Policemen shouldn’t take naps. I should have known that. After all, the very phrase ‘copper caught napping’, when it appears in a report to one’s superiors, or, God forbid, a newspaper headline is seldom a harbinger of anything save disaster or opprobrium. In this case, the matter would be the worse for being literal.
After my call to Annie, I’d returned to my room and, for want of anything better to do, settled down on the bed for a few minutes’ shut-eye, forty winks which turned into a fair few more. I awoke to a throbbing head and the persistent droning of a ship’s horn out in the bay.
I sat up too quickly, wincing at white pain and closing my eyes in an attempt to lessen the sense that some insane dhol player was going to town on my temples. My mouth tasted like glue. Slowly, I rose from the mattress and made for the sink. Turning on the tap, I cupped a few handfuls of metallic water to my mouth, wiped my hands on my trousers and walked over to the balcony. From the street below came sound of tyres screeching to a halt. There was nothing particularly unusual in that. If road conditions in Bombay were anything like those in Calcutta, drivers would be required to press the brake pedal as firmly as they did the accelerator, just to avoid the bullock carts and bicycles that would plague their route at every turn. But then came the sound of slammed doors and commands issued in crisp military tones. I edged further out onto the balcony, close to the wall to ensure I was hidden in the shade, but far enough to catch a glimpse of what was taking place below.
In the street, two black cars had stopped outside the entrance and disgorged half a dozen men between them. None wore uniforms, but they didn’t need to. I’d seen enough gorillas in suits and fedoras in my time to spot a plain–clothes man a mile off. I watched as several headed for the rear of the building while the other three entered the lobby. There was, I supposed, a chance that they were here on a matter unconnected to Suren and me, but there’d be snow in the streets of Calcutta before I’d take that particular bet.
I checked my watch. It had just gone six. Two hours yet till my rendezvous with Suren. I slipped into my shoes, jerked on my jacket and opened the door. The corridor was clear, but taking the lift or the main stairs was out of the question. I headed instead for the secondary stairwell, the one used by the chambermaids, which I found at the far end of the corridor. Opening the door, I headed in and down, but stopped dead after half a floor. I heard a door below open and slam against a wall, then the ring of boots on stone stairs. I wasn’t going to find an exit that way. Turning, I ran silently back up to the third floor and along the corridor to my room. Once inside, I locked the door. Did I have to run? The most they could charge me with was aiding and abetting a fugitive and even that would prove hard to substantiate. But they would take me into custody and, at the very least, question me for the rest of the evening before putting me on the first transport back to Calcutta. And that would leave Suren stranded in Bombay without any possibility of clearing his name. Sooner or later, Section H would track him down and hand him over to the police and then, ultimately, a hangman’s noose. Well, I had the answer to my question. Running was the only logical course of action.
I made for the balcony just as someone rapped loudly on my door. Gently closing the French windows behind me, I vaulted over the railing that separated my few square feet of terrace with that squared off for the adjoining room and kept going, vaulting over more railings till I reached a metal stairwell. The choice was straightforward: up to the roof or down to the street. The sight of a fedora-covered head in the alley below made the decision for me. I’d take my chances on the roof, and within seconds I was climbing the stairs, two at a time.
At the top, I stopped to catch my breath. How the hell had they tracked me down so quickly? Had Dawson set us up? But then why send us all the way to Bombay? He could have just arrested us both at the airfield in Dum Dum. Had he been compromised? I thought back to the odd noise on the end of the telephone line when I’d called him… or… I stopped in my tracks. There was an even darker possibility. Section H didn’t just want to arrest Suren, they wanted to eliminate him. Making him disappear would be easier a thousand miles away in Bombay than it would in Calcutta, where he had friends.
Shouts from below roused me back to action. I scanned the surroundings for an escape. To my left lay a sheer five-storey drop to the street. To the right, the gap to the neighbouring building was too great a jump for anyone other than a pole vaulter or a madman. On the far side, however, the gap seemed reasonable, or at least not suicidal.
I sprinted forward, sweat sticking the shirt to my back, not just from the heat and exertion but also from the dawning realisation that I’d miscalculated the relative heights of the buildings. The roof of the adjoining block was a good ten feet lower than the one I was racing across. Even if I made the jump, the landing was likely to snap a limb or two. Discretion, as they say, is the better part of a broken leg, and I pulled to a halt just shy of the roof’s edge. Going back was not an option. My pursuers would have gained access to my room by now. It wouldn’t take long for them to check the balcony, and that would lead them to the roof. I knew because that’s what I would do in their place. Down in the gully below, I made out the figure of another plain-clothes officer. The leap to the next building still looked like my only option, no matter how hard the landing.
I scanned the roof opposite. At one end, set back by a foot or so from the edge, was a concrete water tank. It jutted a few feet higher than its surroundings and if I could make the distance, the jump might be feasible without injury.
Over the noise of the traffic in the street, I thought I made out the sound of boots on metal. My time was slipping away. I steeled myself, broke into a run and leapt for my life, landing on the edge of the water tank and losing my balance. Momentum carried me forward, face first onto the concrete. The wind knocked out of me, I lay there summoning my wits and cursing Suren for getting me into this bloody mess in the first place.
Men were now on the hotel roof behind me. I could hear them. In my current position, sprawled atop the water tank, I would still be invisible to them if they remained at the far end of the roof. If and when they came closer, however, they’d be bound to spot me. I pulled myself together, crawled slowly to the side of the tank and dropped down behind it. As long as my pursuers stayed on the roof of the hotel, the water tank’s bulk would hide me from view. If they attempted the leap I’d just made, however, all bets would be off.
I lay there waiting, attuned to any sound, any vibration in the air that suggested the men now on the roof of Watson’s Hotel were considering the jump across. They stood at the threshold for what felt an inordinate length of time, but with every passing second my hopes rose. Eventually the voices died away, replaced by the sound of the traffic below and the cawing of crows above.
I decided to give it a good twenty minutes more before moving. I wasn’t due to meet Suren till eight, assuming he hadn’t already been traced to his guest house and arrested, so there was no need to leave my sanctuary while the men searching for me were still on high alert. Besides, my body still ached from the exertion of the run and the seven-foot drop onto the water tank.
When I did finally haul myself up, the sun had dipped below the horizon leaving only a crimson halo hanging low above the Arabian Sea. I slipped quietly across the roof, then jumped to another building before making my way down a stairwell to the street.
My clothes were caked in cement dust, but in the dark, I presumed no one would notice unless they looked closely, and I didn’t plan on standing still long enough for anyone to manage that.
Maybe it was the sea air, but the backstreets of downtown Bombay seemed less fetid than those of Calcutta, which at this time of year were somewhere between a swamp and a steam bath. I took my time, spending half an hour meandering through the streets and skirting the docks between the hotel and the rendezvous with Suren beside the new arch at Wellington Pier. Even then I was a good twenty minutes early and before long discovered the downside of choosing such a location for a clandestine meeting. The Gateway was situated on the waterfront, and though its grand arch was still not complete, that hadn’t stopped the place becoming a bit of a tourist attraction. At this hour, the promenade beside it was thick with couples taking the evening air and hawkers attempting to sell them all manner of tat, and I was soon accosted, not by a policeman, but by a native with a pencil moustache and two pens clipped officiously to the inside of his shirt pocket. He claimed to be a guide and, for a most reasonable price, would show me all the sights of nocturnal Bombay that a gentleman traveller might wish for.
‘Everything from the hanging gardens,’ he said with a smile, ‘to our city’s famous nauch girls.’
I told him I wasn’t interested, but he merely took that as a challenge to try harder.
‘You are staying at Taj Hotel, sahib? Wonderful hotel. Best hotel in whole world,’ he said with a pride that suggested he might have had a hand in building it. In the end it took a flash of my warrant card to finally persuade him that I wanted neither a tour of the city’s architectural highlights nor its carnal delights but simply to be left in peace. Even then, he gifted me a parting message.
‘Remember, sahib, if you change your mind, I shall be round here only. My name is Mahesh. You ask personally for me. Some of these other buggers are rascals! They charge for moon, then take you all low-class places. With Mahesh only, you are sure of tip-top service.’