Leaving Lord Taggart, I returned to Shiva and the car, and once more made the trek to Budge Budge, this time to retrieve Suren and then make the same trip in reverse. I was beginning to feel a little like the ball in a game of long-distance ping-pong.
It was still pitch-dark, and save for the stray chink of light escaping a crack in one of the shuttered windows, the squat grey bulk of the thana remained shrouded like a widow at a funeral.
I got out the car and headed for the entrance. This time I didn’t ask Shiva to come. Instead I left him with a command.
‘Keep the engine running.’
I knocked on the door and was admitted with an alacrity that had been sorely absent during my previous visit. I sought out the same constable who’d shown me round last time and handed him the chit from the commissioner. He read it slowly, thoroughly digesting each word. I decided to speed him on, pointing out the signature at the bottom.
‘Lord Taggart himself,’ I said, and was met with a look of trepidation. ‘I told you your prisoner was a burra babu.’
He led me through to the cells at a clip, maybe in the hope that efficiency at this late stage might yet save his bacon. His apologies began even as he fumbled the key into the lock. The door swung open and he all but prostrated himself at his prisoner’s feet. For his part, Suren was, I felt, rather ungracious, ignoring the man as he exited the cell.
‘You all right?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘I could do with a cup of tea.’
‘Cha, sahib?’ asked the constable hopefully.
‘No time,’ I said.
Instead I lit Suren a cigarette and led him out of the building as the first hues of pink coloured the sky to the east.
‘Feeling more talkative?’ We were sitting in the back of the car as, around us, the waking city sped by. Suren finished the smoke, flicking the butt out of the window.
‘Do you think the commissioner might offer us breakfast?’
I stared at him. ‘You do know how much trouble you’re in?’
‘I haven’t eaten in twenty hours.’
‘I doubt the commissioner’s going to be waiting for you with bacon and eggs.’
His face fell. ‘No, I suppose not.’
He had, I realised, avoided answering my question. Indeed, so far he’d told me precious little of what he’d actually done. Soon we’d be back in Alipore and there was no guarantee the commissioner would take me into his office or his confidence when he debriefed Suren. If I were to get the truth out of him, I needed to confront Suren now. On a whim, I leaned forward and ordered Shiva to pull over at a pavement eatery, just a rough bench beside a glowing brazier, in the hope that filling the hole in Suren’s stomach might induce him to spill the beans.
He took a bite out of a shinghara, a triangle of fried pastry, this one filled with spiced mutton and peas: like a Cornish pasty but with a Bengali kick.
‘So?’ I said to him, taking a dirty rupee from my pocket and handing it to the crone who ran the place. ‘I’ve bought you breakfast. In your religion, that means you’re morally obligated to tell me what happened last night.’
He looked at me, a half-hearted smile on his lips.
‘Are you sure that’s Hinduism?’
‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘It’s in the Gita I believe. Towards the back somewhere.’
Suren took another, more contemplative bite of his shingara, and I decided to try a different tack.
‘I never told you about Ypres, did I?’
Suren stopped chewing.
‘It was 1918,’ I said. ‘The Russians had given up a few months before. Signed some God-awful treaty with the Germans that meant a million-odd battle-hardened Huns that had previously faced east were suddenly sat on trains en route for the Western Front. The top brass were scared witless. As you know, I used to work for Taggart back then too – he was a colonel at the time, high up in military intelligence.
‘He called me into his office one day. Told me the situation was grave. Said we’d had reports the Boche were building up their forces opposite our sector. Fed me some rot about king and country and all that. “Accurate, on-the-ground information. That’s what we need, Sam.” He asked me to volunteer to accompany a platoon into no man’s land. A raid on a Boche trench. “Capture one or two of their men – officers if possible – and whatever plans and documents you can find. You speak a bit of German, don’t you?” ’
I paused to extract a cigarette from a crumpled packet of Capstans, lifted it to a dry mouth, fumbled for a match and lit it with a hand still trembling at the memory.
‘Going out into no man’s land under cover of darkness was bad enough, but a raid on a German trench was a suicide mission. We both knew it. I suppose that’s why he stressed the need to volunteer.’
As I exhaled a protective cloud of blue-grey smoke, Suren placed the remnants of his pasty on a dried-leaf plate, and for the first time since his arrest, seemed to give me his full attention.
‘And did you? Volunteer?’
‘Yes. As Taggart knew I would. The worst of it was that my German wasn’t even that good, just schoolbook stuff and the odd phrase picked up from those leaflets they dropped on our trenches telling us how our women were all sleeping with the men left back at home. I’d be as likely to pick up their trench commander’s laundry list as I would any documents of merit, but that didn’t seem to matter.’
‘What happened?’
‘Long story short: I was sent to join a party of infantrymen specially trained for such raids. Officer in charge was a captain by the name of Graves, which wasn’t exactly a propitious omen. I was told to join them behind the lines for a few days’ training: infiltration, exfiltration, hand-to-hand combat. All the dark arts intended to give you a fighting chance, assuming you first make it past the Maxim gun.
‘Then, too soon, we were given our orders. As darkness fell, we slipped out of the trench, climbed up onto the parapet and slithered over the other side as quickly as possible. I half expected the Boche guns to open fire there and then, but they didn’t. Almost silently, Graves gave the order to advance. We rose from the slime and followed him blindly between the maze of razor wire like rats in the sewers. Ten yards, twenty, thirty, and then we were out, into the churned-up hell of mud and corpses that made up the distance between our line and theirs. We crawled forward on our bellies till we found a shell hole as close to the German lines as practical. I can’t tell you the relief I felt as I fell into that hole. The thing was no more than a shallow crater only yards from the enemy, but at that moment it felt like it offered the sanctuary of a church. Our task was to wait for a Boche patrol, ambush it and use them as cover for our raid.
‘For a few hours, there was this surreal calm. The whole world seemed reduced to the confines of that hole. Beyond it, only a black and barren void. It must have been around midnight that it all started. We heard the creak of a coil being unrolled. Some unfortunate saps had been sent out from the Boche lines to repair their barbed wire. I felt an electricity pass through me. We listened, trying to locate the position of the repair crew, then Graves gave some of his men the signal. They slithered out of the hole and into the darkness, crawling towards the German lines.
‘I heard the rustle as they moved forward, then the muffled, strangled violence. Things were going to plan but then one of the Hun managed a cry and a shot rang out.’
I stopped and took a pull on my cigarette. Suren, though, was eager for the rest of the tale.
‘What happened?’
‘Well, that was it. Within seconds the German line came to life and all hell broke loose. The lead began flying all over the shop. I kept my head down and prayed. I heard the screams of Graves’s men, cut down on their retreat to our shell hole. The Boche repair party must have been wiped out too. Soon there were only three of us left in that hole.’
I took a long, bitter drag on the cigarette, then passed it to Suren.
‘Eventually the shooting died down. One of Graves’s men was groaning, still alive out in no man’s land. I stuck my head over the crater lip. He was about ten yards away. I signalled to Graves, told him I could reach the man. “You stay here,” he said. ‘ “We’ll get him.”
‘He and the other soldier crawled out of the hole. It took time, but they made it as far as the wounded man. They even managed to pull him back a few inches, but I think that’s what the Boche were waiting for. They used that poor wounded bastard as bait, waited till they’d flushed some more of us out, then let loose again.
‘None of them made it back. I waited in that hole for two hours before finally crawling home to our lines.’
I felt the unwelcome prickle of sweat, on my neck and my back, and in my fist the empty cigarette packet crushed to a ball. I looked up. Suren was staring at the dirt.
‘The point is,’ I said, ‘Taggart knew he was probably sending me to my death, but he did it, because it suited his purpose.’
Suren shook his head. ‘You think Lord Taggart sent me to do his dirty work?’
‘Whatever he sent you to do is not my business,’ I said, but take it from one who knows, you’d be wise not to rely on the commissioner’s support if he thinks you’ve become a liability. Just remember who your real friends are.’