I alighted at Alipore station. It was not an easy decision. My throat rasped, my belly was empty, and every fibre of my body cried out in fatigue and begged to stay where I was, wedged into a corner of the tram, ignored and anonymous. Weariness dulled my reasoning. As the tram had trundled along, I’d imagined jumping off and disappearing into the masses, then making my way to Howrah and catching a train to Bombay or Delhi.
It was ridiculous of course. There was no refuge to be had in Bombay or Delhi or anywhere else. Any hope of salvation lay in apprehending Gulmohamed and proving that he, and not I, had killed Mukherjee. To have any chance of that I had to get back to the mansion in Metiabruz where he’d been staying. If I could arrest him there, before he managed to leave town, I might just have a chance of saving myself from the gallows.
I stumbled off the tram, shambled into Alipore station and bought a ticket back to Khiddirpur. The platform was quiet, almost genteel and most unlike the station platforms of North Calcutta, which swarmed at all hours with travellers, hawkers, fortune tellers, bootblacks and vagrants. Indeed, other than a few suited and booted Anglo-Indians, the only other persons on the platform were two uniformed men of the railway police, lounging on a bench smoking bidis with their rifles at their feet. Sweat pricked my back. I told myself there was nothing to fear. While knowledge of my flight would by now have reached Lal Bazar, there was little chance that word of it would have yet reached these two fine gentlemen, and from their languorous repose, it was clear that they were not on the lookout for an escaped fugitive. Nevertheless, I decided to give them a wide berth and turned and walked to the opposite end of the platform. There I sat on a bench under the shade of a neem tree and kept my back to them.
My thoughts turned to Sam and immediately my temples flushed hot. I should not have pointed that pistol at him. He had shown me kindness and loyalty and I had repaid him in the worst possible coin. He would, no doubt, be facing some difficult questions regarding my flight and I wondered what he might say. Would he tell his interlocutors that I had threatened him with a revolver? I expected he’d probably seek to gloss over that most inconvenient fact as it did not reflect particularly positively upon either of us.
The train, when it arrived, was half empty. On another occasion I may have thanked the gods for such an auspicious event, but today I’d have much preferred the camouflage of a crowd, the thicker the better. Nevertheless I boarded a desolate carriage and did my damnedest to disappear, feigning sleep in the shadows of a corner seat.
A conductor in a threadbare coat bearing the insignia of the Eastern Railways appeared just as the train pulled in to the station.
‘Fi-nal stop, Khiddirpur. All change please. All change. Khiddirpur!’
I alighted alongside the paltry few remaining passengers and positioned myself as best I could towards the middle of the group and climbed the stairs to the bridge from the platform to the station exit. Ahead, the group began to concertina and I noticed a guard stationed at foot of the descending staircase carefully checking tickets. Of itself, that did not pose difficulty. I had a valid ticket after all. More troubling though was the sight of another officer of the railway police standing directly behind him with a rifle slung over one shoulder and looking far more alert than his two colleagues back in Alipore. I tried to remain calm. Ticket inspections, especially in the rougher parts of town, were sometimes carried out under the auspices of armed support, mainly because only the threat of a bullet between the ears was enough to make some Calcuttans buy a ticket. But those checks tended to be at rush hour, when the number of fines levied, and the number of bribes paid to avoid those fines, would be much higher. The timing seemed curious.
I cursed myself for my stupidity. I could have simply walked to the other end of the platform, then crossed the tracks on foot like a commoner and disappeared into Khiddirpur. Instead I had reverted to my conditioning. I’d used the footbridge like the bhadralok idiot I was. If I was to avoid capture, I would need to forget gentlemanly ways and think like a fugitive. I stopped and turned, hoping to double-back towards the platforms, but several more constables had now stationed themselves at the far end, presumably waiting for anyone trying to do just that. Like a guard dog, one of them looked over, aroused by my sudden about-face. I had to think fast. Quickly I peered at the ground, as though I’d dropped my ticket, then bent down and pretended to pick it up. By now I had all but fallen out of the pack of travellers trying to negotiate their way past the ticket inspector. I hastened to join them, hoping to force my way into the centre of the pitifully small group.
The inspector did not seem particularly interested in checking the tickets held out for him, but the look on the face of the armed guard beside him told a different story. He was alert, scrutinising every face. Was it possible that my colleagues were already hunting for me? I kept my head down, controlled my breathing and shuffled forward. The barrier inched closer until I was level with the ticket inspector. I thrust my ticket at him and walked past as calmly as I could.
‘Stop!’ came a shout from behind me. My entrails froze. I reached into my pocket for the revolver and began to turn. Just then a man hurtled past me, almost knocking me to the ground.
‘Stop!’ shouted the inspector once more.
Beside him, the guard raised his rifle. But the inspector put a hand on his arm. ‘Chèré-dow!’ he cried. ‘Let him go! He’s a drunken fool. Not worth a bullet.’
I preferred not to wait to see the guard’s response. Instead I walked briskly from the station and hailed a tonga to take me back to the mansion in Metiabruz.