He wouldn’t have done it.
Pointing a gun is one thing. Pulling the trigger, that’s something else entirely. Yes he’d shot a man before, but that man had deserved it. I, on the other hand, had given him a place to stay when he had nowhere else to go, and while the standard of the accommodation was debatable, I doubted it merited a bullet in the chest.
Still, with Lord Taggart lying yards away and bleeding to death, and with his attackers making their getaway, this didn’t seem like the right time to debate things rationally with the sergeant. And Suren had a point. Given the gravity of the charges against him, house arrest could quickly give way to incarceration in the Central Jail to await a trial; and with Taggart out of the picture, there was no one to corroborate his story: of being ordered to Budge Budge, tailing a VIP from Bombay who’d murdered Mukherjee, while he had just set fire to the place. It just sounded ridiculous, so I let him go, and watched for a moment as he ran.
Medical orderlies, khaki-clad and with the demeanour of funeral attendants were already seeing to Taggart. Close by, Villiers looked on like a courtier beside a fallen king. Men were cordoning off the street and the air reverberated to the growl of lorries as yet more police reinforcements descended.
I rushed back, hoping Taggart might still be conscious, but was halted at a distance by a blond officer with a white coat over his uniform. I might have pushed past him had it not been for the large sentry behind him with a bayonet attached to his rifle.
‘I need to speak to the commissioner.’
The officer seemed nonplussed.
‘And who are you, exactly?’
‘Wyndham,’ I said. ‘CID.’
The man made an instant assessment which I must have failed. ‘He’s in no state to speak to anyone.’
‘It doesn’t matter. He’s barely conscious.’
I turned to find Villiers, ashen-faced and bloody. The man seemed to have shrunk, hardly filling his blood-smeared uniform. I fished out my last cigarette, and offered it to him.
‘How is he?’
Villiers shook his head. ‘Not good. The docs won’t comment till they get him to a hospital.’ He exhaled deeply, the cigarette offering absolution.
The orderlies were raising Taggart onto a stretcher as a military staff car negotiated the cordon sanitaire and stopped a few feet from the ambulance. Behind it, two army trucks pulled up and began disgorging a phalanx of troops. The driver stepped out smartly and opened the rear door. Brown boots, polished to a shine, touched the ground, and an officer in a uniform bearing the pips of a major stepped out. The man was well built, with the thoughtful expression of an academic and the cold eyes of a fanatic. In a different time, he might have been a crusader or a warrior monk, but in this era his insignia told me he was an officer of the Intelligence Corps.
‘Who’s this?’ asked Villiers.
I didn’t recognise the man, but I’d had dealings with the organisation he represented, and suddenly I wished I’d kept that last cigarette for myself.
‘Section H,’ I said. ‘Military intelligence.’
The major strode over with the certainty of a hero from a Kipling poem. He examined both Villiers and me, and didn’t seem impressed by what he saw.
‘Who’s in charge here?’
‘That would be me, sir. Inspector Villiers,’ stammered the batman.
‘Well, Inspector Villiers,’ said the major, ‘the military will take it from here. Tell your men to stand down.’
Villiers looked like a man reprieved from the gallows.
‘On whose orders?’ I asked.
The major seemed to be expecting the enquiry.
‘You must be Wyndham,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘You’re the other reason I’m here.’
That came as a surprise.
‘You have me at a loss, Major,’ I said. ‘And you didn’t answer my question. On whose authority are you assuming control? This is the scene of a crime. The Imperial Police have jurisdiction.’
The officer scrutinised me closely.
‘My name’s Boyle, and I’m here on the orders of high command at Fort William. As for jurisdiction, you see those men lying dead there?’ He pointed at two shroud-covered corpses that had been part of Taggart’s guard detail. ‘Those men were military. That makes this a military matter.’
He turned to Villiers.
‘Now, Inspector, if you’d be so kind…’
Villiers didn’t need to be told again. A curt nod and he was practically running back to the police cordon to order his men to stand down. That left me facing Major Boyle alone.
‘Where’s Dawson?’ I asked.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Colonel Dawson,’ I said. ‘I’d have thought a matter like this would deserve the attention of a colonel rather than a major.’
‘That’s none of your concern. Instead, maybe you could tell me what you’re doing here?’
‘I had a meeting with the commissioner.’
The major eyed me with a hint of suspicion.
‘At his residence rather than the office?’
‘It was a matter of some urgency.’
‘What, exactly?’
There was no point in lying to him. He’d only need to question Villiers to know that I’d come here with Suren. Omitting his name wouldn’t be doing the sergeant any favours, and I had the distinct impression that the major might already be aware of more than he was letting on. Yet no good ever came from telling Section H the whole truth, so I tried to appear helpful without saying too much or, hopefully, anything of value.
‘I and another officer were investigating some native disturbance out in Budge Budge.’
The major parroted my words. ‘A native disturbance out in Budge Budge? Seems a trivial matter for the commissioner to be interested in, especially so early in the morning?’
‘I can’t comment on the commissioner’s priorities.’
‘No, I daresay you can’t. And this other officer. Who would that be?’
‘A detective sergeant,’ I said. ‘Name of Banerjee.’
Boyle’s lips pursed, sourly.
‘There was a Sergeant Banerjee arrested in Budge Budge last night on suspicion of murder. Wouldn’t happen to be the same man, would it?’
I wasn’t surprised that Section H already knew of Suren’s arrest. They had informers everywhere, not least among the police force. Their job was to maintain the stability of the Raj and, as such, they took a particular interest in political crimes that might impact that stability. Mukherjee’s murder, with its potential to set the whole of Bengal alight, certainly qualified.
‘That’s correct,’ I said. ‘Taggart ordered his release from custody and asked me to bring him here.’
‘You have those orders in writing?’
‘Not any more. I handed them to the officers at Budge Budge.’
‘And where is he now, your friend, Banerjee?’
That was a good question.
‘He went chasing after the attackers.’
Boyle raised an eyebrow.
‘You let him go wandering off? Need I remind you that he was under arrest?’
‘The sergeant was doing his duty.’
‘And now he’s rather conveniently disappeared. Unarmed?’
‘What?’
‘The sergeant,’ said Boyle. ‘I take it he was unarmed. He was under arrest, after all.’
‘It’s possible he could have taken a weapon from one of the dead or wounded sentries. I was too far away to see.’
The major stared. ‘You weren’t with him?’
‘I was leaving when the attack took place. Taggart ordered me back to Budge Budge. He was going to proceed with the sergeant.’
‘You were leaving when the attack took place… and yet you don’t seem to have suffered a scratch?’
‘I happened to be a distance from the blast,’ I said. ‘My driver had parked the car up the drive, near the entrance to the house. The commissioner’s car was further down, closer to the street.’
‘So if your car hadn’t been in the driveway, the chances are the commissioner’s car would have parked there, too far away to be reached by a bomb lobbed from the street?’
My head began to spin.
‘I don’t know what you’re driving at, but —’
‘What I’m driving at, Captain is that you brought a man suspected of murdering a senior member of the Hindu movement to Lord Taggart’s house, and shortly thereafter, there’s an unprecedented attack on the commissioner himself?’
‘It was hardly unprecedented,’ I protested. ‘There’ve been at least three attempts on Taggart’s life while he’s been commissioner. He even keeps one of the unexploded bombs on his desk as a paperweight.’
‘Four attempts, actually,’ said the major, ‘but this is the first one to have succeeded in harming him. That in my book makes it pretty damn unprecedented. Odd that it should happen when he’s in the company of a native officer who’s just murdered a senior Hindu radical and has now disappeared.’
‘Banerjee’s got nothing to do with this attack,’ I said. ‘He owes his career to the commissioner. He’d never harm him.’
Boyle gave a snort of derision. ‘Indians are a law unto themselves. Just how well do you actually know your colleague? The son of a leading lawyer opposed to British rule; the scion of a rather influential, anti-British family. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Maybe he’s been secretly harbouring those same views all along and has decided that now is the time to strike. Maybe he’s trying to trigger a revolution? He commits a murder which could see the Hindus up in arms. When they find out a policeman’s responsible, they’ll take to the streets and burn every police station from Calcutta to Karachi. Can you think of a better moment to try to assassinate the chief of police of Bengal?’
I couldn’t believe any of it.
‘That’s ridiculous. Suren didn’t kill Mukherjee.’
‘Really? He told you that, did he? Then who did kill him?’
I realised I was close to telling Boyle everything. Maybe that’s what he’d been angling for all along.
‘We don’t know. He was already dead when Banerjee found him.’
Boyle shook his head. He leaned in and pressed a finger to my chest.
‘Well, here’s some advice for you, Wyndham. Find your sergeant, and do it fast. Because if you don’t, we will. And if he’s responsible for the deaths of these soldiers, some of my colleagues might be keen to settle the score.’