Smoke and Ashes Read online

  The smart thing to do would be to throw it in the Hooghly. Only the river was several miles away, I was covered in blood and I wasn’t going to get far in my current garb. What I needed was a change of clothes. I set off across the rooftops scouring the vista until I found what I was looking for. Moving silently, I covered the distance in a matter of minutes, and was soon rifling through the articles on a washing line like a housewife examining the wares at Chukerbutty’s Fine Clothing Emporium on Bow Bazaar. Hindus have a fixation with ritual cleanliness, not just of their bodies but their clothes too. That preoccupation seemed to have infected all of the town’s other non-white residents too, and at any given time, half of Black Town seemed submerged in a sea of drying laundry. Picking out a shirt, I quietly slipped off my own and wrapped it around the knife. The shirt from the line was old, faded and a size too small, but I buttoned it as best I could and rolled up the sleeves. To complete the ensemble, I stole a black shawl, which the locals called a chador, and wrapped it round my head and shoulders like an old woman, then continued over the rooftops until I found a place low enough to jump down to the street. From there I headed north to the Circular Canal where, weighing down the knife and my shirt with a brick, I deposited the package in the black waters below, like a Hindu devotee making an offering to the gods. Then I set off west, stopping at a tube-well to wash my hands and face, before continuing the mile or so to the all-night tonga rank at Sealdah station.

  As I walked, my head buzzed with only one thought. I had to find out why the raid had taken place. It couldn’t be coincidence that a man had been murdered as Vice Division, without warning, launched its first raid in months on a den, just at the time that I happened to be there.

  The clock in College Square read a quarter past three, and I was back in Premchand Boral Street soon after. I was early. Most nights it was at least 4 a.m. by the time I made it home from Tangra. I’d have laughed at the irony if it wasn’t for the dead man I’d left lying back there.

  Trudging up the stairs to my lodgings, I slipped the key into the lock. The apartment was in darkness. Nevertheless, I had to tread carefully. I shared my lodgings with a junior officer, Surrender-not Banerjee, and he was a light sleeper. His real name wasn’t Surrender-not, but Surendranath. It meant king of the gods apparently, and like the names of many of the kings I remembered from my history classes, its proper pronunciation was beyond me and most of the other British officers at Lal Bazar. A senior officer had rechristened him Surrender-not. That man was dead now, but the name had stuck.

  He knew of my opium habit, of course. We’d never discussed it but the boy wasn’t an idiot, and in the early days he’d couched his concern in vague, open-ended questions as to my health, all framed with the sort of disappointed look a mother might give you when you came home from having been in a fight. Not that it had changed anything, and these days, he’d given up the questions, though I still encountered the stares from time to time.

  The more pressing issue was our manservant, Sandesh. He too slept in the apartment, though generally on a mat under the dining table. He was supposed to sleep in the kitchen but claimed it was too large and that high ceilings gave him insomnia. Waking him was not normally a concern, for even if he did care as to where I was going most nights, he was mindful enough of his station never to voice an opinion on it. Nevertheless, seeing me wandering in dressed like a Spanish fishwife might just challenge even his monumental indifference.

  I crept along the hallway to my room and once inside, locked the door. Light from a crescent moon bled in through the open window and fell like a veil on the furniture. The darkness felt like protection and, dispensing with the lamp, I removed the chador and pulled a crumpled pack of Capstan and a box of matches from my trouser pocket. I extracted a cigarette, lit it with shaking hands and took a long, steady pull.

  In one corner stood my almirah, the large wooden wardrobe that was a fixture of most Calcutta bedrooms. With a mirrored panel inlaid in one of its two doors, the thing was unremarkable, save for the lockable steel compartment inside, which occupied a quarter of it and contained the few valuable possessions I owned, together with a larger number of more questionable ones. Placing the fag end in the old tin ashtray which sat on my desk, I stripped out of the borrowed shirt and, together with the chador, bundled it into the almirah’s steel compartment before locking it again. The clothes would need to be burned, but for now this was the best place for them. With the evidence concealed, I sank onto the bed and covered my face with my hands as, on the desk, the cigarette burned down to nothing.

  THREE

  22 December 1921

  The cup of tea on the bedside table was stone cold. Sandesh, as was his habit, had placed it there, probably several hours earlier. I extricated myself from the mosquito net, picked up the cup and threw the contents out of the window, waiting for the gratifying splash as the stuff hit the concrete courtyard below.

  It was likely to be the closest I came to festive cheer. Christmas in Calcutta was an odd affair. While freezing for the natives, it was still never bleak enough for anyone who’d grown up in true British winters, and though the carol singers from the local churches, with their hosannas and hallelujahs, did their best to remind you of the joy of the coming of Our Lord and Saviour, Christmas with palm trees in place of spruce and Norwegian pine just wasn’t the same.

  Christmas aside though, the city had grown on me. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that, in its own way, Calcutta was as flawed and dysfunctional as I was: a city built in the middle of a fetid Bengal swamp, populated by misfits all struggling to survive against the odds.

  Surrender-not was long gone by the time I’d washed, dressed and made it through to the dining table. He’d always been an early riser, but these days I’d rather formed the impression that he left early in order to avoid having to talk to me. Sandesh entered and wordlessly placed breakfast and a copy of the day’s Englishman in front of me. From the creases on the paper’s front page, it looked as though Surrender-not had already gone through it. I pushed it to one side and began to pick at a lukewarm omelette liberally sprinkled with chopped green chillies. I’d little appetite for food these days, and, thanks to Mr Gandhi’s antics, even less for the news. The country was a powder keg, and had been so ever since the Mahatma, as his followers liked to call him, had asked Indians to rise up in a frenzy of non-violent non-cooperation, and promised that if they did so, he’d deliver independence before the year was out.

  Of course, Indians are gluttons for mysticism, and the sight of the man in his little dhoti was enough to persuade them to do just that. Millions of them – not just the parlour-room revolutionaries of Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi, but the ordinary folk, the farmers, peasants and factory workers from ten thousand towns and villages across the length and breadth of the country – had heeded his calls to boycott British products, resign from government posts and generally cause a bloody nuisance. You had to hand it to the little man; he’d taken the Congress Party from a talking shop of lawyers and turned it into a movement of the people. Co-opting the masses – that had been the Mahatma’s masterstroke. He’d told them that they mattered, and they revered him for it.

  The Bengalis of Calcutta, always eager to stick two fingers up to the British, had taken it upon themselves to lead the charge – not that there was much charging to be done, seeing as how the Mahatma’s preferred modus operandi was to get his followers to sit down and refuse to move. What’s more, as a means of protest, it seemed almost tailor-made for the Bengali psyche, which was predisposed to causing maximum inconvenience while doing as little as possible. Striking was in their blood, so much so that you’d be forgiven for thinking that many of them only turned up to work so that they could then go on strike.

  Not so long ago, our city had been the capital of British India. If we’d hoped that moving the centre of power to Delhi might lessen the capacity of Calcutta’s native population to cause trouble, we’d been sorely mistaken. They’d reacted to
the Mahatma’s call with their usual zeal. Students had walked out of universities and schools, civil servants had resigned and government institutions were picketed. Most worrying, though, were the resignations from the ranks of the police force. It had started inconsequentially – a few native officers handing in their badges on principle soon after Gandhi’s call – but later, with the mass arrests and jailing of protesters, and amid mounting pressure from families and communities, the flow had increased steadily.

  The situation in the city had gradually worsened. One might have expected law and order to improve, given the emphasis on peaceful protest, but the Mahatma had unleashed forces that he couldn’t control. Not all of those fired up by his words seemed quite as keen on non-violence as he was. As the months had passed, passions had risen, and there had been sporadic attacks on whites, Anglo-Indians, Christians, Parsees, Chinese and just about anyone else suspected of being less than euphoric about the prospect of an independent India. And the Imperial Police Force didn’t have the manpower to protect everyone, even if we had wished to. For that was our dirty secret. The fact was that the powers that be rather welcomed the attacks. Anything that punched a hole in the Mahatma’s sainted aura was seen as a positive, and attacks by his followers were the perfect pretext for a crackdown. The plan might have made sense on paper – indeed the viceroy and his coterie in Delhi seemed to approve, but they might as well have been sitting in London or, for that matter, on the moon, given how far removed they were from the realities of what was transpiring on the streets. With tempers fraught and jails full to bursting, such a crackdown didn’t seem quite so sensible on the streets of Calcutta.

  Word had it that the viceroy, never the most steadfast of men, favoured a compromise, but a number of stiff telegrams from Downing Street, and no doubt a few stiff gins too, had served to bolster his resolve, and in the end he hadn’t yielded an inch to native demands. Now there were barely ten days to go before Gandhi’s year was up, and with the discipline of even his most ardent supporters wavering, the hope in high places was that if we could weather the storm for another fortnight, the Mahatma’s whole peaceful protest movement might collapse, taking his credibility with it.

  But then had come the news that His Majesty’s government in London had, in its wisdom, decided that the way to strengthen the bonds of empire was to send us His Royal Highness Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, on a month-long royal tour. The effect, of course, had been electric, though more on the natives than on the city’s loyal British subjects. The protests, which had been dying down, suddenly erupted with renewed vigour, as Congress leaders called for a complete boycott of the visit.

  The prince had arrived in Bombay some weeks earlier and was greeted by brass bands and a full-scale riot. Calcutta, on the other hand, had remained stubbornly peaceful as the city awaited his visit. This had caused anguish verging on panic in some quarters – because that peace hadn’t been enforced by the brave officers of the Imperial Police Force, or the army for that matter, but instead by a different presence, the khaki-clad members of Gandhi’s Congress Volunteer Force. Young, earnest, idealistic men, they’d been tasked by the Mahatma with ensuring that non-violent protest remained just that: non-violent; and yet the sight of them directing people like some vigilante militia sent a chill down my spine. 1921 had proved to be a vintage year for uniformed mobs. In Italy, Mussolini’s blackshirts were going from strength to strength, and their brown-shirted brothers in Germany were making a nuisance of themselves too. Our home-grown Congress Volunteers might profess non-violence, but I distrusted any civilian organisation which felt the need to bedeck their members in quasi-military uniforms – and that included the Boy Scouts.

  The Volunteers had been charged by Congress with enforcing Gandhi’s call for a general strike – a total shutdown of shops, businesses and civilian administration – to protest the prince’s visit. At the same time, the viceroy had ordered us to arrest anyone seeking to compromise the efficient operations of the government. Everyone knew there was a showdown coming, and at police headquarters at Lal Bazar, plans were being drawn up to deal with the worst.

  As for the prince, right now he was processing his merry way across the country and was due to arrive in Calcutta in three days’ time – on Christmas morning no less.

  We couldn’t have handed Mr Gandhi a better Christmas present if we’d tried.

  Sandesh entered the room and placed a fresh cup of tea on the dining table. I picked it up and pushed politics from my mind. In their stead, my thoughts returned to the previous night. My escape had been fortuitous, owing more to a Chinese girl’s quick thinking than skill on my part. It still felt like a dream, and maybe some of the memories were just that – opium-induced figments of my subconscious. Pipe dreams they were called, but the corpse had been real enough. Of that I was sure.

  The dead man had probably been a foot soldier of one of the opium gangs which were forever fighting for control over Chinatown: the Green Gang or the Red Gang, most likely. They were the biggest players in the Chinese opium trade after all. Both were based in Shanghai, and Calcutta – the gate through which their opium flowed – was a prize they were both willing to shed blood for. In the past, we’d managed to keep a lid on their feud, but now, with our numbers depleted, other matters took precedence, and the gangs had been quick to capitalise, fighting with each other for the right to fill the void we’d left.

  As to the man’s identity, it would be up to someone in my department to find that out – at least technically. Legally, we had a duty to investigate every murder which occurred within our jurisdiction. In practice though, if the victim wasn’t white or, God forbid, a high-profile native, the initial inquiry was often perfunctory, a form-filling exercise before the case was farmed out to a local thana and forgotten about.

  Still, I wondered on whose desk the case would initially fall. There was even a chance it would land on my own as, by luck or design, I wasn’t exactly rushed off my feet at the moment. And if it didn’t, I’d make damn sure to keep tabs on any inquiry, not because I was worried about it leading to me – once I’d burned the clothes there would be nothing linking me to the scene – but because the whole business had been disturbing.

  I drained the last of the tea and headed for the door. Outside, Calcutta assailed the senses as it always did: a cocktail of primary colours, pungent aromas and the cacophony of life in a city of a million souls packed into a space too small for a tenth of their number.

  I made it to my desk at Lal Bazar by half past ten. My timekeeping of late had been less than impeccable, but not to the extent that it had been commented upon by other officers – not to my face at least. It’s true, Surrender-not had made some rather cryptic references to things he’d heard, but I wasn’t sure what he’d meant. When it came to imparting information, he could be as opaque in his pronouncements as the Oracle at Delphi. Either way, the views of my fellow detectives didn’t trouble me. Only one man’s opinion mattered, and, according to the note on my desk, it appeared he wanted to see me. Urgently.

  I composed myself, then headed out of my office and, collecting Surrender-not on my way, made for the stairs up to the top floor and the office of Lord Taggart, the commissioner of police for Bengal.

  ‘C. R. Das. What do you know about him?’

  It wasn’t the question I’d been expecting. I was seated in Lord Taggart’s office, across the desk from him. Surrender-not sat on the chair next to me.

  ‘Sir?’

  The commissioner shook his head. He looked tired. All of Calcutta’s policemen did these days.

  ‘Come now, Sam. You must know the name. Or have you been asleep for the last year?’

  Of course I knew the name. Everyone in India did.

  ‘Gandhi’s chief rabble-rouser in Bengal,’ I said. ‘His face is in the papers most days.’

  The answer hardly seemed to placate the commissioner.

  ‘That’s it, is it? The sum total of your knowledge of the biggest thorn in my
side?’

  ‘I tend to keep my nose out of politics, sir. But if you suspect Mr Das has killed someone, I’ll be sure to acquaint myself more closely with him.’

  Taggart eyed me suspiciously. We had a history of working together which dated back to the war. As such he afforded me slightly more leeway than he did most others, but there was a limit to his tolerance.

  He let the comment pass and turned to Surrender-not. ‘Maybe Sergeant Banerjee can help you out?’

  Surrender-not looked like he was having trouble staying on his seat. He often found it hard not to show off his knowledge and I half expected his hand to shoot into the air like an overenthusiastic schoolboy.

  ‘Chitta-Ranjan Das,’ he replied. ‘Advocate at the High Court, and reputed to be one of the finest legal minds in India. A supporter of the Home Rule movement, he first came to prominence about fifteen years ago when he defended the poet Aurobindo Ghosh in the Alipore Bomb Conspiracy trial when no other advocate was willing to take the case. Das got him acquitted. After that, his fame spread and he became one of the most successful barristers in Calcutta. As the captain mentioned, he is now Gandhi’s chief lieutenant in Bengal, responsible for organising the non-cooperation movement and the Congress Volunteers throughout the province. The people love him. As with the Mahatma, they’ve given Das an honorific title: they call him the Deshbandhu. It means “friend of the nation”.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Lord Taggart bitterly. ‘Well, he’s no friend of ours, and neither are his blasted Volunteers.’

  Surrender-not was making me look bad. I shot him a glance implying as much and received nothing but a shrug from him in return.

  Taggart turned his attention to me. ‘As you know, Sam, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales is due to arrive on Sunday, and both Delhi and London are anxious that his visit to our fair city be a success.’

  The prince had something of an American film star about him. Maybe it was his charm, or the natural confidence that came from the knowledge that you were born to rule one-sixth of the globe; or maybe it was just the well-cut, very expensive suits he wore, but whatever it was, crowds the world over seemed to flock to the man to bask in his reflected glory, and the British government was more than happy to capitalise on it, sending him on goodwill visits to all corners of the empire.