Miss Colah had lost interest shortly after Sam had departed, leaving me to pore over the coded documents, so it came as a surprise when forty minutes later, she returned to the dining room looking for me.
‘Telephone call for you.’
‘Me?’ I was on the run from the authorities. No one was supposed to know where I was, let alone have a telephone number for where to reach me.
‘The caller asked for Captain Wyndham, but in his absence, he said you’d do.’
‘Who?’
‘He didn’t give me his name. Maybe you should ask him.’
There was no point in refusing.
I followed her out to the hallway and to the telephone.
‘Hello?’ I ventured.
‘Banerjee?’ said a clipped, English voice. ‘It’s Dawson. Where’s Wyndham?’
I breathed in relief.
‘He’s gone to try and catch Gulmohamed paying off Irani, or Atchabahian or whatever his name is. He thinks Atchabahian is working for Gulmohamed. If he can catch them in the act, he’ll be able to arrest them.’
‘Well, that’s not going to happen,’ he said.
I agreed.
‘I told him it was naive.’
‘I don’t know about naive, but it’s certainly foolish. Because Atchabahian isn’t working for Gulmohamed.’
‘What?’
‘Wyndham asked me to check whether Gulmohamed had been in Rangoon prior to Atchabahian’s disappearance. I couldn’t find any record of that, but it turns out someone else was there. A man named MacRae. He used to work for Section H’s Bombay station. He was dismissed about a month ago.’
‘You mean he’s working for you?’
‘You think I’d be telling you any of this if he worked for me?’
‘Why was MacRae dismissed?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, but rest assured, I’ll find out.’
‘I’ll let Captain Wyndham know as soon as I can.’
‘There’s one other thing,’ said Dawson. ‘That bank account you wanted the details of. It’s an account at Grindlay’s, Calcutta branch, registered to the Shiva Sabha. The payment was made from an account registered in Bombay, to which Irani is the sole signatory.’
‘Irani is paying cash to the Shiva Sabha? Why would he do that? Especially if he’s responsible for Mukherjee’s murder?’
Dawson paused. ‘Join the dots, Sergeant. You’re smart enough to work it out.’
My head spinning, I returned to the dining room. I needed to make sense of what Dawson had told me. Opening the door, I found Ooravis Colah idly flicking through the flyers I’d left on the table.
‘So many languages,’ she marvelled. ‘Who can govern a country with so many?’
I stood beside her as she pointed out the different scripts: the South Indian languages with their neat and compact curls; the blocky, Aryan scripts of North India, and the sharp, angular letters of Bengali.
She picked one up and began to read out loud.
‘Is that Gujarati?’ I asked.
‘Marathi,’ she corrected. ‘But it doesn’t make sense.’
I looked at her. ‘What does it say?’
‘Sons of Islam!’ she read, her brow furrowing as she translated the words. ‘Rise up and avenge the slaughter of innocents. Avenge the death of Gulmohamed and the martyrs of Haji Ali.’
For the longest of seconds, I stared dumbfounded at the flimsy paper. I turned my attention to the rows of numbers on the ledger pages I’d stolen. One of them had been a payment to the Shiva Sabha. Suddenly, in a moment of terrible clarity, the truth hit me.
‘I need to get to Haji Ali,’ I said. ‘I need to find Sam.’