CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

PAUL WOKE FROM an intense dream. It seemed he had only just fallen asleep. A phone was trilling, drilling. Paul never dreams, he rather prides himself on never dreaming. He had been in bed, in Boston, with his second wife, their tiny baby, when a voice called. He had pushed the quilt aside and started downstairs, barefoot, listening. Paul! It had been a man’s voice. As he descended the stairs, the baby had begun to cry. He heard his wife murmuring comfort. Paul hurried on down flight after flight of stairs. He was naked. He would never reach the bottom. The thin infant whimper, the woman’s soft words, grew distant behind him. The steps in front were darker now, darker and narrower, plunging deeper and deeper. His chubby thighs grazed the walls both sides. Paul knew it was no longer his house. How could it be? Then his feet splashed in water, he felt a breeze on his cheeks. A river was running deep in the stone and again a voice called across the darkness.

Paul!

The phone rang. Paul sat up and looked at his watch. 7.25. He had indeed slept only a few minutes, only the time of the dream perhaps. How long do dreams last? Feeling shaken, he waited for the caller to give up. Helen wouldn’t phone at this hour, surely. He needed to sleep after a long and very stupid night. At my age. But the noise went on. Paul dragged himself to the sitting room.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello. Hello. Who is that?’

‘Paul Roberts speaking. I’m afraid Helen—’

‘You are a relative of Dr Helen James?’

‘Who is this calling?’

‘This is the police. Delhi police. Are you a relative of Dr Helen James?’

‘I’m a friend,’ Paul said. He tried to clear his thoughts. ‘Has something happened?’

‘You are not a relative, sir?’

‘I said, I’m a friend. A friend of the family,’ he added.

‘There is no relative of Dr James at this number?’

‘There is no relative staying here, no. Only myself.’

‘You are a friend of Dr James?’

‘Yes.’

‘Please to come to the Sudha Dutta clinic at once. Do you know where that is? Shadhanad Marg? You know? Yes. Very good. I will explain on your arrival. No, please come now. This is a police order. Now. Without delay.’

Returning to sit on the bed, Paul wondered why he felt so … what? Upset? Guilty? Or just oddly adrift. It was a physical feeling, a hollowness. What on earth did the police want? Did the phone cause the dream perhaps? Looking for his shoes, he was aware of envying Elaine her youthful misery, of envying Helen her intense adult anguish. These women. ‘I have no intensity,’ he told himself out loud, and he remembered what the girl had said only a couple of hours ago: ‘It just didn’t seem real.’

For the evening had finally produced a kiss. Entering Helen’s flat towards 2 a.m., soaking wet, laughing from the adventure of tramping through the warm rain over pavements strewn with storm debris, he had turned to her and she had appeared to welcome his advance. They had kissed.

So?

All his experience told Paul that a kiss would settle things one way or another: two personalities met naked on the lips and you knew immediately who the other was, or at least who they would be for you. You knew if there would be sex.

Paul had turned to Elaine, perhaps on impulse, perhaps calculating (but these categories had become meaningless a very long time ago). The girl’s mouth came to his; they were tasting each other, opening to each other; there was a nervous urgent warmth about her; the anxiety and confusion of the evening were concentrated on her lips. And she hadn’t hung back. She allowed his arms to surround her, allowed their bodies to be pressed together. There was no resistance. It must have gone on at least a couple of minutes.

‘We’re soaking,’ she said then.

‘I’ll get you a towel.’

He had hurried to the bathroom, his mind full of logistics. Here? Now? What time would Helen be home?

He came back with a bathrobe. There would be the problem of her hairs on the pillow. Her perfume perhaps. Paul liked these details.

Elaine was still standing on the mat by the door where Helen left her indoor slippers.

‘I’d better go to the hotel,’ she had said.

Paul handed her the robe. ‘Get dry,’ he told her. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Call a taxi.’

Paul was not the man to insist. Yet he was surprised.

‘It was a nice kiss,’ he said quietly.

She managed to smile and bite her lip at the same time. She opened her mouth, hesitated: ‘I came to find John.’

Paul handed her the towel. ‘Beautiful and elusive creature,’ he said with mock gravity, ‘give me a moment to change, then I’ll call a cab and take you back.’

He had gone into his room. Drying off and dressing, he had been very aware of being overweight, over forty. All around were Albert James’s books with their enigmatic scribblings. James’s problem, he suddenly decided, was he never had fun.

When he went back, Elaine was still in her wet clothes, her head to one side as she towelled her hair.

‘Your pretty pink scarf,’ Paul said.

It was sodden, which made the pink darker, almost crimson. She took it, grimaced, pushed it in a pocket. ‘You really looked cute in it, you know.’

‘Sure you want to go?’

She nodded. But then the taxi company didn’t answer. A recorded message explained they were closed on week nights from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.

‘So?’ Paul asked. ‘What do we do?’

She agreed to strip off her wet clothes, wear the bathrobe, sit on the sofa. ‘I’ll wait up till six,’ she told him. ‘You go to bed.’

Paul was too gallant to leave her. And she might change her mind.

‘Whisky or tea?’ he offered.

She wanted tea. She sat cross-legged in the bathrobe, careful to keep herself covered, pulling the lapels across her chest, tucking flaps between her legs. The movements intensified an atmosphere of domestic intimacy, as between father and daughter.

‘God, it’s quiet here,’ she said. Then, as if engaged in some other ongoing conversation, she went on: ‘I won’t decide anything till I see John.’

‘What if you can’t find him?’

She began to explain that she had said no to John’s proposal when he made it because it seemed too soon, it didn’t fit in with becoming an actress. She was ambitious and he had seemed overwrought, not really himself. He was so young. Now she had lost John and maybe her ambition too.

‘As soon as you get back to London you’ll feel excited about it all again,’ Paul assured her. ‘Especially when you hear your parents telling you to get a proper job.’ He laughed. ‘For example, if I went back to Boston, instead of going out to Bihar, you can bet your life in a few days I’d be drafting a proposal for some new book or other. I’d be back with my girlfriend there.’

‘So it’s just a question of where you are?’ she protested.

‘Where you choose to be,’ he corrected.

Paul was playing the gentleman and at the same time enjoying the sight of that flushed skin at the base of her neck, the paleness of her small feet, her tight little nail-bitten fingers clutching her mobile in the hope of a response from her boyfriend.

‘Speaking of choosing to be places,’ he said, ‘if you’re feeling tired, we could lie down on the big bed. I won’t touch you. Promise.’

She shook her head.

‘You don’t trust me,’ he grinned.

‘Maybe I don’t trust myself.’

Encouraged, Paul grew earnest. It was a while since he had stayed up all night. Perhaps personality shifts in the small hours. Or perhaps he didn’t really have any personality at all. Albert James had suggested, he began to tell her, that we can only understand ourselves in relation to the communication systems we are locked into. ‘It’s a pessimistic position, but there’s also the hint of a possible way out: if you suddenly change the way you behave, the system is exposed, the other people in it get confused, and the self-perpetuating machinery seizes up. If you follow me.’

Elaine shook her head. She had understood nothing about John’s father, she said. Paul jumped to his feet, went to the shelves and pulled out a few books. He was genuinely enthusiastic and at the same time felt a powerful physical desire to be near the girl, to smell her skin up close.

‘See how he wrote over everything he read?’

He sat beside her on the sofa and opened a heavy volume. She looked at the scribbles in the margin and managed to decipher: ‘Reconciliation is ever spectral.’ What on earth could that mean? The book was about Partition. Still shaking her head, she remarked: ‘John thought he was a genius.’

‘No doubt about it.’

‘But that he’d thrown it all away by not getting involved in a proper research team.’

Beside a page discussing the negotiations that led up to Indian independence, James had written, ‘Syntax and semantics dissolve in contemplation.’

Elaine had to turn the book round to follow the scrawl round a photograph of Nehru. ‘Art’s lively death wish …’

‘Well, I hope he knew what he meant,’ she sighed.

Then she twisted her lips in an expression that might have been wry, or just sardonic: ‘I’ll tell you what, though: whenever John, or now you, start talking about him, you always get exciting and,’ she hesitated, ‘sexy somehow?’

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Paul smiled.

Three hours later, unexpectedly, as he walked her down the stairs to the taxi in the early morning, she kissed him again. She didn’t want to be accompanied as far as the hotel, she said. She had put on her damp clothes with no more than an amused grimace and shiver. But as they arrived in the entrance she turned to him and opened her arms. It was recognisably the same kiss as before, but also unmistakeably valedictory, as if promise and goodbye had somehow been superimposed. In his ear she whispered, ‘I’m sorry, it just seemed unreal.’

Paul had hurried back upstairs and lain in bed. He was angry with himself. Over the last week or so he had resolved to change and now, almost immediately, he had betrayed that resolve. He felt confused. ‘You must go to Bihar,’ he muttered. He repeated the words. In all of this adventure, he told himself, the only person with any solidity and consistency has been Helen. Helen was the same in every time and place; Helen lived and saved lives while Albert did nothing but watch and take notes. ‘Go to Bihar,’ he whispered. ‘Life has brought you to a big change.’

Unable to sleep, Paul had found himself repeating these fragments. ‘Life has brought you to a big change. You must go to Bihar. Enough of collecting women. Enough of playing at living. This failure with Elaine is the turning point. Go to Bihar. Go with Helen. Life has brought you to Helen and Bihar.’

Whichever way he turned on the pillow, after a few seconds a pulse began to thump in his ear. Bihar. Bihar. He lay on his back. Bihar was a poverty-stricken, miserable place. So he imagined. I had life sewn up, Paul thought: the books, Amy. Why do I have to do this?

He turned this way and that, but the words went on automatically. ‘Go to Bihar. Change your life. Go to Bihar.’ Then suddenly he was in a different bed; he was back in his house in Boston, back with his second wife, their baby daughter, and a voice was calling his name from the basement, from somewhere deep below the ground: Paul.

‘Go figure,’ Paul muttered, putting the phone down and heading to the bathroom for a pee. The Delhi police. He had never had a high regard for dreams. No need to hurry, he thought. He had never had a high regard for the police forces of developing countries. Years of journalism had acquainted him with their appetite for melodrama and red tape, especially where foreigners were concerned. It would be some stupid quibble over someone’s immigration papers or permission to work. Paul prepared himself a coffee, then called a cab.

There were two police vehicles in the street by the clinic. Still uncertain whether to be alarmed or irritated, Paul was led to the outpatients’ waiting room. ‘Please stay here,’ he was told abruptly. ‘We are coming to talk to you very soon.’ Before he could think to object, the men were gone.

Paul looked around him. The benches against bare walls were all taken and a dozen and more men and women sat patiently on the floor talking quietly, chewing, scratching, in a warm but, for the American journalist, alien togetherness.

He went to stand at the window, looking out of the room through vertical bars and smeared glass across the brick and mud path between entrance and gate. It was all very unlovely, but better than meeting the quietly curious eyes of the Indians in the waiting room. It irked him the way they were all looking at him, in a quiet collective way. Then, with a muffled clatter, four policemen banged out of the main entrance to the building some twenty yards away to the right. Two were holding a young man by the arms, a white man with flaxen blond hair. His head was swaying and he walked uncertainly, as if in some kind of trance. Another policeman walked ahead and another behind.

Paul watched and frowned. The policemen pushed the blond boy through the gate and into a car. Something has happened. He turned and looked for someone in the room to speak to: ‘Do any of you know why the police are here?’

‘What is that, sir? Sorry?’

It was a gaunt man leaning on crutches. Paul repeated the question a little more loudly. ‘Do you know why the police are here?’

Everybody began to talk. In Hindi. Some of them were obviously joking at his expense. Finally, a younger man sitting on the floor said: ‘Nobody knows. Perhaps a crime, sir.’

A nurse arrived at intervals to call the patients by number. They were all holding numbers. It was almost an hour before a policeman came and told Paul to follow him to the other end of the building. In a room that was little more than a cubby a senior officer was speaking on his mobile.

‘I’d be grateful if you could tell me what all this is about,’ Paul began the moment the man closed his conversation. ‘Where’s Helen? Helen James?’

The man wore a khaki uniform and peaked cap. Thickly framed glasses gave the pockmarked face a certain poise. His moustache was a badge of self-satisfaction.

‘Mister?’

‘Roberts.’

‘Ah yes, my colleague spoke to you on the phone.’

‘Please, I’ve been waiting—’

‘Mr Roberts, I must ask one or two questions.’

The man was abrupt and authoritative. Paul was given a seat across the desk from a young policeman who was taking notes. Telephone still in his hand, the officer preferred to stay on his feet. There was much coming and going of men in uniform; a doctor looked in and hurried out.

‘You are staying in Dr James’s apartment. That is right?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long have you been staying there, Mr Roberts?’

Paul tried to remember. ‘Three weeks, give or take a day or two.’

‘You are not resident in India?’

‘No.’

‘And what is the purpose of your visit?’

Paul was patient. ‘I’m researching a biography of Albert James, Helen James’s husband.’ He hesitated. What other explanation could he convincingly give of himself? ‘He died recently.’

‘Ah.’ The policeman frowned. ‘A biography. You are a writer, then?’

‘I wrote a book on Gandhi.’

‘Gandhi,’ the man raised an eyebrow. ‘You are a pacifist?’

‘Not especially.’

‘You are not a pacifist.’

Paul was exasperated. ‘Listen, could you tell me what this is about?’

The request was ignored. ‘When did Dr James’s husband die exactly?’

‘January. I think the 17th of January.’

The officer went to stand over his younger assistant’s shoulder as if to check what he was writing. Perhaps his English wasn’t perfect. Without looking up, he asked: ‘And what were your relations with Dr James’s son?’

‘John James?’

‘I didn’t know his name, Mr Roberts. I asked you what were your relations with him.’

‘None. I’ve never met him.’

‘You’ve never met Dr James’s son?’ The policeman raised a heavy eyebrow and smiled with self-conscious sarcasm, as if he had caught Paul out. ‘You are a guest of the mother, but you don’t know the son.’

‘John lives in London.’

‘Does he? Does he indeed? Yet right now he is in Delhi.’

‘He is?’ Only now did it cross Paul’s mind that it was John whom the police had taken away. ‘Helen didn’t know her son was in India,’ he said quickly. ‘They hadn’t been in touch.’

‘Ah. Is that so? The mother and son were not in touch?’

‘No.’

‘And he wasn’t staying at his mother’s address?’

‘No. But …’ Paul stopped.

The policeman watched him. ‘And you don’t know where he was staying?’

‘How could I, if I didn’t know he was in Delhi?’

With an abrupt change of tone, the officer asked, ‘Where were you last night, Mr Roberts?’ He started to tap his fingers on the desk.

Paul hesitated. ‘You need to know where I was? What on earth for? What—’

‘Mr Roberts, you must cooperate. This is a most serious matter.’

‘Okay.’ Paul took a deep breath. ‘So, yesterday afternoon a guest arrived at Dr James’s apartment, the son’s girlfriend from London.’

Realising the officer was looking at him blankly, as if ‘girlfriend’ were not a category he recognised, Paul explained: ‘A young woman who is a close friend of John’s and of the family came to Dr James’s apartment because she believed John was in Delhi and thought he was staying with his mother. In fact, that was our first inkling that John might have come to Delhi. Then, since Dr James was on night duty here at the clinic, I took the young lady to her hotel, and to dinner, and then, because she had never been to Delhi before, I drove her round the old town.’

The policeman was in some difficulty with this. He had taken his glasses off and was rubbing them with a tissue, frowning, as if clean lenses might help him grasp the point of what Paul was telling him. After a moment, he asked. ‘Why did this woman come to Delhi, where did she travel from, how old is she, why did you take her to dinner and round the town?’

‘As I said’ – Paul realised that the story might not make much sense to a man of the policeman’s background – ‘the girl, her name is Elaine, is a close friend of the family. Maybe she will become John’s wife. Anyway, she came from London to visit him. He had told her he was in Delhi, but not where he was staying.’ When the policeman still seemed unconvinced, Paul added, ‘In these circumstances it was a normal courtesy on my part to take her out. She doesn’t know India.’

‘You drove her around the old town also? In the rain?’

‘Yes. Then we had a drink. Off Connaught Place.’

‘The lady will verify this?’

‘Of course. She is staying at the India International Centre. Her surname is Harley, I think. I can’t remember the name of the bar, but I could certainly take you there.’

‘And what time were you taking this lady of yours home?’

‘Not my lady,’ Paul corrected. ‘Let me see,’ he made a show of thinking. ‘I was back in Helen’s flat at one-thirty, as I recall.’

‘One-thirty? You are out with a girlfriend of the family until one-thirty!’ There was a decidedly unpleasant sarcasm in the officer’s voice. He scratched at one corner of his moustache and exchanged a smile with the young man labouring with his pen. Then his phone rang again. ‘Hello?’ He hurried to the door and spoke in a low voice in the corridor. An elderly man in a white coat knocked, came into the room, handed a file to the young policeman behind the desk, said a word or two in Hindi and hurried out.

The officer returned and spent a few moments looking through the new file. He grunted two or three times, as if hardly satisfied. ‘So,’ he looked up, ‘what did Dr James say when this family friend arrived.’

Paul was aware of feeling extremely tense. ‘Helen was very surprised,’ he said carefully. ‘She had no idea John was coming to India. She didn’t expect this young lady to visit. She didn’t know what exactly the relationship between them was.’

‘Was Dr James happy that her son was in Delhi?’

‘She still didn’t believe he really was.’

Very abruptly the policeman said: ‘There was a quarrel between mother and son, wasn’t there, Mr Roberts. Don’t equivocate. Dr James was afraid of seeing him in Delhi.’

‘No,’ Paul protested.

‘Why didn’t somebody use the telephone and call the son also? This situation is not credible, Mr Roberts.’

‘His phone was turned off …’ Paul began.

But now the officer’s own phone buzzed again, and again the man hurried out of the room to talk. Feeling extremely anxious now, Paul sat still, aware of the low voice out in the corridor and the young policeman intent on his notes, making corrections, occasionally glancing at this file that had appeared. The room was lined from floor to ceiling with wooden shelves and boxes of medicines. Then, from the one small window, came the sound of a peddler crying his wares in the street. ‘Pa-tai-yei, pa-tai-yei.’

Paul listened, understanding nothing. ‘Ma-tai-yei!’ Why did I dream of a voice calling? he wondered. India was full of urgent voices. Some residue from religious infancy, perhaps? Calls, duties. Then, as if physically nudged, he remembered Helen’s story about the dent on the table, the stone elephants, her son’s weird behaviour. He was in Delhi after all. Suddenly, Paul was terrifically alert. The candle had tipped on the table and burned his hand. ‘Do you think he meant to kill me?’ Helen had asked. The question had struck him as absurd, melodramatic, definitely out of character. But now something had happened. A very serious matter. ‘Ma-ti-alli-yei!’ came the voice. ‘Pa-tai-yei!’

Five minutes had passed. Listening, Paul realised that the officer was no longer talking in the corridor. What the hell is happening? He jumped to his feet. The young policeman looked up. ‘I have to go to the bathroom,’ Paul said.

The man seemed to hesitate. ‘You must wait,’ he said.

‘Delhi belly,’ Paul told him. ‘It’s urgent.’

He hurried out into the corridor. People were jostling in lines or hurrying back and forth but there was no sign of the officer. I must find Helen, Paul decided. He opened a door and saw a dark cupboard, closed it again.

‘Where is the main ward?’ he asked a man with a broom and trolley. Without stopping, the man pointed. Paul hurried along the corridor, turned a corner and saw a larger double door. She would be here, surely. He should have come straight to her the moment he was in the hospital. Paul pushed the doors open.

On each side of the big room was a row of beds. The air was sour with powerful smells. Chemicals and vomit. On the third bed to the left a man was retching. At his side a nurse, a rather fat young woman, was holding his head over a plastic bowl. The man was in his mid forties, thin hair plastered in sweat, eyes bloodshot, neck straining with each spasm, each attempt to throw up. The nurse was speaking in a low voice, her face quite close to his.

Again the man retched. A trickle spattered from the corner of his mouth, dribbled down his chin and onto his sleeve. The nurse spoke softly. Other patients had turned away from the scene, lying on their beds. Someone was reading a magazine. An elderly woman had propped herself up to work at some kind of embroidery, a broad silky weave of blues and greens. She seemed indifferent to the coughing and rasping.

Suddenly, the man’s whole body jerked back then forward again and the vomit poured out of his mouth. It was unexpectedly dark. Paul heard the clatter and splash in the plastic bowl. It must have splashed in the nurse’s face, he thought.

The patient retched yet again, in vain this time. The nurse was young and held his head tight between puffy hands, speaking kindly. Bihar, Paul thought. He was fascinated and repulsed. In Bihar, you will be holding that head. You will be splashed by vomit. Why? Why do you want to do this?

‘Mr Roberts?’

At last aware of his name, Paul turned.

‘Mr Roberts, I was questioning you about a crime. Why did you leave? Do you want me to put you under arrest?’

‘I need to speak to Helen,’ Paul said.

The officer’s eyes narrowed. He seemed to be weighing the American up. ‘Follow me,’ he said.

Again Paul was taken down the corridor. This time they turned to the left. In a few moments he recognised Helen’s surgery and saw at once that the wood of the door was splintered around the lock.

‘What’s going on?’

A policeman with a rifle allowed him to cross the threshold.

‘You can approach the tape, but do not go further,’ the officer told him. ‘We are awaiting an expert to examine this.’

With the blinds raised, the room was in full sunlight. Paul stepped to a red and white plastic tape that had been stretched from a cupboard on the left to the handle of the French window on the right. Beyond the tape was a large desk, but stepping to the right of that Paul saw two bodies, one each side of a low mattress. On the far side was an emaciated teenager in grey-white underwear; his head was thrown back, eyes closed, mouth twisted in a painful smile. On the near side, in a beam of sunshine, Helen’s body was obscenely outspread, as though for some particularly unpleasant form of pornography. From face down to knees, the white skin was oddly mottled, the outflung limbs seemed contorted, the belly slightly swollen.

Involuntarily, Paul brought his hand to his mouth. He couldn’t look and he couldn’t look away. Above all he couldn’t understand. The body demanded his gaze and repelled it. It seemed so much bigger, longer, whiter, more present – immediately, materially present – than a living person could ever be.

‘Helen,’ he muttered.

‘What was that?’ the officer asked.

The man’s voice was sharp. He was observing Paul carefully, but Paul paid no attention. He couldn’t see any way forward from here, or back for that matter, away from this body. The shiny plastic, police-incident tape prevented him from getting closer. But he couldn’t turn round and walk out. He couldn’t think at all. Her breasts were flat and misshapen, her pubis brutally exposed to the bright morning light. Only yesterday they had been in bed together.

‘Her son was slapping her face when we broke in,’ the policeman announced. He seemed satisfied to see the American shocked. ‘He refused to open the door.’

‘Her son was here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Slapping her face?’ Paul couldn’t understand. ‘But who’s the boy? What happened?’

‘The young man is a patient at the hospital.’

‘A patient?’

‘Mr Roberts, any son would be upset to find a mother in this undressed state with an unknown man also. Don’t you think? It is too clear what has happened. Unfortunately John James refuses to answer our questions. Now—’

‘But how did they die? He couldn’t just have—’

From along the corridor came the sound of angry voices. They both turned. There was a clatter of footsteps and something banged. Even in Hindi Paul recognised that it was someone he knew. He knew that voice. A man was shouting, objecting, insisting. Other voices were raised against him. The corridor echoed. The argument was hurrying towards them. There was a yell, then Kulwant Singh pushed in. His bearded face was distraught, his eyes gleaming, his black turban not quite straight on his round face. Fending off every attempt to block him, even taking a knock from a rifle butt, he hoisted up the plastic ribbon, ducked under and at once let out a roar of pain. ‘Helen!’ he shouted, ‘No!’

Three policemen grabbed at him, but Kulwant was already down beside the body. He was shouting. He had his head beside hers. He grabbed her wrist for the pulse, threw it down, clasped the body against his own. ‘No!’ he yelled again.

Paul watched, humiliated by the bigger man’s energy and evident grief. Kulwant was embracing the nude body in a frenzy of denial. ‘No, no, no!’ he went on. The officer shrieked at him. He was spoiling a crime scene. At last, the two young policemen had hold of his arms, forced him to let go of the body and pulled him back. The Sikh was trembling violently, his strong fleshy mouth alive in the grizzle of beard. A torrent of Hindi poured out. His eyes were thick with tears.

Paul listened. He understood nothing, only that Kulwant was profoundly emotively involved with Helen in a way he himself had not been. The man cared enormously. There was a back-and-forth between the officer and the Sikh now. Kulwant seemed to be explaining who he was and why he was there. When the officer interjected, Kulwant snapped back, his voice full of contempt. The man didn’t intimidate him at all. For a moment his powerful wrists wrenched and struggled. Then he rounded on Paul.

‘These idiots are asking me questions about her son. They don’t understand anything.’

Paul was unable to respond.

Kulwant made another lunge, shook off his minders and grabbed one of four or five small plastic bags from the desk. There was a syringe inside and he waved it in front of the officer shouting excitedly. Again Paul couldn’t follow. His eyes were drawn back to Helen’s body. The combination of outflung arms, ugly exposure and wax-white stillness was uncanny.

‘The American will confirm every word I am saying.’ Kulwant turned on Paul again. ‘This is a terrible terrible tragedy. Her husband got her to kill him six months ago, isn’t that right? She killed her husband at his request. He wanted to die. And no doubt he asked her to do the same to herself. He incited her. I have seen her thinking about this for many months. I have been warning her, many, many times. Her husband was a sick man, isn’t that right, Mr Roberts? You are writing about him. You must be aware of that. He was a brilliant man, but sick, with sick impulses, very sick, very contorted, very afraid. I have been telling Helen for many years. Oh I can’t believe this. It is my fault.’

Weakly, Paul said, ‘I am sure Albert James would never have persuaded anyone to kill themselves. Let alone his wife. That was quite the opposite of his character.’

‘But all his thinking was going that way!’ Kulwant cried. ‘Anyway, what is this?’ Again he waved the syringe and turned to the policeman. ‘You will find a deadly mixture in this syringe. I am sure. Probably insulin and Valium. It is very swift.’

‘That is enough now,’ the officer said sharply. ‘A man who is dead six months cannot incite anyone to kill themselves. I said enough!’ he repeated, when Kulwant opened his mouth again. ‘It is true we have found four syringes on the floor. They will be examined of course.’ The officer left a short silence. ‘However, there are other questions also to be answered.’ He touched his moustache for a moment. ‘Why did the son not tell his mother he was in Delhi? Why has the woman left no note, if it is a suicide? If he found his mother already dead, why did the son lock the door behind him? Why did he refuse to speak to us?’

Kulwant suddenly seemed exhausted by his emotions. ‘Perhaps there is a note,’ he said lamely. ‘I still can’t believe this. It’s too horrible. Perhaps she has sent an email to someone.’

The officer turned to Paul: ‘Do you think Dr James could have killed herself? Was she talking about such matters while you were staying with her?’

Very slowly, Paul’s mind was beginning to function. Had Helen said anything? Perhaps she had and he hadn’t understood. ‘What about this boy here?’ he asked carefully. ‘Why would the boy be dead if it was suicide?’

Kulwant turned back to the bodies. He crouched down but without trying to get closer this time. ‘Dear God,’ he muttered. ‘Helen!’ He raised a hand to his forehead, adjusted his turban, stood up again. ‘I see no marks on him,’ he sighed. ‘There is no blood. You will see he also died from an injection.’

Then in someone’s pocket a phone began some urgent melody. A bhangra dance tune. It sounded rather merry.

‘There must be an autopsy,’ the officer was saying.

Kulwant dug into his trousers, pulled out the phone and checked the illuminated screen. ‘Jasmeet!’ He pressed a button, lifted it to his ear and demanded, ‘Where in the name of God are you, Jasmeet?’