Smoke and Ashes Page 8

  Surrender-not made himself at home on one of the sofas while I prowled the room. For a man who agitated for Indian independence, Das’s drawing room was surprisingly Western, decorated in the style one would expect of a highly paid Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, with French furniture, a gilt-framed mirror and portraits of several stern-faced native men on the walls.

  It all seemed rather ostentatious for a man who now wore only homespun clothes, and yet, as Surrender-not had pointed out, Das had bequeathed this house and all its chattels to the Congress Party and the cause of independence. His conversion from advocate to acolyte seemed as sudden and wholehearted as that of St Paul on the road to Damascus, the only difference being that his new-found leader called himself Mahatma rather than Messiah.

  The door opened and in stepped a rather striking middle-aged Indian woman in a plain blue sari.

  Her eyes fell on Surrender-not and her face lit up.

  ‘Suren, my dear. It has been far too long. How are you?’

  Surrender-not rose from the sofa. ‘I’m fine, kaki-ma,’ he stammered, as she walked over and took him by the hand.

  ‘Your parents are well?’ she asked.

  Surrender-not sidestepped the question. ‘Allow me to introduce my superior, Captain Wyndham,’ he said.

  The woman smiled then placed her palms together in pranam.

  ‘Captain Wyndham,’ continued Surrender-not, ‘I have the pleasure of introducing, Mr Das’s wife, Mrs Basanti Das.’

  ‘The pleasure is mine,’ I said.

  She was taller than I’d expected, and carried herself with a certain elegance that one associated with women who wore expensive jewellery. Save for a few bangles though, Mrs Das was bereft of such adornment. In this, it seemed, she followed her husband’s example.

  ‘You will excuse my husband,’ she said, looking me in the eye with a confidence few native women displayed upon first meeting. ‘He is concluding a meeting and will join you shortly. In the meantime, please sit. Would you care for some tea?’

  It wasn’t a question. In Bengal, even more than in Britain, tea was a given, a fact of life as constant as the air you breathed. She pressed a brass button on the wall, summoning a maid in a plain white sari, who, having received the briefest of instructions, nodded and retreated once more.

  Mrs Das took a seat on the sofa opposite. She turned to Surrender-not. ‘I take it this is not a social call, Suren? Your uncle mentioned you came to see him at the courthouse yesterday.’

  Surrender-not cleared his throat. ‘You must speak to him, kaki-ma. He listens to you. Convince him to call off the demonstrations.’

  The lady smiled and shook her head. ‘I could never ask him to do that.’

  Surrender-not ran a hand through his hair. ‘The authorities are becoming nervous, kaki-ma. Their only concern is that this visit by the Prince of Wales passes off without incident. They need to show a peaceful Calcutta to the world’s press.’

  The bangles on her wrist clinked against one another as she took his hand. ‘But Calcutta is peaceful, Suren. The demonstrations are peaceful. What your authorities want, I think, is not a peaceful, but a docile populace, and that is something they will not obtain. If anything, now is the time to redouble the protests,’ she said. ‘It proves your uncle’s tactics are working. In their desperation, the British will concede to his demands.’

  ‘No, kaki-ma, they will not,’ said Surrender-not forcefully. ‘They will crack down and they will spare no one. They will arrest him and throw him in a jail somewhere, possibly hundreds of miles from here. Maybe even outside India. What good can he do anyone by languishing in prison in Mandalay? And you know the toll that the struggle has taken on his health. He is not a young man any more. I fear that prison would break him.’

  A shadow of doubt flickered across the woman’s face as the door opened. Both she and Surrender-not turned to it expectantly, but instead of Das, it was merely the maid returning with tea and Bengali sweetmeats. She set them down on the table in front of her mistress and began to pour.

  ‘What do you wish me to do?’ said Mrs Das. ‘Your kakū will not listen to me. In matters like this, he won’t listen to anyone, save for the Mahatma, and of late, not even him.’

  Anguish etched itself like a rictus mask on Surrender-not’s face and it struck me just how much he’d aged over the last twelve months. The idealistic, self-effacing young man I’d first met over two years ago had grown up quickly, forced to bridge the divide between the love of his family and community and the love for his job and his personal belief that he continued to do what was right and moral. It had proved impossible to square that circle, and, to the extent that he was all but excommunicated from his kith and kin, he was, ironically, as alone in this city as I was.

  They say no man is an island, but the truth is that some of us are forced to be, fashioned by fate and circumstances beyond our control. I was one, and I feared Surrender-not was fast heading that way too.

  The maid set out the teacups in front of us. Mrs Das picked one up and sipped. ‘If you want to change his mind, talk to Subhash.’

  ‘That young fellow Bose?’ I asked. ‘But he’s positively looking forward to being arrested.’

  ‘He may be,’ she replied, ‘but he worships my husband. His desire to keep him from harm will outweigh any wish to court arrest on his own part.’

  ‘Who is going to be arrested?’ said a familiar voice, as the door opened once more. Surrender-not and I stood as Das walked in, smiling like an imp and dressed in a dhoti and a grey-flecked chador. Looking at him, it was hard to believe he was anything more than a kindly old uncle, rather than the de facto leader of millions throughout the province. Behind him came Bose, who appeared altogether more earnest, in the way that only the young and untested can. It was how Surrender-not used to look when I’d first met him; how I used to look before the war beat all of that nonsense out of me.

  ‘Captain Wyndham has come to ask you to call off the protests,’ said Mrs Das as her husband walked over. ‘Maybe you should listen to what he has to say.’

  The glint faded from Das’s eye. He gently squeezed her hand and then gestured for us to sit.

  ‘You will excuse me, gentlemen,’ said Basanti Das. Making her apologies and leaving her tea unfinished, she made for the door. Das took the seat vacated by his wife, while Bose continued to stand, taking up position some feet behind the old lawyer.

  ‘So, Captain Wyndham,’ said Das. ‘Have you come bearing another missive from Lord Taggart?’

  ‘I’m here on the commissioner’s behalf, sir, to ask you to call off your protest at the bridge this afternoon, and to warn you that any attempt to close down the free movement of traffic will be met with the utmost severity under the law.’ Das listened politely. ‘Thank you, Captain. Please inform the commissioner that I would be most happy to accede to his request, provided he rescinds the order banning the Congress Volunteers by noon today.’

  ‘There’s no possibility of that, kakū,’ said Surrender-not. ‘The order comes from Delhi.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ I added, ‘we shall pass on your request.’

  ‘Then we find ourselves at an impasse,’ said Das. ‘Unless you can think of any alternatives?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ ventured Surrender-not, ‘you could move the demonstration to another location? One that would allow you to air your grievances without provoking such a forceful reaction. The Maidan, maybe?’

  Behind Das, Bose snorted. Das held up a silencing hand.

  ‘Of course, we could move it, Suren, but that would precisely deny the purpose of non-violent non-cooperation. It is our job to provoke a reaction. Otherwise, what would be the point? We cannot lash out, and we cannot allow the government to simply ignore us, carrying on as usual.’

  There was a certain absurdity to it all. Here we were, Das and I, in the drawing room of a south Calcutta mansion, taking tea and calmly issuing demands at each other, in the full knowledge that neither of us had room to compromise and avert a
cataclysm that would no doubt lead to violence, mass arrests and possibly deaths in a few short hours. It was like heading towards a precipice in a car with the brakes cut. We both knew what was coming, there was still time to jump out, but neither of us had the ability to take action.

  Das took a handkerchief from within the folds of his dhoti, held it to his mouth and coughed.

  Beside me, Surrender-not was becoming agitated. Balling one hand into a fist, he slapped it into the palm of the other. ‘If you go ahead, kakū, there will be arrests on a scale greater than we have seen since the start of the year. Fathers dragged from their families, sons locked up and deported. Do you want that on your conscience?’ he asked. ‘Hasn’t there been enough hardship already?’

  ‘All struggles involve hardship, Suren,’ he replied benignly. ‘It is only through such sacrifice that we shall create a new and worthy India.’

  I’d seen more than enough hardship and sacrifice in the trenches to know it was all nonsense, of course, but the old man seemed to believe it. I suppose he had to. How else was he to justify the suffering that so many had endured by heeding the Mahatma’s call?

  ‘Please think of your health, kakū,’ implored Surrender-not. ‘A jail is no place for you.’

  Das raised his index finger. ‘I’m not so sure, Suren. Maybe imprisonment in a British jail is the most powerful message I could send.’

  Surrender-not turned to Bose in desperation. ‘Please talk to him, Subhash babu. What good will it do anyone if he should die in prison?’

  Bose breathed in sharply but said nothing.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Das, making to stand. There seemed to be a new-found steel to his voice. ‘If there is nothing further, you will excuse me. Today is going to be a particularly busy day. Perhaps for all of us.’

  I thanked him for his time and made for the door.

  ‘And, Captain,’ he said from behind. ‘Please pass on my best wishes to Lord Taggart.’

  We stepped out into winter sunshine and walked back to the waiting car. The driver stood leaning against the car, a cigarette in his hand and a distant expression on his face. On seeing us, he jolted upright and threw the butt to the ground before composing himself and opening the rear door with all the gravitas of a footman at the viceroy’s palace.

  As he did so, a native police peon, in white uniform and red fez, came wobbling along the street on his bicycle and stopped close by. Leaning the cycle against a tree, he walked over and saluted.

  ‘Captain Wyndham, sir? A message from Lal Bazar.’

  TEN

  We drove at speed along what was blithely titled the Grand Trunk Road, a stretch of tarmac so pitted with potholes that you’d be forgiven for thinking it had been on the receiving end of a Boche artillery barrage. The sun was high though, shining through a grey haze, making it pleasant weather for an Englishman but still perishing for an Indian.

  We’d left Das’s house and headed straight for the bridge at Howrah, crossing it and heading north, away from the city. To our right, the river was visible through breaks in the trees, cutting its way like a gash across the flat plain of Bengal. Our destination – the township of Rishra – lay about ten miles upriver, where the jungle gave way to smokestacks and the sort of dark satanic mills that Blake would have happily burned down had they been back in England. According to the note the peon had delivered, there had been a murder in the township which the local police must have deemed above their pay grade and so had called Lal Bazar. That suggested the victim was British, or at least European. Someone must have informed Lord Taggart, as I couldn’t imagine anyone else assigning the case to Surrender-not and me.

  The car slowed and weaved its way around another sinkhole like a drunkard negotiating his way home after last orders, and soon the first chimneys poked their heads through the jungle canopy of palm and palengra, punching fists of black smoke up into a sootstained sky.

  Dilapidated native dwellings of exposed brick and bamboo began to dot the roadside as we drove past the hole-in-the-wall shops, tea shacks with their clientele of shiftless, listless old men, pariah dogs, itinerant cows and all the other detritus of small-town Indian life. The native dwellings gave way to the high-walled compounds of phosphate factories and jute mills, their ramparts impregnated with shards of broken glass to deter the mischievous and the mendacious.

  The driver brought the car to a halt and barked a request for directions from a thin native who happened to be walking past with a bicycle in tow. The man responded with a nonchalance bordering on the insolent, pointing further down the road and slurring a few indistinguishable words in Bengali. With no more than a nod of acknowledgement, our driver put the car into gear and moved off, before taking a left and continuing down a narrow lane and stopping outside a squat structure with maroon-washed walls and a hand-painted sign above its entrance with the words ‘Rishra Police Station’ and the emblem of the Imperial Police Force emblazoned on it.

  Surrender-not and I got out and headed for the open door.

  The interior was no different to countless other flyblown provincial police stations, which is to say it was dimly lit and manned by an apathetic constable for whom the energy expended in straightening up and coming to attention seemed above and beyond the call of duty.

  ‘Who’s the officer in charge?’ I asked.

  The man scratched at the folds under his chin. ‘Sergeant Lamont, sahib,’ he said. ‘He is not here though.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  The man leaned over a counter awash with files, and opened his eyes wide. ‘Lamont sahib is being at Shanti-da’s Medical Clinic,’ he whispered. ‘He is seeing to one dead body.’

  ‘The body was found there?’ asked Surrender-not.

  The constable’s brow furrowed in consternation. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So it’s been moved from the scene of the crime?’

  He nodded emphatically. ‘Most absolutely.’

  Surrender-not and I exchanged a glance.

  ‘Where’s the clinic?’ I asked.

  ‘Very close, sahib. On Kalitala Lane, near the pond. You know Gaur-da’s shop? Near to that.’

  Once more I looked to Surrender-not who sighed and then let fly a stream of choice Bengali invective at the constable. Two minutes later, and with the demeanour of a whipped dog, he was leading us at a trot down a mud alley to the door of a whitewashed building with a faded red cross and some words in native script painted on a sign beside the door.

  As we approached, a British officer in a khaki police uniform and cap stepped out and was about to light a cigarette when he noticed us. He quickly returned the fag to its packet, stepped off the veranda and walked over.

  ‘Sergeant Lamont?’

  ‘At your service, sir,’ he said with a nod before holding out a hand.

  He looked in his late twenties and was in good shape, a fact confirmed by the strength of his handshake.

  ‘Wyndham,’ I said. ‘From CID at Lal Bazar. And this is Sergeant Banerjee.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he said. ‘We don’t deal with too many murders in this part of the world.’ His accent was Scots. It stood to reason. Rishra was a stone’s throw away from Serampore, and Serampore was practically run by our tartan brethren.

  ‘Where’s the body?’ I asked.

  Lamont gestured behind him. ‘Inside.’

  ‘You moved it from the crime scene?’

  ‘We had to. Orders from Serampore. It was attracting a fair bit of attention. The folk round here are a militant sort, Captain. This is the type of thing that could lead to trouble.’

  It seemed to me that a murder probably already fitted the definition of trouble but there was little purpose in pointing that out.

  ‘Any idea as to the victim’s identity?’

  ‘Aye.’ Lamont gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘A woman by the name of Ruth Fernandes.’

  ‘Foreign?’ I asked. That might explain why Lal Bazar had been called.

  ‘That depends,’
said Lamont.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Your definition of foreign.’

  Lamont led us inside, through a cramped waiting room with empty wooden benches around two walls, through a doorway covered with a fabric curtain and into an anteroom, at the end of which stood a door guarded by a constable.

  ‘There’s no hospital in Rishra,’ he said, as the constable stood to one side. ‘The nearest one’s in Serampore, but it was felt best to bring the body here.’

  ‘Why do I get the impression, Sergeant, that Serampore isn’t keen on handling this investigation?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s no’ that, sir. It’s just, you know … what with the political situation an’ all.’

  Covered by a white sheet, the body lay on a metal table in the centre of the room which was beginning to smell rather unsavoury. Lamont lifted the top of the sheet, lowering it to reveal the face of a native woman; or rather what was left of it. I took a step back and felt like I’d just been coshed over the head. The eyes were missing, gouged out in the same manner as the dead man down in Tangra, leaving in their stead two bloodied hollows. On her lips an encrustation of blood. Walking over, I steeled myself and reached for the sheet. I pulled it lower, revealing the upper half of her torso. Rather than a sari, the woman wore a blood-smeared blouse. On her chest were the marks from two stab wounds, one on either side. I stepped back and steadied myself against a chair as the room started to spin.

  Two murders, ten miles and twenty-four hours apart, both exhibiting identical injuries, which in themselves were hardly commonplace, and yet the only person who could testify to the similarities was me. There were just too many coincidences for comfort.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ asked Banerjee.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  Lamont seemed amused. ‘I’d have thought you CID boys would be used to seeing this sort of thing.’

  I proceeded to tear him off a strip, mainly to hide the torrent of thoughts rushing through my head.

  ‘You think there’s something funny about seeing a woman carved up, sonny?’ I said.