The Shadows of Men Read online

  The suburb of Budge Budge was about as picturesque as a frontline trench, and for a policeman, almost as dangerous. Not for the first time was I grateful for a fast car, a diligent driver and the cover of darkness. As the Wolseley sped past derelict mills and hollowed-out wharves, I wondered just what it was Suren thought he was doing, hanging around in a place like this, and, rather more importantly, why he’d felt the need to get himself arrested for killing someone.

  The police station was a beleaguered-looking redoubt, the shutters over its barred windows scorched and pitted, and the wood of its doors cladded and stiffened with iron. The car pulled up and I got out to the sound of glass cracking in the dirt beneath my boot. The street seemed deserted save for a grizzled pie-dog who sat in front of the station, gnawing on the shin bone of some beast that probably didn’t need it any more, and who growled defensively as I passed.

  The doors were shut fast, which made sense. There was probably little point in reinforcing the damn things if you then left them wide open, and anyway, this didn’t look like the sort of neighbourhood where the locals made a habit of popping in to the station to hand in a lost wallet.

  I rapped on them with the side of my fist, then called out in English, having found long ago that in India the judicious deployment of the English language often helped speed up people and processes that would otherwise take far longer.

  Sure enough, the cover over a spyhole shot back like a rifle bolt and I was appraised by a yellowing eyeball. I looked over to my driver, Shiva. Not being overly keen on him waiting alone outside like a sitting duck, I called for him to join me, but he shook his head. I should have expected that. He loved that car as much as his own family. It was only as the bolts slid back and I crossed the threshold into the fortress-like thana that I realised there may have been another reason for his reticence. If the worst did happen and we were suddenly attacked by a mob, having the car meant he’d at least have a decent chance of escape. As for me, I’d be stuck in the station with the constables, ready to be roasted like chickens.

  The copper who opened the door attempted a salute that petered out halfway to his head, his expression somewhere between wary and world-weary. I knew how he felt. It was late and I was too tired for pleasantries so I got to the point.

  ‘Where is he?’

  The constable gestured with a nod. ‘Please follow me, sir.’

  There wasn’t much to the place: just a room where a few more constables slouched indolently against bare walls; a small office with its door ajar; and a corridor leading to the cells. If there was electricity, someone had cut the supply, because the place was illuminated solely by the flickering light of a hurricane lamp and the air smelled of kerosene and piss.

  Suren, dressed in a soot-smeared and bloodstained shirt, sat on a bench behind the iron bars of a cement cell. His face bore the scars that went with what was known in the trade as a rigorous arrest: a burst lip and one eye swollen shut. The other, though, seemed surprised to see me.

  I rattled the bars of his cell and yelled at a constable who sat warming a desk a foot away. ‘Open this bloody door!’

  The man rose quickly, hurried over and, in a metallic flurry, pulled out a ring of keys.

  ‘What the hell, Suren?’ I said.

  The sergeant staggered to his feet.

  ‘It’s not what —’

  I cut him off with a gesture, waited for the constable to unlock the door, then ordered him and his colleague to wait outside with the other officers. Once they’d gone, I directed Suren to retake his seat.

  ‘What happened to your face?’

  He raised a hand to a purple cheek.

  ‘A slight disagreement with the constables who detained me.’

  ‘Lucky it was only slight,’ I said. ‘Any more serious and they might have killed you. What did you do?’

  Suren sat down but remained resolutely mute on the matter. I ran a hand through my hair. ‘They’re saying you killed a man, then set fire to his house.’

  He looked up and stared at me with his good eye.

  ‘I didn’t kill him.’

  The denial was wholehearted but it was still only half a disavowal.

  ‘And the building? You didn’t try to torch that?’

  Suren paused.

  ‘No… I mean yes, I may have set it alight, but not to…’ His voice tailed off into a sigh. ‘It is most difficult to explain.’

  ‘Well, you better find a way,’ I said. ‘You’re up on charges of murder, arson and resisting arrest. More than enough to see your neck in a noose.’

  Suren shook his head.

  ‘They can’t hang me,’ he said with a degree of certainty which the circumstances hardly seemed to warrant.

  ‘They most certainly can,’ I said. ‘Now tell me what happened so I can sort this out.’

  A bead of sweat trickled down from his temple. He shook his head again.

  ‘I cannot, but it is imperative that I to speak to Lord Taggart. You must get a message to him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the dead man in that building… it was Prashant Mukherjee.’

  The name hit me like a kick from a mule. Mukherjee was a prize ass. The sort of pompous, pontificating high-caste Hindu that made me understand just why so many lower-caste Bengalis had converted to other religions. But to a certain sort of Hindu, mainly the upper-caste, down-on-his-luck variety that blamed all their problems on foreign invaders and Muslim usurpers, Mukherjee was a folk hero. The soft-spoken Hindu high priest who provided the intellectual veneer to justify all manner of thuggery from his hardline co-religionists in the Shiva Sabha.

  ‘Bloody hell, Suren,’ I said. ‘Of all the people whose murders you could have got yourself mixed up in, you chose Prashant Mukherjee?’

  ‘It was hardly a choice,’ he said.

  ‘What am I supposed to do now? I told Uddam Singh that I’d find you and that we’d meet him in half an hour’s time to discuss his boy. We stand him up and he’ll put a price on your head.’

  ‘Uddam Singh will have to wait,’ he said. ‘The priority is speaking to Lord Taggart. Without him, I am dead already.’

  FOUR Surendranath Banerjee

  What did I know about Farid Gulmohamed?

  It was a most peculiar question for the commissioner to ask. I was just a simple Calcutta policeman and a Hindu at that. Gulmohamed, by contrast, was a Bombay financier and a prominent politician – a leading light in the Union of Islam, known for his eloquence and his finely tailored suits. My knowledge of him was distilled from what little I read in the papers and tinged with the usual undercurrent of low-level suspicion about our Mohammedan brothers that most Hindus had inculcated into us from the time we could walk. I told Taggart the former, remained silent about the latter, and received a grunt in acknowledgement.

  ‘He’s here. In Calcutta. Arrived last night on the Imperial Mail. A business meeting, apparently, but this close to the elections, I want to make sure that’s all he’s here for. That’s where you come in.’

  He paused, then inhaled in a manner not dissimilar to the roadside astrologers on Camac Street on the verge of delivering momentous news. I muttered the name of Maa Durga and braced myself.

  ‘I want you to tail him. Report on his movements: who he meets, when and where.’

  My initial elation at being entrusted with a mission was dishearteningly short-lived as a thousand questions clouded my thoughts. How was I supposed to tail Gulmohamed? I had little experience of such subterfuge. How exactly was I to achieve what he expected of me? And where was Sam? Why hadn’t the commissioner seen fit to invite him?

  How was I to explain to Lord Taggart that, while we all might look the same to him, a Hindu following Gulmohamed into the Muslim parts of town would stick out as much as he would at a meeting of the Women’s Institute? In the end, I tempered my questions and muted my concerns, and was thoroughly rebuffed by Lord Taggart with no more than a wave of the hand.

  ‘I’m not asking you t
o follow him into a mosque and pray to Mecca. If the situation arises, just wait discreetly at a distance outside.’

  It seemed churlish to point out that, depending on the mosque, and the neighbourhood in which it was situated, a discreet distance might constitute several miles. In hindsight, I should have done so. It might have saved him a bit of trouble and me a death sentence. But hindsight is as perfect as it is pointless. What matters is kismet and the will of the gods.

  I did, however, have one final question. Why me?

  It seemed to catch him on the chin.

  ‘You’re a senior officer, aren’t you?’

  I had never been regarded as such by a British officer before, and my pay packet also suggested otherwise.

  ‘I am not trained in surveillance, sir.’

  He sat back and shook his head.

  ‘A good point, Sergeant. Except there aren’t any native officers trained in surveillance; not available to me at any rate. I daresay that the intelligence-wallahs of Section H might have someone, but I’m not in the habit of asking favours of the military.’

  ‘How long will Mr Gulmohamed be in town?’

  ‘Two days. You’ll need a man to cover the nightshift, make sure he doesn’t slip out from his lodgings after dark. I’ll let you handle the logistics.’

  And with that it was settled. After detailing what he knew of Gulmohamed’s plans for accommodation, Taggart dismissed me with a nod towards the door.

  I rose from my seat, saluted even though I was hatless, and as I headed for the exit, Taggart called out, halting me in my tracks. ‘And, Banerjee. No need to inform Captain Wyndham of any of this.’

  FIVE Sam Wyndham

  I was less than thrilled at Suren’s reticence in confiding in me, and at the prospect of acting as messenger boy between him and Lord Taggart, and I told him as much. But he can be an obstinate arse when he chooses, and he tends to choose the most inopportune of moments. Yet it was 2 a.m., he’d been beaten black and blue, and I was too tired to argue.

  It was a ridiculous hour to wake Lord Taggart, which made me all the more unwilling to do so, but I needed Suren out of this hole of a jail cell so that I could get him to Uddam Singh, even if we were a few hours late.

  Then there was the reaction to Mukherjee’s death to consider. There would be trouble when word got out. Especially if people thought he’d been murdered by the police. If they discovered that the suspect was being held in the local thana, there was a good chance they’d burn the place to the ground before the morning. All in all, it was ample cause to rob the commissioner of his sleep.

  And so I summoned the constable to let me out and lock Suren back in his cell. I headed for the exit, but not before leaving the officer with a few words of advice.

  ‘The man in that cell. You know who he is?’

  The constable shook his head. ‘No, sahib.’

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is Detective Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee. Lal Bazar big shot.’

  The man’s eyes widened like saucers.

  ‘Detective?’

  ‘That’s right, and a personal friend of Lord Taggart.’

  The constable’s mouth fell open.

  ‘Laat sahib?’

  ‘The very same. Now, between you and me, Detective Banerjee is going to be released first thing in the morning and I’m guessing he’s going to be rather annoyed at the beating you and your friends gave him earlier. If you value your jobs, you might want to make sure the rest of his stay here is as pleasant as a night at the Grand Hotel. Understood?’

  I left him quaking and smiled to myself. I’ve found that there’s nothing quite like putting the fear of God in others to make you feel better about your own tawdry situation.

  Outside, Shiva stood leaning against the bonnet of the Wolseley, sucking on a bidi and metronomically tapping the end of his lathi on the dirt.

  ‘Shob theek aché?’ I asked.

  He spat on the ground and stowed the lathi on the running board.

  ‘All quiet, sahib.’

  * * *

  The drive to Taggart’s residence passed in a blur. The streets were quiet and I was so engrossed in my own thoughts that not even the potholes of Budge Budge could distract me. Soon we were in White Town, an altogether different part of the city, where the vistas were grand and the roads level. But even here, in this bastion of Britishness, the other India made its presence felt. Shiva pulled up at the checkpoint – a sandbag and razor-wire redoubt – that marked the entrance to Taggart’s street.

  A stone-faced Sikh officer, rifle at the ready, scrutinised the minutiae of my warrant card with a mixture of suspicion and diligence, before eventually deigning to wave us through.

  Halfway up the road, past a red postbox and a machine-gun nest discreetly hidden behind a hedgerow, lay Taggart’s driveway, barred by the sort of security that might grace Buckingham Palace or the Bank of England. This time there were questions to complement the inspection of our documentation, delivered in a firm but genteel Home Counties accent by a young English officer.

  ‘What business have you with the commissioner, sir?… Are you aware of the hour, sir?… Is the commissioner expecting you?’

  I restricted my answers to the vague and the monosyllabic, and eventually the young man reached for a telephone to speak to what I assumed was a higher authority within Taggart’s bungalow. The response was swift, however, and the young man granted us access to the inner sanctum with a nod and stiff salute.

  Shiva parked up under the portico and I got out to the sound of the cicadas clicking in the trees. A uniformed bearer showed me up the steps and into the chequerboard hallway where I was met by Taggart’s batman, a heavyset Ulsterman named Villiers, with the physique of a bull and a face like an East End knife fight. It looked like he’d pulled his shirt and trousers on in a hurry. Still, I appreciated the effort.

  ‘Captain Wyndham. Rather late for a social call, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not for me, Villiers,’ I said. ‘Have you woken the boss?’

  The batman scowled. Like many an Ulsterman, he was a stickler for protocol and not overly keen on me taking His Lordship’s name in vain. ‘Lord Taggart’s been informed of your arrival. He’ll be down presently. In the meantime, he’s asked that you wait for him in his study.’

  Lord Taggart’s study was much like Lord Taggart’s office at Lal Bazar: tobacco-scented, and unnecessarily large. I made myself comfortable on one of the several chesterfields that dotted the room like islands in an ocean of parquet and tried to compose my thoughts. Before I’d had a chance to compose much of anything, however, the door opened and in walked His Lordship wrapped in a dressing gown and with his face as grey as his hair.

  I stood to attention.

  ‘Sit, Wyndham,’ he said, as he walked over, ‘and tell me what’s so bloody urgent that you felt the need to force poor Villiers to get dressed in the middle of the night.’

  ‘It’s Banerjee, sir. He’s been arrested on a charge of murder.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It gets worse. The victim was Prashant Mukherjee.’

  Taggart stood transfixed, his face unwilling to accept what his ears were hearing, as though he were still wrapped up in bed and that all this was just some ill-starred dream.

  ‘Why the hell would he do that?’

  ‘He claims he didn’t, but the local coppers arrested him trying to set fire to Mukherjee’s house. And he doesn’t deny that part.’

  The commissioner made for the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large measure of something from a decanter.

  ‘We need to keep a lid on this. If word spreads that Mukherjee’s been murdered, there’ll be hell to pay.’

  If word spreads… in my mind, there was precious little chance of it doing anything else. Calcutta might have been a city of a million people, but when it came to gossip, it seemed little different to a village, with scandal spreading like a virus. And like any virus, it would exact a toll. A price to be paid in fire and blood.


  Taggart rubbed a hand across his face. For someone with the might of the Imperial Police Force at his fingertips he seemed remarkably jittery. Not that I blamed him. With that authority came a terrible weight of responsibility.

  The damn elections were only weeks away and the city was a powder keg. You could feel it: a nervous, pent-up, explosive energy, carried on the air and infused into the oppressive heat as though the end of days were approaching. With the collapse of Gandhi’s protest movement, the natives of Calcutta had fallen into a slough of despondency. Confusion had given way to grief, and then grief to anger. And Bengalis were good at anger, especially of the political sort. No one did it quite like them, which was a surprise, given their lack of physical stature. For a short people, they could be surprisingly violent – like the Scots, but with less bulk. And while they weren’t averse to the physical stuff, the sort with fists and teeth and boots, where they truly excelled was in the sort that required ingenuity and malice aforethought – or, failing that, kerosene and a box of matches. Indeed, for a people who prided themselves on their love of the arts, Bengalis were surprisingly quick to start burning things whenever matters didn’t go their way. And the targets of their incendiary retribution were suitably catholic and comprehensive: from buildings and tram cars to other Bengalis… especially other Bengalis if they were of a different religion.

  ‘What the devil possessed him?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me, sir. Said he would only speak to you and that only you would be able to sort it out. I rather got the impression, sir, that he felt he was acting on your orders.’

  I felt the chill of his stare.

  ‘You think I ordered him to kill Mukherjee?’

  ‘No, sir. As I say, the sergeant denies he killed anybody. But he’s adamant that he’ll only talk to you.’

  Taggart took a long, pensive sip from his glass, then made for the chair behind his desk. He sat down, pulled pen and paper towards him and began to scribble a note, signing off with a flourish.