You had to hand it to Annie. Her taste in cars was better than her taste in men. This one was a red Lancia, fitted with the sort of springs that made it glide along like a feather bed.
My initial stop was at Lal Bazar to locate a couple of addresses. The first was that of Prashant Mukherjee where I hoped I could find his widow. That wasn’t difficult. It was an address in Ballygunge, not Budge Budge, and it was recorded in the FIR – the First Information Report – effectively the charge sheet against Suren.
The other was for Subhash Bose. Bose was a young acolyte of the Congress leader, C. R. Das, whom I’d first met during the Prince of Wales’s visit to Calcutta in the winter of ’21, when Suren and I were on the hunt for a serial killer. Like Suren, Bose was a Cambridge graduate and, by all accounts, just as full of himself. Indeed, the government had hoped he’d join the Civil Service and work for us, but instead he’d sat the exams, come pretty much top and then immediately resigned his position and joined the independence movement. He was a clever man and a capable one, which made him a target of vilification for the editors and readers of the Statesman and the Englishman, a hero to Indians, and a general pain in the backside for the police.
He lived, I recalled, somewhere along the Elgin Road, and again, finding his address was hardly difficult. He’d been placed under police surveillance several times in the last few years and his house was even marked on the maps in certain offices at police headquarters.
I decided on finding Bose first. Elgin Road was in South Calcutta, en route to Ballygunge, so it made logistical sense. What’s more, and with due respect to the widow Mukherjee, I felt Bose would be of more use in stemming the violence, which, as I’d seen for myself, was now threatening to spiral.
I directed Annie’s chauffeur to head south, past the detachments of troops deployed in the cordon sanitaire around the centre of town and the white suburbs. The hope was to contain the violence to the north of the city, with the river acting as a natural breakwater to the west and the salt lakes providing the same role to the east. It was fine in theory, but communal riots weren’t a tide that could be stemmed by ditches or rings of steel. They were more like bushfires that broke out in several places simultaneously and randomly. Just because you limited one riot to North Calcutta didn’t mean another one wouldn’t break out in the south or across the river in Howrah. The authorities knew that of course, but there was a limit to the number of men available for deployment, and in a case of finite resources, the first priorities were always the white parts of town.
Bose’s house was a curious affair. It didn’t seem particularly grand from the roadside, at least not by the standards of South Calcutta, just a three-storey edifice, built all the way to the pavement with a gate offering access to a driveway along one side. It was only once you took that turn and entered the drive that you realised the house was almost a city block long, with a low, colonnaded veranda and upper floors burnished with intricately carved, green-painted balconies.
The driver pulled to a halt under the portico and I stepped out and made for the steps to the front door. The veranda fizzed with an energy borne of adversity, as earnest-looking men in white shirts and dhotis rushed in and out carrying, I assumed, situation reports from across town, much in the same way our police runners were bringing updates to the top brass at headquarters.
Outside the door stood a young lad with the smooth cheeks of an adolescent and the bored countenance of a university student.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked.
‘I’m looking for Subhash Bose,’ I said. ‘My name’s Wyndham and I’m from the police.’
The boy’s face turned sour.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’m not here to arrest him. I’m here because I need his help.’
He smiled in surprise. ‘The police want Subhash-da’s help? He will find that most amusing. Come.’ He turned and gestured for me to follow.
The hallway beyond had been turned into a waiting room, with a row of chairs lined up against either wall, most occupied by young men, some engaged in heated conversation and others simply sitting there, reading papers or pamphlets or smoking.
My guide walked up to a chap who sat behind a desk at the end of the room and said something in rapid-fire Bengali which I presumed was an introduction of sorts. The other stared at me as though assessing my credentials, and I stared straight back. Was he a secretary? He certainly looked like one: small, bookish, bespectacled, and probably with a Napoleon complex to boot.
He turned back to the boy who’d brought me in. There was another brief conversation in Bengali and then the secretary gestured with a nod towards the chairs.
The boy looked at me somewhat red-faced. ‘He says please take a seat with the others.’
I didn’t have time for that. But if a twenty-year career as a policeman had imbued me with anything, it was a robust and finely honed technique of intimidating people.
Moving my guide out of the way, I stood above the little secretary, leaned over and placed my hands on the desk in front of him.
‘If you don’t get Bose out here now, I’ll have you arrested on a charge of obstruction.’
The man looked at me impassively.
‘You think I am afraid to go to prison?’ He held out his wrists, inviting the handcuffs. ‘I have been to jail three times already.’
Before I could respond, the door behind him opened and out stepped Bose.
‘Arré, Raja. Enough of the bravado. If this nice officer arrests you, it’ll play havoc with my schedule, and today of all days I can’t afford to lose you.’
He turned to me with a curious smile. ‘We’ve met before, haven’t we? Have I at some point already had the pleasure of being arrested by you?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ I said. ‘And the pleasure would have been all mine. But you’re right, we have met: a few years ago around the time of the Prince of Wales’s visit. You were helping C. R. Das bring the city to a standstill.’
His face brightened with the spark of recognition. ‘Of course! You’re Suren babu’s friend. Wyndham, is it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And how is old Suren? It’s been an age since I saw him.’
‘He’s fine,’ I said.
‘He’s not here with you?’
‘He had other business to attend to.’
Bose patted my arm as though we were old friends. ‘You British devils are working him too hard.’
I always found it difficult to know how to deal with these Gandhi-inspired independence-wallahs. They’d stand onstage and claim the British were little better than vampires, sucking the life blood of India, and we would respond with mass incarcerations and the cracking of a skull now and then. But away from the glare of the world, they were often the most pleasant of chaps, inviting you in for tea before you arrested them, and who, if it weren’t for the colour of their skin and the fundamental objection they had with the way we ran their country, you wouldn’t be surprised to find taking a drink or playing a round at your golf club. In a country where so many millions were illiterate, there was something extremely educated about the way these people operated a campaign of insurrection.
‘Please,’ he continued. ‘Come into my office.’
I followed him into a spartan room, its walls washed pale green, furnished with a small desk, a few chairs and in one corner an old sofa leaking its stuffing. He took a seat on one of the wooden chairs and directed me to the sofa.
‘Now, how can I help you, Captain?’
‘The riots,’ I said. ‘They’re getting worse. I was told you might be able to help stop them.’
Bose shook his head.
‘And who might be telling you that?’
‘Let’s just say I’ve heard some people comment that you’re the future of this country.’
He seemed to appreciate the compliment.
‘Most flattering,’ he said, ‘but the future of this country is freedom.’
I’d heard this speech before and didn’t care to hear it again.
‘And how are you going to achieve that freedom with the Hindus and Muslims at each other’s throats?’
Bose conceded the issue with a nod.
‘A good point. If we are to achieve freedom, there needs to be unity of all Indians regardless of caste or creed. I believe those who appeal to religion in the name of politics, or set the followers of one religion against another are committing an act of desecration. I shall have no part of it.’
‘So you’ll call for an end to the violence?’
Bose squeezed the fingers of one hand in the palm of the other and sighed.
‘What would you have me do – write an editorial in a newspaper? The riots are happening right now. People are burning newspapers, not reading them. I can appeal for calm, but for that, I’d need to hold rallies. Will your people allow that?’
That was a good question. Under normal circumstances, the chances of a man like Bose getting a permit for a mass rally were slim to nothing, and while these were hardly normal circumstances, the violence was still restricted to the native areas. Unless and until the blood and the flames were actually lapping at the gates of White Town, I doubted whether the government would deem it in their interests to change the policy. What’s more, with Taggart lying gravely injured, the victim of anti-British terrorists, no one in the military would sanction a separatist like Bose holding a rally on the Maidan. He sensed my hesitation.
‘No, I thought not. I’m afraid your superiors don’t consider this to be anything other than an issue of law and order. Allowing me to hold a rally calling for a cessation of violence will appear to the world as though they’ve lost control of the situation. I will, of course, call for an end to this calamitous state of affairs at every opportunity, but if you’ll pardon the irony, I’m very much preaching to the converted. Those attending a Congress Party meeting are, in very large measure, already convinced of the need for unity between the religions. If you want to stop this madness, you will need to convince those who stand to gain most from the violence to disavow it.’
‘I’m on my way down to Ballygunge to speak to Mukherjee’s widow,’ I said.
Bose shook his head.
‘I’m afraid that is likely to achieve very little. I doubt she’ll even talk to you. She is in mourning after all, and if she is of the same mindset as her late husband, she is likely to be a very orthodox Brahmin. Even if she isn’t, the chances are, the people around her, the Shiva Sabha types, will make sure she doesn’t rock the boat.’
‘I still have to try.’
He considered the point.
‘Mukherjee’s body – it has been released to the family?’
I nodded. ‘They carried out the swiftest of post-mortems and returned it this morning. The family threatened to kick up a stink if it took any longer.’
‘In that case, save yourself some time. It’s dusk,’ he said. ‘Mrs Mukherjee won’t be in Ballygunge. Most likely, she’ll be in Kalighat, at the cremation grounds.’
I left Bose, feeling worse than when I’d arrived. He might have felt disgusted by the violence that was tearing the city apart but there seemed little that he could practically do about it. What’s more, he was probably right about Mukherjee’s widow.
I took his advice about where to find her though, and headed for Kalighat, a native neighbourhood to the south. Despite the straight road, it took a while to get there, mainly on account of the hundreds of men heading the other way towards the Maidan and central Calcutta. Here, at least, there didn’t seem to have been any trouble, possibly because the military had been deployed in force. On every street corner, wary men in khaki uniforms and tin helmets stood with rifles to hand.
Nestling on the banks of the Tolly Canal, the temple to the goddess Kali and its burning grounds were not what I’d been expecting. When people talked of the temple to Kali, my thoughts naturally turned to the huge complex at Dakhineshwar on the banks of the river, north of the city. There, thousands of people clamoured night and day, offering their prayers and sacrificial offerings to the goddess, amid the clanging of bells and a fog of incense. This place, by contrast, was a much simpler affair, and quieter too, at least by Hindu standards. The bells still chimed and incense still burned, but the atmosphere was sombre, as befitted a place where the dead went for their eternal souls to be freed to return to the spiritual realm where they’d prepare for reincarnation in a new form.
The entrance was down a narrow alleyway clogged with men dressed in funereal white, as well as one wearing a different white – that of the Calcutta police force. I made my way over to the constable.
He must have thought I’d taken a wrong turning. ‘Can I help you, sir?’
I flashed my warrant card.
‘I’m looking for Prashant Mukherjee’s widow, Mrs. Kamala Mukherjee.’
‘She is at the burning ghat, sir. Offering prayers.’
The way he said it sounded like I had no business going there, and while I respected her loss, there were larger matters to consider.
‘Take me there,’ I ordered.
The constable led the way down an ash-strewn path hidden in the darkness between shallow islands of hurricane lamplight, emerging close to the canal where, in the half-light, a circle of grieving souls stood gathered around the dying embers of a funeral pyre. At the centre, a grey-haired woman clad in a white sari held her hands together in pranam while a priest offered final prayers for the departed.
I waited there, oblivious to the glances of the assembled guests until the mantras had been chanted and the crowd began to disperse. The woman, her arm held by a much younger man, began to walk slowly towards me. In her hand she held a clay dish, packed with what looked like mud.
‘Mrs Mukherjee,’ I called.
The woman looked over. Despite the grey hair, her face seemed curiously unlined. Her eyes too betrayed no sign of tears.
‘May I speak to you?’
Beside her, the young man bridled.
‘Who are you?’
That should have been evident from the constable standing behind me, but I showed him my warrant card anyway.
‘My name is Wyndham. I’m a detective at Lal Bazar.’
It seemed to cut little ice with him.
‘And you think this is a good time to be questioning a woman, minutes after her husband’s cremation?’
‘And you are?’
‘Priyo Mukherjee. Her son.’
‘I appreciate it’s untimely,’ I said, ‘but you’ll be aware that the situation beyond these walls is worsening. A better time may not present itself. If I can have a few moments to speak to your mother, it might save a lot of lives.’
The boy made to remonstrate but his mother held him back.
‘Mr Wyndham,’ she said, ‘please, if you think it may help, ask your questions.’
I thanked her with a nod. ‘I need to know what your husband was doing in Budge Budge.’
The woman glanced at her son.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know for certain,’ she said, ‘he wasn’t in the habit of sharing his plans, but I believe it was a meeting of sorts. He hadn’t been down there in a long while. Not since he stopped lecturing. Still, he was looking forward to it. It was the most animated he had been in months.’
‘And you, Priyo?’ I asked. ‘Do you have any idea of what your father was doing down there?’
The boy stared at me. ‘Maybe you should be the one answering the questions, Mr Detective? First the police tell us that my father died in a fire, but then we receive his body and his neck is broken.’
From his pocket he pulled out a flimsy sheet of paper and thrust it at me. It was a flyer of some sort with large Bengali letters printed in black and white.
‘Are the Shiva Sabha correct? Was he murdered by the Muslims?’
‘Honestly,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what happened to your father. But I am trying to find out. The task is made a hundred times harder by these riots. Until they stop, our investigation is hamstrung.’
The son shook his head with the impatience of youth. ‘So you are not going to do anything?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying.’
‘What are you saying, Mr Wyndham?’ asked Mrs Mukherjee.
‘I was hoping you, or your son, might make a statement calling for calm.’
The woman gave a thin smile.
‘I very much doubt anything we say will stop the killing. Only the leader of the Shiva Sabha could do that, and it is unlikely Dr Nagpaul would wish to do so.’
She looked across at a chap standing not far away, surrounded by a coterie of men. I thought I heard a hint of something in her voice.
‘You don’t approve of the man?’
‘I don’t approve of the way he treated my husband, or how he twisted my husband’s words.’
‘Maa, please,’ said the boy, taking her arm and trying to steer her away.
‘Chhaaro!’ she said, yanking her arm free. She turned to me. ‘My husband was not the man they painted him to be. He was no politician, and he was no hero of Hindutva. He was merely a scholar. A man who loved his religion and studied it closely. It was others who twisted his work. And now he is dead because of them, and they lionise him.’
The man whom she’d glanced at earlier, the one at the centre of the group, looked over, as though alert to the widow’s words. I realised I recognised him from somewhere, a picture in the papers, probably. Kamala Mukherjee adjusted the anchal of her sari covering the top of her head. ‘I can’t tell you anything else, Mr Wyndham,’ she said, ‘not now and certainly not here. But I suggest you have a word with Dr Nagpaul over there. He made his name on the back of my husband’s work. And how did he repay him? When my husband questioned his views, he cut him out.’
‘Out?’
‘Ostracised him. Put a stop to his teaching, cancelled his stipend from the Sabha. And now he has the gall to come here and shed sham tears at my husband’s funeral.
‘Maa,’ said the boy again. This time he seemed almost nervous ‘Maa, we should go. Now.’
I decided to heed Kamala Mukherjee’s words.
While her son guided her to the exit, I moved to head off the man she’d singled out, Dr Nagpaul, head of the Shiva Sabha, the Hindu-first party. He stood amid a circle of four other men and watched the widow Mukherjee and her son leave.
‘Dr Nagpaul,’ I called.
He looked over, as though he’d already anticipated I’d want to speak to him.
He was fortyish, dressed, like the others, head to toe in white – dhoti, kurta and an embroidered cream-coloured shawl draped over one shoulder. Every inch the patrician Bengali Brahmin. His face was soft, moustachioed and bespectacled – hardly what one expected of a man famous for his speeches rousing the baser passions among his followers. But then he wouldn’t be the first person with clean hands and a PhD who made a career out of exhorting others to violence.
‘Dr Nagpaul,’ I said again, as the circle around him parted, ‘may I have a word?’
The man bowed graciously.
‘And you are?’
‘Captain Wyndham. Lal Bazar CID.’
He gave a half-hearted smile. ‘I’m afraid I really am pushed for time, Captain. I’m due to address a gathering on the Maidan in forty minutes and my car is waiting.’
I marvelled at the speed of it all. Bengalis weren’t exactly known for their organisational alacrity, but they could move pretty quickly when they wanted to. Mukherjee hadn’t been dead much more than twenty-four hours and here was Nagpaul off to rouse the rabble in the centre of town.
‘It’ll only take a few minutes,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you appreciate the urgency of the situation. We can talk on the way to your car.’
It wasn’t something he could object to, and I fell into step beside him, with his entourage bringing up the rear.
‘Your speech at the Maidan. Might I enquire as to the content?’ I asked.
He glanced over. ‘My dear Captain, surely you are not thinking of censoring what I plan to say?’
The truth was I had the power to do just that, or, if I so deemed, have him arrested. At least I did in theory. In reality, the decision to arrest an Indian for the content of his speech was taken at a pay grade far higher than mine, and by a man in the khaki uniform of the military or the pinstripe suit of the India Office.
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘But you’ll be conscious of the volatile nature of things out there. I’m sure you wouldn’t wish to say anything which might further inflame the situation.’
‘Rest assured, Captain, I will merely be offering my eulogy to Prashant Mukherjee, a martyr to the cause and a true Indian patriot.’
‘A martyr?’ I asked.
‘But of course.’ He smiled. ‘How else would you describe him?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I never met the man. But his wife didn’t seem to think he deserved that particular title.’
Nagpaul ignored the reference to Mukherjee’s widow. ‘He died for his religion, at the hands of the Muslims.’
‘As far as I’m aware, there’s no proof he was murdered by Muslims.’
Nagpaul gave a snort. ‘Who else would kill him?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to find out,’ I said, ‘but in the meantime, it would be irresponsible to go throwing around unsubstantiated rumours.’
‘And if they were substantiated, Captain? Would your vaunted chief commissioner tell us?’
It was my turn to ignore the comment.
‘I shall tell the truth, Captain Wyndham, about what a great man Mukherjee was and what a loss he will be to our cause.’
‘You knew him well, then?’
‘Extremely. For many years I studied at his feet.’
‘And when was the last time you saw him?’
‘I cannot exactly recall.’
‘Was it in the last few days? Or weeks? Or longer still?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t see the relevance of your question.’
‘I only ask as I’m trying to build a picture of his recent mental state. His widow informed me he’d been rather depressed of late and I wondered if you might corroborate that.’
Nagpaul shrugged. ‘It was a period of time ago, and I don’t think I’m qualified to offer an opinion on his state of mind.’
‘Mukherjee’s widow stated that you hadn’t seen her husband for several months.’
‘I’ve been extremely busy, what with the elections —’
‘It’s just that Mrs Mukherjee believed you’d had a falling-out.’
‘A mere disagreement among comrades,’ he said. ‘Nothing serious.’
‘Do you know what Mukherjee was doing in Budge Budge yesterday?’
‘Why would I? As we’ve established, I hadn’t seen him in a while.’
We had reached the gates of the burning grounds. Nagpaul’s chauffeur was already opening the rear door of his car for him.
‘I’m afraid we must leave it there,’ said Nagpaul. ‘I do hope you quickly arrest whoever is responsible. The Hindus of this country will be watching you.’
‘And I hope,’ I said, ‘that you’ll heed my advice about the content of your speech at the Maidan. Any rumours or false accusations and I’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks. Because this particular policeman will be watching you.’