I took the girls at the brothel downstairs rather by surprise.
‘Is this a raid, Captain sahib?’ The young woman who opened the door smiled. ‘Or are you here for pleasure?’
I knew her as Pia, but that wasn’t her name. She was a pretty girl, probably not much older than seventeen, though you’d be hard pressed to tell from her rather forward manner, and was originally from the hill country up near Nepal. I knew all this because I’d shared the occasional smoke with her on the veranda in front of our building when she was between shifts, so to speak.
‘You know better than that, Pia,’ I said.
‘Then why? You want to speak to Singh-auntie?’
The place was overseen by an affable woman whose husband, Mr Singh, had brought her to Calcutta as a young bride, all the way from her native village near Amritsar in the Punjab. After two months of marriage, he’d promptly fled town, escaping, depending on who you believed, creditors, or the police, or possibly his new wife. A lesser woman might have returned to her village, but that would have entailed a degree of shame which Mrs Singh was unwilling to bear. The facts remain uncertain, but the lady in question had kept his name yet sold his possessions, and her honour, in order to survive. Over time she went from being a working girl to a madam, and indeed a quite successful businesswoman, but at heart, she saw herself as a protector of the young girls who found themselves abandoned in the city or sold into prostitution by families who, one assumed, had fallen into debt.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I just need to use the door to the back courtyard.’
The girl stared up at me. ‘Why you want to go in yard so late?’
‘I’m looking for Suren babu,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t come home.’
‘You think he is in the courtyard?’
I didn’t answer.
She shook her head. ‘For two grown mens you are both always acting like children. Chalo,’ she said and led the way.
The walk to Tiretti Bazar took about forty-five minutes: longer than it should have, but I took the scenic route, sticking to the alleyways, avoiding the military patrols and doubling back on myself to ensure I wasn’t being followed. And all the while I recalled the times I’d walked this route before in the dead of night. Unpleasant, haunting memories: part opium-addled hallucination; part nightmare reality. But that was the past. I’d been clean for a year now, and while it hadn’t been easy, I knew the alternative to be far worse.
The place I was seeking was an opium den housed in the basement of a nondescript dwelling. The place was hardly a secret. Opium was not strictly illegal – not for Calcutta’s Chinese population at any rate – but it didn’t pay to advertise your presence. The police still raided opium dens, ostensibly in search of fugitives or contraband or whatever else was deemed offensive, but actually to remind our friends from the east that this was British territory and that they shouldn’t get too comfortable.
I rapped on the steel door and waited for the spyhole to open, feeling a nervousness I hadn’t experienced for years. To my shock, rather than the grate sliding open, there came the metallic rasp of a door bolt being pulled back and a moment later I was face-to-face with a thin Chinese man dressed in black and who didn’t ask any of the usual questions.
Instead, he beckoned me in as though I were, if not quite a friend, then at least as someone he’d known and tolerated for a decent length of time. I followed him down a flight of stairs to a room that seemed more claustrophobic and less inviting than when I’d been here as an addict. The earthy-sweet scent of opium smoke infused the air and I felt the sweat break out on my neck.
By sparse candlelight, I made out the usual haul of soporific men lying on mats on the floor, each in his own personal nirvana. The man led me past them towards a door at the far end.
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘The VIP room?’
He ignored the comment and instead knocked on the door. Something in the air had changed, I struggled to identify it. It was the smell. The scent of opium smoke was less strong here, and it merged with something else. Was it tobacco? Not cigarette tobacco, but something else, and a rather unusual blend, smoked by only one person I knew.
From behind the door came footsteps and the turning of a handle, but before it opened, I knew who’d be standing there.