Three hours later, I had Atchabahian in the back of a car, heading towards Calcutta.
Of course I’d had no real authority to arrest him, other than that which stemmed from the rifle barrels of the two soldiers behind me, and fortunately that had proved more than enough to detain him, but it left open the question of what I was to do with him.
That’s why, as night descended, we drove not to Lal Bazar or any other police station, but to the hulking stone mass of Fort William, the military’s command post in Calcutta, and home to Dawson’s Section H.
That came as a shock to the Armenian. For most of the journey he’d been silent, possibly in the belief that his erstwhile military backers might still bail him out, but the sight of the military garrison did more to unsettle him than any of my threats had done during the journey.
Dawson was waiting beside a nondescript door which led to a series of dank underground cells. I knew because I’d once been a guest in one myself.
‘He give you any trouble?’
‘None.’
‘Tell you anything?’
‘Not yet, but the real work starts tomorrow.’
‘It can start tonight if you want. I can have one of my chaps soften him up a little.’
I stared at Dawson. It went against everything I stood for. Yet Atchabahian had cost me my friend and possibly my career, and besides, what was the point in standing on principle when the entire edifice around you was rotten?
‘Do what you have to,’ I said.
I slept soundly that night. They say the sleep of the just is reserved for those with a clear conscience, but the truth is one could sleep quite as well by having no conscience at all. We always like others to see the best in us, and my conscience I realised, or what little remained of it after the war, had in recent years been invigorated by the desire to act as an example to Suren of what a good policeman should be. One could argue that my opium addiction had made me a less than sterling role model, but no one is perfect. Now, with Suren gone, I felt free to let my worst impulses reign, and that’s why, when I showed up at the underground cell at Fort William the next morning, I was glad to see that Atchabahian’s face bore scars similar to those which had been inflicted upon Suren at Budge Budge thana all those weeks before.
He’d been shackled and dragged from his cell into a small anteroom furnished with a table, two chairs and low-hanging bulb.
I took a seat.
‘Feeling more talkative?’
He looked at me through the slit of one eye.
‘I want to see a solicitor,’ he lisped through cracked lips and the odd broken tooth.
‘And I want snow for Christmas,’ I said, ‘but neither’s going to happen while we’re sitting here in Calcutta. Shall we start at the beginning? Why did you kill Prashant Mukherjee?’
He hadn’t answered. And it was the same with all my questions that day, and the next. It was on the third morning that he had a change of heart.
There was something in him that had changed. Or possibly snapped.
‘Shall we try again?’ I asked. ‘Who ordered you to kill Prashant Mukherjee?’
‘You must already know that.’
‘Humour me.’
‘You did.’
‘Me?’
‘You and your friends, at any rate.’ He pointed to the guards that flanked the door behind me. ‘Or men just like you. British officers in Bombay. You should be treating me like a hero.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Instead you lock me up in the Ritz Calcutta. Bloody hypocrites.’
‘So you were working for Section H?’
‘I don’t know who that is, but I was working for the military.’
‘Who recruited you?’
‘Some chap called MacRae. He came out to Rangoon, paid off my debts, took me to Bombay and set me up in the Taj.’
‘As Irani?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why?’
‘To funnel cash to the religious crazies. I was to pose as a benefactor, someone with money keen to donate to their cause. And if I was to ingratiate myself with both Hindus and Muslims, I could be neither myself. And I couldn’t be a Christian either, for obvious reasons, so MacRae decided I had to be a Parsee.’
‘You funnelled cash to the Union of Islam and the Shiva Sabha?’
Atchabahian nodded. ‘Others too. Fringe parties, gangsters.’
‘You passed money to gangsters?’
He wiped a dab of saliva from the corner of his mouth. ‘MacRae wanted to raise tensions, get the rival Hindu and Muslim gangs killing each other, so that come the elections, people would vote with their own kind rather than for Gandhi’s mob.’
‘Why start with Calcutta? Why not Bombay or Delhi?’
He gave a smile. ‘I don’t know. It was MacRae’s decision. Maybe he just found the right sort of useful idiots here.’
‘Who’d you pass funds to in the city?’
‘Both sides. Muslim gangs and Hindu hardliners.’
‘And Mukherjee? Why’d you kill him?’
‘Because the gang violence wasn’t working. We expected the Muslim gangs to target more ordinary Hindus, but the bastards just took the money, said thank you very much, and then continued with their own underworld vendettas. That’s when MacRae decided to change tack. He thought a political assassination would work where the gang violence had failed. And he was right. Killing Mukherjee and pinning the blame on Gulmohamed was a good plan. I’d already befriended Gulmohamed in Bombay. Hell, we’d even siphoned the best part of a million rupees to his Union of Islam. I convinced him to come to Calcutta. Told him a potential benefactor wanted to meet him.’
‘And Mukherjee?’ I asked. ‘Why’d you choose him?’
‘Let’s just say he was chosen for me.’
‘So you turned up in advance, wrong Mukherjee’s neck and hoped to pin it on Gulmohamed?’
Atchabahian had a far-away look in his eyes. ‘Imagine if we’d managed it,’ he marvelled. ‘The bastards would even now be slitting each other’s throats across the length and breadth of the country.’
‘But it went wrong.’
That brought him back to earth. ‘Some local fellow came sniffing about, and by the time I’d dealt with him, there was no sign of Gulmohamed.’
I thought back to Suren. It seemed he’d blundered into Atchabahian, taken a beating, and by doing so had accidentally saved the country from destroying itself.
‘What was in it for you?’ I asked.
The question seemed to surprise him.
‘You’re an Armenian living in Burma. India isn’t your fight. Why’d you get involved?’
‘You mean other than the money?’
‘There was nothing more to it?’
‘Actually, there was. I’m a citizen of the Empire. I fought for it and I wish to see it preserved. And it was the right thing to do.’
‘The right thing? You tried to set this country ablaze. It could have descended into a hell of communal violence.’
Atchabahian shook his head. ‘Don’t you understand? That’s all these people are capable of. Hatred of one another is their natural state, and the empire is cemented upon that hate. Learn your history, Wyndham. Your own General Clive, the one you call Clive of India, British India is built upon his defeat of the Muslims at the Battle of Plassey. And who paid for his army? It wasn’t your king in London, or the shareholders of the East India Company. It was the Hindu merchants of Bengal! And when he’d thrown off the yoke of the Muslims, those Hindus of this very city feted him as the weapon of their goddess Durga! They were too short-sighted to see consequences of their actions then and it’s no different today.’
‘You’re no Clive of India,’ I said.
‘No? I did the same thing. I played Hindu against Muslim and strengthened the British Empire.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘You shouldn’t feel bad about it, Wyndham. The British presence in this country has been for the best, and mark my words, if they do one day kick you out, you can rest assured they’ll be back to killing each other before the Union Jack reaches the foot of the flagpole. It’s in their nature.’
I said nothing. The man was mad, and it is disconcerting to interrogate a madman, especially when deep down, part of you suspected his madness might contain a germ of truth.
‘You want to know what the most ridiculous part is?’ he continued, warming to his theme. ‘They’re basically all just the same people! Hindu, Muslim, Muslim, Hindu. They’re so preoccupied with hating each other that they don’t realise that to the rest of us they’re all just the same bunch of little brown-skinned savages. If you British do leave, someone else will just teach them the same lesson. Maybe next time it will be the Russians, or the French, or maybe even the Chinese. It doesn’t matter who it is, they’re too stupid to learn. What does the Bible say? A kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and a house divided will surely fall. You would think their holy books would have taught them something similar, but apparently not.’
‘I’m not interested in a political history lesson,’ I said.
‘No?’ He smiled. ‘Maybe you’ve become too Indian for your own good.’
I took a break between interrogations, leaving Fort William and driving north, to an office building not far from the town hall. Atchabahian’s words had got me thinking, and now I needed to have a chat with someone. The exterior bore a fresh coat of paint, but the walls were stained with gobbets of red betel spit and the stairwell still stank of piss.
The room I sought was on the second floor, halfway down a corridor, and belonged to a newly elected council official who was seated behind a battered desk. He seemed surprised to see me and took a moment to place my face.
‘Dr Nagpaul,’ I said. ‘You may remember me from Prashant Mukherjee’s funeral. Captain Wyndham.’
The light of recognition dawned on his face and was followed by the scalpel edge of a smile and a half-dozen questions.
‘Of course, Captain. Take a seat. How may I help you? Is this about Prashant’s murder? You have arrested someone?’
I remained standing. ‘Not exactly, but it is Mukherjee I’m here about.’
His eyes betrayed no sign that he knew what was coming.
‘You see, a couple of questions keep bothering me. Why would anyone want to murder Mukherjee, and why do it down in Budge Budge?’
Nagpaul’s forehead creased.
‘I’m not sure I follow.’
‘Why Mukherjee? If, as you told me the last time we met, that this was clearly the work of Muslims attempting to instigate a religious conflict, then why Mukherjee? He was just a theologian, a man all but unknown outside of Calcutta and with little real clout even within it. Why not go for someone more important? Someone, say, like yourself?’
‘Maybe because my security is tighter?’ he volunteered.
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘I’ve just walked into your office and I wasn’t even challenged by your flunkeys in the corridor.’
Nagpaul conceded the point with a smile. ‘But you are a white man. They would be more diligent with an Indian.’
‘Really? I’ve had dealings with other Indian political leaders – like Subhash Bose and Farid Gulmohamed – and I’ll tell you something, I couldn’t get within twenty feet of them without being questioned by at least three men.’ There was of course the small matter of Suren and me kidnapping Gulmohamed outside of Victoria station in Bombay, but I didn’t think it merited mention to Nagpaul. ‘I think the reason I breezed in here so easily is that your security men are used to letting non-Indians into your presence.’
For the first time I saw a spark of something, a twitch of the cheek, a flash, gone in an instant.
‘But we’ll come on to that. Let’s stick to Mukherjee for now. Why lure him down to Budge Budge?’
He decided to humour me, making a point of appearing helpful. ‘I would imagine it easier to kill him somewhere away from his home.’
‘Certainly,’ I said, ‘away from his family and his servants, but I meant why lure him to Budge Budge specifically?’
Nagpaul expressed ignorance with a shrug.
‘And then,’ I continued, ‘I remembered something which Mukherjee’s widow, Kamala, said that night at the cremation grounds. She said that her husband hadn’t been down to Budge Budge in a long while, not since he stopped teaching. I didn’t dwell on it, but later, I put it together with something else she said. She mentioned that you and he had fallen out, and that you’d cut off his stipend and put a stop to his religious lectures for the Shiva Sabha rank and file. Those lectures he gave, to your party cadres, they wouldn’t happen to have been the lectures he used to give in Budge Budge by any chance? Maybe even at the house in which he was found murdered?’
The good doctor said nothing, but I noticed the twitch in the cheek once more.
‘If I were to check, Dr Nagpaul, would I find that your party has paid to use that house in the past? Could it even be owned by a sympathiser or a party member?’
Nagpaul shook his head. ‘I have no—’
‘Here’s what I think happened,’ I said. ‘I think Mukherjee disapproved of the direction in which you were taking the Shiva Sabha. The two of you fell out and you expelled him from the party, stopped his lectures and cut off his financial lifeline in an attempt to silence him. Despite that, he continued to speak out, if not for tolerance, then at least for moderation. That didn’t chime with the kind of robust Hinduism you wanted to champion. Then, with the elections approaching, you were contacted by a man who called himself Irani. He probably told you that he had some rich contacts, maybe industrialists who believed in your cause and wanted to provide your party with funds while remaining anonymous. You probably met with Irani several times. Maybe that’s why your men outside didn’t react to the sight of a non-Indian walking through your door just now. Maybe they’d seen Irani or others like him come to meet you before?
‘At some point, you and Irani decided to escalate matters. I don’t know who came up with the plan, maybe it was Irani, whispering in your ear, suggesting that the best way to win votes was to stage a murder and pin the blame on a prominent Muslim. I’m guessing you suggested Mukherjee as the sacrifice and he came up with Gulmohamed as the scapegoat. Seen in that light, Mukherjee was an inspired choice. By murdering him, you’d not only be ridding yourself of a thorn in your side, you’d make him a martyr to Hindus everywhere. In death he’d be the champion of your cause that he would never agree to be in life.
‘I think Mukherjee went to Budge Budge believing he was going to meet you, maybe on the pretext of a rapprochement. Maybe you told him you’d come around to his point of view, or promised him a return to his teaching role – you knew he could do with the money. Whatever the story you spun, you lured him there and Irani killed him.’
Nagpaul sighed. Slowly he stood up and walked over to the window. He looked down into the street, then turned to me.
‘Where are the others?’
I’d no idea who he meant. ‘What others?’
‘Your reinforcements? The police officers, the car or the van – whatever you need to arrest me and take me from this place.’
I said nothing.
‘There are none, are there?’
He walked over, stopping inches from my face.
‘What are you going to do – drag me to prison by yourself? I am an elected representative of the municipal government. You’d be stopped before you reached the stairwell. Your story is a fantasy, and given the lack of constables at your back, I believe it is one that has failed even to convince your superiors at Lal Bazar. That being the case, I shall not dignify it with a response. If you wish to arrest me, please, be my guest. And if not, I would request you to kindly leave my office.’
For a moment I was tempted to punch his teeth in. In other circumstances, I might even have done it and taken my chances with an inquiry, but I was on thin ice as it was.
‘I’ll go,’ I said, ‘but before I do, you should know something. The cash that Irani funnelled to you, from his rich friends. It didn’t come from any staunch Hindu industrialists. It came from us. Or rather it came from a branch of military intelligence.’
The colour drained from his face. ‘That’s not… that is a lie…’
‘I assure you, it’s not. I’ve seen the proof. How do you think your followers would react if they found out you were taking money from the British, that you were nothing more than an imperialist stooge?’
He fell silent and I took it as my cue to leave. I’d reached the door when he finally spoke.
‘Your days in this country are numbered. Make no mistake of that. The writing is on the wall and everyone sees it. When you British do finally tuck your tail between your legs and set sail, we shall still be left with the threat of the Muslims. Rest assured, we will be ready for it.’
I recalled Atchabahian’s words from earlier in the day, of Indians so preoccupied with hating each other that they failed to see the world beyond. I shook my head, walked out of the door and left Nagpaul to his madness.
Atchabahian’s interrogation lasted a few days more. Dawson wanted to wring the man dry, extract every last drop of information he had till the pips squeaked. He’d offered him immunity, and the Armenian had sung like a canary. It was of little use to me. Suren had been right. Atchabahian would never see the inside of a courtroom. The military wouldn’t allow it. But knowledge, as they say, is power, and Dawson could use what he’d gleaned to further his own cause against his rivals within Section H, be they in Bombay or Delhi or anywhere else.
He offered me one sop, however: the chance to drive Atchabahian to the airfield at Dum Dum where a plane stood waiting to take him to Rangoon.
It was late when we set off. The car was Annie’s and the chauffeur was my man, Shiva. If it seemed unusual, Atchabahian didn’t notice. We headed north, through streets still bearing some of the scars of the violence of the previous month. A hollowed-out building here, a boarded-up shop there. The sight still pained me, but Atchabahian was oblivious to it all. This wasn’t his city. It was mine. I knew the buildings, I knew the streets. And I knew the alleys.
He had no idea. Not even an inkling until the car stopped.
‘Where are we?’ he asked.
‘North Calcutta,’ I said.
‘Why are we stopping?’
I gave the order and Shiva flashed the headlights on and off.
‘This here is Gola-katta Gullee,’ I said. ‘There’s someone here who’d like to meet you.’
The door of the shebeen opened and the bullet-headed frame of Uddam Singh walked down the step, flanked by his son, Vinay, and two toughs. As he stepped over the drain, I pushed open the door and got out of the car. Shiva too left his seat, pulled a revolver and opened Atchabahian’s door.
‘Out,’ he growled.
Uddam Singh walked over and inspected Atchabahian. ‘Is this the man?’
‘This is him.’ I said.
I’d promised Singh I’d bring him the man who’d killed his son. I’d probably never find the man who’d actually stuck the blade in his chest – he might even be dead already, just another victim of the violence that had torn the city apart – but I could give him the man who’d provided the cash and ordered the turf war.
Singh sniffed like a man examining substandard merchandise. He turned to his men.
‘Bring him.’
The toughs walked round and grabbed Atchabahian’s arms. The Armenian began to struggle. ‘What is this?’ he cried, but a couple of punches to the gut soon shut him up.
‘Our business is complete?’ asked Singh.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Then I see no reason for you to remain.’
I nodded, then turned and headed back to the car.
Shiva cranked up the car and as the engine exploded to life, I thought I heard a scream from somewhere in the dark.
‘Where to, sir?’ asked the driver.
‘Lal Bazar,’ I said.
It was the day Lord Taggart regained consciousness.