“There’s something you’re not telling me,” said Chief Superintendent McIntyre.
I shrugged. It was always difficult to lie to him.
“Humph.” He gave me a long stare. As light faded from the window, I’d spent an hour and a half describing my investigation. As promised, I’d omitted Padamji’s problems at the Bombay mint and any mention of Vishal’s brother, the mint worker.
McIntyre took out his pipe and tapped the bowl over his knuckles. In the patient tone of one starting over at the beginning, he said, “You visited a slew of banks. Every major banking house in the city, actually. You were at the mint. Won’t say why…”
“The key—”
“So you say,” he growled. “Two days ago a man was run over by a tram, did you know? Worked at the mint. The foundry, I’m told.”
My pulse jumped. He knows. He knows! I kept my face immobile. Tap, tap went the pipe, slapping against his palm. I let him play it out, knowing there was no hiding from it. Blast. I had to protect Padamji.
He said, “Fellow hadn’t shown up for work in days. Know anything about that?”
When I made no reply, he reached over and grabbed my hand. Before I could react, he turned it over. My scrapes were healing, but a few were still painful. My fingertips were singed pink, skin peeling.
He snapped, “You’re not invisible, you know, when you traipse round like a native. Fellow your height! Grey eyes, long black hair. Yes, yes, even wearing a turban. And you limp.”
He turned his head and beckoned someone behind me. An English officer entered. I glanced up and felt as though he’d dumped a bucket of cold water over me. It was the officer from the tramway accident.
I met his gaze with a look of inquiry but did not try to shake hands. It wouldn’t do. I was dressed as an Indian.
McIntyre was saying, “Is this him?”
The inspector frowned. Had I been dressed in Western clothing he would have been named, even introduced. British administrators were mighty democratic like that; a bloke in pipes might be dark as coal, but a neat well-cut suit earned him a hearing.
The Englishman seemed taken aback by my frank gaze.
“Yes,” I said gently. “I am Anglo-Indian. Eurasian, if you like.” I gave him half a smile.
McIntyre’s brogue thickened as he said, “Fellow at the tramway, with blood on his hands—that him? Stand up, Agnihotri,” His face was ruddier than the weather allowed; he cleared his throat as I climbed to my feet.
While I waited at parade rest, McIntyre said, “Medical discharge with military honors. Medal and all. A bloody war hero.” Meaning me, meaning my history. Meaning Karachi.
I swallowed and cast my gaze to the floor.
The officer fumbled. “Yes, sir … but I don’t think…”
“All right. That will be all,” said McIntyre.
When we were alone again, he dropped his pipe on his desk. “What are you doing, Jim?”
“Sir?”
“How will it help if you’re in the clink too? What will old Framji do then, hmm? Goddamn it boy, why can’t you leave things alone?”
If I told him about following the mint worker, I’d have to break my word to Padamji. Knowing McIntyre’s absolute loyalty to the Crown, asking him to turn Nelson’s eye was pointless. Leave it alone? His words stung like nettles scraping my skin.
Across the vast expanse of his blotter I asked, “Is it so important to wrap up Rastogi’s murder quickly? Anyone will do, as long as you’ve got someone for it? You know Adi’s innocent.”
He looked at me with something akin to pity. “So. Those blinders are coming off.”
I had no reply.
“The tram. Did you kill the chap from the foundry?”
I jerked. “What? No!”
He grunted and peered again at his pipe. When he spoke, his voice was heavy with regret. “You’re not telling me something. I can smell it.” He raised his head toward the door and barked, “Havildar! Arrest this man.”
“No,” I said, with splayed hands. “Not today. Arrest me tomorrow. There’s something I need to do today.”
I turned to brush past the burly guard bringing McIntyre’s tea. With a strangled shout, the havildar saved his wobbling tray.
“Stop him!” barked McIntyre.
Three blokes blocked my way. Blast. I turned and glared at McIntyre.
“Lock him up,” said the superintendent, adding to me, “Do you good to cool your heels a bit. Do that knee some good too.” He beckoned to his inspector and growled instructions while someone shoved me from behind.
They led me through the maze and into a bank of cells. I cursed softly, until I recognized the place.
“Jim!” Adi cried, leaping to his feet.
I grinned. “Hullo.”
The havildar pulled open the door of the cell beside Adi. I entered and thanked him formally. He mumbled something about mealtimes, then I asked whether Major Smith had left for the day. He had.
Sitting on the metal plank that passed for a bed, I met Adi’s stunned gaze.
“I would have brought your supplies, but I didn’t expect to return just yet.”
Adi chuckled in surprise. Over the next few hours, lying on the bunk, I brought Adi fully into the picture. Cross-legged on the floor of the adjoining cell, he laid out the prosecution’s case, and plied me with questions. More than anything, he seemed hungry for conversation—what did it matter if the jail’s electric lights blinked out? I had much to tell.
When the talk wound down, Adi asked, “Jim, what exactly did you do for Jeejeebhoy?”
“Mmm. Adi, some other time, yes?” I yawned, stretching it out. I would not put it past McIntyre to tuck an assistant nearby, scribbling in shorthand to record our conversation.
Adi did not want to say good night. “The baronet’s a brilliant man, Jim. Someday I want to build a business like that—not just a factory, but an entire industry. Something I can be proud of, that my staff tell their families and friends about. Something to make Indians stand tall.”
“Give it time. If anyone can do it, you can.”
From beyond came the clang of a door closing.
“Tell me about the army, Jim.”
The lad was lonely. He’d been cooped up for days—was it two weeks already?
I said, “I lived and breathed the army for fifteen years, Adi. Thought I’d seen life bare of fripperies and politeness. Stripped to the unvarnished truth. I’ve seen men sweat in the flurry of preparation, quick glances before an action, saying without words, ‘This is madness! But if you’re going in, I will too. I can’t be the one to cave.’ It’s a different world. Feels like a different lifetime.”
Adi spoke quietly. “It took … courage.”
Did McIntyre in fact have a bloke writing down our words? He wouldn’t have much luck in the dark. It was strange, speaking into the night like this, knowing Adi was listening, and would understand. It brought a deep sense of peace.
I told him, “During a skirmish, there’s sometimes a moment when things get out of hand. Something goes wrong, something we didn’t expect. A surge of panic, training forgotten, blokes flee. I learned to tell when it was near, and threw my weight against it, yelling orders, calling out names to avert it. Men who break and run can scarce look themselves in the mirror.”
Adi sighed. “You’ve seen a lot.”
“Didn’t know anything about civilian life. All I knew of women were bawdy songs and anecdotes told after a trek. And sometimes, with the curry on our mess plates licked clean, I’d sit under a jacaranda tree and hear about some other bloke’s romantic adventures. Never someone in our company, ’course, always one company over.
“I’d been chuckling over some lewd rubbish when my commander, Colonel Sutton, overheard. The others he sent to dig latrines. To me he said, ‘You’re coming with me. Quickly now, jaldi, jaldi!’ I must have been eighteen perhaps, or nineteen.
“He took me to his quarters and presented me to his wife and daughters. I was so embarrassed, I didn’t know how to greet them! Then in his study I got a tongue-lashing that made me feel like a week-old banana peel left out in the sun. ‘If you speak of women or to them, you speak with respect or I’ll have your hide for a pillowcase,’ he said.
“Before dismissing me, he handed me a book. Ordered me to read and return the next week to discuss it. You could have knocked me down with a puff!”
“What was the book?”
“Oliver Twist. He asked what I thought of poor Nancy.”
A long pause. Adi asked, “You’ve seen … death?”
“Mmm. Odd, now, remembering it. I read that book just before our ambush. I turned in Dickens after drill and went out on a sortie. Then we took fire. Just a few shots, really. Came from a nearby thicket. We scurried, took cover, but one of the lads was cut down. I knew the bloke. Shot in the gut.”
Adi said nothing, so I went on. “What could I do? Put an arm around him. He was weeping. From pain? Shock? Fear? I gripped his hand, spoke to him the way Father Thomas talked, gently, with certainty. The bloke watched me for the half hour it took him to die. Chaps started to call me ‘Padre’ after that, yet I had no vocation for it. Books, now—reading was my vocation. In books I was not a mixed-blood urchin with horseshit in my hair, but an explorer, a conqueror, or a gentleman.”
Adi chuckled. “First book I loved was Robinson Crusoe. And then The Count of Monte Cristo. Snuck it into my room at night. Did you read a lot?”
“Whenever I could lay my hands on a book. Most afternoons, while furloughed in Simla, or Lucknow. Each day was much like the last. Bugle calls at the same time, ate meals, boxed, drilled—loading and unloading the guns. Carried supplies, set watches, slept. It was a blessed change when some message had to be delivered, or volunteers needed to fetch the mail. Got my pick of the horses then. Usually made good time.”
“No fun, no parties at all?”
I thought about those years. “Oh, we sang aplenty. But most places we had no female company. Few single women, mostly officers’ wives who’d followed from England. They organized card games and dances, but a fellow without prospects isn’t invited. Instead, I plowed through Shakespeare with the aid of a tattered Oxford dictionary. The women in those pages! Juliet, just fourteen, running away for love. Wise Portia, ill-fated Desdemona!”
Adi chuckled at my pronunciations.
In those days I’d thought of a wife as a delicate ornament, a prize to be won and set up in costly finery. I’d considered them fragile. How wrong I was. Diana had saved my life several times. Would she know where I was? God, I hadn’t sent any word to her. She’d be ruddy furious.
In the morning, a guard brought me a small metal tumbler of tea and a rusk that would have left a sparrow hungry.
“Mmm! Such posh fare! They spoil us here, don’t they,” I said, sipping the steaming liquid while holding the glass on end, a thumb on the rim, my fingertips on the bottom.
“Oh, it’s the Ritz,” called Adi. “Best chai on the western ghats. On the continent!”
I spotted a familiar set of shoulders at the end of the corridor and hailed him. “Smith! Dammit, man! Major Stephen Smith!”
He spun around. “Bloody hell, Jim? You sent the jailor to get me?” He strode over and peered as though I’d done a magic trick, and not a particularly nice one. “What the devil you doing in there?”
I joined him at the bars. “It’s a mistake. Mac sent me to cool my heels. I need to get out, Stephen.”
His mouth opened and closed.
I could have wept for impatience. Somewhere in Cammattipoora, Sona was waiting to meet her sweetheart. But Satya wouldn’t come, would he?
Voice rough, I said, “It’s me, Smith. I’ll explain everything. Sign me out, now!”
“Ah—” He seemed flustered.
I groaned and used my last chip. “You said you owe me.”
His pupils dark, he gaped at me. I’d saved his life in Karachi; I was demanding repayment. I grimaced in apology, hoping he’d understand I had no recourse. If there was any other path, I’d take it.
“Right,” he said and turned on his heel, leaving me with a sour taste in my mouth. Yes, I was a heel. And no, I had no alternative.
Sometime later, the guard keyed my cell, saying in Hindustani, “You are released. You can go.”
Straightening my rumpled clothes, I snapped a salute to Adi and hurried after my erstwhile captor. Damn and blast. How much time had I lost?
A box of sweetmeats in hand, I entered Cammattipoora. In the heat, the stench of rotting vegetables and urine heralded the garbage pile at the corner of Banpura Lane where tenements bordered the street. Hindus and Muslim families had commingled in most suburbs when I left Bombay two years ago. But last year’s riots over cows had separated Muslim mohallas from Hindu enclaves.
As the lane narrowed, the bicycle rut in the middle served double duty as a sewer, so that one had to straddle it with each step, or walk aslant on one side, ducking to avoid the overhanging wooden windows. These dismal hovels were crowded with occupants, men of all ages leaning in open doors or squatting to defecate in the street.
In my army years, I had a fair tolerance for bodily odors. Blokes living in close proximity ignore flatulence or turn it into fodder for limericks. Sweat smells no worse than vomit, and one can become inured to the stench. But I was out of practice. Assailed by these, I strode quickly. At the cowshed, the clean smell of manure was a welcome change.
Mouth dry, I counted the ninth door and hurried up the stairs.
I knocked. Nothing. Not a whisper within, no footstep, no murmur. I thumped the door, but it remained uncooperative. The shuttered windows were dumb.
“Gone, sahib,” said a voice behind me.
A plump fellow in a dirty black vest brushed his trousers to smooth them.
“Where have they gone, the women?”
He shrugged. “All gone here and there…” He spread his hands to either side.
“And who are you?”
“I live there, sahib! Come.” He pointed to a structure down the street and invited me, eyebrows wriggling. I quizzed him for a few minutes, then turned my attention to the neighbors.
When I approached, two of them got to their feet and advanced, eyes narrow in the universal sign of a challenge. Both wore belts. Both bore knives.
I asked about the boarded windows. The pair answered with suspicious looks.
“Who owns the place?”
They did not know or would not say. Yet the furtive glances that passed between them spoke another tale. I tried other doors, but the residents stayed mum. It was almost … as though they feared someone. Someone who might be watching, even now.