I left Mathilde Rouvel with the promise that I’d be back after I’d spoken to McGuire. I told her to pack a bag and make arrangements to spend the night at a friend’s place somewhere in the cantonment and said I’d return to escort her over personally, not because I was feeling chivalrous but because I wanted to make sure I knew exactly where she was going.
I walked downstairs in a fog, trying to make sense of the contradictions. Rouvel had known Fernandes during the war. She was adamant that Fernandes had been in Barrackpore in 1917 and 1918, and yet the word ‘Rawalpindi’ had triggered something in her; a reaction I couldn’t quite fathom.
I walked out of the building and into the night, passing a native sepoy, a white coat over his uniform, who stood leaning against the wall, smoking a bidi. The smell of the cheap smouldering cheroot leaf was like balm on my synapses and I couldn’t resist stopping to light a cigarette before heading rapidly in the direction of the address for Colonel McGuire which Mathilde Rouvel had provided.
I hadn’t gone two hundred yards when I saw Surrender-not coming out of the gloom towards me.
‘He’s not there,’ said the sergeant.
‘What do you mean, he’s not there?’ I asked. ‘Where is he then?’
‘I don’t know, sir. His batman said the colonel had no plans for the evening, but that he received a telephone call about an hour ago. Fifteen minutes later, a car pulled up outside and he and his wife went off.’
‘I take it he didn’t say where they were going?’
‘No, sir. Nor when they’d be back.’
‘Did you ask him what the colonel’s reaction was to the telephone call?’
‘I did, sir. He said it was none of my business. Should we go back and press him on it?’
‘McGuire’s batman,’ I asked. ‘British or Indian?’
‘Indian.’
I took a pull of my cigarette and thought for a moment. In lieu of anything more useful, part of me was sorely tempted to go and tear a strip off the man, even though he probably had little to tell us. The chance to take out some of my frustrations on someone was hard to resist. But we were on thin ice as it was. Section H had told us to leave well alone. Instead we’d marched straight into the lion’s den – onto a military base, looking to question a colonel – and as I knew from the night before, they didn’t take particularly kindly to my meddling. I’d little doubt that McGuire’s unexpected telephone call and subsequent vanishing act had been orchestrated by them, if not directly, then at least at their behest.
‘Leave it,’ I said finally. ‘I doubt we’ll get anything out of the man.’
Surrender-not nodded. ‘Did you glean much from Miss Rouvel?’
‘A little,’ I said. ‘The name of the dead man in Tangra, for one. Prio Tamang – Nepalese apparently; an assistant to the hospital quartermaster. During the war, though, he was an orderly. According to Rouvel, he acted as liaison with the wounded Gurkhas who were patients here.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Just that Dunlop was running some research experiments here in 1917 and that Nurse Fernandes and Nurse Rouvel were on his staff.’
‘So Fernandes wasn’t in Rawalpindi?’
‘Apparently not. Someone must have falsified the details of her personnel file.’
‘Who?’ he asked. ‘And why go to the trouble of falsifying her service record? She was just a nurse. What is it they’re trying to conceal?’
‘Whatever it is, I think Rouvel knows, but she was too scared to tell me. Seeing as how Colonel McGuire seems to have disappeared for the evening, maybe we should go back and question her again. Come on,’ I said, flicking the cigarette butt into the darkness. I turned and began striding back towards the nurses’ quarters with Surrender-not half a pace behind.
The porter was still at his seat in the lobby. He looked up as we passed and said something to Surrender-not in Bengali. The sergeant froze in his tracks. Then turned and fired back a response. From the inflexion in his voice, I guessed it was a question. The porter hesitated, then replied, and without warning, Surrender-not took off towards the stairs.
‘Come!’ he said. ‘We have to hurry.’
I ran after him. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
‘Miss Rouvel,’ he panted, between breaths. ‘The porter said someone else asked for her room number.’
‘When?’
‘Two minutes ago.’
‘But who?’ I said. ‘No one passed us.’
Then I remembered. The sepoy in the white coat having a smoke outside. It was dark and I’d paid him scant regard, assuming he was some orderly who was billeted in the building. That had been stupid. The chances of a native sepoy being billeted in the same building as a European woman were zero.
We reached the first-floor landing when there came a scream from the floor above.
‘Hell,’ I said, casting a glance at Surrender-not as we ran up the second flight.
Doors were already opening in response to the commotion as we made it to Rouvel’s floor. At the far end, I saw the head of the short nurse in room 7 sticking out into the hallway, angrily sniffing the air like a mongoose searching out danger. She stared at the doorway directly across from her and suddenly let out a scream of her own.
Time slowed to a crawl as we sprinted along the corridor. Behind me, Surrender-not was shouting at the nurses to get back in their rooms and lock their doors.
Suddenly, a man burst out of Rouvel’s room. He was barely five feet tall but carried himself with a purpose and a poise that I realised I’d seen before. Something glinted in his hand – a thick, curved blade. As he turned in my direction, I got a decent look at him, and immediately I had no doubt. The smooth, bronzed, taut skin, the determination in the set of the jaw, the fire in the eyes. The man was a Gurkha.
He saw me and took off in the opposite direction, towards a set of doors at the far end of the corridor.
‘Stop! Police!’ I shouted, as though that had ever worked. Ahead of me, the man reached the doors and burst through. I made it to Nurse Rouvel’s door and peered inside, bracing myself for what I might find. In front of me, Rouvel stood catatonic, rooted to the spot. In her arms she held a suitcase.
‘Are you all right?’
She looked at me, and then through me, her eyes not seeming to register what had happened. I grabbed her.
‘Mathilde.’ Her eyes focused. A spark of recognition.
‘I’m all right.’
In the meantime, Surrender-not had run on in pursuit of the attacker, and suddenly I realised I had another problem. If the man really was a trained Gurkha, then Surrender-not wouldn’t stand a chance against him. Not at close quarters at least, even with a revolver. I’d heard stories of Gurkhas charging through walls of German machine-gun fire before setting to work on their enemies armed with nothing more than their kukri knives. It was said that their blades could cleave a man’s head from his shoulders in one blow.
I turned and ran after him, throwing myself through the doors. The stairwell beyond was in darkness and I groped around, blindly feeling the wall for a light switch as my eyes took their time to adjust. From close by came the sound of footsteps falling rapidly on concrete steps. Then the explosion of a gunshot. I gave up looking for the switch and made for the stairs. From somewhere below came the clang of metal on metal, then a muffled cry.
I reached for my revolver and ran down the first flight, then the second, then stopped dead. In the illumination of the pale light filtering through a window, two bodies were locked together, struggling in the darkness. I raised my gun, then hesitated. There was no clean shot to take.
‘Stop!’
The attacker had his arm around Surrender-not’s throat, in his hand the kukri, the metal of its blade glinting in the half-light. In his other hand he held Surrender-not’s revolver. Slowly he raised it, aiming it at my head.
‘Drop the gun,’ I said, as calmly as one can when one’s heart feels as though it’s about to burst through one’s chest.
I struggled to bring my breathing under control. Surrender-not too looked like he was having trouble breathing. The man stared at me, then shook his head.
‘I don’t want to kill your friend.’ His voice was thick. Nicotinecoated.
‘Then let him go.’
‘And then what? You shoot me?’ His gun was still pointed squarely at my face.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t shoot you if you let him go. On that you have my word.’
‘Your word?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘You are police. Your word means nothing.’
‘I’m ex-army,’ I said, hoping he at least believed in military honour.
‘What regiment?’
’10th Fusiliers.’ That wasn’t strictly true. I’d spent most of the war in military intelligence, but we wore the uniform and insignia of the fusiliers and now wasn’t the time for a clarification.
‘I got no quarrel with you,’ he said. ‘But if you don’t do as I say …’ He tightened his grip around Surrender-not’s neck. ‘Now put down your weapon. Slowly.’
I paused to consider my options and realised I had none.
‘Do it now!’ There was a nervousness to his voice.
‘All right,’ I said. With my arms outstretched, and keeping my eyes on him, I slowly bent down and placed my Webley on the floor in front of me.
‘Kick it over here.’
I straightened and did as he ordered.
‘Good,’ he said, bending over and taking Surrender-not with him. Pocketing the pistol in his hand, he picked up mine, then stood back up.
Suddenly he pushed Surrender-not towards me then bolted down the corridor.
The sergeant came flying forwards. ‘You all right?’ I asked, grabbing him by the shoulders.
‘Yes.’ He nodded, rubbing his throat with his hand.
‘Good. Stay here,’ I said, moving past him into the corridor. The Gurkha had almost reached the lobby at the far end.
I set off after him without any thought as to what I’d do if, by some miracle, I managed to catch him. He’d entered the building armed with a knife and now, thanks to Surrender-not and me, he had a pair of police-issue Webleys as well. On the bright side, if the maniac did end up killing me, it would at least save me the trouble of explaining their loss to Lord Taggart.
By the time I made it to the lobby, the Gurkha had fled through the entrance and down the steps, leaving the startled porter in his wake. I followed him out into the night and gave chase, pursuing him round a corner and into an alley heading, I thought, away from the river, realising that, even as I did so, the gap between us was growing by the second. At the end of the alley he turned another corner and I lost him, but I kept on, my legs leaden. My lungs felt as though they were about to explode. I pulled up, breathless. The street was empty. The Gurkha had disappeared.