The door had been forced. It swayed slightly in the gentle December breeze, splinters hanging from the area where the lock met the door jamb. Silently I pushed it open with the toe of my shoe and waited in anticipation of gunshots. None came. Just a dead silence broken only by the distant wailing of the siren. Even the birds seemed mute.
The splintered door told me my fears had been correct. Gurung was here and by now he no doubt had McGuire. I ran through the probable sequence of events in my head. Gurung had been at the fair. He’d realised McGuire was being watched – actually, a man like that would have assumed from the outset that the director would be under surveillance. So he’d hatched a plan. Instead of going after McGuire, he’d get the man to come to him. And for that he needed Mrs McGuire. At some point, she and McGuire must have parted company. McGuire’s minders would have kept focus on him and not his wife, and it wouldn’t have taken much for Gurung to isolate her and force her, probably at knifepoint, to do his bidding. He’d have brought her back here, then paid the urchin to deliver his note to McGuire. And McGuire would have felt he had no choice but to comply with whatever Gurung had ordered in that note.
Revolver drawn, I inched my way inside with Surrender-not a step behind. The hallway was unlit, shrouded in shadow, and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I made out the doors to the drawing room and the dining room and the passage that most likely led to the bedrooms.
There were two ways to do this, slowly and methodically, or to go in with guns blazing. It had now been about twenty minutes since McGuire had walked through the admin building and given us all the slip. Assuming Gurung had told him to come here, and that he’d come directly, he would probably have arrived here no more than ten minutes ago. It wasn’t a difficult decision. Ten minutes – it could be a blink of an eye or a lifetime. It was more than long enough to kill a man, yet not much time to pluck his eyes out and ceremonially carve him up. McGuire might already be dead, but there was a chance – a good one – that Gurung was still here.
Instinctively, I made for the first door, the one to the drawing room, kicked it open and dived in. The room was silent but for the ticking of a clock. Behind me, Surrender-not was already heading down the hall and making for the next door. He didn’t have a gun – it took a lot of paperwork and questions asked before a native officer received a replacement – so it was either damn brave of him or remarkably foolish. Gurung could be waiting behind it, ready to welcome him with a chestful of lead. Not that Surrender-not seemed to care. I steeled myself for the sound of gunfire, but once again, none came. Sometimes I didn’t give that boy enough credit. I breathed once more and backed out into the hallway.
‘Empty,’ said Surrender-not.
‘The bedrooms,’ I said. ‘He left Dunlop’s body lying on a bed. Maybe he’s doing the same here?’
We moved fast, through the hallway, to the rear of the house. From somewhere close by came a thud, the sound of furniture toppling over.
‘That one,’ said Surrender-not pointing to a door.
‘Brace yourself,’ I said, taking a deep breath before turning the handle and pushing open the door.
At first the room looked empty. But then, between the bed and the dressing table, Surrender-not spotted the leg of the upturned chair. He ran in and I followed. On the floor, gagged and tied to the chair, lay Mrs McGuire. I helped Surrender-not right it. He untied the gag around her mouth and let it fall to the floor.
‘Are you all right, Mrs McGuire?’ he asked.
The woman seemed to be in shock.
I placed my hands on her shoulders. ‘Mrs McGuire.’
At the sound of my voice she looked up at me and tried to focus.
‘Do you know where your husband is?’
Again, she said nothing, just shook her head.
I left Surrender-not to untie her and headed back into the hall. Frantically, I made my way along it, kicking open every door and, each time, being met with nothing but an empty room.
Behind me came the sound of voices and boots running up the front steps. Major Dawson’s men had arrived. I walked quickly back to the front hall. Soldiers were already searching the rooms off it.
‘Tell me he’s here,’ said the major, red-faced. In different circumstances I might have enjoyed his discomfort, but not now. Not today.
‘We haven’t found him,’ I said. ‘Though the wife was tied up in one of the bedrooms.’
Dawson let fly a string of expletives. ‘How the hell did we lose him?’ he exclaimed, his voice reverberating off the walls.
‘Mrs McGuire can tell us what happened, but my guess is Gurung targeted her. He would have realised that McGuire would be under surveillance, but there was a chance that his wife wouldn’t be. He grabbed her, then sent McGuire a note, forcing him to come back here.’
‘So where are they?’ asked Dawson as his men continued their search.
‘Gone,’ I said.
‘Gone? Gone where?’
‘Who knows?’ I shrugged.
‘Well, they can’t have got far,’ he said. ‘They’re probably still in the cantonment somewhere.’
‘You could try locking down the base,’ I said, ‘but I expect Gurung’s done his homework. He’ll know how to slip in and out of this place without getting caught. Besides, there’s a bloody great river at the foot of the garden. If he had access to a boat, he could be halfway to Calcutta by now.’
Dawson reached into his pocket and fumbled for his pipe. ‘We can’t just wait here and do nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m going to order the complete shutdown of the base and a watch on the river.’
It was the right thing to do, of course, but it was a bit late to be shutting the stable door. Our horse hadn’t just bolted, he’d taken the prize filly with him and was now off to set fire to the farm.
‘Do what you need to,’ I said, ‘but if you really want to avert a catastrophe, cancel the prince’s engagements today.’
Dawson sighed. ‘You know that’s not going to happen. The viceroy’s hands are tied.’
‘Then you’d better pray that Gurung decides that carving up McGuire is vengeance enough for the death of his son. If he could enter a cantonment like Barrackpore with impunity, what chance have we got of stopping him if he decides to murder innocent civilians in the middle of White Town? Not just British. Indians too.’
The major’s face darkened. ‘Let me worry about the British,’ he said. ‘You just focus on keeping the Indians off the street.’