Gulmohamed’s train was running late. We knew because we’d promised a platform boy two annas to come to the all-night canteen where we’d taken refuge and give us half an hour’s warning of its arrival. The boy was one of the countless orphans who lived on the railway lines and knew its comings and goings as intimately as any stationmaster, so we were in good hands.
The delay was hardly surprising. We British might have given India its railways, but someone really should have thrown in a timetable to go with it. Too many trains in the country seemed to depart with only the vaguest notion of when they might actually arrive at their destinations. Indeed, the essential requirement for railway travel in India was not a train ticket but a good book that could see you through the interminable delays.
The wait was inconvenient, all the more so given that there was a limit to just how many cups of tea Suren and I could consume in the interim. Still, it gave us time to if not fine-tune our plan, then to at least paper over some of its more gaping holes.
‘And he won’t recognise you?’ I asked.
Suren shrugged. ‘I sincerely hope not. The last time he saw me I was turban-clad and dressed as a coolie. It was merely for half a minute and I believe his attention was focused less on my face and more on the gun in my hand. Not that it matters. This is never going to work.’
He was probably right, but I wasn’t about to say so. Even in his darkest hours, a man needs hope, or failing that, a belief in God.
‘Trust me, it’ll work.’
Suren raised an eyebrow. Behind him, the door opened and the platform boy hurried in, a broad smile on his face.
‘Sahib, train lagabhag aa chukee hai.’
‘How long?’
‘Twenty-five minutes.’
I passed the boy his two annas and looked up at the clock on the wall. 3 a.m. and then some. Gulmohamed’s train would arrive by half past.
I turned to Suren. ‘Let’s go.’
I’d spotted the car beforehand. A black Crossley, parked in a side street lock-up that hadn’t been locked up particularly securely. There should have been a durwan somewhere watching over it, but he was probably taking a nap in one of the garages close by. With the aid of a rock, Suren and I broke the worm-eaten wood around the hinges of one of the garage doors, thus removing any need to worry about the heavy chain and padlock that fastened it to its partner.
The car inside was covered in a decent coating of dust which in England might have suggested it had been off the road for a month but in India signified a hiatus of anything as short as forty-eight hours.
Taking some rags from the footwell, we got to work wiping it down, then gently wheeled it out of its bed, down the street and round a corner to the nearest main road.
There, Suren took up station behind the wheel while I made for the crank handle at the front. It took several arm-wrenching turns before the bloody thing fired finally to life.
‘I am still not confident about this,’ he said, as I took the seat next to him.
‘You have to do it,’ I said. ‘It’ll look odd if I drive. You only need to manage a minute or two till we’re away from the station. I’ll take over from there.’
I’d explained to him the rudiments of driving over several cups of canteen tea. Now it was time to put theory into practice.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘just as we practised, foot down… engage gear… gently off the clutch and onto the accel—’
The car jerked then spluttered to a halt.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s try it again.’
With ten minutes’ practice behind us, and five left to spare before Gulmohamed’s train was due to pull in, Suren had sufficiently mastered first gear to a level where, with the assistance of the gods, he could trundle quite a fair distance without stalling.
‘Good enough,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
I sat in the back while he manoeuvred the car and brought it stuttering to a halt at the station’s taxi rank. Ahead of us, two other cars were parked up – real taxis, I presumed – with their drivers dozing in their cabs.
From here, the main entrance to the station was clearly visible. Of course there were other exits, but from what I’d read in the press, Farid Gulmohamed didn’t strike me as the sort of man who used side exits. With luck, he’d come out of the station, with or without an armed guard, and get into a car which we’d follow until he reached his home. And while his escort might stay with him tonight, it’d be that much easier to get to him later, once we knew where he lived.
I scanned the steps and the area around the entrance. Save for a couple of sari-clad cleaner-women with their dried-grass brooms and a railwayman having a smoke, the place was devoid of life. If there were any Section H or police operatives in the area, they were either inside the station or remarkably well hidden.
As we sat there, a rotund chap in a white shirt and a Congress cap emerged from a small wooden hut near the front of the rank.
‘Taxi marshal,’ said Suren.
The man walked to the lead car in the rank, bent over to have a word with the driver, then straightened up and noticed our little Crossley parked at the end. He began to walk over, his expression suggesting he knew we weren’t one of his regular cabs and that illicit parking in his rank might constitute a cardinal sin.
He marched over to Suren’s window, demanding to see his credentials.
‘Permit, dikhao!’
While Suren tried to placate the man in what even I could tell was garbled Hindustani, I spotted Gulmohamed exiting the station. From his photographs in the paper, I’d expected him to be taller. Beside him strode a policeman. Not an inspector or even a sergeant, but a regular beat constable.
‘Suren,’ I said, tapping him on the shoulder, but he was too busy remonstrating with the taxi marshal to notice. We didn’t have time for that, so I stuck my head forward and the little man in the Congress cap stepped back in shock.
The sight of a white face had the same effect it always does on a certain type of Indian. He seemed suddenly lost for words, the wind blown out of his sails, and when he did relocate his tongue, his tone was far more measured.
‘Tell him we won’t be here much longer,’ I said to Suren. ‘A minute or two at most.’
‘What?’
I gestured out of the window with a nod. ‘There’s our man.’
Gulmohamed had left the constable on the station steps and was even now walking towards the taxi rank.
The taxi marshal too noticed his approach and was straightening up.
‘Stop him,’ I said to Suren.
He turned in his seat. ‘The marshal?’
‘Quickly,’ I said. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
‘Bhai saahb!’ shouted Suren. ‘Ek minute.’
I took out my warrant card and shoved it at the sergeant.
‘Show him that. Tell him you’re on police business and that you’re going to pick up that fare.’
Suren did as ordered and for an instant it seemed the fat marshal was about to protest. But any such thoughts were quickly staunched as I stepped out of the car with my revolver in my hand. The man got the message, then scuttled off to tell the lead taxi-wallah that he would have to wait a while longer for a customer.
I turned to Suren. ‘Pick up Gulmohamed. Ask him where he wants to go, then drive round the corner. I’ll be waiting there.’
‘What?’ he said in shock.
‘Just do it.’
With a grinding crunch of gears, Suren set off towards the front of the rank where the marshal waived him forward as though he were landing an aircraft. Gulmohamed reached the rank and began to chat to the man, no doubt negotiating the fare. The lack of police presence puzzled me. If they were letting him go home unaccompanied, it suggested that the men who had pitched up at my hotel earlier were not the same people in charge of Gulmohamed’s security, or at least they hadn’t been informed that he was the reason why Suren and I had come to Bombay. That bolstered my growing belief that Dawson hadn’t sold us out, but rather that his phone had been tapped.
I assumed that those who’d tapped Dawson’s line were his colleagues in Section H, as the idea that the police could tap his phone without him getting wind of it was laughable. Lal Bazar leaked like a colander and Dawson probably knew as much of what went on in the building as the Commissioner himself. Those responsible for Gulmohamed’s safety, however, would have been police. The authorities in Calcutta would have been alarmed by the Hindu—Muslim rioting and made sure that such a high-profile leader was safely escorted out of the city. Once out of Bengal, he was no longer their problem, and in Bombay, still thankfully free from the violence, the local authorities must have considered the only precaution necessary was for a constable to meet him at the station. There was of course another possibility: that even now Section H did indeed have him under surveillance, and that I’d just failed to spot their agents. If so, Suren and I might be driving straight into a trap. With a sudden dread, I watched Gulmohamed get into the back of Suren’s taxi. If this was a trap, we’d find out soon enough.