We reconvened in the dining room, getting back to work only after we’d requested, received and polished off breakfast. Suren, bless him, was always maudlin on an empty stomach.
The maid cleared away the plates and he spread the papers pilfered from Irani’s office over the dining table. The flyers he all but ignored, concentrating on the few pages of what we assumed were financial transactions.
‘This would be easier if we knew the context.’
‘We can guess,’ I said. ‘An Armenian soldier, in less than stable mental health, is kicked out of the army for murder. He’s all but broke, gets involved in certain unsavoury activities and is in and out of prison. Then he disappears from Rangoon and turns up in Bombay as Irani, claiming to be a businessman, staying at a luxury hotel and splashing cash like it’s going out of fashion. A man whose only real skill seems to be killing people suddenly finds himself in demand.’
Suren stared. ‘What are you suggesting?’
‘I’ve slept on it,’ I said, ‘and I’m convinced. A politician such as Gulmohamed likely has some shady friends in the underworld. Say one of his contacts mentions Atchabahian, a man with no money and no love of Hindus, sitting out in Rangoon. Gulmohamed gets in touch, brings him to Bombay, smartens him up and installs him at the Taj as Irani, and then pays him to do his dirty work.’
‘Including murder?’
‘You saw him with Gulmohamed on the day Mukherjee was murdered. Maybe they’re planning to destabilise the other parties prior to the elections next month? They murder a prominent Hindu – but no one too important of course – knowing that the Shiva Sabha will react with riots and anti-Muslim violence, which in turn will solidify the Muslim vote behind them. When Gulmohamed told us he didn’t kill Mukherjee, maybe he was simply telling the technical truth. He didn’t kill him. He just got Irani to do it.’
I could see the cogs turning as Suren pondered the premise.
‘If he’s Armenian, what’s he doing helping the Muslims? I thought there was no love lost between them after what the Turks did to them during the war.’
That was a fair point, and one which I hadn’t considered. Yet I questioned its relevance.
‘As far as we know, the man grew up in Burma. He might be Armenian by background, but I’m not certain that means a whole lot.’
Behind us the door creaked open. Miss Colah entered, draped in a blue silk robe.
‘Good morning, gentlemen.’ She sounded hoarse from the night before. ‘You’re up early.’
The maid approached and Ooravis rattled off an order for breakfast, then came to the table and pulled out a seat.
‘Hard at work already, Suren?’
‘Just trying to make sense of these papers.’
Ooravis gave the sheets the most cursory of glances, then turned to me.
‘Well, Mr Detective? What do you plan to do now?’
It was a good question.
‘Suren can keep working on these documents,’ I said. ‘Meanwhile I’ve got a suspect to track down.’
She arched an eyebrow.
‘Really? Anyone I know?’
‘I doubt it. Someone called Haji Ali. I think he works for the Union of Islam.’
Miss Colah looked at me and laughed.
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘We found his name and a telephone number among Irani’s papers,’ I said. ‘The number is registered to the headquarters of the Union of Islam.’
Colah shook her head. ‘The number might be registered to the Union, but I doubt it’s the number for someone called Haji Ali.’
‘Why?’ asked Suren.
‘Because Haji Ali isn’t a person, at least not any more. He’s been dead for about five hundred years. These days he’s a place. A mosque to be precise. Out on a causeway near Worli.’
Suren shrugged. ‘Maybe that’s where he and Gulmohamed meet?’
‘Or met,’ I said. ‘We’ve no idea of a date.’
‘It’s today,’ said Ooravis Colah.
We both looked at her.
‘It stands to reason,’ she continued. ‘It’s Friday. Gulmohamed will be going to Friday prayers at the mosque. The area around it is always packed at that time. If you want to meet someone in a crowd, that’s where and when to do it.’
‘You should have been a detective,’ I said.
‘Maybe,’ she said, then gestured to Suren, ‘though looking at the predicament Suren finds himself in, maybe being a detective while being Indian isn’t such a good idea.’
I left Suren with his numbers and once more borrowed Miss Colah’s car and chauffeur. The man seemed rather bemused by my request to go to Haji Ali, but any doubts he may have had, he kept to himself.
I wasn’t sure exactly what I hoped to achieve, but if I could intercept Gulmohamed handing cash over to the man calling himself Irani, maybe that would be enough to arrest the pair of them. Granted, there was the fact that I had no proof of anything, but that was the great thing about our laws. If you had the merest suspicion that an Indian had committed a crime, you could simply arrest him and come up with a rationale later. I figured that once they were both in custody, it’d only be a matter of time before Suren deciphered Irani’s coded notes or one of them cracked.
There was, of course, the small detail that I had absolutely no authority to arrest anyone in Bombay, but if Dawson was right and Gulmohamed wasn’t a Section H operative, then I hoped a call to the spymaster in Calcutta would help smooth the way and provide me with the clout I needed. I should have called him already that morning, but in my haste to get to Haji Ali, it had slipped my mind.
The journey was slow, the car waylaid by a mass of thousands of Mohammedans all heading for the mosque. It was still far too early for Friday prayers, and I wondered what was going on. Maybe they did things differently in Bombay, but that felt unlikely. If there was one thing I’d found all religions to have in common, it was a certain dogmatic following of ritual. The precise timing of a service or the protocol of a liturgy were usually set in stone, generally by some priests many centuries after the god or prophet in question had washed his hands of us all and headed back to the heavens. That was the thing about religion. It was an open question as to how much of it was divine inspiration and how much was just bureaucratic packaging.
We carried on, inching forward, with the chauffeur making loud and liberal use of the horn with about as much effect as it would on a herd of water buffalo.
‘What’s the hold-up?’ I asked.
The chauffeur shook his head. ‘Mujhe nahin pata, sahib.’
‘Then ask someone,’ I said.
He leaned out and shouted to one of the men streaming past. Like the others, he was dressed in white, complete with a small white cap on his head. The man gestured back with a shake of the head, that strange Indian gesture that after five years I was still unable to quite fathom.
The driver turned to me.
‘Rally,’ he said. ‘Islam Union holding meeting at mosque today.’
A rally at Haji Ali. It felt like Gulmohamed was building up to something. With the elections only a few weeks away, today felt like it would be his call to arms. That Irani had made a note of it essentially sealed the connection between them. Gulmohamed probably wanted his fixer close at hand, maybe he had other people he needed killed.