. The tunnel mouth yawned at the end of the corridor, black and hungry.

Morrison was standing in the doorway of the orderly room, already dressed, his face a mask of practiced concern. He was the senior officer. The man in charge. The man whose channels Hartley no longer trusted.

"Will," Morrison said. "You heard."

"Hayes." Hartley stopped in front of him. "On night watch when the fuse blew."

Morrison's eyes narrowed slightly. "We'll get to that. First, we need to contain this. Man's dead—looks like suicide, and I don't need that kind of morale problem in a hole in the ground. I'm ordering an investigation." He paused. "You should have secured the tunnel better, Will. Man under that kind of pressure, unsupervised watch, it's a recipe for this."

Hartley let the accusation sit in the air between them. Morrison was quick to blame, quicker than he'd ever been before. As if he wanted to shape the narrative before anyone else could.

"When did you last speak to Hayes?"

"Me?" Morrison's face flickered. "Days ago. I don't watch the night roster. Cole handles that."

Cole.

Hartley nodded slowly. "I'll need to speak to him. Hayes' duties, his last few days."

"Fine. But get it done quickly. Finch is due back from the meeting this morning, and I want—"

"Finch is in London?"

Morrison blinked. "He was called back. Late last night. Didn't he tell you? I assumed—well, never mind. He's gone."

Gone. Finch had been the other man briefed on the decoy. Hartley had spent the last two days watching him, waiting for a tell that never came. And now Finch was gone, back to London, no explanation, no handover.

He could feel the room closing in around him. The mole wasn't outside. The mole wasn't a single man. It was a web, and Hayes had been a strand in it—and someone had cut him loose.

He turned and walked back toward the tunnel without another word. There was one man left to interview, and Hartley was done asking questions gently.